Article January 11, 1900 Issue

"If They Only Knew"

Dayton (O.) Herald

Looking at life from a mortal, material standpoint what a sad scene presents itself! The daily record of events presents the medley of life and death, day after day, in varied tales of crime, disaster, sorrow, suffering, as the panorama—the dream of the false sense of life—moves on. The seemingly helpless victims of every ill that flesh is heir to, bear the pangs of physical agony, whether it be pain, poverty, or mental woe, as a reality and burden from which there is no escape while living on earth. If they only knew, there is a way out of it all, and happy, indeed, are they who find it, the way of Life, the opposite of death.

If we think profoundly upon this subject we must see, from the standpoint of human reason, setting aside Revelation which teaches it most unequivocally, that the mental qualities, the character which is the reality of each individuality, is not dependent upon physical organization, and must survive it. Those who believe, or who profess to believe, that death ends all, are a very small minority. The hope of living on or of "living hereafter," is so universal as to be a very strong argument upon the side of the Scriptural teaching, that man is immortal.

The desire to live is born of God. Man clings to life tenaciously through all the degrees of suffering, and under the stress of adverse circumstances, shrinking instinctively from the thought of death. He feels his unity with Life, and especially in times of trouble turns for help to a Power beyond the visible. If it were not for this natural love of life, if it were really believed that death gives entrance to a heaven of health and happiness, this self-destroying error would have a much larger roll of human sacrifices as a legitimate result of the teaching that it is the will of God for man to suffer as long as he is in the body. Jesus overcame death as an enemy during his life-work, and in his own resurrection. He came to "destroy him that has the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." The destruction of death and hell is the final work of the Conqueror, before the new heaven and earth can be fully manifested here.

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