Description
“IMMORTALITY means to the average person that man shall persist after the experience of physical death, retaining a full recollection of himself and the ability to recognize others. If his full capacities go with him beyond the grave, he must be able to think consciously; to reason, will affirm, declare, accept, reject, know and be known, communicate and be communicated with; he must be able to travel about, see and be seen, understand and be understood; he must be able to touch, taste, smell, hear, recognize and realize. In Christ, if he is really to continue as a self-conscious personality, he can do so only to the degree that he maintains a continuous stream of conscious self- knowingness. ”
“THIS means that he must carry with him a complete remembrance; for it is to remembrance alone that we must look for the link that binds one event to another, making life a constant stream of self-conscious expression. To suppose that man can forget and still remain himself is to suppose that he could cut off the entire past and at this moment be the same personality that he was a moment ago. Remembrance alone guarantees personality. Individuality might remain without remembrance, but not so with personality; for what we are; is the result of what we have been the result of what has gone before.”
TO most of us the idea of immortality means the continuity of the individual life, forever and ever expanding. We wish to feel, when the experience of physical death shall occur, that what we really are will continue to live beyond the grave. We wish to feel that we shall again meet those friends whose lives and influence have made our life happy while here on earth.
MOST of us have as many friends on one side the grave as on the other and we hope to see them again; we hope to talk to them to feel their presence to commune with their souls. With Tennyson, we like to feel:
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him; thou art Just.