The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1895-11-28

Gods terrestrial creatures. 1t is the ami
NAL nature that perishes, and it is as an
animal that man dies. His spiritual
nature, whether it is in good or evil case,
lives on forever. These bodies are lent
us, for a season, to assist us in our earth
ly evolution. When they become unfit for
that end, when they become a hindrance
instead of a help, a way is provided by
which we may get rid of them. Death
is that way. This material world, with
all its manifest extremes of i'll and good,
pleasure and pain, exists only as the
great workshop for the evolution of the
immortal individuality of man.
Upon leaving the earth we are all to
move along the same road, but we can not
conveniently all start together. If my
love goes before me, why should l wall
or despair, since | am soon to follow and
know where to find her?
When people say we are dead, and dig
a grave in which, with reverence and GER
| emony, to place our remains. we do by
no means at that moment die for the first
| time in our life. Neither do we die for the
last time. With our birth our death be-
gins The body is always dying and al
ways being born. Practically we die
| every day, every hour, every moment.
But through all this change of growth
we still exist SO also when that great
est change of all comes upon us, when the
entire dissolution of our physical atoms
takes place, we still exist. We have
changed the outward and visible form,
but only to enter into fresher life and into
newer existence. For man in his present
stage of evolution death is not loss, it
is not a punishment, it is not a disadvant-
age. 1t is one of the changes to which life
on this planet is subject; it is transition
it is the passage from the material to the
spiritual, it is the completion of the first
little round in human life, the first short
| flight of the spirit into space. If we
know that we live after we are dead, we
can say with Paul:
so, Death! Where is thy sting?
o. Grave! Where is thy victory?'
AS to the locality of the spiritual world,
l accept the teaching of the wisest mys-
ties and seers, with Emerson and Sweden
borg ut their head. According to their
thought, this world is the rind, the envel-
opment of the spiritual world. Matter
| is, everywhere, the body, the continent
and is everywhere around and within
this world of material things. The blind
man does not need to 60 anywhere to get
into the light; couch his eyes and he can
see. The sleeping man has no conscious
ness of the outer world wake him, and
he is in it without rising from his bed.
1t is just so with mans perception of spir-
itual things. We are spiritual beings, and
the desire to gain some knowledge of our
nature, capacities and destiny has be-
come too strong, in this age, for suppress
sion. Emerson was fond of pointing out
how Milton anticipated modern thought
when he wrote in Paradise LOST"
"What if earth be but the shadow of
heaven. and things therein each to the
other like more than OH earth is
thought
The human spirit, derived from the In
finite, is human being in the human
form, having all the organs that compose
Il human being, both external and inter-
nal, from the least to the greatest. The
spirit has the spiritual senses of sight,
hearing, taste and touch, and these senses
render the same service 10 the spirit that
the material senses render to the body of
flesh. The only difference is caused by
the higher activity, power and sensitive
ness of spiritual substance.
This material body, when we lay it
down at death, crumbles perishes and
disappears. 1t is the broken shell from
which the bird has flown. 1t is a cast
ing-Off by the spirit of the form it no long
er needs, as we cast off needless clothing
1t is II passage from an outer to an inner
room in the "housc of many mansions
AS the aged grandmother says in the
poem, when she is told of the death OF
her son:
Gone for Il minute, my dear, from this
room into the next.
l. too, shall so in minute: what time
have TO be vcXcd?"
We shall be just as much men and WON
Il 4, l,,,cn holl Ia,
in Il world as real as this one-yes, more
real and more enduring. The locality OF
the life to come is as close to us now
as our own souls are close
From this world to the
other is but q step-the shortest of al
steps. We say fearful good bye to the
dying, while they are hearing the wei
come of old friends. The sense of part
ing and separation is with us, the pleas
ure of reunion is with them. The robes
of mourning, the Grape, the lamentations
over coffin and grave, reveal the weak
ness of our religious faith in God and
human destiny. If we really and fully
believe that all is well with our dead
that to die is an exchange of obstructive
conditions for a broader, fuller, freer life
we would attain to the spiritual, idea
religion, which forbids us tr shroud our
selves in gloomy black and shed hopeless
|
,, tiers had befallen those who so, as wei
as those who are lingering here.
The greatest prophets of the past, with
Jesus at their head, have announced Il
coming age when physical death will b,
superseded by voluntary translation
That is the occult significance of the res
direction, but in the present stage of hu
man evolution death is needful, yea, i'll
dispensable. 1t is universal and ineyita
Bile, it therefore must be good. The life
hereafter, to the useful, kindly, unselisl
man, is Il growth, an ascension and d
delight. The errors and imperfectiOns
of the carth-life are speedily Outgr0wn
and his spiritual evolution is FASTENED
not hindered by the experience of death
The selfish and evil man finds that life
Mt first, stern, wholesome, needed dis.
cipline, intlexibly firm, calmly wise, re-.
sistlessly strong. AS he learns the les
sons of obedience and moves in the path
way of repentance and reform-the only
possible path in which he can mCyc-ho
comes by degrees to his better self; then
the life after death becomes to him also
q growth, an enlargement ami delight
Every restraint there is benevolent; every
discipline there is medicinal; every pain
there is for corrective and cure-nothing
is for revenge. In the spiritual world
we may meet with strange and uneX-
pected experiences, but there are two
things which no man will ever find in
any possible world of the hereafter-the
hopeless, endless hell of the sectarian,
or his blood-thirsty, wrathful, savage
| nnitv Nn will not how IN MOIocb thnrn