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'"Heavenly Recognition by Im plication of Its Rejection." Text: "I Shall go to Him" II Sam. 12:23 (Sermon hy Dr. R. G. Lee.) Of all the questions that have ex ercised and still exercise the mind of man, none are more interesting and important than those that relate to man's origin and destiny. The "whence" and "whither" of personal life, are both fundamental questions. Both, too, are bound up with reli gion. From time immemorial man has looked into the years, backward and forward, reminiscently and pro phetically, wondering, wondering! In these far-back, primitive days when life seemed simple, something in man revolted from the thought that life could end in endless sleep. And, even now, in this our day when we have let go of some of the sweet simplici ties of the old-time religion, we are apt to think of the future life as less obvious, less real, more ghostly, more metaphorical. Thus we become the victims of time and space. Dr. Jowett said: "We must preach on these great subjects whose vast ness almost terrifies us as we ap proach them." And I am frank to say that the subject of the morning hour .and the subject of the evening hour is a subject whose vastness almost terrifies me as I approach it, but its solemn splendor thrills my soul. There come times to us all when ?we wish Christ had said more. There are great questions which we should like to have put to Him, and on which ?we should like to have received exact and definite information. So it is "with this question of heavenly recog nition which presents to us a problem of unusual interest. The question comes to us distinctly amid the roar of the complex machinery of our modern life. It presses down upon our hearts when the cares of life press heavily on our shoulders. The question comes to us when we would be materialistic ; but the " spiritual will not down; the oft smothered but unquenchable fires of the spiritual 'burn-and we find ourselves in times of unspeakable loneliness, in periods .of meditation, in times when the neart is crushed with some great sorrow, asking: "Shall we know each other in heaven?" There are many who say: "I have friends in the Spirit land Not shadows in a shadowy band, Not others but themselves are they, And still I think of them the same A.s when the Master's summons came !" Of course they think of them the same-and the mother whose boy died on the battle fields and died in :the faith wants to know if she shall know her boy in the green fields be yond the swelling flood. And the mother whose arms ache in emptiness for the little child that went away, wants to ?now assuredly if she shall hold her child again. And the father whose boy died just when the years were opening with golden promise .-as the day opens with sunrise glory, wants to know if over yonder he will .look on his child's face again. And the friend whose friend went away .as Elijah left Elisha wants some as surance that the friendship will be renewed again in a better world, say ing oft: "Here in this body pent, Absent from him I roam, ' Yet nightly pitch my moving tent A day's march nearer home." Now it is one thing to avoid reck less assertion without any founda tion. It is undoubtedly another thing to have so little trust in God that we are afraid to make a fair inference concerning the life beyond such as we would unhesitatingly make in like .conditions here. I believe in recogni tion in heaven as surely as I believe in any teaching of the Bible, as firm ly as I believe there is a God, as strongly as I believe you are before me this morning. If consciousness, .character, love, memory, fellowship, are in that life, why should there be any question about it? May God help me for your sakes to take the doc trine of Heavenly Recognition out of the region of surmise and specula tion into the region -of absolute cer tainty. May we all leave the house today and tonight as one who leaves here his burden and takes away a song, believing that the kiss of re union at the celestial gate will be as certain as the dying kiss at the gate to the grave . Let us consider Heavenly Recog nition from what implications of its rejection implies. Its rejection im plies : 1. The Utter Forgetfulness of Ou? Earth Life and Friends: In other words the blotting out of the faculty cf memory. Shall we forget forever those whom we knew on earth? Shall we forever be unfamiliar with those with whom we'walked and talked in the sacred intimacies of this life on earth? Shall we in the glory come near to those with whom we locked arms in sweet comradeship and join ed hands in holy endeavor and with whom we ran in iocfc step toward no bl? goals on earth and, up there, know them not? Was the old poet lying when he said : "Friends depart, and memory takes them To*her caverns pure and deep?" Will death come like some grim husbandman who prunes a vine and cut away from the vine of our being the branch of memory? Then it is all false that we have believed that: "When time who steals our years away Shall steal our pleasures, too, The memory of our past will stay And half our joys renew." Shall we in heaven, looking out through the windows of the eyes, re ceiving messages through the por tals of the ears, not know those -whose faces on earth' we knew, whose voices on earth we heard? If we shall not know one another why then this undying memory of departed ones, affgrM?MlBlMWttsBflBH this aching void that is never on earth? Alas for us! Then w worse off than the lower ani The calf is taken from the cow cow mourns for a night-and in a day her calf is forgotten, kittens are taken from the mc and after a day or so of restless dering the mother forgets the kil The dove mourns for a day ii elms over the nest wrecked bj storm and for the birdies dro by the flood-and then the bi are remembered no more. Bul poor human mother never for When her head is white with snow of many years and her fee faltering go down the sunset you can bring tears into her eye mentioning the child that died ir arms forty years ago. And when old father passes the eightieth i stone of life, a useless cumbere the earth, he will weep, at the J mention of the wild boy that b his father's- heart and despised father's counsel. Through the s owy past, like a tomb searcher, n ory runs thus, lifting each sh: that time cast over buried hope In the fields there must I k nothing of the fields I ploughed hi In the light of His face must I 1 t?o memory of my mother's f God forbid. In the mingling of throngs up there must I have memory of my people whom I I served here? Shall I remember m ing of mother's lullaby or of Gospel songs that have thrilled soul simply because I hear from thousand times ten thousand thri the song of Moses and the Lar No-a thousand Jaimes no! The Bible says that "nations si be born in a day." The time is ci ing when the heathen shall be gi' unto Him for His inheritance ? the uttermost parts of the earth His possession. And when Ch comes to God, wlil it have no merni of Morrison who toiled for 30-( years and died not having receii the promise? Will China know no ing of our own great John Lake a of John Anderson from Woodru who sleeps in the mud of a Chim river today? When Burma comes God crowned with salvation, v Burma know nothing of Judson a his wife, sweet Ann Haseltine? Wh the Indians hit the long trail v they know nothing of Dr. Brainer When Africa comes naked from t jungle to put on the Gospel appa] will it know nothing of David Livir ston and Dan Crawford-and other When Siberia comes to God will know nothing of sweet, heroic Gra McBride who died in the snows th from the corners of the frozen lai the Gospel bells might ring? Wh< Labrador hosts come through t gates will they not know Dr. Gre fell? Surely. Surely! Dives had memory when he "lifti up his eyes in hell, being in torment To him Abraham said, "Son, remen ber," Dives remembered the feast 1 gave. He remembered the beggar i the gate. Remembered his brother He remembered his opportunity. K remembered his earth life. If the e: iled and lost remember, will not tl enthroned remember? Byron sai( "Eternity forbids to forget." 2. Rejection of This Doctrine D< feats the Expectancy of the Work Even, among those reared at paga firesides and taught by pagan teacl ers there is the yearning for heaven ly recognition. The great paga teachers believed and taught that th fires of life when they died dow would not leave cold ashes. Ultimate ly this does not prove anything. Bu it does suggest this: That deep dow: in human,, intuition and deep dowi in the human soul God Almighty ha not left man without a witness. A one has said: "The profound cry o the human soul and the thought o human consciousness is the fact o heavenly recognition." In all land and in all ages the theory of recog nition in the future world is received What form of religion planted thi: thing which Christianity confirms' No form of religion for it is receivec under all forms of religion. It *s i sentiment universally implanted; i is a feeling universally vital; it is ar anticipation universally dynamic. I: It God implanted? Then it is right fully implanted. Cicero who lived before Christ'f day said: "Oh, glorious day when ] shall retire from this low and sordid scene to associate with the divine as semblage of departed spirits . . . . , with my dear Cate, the best of sons and the most faithful of men. It was my sad fate to lay his body on the funeral pile. If I seemd to bear his death with fortitude it was by nc means because I did not feel sensi bly the loss I had sustained. It was because I was supported by the con soling reflection that we should not , be long separated." Homer, great man to the Greeks, tells of Ulysses meeting his mother in the spiritual world and recognizing her. Virgil represents Aenaes aa meeting with his friends over there and talking with them. Old Socrates was nerved to drink the hemlock be cause of the thought of meeting the friends who had gone before. These are just a few glimpses through the eye of a needle at the landscape of pagan teachers-but a taste of their philosophy, but a drink at the spring of their poetry. But, in the lower order of beings is not the same desire, clothed more raggedly of course, but as strong nevertheless, vital? Longfellow said that: "Even in savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings For the good they comprehend not; There are feeble hands and helpless Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God's right hand in the dark ness." An ancient heathen king would whisper a message into the ear of his servant and then cut his servant's head off to send the message to the other side. Among the Danes when a master dies the servant sometimes .slays himself that he maay serve his master in the future world. The Indian warrior "died, and his wife and others of his followers were slain that they might follow him to the happy hunting ground. The In dian's bows and arrows were buried with him that he might have weapons in the other world. And his dog was slain and buried with him that the dog might in the happy hunting ground, run the deer without weari ness. Repulsive indeed, these incidents and practices to our cultured minds. Yet, robbed of their objectionable features, they cause us to believe that deep down in the human soul, even among the most heathen of peo ples and among the religions of pa gans, there is something that resteth not and is not still in its longing for fellowship. That proclaims the reality of recognition in the future state. The German believes it. The Arab believes it. The Chinaman eating rats in Hongkong believes it. The Eskimo, feasting on the putrid blubber amid the ice floes of the North\believes it. The Bushman of Africa with the mentality that can count but two believes it. The Turk believes it. The cultured college professor who has not gotten away from his mother's religion believes it. Under every sky, by every river, in every zone, this belief is held. And, as Talmage says, a principal universally implanted must be God-implanted, and if God implanted it it must be a lawful ex pectation. "Oh, ye weary, sad and tossed, Droop not>, faint n^t, by the way; Ye shall find the loved and just In that land of perfect day. Harp strings touched by angel hands Murmured in my raptured'ear; Evermore the sweet truth stands, 'We shall know each other there.' " 3 Rejection of This Theory Implies That Heaven is Contraction Rather Than Expansion: But heaven is not a place of contraction. It is a place of enlarged knowledge, a place where I shall know more than I know here, a place where I know others better than I know them here, a place where they shall know me better than they do here. Conceptions of heaven vary. Rob ert Hall said his chief conception of heaven was-rest; Wilberforce love; Southey-place of intellectual activity and enjoyment; Foster-un folding of all the mysteries of truth and providence; Leighton-world of perfect spirituality and holiness; Payson-"where I shall be with Christ and serve Him and enjoy Him forever." But unite all the conceptions and add to them all that heart can wish or mind cnoceive and you will see that in them all and through them all it the thought that cannot be hidden of enlarged iknowledge-expansion, lot contraction. Paul said: "Now we see through a ?lass darkly, but then face to face. Now we know in part, but when that ivhich is perfect is come, then that ?vhich is in part shall be done away." Thank God for that! John Evans, the great Scotch ninister, was seated in his study. Elis wife came in and said "My dear, io you think we will know each other n heaven?" He turned to her and >aid: "My dear, do you think we will 3e bigger fools in heaven than we ire here?" Now that is not a flip pant answer; no, not at all. The idea that we shall not know one another n heaven makes it appear that we shall know less in heaven than we io here. But our knowledge there will be increased and enlarged above our knowledge here as the oak is enlarg ed above the acorn, as the butterfly is enlarged above the chrysalis, as m ode of Milton is enlarged above the letter z, as a steel girder above the sinew and bone of man's arm, is the gleam of a star over the glow af a glow worm. As the steel levia thans of today surpass the old ba teau, as the incandescent light trans cends the tallow dip, as the macadam road excels the turtle path, as the thinking of a philosopher goes high er and deeper than the thinking of a child, as Niagara goes beyond the mud puddle in glory, as the Alps possess more majesty than the prairie dog's burrow-so will that which is heavenly outshine and outgrow and out reach that which is earthly. "We shall know each other better When the mists have rolled away." The higher law always sets aside the lower. Vegetable law sets aside mineral law-and there is growth. Animal law sets aside vegetable law -and there is nutrition. Mental law transcends the physical law-and the blood is consumed by thought and emotion. The law of life, out breaking life, transcended the law of death. So the heavenly transcends the earthly-and as God's thoughts are high above our thoughts now, so our thinking in heaven and our knowing in heaven will transcend our thinking here and excel our knowing herei Job said: "All my purposes ARE broken off." But he did not say "All my purposes WILL BE broken off!" Browning said: "On earth the brok en arcs, in heaven the perfect round." In heaven we shall be consciously alive, in a life richer, larger, fuller. We shall be personally alive, under conditions which impose no limita tions upon us. We shall be outside the fettering limitations of time and space. Dr. Maclaren said: "Every man that has died is at this instant in full possession of all his faculties, in the intensest exercise of his capacities, standing somewhere in God's pres ence, and feeling in every fibre of his being. That life which comes after death is not less real, but more real, not less great but more great, not less intense and full, but more in tense and full than the mingled life which, lived here on earth, was a i (Continued on Seventh t*b ) m Per Cent Discount In order to close out all winter goods we have de cided to make a sweeping reduction TWENTY|Per Cent on all CLOTHING, SHOES and HATS This is good, clean merchandise bought direct from the leading manufacturers of the country. Nothing cheap or shoddy in stock. All goods marked in plain figures and same price to everybody. Now is the time to buy what you need. It will even pay you to anticipate your needs. Come in before the stock is broken-while you can get any size you want. DORN & (HIMS TS m mm Seasonable Goods m AT A DISCOUNT igen? ? We are giving 10 per cent discount on all Kero Gas Oil Cook Stoves, Wood Stoves and Ranges. Now is the time to buy and save money. 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