The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-03-30

but then face to FACET Corinthians 1872.
Once more the springtide brings
with it Easter and the lesson of the
Resurrection. Once more the dead
earth blossoms into life and beauty.
symbolic of the life in the Great Here
after.
Although to many Easter means lit
tie beyond new froeks and gowns. or
the beginning of a new season, the fact
which underIies it is the most potent
of human existence. Immortality, the
hope of another life beyond the grave,
an existence from which sorrow is
banished and in which perfection is
attained, life eternal in the presence
of the Creator of the universe-that is
the greatest thing to which frail hu-
mainly may look forward.
1t is something which we may not
understand any more than we can un-
derstand the beginnings of time or the
limits of space and eternity, but faith
in a hereafter is as firmly planted in
the human breast as is the fact of ex-
istencc itself. Now, says the Apostle
Paul-one of the greatest philosophers
and thinkers of any age. by the way
Now, says Paul, we see through
Sass AAdIR4ys Oub l4AGAA-AAA lAlS AAGA c
after-we shall see face to face.
George D. Prentice once wrote a
beautiful paragraph on this subject of
immortality. Here it is:
MEN seldom think of the shadow
that falls across their own path, hid
ing forever from their eyes the traces
of the loved ones, whose living smiles
were the sunlight of their existence.
Death is the great antagonist of life,
~ i L. to-
the skeleton of all feasts. We do not
want to go through the dark valley, al
though its passage may lead to Para
disc; and, with Charles Lamb, we do
grave even with kings and princes for
our bedfellows. But the fiat of nature
is fnexorable. There is no appeal of
relief from the great law which dooms
us to dust. We flourish and we fade as
the leaves of the forest, and the flow
ers that bloom and wither in a day have
not a Trailer hold upon life than the
monarch that ever shook the
earth with his footsteps. Generations
OF men appear and vanish, and the
grass and the countless multitudes that
throng the world today will tomorrow
disappear as the footsteps on the
shore. In the beautiful drama of Ion
the instinct of Immortality so elo-
quently uttered by the death of the
devoted Greek finds a deep response in
every thoughtful soul. When about to
yield his young existence as sacrifice
to fate, his beloved Clemanthe asks if
they shall not meet again, to which he
replies: L have asked that dreadful
question of the hills that look eternal
of the streams that flow forever
Of the stars among whose fields of
azure my raised spirit hath walked in
glory. All were dumb But while I
gaze upon thy face I feel that there is
in the love that mantles
through its beauty that can not wholly
perish We shall meet again, Gle
manthe.'"
There are many mysteries about the
and the life beyond-in
fact it is all mystery; but without a
belief in 1t life would be largely a
blank. And SO Easter, commemorative
Of the resurrection of the Man of Gal
lee. Is the greatest of all festivals
greater than Christmas, for without
His resurrection the life and death of
the Nazarene would still have left an
1nsatisfied longing in the soul of hu-
nanity. Man would have had His
great teachings. but without the as
surance and proof that death and the
grave were vanquished and that there
IS future life, this existence would be
1reary in the extreme.
Much must be left to faith; but the
essence of the whole matter is summed
Up in this paragraph from an editorial
IN Easter in the current Harper's |
Weekly: ITO know One risen from |
he dead, TO feel the life once reaching |
,nly a handful of folk on a strip of |
and by the Mediterranean, now fill |
ng the world and leading men every |
where, is to know that as surely as the |
;pring follows winter, SO surely does
ife follow death; and how little 1t |
matters what the form of that life be, |
ince at least we know that nothing is |
ost.'