DR. FRANK CRANE'S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 216, 1 December 1927, Page 5

DR. FRANK CRANE'S DAILY EDITORIAL

THE MINISTRY OF DEATH (Copyright, 1921.) 'J'AKE off your hats! The man’s dead! You’re hunted him over the hills, tracked him through the woods, waited for him at his home, followed him from hiding-place to hiding-place, and now you’ve got him. He lies there with staring eyes, his arms outspread, a ragged hole in his breast, moveless, quiet, harmless as wood—dead! So take off your hats! He was a criminal, a thief, a murderer, lowest of men, yet he was a human being, an immortal soul, a creation of the infinite God. Alive, he was despised. Dead, he is a solemn thing, sacred as a church. Against death all our hate, our vindictive pursuit, our violence stop and are beaten back, scattered into thin air, as the ocean wave stops, dashed to foam against the rocky cliff. Life may be sordid and cheap in the living of it: when it depart* the mark it leaves is always majestic. At death the mysterious beauty of eternity suffuses the coarse face of time. Without death we could not understand life. For life’s evil institutions are too venerable, its senseless customs too iron, its manias too intense, its passion fevers too fierce, so that, unchecked by death’s cool reasoning, life would speedily become a whirlwind of fury. Death is the one preacher of righteousness, nobility, mercy, charity and justice, whose lips cannot be stilled. Life has forgiveness, which is good: but death has forgetfulness, which is better.