The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1910-03-28
IMMORTALITY IS A
MEASURE OF VALUE
William ThurSton Brown Says
to Look Forward
to It.

A sermon on Something Better
Than the Hope or Faith of Immortal-
ty'' vas delivered in Unitarian church
yesterday by the pastor. Rev. William
Thurston Brown. He said, in part:
THE question Of immortality is a re-
ligious question, or a moral and spiritual
question, only as 1t is concerned who'll
~ with moral and ethical values, with
the present. not the past or future, with
life. and not with space or time mere
ly. Space has nothing to do with life.
You do not live in proportion TO your
size. Neither has mere duration Of
time anything to do with immortality.
Would you be immortal if you could
live forever? Would not endless exist
ence be the cruellest punishment that
could be inflicted on some people
There are stones in the pavement OF
the street which we unthinkingly tread
upon which were here long before the
race of man. and viii be here when
the earth is as dead as the moon. They
NIL space and they endure through such
a period of time as the lifetime Of the
race cannot begin to measure. But
immortality is not an attribute of
stones. Immortality is a measure of
value, not OF time.
Would it not be the greatest human
service to cali men and women away
from all thought of religion as having
to do with past or future and fix their
thought on the truth that life and i'm
mortality have but one tenSe-the pres
ent Who can sound the depths of that
tragedy which has led men and women
TO postpone all the sacredest things of
life to a distant future, led them to
imagine some other world can possibly
be better or higher or holier than this,
that any future life can hold possibili-
ties greater, finer, dearer than this? 1t
is some place beyond this life where,
according to the teaching of the Chris
tian church, the fulfilments of the soul
are realized 1t is in a heaven beyond
death-not here-where grows the tree
of life whose leaves are for the healing
of the nations. 1t is in some Sweet
Bye and Bye" that the cup of happiness
shall be full for you and me. 1t is in
some other World-nOt this-that peace
and justice are to reign. 1t is only
when We have discarded this flesh and
blood and can fit about like shadows
that we shall think most freely, live
most fully, love most truly, and express
ourselves to the uttermost.
From nothing have we suffered so
cruelty. by nothing are we now so de-
superstition which has so long usurped
the name OF religion. and made human
beings blind to the truth and joy of
life and deaf to it's hottest calls, the SUI
perstition that immortality is a matter
of space and time, that God is not the
most immediate fact of our human life
there as nowhere else. We but de-
grade ourselves, darken our own vision,
profane the temple of our own nature,
by reverence for a God whose very
soul is not the dwelling place of truth.
If God means justice, then where
are We men and women so surely in
his presence, conscious of him, and
how else so well may we find the very
fulfilment of religion as when We make
justice the great reason for living
justice which includes all, that
reaches all. that gives every last and
lowest human being the cheering COM
forting sense of its protection?
we must not be content to live the
life of any past. or any life dictated by
the past. We are feeling the stir Of
deeper, larger, higher life. We are
hearing the call of holier evangels than
all the past has known. We are citi-
zens OF a new world-a world in pro-
cess Of creation, breaking the shell of
combining custom and creed and tradi-
ton, and opening out into that which
is to be. No occupation has ever been
pictured for a future paradise so worthy
OF us, so uplifting. so rewarding, as that
which we may now and here know as
the creators of a new and better civili-
ZatiOn."