IMMORTALITY NOT A CURSE.
By N. W. Vincent
THERE is something grand and hope-inspiring in the very word immortality. It is the opposite of mortality. It denotes a state free from death. So blessed is it that we are taught that God is its source, and its only absolute possessor. John 5: 26; 1 Tim. 6: 16. But if all who fail of the heavenly kingdom shall from age to age seek death and it shall flee from them, as in the case of some mortals during the one hundred and fifty years' sounding of the first woe trumpet (Rev. 9: 6), it follows that immortality will be to those lost millions a curse; a curse irremediable, eternal; a curse that will nourish the plant of sin in God's universe forever; a curse that will make rebellion, deformity, discord, pain, and anguish existing, horrid realities to eternity. In Rom. 2:7 we are taught to seek after immortality as associated with honor and glory. It cannot, therefore, be a curse. It is the crown of life of the Holy Scriptures. It was not given to the fallen angels, nor to the lost of our race at the beginning of their probation, with the divine foreknowledge that it would ultimately be an endless curse. It was reserved for the overcomer. Let us seek for it by patient continuance in well-doing; then it will be sure for us “at that day” “when the Chief Shepherd shall appear.”