“If a man die, shall he live again?” This immortal
query of Job, which has agitated the human heart from the very cradle
days of the race, is the question that down through the ages has filled
men with paralyzing fear and kept blind humanity groping on the edge of
doubt and dismay. It is the question that has been asked repeatedly by
you who have stood alone and sorrow-stricken before the tomb as you
have bid a tearful farewell to the lifeless remains of one near and
dear to you. It is the question that has perplexed every normal and
intelligent person; for, unless a man is afflicted with spiritual
stupidity or cursed with incurable indifference, his reflections, with
ever-recurring insistency, will lead him into that labyrinth of anxiety
and wonder which comes with every serious thought of death.
Of all the fears with which human existence is
cursed — the fear of poverty, of starvation, of disease, of insanity —
none is so withering as that abject terror which makes men cringe
before the thought of the inevitable end. It poisons human happiness
and intrudes itself as a spectral phantom into moments of peace and
quiet. In spite of the garlands of human eloquence that we may strew on
the grave of a departed beloved one, when we see the light of the soul
quenched and behold the lifeless form that is cold to the pleading of
our affection, unmoved by our hot tears, the age-old question raised by
Job demands an answer, “If a man die, shall he live again?”
Job’s question expresses, first of all, the
uncertainty of all human attempts to answer this question; for the best
that men can offer falls woefully short of giving a positive and
definite solution to this mystery. Modern science, in spite of its
remarkable progress in recent decades, is incapable of offering any
helpful information. In the words of a Princeton investigator, “Science
is able to say just one definite thing.... When a man dies, the soul is
not there. It cannot tell whether the soul has perished or whether it
has gone elsewhere.” It is true, of course, — and this needs to be
reemphasized in this skeptical, unbelieving, antireligious age, — that
most scientific men believe in the immortality of the soul. Thomas
Edison, for example, had observed that the sequoia trees of California
have lived for four thousand years (or more than 3,900 years longer
than the ordinary span of life), and he says that, if the life of the
sequoia thus extends through century after century, the immortality of
the soul need not startle or surprise us. And he concluded, “Today the
preponderance of probability very greatly favors belief in the
immortality of the intelligence, or soul, of man.” But, after all, the
best that scientific research can offer is merely a strong probability;
and all the scientific attempts to prove life after death, all the
intricate machines and devices that have been constructed for this
purpose, fail to carry any definite and assuring conviction.
Now, if the best human endeavors fall so hopelessly
short of the mark, it need hardly be stated that the popular, but
fraudulent efforts of modern Spiritists are thoroughly deceptive and
ruinous. It has been the boast of Spiritists down through the centuries
that they have penetrated deep into the mystery of the next life and
that it is incontrovertibly true that they have enjoyed communications
from the other side of the grave. But the dead never return. There has
never been a bonafide example of such messages from departed spirits.
All that Spiritism has done with its fraud and its failures has been to
increase doubt and unbelief, to stir up strife, and to promote
soul-destroying superstition. God alone knows how many followers of
this fraud have been sent to hell on the suicide road. Spiritism stands
convicted on its own pernicious record. And it is one of the
unexplainable mysteries of our day that rational and intelligent
people, who should know of the exposures of the unscrupulous fraud
behind these Spiritist seances, can support this destructive
superstition to such an extent that there are, upon reliable estimate,
no less than 100,000 mediums and clairvoyants and other members of this
unsavory guild in our own so-called Christian nation. My appeal
tonight, especially to you fathers and mothers who have the sacred
responsibility of watching over the welfare of your homes, is to throw
out all the magazines and printed matter that cater to this destructive
delusion, as harmless and innocent as they may seem at first glance; to
oppose all visits to fortune-tellers and Spiritist seances, even though
these visits be regarded only as amusing pranks; and to join with other
right-minded citizens in driving out of your communities these people
of whom the Scriptures say, “All that do these things are an
abomination unto the Lord.”
It follows similarly that the weird revelations of
which we read and hear so much in our day of religious mystics can
offer nothing better. The number of those who claim to have enjoyed
special illumination and to have unsealed the secrets of the hereafter
is truly legion. But St. Paul says, “If any man preach any other gospel
unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” And those
who rise up with their special and anti-Scriptural revelations are
merely offering the play of childish and irresponsible fancy, or they
are malicious charlatans, who trifle with sacred emotions and trade on
religious credulity and ignorance. Yet in the perversity of human
nature there has never been a cult too impossible to enlist the support
of a large number of deluded followers. Up in Canada a fanatic who
called himself the Czar of Heaven claimed that he had visited God three
times and in heaven had received definite instruction to wear a crown
of oranges. The police reaction to this citrous mythology resulted in
his arrest as a disturber of the peace; and if similarly drastic
procedures were followed in the case of other cult originators who
claim to have revealed the secrets of the next world, perhaps
substituting psychopathic investigations for the police cells, there
would be much less misfortune here and much less disappointment
hereafter.
But with scientific research and mediumistic humbug
unable to solve this perplexity, modern, materialistic unbelief tries
to answer this question with a stolid resignation to crushing
annihilation. Those who deny the existence of a living God tell us that
death ends all, that, when a man dies, the only thing that is left is
the disintegration and decay of his lifeless remains. So we read of
brazen scoffers who request that their ashes be scattered to the four
winds or who have carved into their tombstones the statement that their
graves are sealed forever, as though defying God to resurrect their
body. Yet with all this there is the torment of an uncertain doubt,
which has turned cool and collected scoffers and infidels on their
deathbed into hysterical madmen. No! The annihilation theory, the
belief that death ends all, is in many ways the most piteous of all
human attempts to solve the mystery of death; for it tries to stifle a
voice that cannot be stilled, to silence a conscience that cannot be
silenced in its insistence upon a retribution and reckoning beyond
life’s end. And thus, with all this delusion and uncertainty, with
scientific research hopelessly baffled, the great mystery of life after
death is answered by the masses with a hopeless questionmark or with a
fatalistic indifference, which leads them to eat, drink, and be merry
because tomorrow they may sleep the mysterious sleep called death.
Their answer to Job’s age-old question is a cold, blighting “We do not
know.”
But Job addresses this question to God, the one
Source of truth and light from which positive certainty and heavenly
comfort can come. And we who likewise crave to know what lies beyond
the grave turn to the same Source that today can solve every perplexing
problem of every human heart — God’s revelation in our Bible. Here,
first of all, we learn to know the cause of death. Man was not created
for destruction and decay. As he proceeded from the creative
master-hand of God, the climax of His divine workmanship, there was no
seed of death and corruption in his body. Pause for a moment to reflect
upon the radiant glory and happiness of that existence — no pain or
sorrow, no sickness or grief, no death and destruction, and for that
reason none of the heartrending sobs, none of that desolate anguish
that lies hidden in the strange word death. But that Paradise was
shattered by sin and by the willful uprising of man against God. By sin
came death; and from that time on man that is born of woman pays for
sin with death; for “the wages of sin is death.” Now, if Paradise Lost
is to become Paradise Regained; if death, the punishment of sin, is to
be removed, then sin and its tragic consequences must be eliminated.
And where — oh, searching question of the ages! — is this sin-removing,
death- destroying power?
Where else, I ask you, as we see the Cross of Christ towering over the
wrecks of time, everlastingly triumphant as all human efforts to
counteract sin fall in hopeless confusion, where else is there
assurance for the forgiveness of your sins than in the holy, precious
blood of Jesus Christ, that cleanseth us, every one of us, from all our
sins, as black and damnable and brutal as they may be? So, wondrous
truth of truths, with Christ, the Lamb of God, taking away our sins,
bearing in His own holy body the iniquity of every one of us, we look
beyond the hostile circles of blighted, unbelieving minds, our faith
overleaps human doubt and distrust, and from the sacred lips of Him who
never uttered one unfulfilled hope or promise we hear this
heaven-hallowed pledge, “If any man keep My saying, he shall never see
death.” Note the sweeping inclusiveness, the pure grace, the blessed
promise of this golden truth. “If any man” (and let me stress as
forcefully as I can the wonderful fact that this embraces every one
within the range of this invitation tonight, including you who enjoy
the admiration and respect of your community, and you who are receiving
this message behind prison bars or in the corrective institutions of
our country; you who live on in serene and unruffled self-satisfaction,
and you who write me that you are troubled with dark and deep sins),
“if any man,” Jesus assures us, “keep My saying,” — and that means
accepts and believes and follows the divine instructions and the
comforting promises of His Savior; if any man humbly and contritely
comes to that loving, merciful, forgiving, uplifting, restoring,
renewing Christ, — he has this sacred, infallible promise, “He shall
never see death.”
But I hear voices raised in protest, asking: “How
can Christ promise men that they shall never see death when every one
dies?” It is true, man completes the span of his temporal existence and
dies; but if he has Christ, he does not see everlasting death. It is
like emerging from the dark and gloomy catacombs into the radiant
splendor of a new day; his temporal death is not a sad ending, but a
joy-filled beginning. To him who keeps the saying of Christ death is
but a door to a more abundant and more glorious life; death is but the
key which unlocks the perfect fullness of heavenly bliss. The
Scriptures well represent this sublime transformation with the picture
of a seed sown into the ground, which decays, but later blossoms forth
in strength and power. So the body that is consigned to the grave
succumbs to the ravages of decay and decomposition, but it bursts forth
on that glorious day of the resurrection of all flesh in the glory and
beauty of a resurrected body with new power, with new beauty, and joy
everlasting.
Again I hear other voices that ask in anxious doubt,
“Can Jesus keep His promise?” Let me answer this question by asking
other questions: Who was it that stopped that sorrowful procession of
mourners outside a city gate in far-off Galilee to restore a dead son
to his bereaved and widowed mother? Who was it that called into the
grave at Bethany to summon the lifeless corpse of His friend back to a
revitalized existence? Who was it that bent His divine form over a
Judean maiden slumbering in death to restore her to life with His
divine “Maiden, arise”? But above all, who was it that by His own
divine and victorious resurrection from the dead, bursting forth from
His rock-sealed grave, appeared to hundreds of witnesses during the
forty days of His resurrected life on earth? Who is this wonder figure
of history before whom the terror of death vanished as a cloud, — who,
I ask, if not the very Incarnation of God, the everlasting Son of the
Father?
Remember, that gift of endless, deathless
immortality is the sacred promise that comes to us again and again in
God’s errorless Word; for if there is one truth of strength and belief
that stands out with particular emphasis on the pages of the New
Testament, it is this holy pledge of Jesus, that there is no death for
those who believe in Him. Listen tonight as He tells you, “I am the
Resurrection and the Life”; as He assures you, “Because I live, ye
shall live also;” as He promises you, “He that believeth on Me bath
everlasting life”; as He comforts you, “In My Father’s house are many
mansions.” Review the dozens of repeated promises of a life that lives
beyond the grave, of the hope that rises triumphant over the dust of
death, and you will know why the saints of God of all lands and ages
have been able to meet grim-visaged Death with the calm and quiet
assurance of a ransomed soul. You will be able to understand why the
simplest Christian, trusting in these sayings of his Lord, can view the
hereafter with a ring of indomitable triumph, “O death, where is thy
sting? O grave, where is thy victory? … Thanks be to God, which giveth
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” — while the best that
infidels and skeptics like Ingersoll can do is to stand over a form
prostrated in death and to mumble the hopeless, “It is better to have
loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
But the soul that has been ransomed through Christ
is not lost. Mark
well, this sacred promise is sealed to you with a double affirmation,
“verily, verily.” You may doubt and wonder when men pledge themselves
in promises or relieve themselves of predictions; you are entitled to
place a mental question mark after the best theories that men may
advance to explain life after death; but here, with the repeated
assurance of Jesus, is a verity truer than earth’s truest truth; a
pledge of heaven’s highest hope, which answers the searching inquiry of
your heart by pointing you to the glorious resurrection. There you
shall see your Savior face to face, in that indescribably happy reunion
with those of your dear ones who have gone before you in faith and who
together with you shall see “what eye bath not seen” and hear “what ear
bath not heard,” — there in that resurrection unto glory. Amen.