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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 03. Death Always a Tragedy
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Death Always a Tragedy
And death is always a tragedy to somebody. Life is tragic. Death seems but the dark double-knotting on the end of the tragic thread of life. Never a day passes without death breaking some heart. Never a corner safe from the dripping rain of death's tears sometime.
Homes are broken up. The hearthstone is left to its white ashes. The dear loved family circle is scattered beyond reunion here. Habits of a life-time are snapped in their toughest threads. Plans and ambitions lie scattered to the mocking winds. And memory trails its minor chords along every street and hallway of the bruised heart and rudely disturbed life.
The world's worst war has added a terrific emphasis to all this. It was bad enough before. It is running riot now, seemingly an unchecked, unrestrained, ghoulish riot, despite statesmen and law-makers, armistices and treaties, and all the rest.
But there is something yet more tragic than these things. There is the terrific uncertainty in most minds and hearts growing out of these things. Uncertainty, where the heart's involved, where love's on tenter-hooks, that comes to be the worst pain that can come.
The questions come trooping in, insistently, incorrigibly, by day and by night, demanding asking space, and giving no breathing room in-between. Is he still alive? Is there a spirit world? Is there really something beyond this life? Where has he gone? How are things with him now?
All over the world, Orient and Occident, below the equator and above it, in savage krall and cultured home, among so-called heathen peoples and in the shining of the flood light of truth, the cry breaks out of human hearts, where has he gone? Sorrow makes all the race akin. Differences, hatreds, prejudices, are submerged in the hour of a common sorrow.
Yet there's clear light. There's an answer to these questions. There is certainty in the place of uncertainty. There's positive dependable information at hand. It's enough to give the gold-en tint to every black cloud. There's another bit
of music that comes to overcome minor chords in the symphony of sorrow, even while these still give their sweetened underchording to the new joyous rhythm,
And of that certainty we want to talk a bit now. We want to find the keynote of the mingled symphony where joy sweetens sorrow, and sets your hearts a-singing and a-tingling, through the bit of waiting for the reunion day.
Fierce was the wild billow,
Dark was the night;
Oars laboured heavily,
Foam glimmered white;
Trembled the mariners,
Peril was nigh;
Then said the God of God,
"Peace! It is I."
Ridge of the mountain wave,
Lower thy crest!
Wail of Euroclydon,
Be thou at rest!
Sorrow can never be,
Darkness must fly,
Where saith the Light of Light,
"Peace! It is I."
Jesus, Deliverer,
Come thou to me;
Soothe thou my voyaging
Over life's sea:
Thou, when the storm of death
Roars, sweeping by,
Whisper, O Truth of Truth,
"Peace! It is I."
Hymn of St. Antolius