THE FEAR OF DEATH.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20828, 11 April 1933, Page 15

THE FEAR OF DEATH.

TO THE EDITOE OF THE IRESS. Sir,—l wish to congratulate "Humbert" on the good humour with which he has received my former letter and on his frank confession of religious externality. Another of those "mysteries" which I delight in is why people write letters to the newspapers, and here I am doing it myself. Still, I cannot let "Humbert's" questions pass.

I wish "Humbert" had dropped the plural "churches," for a multitude undefined is confused Babel, and, furthermore, I hold no brief for "the churches." He probably means the Church. The Church, then, is, as he says, an historic body "subject to the laws of change and adaptation." It set off to be that. It has amply proved itself to be that. Its initial "regulations" were therefore broad enough

and unquestionable enough to allow for change and adaptation in all other respects. It did not lay down any fundamentals regarding death. It took death for granted, as I am afraid we all must. Individual interpretations and opinions, like the gloomy hymns "Humbert" cites, are not a part of the Creed. No one is obliged to assent to them. Personally I avoid them. And here I beg to mention that "Abide with Me" is usually asked for by people arranging a funeral—and that is not gloomy. Solemn and gloomy are not synonymous. As for the burial service "Humbert" will be relieved to know that I have read it—several times, running to hundreds of times, in fact. I suppose that a great deal depends on the way it is read (at a funeral, I mean), for long familiarity with its majestic utterances leaves me convinced that it is anything but "full of gloom and terror." Then, to many people, for reasons best known to themselves, death is a sad event. It is a fact bound up in their nature. Death is so private. One does not die in company, even in battle. It is lonely, and everyone that I know seems to shrink from stark loneliness. It is exalted; one holds the floor, so to speak, in the act of dying. And the bereaved like to feel that they share in the privacy of that exaltation. For this, if for no other reason, it would be in very bad taste to thrust unwelcome "cheerful" attentions upon a death-bed. The principal actor in the drama might resent it. After all, it is his funeral, is it not? I am not competent to judge of the relation that exists between sin and death. Neither is "Humbert," for that matter. The mythologies and atavisms that he despises belong to the wisdom of the ages, and I have too much respect for that wisdom and the immense past to throw it over for any glib modern theory, even one of my own manufacture. There is, as "Humbert" probably knows, something in that wisdom that relates to birth, as well as death, being the result of. the individual's own sin. There is also ground for feeling that the ancients regarded death as being a reward for virtue. In fact, the ancients cannot very well be cited as responsible for any one particular theory about sin and its relation to death. Anyway, has anyone ever yet decided what sin is? "Humbert" declares that "all churches assure us that unless we die according to their orthodox beliefs, death will be an awful event, making God a sectarian and arbitrary tyrant having predilections and taking sides in our pettifogging casuistic reasoning." I beg t% assure "Humbert" that if I thought that that were true I would tell "the churches" to go to that Hell which "they have given up the idea of." I think "Humbert" had better come to Little River for the "Three Hours' " service on Good Friday. It would do him a power of good. May I add a word in reply to Mr Trolove? I wish to assure him that frequently students of theology do in all sincerity go through the equivalent of "a course in psychic science, and become sufficiently familiar with spiritualistic practice to recoil from it in disgust."—Yours, etc., D. R. HAY. Little River, April 6, 1933. TO THE IDITOE 01" THE PEESS. Sir,—Most of us profess to be Christians; certainly the Churches, or most of them, are designated Christian. Your correspondent "J.E.D." says: "It is appointed unto man to die once," and after death the judgment. I prefer to follow the Master Christian's teaching. He says: "Verily, verily, I say unto you if any man keep My sayings he shall never see death." He overcame death, and said "He that believeth on- Me the works that I do shall ye do also, and greater works than these shall ye do." Again, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Paul says, "For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal put on immortality," but he does not say it is necessary to die to accomplish this change. A modern writer says, "Jesus said substantially, 'He that believeth in Me shall not see death.' That is, he who perceives the true idea of life loses his belief in death. Such a one abideth in life—life obtained not of the body incapable of supporting life, but of truth, unfolding its own immortal idea."—Yours, etc., A.H.W. April 6, 1933. TO THE EDITOB Or THE I'K.BSS. Sir, —Your correspondent "Vita" too easily disposes of the evidences of the reality of life after death which have been given to us during the last half century. Anyone who will trouble to make a study of the real literature of the subject will find that there is an amount of plain, reputable, scientific evidence regarding the after death life which is absolutely overwhelming. Much of it comes from men whose names are well known to the public, whose reputations altogether rule out any suggestion of carelessness in observation or inaccuracy in description. The following books may be recommended to the serious and enquiring student: The Great Problem and the Evidence for its Solution, by Dr. A. Lindsay Johnson; Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, by Alfred Russei .Wallace; the

wonderful works of Robert Dale Owen, such as The Debatable Land and Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World; Sir William Bwrett's On the Threshold of the Unseen, and the Rev. Charles Drayton Thomas's Some New Evidence lor Human Survival; Transcendental Physics, by Professor Zollner; Sir William Crookes's Researches in tbm Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism; Sir Oliver Lodge's books, Raymond and Raymond Revised; Colonel CUcott's People from the Other World; The Other Side of Death, by C. W. Leadbeater; Towards the Start and The Wisdom of the Gods, by Dennis Bradley. When a few of these books have been carefully studied, then an opinion on the subject of the value of scientific evidence of the survival after death might carry some weight —Yours, etc., April 7, 1933