Looking Back: An Autobiography

by Merrick Abner Richardson

I have spent years in the principal parts of the world studying the people and their modes of worship and I have found that all religions are one and beautiful in that they teach that at death the soul will be free. The righteous and wicked will be separated and our future destination will depend upon our personal motives while living in the body.

Whether our soul theory be a myth, mystery or truism, one thing is obvious, those living under the conviction that their apparent secret motives are in some way actually known, and will stand for or against them at death, will lead more pure lives, and make better parents, citizens and neighbors than those who imbibe materialism through faithless instructors who apparently hope there will be no reckoning day.

The immortal soul has been the staff of hope on which frail humanity has leaned for ages. The American Indian stood in the evening gloom, shading his brows with his feeble hand as he tried to look over the cold waves of death just to get a glimpse of the unexplored happy hunting ground. John, while on the isle of Patmos invented pearly gates and golden streets. He had caught the symbolic mode of teaching from Jesus in that ideas transformed into object lessons are more easily comprehended.

Jesus taught the soul theory from start to finish. "The kingdom of God cometh not by observation—the kingdom of God is within you." "Fear not them which kill the body but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in Hell." "It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." "The words I speak unto you are spirit and are life." Still he illustrated his ideas through object lessons.

Many who do not profess actually believe in the immortality of the soul. When unprofessing parents weep at the death of their sweet babe; they somehow believe that after life's dark storms are all passed, they will find that their pet has been in the care of loved ones who have gone before.

Any thoughtful person when observing their hand must discern two distinct forces in existence, spiritual and material or visible and invisible. And that the invisible is the force which knows and drives the material. Thus, as the exterior stimuli through the ear or other senses awaken the reason, so the invisible through the different functions of the brain emit their conclusion, based on world experience and scrutinized by the spirit, or a God-given power we call reason, which is often swayed by sly will power.

The aged are continually calling up minor incidents of forty years ago, while yesterday's events evade recall. Why is this?

It is not that the obscurity of vision, confusion of results and uncertainty of doubt which befogs life today darkened the path in the same way fifty years ago, but time has removed the obscurity and the original appears. Could we live another fifty years, might not the cloud which now befogs our path have vanished and we again remember the glance of recognition of yesterday, which now seems hard to recall.

No one contends but that our journey of life is traveled in utter darkness. No recall of the past, no discernment of the future. If then one unimportant act or thought of the long ago did record itself, may not all have done the same, and may it not be that when the veil of obscurity is drawn aside, all the minute details of life will blend the awakened past with the present, and we discover that our birth was not a beginning but rather a forgetting, and death the welcome morning call.