A MEMORIAL SERMON.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 13 December 1917, Page 1

A MEMORIAL SERMON.

In the course of bis sermon, preached on Sunday morning at St. Mary's Church, when the memorial tablet to tjhe late Trooper George Burlinson was unveiled, the Rev. G. B. Stephenson said :

To-day we hold in grateful and proud memory one oJt' the young men who went out from among us—and returns no more. And to-day he is in our thoughts, not as a solitary soldier, but as a type. He is one of many brethren, he is one representative of that host of warriors, true and bold, who gladly and eagerly left kith and kin, comfort and ease, and peace and prosperity, to face hardship and death. As in our minds we picture what he was —mounted and ready for battle —behind him we see the thousand? shadowy forms of comrades, soldiers of the line who have shared his fate. In olden timesi poets and writers and preachers would hardly have mentioned ordinary soldiers. When they desired to impress the tragic nature of death they would have said : See how death ever takes the great ones, Kitchener and Maude, and the rough red hand of the revolutionaries striking at the greatness of llussia. But today, instead of seeing the sadness and inevitableness, the essential tragedy of death in the few great ones, we rather see it f°r the crowd of common soldiers- Think how unlike death our men would look—a laughing band of men in the strength of young manhood. Then in a few hours so many may be swallowed up in death. It is ffiis sweeping away so suddenly of a multitude of ordinary men that appals us, and doubtless before the war is over the tragedy will repeat itself over and over again. Crowds of mounted men will be rushing across the arid slopes of Palestine and many a horse will be riderless. Multitudes of men will be rushing to the attack in Flanders, and again and again mothers and fathers, sisters and wives and little ones will helplessly weep, without the comfort of a last look, without being able to speak the last words of love. It seems a commonplace to say all this in time of war when it is so obvious but to-day we are saying more than this. Men of a hundred years ag° used to threaten the great ones with death. They would have reminded them of the weakness and shame of it. But to-day we know a better way. No Voice of one who is to preach the good news of Christ could speak like that. To-day our whole attitude is changed. It is not death that lnimbles us. It is life that humbles us. .It is our life that is felt to be s o insignificant.. Each is but an atom, a unit in a heap, a few petty, noisy years we have —of love and hate, of food and sleep, of work and play, and then we are gone. We see that more clearly in the light of war, when lives are p°ured out like water for the sake of other things—freedom and honour that take precedence of life. The life of one —how insignificant it is. Yet suddenly at death each one becomes distinct as around him rolls the tragedy. Though a thousand go down side by side with him, for each there i s a solitary pilgrimage, with its over-mastering awe, and with its glory of hope. Life may appear insignificant or sordid or useless, but nothing, not even the multiplying of death in this time_ of war can rob death of its ancient majesty- r°r each it is the hour of great adventure for which the years on earth wei'e but the playtime, the practice-ground for the real thing when at last the soul is free to face eternal life and God. The hour of great adventure for greatest and least, for the common soldier and the great general, they take not tlientitles through the portals of death. So would we cry to men like this who have risked death for God's things : Go forth to your adventure in the name of the Tather who gave you life for it. Go forth in the name of the Son who died to prepare you for it. Go forth in the name of the Spirit who has been struggling to get you ready for this — your great adventure. Yes. surely it is life that is drab and sombre, with its wasted days ; with its miserable quarrels, with its follies and sins, with its blood and tears. But death cuts across it and lifts men out of it t'o the chance of real life. So let the ennobling thought of death as the great adventure, the last fight and the best, ,sweep over beart and soul, cleansing away all fear of the dark, all cowardly thought of punishment and judgment, all foolish thought 01 extinction and nothingness. lor we would not" speak of ileal 1) today to threaten as they used to in days of old. We would not say of a man like this : He is dead ; he is taken by death- in awed tones to fill men s minus with morbid Surelj we should speak of death liopei fully and-calmly. It is the set--1 ting out for that extension of lite for which the busy years here i were preparing* us. So it is realI ly life that is still our theme.

iind death is only an important incident in life that stretches on before and after it. Life ! Yes, but who is alive. Do you call it when men live selfishly °r wickedly, grasping- all they can, and smothering their very souls ? Is it life when men live 011 to middle age and leave no noble deeds that will live after they are gone? Is it life when men struggle 011 to threescore years and ten and when they die it is a relief, ,even to those who love them best? And death is the tragic act in which life is given wings for further flight- At least for men like this who fared bravely and manfully out in response to the call of honour and freedom. "Wlio would not be willing to go as soldiers go? "Who. would not —except for the love and protection °f wife and little children — choose a soldier's death? To die as they do, in full vigour, glorified by having given their lives for others. .For at least these men are alive, and death for them does not stay the foaming current of li f e> but is merely the chance of its extension, the instrument of its renewal, the method by which God frees it for the life eternal.