The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-04-16

be guided by mere sentiment at the ex- pense of fact or rational probability. But today the matter stands. we need to hide from our intelleets no eertitude of science; and no man can charge Us with | igoring fact to exalt sentiment. while in our souls there stirs and sings the resur- reetion faith With entire intellectual freedom and intellectual honesty, shack led by no fear, in bondage to no super stition, we may entertain that faith. There is nowhere any voice of protesting reason to forbid or restrain our gladdest hallelujahs. There is nownere any coun- ter voice of authority to silence or sub due the poets singing
 Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know What rainbows teach and sunsets show? Verdict which aecumulates
 From lengthening scroll of human fates; Voice of earth to earth returned Prayers of saints that inly burned Saving. what is excellent,
 As God lives. is permanent:
 Hearts are dust. hearts loves remain Hearts love will meet thee again.
 Nay from horizon to horizon. from nadir to zenith of what the intellect thinks and knows there is nothing to tell us that the poet-volce sings false. We are at liberty to rejoice that if sings true: that hearts loves. when hearts arc dust, do remain; that hearts love. which met us here will meet Us all again.
 What the Hope Is. But understand my friends what this hope of the resurrection Is. Let Us not l identify or confuse, or burden 1t with any smaller hope or fancy, or belief. Let us not suppose 1t dependent upon the | ,f corning the precise character of the here after world, concerning what heaven may l be like, or what hell may be like, or the | process of the passage from lower life l through death to higher. l doubt not many a man has supposed it necessary for him to deny the resurrection-fait because he found it impossible to accept somebody's picture of heaven, or descrip- i tion of hell, or give assent to the fatuous and grotesque idea, that the dust of a buried body is to be raised from its grave revivifed. The resurrection of the dead may be q fact if all the pictured heavens and imagined hells, are but superstitious fancies. There s no necessary connection whatever between them and fl. and not for one feeblest fraction of a moment does our faith in it's aetuality depend up on our believing that, when we arc through with and lay aside these worn
 
 them up again and call them ours. What kind of a world 1t is, into which death will usher LIS, and how our living spirits will be there embodied clothed upon no man has had authority given him to declare.
 This and this alone would seem to he
 implied by the resurrection-h -hope-that the world after death is realm in which life peculiar to the self-conscous personality will be- not less, but more amply lived; 8 realm of freer exercise to the noblest l faculties of mind and heart; a realm where all heroic impulses will urge us on to vaster heroism-and all aspira- tions to goodness and truth lift us nearer the height of our heavenward goal. There, l still our minds will think, our wills re- solve our hearts love. There, will be great purposes to serve, great duties to perform. great work to carry to per lection. as we fill our places in the liv- ing universe of God. and our joy will be, what the highest Joy already is-to know that we are filling our places, and by heroic endeavor enlarging them-warrors | still for the eternally good and true-fo- lowing, ever following, the ascending white banner of purest purity and holiest holiness, from Godly altitude to Godlier; as on this time-sepulchred earth-savc l for it's clinging sins and scalding tears! There, the labor of all the good and great 1 will be, as now, an eternal hallelujah to | the goodness and greatness of God. There this faith tells me, the friend whose last | look into my face was loves whisper. in- l artleuate, loves benediction voiceess, waits to companion my life again with the light. strength,' cheer, of his vital visible presence. There.
 Death with his healing hand 1 Shall knit once more the band | Which needs but that one link that none
 may sever;
 l Till, through the only good
 | Seen, felt and understood.
 1 The life in God shall make us one for l ever,"
 l This in dim human words is the resur- 1 rection-Hope. the hope that ten million stainless white flowers will mutely sym ! bolize on ten million graves today, the l hope that touched the stricken souls of men and women with the chrlsm of re- generation to new life and joy, on that epoehal day long ago. with its conquered i tomb--its Risen Christ!