Lectures by the Rev. S.J. Neill.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4308, 21 October 1882, Page 3

Lectures by the Rev. S.J. Neill.

DEATH. It seems .somewhat contradictory ac cording to ordinary usage to speak of death

as one of the subjects under this theme of Life. As we journey down tbe ages the - wordß we use point no longer to their old meanings. Once, to die meant to show no longer signs of activity ; now, to us it means that the mode of action, and the sphere of the operation only are altered. For we see that nothing can perish; it may change, but it cannot die. Tbe only thing which could die is life, and life is reality or essence, is Being itself. Tliat which is not life cannot be said to die ; it merely changes. The plant ceases to manifest what we regard ns signs of life ; the material particles are blown about as dust, but that which gave form to the plant existed independently of it, and before theme atoms came together, as tbe rose or the violet thai perfumes the garden, and as We rise in tbe scale of life we carry the ■ saute, principle with us as a fathoming line to sound tbe deeps of existence, and we ,• feel bound to'conclude with Carlyle and • many others tbat " the real Being of what ever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be is even now and for ever.—only the time-shadows perish or are perishable." ■ This life which we think is so active and wakeful is after-all but as a death or a sleep, and that what we, according to the language of appearances call death, is according to the language of reality a waking up. I most emphatically believe that concerning man. Death is as really the „ gate, of life, as birth into this life is also ;< tbe gate of life. The change called death is, I apprehend, more correctly described as j^ug Inward, thars by any other phrase. . " l¥e are on the outer "skirts of. Being; w e take a step'inward when we pass from the material into fhe spiritual which informs »nd-upholds ihe material. We pass? from ■ the phenomenal into, the real, from the world of effects to tbe realm of causes. There is a little boy bounding in his glee, rejoicing in his health, quick, tender, affectionate, but the fever swells the veins and "inflames the nerves, till heart, and nerve, and blood will no longer work—the merble face lies calm and motionless,—no thought, no love, no bounding life is there. Ah ! he is dead. What is dead P Nothing is dead. The body is motionless, but then it never had any power of movement in <~ itself;^ it was moved, the band was raised, . just-as the coat sleeve is raised, because ' #xere was a power to raise it; the eyes .flashed, and tbe cheeks dimpled: they 'were the results of a power of thought and will, but tbat power is now and for ever. Could we look within the veil, as we look within'a room when the door is left ajar, I bare no doubt we should see the little boy or girl still, not greaily altered, for growth there as here is by degrees ; see the boy or girl among welcoming play mates, led by loving'hands, safe from the biting frosts of adversity, and the disease and strife of this lower world. We believe all who have followed us iv . these lectures on Life will Lave come by a reasoned ascent to see in the light of demonstration, that nature and the Bible Tooth come,to the same point. Both come to this : Ihe one says " all life is imperil able," the other, on the lips of Christ, "all live unto God." You, can get a great many things in the Bible, as in nature, that seemingly point in other directions; but all things proceed from a centre, and if we hare the right clue, nature, all revelation will conduct us to life everlasting, all being in Him. We conclude when water ceases to exist as water that the causes of the former phenomena still exist, and it is a fact of science that they do, and that you can, so to speak*, materialise these causes back again into water. We conclude that those phenomena which are the direct modes of manifestation or of existence of an object do not cease to be. For iastanoei we could not think, of matter as not beings extended, so we cannot think of spirit without its qualities of thought and will. For matter to cease to be extended | would be, we feel, ceasing to exist; so the spiritcould not, we think, exist without its qualities of thought .and will, for they are the form in which spirit exists. Therefore, we conclude that since life is beingj and nothing which is .can cease to be, and our highest form or conception of life i«" as thought and will, or as pure spirit, what ever .thinks or wills ever did, and ever will, irksome form manifest those qualities.. But you will say, bow can that' be so? We have no recollection reaching beyond childhood, we have passed hours in sleep, and remember nothing. What does that prove? Nothing more than that we are tin this life that we may become individualised ; it is by tbe action of memory we have the realization of personal identity, this comes to us in the first act. of consciousness, and does not depend on the conditions the philosopher Locke supposed. - Had we no consciousness of like and unlike, we should not know ourselves as existing. That is one ! great use of this conditioned life of time and space and flesh, we " learn the use of I and me." And, that we do not reniem« ber anything during hours of sleep, proves nothing more than that the connection has not been established for a time between that brain power or quality which records sensations. By a blow on a certain part of the head the mental action corresponding to that part is made inoperative for a time. We may compare dreamless sleep to the eye resting out of focus. You all know what this is. You are gazing at something, and you begin to think deeply, by - and by though you-continue gazing you are. not conscious of seeiiig anything. The phenomena of the external world are all the same presented to the eye, but no seeing^ffower. is in the eye—the fact is, the real eye is looking elsewhere, and not through the dim material spectacles of optic nerve and crystaline lens at ali. The mind, the real eye, has been sc busy looking at truths, at ideas, that there has been no sensation recorded through the organ of vision. So it is a common saying that dreamless sleep is most refreshing, the mind is elsewhere, and the body has just enough connection with the spirit to preserve the vital functions, not such a strong and intimate connection with the brain as to record ideas. Tbe mind has not ceased to exist, however, in Ihe meantime. We simply do riot know what were its visions. But bring the body more into harmony with the soul, or into such a gtate that the soul will see, and its lmpressions be at the same time recorded on the cerebrum, then you have that luminous State which the great of every age have experienced. It is then true what* the following of these inductions lead us to, which our deepest thoughts maintain, and which the Bible confirms, that whatever is is always, andjts mode or modes ot existence- inhere in its being,—extension witlrmatter, thought and will in the spirit.

Owr bodies, and aU -things material are aHowtl by science to, be iucapable of anmhilation; mn^ch mpresb we conclude.is that which is of nobler essence or existence, J that which knows and loves,' and; is more truly substance than this phenomenal world which we move in. The argument of instinct is strong because it points in ._ the direction which we find the logic of *hftets". to lead us. The Rev. 3: Cook, I

think, referred to this in his address last, Week rri Auckland. Instinct' or intuition i "' if worth much; The voice of nature does , not uttiftr false prophecies. It is the call, , the invitation of the Creator addressed to

his creatures. And if. this be true with regard to the, impulses of the physical lira, why should the soul with its superior _-" .instincts come short and be deceived. No /dofc&t there a»y be acquired «r perverted • iflltincts, as. well as perverted notions of : ,th.c aoul; we may long for beer or tobacco, ; aid many things bad for us, but these are not natural,'they are acquired, and distaste- - fid,,to ? alt natural instincts who have not aequirbi?" them. So the notions of the soal may be warped and altered, but we ppsak only of what is truly natural, vested in our constitution, and we find that man

»s naturally has the dim consciousness of , futurity as he has naturally the desire for • • food. - But hearken further. Nature fays 'life and his brother death walk hand in ""turn!,* tfofc as foes, but as bosom friends. They are the right and the left of the , universe. The rocks are being eaten ' »way, ; the rirers are bearing their remains down to the silent sea. Again look, the earliest shells, the earliest plants, are building up from their decayed forms the -possibilities of new and higher existence. Had aot out. ancestors passed away, what would the world be but a mass of nude, £<Uuab, savages—art, science, religion unknown. Death ia no curse, we must turn tack again and read our Bibles till they come into, harmony with the Tolume of Creation of the Universe. Death is interwoven with the very constitution of our placet, and doubtless of the universe, therefore the idea of death as the result of eating an apple or pear or peach is not according to nature. Death has before now come into being; it is in other worlds where the human race can have no bond to make or mar. Death is the other side of life, it is the birth from one stage of being to another stage. Death, as Jestns says, is another life.

"'Death is another life; We bow our heads. At going out, we think, and enter straight Another golden chamber of the Kings' Larger than this and lovlier."

Nothing people dread so much, and with so little reason, as death. Adam Smith, the author of the book which has done so ninth for the science of political economy, shows that the notions felt about death are misconceptions. We see a person in a state, which would be very painful to us with our health; we mix up the assumed j notions of the sufferer with our feelings in health, and think how very terrible it | must be; but those who are dying hare perhaps in no case greater pain than those who fall asleep every night. Oliver W. Holmes demonstrates that a man who is shot through the bead ceases to exist' in this world before he knows it; because the action of the musket ball leaving the musket is scf much rapider thah; the action of the nerves of sensation. .He has shown this by many experiments. Sleep would be terrible to us if we did not wake here again. A person lying, down, and passing off in long drawn breaths to a j motionless condition, that would be i thought terrible if we were not used to it.i I believe that as a rule the feeling is very | similar to every one who is said to die, to that rather pleasing feeling we have when we drop off to sleep. Hence the language of appearance, again, calls death a sleep. So I think it is, but the waking .: is not long after we. fall asleep, not more perhaps in most cases than a day or two, not more than three days, the time associated with keeping the dead, and perhaps not more than a few hours as we count time. . "Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise," implied sieh a speedy change as this from the life in the flesh to the life „ beyond. We dread death because we are as yet imperfectly acquainted with its ! philosophy. We are coming to regard death in a natural way, and to fear it as' little as we dread the sweet sleep of the child. If we were immortal in our physical forms, the greatest curse that could fall upon our world would descend upon us. , Imagine man immortal here, and all else I mortal. In less than a 1000 years there would not be'standing room on our planet if the ordinary increase continued. Tbenbtrth would cease for want of room "for the new comers. No more infants, no more blooming boys and girls, -no more courting, for all would be wedded before a thousand years had passed. In such a world fire would- not burn a man, water would not drown him. There would be no''waste and no appetito therefore. What a withered, wrinkled, melancholy fossil world this would become, till at last there would ascend up a fervent united ' prayer, "Oh, God send.us death, that,it may renovate and bless this stagnant world." Death is one of the greatest blessings which the Great Creator could bestow on his works.. In one of Dean Swift's works he pictures the travels of Gulliver as disclosing a condition of society in which some men and women called teruld briigt were by a certain peculiarity of birth immortal in the body. At first he thought they mast be beings much to be envied, but closer experience showed:him thatafter 40 years or so they began*to droop and wither, to loseinterest . in life. Their, "greatest: misery was that they could not die, but were doomed to live for ever in the body as a prison house.. Death is the blessed renovator, even as sleep is tired nature's sweet restorer. Death is no annibilator, for it i is really the process and development of' life that' brings about* the change called < death. ; Death . prevents obstruction 'on thV;globt>. It, is the grand marshal of God keeping due order, saying on! on I room/or the rest, room, for fairer .women and braver men, and greater philosophers, and sweeter poets, more ingenious mechanics, more loving and generous souls who will make earth more a paradise. Listen to what the late author Seneca-says of death. Seneca has been compared to Paul, and these words will go not unfitly along with the words about the spiritual body written by the Apostle t&'tfce Gentiles. • Seneca says: • " The body being only the covering of the soul, at its, dissolution we-shall discover the secrets of naiuip—thf. darkness shall be dispelled, akd oar sdQls irradiated with ,: light and glorr: «.glory without a shadow, Z] a glory that shall surround us, and from .. wfeS we (ball look down and see day aMkfMf|fc£ beneath us-:,and as now we dtoMtlift our eyes to the tun without dtkiliag, what shall we do when we behold the difine light it its illustrious originilrF-"" 'Death, an one of ~tiw hymns

has it, is that herald which calls us from the land of mists and darkness to that land of pure delight, where everlasting spring abides and never withering flowers -r" sweet fields beyond the swelling flood stand dressed io living green." Onr friends lire to God, the parent and the child, the husband and the wife; the loved are not lost, they are mysteriously with us even as we are here mysteriously with God, says the great English sage.

" Beyond the flight of time, Beyond the vale of death, There surely is some blessed clime Where life is not a breath, Nor life's affections transient fire Where sparks fly upward and expire.

There is a world above, Where parting is unknown, A whole eternity of love, Formed for the good alone; And Faith beholds the dying here, Translated to that glorious sphere.

Thus star by star declines, Till all are passed'away As morning high and higher shines To-pure and perfect day, Nor sink those stars in empty night; ' They lose themselves in Heaven's own light."