Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 292, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1913 — IMMORTALITY. [ARTICLE]

IMMORTALITY.

BY REV. JUNIUS B. REMENSNYDER

Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and Immortality to light. —ll. Tim, I, 10. The two greatest facts that confront man are life and death. In nature they appear as an alternate aeries. The life and beauty of spring are succeeded by the fading and death of winter. But this white sepulchre only proves a fostering cradle in which worn out nature is resuscitated into all the charm and vigor of new life, and in this alternate series the process goes on forever. Nature then does not die, but is invested with immortality.

Maa’s death, contrariwise, is shrouded in mystery. No mortal ken can follow the spirit’s trackless path; Are there, then, any means by which we can get light on this great question of immortality? Are. there reasonable grounds for the trust that we shall survive death?

Philosophy is not against it, for the greatest phllosophers have believed in it. Science brings affirmative testimony to it The modern law of the conservation of force shows no loss or destruction of force or matter. Energy changes, but does not die. Evolution points to a constant unfolding and progress to higher forms of being. The overmastering desire for immortality is one of the strongest grounds for the future life. Just as the lens of the eye points to a world to be seem or the wing of a bird Indicates ass aerial medium for flight, so conclusively does the desire for continued existence prophesy its reality. Nature 1b not a He. She does not taunt us with false promises. The vitality of the spirit in advanced years is another argument “The soul does not age with the body,” wrote Emerson. A normal man or woman grows in wisdom, spirituality, sympathy, tenderness, charm and moral, beauty, so that it is true of such, “at evening time there shall be light” Such lovely personalities only seem to die. The husk and shell falls from them, but we feel that the

spirits cannot but live on beyond the grave, beyond the worlds. Strong corroborations as are these, they are not decisive. We crave for assurance upon a matter of such vital moment And it can come only from one source—revelation. Should not God speak to those to whom He has given this Irrepressible longing and settle it with a word of certainty? And so the Scripture assures'us that He haa done. "Jesus Christ hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light” He decaired the great that "all live unto God.” Our eyes see deaths, but God knows only life and sees death but to be a phase of life. Death Is, then, but a stage of development We enter the future very much as we have left the present life. We will progress in knowledge, in holiness, in happiness, or in the evil courses and tendencies of our earthly lives. And in view of this fact, how Important becomes the state in which we enter that life —prepared or unprepared, sensual or spiritual, the servants of God or of the evil one?

Lastly, in the light of this great truth of immortality, what grandeur attaches to life! How incalculably it Is increased in value when we see it under the aspect of eternity! What care one should have to his acts when they are seeds reaching out into undying ages! How different become our alms and plans when they are not to be broken by death but to be carried forward on larger scale hereafter!