THE DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE
PAGE TWO
"If a Man Die,
Shall He Live Again?'
umble follower of the
of A ps an humble
great teachers of humanity, I preient
to you on this sacred day, my re-
flection upon their thoughts and not
original opinions evolved out of my
own inner consciousness boldly given
td the world as my solution of what
men, infinitely greater than 1, have
confessed themselves incapable of
solving.
BY RABBI HARRY H. MAYER
In the first place, let us investigate
Temple B'nai Yehudah
the objections to the theory that the
Kansas City, Mo.
human soul is eternal. The first
objection is that man has no evidence
of the senses that he possesses a
spirit, or that if he does possess a
spirit, that it out-lasts his physical
decay and defies the fiat of nature that
all material things shall crumble to
dust and moulder in the soil. The
evidence of our senses nut only gives
us no intimation that the spirit of man
contradict
o radlicti
is eternal; but it seems tocoil
man
the iissumption that the spirit
is eternal. Is the evidence of our
senses conclusive? \\lien we see one
that we know but a short time before
was animated by life, lie inert, rigid,
motionless in death, our senses pro-
claim that there is nothing more than
can be assumed concerning the per-
sonality that inhabited that dead mass
of material. Our senses give us no
proof, even with the aid of the deli-
cate instruments that we have in-
vented, that there dwells in the body
in spirit which at death wings its way
to a celestial abode. Our senses give
us the clear pronouncement that the
body, that Will perish utterly, has no
room for the spirit. Shall we accept
the dictum of our senses? Are our
senses an infallible guide? Can they
be depended upon to tell us the truth,
and when they tell 116 what seems to
be the truth, may we implicitly believe
that which they report to our mind?
Every tyro in science is aware that
the evidence of the senses is decep-
tive. .When I travelled a few years
ago in Europe 1 had the experience in
Paris of hearing a guide for a Cook's
tourist party admonish the people in
his company to notice that one of the
pictures in the Louvre gallery was so
Rabbi Harry H. Mayer
wonderfully painted that the eyes
N
the
border-line
of
the
new
whether
science,
with
all
its
modern
would seem to follow the person who
0
division of time marked by achievements, has any message for moved along in view of it and kept
our religious New Year we us on the subject. What interests his gaze fixed upon it. The men and
anxiously search for sign- us is to know whether the history women in the Cook's tourist party
hisper gaped open-mouthed at this piece of
posts that may indicate that man is of humanity sends to us any w
immortal. Is there a life beyond that will enable us to catch God's wisdom from the guide; they fastened
the grave where this life will be revelation, giving us the clue to the their eyes upon the eyes of the pic-
continued in a life unending? If a riddle. What we are interested in ture and their senses verified what
man die shall he Jive again? Is knowing is whether men do well to the guide told them was a fact. But
♦ there reason to hope, that though hope that the grave does not destroy their senses deceived them. Not only
all things ar subject to decay and human existence; that the grave, in that picture, but any picture that is
dissolution, we shall rise again the words of Browning, is not the not utterly impossible and crude,
goal but the starting point of life." would bear through the channel of
transfigured from the dust?
To answer these questions, either What interests us is what the tes- the senses the same message to our
in the affirmative or in the negative, timony is of the world's greatest brain.
A
by producing an array of Bible texts, thinkers in their writings on this
As a child I remember having
walked one day by the side of my
would be an easy matter. The Bible most baffling of things.
I would not presume to give my father and noted that the sun appar-
is composed of literature that is a
deposit of the thought of many ages, own reasonings about immorality, un- ently was following us as we moved
and of the most divergent schools of based upon the reasoning of the along. I imagined, in my childish cre-
philosophy. It is a fruitless and use- great thinkers who have grappeled dulity, that the sun was paying us
less task to garner texts from the with this subject. It would be pre- homage. My senses proved to me
Bible and to say that they prove or sumptious for me, or for almost any that the sun was following our steps,
that they disprove the future life. other minister, however well trained but the experience and knowledge of
he might be, to pose as our elders would have taught me that
We are not interested in the in theology ,
theological problem involved in the an authority upon this question of the evidence of my senses was decep-
teachings which the Bible lays down the life immortal. All that I can do, tive.
upon the question of immorality. or all that any preacher or platform
We constantly correct the evidence
There are excellent religious people speaker, who is properly modest and of the senses by the logic of exper-
who believe that they have ground who realizes that he is not an au- ience. The mind sits in judgment
, for thinking, on the basis of Biblical thority upon psychology and biology upon the senses and Where it does not
teachings, that life in the world to and all the other sciences that eon- verify by logical process the appar-
conic is promised, while there are tribute their mite to the solution of ently certain facts that they present
others who do not, and one of the this problem, all that I or any other to our mental notice, these apparently
latter, the chancellor of a state uni- preacher or speaker, who —has a certain facts are incontinently re-
versity, wrote an interesting letter proper sense of proportion and jected by us.
to the newspapers only a few years modesty may venture to do is to
Is it not so with regard to the
steps of the philosophers mdvement of the sum -around the
ago in which he adduced Biblical follow the
sentences in support of his convic- and great thinkers who have blazed earth? Our eyes tell us that the sun
tion that life beyond the grave is the way through the jungles of per- rises in the east and sets in the west,
plexity that grow like an impassible
not promised in Holy Writ.
(('ontinued On Page Four.)
1 What interests us is to know barrier all around this most difficult
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