The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1903-05-07
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT AND CONVINCING DIS.
COURSE ENTITLED ''lMMoRTALlTY."

forting Message to Those who Are
wavering in tho Belief In Regard to
Life Everlasting.
New YORK CIrY.-In the Church Of the
Messiah, Brooklyn, Sunday morning, the
on "Immortality-Th Longing for It, Pro-
posed Substitutes, Mans Right to It."
The text was from Job xiv: IA: IF man
die shall he live again." Mr.. Hester said:
The irrepressible, ubiquitous question,
repeated again and again, world without
end, Men like Job were asking it centur-
les before Christ, and men like Job are
asking it centuries after Christ. It is in
vested with perpetual youth, and the world
never tires OF hearing answers to it..
A father afflicted by the loss of his only
son in the morning Of beautiful youth
writes book entitled Life Beyond
boy, beginning, my Dear Phil" and clos
ing with these words: God bless you, my
boy, till the eyes which 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
cease of her husband. She finds great COM
fort 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
in such position could or would want to
give any different answer?
The thoughts of men on the subject re-
peated, reiterated, reafirmed throu6h 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
was proclaimed amid rejoicing, melody and
song on Sunday last in all the churches.
The echoes of Easter have not yet 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 Ari-
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 and 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 g, 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-
bltion of Almighty power which while it
impresses us it correspondingly depresses
us because it emphasizes the difference be-
tween us and Him and makes US despair Of
ever attaining unto such exaltation. If
this be 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 a 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 specula-
tive questions. Whenever possible they
would meet and find relaxation in convers-
ing on subjects other than shop. Their ia
soul, but they could never find any salts
factory reason for believing it. They sep
arated and one retired to distant State.
After twenty-five years they met at
crowded reception in the White House.
They shook hands cordially, and standing
asked, ANY light, Albert?' None was
"Any light, Lewis!" 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.
that the impulse that prompted these men
to tryFto 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-
1 49,, l. u
at the idea of humiliation, of becoming
nothing more than 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 rea-
sOned, when death, the long sleep, comes
to him. In after and higher stages of cul-
ture the conception of Immortality was at
first sad and depressing one. The Sheol
Of the Jews. the Hades of the Greeks, the
Orcus 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 strong suggestion
glides forth in new and better one. The
beetle breaks away from its filthy sepul-
cher and enters on new career, and man
notices it and begins to hang golden scara-
baei in his temples as symbols of his hope.
Winter retires and there comes a resurrec-
ton of flower, foliage and fruits. He sees
the silkworm weave its cocoon and die
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
flies on tombstones and ventures to hope
that he may likewise be freed from the en-
tanglements and deflements of earth and
flesh and range in freer and happier state
the universe at will. Ali such simihtudes,
and there are hundreds of them in nature,
help to strengthen mans conviction that
he will live again, make more roseate the
hope that he will survive the wreck Of the
universe.
IF man die, shall he live again? The
answer of Christianity is, 81 believe in the
resurrection of the body and the life ever
lasting" But this answer is not unani-
NOUS. Modern skepticism and speculative
| philosophy have proposed certain substi-
| tutes for. the faith once delivered. Even
though the comforting doctrine Of Chris
i tianity be rejected men recOil from the