Missouri Valley times. [volume] (Missouri Valley, Iowa) 1874-1931, 1906-01-18

iieial ol Dis harper, president
of the Chicago University:
"There is no death. There is
no age-long sleep awaiting a
mythical resurrection. Death
is in itself the resurrection"
With these few sentences DIR.
Lyman Abbott prefaced his adj
dress at Kent theater. The
opening exercises were most
simple in their nature. DR..
Charles r. Henderson offered
an eloquent prayer. Then the
venerable champion of liberal
thought, the gray-haired maj
esty of his presence giving an
added dignity and solemnity to
the occasion, began the funeral
GRAFTON.
4 FRUlTlON OF HOPES INEVITABLE.
"Mankind, like man, has had
a childhood, an adolescence and
we hope that it will have a ma
Iturity," he said. "Nay, we
4 know that the full fruition Of
our hopes is inevitable. A race
in its infancy, just as the little
child, knows only the physical
world. 1t imagines that the
! sea, the sky, the thunders, the
mountains themselves are God.
1t is dominated entirely by the
sensory impulse and draws it's
knowledge from that source.
"Then it begins to learn some
thing from the light within. 1t
begins to attribute to these out
ward phenomena something of
it's own inner experience. 1t
begins to speak of the gods, Of
the lightning, the sea, the
ceassless winds. 1t begins to
think of the spirits behind the
| phenomena. When the rains
do not pour Jove is absent.
When the north wind bowls
Boreas is abroad. But only the
| physical phenomena can give
| to this childlike race any in
/ spiration.
CAT the next step it begins
to attribute to these spirits be-
hind the physical organisms Of
nature something of the newly
evolving spirit within itself.
The gods feel hate, love, jeal-
ousy, anger, fear. Gradually
arises the idea that this inner
something itself is akin to the
gods; but the physical main
tains its dominance and the
idea of the resurrection of the
material body arises; the recon
struction and reunion of the
inner something with it's outer
husk. Hence the efforts to pre-
serve the body intact, the en-
balming, the burial of weapons,
foods, favorite objects with the
corpse.
CONCEPTIONS cURl5UsLY MIXED.
Gin this strange twilight the
spiritual and material concep-
tions are curiously commingled.
The childhood race conceives
the idea of the spirit waiting in
some hades, some shadowy,
half-lifeless world, until the
restoration of the physical
husk. The dead are dead, but
by and by they shall come back
from their death. This idea is
the same in all races. 1t af-
fected the religions of all great
races. Greeks. Egyptians !,
Romans, all held to it firmly.
1t was the basis of the Hebraic
conception Of life.
Isaiah speaks of man as
though the body was the man.
Even in the most philosophical
of all Hebrew works Job, the
idea is apparent. At times the
higher sense breaks away from
material conception and he ex-
claims: 81 know that my Re
deemer livith!" but the whole
trend of his philosophy is that
of the resurrection of the fleshy
incumberance to the spirit.
"Jesus brought into the
world the new conception. For
the first time the world heard
that God was spirit and not a
spirit. You are not to look
outward for the reality but
within.
DEATH PORTAL TO BRIGHTER LIFE
/" Death is bat the portal to a
brighter life, a swing open of
the doors to a new sphere of
existence. 1t was not idly. it