Part 2

Again I say, let us be content with this hope which has been the only stay of countless thousands in every age since Christ trod the shores of Galilee, and spake to the listening thousands by the sea. Let us be content with the plain living words of Him who is Truth itself, who was before the world began, who spake and there was light, who breathed into the lifeless dust and it lived; Himself, the King and the Prince of all Life, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last; who will still remain unchanged and unchangeable when this world of sin and shame has become the kingdom of His Christ; when human philosophy has died out, and human science failed; but the greater, and purer, and nobler wisdom abides—greater, because God, the author of it, is mightier than man; purer because it wins men from the base things that perish, and nobler because Heaven is higher than earth. Let us hold fast to this belief, firmly, through life; that it fail us not on the bed of death, as we draw near to the twilight of eternal day, and to the fulness of knowledge which is Life.

Well is it for us that neither the perverseness, nor pride, nor wisdom, nor ignorance, nor intolerable vanity of man can snatch from us the birthright of immortality. And they who basely attempt to unsay what God has said, and to rob us of hope beyond the grave, add but one more proof, not of man’s having risen from the foul beasts of the earth, but having fallen from his first high estate. Their very ignorance, doubt, and defiance of God are but tokens of their own corruption, confusion, and decay. Meanwhile the earth abides in its appointed course; heaven abides, life and death remain; truth is immortal. Wise men, ripe for the grave, mighty in worldly knowledge, babble of mysteries beyond their utmost ken. So let it be. God is not unmindful of His own.

“Man’s little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of Thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they.”

For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of His own eternity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

LAUS DEO.

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J. OGDEN AND CO., PRINTERS, 172, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C.