The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-03-25
THINGS ABOUT DEATH
A SERMON ALONG THIS LINE BY REV.
j.. CUMMING sMITH
He Takes for His Subject, els Death
InexpIicabIe
Church-Other Services.

The Rev. J. Cumming Smith, Of Taber-
nacle Church, yesterday morning gave the
first of three sermons on The Last
Things" His subject was rs Death Elk
plicable?" and the text was taken from III
Corinthians, V, Ia; L Thessalonians. V, 10;
ii Timothy. iv. 6-8. There was an unusual
ly large audience. In part the Rev. Mr..
Smith said:
depths of divine mystery, but we can sink
our plummets down some distance ana
gather conception of the direction OF some
submarine currents. And with our more
enlightened modern methods OF handlng
the Bible l think ii is growing clear that
we need TO distinguish between one form
OF death which we share with all the or
ganic world and another form OF death
which is peculiar to our species. The COM
mon orthodox idea that sin initiated all our
physical death is growing less ana less
satisfactory. If sin had never blighted our
race there Is every reason TO believe that
generations would leave our world In due
time as blooms fall from the plant or rosy
ripe apples drop from the tree Our lower
life shares the changes and destinies or all
physical organic life. We were never de-
signed to be eternal tenants of one planet
when a boundless universe temptS the night
of our wing in so many directions.
THE upper range or register OF our being
alone can claim an i"nextinguishable career.
Nature Is glorified by evolution and human
history presents a vista of terraces, and on
each terrace a race stops ana acts out a GER
tain limited life and then ii is ready to as
cend to the developments OF the next and
higher terrace.
The fact of sin explains what we call
spiritual death; spiritual death means the
decay and torpidity of our exalted and
richer selves so that the sense OF God grows
coated over with d~ullness. We die on top.
To be carnally minded. this is death:
ITO Paul the presence or death was
robbed of fear, harmless as an assassin
when his weapons of Steel have been
wrenched from him.. And was that DIS
illusioniZing of death due TO any 1aise
vision or empty vagary? Was Paul wild
Drained on this point when so sane on
every other? Was his a bright-hued opium
ism but also an optical illusion! Inc
answer Is that he reveled in a revelation
of life, which however or whenever he re-
ceived 1t, chimes in with our best thougnt
to-day and even keeps in advance. faul 5
secret was the conscious development Oh
the higher life in us. He saw that to be
the royal development TO which all otner
development were secondary but tribu-
tary. The life of God in man, not a dim
or a dormant life, but a conscious life,
opened UP new heavens and new earths.
Hence he affirms the life divine 10 De d
present experience as much as a future
e~ffulgence. To live here or to hve In an
other orb was TO him about equal 10 a
choice between inns of same price when
all the inns lay nestled in the pine ridges
and he was in search of the pine-scented
attitudes. What mattered to PAU the
mere geographical locality when all local.
tiles were flooded with Examinations OF
God and every stopping place situated In
the divine glory.
Hence, while Paul is the apostle of i'm
mortality; while no seer is SO quick as he
to catch every foregleam and every an
alogy that led logically to the continuity
of our life. yet Paul as surely saw that
heaven is a present fact and that any flu
ture heaven we paint owes its colors and
attractions in the last ANALYSIS to the i'm
perishable elements of beauty blooming
out in this actual life. We never can
Danish skepticism by looking onward TO
a mirage heaven built in air, to a murky,
nebulous existence rounded on pure faith
alone. That day is past because the weak
ness of that day was that IL made earth
a dungeon and Toasted the eye on distant
paradises. Such a fancy was the
fimsiest fallacy that ever imposed on rea-
son. If no CLEANS of God In the soul of
man now: II no spark of n divine life
flaming up, however family, from the ashes
and difficulties of the lie that now is;
then there can not even be a conception
derstand q tree, but fancy a tree trying
to understand the reason of our higher
race when 1t has no germs in itself with
which to form an idea of the reason about
IL. Pau is the apostle Of the immortal
life as a present conscious experience.
He is therefore free from gushing or va
porous rhapsodies. Hence the absence of
any funereal accent in his victorious let
tiers and sermons The lives of triumphant
men and women with few exceptions,
where morbid qualities entered as fac
tors) are carried along with the same
buyant hope that blots out the view of
death as playing any important part. Our
modern life has caught the increasing
contagiou. 1t is simply the insistence on
the life of the soul as being the deter
mining factor. Man is now a part of God
with a physical attachment; a glorious
poem-with a little footnote in the shape
of an organism. And the last argument
agn0sticism is the reality OF that higher
spiritual history in the soul"