The Penn's Grove record., 1916-02-04
into ETERNAL LIFE
Soul Moves to Appointed Place
When the Spirit Leaves the
Mortal Body.

of this question to you and to me is
what death is. It is not a Gloomy
thought; It is not a SAD one; it is
a great philosophical question that
becomes exceedingly interesting to
anyone who gets into the inner part
of its consideration. He meant that
we all die daily; not that it was Pc
culiar to him. but that it was a gen.
eral, universal truth.
What is death? It is a change.
The Bible defines it very frequently
as a change. Eve shall all be changed.
In a moment, in the twinkling Of an
eye, at the last trump, for the
trumpet shall sound, and the dead
shall be raised" We shall all be
changed, so that the word death"
whether in the original language or
the English, a a change. You
do not lose anything unless you be-
come dead to it. Every little loss is
a little death. The Bible, then, pre-
sents death as being a present loss;
something gone today which we value
and desire to retain.
1t is also defined as a transition.
If we go from one room to the other,
we die to the first room, and 1t is a
resurrection and a new life in the
other room. It is a transition, and
when the apostle Paul uses the word
death" he means all these things.
Death also means change of form,
but never change of essence. The
Bible never teaches that death is an
initiation.
Simply New Form Of Life.
Death, then. in a scriptural sense
is a very philosophical question. For
instance, If you had a large amount
of gold hidden in your cellar, and
bonds and stocks in your safe, and
you live with them in misery joy
and satisfaction, you count your gold
over every night, and you bury it
again beneath the soil, and the next
night you live with it again, or you
go to the safe and open it and take
out the stocks and bonds and count
them over, and o live with them.
Then the time comes when you con-
clude you will die to those things,
that you will give them up, that you
will take your gold from the cellar,
that you will invest it in a hospital
or some school or church, or some in
stitution for the good of humanity,
then you die to the gold in your eel
lar, and you live to the new form in
which that gold appears. You take
those stocks and bonds and o in
vest them in a home, and you furnish
it with the luxuries Of life, you live in
it with your family, and o sur
round it with all the joys of domestic
comfort, and you die to the bonds;
let them all go; you have lost them,
you are dead to them, but you are
alive to the new home and all the
blessings that come with it. You
in another. That is the Bible teach.
ing as to what death means.
Did it eve occur to you that Christ
died twice? Not only once did he die
for us, in the form that we read about
when he died and went home to heav-
en-. But he left those fields of
glory, left his association with the
angels and gave up his home in
heaven, he died to heaven when he
came down to live as a man upon this
earth. The greatest trial of his ex
istence must have been there.
Error to Dread Death.
Christ died twice. All sacrifice is
death, and what is going on every
day in the natural world, as we meet
1t everywhere, is but analogous to
what takes place in the spiritual
world, all dying, and any person who
makes a sacrifice today for the bet
torment of the future is dying today
that he may live doubly tomorrow.
l must point the Gospel moral
which it teaches us, and that is that
you need never dread death. There
is nothing to dread, unless your sins
are heavy on your heart, or unless
you have failed to do what you could
do, and that is, put your trust in
SAA4ot. IL YOU nave ldIlu Ill OuT1SL you
should have learned by now not to have
any fear of death, and if you have, re-
solve now that you will not have any
fear of death, that it is but the natural
thing anyhow. You are dying all the
time. Your body has died many times.
This entire body goes through a
change in less than eight years, so
that there is not one particle of the
body left that was there eight years
before. All is dead, gone! 1t has dis
appeared, as the whole body ultimate
ly will; and when death comes to you,
remember that nature, instinct, and
everything teach that death is but
transition; that it is not humiliation,
but the natural going from one natural
state to another natural state; that
o live in this body while in this
world, and it is your natural condition
to remain in this body so long as it is
of any use to you, but when you go