Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 153, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1914 — THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.

(By HENRY AUGUSTUS BUCHTEL, Chancellor University of Denver, Former Governor of Colorado.)

"I went to the Bible for authority, as I am In the habit of doing, for I have never found any other book which contains so much truth, or in which truth is so well expressed."— William Jennings Bryan.

The only credible disclosure of God tn literature is the Bible. Max Mueller

gave his life tb the study of the religions of the Orient, and then remarked . in a notable lecture on Buddhism, “However highly we prize our Christianity, we never prize it highly enough until we have compared it with the religions of the rest of the world.” Not only does the Bible give us the only credible disclosure of God in literature, but it also

gives us the only credible disclosure of man in literature. From reading the fascinating pages of the Bible man has come to believe in his own immortality. The development of that faith is his most significant achievement because it has given shape and direction and color to his life. It has civilized him.

We have now arrived at the day when modern science has not only changed its tone of denial of man’s immortality, but when the president of the British association, Sir Oliver Lodge, speaking at the supreme moment of his life, makes a definite declaration of faith in a future existence for man. The evolutionist now makes bold to declare that the denial of the immortality of the soul is to rob the whole evolutionary process of its meaning. “Man is the last and greatest achievement of evolution. To suppose that what has been evolved at such a cost will suddenly collapse, is to suppose that the whole scheme of things is self-stultifying. It is to convert the whole drama of creation into an imbecile and driveling farce."

Many years ago a list was made of more than 5,000 books which had been written on the consolatory hope -that we shall live forever. That list now would pass the 6,000 mark. Some of the most significant modern contributions to this literature have been made by John Fiske, Newman Smyth, George A. Gordon, G. Lowes Dickinson, Samuel M. Crothers, William Osler and William James. The first sentence in the last will and testament of the late Professor Guizot of the University of Paris was the significant word, “I humbly trust that God allows me to call myself a Christian.” Every educated man in the world has abundant reason for writing down as the first word of his personal creed: “I humbly trust that God allows me to call myself a Christian.”