The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-10
REY. JOHN D. KENNEDY.
HIS FINEADDRESs AT THE ELKSi
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES,
Delivered at the HypsrIon Sunday
 Evening-The Hope as to the Life Beyond-Comforting Words for the

A~SFS N~~ w N~AS -.~~
 Beyond-comforting Words for the
 Borrowing and Bereaved.
 There is an instinct in the human heart that prompts us not to permit the memory of our departed friends and associates to be forgotten. We cling with all the tenacity of friendship and love to the memory of those whose lives were closely intertwined with our own and their names and virtues live upon our lips long after their labors are over and their hearts gone silent.
 Their virtues we engrave upon the tablets of love and memory" To give outward manifestation of your love and regard for departed brothers, you gen. tlemen assemble each year and from the altar of your hearts issue forth ten- der expressions of love for those who were your co-workers in the glorious cause of propagating charity and fra ternal love among the brethren.
 Each year at the recurrence of these hallowed exercises you miss some fa- miliar face, some voice that mingles no more with the other voices of the lodge room; you look in vain for the we'll re- membered greeting of hand now cold in death. It is on occasions like this we feel the awful reality of death, and we realize the force of these words of Holy Scripture: Tt has been appoint ed unto all men once to die"
 Our path through life may be a pleas ant one; it may be strewn with every flower which fallen world has yet pre- served, but somewhere along that path a grave Is made by the decree of God, and sooner or later that grave shall claim us as its own. Riches cannot bribe death, neither is poverty too low ly to claim it's notice But when death has laid its cold hand on lives that had been its victims, can we bring ourselves to believe that all Is over between our selves and our dead? 4 After this existence which we call life ---so short, so full of trouble-is there, then, nothing more? Are love and friendship vain; virtue and justice mere fantasies of the brain? To speak thus would be to stifle the best and noblest instincts of the heart. .4. .e...
 How could we be able to account for the feelings with which we stand beside the open tomb? Would the dust and ashes we are about to lay to rest in themselves have power to claim our fondest. affection? No: it Is because there is a voice which tells us that all has not died with them. It Is this voice speaking within us which has ever made mankind cherish and venerate the last resting-place of their beloved dead. All nations have believed that the sleep of the grave is not to last forever; that there is something that survives death, and that is the soul, an immortal spirit.
 Abraham, hoping in the resurrection, consoles himself for the sacrifice of his son, Isaac; Job, abandoned by all, was comforted by the conviction that he would rise again from the grave; Greeks, Persians, Egyptians believe in their Elysian fields. It seems as If God willed to engrave on the soul the word immortality, that it might be center of light destined to shine in the midst of the blackest darkness, in all ages and under forms the most diverse, Surely the voice of universal testimony is the voice of truth. Were is only 8 solitary voice, that would be sufficient to arrest our attention; but 1t is the voice of the whole human race; 1t is the voice of God.
 Thus the nature that God has given man together with the faith that Is i'm planted in our souls, my dear friends, makes us look beyond the grace, and see through all it's shadows another world and to brighten by the hope of a future meeting, the gloom that the death of those we loved has flung upon our hearts. With the eye of faith we penetrate the miserable remnants of mortality and behold the eternal home of depart ed friends and brothers, Where the righteous live forever more; their re- ward also is with the Lord, and the care of them is with the Most High. There fore they shall receive a glorious king dom, and a beautiful crown from the Lords hand, for with His right hand shall He cover them, and with His arm shall He protect them" (Wisdom ", 15 ,16.)
 How consoling the thought that hu- man love and human friendship are not flowers so frail that deaths cold touch can wither them forever; that associa- tions formed here on earth may again be renewed and perfected in the unseen world beyond the grave. Whether this union with departed friends and broth- CTS shall be realized by us rests entirely | with ourselves.
 Gentlemen, the principles of your es- teemed order should be powerful ad- juncts to aid you in securing this bliss full immortality and to bring about a happy reunion with former comrades and friends. In the words of a respect ed friend, a priest of the Catholic church, who has the honor of member ship in the order of Elks, "the funda- mental and actuating principle of Elk life and Elk virtue, containing as it does the essence of all human wisdom and Christian philosophy, Do unto | others as you would that they should | do unto you," Is one which if faithfully adhered to and consistently practised in all the varied circumstances of life and among all classes, would make this world veritable paradise and prepare