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THOUGHTS OF IMMORTALITY

The soul lives after the body dies. The soul passes through the gate; he makes a way in the darkness to his Father; he has pierced the heart of evil to do the things of his Father.

Then shall the Judge of the dead answer: Let this soul pass on; he is without sin; he lives upon truth. He has made his delight in doing what is good to men, and what is pleasing to God. He has given food to the hungry; drink to the thirsty and clothes to the naked. His lips are pure and his hands are pure. His heart weighs right in the balance. He fought on earth the battle of the good, even as his Father, the Lord of the invisible world had commanded him. O God, the protector of him who has brought his cry unto Thee, make it well with him in the world of spirits! He loved his father, he honored his mother; he loved his brethren. He never preferred the great man to him of low condition. He was a wise man, his soul loved God.

He was a

brother to the great and a father to the humble; and he never was a mischief-maker. Such as these shall find grace in the eyes of the great God. They shall dwell in the abodes of glory, where the heavenly life is led. The bodies which they have abandoned will repose forever in their tombs, while they will enjoy the presence of the great God. — Egyptian (Book of the Dead).

Heaven is a palace with many doors, and each one may enter in his own way. There is another, invisible, eternal existence, superior to the visible one, which does not perish when all things perish. Those who attain to this never return. The God of the dead waits enthroned in immortal light to welcome the good into his kingdom of joy to the homes he has prepared for them, where the One Being dwells beyond the stars. - Hindu.

There are treasures laid up in the heart-treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death, when he leaves this world. Man never dies. The soul inhabits the body for a time and leaves it again. The soul is myself; the body is only my dwelling-place. The pearls and gems which a man has collected, even from his youth, cannot go with him to another world. Friends and relations cannot go with him a step further than his place of burial. But a man's actions, good or bad, go with him to the future world. As kindred, friends and dear ones salute him who hath travelled far and returned home safe, so will good deeds welcome him who goes from this world and enters another. - Buddhist.

What is death? To be born again an angel of Eternity. Persian (Buzurdi).

The Supreme Soul, whose work is the universe, always dwelling in the hearts of all being, is revealed by the heart. Those who know him become immortal. Hindu.

The sun rises out of life and sets into life; this is the sacred law; it sways to-day, and will sway to-morrow.

From the unreal, lead me to the real; from darkness to light; from death to immortality! This uttered overcomes the world. Hindu (Brihad Upanishad).

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Know that these finite bodies have belonged to an eternal, inexhaustible, indestructible spirit. He who believes that this spirit can kill, and he who believes it can be killed, both are wrong. Unborn, changeless, eternal, it is not slain when the body is slain. * Weapons cannot cleave, nor fire burn it. It is constant, immovable; yet it can pass through all things. * * * * Grieve not then for any creatures, and abandon not thy duty. For a noble man, that infamy were worse than death. **** It is good to die dɔing thy own work. -Hindu (Bhagavadgita).

Virtue is a service man owes himself; and though there were no heaven, nor any God to rule the world, it were not less the binding law of life. It is a man's privilege to know the right and follow it.

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Betray and persecute me, brother men ! * * * * Earth, hell, heaven, combine your might to crush, I will still hold fast by this inheritance! My strength is nothingtime can shake and cripple it; my youth is transientalready grief has withered up my days; my heart—alas! it seems well nigh broken now! Anguish may crush it utterly, and life may fail; but even so my soul, that has not tripped, shall triumph, and dying, give the lie to soulless Destiny, that dares to boast itself man's master. Hindu (Ramayana).

Man must not be carried away by grief, but hasten to

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a better mind. Thou hast shed tears: it is enough. We have given what we ought to grief; now let us do what is becoming. — Hindu (Râmâyana).

Why lookest thou so dull upon thy friends, thou to whom thy friends were so dear? Thy face seems to smile on us in the bosom of death, as if thou wert alive. We see thy glory still, like sunset on a mountain's head. - Hindu.

He who in the morning has seen the right way, may in the evening die without regret. — Confucius.

It is right, my friends, that we should consider this: that if the soul is immortal, it requires our care not only for the present time, which we call life, but for all time. He, then, is truly wise, who considers most about his soul; who having adorned his soul, not with a foreign, but with its own proper ornament,― temperance, justice, fortitude, freedom, and truth,-thus waits for his passage to the world of the departed, as one who is ready to go whenever destiny shall summon him.

If death be the journey to another place, and there all the dead are, what good can be greater than this? Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth,that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. - Plato.

The body is a prison, from which the soul must be released before it can arrive at the knowledge of things real and immutable.

The soul of each of us is an immortal spirit, and goes to other immortals to give an account of its actions.

When thou shalt have laid aside thy body, thou shalt

rise, freed from mortality, and become an inhabitant of the kindly skies.

My body must descend to the place ordained, but my soul will not descend: being a thing immortal, it will ascend on high, where it will enter a heavenly abode. Death does not differ at all from life.

Every soul is immortal; for whatever is continually moved is immortal. Every body which is moved from without is soulless, but that which is moved from within, that is, of itself, possesses a soul, since this is the very nature of soul. But if this be the case, - that there is nothing else which moves itself except soul, — soul must necessarily be both uncreate and immortal. — Plato.

All that God works is effortless and calm:

Seated on loftiest throne,

Thence, though we know not how,

He works his perfect will.

- Eschylus (The Suppliants).

It is shame

For any man to wish for length of life,

Who, wrapt in troubles, knows no change for good.
For what delight brings day still following day,

Or bringing on, or putting off our death?

I would not rate that man as worth regard
Whose fervor glows on vain and empty hopes:
But either noble life or noble death

Becomes the gently born. - Sophocles (Ajax).

An immortal man established in righteousness is a noble hymn of God.

Greek.

Who knows whether to live is not death, and to die, life?-Euripides.

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