The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-04-23

q am the resurrection and the life; he that belieyeth in me. though he were dead, yet shall he live. And who- soeyer liveth and believeth in me snail never die."-St. John, xii, 25.
 This is Easter Day, royal day. a day when a ray of divine light pierces through the shadow of the grave. Let us gather around the Prince of Life, who has said: "I am the way, the truth and the life; T am the resur- rection and the life" and may we learn from him the deep meaning or the Passover, the secret of unperishaple life.
 Man has been endowed. together with life, with the desire of living and the duty of living. But at the same time as life strengthens within him, urges him onward and sustains him, death looms up in front of him. There is nothing more tragical than the meeting between man and death. Man has the feeling of being on the earth by a right that has come from above; he longs to become something more, to grow. to increase in himself that which is only just beginning. He draws the sap from everything around him, he derives knowledge from the sources of all things he widens his domain. Death says to
  stores; it tarnishes sources. and. under his very eyes, digs the abyss of obliv- ion, and says to him: From that you sprung, to that you will return" Ev- CT since mankind las existed. life has struggled with death. It must be said that death has great advantage on its side and that it's demonstrations are imbued with a character of brutality and evidence that fills us with horror. By disease, by steel by fire. 1t attacks and overcomes us. When the remains of our poor life are on the ground at its feet it crushes them. tramples up- on them. discomposes them and dis perses them, just as the prosecutors and executioners threw the ashes of the martyrs to the four winds What reply can be made to such demonstra- tions of our nothingness? What mouth will open before that widely yawning granite mouth of the sepulchre that brushes all that is living? For long time mankind remained silent before death and allowed 1t to have the last word Man is too small to speak be- fore the monster
 But an ally slowly rose from the shadow in which our ignorance had concealed him, and that ally is God. From the day when man received in his conscience the testimony and reVe- lation of the One who is at. the heart of all things, death had spectator and a judge Man, doubtless. did not yet believe in life. in spite of death, but he felt, when dying, that on his grave there remained something else besides death, his old enemy. He had the feeling that someone saw him die, watched over his last throes. received his last sigh, and he departed more peacefully, knowing that God was there. With the possession of that faith, man made another step forward. by the grace of his great Ally He saw death itself enveloped in the eter- nal will, and could say, when he closed his eyes for the last time: aLord, let Thy will be done; I go to sleep in Thy arms and put all things fin Thy care, Thou Guardian who never sleeps" Arrived at that stage, it could be said truly that the human soul had found a fortress from whence 1t could brave death. With timid'ty at first, then with greater and great CT strength, the assurance that we do not wholly die, that God received us. that He would draw us out of that night and awaken us from that sleep became manifest among the believers of the old alliance, and ended by at- taining radiant faith in eternal life. such as 1t is triumphantly proclaimed in the gospel. The gospel can be tru- ly be called the religion of life. Since then. faith in life, under various forms, has never completely died out. 1t has only had ups and downs. It Is of the greatest interest to all of us to ascertain the causes that increase or diminish our faith in life.
 It must be acknowledged that, If the strong belief. in afterlife has some