"In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you: for I go to prepare a place for you."-John XIV: 2, "He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must go alone, Will lead my steps aright." -William Cullen Bryant. A Greylock Pulpit. LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. Jno. 10: 1. I go to prepare a place for you. 'And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there ye may be also. Jno. 14: 2, 3. Men cling to life. Outside of the range of Christian influences, men not only fear death, but even regard it with terror. Christianity has largely removed the fear of death, while at the same time doubling her own task, by increasing the desirability of life. There is rarely much pain at death. What men dread is annihilation. Some say that death ends all. Others deny that death is the end. The result is a painful questioning. It is no uncommon thing to hear a man say, "I would give anything to know whether immortality is a fact." A large class comes into contact with religion just enough to keep agitated, and not enough to make its great truths the basis of conduct or the inspiration of life. They deprive themselves of the greatest proof of immortality. There is a proof of immortality in the probable argument from reason working in the fields of philosophy and natural science. There is however a higher and more convincing proof in the demand the soul makes when that same reason is clarified, not by an emotion, but by that more complete obedience to law which can make the mortal heavenly. We are not to refuse audience to the views of philosophy, because our own faith rests on more than probability. Let us rather call up, as our first witness, Father Time himself, with his scythe, hour glass, hoary locks, and high forehead. He is to testify of time not eternity. Tell us Father, what you know about immortality from your observation of men. His answer is, that men, as a rule, have ever clung to a belief in their immortality. Here and there individuals have doubted and attacked the doctrine. These cases are exceptional. They have rather served to demonstrate the vitality of the teaching, which has gained headway in spite of attack and strengthened its hold on the soil, as the winds of wintry doubt have wrestled with its branches. It is easy to undervalue this witness. No one can afford to ignore the drift of the centuries. It may pay to ignore the testimony of one man, or ten men, but the agreement of a race, and an agreement made emphatic in the ratio of growth in civilization, is quite another matter. "Men may," it is objected, "believe what is after all not true." Yes, one man, ten men, even a generation; but when you consider the masses of men, it takes less credulity to say that the fact of immortality corresponds to the belief, than to say that it is untrue. This idea gathers force when we remember that we do not have to quote merely the heroes of the visible church, but that Cicero, Plato, Plutarch, Montesquieu, Franklin, Robert Burns, Emerson, and a host beside, hold to belief in immortality. facts remove the question above the level of scorn. These No man ought to want to die as the beast dies. If he takes such a creed, let him hold it reluctantly, not by choice. There is nothing very pleasant about it. Let him prove to us that death ends all. We are all alive here to-day. We shall all be alive tomorrow, unless something occurs before that time to kill us. The only thing we know, that can be conceived to kill us, that is to completely end Loth soul and body, is called death. So far as anyone can see to the contrary, death only disorders the material organism. It redistributes the type in nature's font. It can not distribute the ideas and spirit which the type has expressed. I exist. It is an assumption wholly with out foundation, that death touches the soul. No one should say, I die with the body, when even Mr. Ingersoll can assert "Hope may hear the flutter of a wing, and faith may see a star.” Science has taught us to expect surprises. Immortality is no greater surpise than the origin of species. The origin of species is no greater surprise than the development of animal from vegetable life. This in turn is not so great a leap as the one from inorganic to organic nature. These facts remove all presumption against a future environment for the soul which shall correspond to its nature and the law of its growth. If science has established anything in regard to the method of the Divine creation, it is, that harmony exists between the various parts of nature. A fin on a fish means water. A wing on a bird means air. A cushion on the end of a camel's leg means hot sand. The wild geese going south means winter. Mortise and tenon do not so closely fit as one part of God's creation fits another. The design is not less because of the manner in which it is displayed. The harmony transcends appearance, and reveals as kindred, varing forms of life. The Christian is the type of the future. The earth, though a vestibule of immortality, is becoming like the porch of the Hebrew temple, beautiful. Nature furnishes the raw material. The harmonies are hidden. The order is, search, discovery, use. The stages of ascent are barbarism, civilization, christianization, immortality. We do not have to wait for the full development to enjoy a goodly measure of its benefits, We are under happy laws, not caprice. God could be neither wise nor good to give the young wild goose the instinct by which it safely goes from Manitoba to the sunny south and then bestow on man the much stronger instinct for a summer land of immortality only to fool him with annihilation. We not only believe in and desire a future life, we demand it. Animals do not demand it. The law of harmony is not violated in their case. Unlike men they have a bounded horizon. They secure a speedy development and serve their purpose of utility. Man, on the other hand, develops slowly and at the best only gets a start in this life. When he shakes off the flesh, he is just prepared to live. The greatest men are in haste to call themselves infants. They admit that they have but touched the hem of the garment of knowledge and character. They have only taken a few steps. Earth is the alphabet, Heaven the literature of humanity. Our lives are full of plans. Some succeed. Some fail. "Hearts are broken, heads are turned by castles in the air." It was not wrong to construct some of them. "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" implies to much of this life. It is quite another thing to say that disappointment is the main fact, when all the facts are understood. Men cannot be fooled all the time. They will not be content with the food that satisfies a brute. Aspiration is not forever married to doom. What God has not joined together He will most certainly keep asunder. Things happen every day which make us desire distributive justice. We say that man will have to give an account. There will have to be a reckoning. A righteous apprehension of a future judgment rises in us. It looks beyond this life. The Creator could put in us an apprehension of a future judgment to act solely as a restraint in this world. He would be guilty of making us believe a lie in order to govern us. The government of human affairs is clumsy. Men who are smart go free. The dull criminal is caught. Those who are comparatively innocent suffer degrading punishment. One of the fears I have had about our new jail is that we might not get the right people into it. God's justice works itself out on a long and correct scale. If God did not believe in government by the people, instead of interfering Himself or helping kings and vice-gerents to do so in His name, and He should hold court at the town hall to-morrow, in place of our regular judge, we should be interested to see who would be called into court. It requires a future life to make the last first and the first last, to right wrongs, to proclaim things secret, to vindicate honor. Merciful and righteous discriminations will obtain dominion. Immortality is necessary. There is a Heaven. There is a Hell. Neither are physical. Both begin in this life. The former never ends. The latter does not end in this life. Here is a good man impressed with hope. There is a man for good reason depressed with fear. His sins are real, great, and unforsaken. The feelings are not accidental. They follow law. We are looking at a portrait of humanity. These facts have little meaning unless there is a future life. "Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Was not spoken of the soul." Note also the abounding hardship of the world. Terrible deseases are to be fought. Poverty is to be struggled against by millions. Storms, fires, floods, earthquakes, massachres, temptations, evils legion, mountain high, attend the infant steps of man. "The whole creation groans." Mr. Ingersoll is right. Said he, "If I were to make the world I would make health catching." He is right, if this world be all. The sacrifice would not pay. The burden would be too great. The pain is not guaged to the need of one short life soon to end forever. Force yet rules the larger portion of the world. The vast militarism of the European powers, is a confession of this fact, whether it is regarded as a necessary defense or the spirit of aggression. The doctrine of one world at a time is false, if by it one means to ignore the worth and dignity which the truth of immortality bestows. Mental, moral and spiritual manhood are trained in the school of difficulty. Too noble qualities are being developed to make health catching. The cost is too great for the return on the investment. We demand an immortality wherein pain and every sort of expense shall prove themselves justifiable. No one objects to a God who is a consuming fire if His fire has a purifying purpose and result. Again the belief is not only associated with the highest type of character found in the world, but men and women declare that without the fact of immortality they would not have that character. It would seem to be impossible to escape the conclusion that belief in immortality is essential to the growth of the best manhood. The lives not only of Paul and Luther, but our February saints, Lincoln, Mary Lyon and George Washington received motive and power from an immortal perspective. If it be declared that they only imagined the dome over their heads to be lighted by beams from an eternal world, then we are asked to believe that a delusion can produce good character and that a falsehood is more wholesome than the truth. Last week many loyal citizens stepped aside from their usual duties to give special honor to Abraham Lincoln. Many a pulpit rang with patrotic mention of the martyr president. Of him John Lothrop Motley. the historian, has said, "He went through life bearing the load of a people's sorrow with a smiling face. As long as he lived he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets." Is this such a man as our pantheistic friends sacrifice to the mass of society, while leaving no more room for his own personality after death, than the smoke of a locomotive has, as it disappears in the frosty air? Our home and friendship ties bind us more closely together as years pass. The young couple have a more demonstrative love than the old. The old couple have a deeper love than the young. Time enriches life. It removes some things and brings in others. The vitality and power of the affections are intense, unconquerable and always growing. Little ones come and go. The only consolation that makes life endurable is belief in immortality. Life would be a tantalizing thing, not worth living, a lie, without a future life. Thus far we have been answering the question put in in the book of Job, "If a man die shall he live again?" We may open the New Testament and find that Jesus Christ assumed immortality, while he brought life. If He had not been going to prepare Heavenly mansions for them, He would have told them so. Such things were matters of course. The prime condition of the occupation of the mansions, was keeping His commandments, character. He therefore spent all his time in telling them by |