Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-02-25
IMMORTALITY.
ARGUMENTS AND PROOFS OF LIFE
IN THE BEYOND
Strongly Presented by Rev. John F.
Won HerrIich-Some Thoughts
for the Thinkers.

PART /.
"If man die shall he live again Dob
xiv, ID.
Our Savior never entered into any argu-
rnent to prove the Immortality of the soul.
Like the existence of God, it was an ac-
copied fact. He knew that the conviction
and instinct implanted within US, as strong
as life itself, and part of our very make
up and nature, would be stronger proof
than any mere argument or process of
But great and towering as Christ stands
out upon the canvas Of history, proclaim
ing to the world the promise and assurance
Of Immortality, He but voices the instinct
of common humanity.
From the days when Adam wandered
sinless in the leafy bowers of Eden, down
to the present moment, Immortality, now
fading into grotesque imagininss, then
flashing into burning convictions, has been
the hope and inspiration of mankind.
Tenderly the Egyptian laid his beloved
dead in vault and sepulcher, and in con-
fidence waited the coming of Ptah to re-
store them to life and happiness. The
philosophy of the Greeks. even in its most
Geld and intellectual period, could not
cloud over nor hide the golden gate of the
eternal world from the seeking souls of the
signing millions, and long before Cicero
looked scornfully toward handicapped
Olympus, saying: " | see no God there,
but only ice and snow"
Long before Apollo shook his egis of
confusion over the destroying swarms of
the scourging Attila, the Greeks had
learned to look beyond Citherton and
Olympus, had raised affairs to the unknown
God, and had touched the garment hem OF
the Great Jehovah So also the rude sea
kings of the north, who laughed at storms
and sang their warlike songs in the face OF
battling men and furious elements, were
neryed to efforts Of grandest valor by the
priest-drawn picture of
THE GORGEOUS wALHALLAi
1t was grim idea, Graded in the craggy
north and christened in human blood, but
1t expressed the nobler instincts of the
human soul trying to burst through the
barriers of brutality and superstition.
So, too, amid the swamps and highlands
among the barbarous and civilized, we find
the moving and stirring of this mighty i'm
pulse. In fact, God has not so lowly rooted
the brain OF any race or nation but that
the birds of instinct and fancy may nest
beneath its leaves, and sing sweet songs OF
future peace and joy for earth-tired, weary
burdened mortals. 1t is an instinct which
begins with man, and reaches down to the
last little grave that was dug in snow-clad
Woodlawn; an instinct as wide as the uni
verse, and as real and substantial as the
stars that shine in the heavens above us
Not alone the product, of thought and
cultivation, but alike by the civilized and
savage.
The Spaniards found it in the swamps
and glades Of sunny Florida, on the table
lands of Mexico, and on Peru's mountain
slopes.
Livingston and Stanley found it amid
the morasses and iungles of distant Africa
and interior Egypt-none so low down in
the scale of thought and feeling as not to
have dreamed of life beyond this. Man
cannot die; it is not death to lay aside
this throbbing dust-to burst these bonds
and soar aloft to heaven and God.
Every analogy in nature points to the
everything truth that death is only A
Change thousand phases of parallel
phenomena in material nature attest and
evidence mans continuity of existence
these proofs may no. be conclusive, but the
accumulate the evidence.
The beetle breaks forth from its filthy
sepulcher and sports in the fields and road
ways renewed creature. The silk-worm
weaveS its cocoon and lies down in its
oblong grave apparently dead, when, 10,
after time it comes forth winged moth.
glittering with rainbow colorS to sport and
bask in the sunshine, to live a new life
and to be new creaturel So, too, from
the beautiful springtide that brilgs resur-
rection and life to the graves o. the sod
and forest. Man dreams of a life and
resurrection to follow the lowering of his
mortal body beneath the sod of the grave
yard.
The metamorphosis of the caterpillar
into the golden-winged butterfly is both an
argument and an analogy. The body is
but the chrysalis of the soul, and the
spirit energies from its cast of cocoon into
the ethereal air and summer light of a
higher existence,
Nor is the change greater in the case of
the immortal spirit than when the
golden-wlnged insect rises from Its loath-
some clod-covered sepulcher.
In science the indestructibility of matter
Is one of the first principles of scientific
belief-an atom once created can never be
destroyed again. No power on earth can
destroyed the particle of dust that is tossed
by the wind or plays in the sunbeams.
1t may change its shape, but never be
uncreatedl But science goes still farther
and declares that not only is matter in
destructlble, but that which we call force
is also indestructible Heat may be
changed into motion, and motion into
electricity, and then back again, but 1t
always exists-it remains a force forever.
Man consists of body and soul, of matter
and spirit, of material and force Inter-
twined about each other are these two
elements. They are separated at death
The body returns to the earth as it was.''
and the spirit goes-where? The scrip
lures tell US to
THE GOD WHO GAVE IT."
We ask of science-where But she
replies: Esprit force cannot be destroyed
But she has no voice to tell us whittier it
has gone nor the form it has assumed In
the material world there is no such thing
as destruction or humiliation; things are
changed, transformations abound, but
essences never cease their existence. Sci
ence tells us that the force which makes
man living soul is indestructible, just as
the particles which make up his material
body. Destroy the human soul, blot it out
of existence, and you commit the only act
of destruction which takes place in Gods
great universe.
Think you that God has formed the I'M
thinking, inanimate clay of the material
universe into glittering particles of matter
and ordained them to sport and play for
ever, while he has created being, the
very climax of creative skill and wisdom,
rejecting his own image in mental, moral
and spiritual capabilities, yet doomed that
masterpiece of divine wisdom to 90 ont in