The Newtown bee., 1895-02-08


 mute as the dry sand. The Book of Ma ture teaches us many things, but it tan- talizes by the questions which it raises and cannot answer. It furnishes an al phabet, but it is not able to put the let ters together to form single written page. In sorrow, in sin, in life every where and always we need saviour, Bible, God-that is the teaching of the Book of Job.
 To poor Job living in that far-away, twilight era of the worlds history, standing helpless on the shore of an un- explored sea, as I have told you, ques- tions were ever coming which he could not answer, and my text simply gives you one of these questions; there are scores of others in the Book of Job. "Yea, man giyeth up the ghost, and where is he?', Job could not answer that question.
 THERE IS ONLY ONE HINT in the entire book that he had any cer- tain knowledge about the life beyond ]; and, although the thought is beautiful, there is very, very much doubt as to just what meaning the words had for Job. Here is the thought, 'sFor I know that my redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and,. though after my skin worms de- stroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not an. other, though my reins be consumed within me-" And, even allowing the fullest, richest meaning to these words, this relation is, amid the surrounding darkness of that far-away time, like the light of meteor that darts for mo- ment across the inky spaces, or like the light of candle in a universe of gloom.
 "Yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is hep And, after all has been said that man can know, iC still remains question. It was question with Job, with Socrates, with Plato, with Cicero, with Peter, with Paul, with Augustine, with Luther, with the Wesleys, with Zwingli, with Brooks, with Emerson, it is still question with you and with me. Press further and further into the realms of truth about the mysterious future and one answered question suggests an- other still to be answered, and one key unlocking mystery opens door into an- other room of mystery, and in our hope less endeavor we cry "There is no end, there is no end." When we attempt to pierce the veil that hides the things be- yond this life, we feel as Isaac Newton felt in his searchings in the world of science. As little boy he lay at his mothers feet, and, looking up at the stars as they blinked in the great con- cave above him he wondered at the pow CT which held them in their places. Grown to be man, he discovered the law of gravitation and explained the wonder of his youth. But in his old age with the history of his marvellous dis coveries behind him, he confessed: sI feel that 1 am but 8 child gathering 8 few pebbles upon the shore of the unex- plored ocean of truth that lies before me.' Now it is given unto us to know in part; by-and by we shall know even as also we are known.
 NOW IT IS ALLOTTED
 for us only to speak as a child, to under stand as a child, to think as child; by- and-by we shall put away childish things. Now it is our portion only to see through a glass darkly; by-and-by we shall see face to face.
 Some answers, however, can be given to the question of the text, and for these answers we stay not with Job, we leave prophet and priest and vision and dream i; we come to the full revelation of truth made through Jesus Christ.
 ''Yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?" answer, first, he is somewhere, that is, in certain, definite, established place. That is no small thing to say; it is no small thing to give location to an object,to bound it by some measure you can conceive. That makes just the difference between found arti- cle and lost article. A lost article is ore whose place is entirely unknown. When man giveth up the ghost, he does not roam through measureless spaces, aimlessly, foolishly, having no home. It makes no difference whether the soul goes to the Heaven of the blessed re- deemed, or to the limbo of the unblest lost, the soul is somewhere.
 Tho cnu1 vbop nuitt;no ,oorto I body, goes somewhere, and to place so definite that it is ssprepared'' place, a place prepared both for those who are to forever share Gods love and for those who are forever to be denied His warm embrace. To those on His right hand the Judge at last shall say: 'sInherit, ye blessed, the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,' and to those on His left hand the sentence shall be: Depart, ye cursed, into ever lasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels" have no sympathy what ever with that notion of the hereafter which represents it as an aimless exis- tence, an idle vacancy, a life that can be best expressed by a great cipher or an absence of lines.
 Death is not annihilation. Science is:to- day continually emphasizing this lesson that no force or form of matter is ever lost out of the universe; it may appear in an infinite variety of changed forms, but it continues in some form to exist. The twisted column of smoke that rises from your chimney as you cook your morning meal
 GOES UP TOWARD THE SKY;
 von lose sioht nf if vau say if