A nature so richly charged, so well disciplined, so largely cultivated as his must pour itself out to the delight of friends and comrades. That it was of the highest immediate benefit, none will question. But granting, as it is our glad privilege to grant, that the influence of such rare and rich life will live long in the community reaching lives that we dream not of and touching them to higher issues in ways which no imagination can discern, yet the time must arrive when even this remote benefit of his life will cease to have effect here on earth. For this earth must pass away, every drop of water upon it will be dissipated, every green thing will vanish, every life will die, its solid frame will be shattered into fragments and be resolved back once more into star dust. This end to the man of science is not a possibility but a certainty.
Nothing can remain unless the soul is immortal.
But if the soul is immortal, then in the language of one of America's greatest scientists it will carry hence all the gains of life on earth to be used as capital for a business of infinite worth in the life to come. For we must remember that infinite progress is necessarily involved in this expectation of life eternal. The thought of a stationary existence is utterly repulsive. Only in the thought if unceasing advance can immortality be made engaging or be made to stand in the light of the deepest thinking. Do something, I pray, to picture to yourself what infinite progress would mean.