THE AWAKENING CALLED DEATH!

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 171, 10 July 1908, Page 4

THE AWAKENING CALLED DEATH!

Tu the Editor. «%-l am sure I cannot understand the reason that the New "Plymouth paper-j use 4to be taken oil" the readingroom file at about even- issue, when the old library was in existence, instead of filing back numbers of the two most important papers, so far as local interest goes. The thing was absurd, and 1 have just referred to the back number of the Daily News of the issue of 11th June, 1908, to quote from a small article on ;i subject I am deeply interested in.- The News is filed miles away from New Plymouth, and let us bop'c that back numbers will be filed in the new library. This is entirely apart from my subject, but it is most important. Now to begin. Aii article appeared on the date mcn-

tioned entitled, "Why I Long for Death," and quoted Count Tolstoi's opinion as to » future 4'ite. He says: "X believe with all my soul in what I say. I feci, T know with certainty that iii dying t shall be happy, that I shall enter a*world more real." What a pity, I thought, as I read those lines from such a brilliant authority, that we did not all know and realise the same thing. What an immensity of nothing short of hell and suffering it would avert. Those pitiful scenes that are enacted day after day at thousands of gravesides, and long months' and years of grieving. Why'Y Simply through a wrong conception of lliings. Certainly, the parting is a terrible wrench, but instead of making matters wtrse we should look on death from another view point. After all, what is death? Well, I have given attention to the subject for years, not from a religious point of view, but from a purelv scientifie one; and what lias been the result of my investigations'! Simply this, that Death is not Bcath in the true sense of the term, but it is really an awakening—an awakening called bv the name of Death. That is all. I* will quote again from that article, and how

true every liu»» seems to nie: "All our life, from birtU to death. is it not. with all its dn'ain*. itself a dream? Docs not our !*lief in its reality spring solely and entirely frfnn our of anv other life more real? Our earthly life is one of the dreams of smother and

nitre real life, and that other life is a dream of!yet another life,'' etc. Jlow simple this is for those who have given pure scientific attention to the matter, cutting clear all evidence except tliar. which could be proved, and provvd uudoubtedly e and hacked by such brilliant scientific authorities as Sir William Crookes, Wallace, and a host of other:I could mention. 1 assert that the fac:

of a future state %«• all is proved and reproved. and it only remains for the people as a whole hi gra<-p the fact that ft is a natural law that we migrate from

this stiPte to one still higher- one step, as H were, in the aeons oftiine. Shall we all in a future state rejoin those ,we love deafer than life—the mother her child, etc.? 1 have endeavor."l tiprove otherwise and fail™l--uml thai dismally, so far as my own involiga tions go. I tin not see evie to ( .\e with the present teaching iu the churches, but of one thing I am at one with them, and that is that there is something ahead of lis, only a matter of time, and that all participate in that somethiiie. - I am. etc., AliTlin; PJl'AliD. llawera, Sth July. lIMIS.