THE BUILDER DECEMBER 1915

AFTER DEATH SHALL WE LIVE AGAIN?

BY BRO. R. I. CLEGG, CLEVELAND, OHIO

SAYS Brother Fennell, in the July issue, "My greatest interest has
centered around the problem of demonstrating the future life. . ."
How can it be demonstrated? Not wholly by the monitorial evergreen.
That is obviously misnamed. Neither by the acacia. These are but
transitory symbols. Reminders rather are they than irrefragible and
conclusive evidences. Contributory and maybe presumptive testimony
it is true but mainly suggestive, not absolutely convincing to the
antagonistic among the sceptical, not altogether satisfying to the
friendly critic. For the evergreen shrivels at the approach of
heat, and disintegrates into elemental dust at the touch of a mere
ignited match. How illusory is it at a superficial glance if we so
measure it as a firm foundation for our faith !

How then shall we Freemasons answer for our reliance on the life
eternal? We may look to the Great Light. Is there anything further?
Humbly I offer a few crude comments in reply.

First, Faith: Nature tells us of symmetry and order, even as we are
taught as Fellowcrafts. Order is indicative of purpose. In that we
perceive design. Beyond the art of the Builder, we recognize and
reverence the Architect Sublime of the Universe.

Incomplete are our lives. Rewards and punishments are various and
mysterious and to our defective sight they are ill-assorted and
unequally applied.

Seeing here so much of the unfulfilled we must contritely,
prayerfully and expectantly hold with humility as little children
the hand of Him our Father when hence we go into the dark.

Second, the Hope Universal: How beautiful Robert Ingersoll voiced
with eloquence the unquenchable ardor of men, even of the agnostic,
for comfort in this problem. He the fighter most brilliant against
faith religious could not but doubt his own conclusions when
contemplating the mystery of the grave. Death, said he, may be but
the closing forever of a door or the unfolding of pinions for
flight, and dire was Ingersoll's dilemma when without the chart of
religion or the beacon light of its convictions.

While throughout the world men of all tongues in all the ages, wise
and simple alike, have deemed-this belief in immortality to be at
the very least a probability, and most men have admitted it to be
a certainty, we may well ask ourselves why so fundamental and
generally accepted conviction is indeed not to be classed with the
axioms of the geometers. Assuredly more than hopeful is the lesson
of this world-wide and world old acceptance.

Third, by Analogy: Force is eternal so far as investigation
reaches. The conservation of energy is a principle accepted both by
atheists and the faithful everywhere. Matter to the physicist
disappears not but has protean forms. Nature's changes and
phenomena are ebbing and flowing constantly as a restless sea.
Outward goes the tide, to be again driven back upon the shore.
Upward to heaven rises the evaporated waters from the ocean to fall
once more as rain upon the land, or as the shimmering pearly dew
upon the flowers of the earth; or perhaps the drops unitedly tumble
joyously adown the mountain side and the slender brook rushes
boisterously or flows quietly along gentle slopes or leaps o'er
Niagara's brink back to the bosom of the deep waters whence it
first emerged.

Into the earth's waiting soil-drops the seed. A tiny plant is given
birth. It grows and blossoms. Anon the seed reappears. Scattered by
the vagrant winds or the industrious hand of man the seed is once
more entrusted to the fruitful earth. Again and again it lives the
unceasing succession of cycles.

So goes everywhere the busy round of Nature. As of the body so is
reasonably the evolution of the soul. Can we not as a consequence,
fairly by analogy alone, believe that the greater plants and twigs
and trees of humanity, youths and maidens, men and women, may
anticipate that in due course there will come just such renewed
opportunities for the service of our God ?

And lastly, by our ripening knowledge: As children our facts are
few. They are unrelated. We see them not at all in precise and
accurate comparison with other truths that widening experience
alone unfolds to us. When older we note a coherence where formerly
was naught but scattered and broken links. The universe then
becomes the more vividly to us a true unity.

Is there an apparently irregular motion of a star ? Science
welcomes secrets but abhors mysteries. An astrophysicist in due
season dares probe with mental means into the darkness. He places
and appraises the source of commotion though he sees not neither
does he feel save with the eye and hand of faith founded in the
assurance that everywhere is operative law. Later when the mechanic
improves his practice in optics the astronomer sees further than
before into the heavens and announces the disturbing element as a
hither to undiscovered star. Thus also in chemistry did Mendelief
reason out his law of the periodicity of the elements. So likewise
did Helmholtz see the relation of tone and overtone.

Therefore this coherent relationship of Nature, this suggestion on
all hands that the present is but a promise, that the bud is only
the unopened flower, gives a deepening knowledge that an
intelligent and altogether justifiable belief is that of
immortality. Or surely we be less than the beasts and the herbs of
the field in the economy and the systematization and the intention
of the world.

From isolated facts the scientists unearth and grasp the general
law. Is a measure of oxygen of a specific atomic weight? On trial
he finds accordingly and says, Yes. He repeats the experiment.
Again he secures the same evidence. The particular fact becomes
with every repetition the emphasized proof of a universal law.
All truth is but these related uniformities. From them we look
further and trustingly into the future. Immortality is the fact
that scientifically satisfies.

Here be briefly and in part the restful rocks on which at least one
Mason builds his expectancy of meeting those he loved that have
gone before.

