DR. GRENFELL ON IMMORTALITY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 282, 25 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

DR. GRENFELL ON IMMORTALITY.

"BECAUSE I AM SURE OF IT." "To mo it is a sign of feebleness," says Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, in an article on i" ''Shall a man live again?" in the New York Outlook, "when a preacher of our immortality searches through dusty J tomes for the confirmation of a lifelong j intuitive faith." Dr. Grenfell is fully ; satisfied to believe in immortality "just because I am sure of it":— "I believe that intuition brings me into most direct and most reliable relationship with what is most vital and true. Any man who, to my mind, is worth while worrying with believes in honor and love and truth. .... Tt is best to believe it. I was taught that it was true at my mother's knee, and there I learned of immortality. I took in one / with .the other, and f mean to cling to both of them. I pray that the day may | never come when I believe that this' beautiful world, and this gift of life, are evi-, deuces that we are only the sport of a devilish God, who would leave matter indestructible, but destroy the noblest attribute of mankind." "There is something that will not take 'no' from my brain," he says. "Some call it the moral life, some the ideal life, some the spirit or soul. I call it T." I Among various interesting points, Dr. I Grenfell mentions the persistence of I memory through all the altered forms of the body; the creative power of the soul—"How can a physical organ produce an idea?—his belief in man's sonship to God; and his faith in the re- ' surrection of Christ, .of which he says: — "Experience has convinced me that this faith is too valuable an asset here to 'be wantonly thrown away. After all, are not the reasons for doing so too often caused by the will, and not by the 1 intellect? T.t makes great demands on life, this faith in immortality us Christ 1 teaches it." Dr. Grenfell's position, however, is best ' summed up in his statement: "The fact 1 is, I hav given my time to the study 1 of mortality; I have accepted immov--1 tal'ity as axiomatic. . . . More than i once at sea, if I had waited'to hem my 1 reason into n comer before adopting a 1 course of action. T should not be here ' to .tell the tale."