ut is this emparadised life to be some day thrown aside? G.J. Romanes,
whose Christian upbringing had instilled in him the distinctively
Christian appreciation of the value of his own life, when his scientific
opinions robbed him of the hope of immortality, wrote: "Although from
henceforth the precept 'to work while it is day' will doubtless but gain
an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words
that 'the night cometh when no man can work,' yet when at times I think,
as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed
glory of that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of
existence as I now find it, at such times I shall ever feel it
impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my instinct is
susceptible."

And Jesus increases the significance of people for each other. He
possessed and conveys the genius for appreciation. He came that life
might become more abundant, and every human relation deeper, tenderer,
richer. It is to love that death is intolerable. Professor Palmer of
Harvard, a few years ago, delivered a lecture upon _Intimations of
Immortality in the Sonnets of Shakespere_, in which he showed that, when
a man finds himself truly in love, mortality becomes unthinkable to him.
And for Christians love and friendship contain more than they do for
other men. Christ takes us more completely out of ourselves and wraps us
up in those to whom we feel ourselves bound. He makes life touch life at
more points, life draw from life more copious inspirations, life cling
to life with more affectionate tenacity. He roots and grounds us in
love, and that is to root us in the souls of other men; then to tear
them from us irrevocably--parents, children, husband, wife, lover,
beloved, friend,--is to leave us of all men most pitiable.

Love--the prisoned God in man--
Shows his face glorious, shakes his banner free,
Cries like a captain for eternity.

Again, Christ gives men an ideal for themselves which in their
threescore years and ten, more or less, they cannot hope to achieve: "Be
ye perfect as your Father." Jesus Himself, in whom we see the Father, is
for us that which we feel we must be, yet which we never are.
Immortality becomes a necessity to any man who seriously sets himself to
become like Jesus. Our mistakes and follies, the false starts we make,
the tasks we attempt for which we discover ourselves unfit, the waste of
time and energy we cannot repair,