Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1908-02-28
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THE GREAT CHANGE.
By Henry F. Cope

by henry l.. cope
IF Il man die, shall he live again?
All the days of my appointed time will
1 wait till my change come. Job
II IA.
We often sigh for present immor-
tality life without end in this world,
without thinking how weary and empty
such a life would be, how barren eX-
istence would seem if it held no mys-
terry, if it were all spread out before
us and a thousand years hence known
as we'll as to-day.
Surprising we knew absolutely that
existence held nothing higher for us
and that from this life of our present
limitations there was no escape, how
dark would be our despair, how hope
less our lot The world would be our
prison and freedom from death our
CALLING bondage.
When we curse death, when we cry
out against the pain and parting, we
forget how that mysterious door beyond
which none of us has looked has yet
opened out to us another world. The
fact that each life has limits has set
in our hearts the illimitable life; our
mortality has endowed us with the
spirit of glad immortality.
This world would be as a room with
out doors or windows but for those
mysterious exits. Through them pass
our friends, not their forms or faces,
but the real men and women, that
which we have seen behind form and
They are not visibly with u.s. and yet
we know that somewhere they must be,
that without our walls there Is life
and love-
SO death that seems to limit our lives
has but seemed to enlarge them. 1t
has broken up with its sharp blows
the soil of our hearts and caused i'm
agination to SOW her seeds and nurture
her hopes until all the fair heritage
of our visions of paradise, our aspira-
tons after the larger and higher life
have blossomed within.
The pictures we have painted where
with to adOrn Our hearts left deSOlate
by the passing of loved ones, the
thoughts of their possible felicitudes,
have had real and practical effects. An
ideal life before US leads us to strain
after it's ideals now the possibility of
a spiritual existence emphasizes the inn
portance of the spiritual to-day.
One does not have to dream of a
heaven of sensuous bliss, one does not
have to postpone the realization Of
ideal condition to some future city in
order to catch the real values of the
thought of further, higher stage of
being The child may find pleasure in
harps and robes and crowns; our need
is the sense of the reality Of this extern
sion of life.
There are none living in any full
sense of life and thought who have not
pondered on this life that lies beyond
the walls and windows of our world !;
at times we ali have seemed to hear
voices that came from that beyond,
while in our hearts we cherish friend
ships and think of the friends as wait
ing somewhere.
How wonderfully the grave binds the
living together. How many a family
breach, how many a broken friendship
has been healed by some hand that,
just removed to the beyond. seemed to
reach out from it and bring severed
ones together again. How wonder
fully has death made us tender to the
living.
Ever that spirit world possess about
us peopled with dim, shadowy forms,
seen only by the spirit, yet wonderfully
shaping our everyday lives. Ever that
choir invisible sings to the souls of
men. The good and great Of long ago
or of our own hearthsides, being dead,
speak louder than could the lips of the
living.
Death has set these voices free, and
now they speak to us OF the great
change that shall set the divine with
in us free and shall shake off the i'm
prisoning dust. And SO men go on to
the grave. not stoically determined to
bear the blow of the gods. but highly
resolved to discover and live the larg-
err life beyond the change
These are not the dreams with which
we soothe and deIude ourselves when
confronted with the Darkness of
death; these are the convictions deep
craven in humanity universally. This
sense Of the larger life in which the
soul goes on to full fruition makes the
present seeding, budding, pruning it's
wintry blasts and summers heat all
worth while because they are not for
a day and death, but for the life that
is forever.
GRUMBLERS NEVER POPULAR.
By Rev. George Downing Sparks.