"OUR LIFE AFTER DEATH."

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1455, 6 November 1911, Page 4

"OUR LIFE AFTER DEATH."

SERMON BY REV. H. Q.

ROSHER.

Tho Yicar, Rev. H. G. Kosher, conpluded the present series cf service for men only at All Saints' Olinrcb yesterday afternoon. There was a large congregation. The subject of Mr Roshor's address was "Our Life After Death." The speaker said that, there were momeuts in everyone's life, when we thought of our personal future after death. Such thoughts came in seasons of sorrow and sickness and to those who believed ia Jesus Christ nothing was more certain tlisn death would be the end of life to none of us. v Death's terror, it it had any, was not so much due to what it oau destroy as what it cannot. "We think of death as if it changes unr character,"said Mr Rosher, bot it does not. It is merely the separaticn of the soul from the body and not of the soul from the spirit; the soul and the spirit survive death: and when separated from tli? body pass, into an intermediate state bliaped aud stamped with the impress which the life on earth has fast?nefl upon it, Then , perhaps, we shall see ourselves as W8 really are, in the tremendous light of God, After the day of judgment comes the perfect life in Heaven, and also the punishment of Hell. Mr Roslier said there ha 3 be?n a. great deal of unwarrantable teaching about Hell which had done ninch barm because' it was inconsistent with Diviiiejnstioe. "It is a monstron orime," continued Mr Roslier, ''to teach that anyone created by God cannot, esoape Hell, or that any can be lost, Bimply beoaus? they did ni know the truth of the Gospel. What God will not do is to force men against their own oonsoience. He will not .overpower and annihilate that freedom which makes us men. So if Hell contains one lost soul it is not God's doins. Men are making here their own Hell by shutting out God. Hell is not so muoh a place, bnt a state-a condition of rebellion against God. .Eternal damnation means leaviug the siuner to himself. ■ Fear has little or m power/to make men Christians. Men will attain eternal life not by being frightened into it, but by being attracted by it. As to the middle state of waiting between death and judgment wa know very little. We cannot bnt think in the waiting state men are cleansed and enlightened, and this can hardly be'done withont pain. Wa do know, concluded Mr Kosher,, that onr daily acts form habitsjand habits become character, and character tends to become fixed for good or evil. The final judgment /is to be the restoration of all things to the place they have fitted themselves.'