The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-04-18
HOPE BEYOND THE GRAVE.

The old and rapidly passing doc.
trine of orthodoxy, that this life ends
all hope for sinful souls, that beyond
the grave there is no opportunity for
theredeeming influences of divine love
to operate and bless the sinner, is one
of the most unreasonable and utter
ly untenable doctrines ever taught
in the name of Christianity. 1t is
hard to understand how the human
mind could conceive such dogma in
view of the explicit teachings of the
ever seeking and ever-saving nature
of the religion of Jesus Christ. We
cannot look upon death as inter
posing an eternal barrier to the tri-
umph of the Saviour's work in human
souls. The divine love revealed in
JesusC Christ sweeps beyond the grave
and the tomb and all souls are held
in its embrace until the agencies of
grace and redemption have accom-
plished their benefcent work. New
man Smyth, one of the noble band of
orthodox teachers, who have seen the
light of Eternal Hope illumining the
modern heavens from the face of Je-
sus Christ, well says: 81 believe that
the end of probation for the individ-
ual is not, and from the nature of
moral freedom cannot be, any out
ward circumstance, temporal accident
or physical change, like the death of
the body"
We have recently written of baffled
and defeated lives as needing a re-
newed opportunity and a better
chance than has been accorded them
here. 1t would be hard and an un.
just thing to condemn them to an
eternity of failure. 1t seems impos-
sible that we shall say that there is
no hereafter for them, and that they
subserve their purpose when their
whole career is one bitter and I'M
broken martyrdom. No-death in
their case is not the end; it is only
the beginning. Then again, let us re-
member that large class who are born
and reared in dark and depraved
places, and from their coming into
the world to their going out, know
nothing of the tender, kindly social
affections and nothing of the purity,
and faith of Christian homes. In
that outer world where they dwell
amid unpromising surroundings, no
redemptive influences operate and
none can reach and mould them into
better likeness. Of God they know
nothing; and they, perhaps, have
never heard of Christ except in oaths
and blasphemies. There they are,
shut up in hopeless prisons of vice
and depravity. They are born in sin
and Graded in iniquity.
And when such as these die, it is
without any prayer breathed over
them, and with no consolatory hope
of better hereafter. Shall bars of
darkness be about them forever?
They have had no chance here for
growth or attainment,-shall they be
continued in their vileness and de-
pravity and shame forever? If so, if
no better chance is to come to them,
then to suffer them to come into ex-
istence, and to be shut in by the cir
cumstances that made them to be
lost and undone from their very birth,
their life was not only mistake but a
wrong. We can only conclude, there
fore, that there is world where these
darkened and baffied lives shall be
lifted up into the light, and fairer
opportunity shall be given them.
Death, we may be assured, is not
the end for these myriads of earth.
Neither is it a bar to redemption or
to any recovery of lost ground. 1t
does not interfere, as an evil force, to
prevent the fulfilment Of unfulfilled
lives, nor to deprive of further OPP
portunity. The only satisfactory and
comforting view is, that it places the
emancipated soul amid better sur
roundings, and opens wider to it the
gates of hope and progress-that it