Los Angeles herald., 1907-04-01
EASTER LIFE IS
TOPIC OF SERMON
Pastor of Memorial Baptist Church
Finds It Term That Shines
Forth from All
Creation

Yesterday morning in the Memorial
Baptist church the pastor, Rev. c. C.
Pierce, preached sermon appropriate
to the day on the Easter life, taking
for his text the words, Now is Christ
risen from the dead, and become the
first fruits of them that slept" He said
in part
THE one great word which every
where shines forth from all creation is
the word Life" We see it in the blos-
soming flowers, in the endless forms
Of visible things, in the wheeling
worlds, in man, in everything about
us do we find one great fact, and ap-
parently one universal aspiration. A
stranger walking this world seeking
to find the greatest thing here and the
most universal thing would be COM
PEELED to say that it was life, in some
form or another.
"Where life begins or ends, what is
its source, what its origin or what it's
final goal and destiny, we do not know,
but the great fact of life is all about us.
To say that life comes from God and
that 1t goes back to God is only push
ing the mystery of it one degree fur
ther along and in nowise gaining a
more complete explanation.
Equally universal is the phenomena
of death. In our deep longings for
life and our struggle for and aspira-
tions for life, in which man shares ap-
parently with all created things, we
are in the midst of death, dissolution
and decay OF all things which manifest
any life or any creative energy in
whatever form. From the tiny flower
up through men and all animate cre-
alton and so on to the wheeling worlds
i 4 d. lit,
thing travels one single road and
marches on to the same destiny
death.
But man, so far as we can under
stand l1m, alone of all this varied
creation, cries out for something more.
He longs for the endless life; he clings
to Immortality. He struggles against
what seems to be the universal des-
tiny. Going down with all created
tomless vortex Of death, he cries out
still for life.
Cry Is Answered
"And the Being who created us an
swers that cry and responds to that
supplication. We are not left utterly
in the darkness of our own shattered
hopes. We reach out in the gloom and
In the sorrow which is occaSioned by
the going down of our fondest aspira-
tions and feel the touch of hand
which reassures us. The Bible, spring
ing as it did out of the deep longings
of the human heart and Voicing as 1T
does the age long hopes and aspira-
tions of the best and clearest visioned
of our race, is but a clearer statement
Of what man has longed for and OF
the reply of the Creator to that cry.
And everywhere we find in the Bible
fho a.
sis to Revelation there is one word used
over and over again and set forth un-
der all possible conditions, and this is
the word life God gave man life orig
inally, he unfolds the real possibilities
of life, he nourishes life, he sets before
us the true ideals of life, he leads us to
see the real possibilities. the glorles
and the true destiny of life, and he 1t
Is who tells us that there is a power
which makes for life and which enables
man to triumph over what is supposed
to be the enemy of life. The one word,
dearest of all to the heart of the Gre
ator OF life, is Life
"And never was the longing of the
human heart so answered; never was
the reply of the Infinite to humanity's s
hopes and aspirations so explicit so
satisfying or so complete as In Christ.
He solved the problem of human exist
SllNt dihA ilV NiAdiAPAiSN pNSA
He came to show us what we might do
and what we might be, He came to
bring us here and now that conscious
ness which would enable us to know
that life is the victorious thing. Life
Is ever lord of death. and love shall
never lose its own Our true part in
this life is to let the truth which
Christ came into the world to reveal
to so master our lives that we shall
not afnof,Iu 1OOlx for qOnna triupn mia N I
existence by and by, but should live
the triumphant. the victorious life this
minute. Christ's resurrection is not
simply a past event; 1t does not point
TO some great thing by and by to take
place in or for us. but II is an ever
living and an ever-present power In the
life of humanity. When we realize and
possess this the Easter hope changes
into the Easter life and we enter upon
the possession OF our birthright while
still amid the things of this earthly
life