STATE OF THE HEATHEN AFTER DEATH.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 131, 4 June 1900, Page 2

STATE OF THE HEATHEN AFTER DEATH.

"And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice;and there shall be one .fold, and one shepherd.'"—John x.,' 16. .

The above subject was on Sunday week brought by Mr Walsh before The Auokland Society of the New Church. Men seek to become like the Qod they worship. Religious intolerance is the reaction of the God idea, upon the worshipper. Wrong views of God lead to. false worship, and a false conception of man's reflation to man. He who in his thought yarrows the sweep of the Lord's love, becomes narrow in his own love and sympathy. During the whole of our Lord's life on this earth He was preaching, by word and deed, that grand gospel of love to the Lord and the neighbour. That we,. may form some idea of the enormity and horror which consign the hen then world to hell—simply because itdoes not believe in a name it never heard—turn to the follolwing statistics: There are 8,000,000 Jews, 120,000,000 Mohammedans, 120,000,000 Brahmins, 1,000,000 Parsees, 483,000,000 Buddhists, 189,000,000 unclassified heathen, and only 353,000,000 nominal Christians ,out of a total of 1,374,000,----000 of soula. So that supposing all who accept the Cb.ris.ti an religion to be saved, there axe 9SI>OOG,QQO. qJ souls

without God and awaiting only His sentence consigningl them to the devil and his angels. Surely this cannot be the teaching of the God who is love! Let us consider first that fhe Lord is the Creator and Father of all men. His end in creation was a heaven of angels from the human race. This world is the seminary of heaven. Here men are born and unfold for a better world. All religions embody and reveal the Father's love in forms best adapted to His children, Second: The Fatherhood of God implies the brotherhood of man. "All are but parts of one stupendous whole." The human race is a grand man, whose soul and life is the universal Father. Third: God provides a medimu of salvation for those outside of Christendom, and that medium is found in their religions. Buddhism, Brahman ism, Mohammedanism, Confucianism, nil tench that there is a God, and that He must be loved and obeyed ; each holds | lip a standard of moral right and wrong; each teaches precepts of civil and moral Jife; each embodies great truths, which have found their way into them from the ancient Word which was extant before Abraham's time; and by the truths of these reli gions and a life according to them, is connection with heaven and TTlrougli heaven with the Lord, Fourth: Of what use then is the true church? JJucJi every way. The human race is a grand man in the sight of the Lord, and every one who is in any r-rgree of good and truth has his place in this grand body of humanity. Thp true Christian church is the heart and-lungs of the human race, as the granTl man. The Word in the church is life from the Lord through heaven to all the rest, J'JS* ns the ljfe. of the members ami viscera of the whole body is from the heart and lungs. Fifth: Although heaven Is n state into which none csui enter who have nor realized the union of good and truth in their sou'is, this , world is not thp only scene of insirue* tion. Every man, he he f*hr*s*fiin or heathen, seals his destiny hero, weaves into his character elements which make him either nns»el or devil. P.nt those who havp not known thp. truths of Christianity have them presented to them in the world nf spirits where the judgment ial«>s place, "ami if they have been faithful to the light they ha<l fheir minds gladly open to them. They then become angels in our Lord's grent spiritual household. R is not whnt a. rnnn believes* but what, he is that determines his future.