example and precept, how to live. Having the revelation, the personal Gospel, of the risen Lord, we have complete peace. The Gospel is not a guess. It is revelation. It is not limited. It is universal. It is not relative. It is absolute. It is not a future matter, to wait for, but a present lever to pry up life. It is itself life. It is for earth as well as Heaven. It is eternal, a gift rather than a promise, a possession rather than a hope. "He that believeth on me hath eternal life," not will have it. Who believes that He who spoke these words was annihilated at the change we call death? Love declares its own eternity. There are transient elements in the earth, but genuine virtue is not one of them. Some say that "a man without virtue may exist hereafter, but that a man with virtue ought to live forever." He will. Eternal life and eternal virtue are synonymous terms. It is not enough to exist. We must live. Existence without life may be worse than death. Life without existence is an absurdity. Doubt and sin are not necessarily related. It is nevertheless true, that more men would have the conviction of immortality, were it not for the blur which sin makes. Eternal life should appeal to man not as a reward but as an intrinsic good. It develops the whole man. It builds him on a larger scale than he would otherwise be constructed. Immortality gives scope, outlook and satisfying range to the mind. It gives tonic. It makes tolerant. It justifies sacrifice. It can afford to be serene in the storms of life. It is full, free, growing, abundant life. Some one asks whether I am willing to "call it salvation." No! It is more. happy in Hell. It includes salvation. It is sufficient in itself. It can be Looking at humanity exactly as it is, we often fail to discover very much dignity. We might easily spare the citizens of China, India, Africa, Turkey and many other countries. Sink these countries in the sea and it would be hard to show that the world had lost one idea or a single invention. Take an illustration nearer home. Take the first man you meet. He has this, that or the other good quality. The rest is accounted for by the fact that he is assuming, or is good looking, or that he has a good address, or has had forty thousand dollars left him by a rich aunt. He is an overestimated soul. He is an immortal far from home. Can we help matters? We can first of all throw the man on the true and eternal perspective. Wait. He is now in the seed form. I grant you more, that the man is mean, that he is a liar. You will have to regard him as a very sick patient. Project this ignorant, sinful man against the background of a hopeful eternity and you will be able to work when you would otherwise despair. There is a victory for the race through Him who "tasted death for every man." Heaven is pictured for us in the Scriptures. We receive it as pictorial. From the example of the Scriptures we, as individuals, accept the same structural principle of picturing our Heaven. The pigments of our painting are taken from our daily life. Deeds and spirit mingle to make a beauty which we can not analyze. The best artist is the one whose work is the most truthful. He has the ascending habit of imagination. His moral genius works upward instead of downward. He parts with a dear friend and Heaven is joined to earth by one more golden cable. The older he gets the more populous the other world becomes. The disposition of us in familes here, the gradual certain calling of us all one by one, deepens our conviction of immortality. We dare not trust mere existence. If we hope to meet and associate forever with those who have gone before us, we must live on their plane. Existence in an animal can easily be conceived to consist with annihilation. The question has been raised whether we are naturally immortal or whether we win our way to immortality in life inspired and imparted by Jesus Christ. While one may not subtract at all from the importance of the arrival at Heaven by the vital ethical process of "truthing it in love,” as Paul would say, we must believe that immortality is knit into our soul tissues. It is easier for one to believe that man is so made in the image of God, that it is all but impossible to get that image out, than it is to think that there is so little of His image in a man, that masses will have to meet annihilation because they do not rise into the life of the Christ in this life or the life beyond. Whether your view of the facts leads you to hope or to fear, this great fact remains, God is love demanding life and life is love demanding, not a fair chance merely, not a probation even, but all that an almighty, all-loving father can devise in not only beginning, but completing the creation and education of his own child. It is our highest privilege to find refuge in God's eternal goodness. The incarnation and the events which it includes, were not after-thoughts of God to relieve a desperate and unexpected situation. It was God speaking to his child, as soon as the child could hear. It was God appearing to his child, as soon as the child could see. The practical question is a present world issue. Shall we exist or live? As we answer this question, we reject or admit daily increasing proof of immortality. |