peace on earth among men of good-will Take this mortal life as a thing
of seventy years, more or less, to which death puts a final period, and
you have nothing but confusion, chance and futility,--nothing safe,
nothing realized, nothing completed. Evil often triumphs. Virtue often
is defeated.

"The good die young,
And we whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket."

But take death, as Christ teaches us, not as a full stop, but as only a
comma in the story of an endless life, and then the whole aspect of our
existence is changed. That which is material, base, evil, drops down.
That which is spiritual, noble, good, rises to lead us on.

The conviction of immortality, the forward-looking faith in a life
beyond the grave, the spirit of Easter, is essential to peace on earth
for three reasons.

I. It is the only faith that lifts man's soul, which is immortal, above
his body, which is perishable. It raises him out of the tyranny of the
flesh to the service of his ideals. It makes him sure that there are
things worth fighting and dying for. The fighting and the dying, for the
cause of justice and liberty, are sacrifices on the Divine altar which
shall never be forgotten.

II. The faith in immortality carries with it the assurance of a Divine
reassessment of earth's inequalities. Those who have suffered unjustly
here will be recompensed in the future. Those who have acted wickedly
and unjustly here will be punished. Whether that punishment will be