The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1898-04-14
DEATH AND AFTER.
Meaning Of the Festival of Resurrection
In Variota Creeds.


Copyright, 1898, BY American Press Asso-
Easter as a church festival Symbolizihg
the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the mir.
| aole on the truth of which Christianity
as a approximation is founded. Regard
ed as the chief of all religious festivals, IL
seems singular that many of the denomi-
| pations have not observed 1t, though be-
lieving absolutely in what IL oommemo-
rates. OF late years more and more sects
| have celebrated Faster, but 1t is not long
| Iince its celebration was mainly confined
In this country to the Roman Catholics
and the Episcopalians. All the churches
that claim to bo orthodox hold faith in the
resurrection, physical and spiritual, Of
| Jesus and In the conscious immortality Of
| the soul.
In these days IL would be difficult to
give even the names of the numberless
churches that exist and impossible to say
what their members individually believe
however exact and explicit their formal
| profession of faith may be. Christian at
| large hope for salvation through the at j.
ment of Jesus, for eternal bliss herea or
in the presence of God and the ang ls
Death is to them release from care and
pain and they enter after 1t into a state
of immortal beatitude. This is certainly
most comforting. Any ono who earnestly
oherishes such faith should bo able TO bear
all the ills of this world, in view of what
| is in store for him in the next 1t seems
pity that the whole of mankind cannot
accept it and be made happy by 1t instead
of having a diversity Of religions, each one
of which makes the same claims for truth
that Christianity does and regards itself
as the only true religion. Unhappily, as
experience shows, belief is not dependent
on wish or will Each and every man be-
lieves as his mind and temperament COM
pei, and this fact necessarily peoples the
planet with heretics, whatever the prevail
ing religion or religions.
Apart from forms of worship, SO called
there are endless differences of opinion,
most Of them radical about God, death
and the hereafter. The orthodox common
ly think of God as personal being after
whose image we are created and who is in
effect ourselves, exalted, idealized, perfect
ed The nonorthodox regard him as per-
yading spirit, prevalent influence, a per-
manent, indestructible principle, u subtle,
universal emanation. Metaphysicians have
drawn all kinds of differences about Deity,
and In attempting to make him intelligi-
| BILE have made him hopelessly obscure. 1t
is often supposed, when one man asks
| another, "Do you believe In God?" and
the other replies in the affirmative, that
the two entirely agree. Nothing could be
further from certainty, since one mans
| idea of God may bo altogether distinct
| from that of the other. We may all have
| faith in God, God of some sort, and yet
be as far apart as the poles. Believers Of
ten denounce believers differing in belief
as atheists, term that those who disagree
theologically have always been inclined TO
| apply freely and recklessly to each other.
Many able philosophers who recognize his
existence now speak of God as unknown
and unknowable and therefore deprecate
theology and its study as worse than use
less, because a mere waste of time.
Concerning death there are as many and
discrepant opinions as about God, and nat
urally, since knowledge about either Is
clearly impossible. Death is rarely associat-
| ed, as it was a generation or two since,
with terror, except by persons of narrow
training and convictions. 1t has been re-
lieved of the old theologic bugbears and is
| looked on in a more or less philosophic
| light, even by many assuming to be ortho-
dox. All the ancient habits and feelings
connected with it have been changed.
| Deathbed repentance, once deemed so es-
| sential even by Protestants, has grown OBJ
solete, at least in cities. Clergymen are
not considered in duty bound to visit the
seriously i'll, nor are they sent for to pre-
pare them for dissolution. Physicians do
not esteem it to be their duty to inform
their patients that they are near their end
1 NIL fpp hn
trary, indeed, is practicod, for it is held
| that any one dangerously i'll will be more
likely to recover If ignorant Of the fact
than if deprived of hope, great sustainer
always This course would have been
thought criminally culpable extremely
wicked, not many years ago, and today it
is almost universally followed and ap-
proved.
Death is not ordinarily accounted In it
self calamitous, save for those who sur
viye, though every effort is made, of
course, to avoid it or defer it so long us
may be- Men generally have no wish to
| die, unless particularly unfortunate in
some way (they would be morbid other
wise), but when they see death approach
| ing they are apt to meet it with complete
| resignation.
The theories-they can be nothing else--
about death and the hereafter are as num-
berless as conflicting. They range between
the most consolatory and the most satur-
nine and all of them have their earnest ad-
vocates Each and every one contains its
share of truth and harmonizes with the
minds and proconoeptions of certain peo-
pie. The best rule, perhaps, is to adopt
the belief that acoords with ones own
temperament. The notion that a man
cannot be good unless orthodox and that
heterodoxist must be bad has ceased to
carry weight. Morals and theology have
no connection. There are vicious Chris
tians and exemplary in1dels. All con-
scientious persons believe what they must
and do what good they can. This Is the
practical religion of today.