Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1880-06-03
The Possibility Of Death.

The following is extracted from a re-
cent sermon on Happiness and Prob
lems," by Professor Swing, of Chicago:
1t is perfectly possible for you and
me to die next month, or next year. 1t
is problem whether you will be any
where in the streets of earth a year or
five years hence. We need not pause
over the statement of this impressive
uncertainty. We need not awaken our
sleeping sorrows by recalling the null
titude of those who have gone from us
of late days-gUne in their youth or
middle life-gone when they fully ex-
pected to stay. You all know the
height and depth OF this inquiry. II
needs no ampliication, for the prob
lem of when will this world end to
you or me is SO strange and deep that
nothing can be added to it by any
rhetoric. When will you cease to liver
What an unopened book! No one on
earth can break the seals and read the
hidden date. But now mark the hui
man success that comes from this enig-
ma. l do not say that greater sue
cess may not be coming to the inhab-
itants of some other world by some
other influence than that of an uncer-
tain grave, but of man as he is we
must speak. Look at the two facts
which greet all born into earth. O
We cannot stay here always. The
earth would not contain all its count
less millions did none die. If other
thousands of millions are to come,
then we must pass away. To come to
such little world necessitates short
stay. We can visit earth, but we can
not live here. The second part (2) is,
that we are imperfect beings, and this
awful removal from this place must
come in some manner that will help
make us nobler men and women while
we stay. The Almighty, therefore,
says: 81 will remove each generation
in thirty-three years; but will conceal
from each one his own day of doom"
When disease sweeps across the land
all will fear, but not all will die. When
the dark cloud cones up from the hori-
zon, and when the lightnings flash and
the thunder makes the hills tremble, all
will wait in strange silence, but not all
will die; out upon the seas in the
storm all the inmates of the ship shall
pray. but only one ship shall become a
tomb, and thus all shall seem on the
confines of death, and in such pa
thetic world shall they think their
thoughts and plan their actions. From
early life to old age each one born into
this planet shall be unable to boast OF
tomorrow, for between him and the
future he sees this shadow lying.
Some atheists springing up in the
fourth century affirmed that this world
was not made by a God, for lad it a
wise author He would not have made a
creature that sometimes died an infant,
and often in all the beauty of early life.
A wise God would have given each
being fixed term of existence. They
alluded to the fact that brutes generally
live a fixed number of years. whereas q
man is a weak and powerless thing,
more liable to die young than die old.
To these atheists the father Lactantius
replies that animals have no souls that
may be Influenced by any meditations
upon dissolution, but man has natural
arrogance and vanity which are soft
ened by this painful vicissitude. The
elegant Latin points out what tender
ness of parents springs up out OF this
frailty of their children. and what help
fitness springs up in society from the
fact that all are travelling in a path
liable any moment to be swept by
storm. And then he makes q beautiful
illustration. He says coarse and cruel
animals, the lion, the serpent, the
eagle. the hawk. 60 each apart, but all
gentle and helpless creatures band to-
gether-the does and the deer. Thus