bed and says, "I will meet
them again"--not one word. From the top of Sinai came no hope of
another world. And when we get to the new testament, what do we find
there? Have thy heart counted worthy to obtain that world and the
resurrection of the dead. As though some would be counted unworthy to
obtain the resurrection of the dead. And, in another place: "Seek for
honor, glory, immortality." If you have got it, why seek for it? And
in another place: "God, who alone hath immortality;" and yet they
tell us that we get our ideas of immortality from the bible. I deny
it. If Christ was in fact God, why didn't He plainly say there was
another life? Why didn't He tell us something about it? Why didn't He
turn the tear-stained hope of immortality into the glad knowledge of
another life? Why did He go dumbly to his death, and leave the world
in darkness and in doubt? Why? Because He was a man and didn't know.
I would not destroy the smallest star of human hope, but I deny that we
got our idea of immortality from the bible. It existed long before
Moses existed. We find it symbolized through all Egypt, through all
India. Wherever man has lived, his religion has made another world in
which to meet the lost. It is not born of the bible. The idea of
immortality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human
heart, beating with its countless waves against the rocks and sands of
fate and time. It was not born of the bible. It was born of the human
heart, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and
clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
We do not know. We do not prophesy a life of pain. We leave the dead
with nature, the mother of us all, under a seven-hued bow of hope.
Under the seven-hued arch let the dead sleep. "Ah, but you take the
consolation of religion." What consolation has religion for the widow
of the unbeliever, the widow of a good, brave, kind man who lies dead?
What can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the bursting heart of
that woman? What can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the aching
hearts of the little orphans as they kneel by the grave of that father,
if that father didn't happen to be an orthodox Christian? What
consolation have they? I find that when a Christian loses a friend the
tears spring from his eyes as quickly as from the eyes of others.
Their tears are as bitter as ours. Why? The echo of the promises
spoken eigh