Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1882-04-09
AIEMPggIS APPEAL
SUNDAY, APRIL ., 1Ss2
EASTER DAY.

SUNDAY, APRIL 8, ISIS:
EASTER DAY.
This is Easter Sunday, the greatest OF al
the christian year. 1t celebrates the day
when, as the gospels tell US, death gave up it'
prey, when the gates OF the grave'were opened
and the grandest truth man knows of-his
own destiny-was demonstrated. The dead
we are told, rose and lived, and the Immortality
OF man was proclaimed in accents whose
echoes will never cease while vale and
tain checker the surface of our earth. Folly
may deride and agnosticism may deny, but
while human lips exist human voices will
utter: 81 know that my Redeemer liveth, y
and that is a knowledge that carries with it
the certainty of personal life beyond the
grave. There is no nobler fact connected
with his own nature, no phenomenon OF
mans being, as exalting this. When the
Roman slave learned that, although his
fellow-creatures ranked him with the toiliDg
OK, he would not die like an OK, but in
happier world be free, free with the happi-
ness that truth and virtue bring to
their possessor, he became new man.
Because he was filed with a hope
blooming with immortality he shook off
fear and faced dungeons, fires, and the lions OF
the Coliseum. No longer cowardly and
craven, he became the heroic martyr, and
such was the seed of the Church. This grand
fact that Easter Sunday proclaims has proved
too dazzling for the human mind readily to
grasp. Moses, David, Solomon and Job
knew nothing, or taught, nothing of it. The
prophets, as time went on, had glimmerings
of the great truth; the Jews of Jesus's time
had an obscure knowledge of it; but to Him
it was reserved to proclaim fully the great
fact, He brought life and Immortality to
light. Even yet, gradually as the light of
this great truth was let in on man, its daz-
zling effect has not passed away. Imsgina-
ton has invented thousand follies and SUI
Perstition has called up thousand chimeras
in connection with it. Its happiness has
been linked with all sorts of material ideas,
the wonders of an Aladdin's palace and the
music of an immense st. Peters. The
very body of flesh has been sup
posed literally to pluck its dust from where
winds had blown and waves had tossed it.
Even now this manifest error is believed in
and taught. The authority says: "Thou
sowest not the body that shall be- .
There are bodies celestial and bodies terres-
trial. 1t is sown a natural BODY.
ii is raised a spiritual body. Cor
ruption doth not inherit interruption. =
We shall all be changed" But tradition and
the presumption of theology commonly
maintain that the material veil which shuts
out the glory and imprisons the soul within
the dominion of deceiving senses is to be
dragged into the immensely that knows no
end. The story has proved profitable, and
as certain heather put food and drink by
the dead, and others placed a coin in the
hand of the corpse to pay toll or ferriage on
the journey before him, so some christians
have made profitable trade of extracting
tribute from the living to aid the welfare of
those who are gone where there is no mar
riage or giving in marriage, and where mans
Intervention cannot come between the soul
and its Maker. That mans fancies,
inventions and traditions are erroneous
is proved by the infallible rule
Jesus laid down: "By their fruits
We shall know them.n In the primitive
church the knowledge of Immortality was a
cause of the Profoundest joy. That man
did not lie through the eternal ages like
dog or a clod was a matter for cheerfulness
and rejoicing, and the catacombs OF Rome
by their sculptures and their expressions
testify to-day to us how joyful to the early
christians were the glorious hopes that ex-
tend beyond the present life. Such was the
fruit in the ages OF nearer knowledge and
purer faith. To-day the advent Of immor-
tality is contemplated with fear, and the
grave associated not with brightness and
life, but with loss irreparable and images of
pain and endurance, and dread and fear.
SO i'll is the great fact of Immortality taught
and underst- cd that the immensely and
glory of the fact is little appreciated, and
knowledge of life beyond the grave is &C.
oepted with no more earnestness than a |
knowledge that when youth arrives |
at manhood the chin will have a |
beard. But to the thoughtful and |
intelligent, there is often a hesitation |
about giving full faith to Immortality on ac-
count OF its vastness and its grandeur; it ap-
pears like glory too radiant, blessing too |
transcendent TO be hoped for. To leave this !
little globe to be denizen of the limitless |
fields of space, to be loosed from the prison. |
house where FIVE little windows allow the |
only feeble glimpses of nature accessible to |
us, to have worlds within our ken and suns |
within our mental grasp, to trace in myriad !
forms of development the operation of laws |
of which we here obtain only feeble glimpses;
TO be removed from the surroundings of |
moral evil, to find purity, and truth and love
with all among whom we there mingle, to |
find love warm and earnest everywhere per-
vadiDg, to associate with the good of past ages
and enjoy the converse of natures as far
above man as man is above the insect-the |
very magnitude and joytulness of the hope !
prompts the feeling sit is too good to be
true" We have TO drink in all the import |
of the Easter mornings revelation in that |
garden near Jerusalem before we |
can rise TO the level of the grandest personal |
truth it is given to the human mind to grasp. |
Man being what he is, for him to challenge
and deny the fact of Immortality must be |
expected; and the denial often comes from |
Inns that would give up all earth can offer
them could they believe it true. None esteem
Immortality as highly those whom doubt
has conducted to the edge of the abyss and
shown them, in the bottOmless pit OF mega
,ion the gloom, the weld, the black darkness of
,,,nibilaiiop. Have a soul-immortal, trans
cending the bounds and limits of mortality
and material laws? is mementous ques-
,;ou. Its full answer is to be found only in
hat Easter Sunday mornings occurrence