“BEYOND THE GRAVE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 985, 30 May 1930, Page 16

“BEYOND THE GRAVE”

REV. W. BENTLEY’S MISSION

Last evening. at St. Matthew s Church, the Rev. Walter E. Bentley, of New York, dealt with “Life Beyond the Grave.” Treating and interpreting seven ditferent texts, the speaker deplored the prevailing ignorance on the subject. Christians today should know far more than the ancients, living as they did in a time of revelation and discovery, when science was confirming what religion had asserted all down the ages. “As we shall rest from our labours (earthly drudgery and temptation), our works, intellectual and spiritual, go on with us in the rfiany mansions (degrees and spheres) in our Father’s house. And the other world is not far away, but all around us, for the spiritual world interpenetrates the physical as water flows through a net, though we see it but dimly. It is the environment of our spirits as matter is of our bodies, and books and culture that of our minds. This spiritual environment is best seen in the Church —the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, focussing the unseen, and throwing it as a picture on the screen of the material. This next world was called Hades by the Greek, Sheol by the Hebrews, Paradise by the Persian, Purgatory by the Roman Catholic, and the state of progressive purification by the Anglican. They all meant the same place. This evening, at 7.30, Mr. Bentley will preach on “Why We Believe in the Resurrection of the Body.”