Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1902-05-23
IMMORTALITY.
1.-THE Outlook

"I am the resurrection and the lie.
| In every race and age the thoughts
| of men have travelled on beyond the
narrow bounds of mortal life, and.
while the mystery of death has been
deeply and often tragically felt, it has
never been accepted as finality in hu-
man experience, limit set to human
growth, an end of human energy. The
tide of vitality in the heart and soul of
man, once set in motion, has risen high
er and higher. and in thought, imagin-
alton and faith, sweeps past the mys-
terry of death and on into the undiscov-
cred world beyond, as If infinity alone
We're vast enough to receive and con-
tain it.
Deep in the soul lies the conscious
ness of immortality; felt by the savage
and expressed in the crudest symbols;
rising out of the depths of the spirit
of the most highly civilized, and inter-
preting Itself in The MODEST forms of
art and the most beautiful rites of reli-
gion. Questioned. doubted, aasailed by
a thousand arguments, that sublime
faith, born of the greatness of mans
soul, inevitably rising into conscious
ness whenever the highest possibilities
of that soul are developed, remains in
destructible. Without ft mans nature
lis inexplicable, mans mortal life mean
ingless mans soul delusion and a
mockery. The more nobly mans life
lis lived and the more clear and
searching, as a result of noble living,
mans insight into the mysteries be-
comes, the more inevitably must he in
fer his Immortality. The richer the
content of history In character, know
ledge. art, civilization. the more mex
plicable will the greatness of achieve
ment be without the explanation of i'm
mortality.
Amid this tide of life, steadily rising
in the remote past and mounting high
er and higher as the years go by
stands the master of it all, the Lord of
the world. and cries with a voice in
which there is the certainty born of
personal experience Il am the resur-
rection and the life" The thrilling cry.
the most consoling, healing, merciful
ever heard by mortal ears, came from
one who had not dreamed, speculated,
reasoned; 1T was the cry of one who
had been dead as other men had been
dead. who was buried as other men
have been buried, and against whose
tomb that terrible stone which has
crushed so many hopes and broken so
many hearts was rolled. That great
cry did not come from the cell of the
from the study cf the phil
osopher, from the laboratory of the sci
enlist: 1t came from the grave itself. 1t
was voice from the very blackness of
the mystery. 1t carries with it the final
of one who died and was bur- /
fed; who had been wrapped in grave |
clothes and laid in tomb. with the
great stone set as seal on his death
To the multitude whose hearts are
sore with sorrow, and for whom the sun
is darkened in mid heaven. there come
many voices prophetic with hope. but
there is one voice which rings with the
clear, penetrating tones of reality. /
Those who have left us do not come I
back, and we must walk the ways of
mortal life without them; but they live +
as we live, think as we think, love as
we love, only more deeply, more purely, I
with new freedom. They are not dim I
shadows Of those whose hearts were +
once ours; they live as they never lived {
before, as we can not live now. We do (
not hope that they live; we do not in /
feel with US and for us; we know that /
they live, because he lives who was
once dead as they died and was buried I
as they are buried, and who said 81 am (
the resurrection and the life"