THE DEATHLESS UNITY.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 6, 22 January 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE DEATHLESS UNITY.

By' Rev. R. J. CAMPBELL, M.A

(Abridged from a sermon preached in the City Temple last month).

An abnormal time like the present sets the fact of death in a new and intensely v : vid light. At ordinary times we are not brought so sharply up against it; it steals into our midst and does its work more silently. though not less effectively, than now We know well enough that we must all die, and the only question is when; but to a large extent we can avoid thinking about it so long as life flows on in an even course. But let that course be interrupted in sor;e drastic manner, as by the great world-war at present raging, and at once we see it with other eyes. On The Battlefields cf Europe men are dying in thousands and tens of thousands— young men, too. It is not the old that are passing in the greatest numbers to that bourne from which no traveller returns, but the young and vigorous, men who have not yet reached the prime of life. And in reading obituary notices 1 have been repeatedly struck with the number of only sons or young husbands who are among the killed One can so easily imagine what this means in the homes from which they have gone forth. So far this has been the bloodiest war of history—l mean relatively to its duration —and 1 have no doubt that before it ends it will have proved to be absolutely so. It gives a shock to the imagination to contemplate; we have hardly realised as yet all that it means to the human race. The destroying angel is passing over the world and slaying the first-born as he goes—nay, more than that, he is iaking the flower of the youth oi the nations, and none can prophesy what havoc he has still to work before he stays his appalling progress. How are we going to meet his visitation? There may be a tendency for many of us to grow callous in time to the prodigality of death. That is the case already with our soldiers at the front. Some of those who have returned tell me that daily participation in scenes of carnage gradually hardens them thereto, till they come to view them with comparative indifference. There is no help for it; it is either that or going mad. No sensitive human organisation could stand the horrors of modern war unless nature mercifully blunted its perceptions. Gentle, compassionate, kindly men, who at homo would be overwhelmed with concern if a fellow-creature hurt in their presence, will cease after a while to be deeply moved at anything. They care no more about dead bodies thickly strewn than about the dust under their feet; they have to steel themselves to bear the horrific sights and sounds of the field of strife. Most of them don't need much steeling; they are so worn out that their nerves refuse to react beyond a certain point to any emotional stimulus. Walking hourly hand in hand with death they take him for granted, as it were, in a way they would never dream of doing under ordinary normal conditions.

Though the fact has nothing directly to do with my text I feel J ought to observe In addition hero that there is always a ]>;uigei' of Demoralisation at such periods as the present It is a strange fact, but undeniable, that wherever and whenever death operates on a large scale and with appalling methods people generally tend to become reckless; the baser passions frequently get the upper hand, and men behave like beasts Despair and wickedness are usually close companions. I am told that the ghoulish scenes which took place after the Messina earthquake, when all the scum of the earth seemed to collect like vultures on that fatal spot, were beyond description. A disaster of such magnitude, which called forth pity and self-sacrifice in an unparalleled degree, also let loose the vilest forces of hell. Drunkenness, sensuality, robbery, and murder strove for mastery with Christian tenderness and heroism. So in the French Revolution, when no one's life was safe for a day. all kinds of devilry developed; men and women danced and jested with death. The same was true in the Great Plague of London in the seventeenth century. One would have thought that the terror of such a pestilence, so swift, and merciless, and far-spread would have driven people to their knees. It did in many cases, but in others it turned to blasphemous orgies of the most abominable character.

Why this should be I will not at the moment presume to say. I only want to warn you against it. As time goes on, and we become more and more familiar with the grim presence of death in our midst, v.e shall as a people either sink or ris«e morally, and which we shall do clepends entirely upon the spirit in which we address ourselves to the future and our attitude to the grea; mystery of the life beyond. Tho worst thing that death does, the only thing in which he can hurt at all, is the sundering of beautiful human fellowships, the tearing of loving souls apart. There is nothing else, notiiing whatever, in which death has any power to harm. This is his sole weapon; if it wero not for this everyone could welcome him as a friend. And oh the tragedy of it! Two hearts with but. a single thought, Two hearts that boat as ona are suddenly made to learn that they ere still two and not one when death comes along and snaps the tie that hinds them. One can undorstp.-id two people who are all in nil to each other feeling that nothing can ever divide them. And they are right, for what is life but An Essay in Love? What value has life without love? It, has often been lived on other terms, and the poor stupid world still goes on trying to livo it for othor

ends; but take love out of life and it has lost all meaning. I say this without prejudging the case as to whether the love of one human heart for another is the highest form that love can take. But i also say that those are right who hold that love and life are intrinsically one, and that when soul has been knit to soul in love something has taken place which has eternal significance. And when death threatens that afI flnity no wonder that all that is best in us rises in protest. You live with your beloved year after year, and it seldom or never occurs to you that anything could happen to dissolve ' that sweet partnership, till one day it does. Death knocks at the door, and love fights in vain to keep him out. How true G. F. Watts' picture of the struggle of love and death is to the facts in such a case! Love as a poor unarmed child raises feeble hands to push back the grim, towering form of incoming death who strides remorselessly on heedless of his cries. You find it hard to believe, perhaps, thai, fate could do such a cruel thing as to divide you from him or her whose soul lives in yours and whose love is the very air you breathe. But it can, and it does. Not till the grave actually closes over the dear familiar form can you accept the stern decree and realise that you are left alone. What hope is there? What is the word of God to such as you? The Communion of Saints.

It is this, the inspired message of my text: In the spirit there is no dividing and never has been. What you possess in the spirit you possess uninterruptedly for evermore. Death is an allusion of the ilesh. Your dead do not leave you, nor you leave them. Death does nothing to separate the souls that have grown into each other and shared with each other in the infinite love of God This earth-world is a land of shadows and dreams, but we do not live in it alone, we live in another and higher all the time. I must be careful to make myself clear. I do not say you are conscious of this with the mind, but I say you can know it with the heart. You know now—do you not? —when you are really in possession of a fellow spirit? What has the body got to do with it. Almost nothing at all. At the best it is only the language of the spirit, and the spirit can dispense with that language. Unless spirit speaks to spirit, bodily presence is of no account; and when spirit intermingles with spirit you know it, and feel it in the depths of you, though oceans roll between the corporal frames through which they are linked to this world. There is a self in every one of us that we know very little about, a majestic angel, a son of God. It is that that survives all things in life and death; in fact, it dwells in the eternal world now, only we do not know it, as the roots of a tree are hidden in the ground and will reclothe that tree with verdure when summer comes again, or as the spring that supplies a mountain stream remains hidden out of sight and will flow again to-morrow though the stream be dry to-day. Sometimes the sad reflection is indulged that our parting from these whom death has summoned is a real good-bye because time dulls the edge of every sorrow; we shall not be the same when we meet again, if we ever do, for we are changing all the time. I think many people feel this keenly when they are watching their dear ones pass away from them into the vast unknown. It is no balm for the wound of bereavement now to be told that the broken fellowship will be resumed by and by. Will it? That is just the point. Can it be? Will the soul be the same? What happens even on earth when friends are separated even for a few years? They tend to grow apart more or less. Have we any reason for supposing that it will be greatly different with the greatest change of all, the schism of death and what follows death? Yes, and no. The fundamental self never changes; it is the surface self that does; the spirit never lets go what it has once possessed. The brain and the body forget, the spirit never. What we know of ourselves here from childhood to old age is but a tiny fragment of what we really are; and death recovers the knowledge, renews all the blessed experience that has sunk into the background of the poor mortal mind.

Again, some people say that all merely Personal Affinities and Associations must perish and ought to perish, that they are too narrowing, too limiting for a child of eternity, a son of God; all their work is to evoke the spiritual qualities they exercise Yes, but what are these? They are not thinkable apart from the fellowships that created them, and mean nothing otherwise. What r.re love, and fidelity, and the spirit of selfsacrifice without the relationship of soul to soul? Grant immortality to the one and you affirm immortality of the other. I admit it is unlikely that these merely go on; they go up. They will not continue as they are; they will enlarge till they embrace a range of consciousness to us at present inconceivable. But they will never cease to be themselves —Love will never lose its own. "Because I live," said Jesus, "ye shall live also." Think of that precious word and all it implies. We might say of all we have ever loved in Christ, Because I live, ye shall live also. Yea, Christ is himself the pledge and guarantee that no spiritual fellowship that has ever existed will be either diminished or destroyed by the rude hand of death. Therefore be comforted, all you whose deepest heart-treasure is not on earth but in heaven. You will not lie divided from it even now. Your love is helping to make tho joy of heaven for those who are wailing fori you there; they see it, they feel it, they know it as they never (lid on earth, for the body is a dull medium through which to utter the soul's best. And -love is still coming to you, still filling and warming your heart, from that glorious other side, v!'i"h is not tar away, but very, very near. Are you not at Cmes aware cf it When you are at your highest are you not conscious (if the vibrations of a love ihat is purified from the dross of this world, exalted above all tilings earthly, hut burning more, not le«s, intensely toward you? When God's pence wraps you round as with a mantle in hours of blessed spiritual communion, docs it not come charged with the fragrance of (ho prayi is and blessings cf some who have parsed beyond tho smiling and the weeping, and in their happiness and glory are still thinking of you? Can you pray without being drawn roarer lo them? For I lie only immortality is Ihe immortality of love, and love is God.