LIFE AFTER DEATH

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 270, 11 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

LIFE AFTER DEATH

BISHOP CROSSLEY'S SERMON. THE DANGER OF THEORIES. Auckland, May C. There was a large congregation in St. Mary's Cathedral last evening, when his Lordship Bishop Crossley delivered a sermon entitled "The After Death." The Bishop said that certain words oE his had been reported in the public press as follows:—-"People don't go to heaven when they die, or to hell either. It is a popular belief, but. if it is true, where would be the moral of the Day of Judgment long afterwards ?" Thai; report of his words he upheld, and now he was venturing, at the request of many earnest people, to speak more fully upon the subject. Very mistaken inferences had been drawn from his words. "I have been congratulated," added the Bishop, "on having got rid, out of my Christian philosophy, of heaven and hell. I might, just as reasonably, have been congratulated on getting rid of God Himself. One writer, the study of whose works I recommend, says: No man has ever yet gone to heaven. No man has ever yet been finally judged. No man has ever yet been finally damned. I hold to the belief that heaven and hell do not supervene upon d«ath." Christianity, continued Dr. Crossley, demanded nothing that was either opposed to reason or contrary to the moral aspirations with which God had endowed them all. 'What was after death? He approached this sermon with an intense sense of reservation. What should be noted was the strongly marked reservation of those very creeds of their own Christianity. All that the creeds said about after death was enshrined in three statements—"That our Lord descended into hell ; that He will return to judge the living and the dead; and, lastly, we look for the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." A STRIKING SILENCE. The still mora striking fact should be noted of the silence in a large part of the only Man who ever knew, and that was Jesus Christ. They viewed the culm aloofness and self-assertion of Jesus of Nazareth when He spoke of death or of judgment, though in the Jewish religious world in His day there was elaborate speculation upon the after-death. There was a tremendous danger of building theories upon isolated texts, upon texts dissociated from the recognition of the spiritual progress made at the moment they were said or written. There was a danger of forgetting that the great minds of Christianity had not been at one throughout the centuries upon this great subject. THE MYSTERY OF MEMORY. Bishop Crosslfiv, continuing, said there was the danger of assuming three things on certain witness:—"(l) The danger of assuming the everlasting life of the devil; (2) the danger of assuming the evcrlastingness of sin; (3) the danger of assuming the necessary everlastingness of yourself." There was to be special note on the word "necessary." The question faced them: "Am I an animal slowly developed, shorter lived than many other animals and yet superior to all? Am I a body only? One thing I. know, my brain is my own. but it is not me. What is this 'l'? Something obtains within me. that I can discipline, but not altogether control. There is personality that has a most potent expression in memory. Memory is the most mysterious thing in myself. Memory acts whether I like it or not. Memory is a sort of self, but it docs not die. What am I? I am, I believe, a spirit with a continued and uninterrupted existence, and a bodj that constantly changes."

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. What was after death? There was one certainty in after death. It was this: The Day of Judgment was the last day. And that la<t day, throughout the Scriptures, was associated with the return of the Son of Man. Was the Day of Judgment the day of death? He said that upon judgment, and not until judgment, depended heaven or hell. It was clean against the New Testament to say the Day of Judgment was the day of one's death. If the Day of Judgment was not the day of death what happened to the sold after death? Jesus Christ had told the storv of the rich man and Lazarus, and in that story there was nothing more clear than two things —continuation of conscience and identity of character. Those who believed that they were to be judged on the day of their death must find it difficult to fix ideas of reality upon that tremendous real thing, the Day of Judgment, which most clearly would not occur until the return of Christ.

THE STACE OF I'ARADHE. If there were to be a stage when memory and conscience continued to act after death what was it'.' Christ., on the cross, looked into the face of the dying criminal, who had asked ITim to remember him when He came into [lis Kingdom, and He answered: "To-dav thou shalt be with Me in paradise." They would get into dire confusion, said his Lordship, if they thought paradise was heaven. The word had been used to describe the place of the souls that had died, waiting for the judgment. After the day of resurrection Christ said: "Touch Me not; I am not yet ascended unto your Father and My Father." Paradise was what was described in the creed as the descent into hell. In the Revised Version the word used was Hades. Hades meant the unknown, the unseen place, the place of rest and peace of conscience and memory. . Concluding, the Bishop said that the long-held view of the Church, of Cod was that heaven and that hell were not existent for people till the Day of Judgment. They would pass into a stage after death with character, with personality, and with memory.