The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1903-06-19
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT AND CONVINCING DIS
COURSE ENTITLED IMMORTALITY"

The Rev. 81. Claluuester Delivers Conn
fortlng Message 90 Those Who Arc
Waverin In the Belief in Regard 70
Life Everlasting.
NEW York CITY.-In the Church Of tho
Messiah, Brooklyn, Sunday morning, the
rector. the Rev. ST. Clair Hester preached
on "lmmortality-Th Longing for 1t, Pro-
posed Substitutes, Mans Right to It."
The text was from lob xiv. IA: IF a man
die shall he live again. Mr.. Hester said:
The lrrepressible, ubiquitous question,
repeated again and again, world without
end. Men like Job were asking IL centur-
les before Christ, and men like job are
asking IL centuries after Christ Ii is in
vested with perpetual youth and the world
never tires OF hearing answers to IL.
A father afflicted by the loss of his only
son IN the morning of a beautiful youth
writes a book entitled Life Beyond
Death" His dedication is a letter 10 his
boy, beginning, My Dear Phil" and clos
ing with these words: God bless you, my
boy, till the eyes which l closed see open
again and looking into mine, Lovingly
father This is the answer Of one in
grief. Under similar circumstances could
you, would you, want to give any different
answer A wife bewails the sudden de-
cease of her husband. She finds great com.
Tort in reading through his sermons and
gathering from them and publishing every
sentence that bears on the subject of
meeting again in the world to come Her
| heart is constantly singing:
"Soul of my soul, we shall meet again,
And with God be the rest"
Hers is the answer of one in loneliness
buoyed UP by confident anticipation. Who
m such a position could or would want to
give any different answer?
The thoughts of men on the subject re-
peated, reiterated, reathrmed THROUGH thou
sands of years Of human history, form an
accumulation of evidence from which it is
| difficult to escape, evidence that gains en-
| phasis by its repetition, evidence that
arouses deepest feeling by the very earnest
ness of its utterance. The answer of Jesus
| Christ is the only answer that entirely
satisfies the human mind and heart. 1t
was proclaimed amid rejoicing melody and
| song on Sunday last in all the churches.
The echoes of Easter have not vet died
out. Their soul has gone into all the world
and their words unto the ends of the earth
| The echoes that come from the rock-hewn
| tomb within the Garden of Joseph of Arr
mathea are not like those we shout among
cliffs and canyon walls that gradually soft
en- and die away. They are within the
realm of the spiritual world sud they in
| crease rather than diminish. They grow
from soul to soul, from the soul Of the risen
| Christ to the souls that believe IN Him,
and so they grow forever and forever
If Christ alone of all who live or have
! lived upon the earth is to live again after
| death, the resurrection of the first Easter
| day is nothing more than an amazing exhi-
! bition Of Almighty power which while it
| impresses us 1t cOrrespondingly depresses
vs. because it emphasizes the difference be-
! tween US and Him and makes us despair Of
ever attaining unto such eXaltation. If
! this Re your feeling His rising was to no
! purpose, our preaching is vain, Christian
! ity is cruel system of deception and we
are Of all men most miserable. But the
truth is His rising was promise and
! pledge to us of ours. He was the first fruit
! of them that sleep.
First of all let me ask is it a fact that
men desire to live again? Emerson tells
the story of two members of the u. S. Sen
ate who were fond Of discussing speeula-
! tive questions. Whenever possible they
would meet and find relaxation in convers-
ing on subjects other than shop. Their IA
vorite topic was the immortality of the
soul, but they could never find any salts
factory reason for believing it. They sep
arated and one retired to a distant State.
/ 4AllNA bWCHJ1 -llNG yGulS lLlGg lAGb ~ u
crowded reception in the White House.
They shook hands cordially, and standing
to one side for a moment one of them
asked, "Any light, Albert" "None," was
the reply. After a pause the other asked,
/ ANY light, LeWisE The answer again
was None" They shook hands again,
looked one another in the eye in silence
and parted, never to see each other again.
Emerson's remark upon the incident is
! that the impulse that prompted these men
to try to find proofs of Immortality was it.
self the strongest of all proof. In my opin-
! ion Emerson was right
Yes, men do desire to live again. They
are not afraid to die, to have the body de-
stroYed, many of chem, but thew shudder
at the idea of humiliation, of becoming
nothing more than a breath of air or a
| pinch of dust. Even the barbarian and
the savage believe in future life, that
somehow the thinking soul may escape the
wreck of the unthinking body. In all prob
ability it is an idea that grew out of the
! phenomena of dreams. While man sleeps
his other self wanders away at will, and
something like this may happen, he lea
soned, when death, the long sleep, comes
to him. In after and higher stages of cui-
ture the conception of Immortality was at
first sad and depressing one. The Sheol
of the Jews, the Hades of the Greeks, the
0rcus of the Roman, were abodes Of
shades, shadows, ghosts-and such future
could only be regarded with fear and dis
like. But in time man began to surmise
that perhaps the next life might be an i'm.
provement upon this one. The analogies in
nature around him gave a strong suggestion
to this effect. The snake casts It's skin anu
glides forth in a new and better one. The
beetle breaks away from its filthy sepul-
! cher and enters on a new career, and man
notices it and begins to hang golden scara-
baei in ais temples as symbols of his hope
Winter retires and there comes a resurrec.
the slkworm weave weave its it's cocoon % c9i and ' ais
within it, and after time come forth clad
in brighter colors and able to spurn the
earth on which it formerly crawled and fly
away and then he begins to carve butter