What Peace Means | Page 6

Henry van Dyke
but with seeds of blessed harvest. God paint upon the
broken storm-cloud the rainbow of eternal hope. God help us and our
friends to make a peace that shall mean good to all mankind. God send
upon our victory the light of the cross of Christ our Saviour, where
mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other.

III
The Power of an Endless Life
Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the
power of an endless life.
--Hebrews 7:16.
The message and hope of immortality are nowhere more distinctly
conveyed to our minds than in connection with that resurrection morn
when Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene. The anniversary of that day
will ever be the festival of the human soul. Even those who do not
clearly understand or fully accept its meaning in history and
religion,--even children and ignorant folk and doubters and
unbelievers,--yes, even frivolous people and sullen people, feel that
there is something in this festival which meets the need and longing of
their hearts. It is a day of joy and gladness, a day of liberation and

promise, a day for flowers to bloom and birds to sing, a day of spiritual
spring-tide and immortal hope.
Mankind desires and needs such a day. We are overshadowed in all our
affections and aspirations, all our efforts, and designs, by the dark
mystery of bodily death; the uncertainty and the brevity of earthly
existence make us tremble and despair; the futility of our plans dismays
us; the insecurity of our dearest treasure in lives linked to ours fills us
with dismay.
Is there no escape from Death, the Tyrant, the autocrat, the destroyer,
the last enemy? Why love, why look upward, why strive for better
things if this imperator of failure, ultimate extinction, rules the universe?
No hope beyond the grave means no peace this side of it. A life without
hope is a life without God. If Death ends all, then there is no Father in
Heaven in whom we can trust. Who shall deliver us from the body of
this Death?
Now comes Easter with its immortal promise and assurance, Jesus of
Nazareth, who died on Calvary, a martyr of humanity, a sacrifice of
Divinity, is alive and appears to His humble followers. The manner of
His appearance, to Mary Magdalene, to His disciples, is not the most
important thing. The fact is that He did appear. He who was crucified in
the cause of righteousness and mercy, lives on and forever. The
message of His resurrection is "the power of an endless life."
The proof of this message is in the effect that it produced. It
transformed the handful of Jesus' followers from despair to confidence.
It gave Christianity its growing influence over the heart of humanity. It
is this message of immortality that makes religion vital to the human
world to-day, and essential to the foundation of peace on earth.
We must not forget in our personal griefs and longings, in our sorrows
for those whom we have lost and our desire to find them again, in our
sense of our own mortal frailty and the brief duration of earthly life, the
celestial impulse which demands a life triumphant over death.
The strongest of all supports for peace on earth is the faith in

immortality. The truth is, the very character of our being here in this
world demands continuance beyond death. There is nothing good or
great that we think or feel or endeavour, that is not a reaching out to
something better. Our finest knowledge is but the consciousness of
limitation and the longing that it may be removed. Our best moral
effort is but a slow advance towards something better. Our sense of the
difference between good and evil, our penitence, our aspiration, all this
moral freight with which our souls are laden, is a cargo consigned to an
unseen country. Our bill of lading reads, "To the immortal life." If we
must sink in mid-ocean, then all is lost, and the voyage of life is a
predestined wreck.
The wisest, the strongest, the best of mankind, have felt this most
deeply. The faith in immortality belongs to the childhood of the race,
and the greatest of the sages have always returned to it and taken refuge
in it. Socrates and Plato, Cicero and Plutarch, Montesquieu and
Franklin, Kant and Emerson, Tennyson and Browning,--how do they
all bear witness to the incompleteness of life and reach out to a
completion beyond the grave.
"No great Thinker ever lived and taught you All the wonder that his
soul received; No great Painter ever set on canvas All the glorious
vision he conceived.
"No Musician ever held your spirit Charmed and bound in his
melodious chains;
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