The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-03-31

places and taken any large part as
teachers, or thinkers, or authors, or
rulers, naturally attracts attention and
calls for wider notice +; but death in
itself considered is the same to the in
dividual, whether he lay down the pen
or the sword, or go from the pulpit or
throne. And it is neither more nor
less to the humblest citizen of any land.
A church may mourn the lossSof pas
tor, and country mourn the loss of a
great ruler; but human love and sor-
row are much the same among the high
and the low, and the rich and the poor.
| There is not one kind of love and sor-
row in the homes, and hearts of roy
atty, and another in the homes and
hearts of the common people. The
great facts and feelings and sentiments
of life and death, and joy and sorrow,
are much the same in palace or howell,
and the children of royal families do
| not mourn the death of father
mother any more deeply than do the
children of any loving home in city or
country. The affairs of an emf ire may
be affected by the death of king, and
so may the lesser affairs of the family
be changed by the death of parent.
But over and through all such
changes is the strange fact of death
itself; the startling fact that human
bodies are but vitilized dust, and with
all their strength and beauty must re-
turn to the earth and mingle again
with the elements from which they
were taken to flow in the river, fall in
the rain, float in the air, or grow in the
life of grass or grain, of bird or animal.
Matter is not the stable or unchange-
able substance that it appears to be to
the senses. 1t is true that the essen
tial elements of matter, so far as we
know them, do not change; but these
are constantly assuming forms and
entering into new combination form
ing now the bodies Of plants and then
of higher organisms; and it may be
that the oxygen that vitaliZes the air
we breathe may have been breathed by
thousands of bodies now dead and it
may be that these dead bodies have
come up in vegetation and have been
re-assimilated and are now in part the
bodies in which we live. Life is for
ever clothing itself in new forms, weav-
ing from the elements of nature the
bodies in which it appears but there
is no evidence that life itself, even veg
etable life, dies, and hence it is only in
the sense of the change Of the outward
form that we can certainly say that
there is any such thing as death.
But the relations between life and
its material body are so intimate that
practically we say they are one. When
we speak Of our own lives we include
the body with all senses, and yet we
discriminate between the essential self
and its organism we speak of our
bodies as a something that we own and
use, as our hands, our heads, our eyes.
Aud it is here that science gives us the
best philosophical definition of life as
the correspondence of an organism with
finds its environment in the surround
ing earth, and the air, and light, and
rain. Cut off from these it dies. Sci
ence again tells us that completely of
organism favors longevity, or increases
the chances of maintaining correspond
epce with environment. The plant is
stationary, and hence cannot move
away to escape drouth or cold, but birds
and animals can change their location.
Man is the highest and most complex
of all organisms, and hence can main
tain his correspondence with surround.
ing environments where the lower ami
mails cannot. He can build ship and
live on the seas /; he can create an artif-
cial climate by the use Of clothes, and
houses, and fires, and live in the coldest
ATTITUDES; or he Can travel from one
climate to another; and by his knowl-
edge of surgery he can reset broken
bones, and by his chemistry he can
counterfeit many poisons.
And here is the struggle for exis-
tence; 1t is the effort to maintain the
correspondence between the physical
organism and its material environments
of air, and food, and drink, and heat,
and cold. When the correspondence is,
perfect, there is health when it is dis
turbed, there is disease; when its broken
off, there is death. The outer condi
lions of life still exist, but the organ
ism cannot appropriate them f; the lungs
cannot use the air, the stomach can no
longer receive food, or the weary heart
can no longer beat. Then the body,
no longer held in life by its correspond
ence, returns to the earth.
The physical body is the materalized
self Of man f.; it relates him to the world
of sense; of sight, and feeling, and
sound. 1t is through these senses that
we know each other as bodily exis-
fences, and it is by the use of these bod
lily powers that we perform the work of
e. l..