SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 September 1921, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

FORETOKENS OF IMMORTALITY.

‘Enoch walked with God and he w?.s not for God took him.” —Genesis, V. 24.

(By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.)

There is a whole biography in this brief epitaph—a full, fruitful, rounded life flashed into a vivid lightning eketch. There is no padding, no fulsome flattery, and no cruel criticism. Events and details are omitted. We are introduced at once to the spirit, the method, and the purpose, of the man commended: and all other matters, the i time of his birth, the character of his education his social environment, his plans, difficulties and achievements, are only incidents and episodes. Such things have their place and use in biography, since they nerve to reveal the conditions under which a" great life pursued its purpose and accomplished its task. But the essential point lies beneath and beh'ind a man’s sayings and doings, in the central and ruling ideas of the roan himself. He is the real centra of interest, and to understand him is to learn how little or how much must be credited to whatever he said *or did.

But the passage is of more than historic value. It is a philosophy as well as a biography. It embalms a memory, and it presents an ideal. It represents life and death in their higher aspects, the one as “a path to a cle-tir purposed goal,” the other as in no sense an accident or a disaster, but a consummation I and a. crown. Life is regarded’ as a steady progress in noble company, and death as an ordered and gracious dispensation of God. It links the character of a man’s life with the character of his death, and both to the righteous dominion of the Almighty. Of course these themes are not new. They are old as man, yet new as the flowers on the last dug grave. DEATH IS INEVITABLE. Besides, these words concerning Enoch the Saint supply warm and welcome light on the future.. Death is inevitable. The generations are as changing sentinels in the night. The thought mey be unwelcome, but it inescapable. Death, the democrat, comes at aft hours, along every route,, to every home. Even when we have anticipated his coming, his arrival meets us with a shock of surprise. He makes no allowance for age or rank. No matter how much has been accumulated, or at what cost, not a farthing of it all can be smuggled across the frontier. The moneyed man and the penniless pauper quit the world on the same terms. “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out,” and it is this universal fact that makes the doctrine of immortality no longer an academic question, but a subject that presses with pathetic urgency. “If a man die shall he live again ’’ “Man dieth and giveth up the ghost, and where is he?” Agnosticism echoes “Where?” Atheism boldly cries “Nowhere.” The. one mocks the mourner’s grief, the other poisons the rest of life. Still the question haunts the mind: Does death end all? Is there no life beyond the shows and shadows of the things we sec?

IMMORTALITY TS DEMANDED. Thinly. Immortality is demanded. The desire for it is so profund, so persistent, so universal, and it- seems so purposely implanted, that we may regard it as prophecy and pledge. We have an instinct for the life to come, and instincts arc Nature’s foretokens. Surely Nature will not whisper truth to swallows, and beetles, and spiders, and tell lies to men? “The faith in iminortalit.y depends on a sense of it begotten, not on an argument of it concluded,” says Horace Bushnell. “I came forth from God, and I am going back to God, and I won’t have any gaps of death in the middle of my life," says George Macdonald. Human instincts demand the larger, fuller life beyond. Emanuel Kant rested his argument for immortality on the doctrine of conscience. Conscience bids us aim at perfection, and perfection eludjis our grasp, and is never attained here; and if death ends all, then we are overweighted in our moral nature, for •conscience needs an enduring arena for its operalion.

“The facts of life confirm the hope That in a world of larger»scope, What here is faithfully begun Will be completed, not undone.” THE INEQUALITIES OF LIFE. Think of the inequalities of life. How they mock and baffle us! The world is riddled with wrongs. Multitudes of mon and women are. as Shelley phrased it. “shipwrecked into life,” or, as General Booth sqid more bluntly, they are

“not so much born into the world as damned into it." History is 1 trgcly a record of the reign of injustice. Tyrants dwell in lordly halls, while heroes starve «n reeking cells. Vice wanl.nis m purple anti line linen, while virtue wa.iks in rqgs and shares the kennel wi.h The hounds! The best of men h?ve been hunted, and shot, and burned, and beheaded. AVhero are the Christian martyrs? What of Savonarolo and Galileo, and what of Ridley and Latimer What of the crowds born criminal, for whom life is alternate theft, ami penal, servitude? \yhai of the multitude crushed by our social and industrial system, and •for whom the world is one huge ganglia of nerves ami shooting pains? Oh! if God made the world, and if God is good, there must be rectification somewhere! A future life is necessary to save the present from the contempt. of honest men. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” “Here lies David Elginbrod, Have mcrey on his soul. Lord God, As I would do. were J Lord God, And You were David Elginbrod.” A FUTURE LIFE. Further, life’s wihhheld completeness argues future life. Our ideals outstrip attainments. We have a faculty for the infinite. “Alan never is but always to be blessed.” Beethoven saj’s that his most polished symphony is but, the eiripi \ echo of the music that ravishes his soul iu his dreams. Raphael’s masterpiece disappointed him. Tenny-on revised and corrected, yet never could attain the music and magic of words that filled his poof soul. The reformer cannot realise, his plan. Every step in the inarch of progress opens a thousand new possibilities. Surely there must bo satisfaction somewhere. Men do not cease to think, and feel, and aspir - * after death, else God ha«s created man to mock him with the unattainable. That cannot be. Do men write 1 Iliads on rose leaves, or mould MadrMia? in yox’f

Saint Paul’s letters survive; can his letters be greater than he? '‘Paradise Lost” lives; is John Milton blotted out?

That death ends all is intellectually inconceivable and morally monstrous. God ►liberates the earth from its tomb of ice and its shroud of snow, and He will certainly call man from tne winter of the grave to the summer of the sky. Immortality is demanded, IMMORTALITY SUGGESTED. But immortality is suggested. Socrates rested his argument on the indestructibility of things. Smite how you will, you destroy nothing. The coal burns, but the ash, and smoke, and heat equal the original bulk. Things assume different shapes, but nothing perishes. Each rose petal that falls maltes next season’s roses redder. There is not one atom less in the world to-day than on creation’s morning. No ctor is lost that once has been. Not a single sound has ceased to vibrate in the wide fields of air. Not one tipple is lost in the dim and tumbling sea. Shall atoms persist and souls perish Shall pure thoughts, brave resolves, and noble deeds die while trees and meadow grasses toss in the sunshine?

THE LAW OF NATURE. “The law of Nature is eternal germination.*’ Shall corn stalks live and souls pass away? Besides, the immortality of influences is not denjed. Indeed, the influence of some men only begins when they have “shuffled off this mortal coil.’’ In the days of his flesh, David sang to a small end scattered people; to-day he sings to the world. When the Be<lfo r d tinker dreamed his dream, his world was bounded by a prison cell; to-day he speaks to Anglo-Saxondom. The artist dies in a garret; his pictures hung in famous galleries, and thrill the beholders. The author dice, but his book lives on. The deeds of to-day are flung into futurity. It seems irrational that gentle Willie Shakespeare’s'spirit should sink io dust and hie “Hamlet” live to the end of time. When Rufus Choate took ship to the port where he died, a friend said: “You will be here a year hence.” “Sir. I shall be here 100 years hence, and a 1000 years hence,” said the great lawyer. And such has been the teaching of the great religions of the world, as may be seen in the liturgies of Egj’pt and Babylon.

“Dust thou art to dust returned Was not spoken of the soul.”

IMMORTALITY REVEALED.

But these are guesses, speculations, suggestions only. They do not amount to proof. They give no assurance. They haunt the mind with ghostly possibilities, and, had we nothing more, we should wander in twilight, wishing tn know, yet resting in peradventure. It is •n Jesus Christ that immortality is revealed. The demands of Nature He sets to poetry. Man’s guess He turns to full assurance. We only know the alphabet of life; He arranges the letters into a song, scores music for the song, and sets the angel choir to sing it beside the Jasper Sea. He was dead, and. beho’d, He is alive for evermore, and His ri.V.ig .nvolves ours. We cannot die while He lives. Under His leadership death be■omes an exodus out of the prison house , of clay, into the spacious dwelling in the Father’s House. His cross speaks Deat'. s defeat, and opens the gate of life immortal. “Thanks be unto God who g,veth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

LOSS OF A SPLENDID CHARACTER.

You know why I have spoken thus to-day. By the translation of the Rev. j William Drew, this church has lost its ! first minister, and New Plymouth one |of its most honored citizens. The congregation is the poorer and the district 'and the Dominion are impoverished ! Faithful in friendship, zealous in/all t.uit i made for good citizenship, loyal as a I Britisher, and devoted as. a minister of religion, Mr. Drew was the type needed for the moulding of New Zealand. His I outlook on life was not narrow, neither was his patriotism pinched and parochial. "With deep convictons and the courage to express them, he blended toleration and charity. He was too big a man to cherish a grudge. His friendship was of the practical sort t'-at found pleasure in helping others. His heart overflowed with kindness. Hie spirit was young, I past four-score years, and he was quick to foster latent ability and develop it by discriminating praise. You know with what loving fidelity he served this cliUrch as its founder and its first minister. How he loved its services to the end, and prayed for its prosperity. It is not for me to lift the veil from his home life and

tell what he was as husband and father, more than to say that those who knew him best loved him most. I would not shame his cherished memory with flattery, which was foreign to his nature. It was my privilege to come close to him on questions that are deepest and holiest in a strong mans life, and I tell you that my friend, and yours, was a good num, simple, bravo and strong, and he Was so because at the background of his life Jay the iscrious recognition of the word and the will of God, and the supreme saviourhood of Jesus Christ His Son, "Whose faith follow considering the end of your faith, Jcsuo Christ, the same yesterday and to-day, and fur ever.”