LIFE AND LIFE'S HEREAFTER.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 December 1920, Page 6

LIFE AND LIFE'S HEREAFTER.

"As a leaf."-Tsa. LXIV., 6. "As the stars." —Dan XII., 3. (Notes of a sermon preached in the Baptist Church, New Plymouth, by Rev. A. H. Collins, on the unveiling of memorial windows to the late Arthur Hamilton Ambury and his brother, Raymond John Ambury. At first sight these words seem to have nothing in common. Isaiah and Daniel were prophets of the same nation, but 'they differed in time and in tern- j perament; they lived under different conditions and viewed life from different standpoints. One passage appeals to faith and the other to sight One rings the curfew of man's mortality; the other sounds the toscin of eternity—the matin song of the life everlasting; one is concerned with life, the other with life's afterglow. Yet in spite of these surface differences, there is a deeper unity, and the passages are not contradictory but complimentary. Each is true in part, and neither is wholly true apart from the other. I have put them side by side as a message suited to the circumstances of the hour. "As a leaf!" Frail, fleeting, helpless: one day green and silken, the next day bruised and buried, or burned! How pitiful, how tragical, how ironical, how alsardonical it sounds as an epitomy of human life! "We all do fade as a leaf." "Show pity, Lord, for we are frail and faint; We fade away, oh! list to our complaint! We fade away like flowers in the sun; We just begin and then our work it done." It is true and sobering, but the mood is hardly healthy, and might easily become morbid. "As the stars!" Keen, vast, distant, and friendly, yet shrouded in mystery, ruled by law, and fashioned by the hand of God. "The stars!" Prized in childhood, welcomed down to old age, pondered by the poet, explored by the scientist watched by the sailor. "Star of hope, when winds are mocking, Bless the soul that sigh for thee: Bless the sailor's lonely pillow, Far, far, at sea." That, also, is true, but the mood needs watching, lest it betray us into unreality. The pessimist is not a pleasant companion, and his creed is essentially false; but he serves a very useful purpose in washing some of the rosy tints with which shallow folk pain't the ugly facts of life. The optimist, too. is our good friend when he smiles and sings and bids us see "the soul of goodness in things evil," but his creed is not stormproof, and we need to face things as they are. "As a leaf," "As the stars," which is true as a parable of *fifo? Both are true, within certain limits, and neither is true as a rounded, full-orbed statement of truth. So much depends on the angle of vision. "Two men looked out through the prison bars: The one saw mud, the other stars. Two men visit one of our modem cities. One explores the slums, the hospitals, the gaols. The othr- tours the suburbs, the schools, the uni. u-sity, and the churches. Each tells what he saw. Neither exaggerates, yet how different! Which is true? Both are true, in part; neither is true as a complete statement. "What is your life?" Ask the poets. Ask gentle Willie Shakesperae, and he answers: "Life is a walking shadow, A poor player that struts And frets his hour upon the stage, And then is seen no more. 'Tis a tale told by an idiot Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Ask Robert Browning, and he says: — "To me the earth's not gray, but rosy. Heaven not grim, but fair of hue. Do I stoop? I pluck a posy. Do I stand and stare? all's blue. God is in His heaven, All's right with the earth." Ask Longfellow, and he sings:— "Tell me not in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream, And the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem, Life is real, life is earnest, And the grave is not the goal, Dust thou art to dust returnest Was not spoken of the soul." Ask Shelley, and he declares: "Life like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains tl/i white radiance of eternity." | Ask Tennyson, and he proclaims:— "Thou wilt not leave us in the dust; Thou madest man, he knows not why; He ithinks he was not made to die, And Thou hast made him; Thou are just Which is true? Shakespeare's is the voice of the pessimist. Browning's is the voice of the optimist. Longfellow strikes a deeper note. Shelley is graver still. Tennyson is victoriously Christian. The pessimist and the optimist play Nelson with the blind eye to the telescope, and so each fails to see life steadily and see it whole." But it is the game of a simpleton to ignore the tragic things of life, its brevity, sorrow, wrongs; it is even more foolish to refuse to see that life has its compensations, powers, immortal hopes. Man is mortal? It is only half the truth, and the poorer half to hoot, for man is the child of immortality, and to forget that is fatal. "Man dieth and , giveth up the ghost, and where is he? There iji the city sin and slime, soiled, withered, dead," say some. It isn't true. "We all fade as a leaf." Granted! The seeds of decay are in our flesh. Years pass, faculties fail, powers decay. The process varies with different men, but sooner or later death conies to all, and he is the wise man who keeps the solemn fact in mind. But even in their fading leaves may be very beautiful ;in the 1 pensive autumn days when the forest is i glorious with its crimson and its gold. A : dull grey wall becomes an object of , splendour when the Virginia ere'eper is dying. Yes, and the fading leaves supply a rich compost for next year's growth." "These Christians die well," said an early critic, and he might have added, , "they rise again." "As a leaf," "As the j stars for ever and ever."

The best part of a man is never lmried in his grave. Influence is immortal. Yon have only to look around to see how the men of past generations are living still. They felled our forests, built our cities, shaped our laws, wrote our books, scored our nmsio, consecrated our churches, and set our national ideals. If they cCuld come back to ut and claim what

they contributed to the world's Wealth and progress, How little would 'Be left! The grand life is indestructible. The great missionaries of the world are not dead. Their influence is fresh as the I palms that shadow their graves. Wilberforce still pleads the cause of the enslaved: Howard still woos men to love, of mercy; the martyred army is a living army; the stakes of Smithfield bio's- ]. soni from age to age, like Aaron's rod <, that budded. ii Humble men and women drop from y the tree of life like faded leaves, but n they add something to the fibre of the c tree, and they live on like the .stars that o burn in yonder sky. "As a leaf," "As n the stars, for ever and ever." David, p the sweet singer, sang to a'tribe; to-day 1 his audience is trie wide world. Was ( Saint Paul ever more alive than now? s Has Dante ceased to be ? ' Has Bunyan a ended his pilgrim's progress? Do Spur- I geon, and Dale, and Liddon, and Mac- g larcn no longer preach? Years fly. but u eternity! Men fall, but man! When c Rufus Choat took ship to the port \i where he died, a friend said to him, t "You will be hero a year hence." The t greitt lawyer answered: "Sir, I shall be t here a hundred years hence, and a thou- s sand yearsTience." "As a leaf,' "As the stars ,for ever and ever." n You know why I have spoken thus to- v day. In Maeterlinck's play, "The Blue u Bird," the little child in the churchyard o is made to say, "There are no dead/ and a the instinct of the race says the same s thing. But "immortality is the glorious dis- u covpry of Christianity." Before the g war multitudes had lost their sense of li God, and sin, and immortality; but the v war has roused them from tlieir torpor, r Whatever we may think of the visit of n Sir Conan ]\vle and the teaching of spi- h ritualism, it means, that the materialis- u tc philosophy is stark dead for most men. v "Because I live ye shall live also." said e Jesus Christ. That is final. Millions i have found it so. The saints and martyrs have found that anchor hold. Just before lie fell, mortally wounded, at Lemnos, Rupert Brooke, the poet, wrote on a scrap of paper:— "Safe where no safety is Saie though I fall, And if these poor limbs die, Safest of all." 1 1 Wherefore we sing:— i \ "Lord, where Thou art, our happy dead' ' must be, ' | And if with Thee, what then their * sacred bliss! 1 Till faith be sight, and hope reality, ' Love's anchorage is this." ' i "As a leaf," "As the stars, for ever ' and ever." i