proclaim its constituent and objective characteristic are:

The abolition of death.

The gift of a new life.

Immortality.

First--The abolition of death.

Death is a black fact. It is the shadow the sun never penetrates,
the robber who steals the treasure more precious than gold, the
guest who never waits to be invited, the intruder who feels at home
whether in palace or in cot, has no respect of persons, and lays his
hand with equal familiarity on the king upon his throne, or the
tramp by the wayside, saying "come" to the sick, "tarry not" to the
well, is sure of the old, and revels like a reaper in the harvest of
the young. It breaks the plans and disorganizes the relations of
life; and then, like a coarse comedian or a heartless satirist,
compels those who survive to turn away from the memory of their
dead, reorganize their lives and live on as though those who once
lived with them and formed an intimate part of their daily
experience had never existed.

Unless God himself shall intervene, death is the certain end of the
longest life.

Side by side with the certainty of death are two things which give
it emphasis: the brevity of life and its uncertainty.

How brief it is! what are sixty or seventy years as measured by
hopes and fears, by splendor of genius, by forecasts that outreach
the ages, by thoughts that climb and climb with ease to the
infinite, by energy of mind, which, rising superior to the combined
hindrances of every day, is always peering beyond the last endeavor,
and stretching itself towards unbroken continuance, cries, "What
next?" Extract from the allotted time of three score years and ten,
the puling days of infancy, the immature years of youth, the hours
of indecision as to the route to take, the right profession to
follow; take the hours given to eating and drinking (that eating and
drinking which in spite of the glamor we throw about it is simply
repairing the mechanical waste and renewing the chemical energy that
will enable us to go on a little while and a little way farther);
take out the time spent in sleep--in practical nonentity--and the
remainder is a pitiful handful of years, so few, that to number them
seems like a mathematical mockery, like numerical trifling.

And the uncertainty of life! What man is he who can assure himself
of ten days? In that time he may die, be buried and be forgotten by
the world that scarcely heard the tolling of his funeral bell, and
had no time t