The Resistance to Oblivion

“Remember Me.” — Luke xxiii. 42.

The heart, like the intellect, has a desire for immortal memory. It is not the product of conceit, but of humanity. It is the soul’s assertion of its helplessness when left alone — its cry for support from other souls. Do you know the meaning of the English word Remember”? It literally means “Member me again.’* It is the sign of one who is passing out of a family circle — going, let us say, to a foreign land. He says,” Member me again! When you gather around the household board, or sit at night by the winter fire, keep a place vacant for me! Keep a gap in your hearts where the old chair should be! Do not forget to count me among the members of the family; do not omit to number me in the circle in which I am not seen! “And so we all ask in the prospect of the great journey. What most of us fear in death is not that we shall cease to be; it is that we shall cease to be members of the family of man. We doubt not that there are circles beyond the sun; but what of the circles below it? Shall we be members of the earth no more? Shall the last link be broken that binds us to the clay? Shall we be blotted out from time? Shall we part from the seen and temporal? Shall our feet have no right to be listened for in the march of the earthly army? We stretch our hands through the void and cry, Member me again — re-member me!”

Be still, my soul! thy prayer is answered. Thy Lord has offered to re-member thee. Knowest thou what is meant by being a member of Christ’s body? To be lifted into a mystic circle? No; to be re-instated in the circle of earth. Christ’s communion is not mystical; it is that which prevents mysticism. Mere immortality would draw thee away into the invisible, would separate thee from the order of human things. But the membership in Christ’s body brings thee back. It restores thee to the life of the body; it gives men a right to think of thee as a citizen of time. The Brahman speaks of death as a breaking of the bottle which sends the enclosed water back into the parent sea. O cruel sea, which destroys the individual drop! But Christ puts back the drop into the bottle. He restores the body, the house, the form. He preserves the human relationship. Thine shall be no flight beyond the stars; thine shall be no blending with the infinite sea; thine shall be no fading of the cloud into the imperial blue. Thou shalt keep the cloud, thou Shalt retain the cross, thou shalt hold fast the care which makes thee human; and men shall say of thee when death has dissolved the tie, “He is still our brother he is re-membered in the family of man,”