How natural it is, when reminded of our loss, to exclaim, Shall we not meet them again? Is this parting to last forever? Is there a God? Has he not answered this agonizing inquiry? When we sit down upon the brink of those waters which have swallowed up our living treasures and weep and call upon the waves of eternity to give back our dear ones, when, from the shores of time, we look and gaze and listen, does no voice reach us? Yes! To the ear of faith there is a voice. It is the voice of our God. We listen. The words come ringing in our hearts, "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." Our grief is allayed. We believe and are comforted. We look forward to a happy meeting. A reunion for eternity hovers before us like a bright star, lights up our pathway, and leads us forward in a living hope.
Nowhere in the Bible is human sorrow clothed with cold indifference. The counsels of that book and its promises are so adapted to the sorrowing that those who have passed through the furnace of affliction know best their value. There is no such relief from sorrow found away from the faith of God and the Bible.
There is an hour when we ourselves must die? Shall we trifle with the will of God till then? Can we trifle with death when it comes? "The sting of death is sin." Death never fails to bring along with it a keen sense of guilt to the guilty unless they are cut off in a moment, and then who knows the anguish that may be experienced just beyond? What is there to soothe the sorrow of the dying sinner?—of that wicked soul who never obeyed his God nor did anything to make the world better for his existence? Let none of us live at a distance from our God. Let none of us approach death without the necessary preparation for mutual association with him. Let none of us bear the burden of a guilty conscience in that hour. May none of us be so cruel as to leave the hearts that love us in doubt respecting our condition in death. May we never tread its dark waters without the light of the glorious promises and facts of the religion of Jesus the Christ. Let us keep our souls pure in obeying the truth through the Spirit. Let us live with and obey God, do good and be happy.
INDEBTEDNESS TO REVELATION—No. II.
BY P. T. RUSSELL.
Thought, Thinkers, Things—realities with their qualities or attributes. These are all connected. If the first and second are present the others are not far away. We only think when we perceive, and only perceive realities. Nonentities are not perceivable, and therefore not thinkable. Thoughts may be, and are, transferable from one to another by words, or signs equivalent to words, yet we are only able to impart to another ideas already in our possession.
We have no thoughts of our own but those which are the result of our perceiving. We have no thought of color without the eye, nor of sound without the ear, etc. Now, if we have in our possession thoughts of persons or things beyond the reach of our powers of observation, i.e., beyond the reach of the five senses—seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling—then those thoughts can not be ours; we could not be the first to think them; they were too high for us; they were out of our reach. Who, then, could and did reach them and give them to us? This ought to be the question of questions with us. Thoughts of foreign countries have been given to us by the men who have seen those countries. But they could only give us ideas of what they had seen or others had told them. A man visiting England only could give us no thought of Russia, unless instructed by some one who has seen that land; then, and not till then, could he give us thoughts of Russia. I am now ready for the statement of this proposition, viz: The following trio of thoughts are beyond our reach. They are not our thoughts; we did not think them, but we have them; then, some being who could see higher and look farther than we must have given them to us. Those thoughts are the following: First, the existence of God; second, the use of words; third, the origin of religion. These I will examine in the order given above.