Nor Is the Extinction of Life Logical…

There are some wonderfully satisfying assurances as to those who have left this life. Often we cite scripture as to the reality of resurrection, the certainty of eternal life but would turn now to Cicero on the certainty of the future before us: “Death is not a subject for mourning when it is followed by immortality,” he said. “. . .Die we certainly must. . . without being certain whether it may not be this very day. As death, therefore, is hanging over our head every hour, how can a man ever be unshaken in soul if he fears it?. . . I believe. . . that your father’s. . . my dearest friends are still alive,” he continued. “I hold . . .[that] the soul [with] its many accomplishments, its vast range of knowledge, its numerous discoveries that a nature embracing such varied gifts cannot itself be mortal . . . . It is again a strong proof of men knowing most things before birth, that when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that they are not then taking them in for the first time, but remembering and recalling them . . . . Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least? Don’t you think that the soul which has the clearer and longer sight sees that it is starting for better things . . . . Nor is it only those whom I knew that I long to see; it is those also of whom I have been told and have read . . . . I shall not go to join only those whom I have before mentioned, but also my son . . . . I was thought to bear that loss heroically, not that I really bore it without distress, but I found my own consolation in the thought that the parting and separation between us was not for long.” With inspiration, with revelation, and with an inner certainty, men have so expressed themselves over the ages. And God has not deceived or misled us in our love of life and loved ones. This is not the end of personal continuance, nor is the extinction of life logical. And so we come again, from many sources, to this certainty of assurance: that those who have left us yet live, and where they are, there we may be also.