Magyar Egyház, 1971 (50. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1971-04-01 / 4. szám
12 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ when he was conducting a performance of the opera stopped the orchestra and dismissed the audience when the opera was about two-thirds of the way through. You see, the original composer of the opera had not been able to finish it before his life’s journey had ended and it had been finished by someone else. So, Toscanini stopped the performance, dismissed the audience by saying, “Here is where the master laid down his pen.” Work remains unfinished! It does not make any difference who you are or how many talents you have. You will come to the end of your life here on earth with only a portion of your work done and only some of your talents developed. Always unfinished, you see. And it is impossible to believe that God would begin such an amazing work which He has begun in you by bringing you into life and giving you a chance to begin to grow, without also making provision for your continuing development. Because of that I say we die and “behold we live.” Then also a continuing life is just the kind of wonder that we have to expect in this wonderful universe. There is something great and marvelous going on in this world, and I tell you that the ultimate goal toward which the whole creation is moving must be something wonderful too, greater than your mind and my mind and all people’s minds can really understand and fathom. I remember well some words written by H. G. Wells, who certainly was not any sentimentalist nor conventionally religious person. He said, “All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things.” Now that sounds like something. That is a statement of fact which ought to inspirit and compose your soul. “All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things.” And when you think of this fact you see what he meant, namely, always the wonders of the world as they have become understood have turned out to be more wonderful than people have ever dreamed of. It wasn’t long ago, you know, that people thought that they were living on a flat earth in a small universe, but now we know that this earth on which we are standing is part of the Milky Way, which is so big that it takes light seventyeight thousand years to travel across it, and the Milky Way is just a speck of cosmic dust in all of creation. The universe is more marvelous than people ever dreamed of. And the small things are marvelous too. When the molecular theory of matter was first discovered people thought that they had hit upon something great, but little did they suspect that the atom was such a marvel in itself, You see, as soon as one door has been opened which reveals a wonder, immediately more doors stand before you waiting to be opened, doors behind which are additional and greater wonders. Always the wonder turns out to be greater than people expect or even dream of. “All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things.” And a continuing life for you and for me and for every child of God is just the kind of a wonder that you ought to expect in this wonderful universe. I suspect that when your birthday comes you will be surprised and say, “Why, of course, of course, this is it.” We die and “behold we live.” A birthday into eternity is promised also because of the fact that in science and in every realm of life nothing gets lost in this world. Not really! Our shortsightedness and the smallness of our minds sometime make us think otherwise, but it is not so. Nothing gets lost! You can take a sledge hammer to the statue Venus de Milo and you can smash it into a thousand pieces and then take the pieces and grind them into a powder but not a single particle of the statue at which people have gazed for years has been lost to the world. It is in another form but nevertheless it is not lost. That truth holds on wherever you go, and do you think that God would preserve a speck of dust and not preserve a human soul? I suppose it was the realization that nothing gets lost that led Alfred Whitehead, that giant of a philosopher at Harvard University, to the conclusion which he reached. “How can a person best describe God?” he asked himself. And he kept asking that question so long that ultimately he reached this conclusion—the best concept under which you can think of God is that of “a tender care that nothing be lost.” Well, do you think that you are going to get lost? Of course not! Do you think that that little child you laid away in that never to be forgotten plot of land is going to be lost? Of course not! Do you think that even the downmost child of God will ever get lost? Of course not! God provides a birthday for all. For we die and “behold we live.” I expect that great birthday also because of a truth which was once expressed by William James. He said, “The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.” Now that is saying something significant. “The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.” It is quite obvious to anybody with any discernment of mind that if a soul is not worth preserving then it is hard to believe that that soul is immortal, but when you think of some people, at least, you know that they are worth preserving. When you think, for example, of that man whose statue is now brooding over our nation’s capital, Abraham Lincoln, you know that he is worth preserving. When you think of Shakespeare, of his mighty mind and genius, you know that he is worth preserving. Or when you think of a simple, good, and
