The Sabbath

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17964, 8 March 1930, Page 6 (Supplement)

The Sabbath

REMEMBERING. i I Forgotten is He where the ranters curse; j Forgotten where the flippant, withj out shame, ! The angry, without thought, profane His name; j Forgotten where the reckless turn averse 1 j From wholesome counsel. In the crowded ways j Of worldlincss, who hears a voice of | praise |To Him arising? Yet some hearts may sing, Remembering 1 ; Hereafter, when our madness is outworn, j When waywardness has passed, and i folly palls / Upon our sated race; when wisdom calls !By clear, united voices—men shall mourn j The bitter, wasted past, when they j forgot j His love that waited, while they knew it not; ! Then, rapt beyond its grief, the world shall sing, • Remembering 1 —Grace Agnes Timmerman. !

i I AN INBORN HOPE. I |

j j PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. | Dr. Albert Peel, the editor of the ; Congregational Quarterly, contributes. 1 to the Spectator an article on “P£r- : sonal Immortality.” I “I have just returned from an i afternoon’s sick visitation,” he i writes. “Most of the people I have : seen are aged people, who are vividly conscious that their days on earth : are numbered. As I have gone from bouse to house I have been struck by the fact that every invalid has talked with absolute assurance of the : continuance of life, of the certainty of the recognition of loved ones gone ■ before, and of joyous reunions soon to take place. “One of them was finding solace in Whittier’s words:—-

'When on my day of life the night is falling, And, in the winds from unsunned spaces 'blown, I hear far voices out of darkness calling My feet to paths unknown; l Suffice it if—my good and ill unreckonecl, And) both forgiven through Thy abounding grace— I And myself by hands familiar beckoned Unto my fitting place.’ “Most of the others were simple souls without much in the way of learning: they would probably never use the term ‘personal immortality,’ but of the thing they have not the slightest shadow of a doubt. They are as sure as was' the widow of the famous Sir John Franklin, who was Inst in the search for the NorthWest, passage. Her words, inscribed mi his monument in St. Paul’s -Cathedral, read: ‘This monument was erected by Jane, his widow, who, after long waiting, and sending many in search of him, herself departed to find him in the realms of light, July, 1875.’ “Are they under a delusion, a delusion from which they will never themselves wake because they will never themselves wake from the sleep called death? Is there such a thing ns a continuance of the individual personality after the death or the body? . . . .

“I myself never feci the slightest Interest" in what will happen to me n fl.cr the death of the body. The faith I have in religion is quite content to leave all that on one sidej

there is little time enough on the earth to do the ’duty that lies nearest. 1 am not anxious about what the future life contains for myself or' for those I love. "I believe that any such values as my life stands for are sure to be preserved. But it may be in the wisdom of God that they will be best preserved by being Incorporated In some way into the Divine Being. I cannot understand the man who believes that a petty self, with all its futilities and idiosyncrasies, deserves survival; rather do I imagine that a man should desire everything that is petty and peculiar to be swept away, and his life perfected and filled to the Full by a larger power and purpose. . . . “A few weeks ago,, when I was thinking over this subject, I read) in the Observer a poem by Air Ronald Campbell Afacfle, which seemed to me to express much of what I feel about personal immortality. It Is called ‘Pantheos. St. Enogat’s Bay.’ It is too long to quote in full, but here are the first and third stanzas:—

‘The doubts and discords of my heart are dumb; I have become Part of the cosmic rhythm of the Lord; For all my being vibrates in accord With the blue pulses oF the tide that sways And swirls and ripples into rocky bays— With the white tremor of the surf that smiles, As breakers beat upon the Breton isles. The doubts and discords of my heart are dumb; I have become An ebb and flow, an elemental urge, Hoar of the mist, and heaving of the surge, Sight of the wind and murmur of the waves, Seethe of the foam, and music of the caves. Grown part and partner of the Oversoul ■ In every wavelet I partake the Whole.’ “The poem ends: —■ ‘I have become the Spirit of the Sea, And know the Life in it, the Life in me.’ “That suggests the kind of immortality which I desire—an immortality of which I can be conscious here and now." ■