Omaha daily bee., 1906-04-08
IDEA OF AN EASTER SERMON
Immortality the Only True Guiding Star of
Hope for Mankind.
PROOF is WANTED BY THE HUNGRY SOUL
Does Not Rest Alone on the Testimony
of the Weeping Marys and the
Eleven Disciples who stood
at Vacant Tomb.
The grave cannot praise Thee;
Death cannot celebrate Thee.

Aroused from profound meditation by the
query Of a friend, Gladstone responded: 81
was thinking of the first Ave minutes after
death and what II means to be good friends
with God" Not infrequent are the times,
nor brief, when every man who thinks and
every woman who loves turn toward the
future with an agony OF desire. "Thlther
all footsteps tend thence none depart
From that bourne no traveller returns No
wave OF that mysterious sea has ever been
touched by the shadow of a returning sail"
Whence he came and whittier no journeys,
man does not know. Life is shoal of
time, rounded by a sea whose tides for
ever ebb Man is beset by a multitude of
foes. but worst OF all he must bear his
burdens, endure his sorrows and make his
fight for existence all the while knowing
that he is under the sentence OF death. an
memorable verdict pronounced by secret
council In the mysterious chambers OF the
sky
Death Is tho august mystery, pondered
by every age and solved by none. Before
II the daring and intrepid feet of science
pause and mark time with meaningless
shuttle: Philosophy lays aside its wisdom
and gazes with the eyes of ignorance, and
from IL Religion fees for comfort into the
arms of Faith. Death robs and makes
no restitution. 1t strikes the music OF
the lips of love with everlasting silence
and chills the caressing hand, until neither
marble is so rigid nor ice cold. Born
at zero, governed by forces generated in
an unauthorized ancestry, the unwilling
heir TO appetites, passions and desires tina.
seorch and wound, denied the instinct OF
the bird and beast and flower, man is
forced by an invisible power to begin his
Ton nj he
toward the abyss called death.
what Man Has Done.
The wonder is, that man aspires and
achieves. The wonder is. that he should
strive and endeavor within the shadow Of
this universal tragedy. Yet he continues
Amid the forces that threaten and visit de-
struction he has founded empires and
heaped guilt as high heaven; he has ex-
plored the earth. the sea. the sky: he has
turned deserts into gardens and marked the
trackess waste OF oceans with the definite
paths OF commerce.; he has slit his veins
above the roots Of freedom and plucked the
cardinal blossoms OF liberty bordering the
crimson highway Of war. Amid the crum-
bling ruins OF Hfe's hopes and ambitions,
in the face OF the sealed silence Of his un-
replying dead conquered yet victorious, ter
riied yet intrepid, baified yet unbeaten, in
consistent yet Incompatible, man faces the
problems OF life with a song in his heart
and laugh on his lips imperiously chal-
lenges death and boldly dehes its catas-
troDhe
Man loves therefore he hopes. Deep
seated In his nature is the only instinct that
justihes the existence OF a moral universe.
II is the instinct OF immortality. Anniver-
saries are monuments as we'll as mile
stones. and 10 this instinct for immortality
man has erected the monument called Eas-