9. People ask: "What will be after death?" The answer must be this: if you truly say in your heart, and not merely with your tongue, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," that is in this temporal life as well as in life beyond time, and know that His will is love, you need give no thought to what will be after death.
10. The dying Christ cried out; "Falher, into Thy
hands I commend my spirit." If He utters these words not with his tongue merely, but with his whole heart, what can man need more? If my spirit returns to Him from whom it has proceeded, nothing can happen to my spirit but that which is best.
III.
Death—A Release
1. Death is the destruction of the vessel in which our spirit was contained. We must not confuse the vessel with that which is put into it.
2. When we are bom, our souls are placed into the cofiin of our body. This coffin—our body—is gradually destroyed, and our soul is more and more freed. But when the body dies, in accordance with the will of Him who joined body and soul, the soul attain its complete release. Heraclitus.
3. Even as the tallow of the candle melts from the fire, so the life of the body is destroyed through the life of the soul. The body bums in the fire of the spirit and is entirely consumed when death comes. Death destroys the body even as the builders take down the scaffolding when the structure is completed.
The stmcture is the life of the spirit, the scaffolding is the body. And he who has reared up the stmcture of his spiritual life rejoices, when dying, because the scaffolding of his bodily life is removed.
4. We think that life ends with death because we account as life only the period from birth until death. Thus to think of life is to think of a stream that the stream is not the water therein but consists of the shores.
5. Everything in the world grows, bloQira& ^яА. xfc^
turns to its root. To return to the root is rest in accordance with nature. That which is in accordance with nature is eternal; therefore the dissolution of the body hides no perils. Lao-Tse.
6. When in the last dying moments the spiritual principle leaves the body we know for a certainty the body is being abandoned by that which has animated it and ceasing to be a thing separate from the material world combined with it. But whether the spiritual principle passes into a new form of life, with new limitations, or unites with that timeless and spaceless principle which gave it life, we do not know, we can not know.
7. He who has striven all his life to subjugate his passions, being hindered therein by his body, can not but rejoice to be released from it. And death is but a release. The process of self-perfecting of which we have spoken so much consists in the striving to dissociate as far as possible the soul from the body, and to teach it to collect itself and to concentrate within itself and independently of the body; and death gives this very release. Is it not strange that he who has been preparing all through his life to live as free as possible from the dominion of the body should be discontented at the very moment when this deliverance is about to be accomplished? Therefore, as much as I regret to leave y0u and to cause you grief, I can not but welcome death as the realization of all that I have striven for all my life.
Socrates* Farewell Address to His Disciples
8. Only he does not believe in immortality who has never truly thought of life.
If man be only a corporal being then death is the end of something so insignificant that it is not worth while to
r^ret it. But if man be a spiritual creature, and the soul live in the body only ifor a season, then death is merely a change.
9. We fear death only because we mistake for our true self the mere instrument with which we are wont to labor—our body. But if we only accustom ourselves to regard that as our self which directs the instrument, namely our spirit, then there can be no fear? He who regards his body as an instrument given him to work with, experiences at the moment of death only the consciousness of awkwardness which the workingman experiences when his accustomed tool is taken from him while the new one has not yet been given him.
10. Man observes how plants and animals spring into life, grow, strengthen and multiply, then weaken, deteriorate, grow old and die.
He observes the same process in other people, and he knows that the same will happen in his own body; he knows that it will grow old, deteriorate and die even as all things that are bom and live in this world.
But besides these things which the man observes in himself and other creatures, he also knows something within himself that does not deteriorate and grow old, but grows stronger and better the longer it*lives; every man is conscious of his own soul within him which can not fare as does his body. Therefore death is a terror only to him who lives with the body and not with the soul.
11. A wise man who affirmed the immortality of the soul was asked: "But how about the end of the world?" He replied: "In order that my soul may live, no world is required.*'
12. The soul does not dwell in the body as though tt were at home, but as a wanderer in a strange refuge.
Hindu wisdom.
13. The life of man may be pictured thus: progress along a corridor or a cylinder, first free and easy, then due to self-expansion more and more crowded and difficult; as he moves onward he sees in the distance, but gradually coming nearer, the brightness of the free space beyond, and he observes those who precede him disappearing into the beyond.
How then feeling all the strain and pressure and impediment of his progress should he not long to reach the open space ahead of him? And how then should he, instead of desiring it, fear to approach this freedom ?
14. The more spiritual our life becomes, the more we believe in immortality. As our nature departs from the uncouthness of the animal, our very doubts are gradually destroyed.
The veil is lifted from the future, the darkness is dissipated, and we feel our immorality right here.
Martweau.
15. He who has a false view of life has also a false view of death.
16. He who knows others is well-informed, he who knows himself is enlightened.
He who overcomes others is strong, he who overcomes himself is powerful. But he who dying knows that he is not destroyed is eternal. Lao-Tse.
IV.
Birth and Death are the Boundaries Beyond Which Our
Life is Unknown to Us
1. Birth and death are the boundaries in two directions. Beyond either there is an equal mystery.
2. Death is the same as birth. With his birth the infant enters into a new world, begins an entirely diflFerent life from the one in his mother's womb. If the infant could tell us what he had experienced while departing from his former existence, he would relate an experience similar to that of the man who is passing out of life.
3. I can not rid myself of the idea that I had died before I was bom, and that in death I shall again return into the same state. To die and to come back to life with the memory of former existence we call a swoon; to awaken with new organs which must be developed anew we call birth. Lichtenberg,
4. We can look upon life as upon a dream, and upon death as upon an awakening.
5. When people die—^where do they go? Probably there whence people come when they are bom. People come from God, the Father of our life; all life has ever been, is now, and ever will be from Him. And all men retum to Him likewise. So that in death man merely returns to Him from whom he issued. The man leaves his home, labors, rests, eats and amuses himself, labors again, and when he feels tired returns home.
Even so with human life: man proceeds from God, labors, suffers, is comforted, rejoices and rests, and after all his vicissitudes, returns home whence he came.
6. Did we not experience one resurrection from a state wherein we had known less of the present than va tb«.