The Jewish outlook., January 27, 1905, Page 4, Image 4

About The Jewish outlook. (Denver, Colo.) 1903-1913

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4
B’nai B'rith Memorial Services
Denver Lodge 171, I. O. B. 8., which
numbers over 400 members, held mem
orial services last Sunday morning.
President Joseph S. Jaffa and Brother
Herman Strauss delivered the addresses.
Mr. Jaffa spoke in part as follows:
Brethren —Once more in the cycle of
time; once more in the absorbing endeavors
of existence, we pause for a moment to pay
tribute of respect to the departed. United
in brotherhood, we are assembled here upon
this solemn occasion to commingle our feel
ings of love and honor to those who but a
year ago were of us. Their memories
though still living and ever to live as long
as thought shall be our heritage.
Five brothers, all in the full bloom and
sweetness of young manhood, and another,
crowned with the glories of life’s struggle,
whose mortality at this moment awaits our
final escort, have all entered the mystic
ante-room, and from there have been ush
ered into the lodge of eternity.
Theirs mostly had been lives of joy—
yet from joy and happiness to pain and sor
row is but a step; a mere tremor in the
gradation of the scale of life; fate was kind
to them; it held back the hand which might
have pointed the way from the springtime
of life which their visions followed to the
direction of a vista of heartbreaking and
saddened gloom; they knew only the
warmth of manhood’s friendships; some of
them had known the bliss of the admira
tion and the throb of a young wife’s heart,
beating in unison of encouragement with
their own ambitions; they, too, had known
the meaning of the ecstatic love for the in
fant babe and the joys of the evening of
frolic with a child of tender years. It was
not their lot to meet shipwreck or to know
the blights of broken plans, or to'experience
the sting of baffled ambitions or to suffer
the knowledge of the sundering of warm
friendships and tender affections. Death
beckoned. They saw and they followed,
and, meeting death, they solved its myste
ries—mysteries only for us, but not for
them. The crushing doubt that oft-times
agitates the mind; that encourages the
spirit of unrest, they have solved; they know
of the radiant sunrise with unimaginable
splendor, peering above a celestial horizon;
they know of the strong, hopeful and force
ful energies finding instant exercise; they
knew of the passions, ambitions and affec
tions that sway and impel and are satis
fied.
As time progresses and with it the re
currence of this sacred day, the dead come
back to live with us once more. We see
them now as once we saw them on this
earth. They are the same bright figures or
their counterparts that come also before our
eyes and when I speak of those who were
my brothers, the same words describe yours.
On this day we still meet in the closest tie
which is possible between men, a tie which
a common ambition has made indissoluble
for better, for worse. When we meet thus,
when we do honor to the dead, we also in
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THE JEWISH OUTLOOK
terms embrace the living. Nature is conde
scendingly grand in her comfort. The dead
live. We commune to-day with our broth
ers. We see them in their youthful and
manly endeavors, for while time sprinkles
its white frost upon us, our brothers never
grow old. Youth to them is perennial. Age
does not wither them, nor does time palsy
their hands. The mighty struggle of life
exempts them from the marks of turmoil;
from the pangs of sorrow and from the
deeply chiseled lines of grief, which to us,
their survivors, mark us as it were in mock
ery. Whether the future shall be kind to
us or harsh in its treatment; if our lot be
that of joyous fame or we be given com
fort that the accumulation of wealth might
bring or on the other hand, whether we
drink the dregs of despair, of anguish or of
sorrow, we remember the departed as they
were. Our brothers, though away from us,
still live, and in our memories we accord
them the crown of victory. They have won
as against us in the great race of eternity.
Our brothers retreated with the aspect,
of victories, and though they succumbed
they were the conquerors. The sun of each
went down at noon, but it sank amid the
splendors of an eternal dawn.
Good, stout hearts—Ah, me, how many?
Six were stilled within the past twelve
months and to us who remain behind is left
this day of memories. Every year in the
heights of symphony of lov! and life there
comes a pause, and through the silence we
hear the lonely pipe of death. Year after
year those of us in the spirit of reminis
cence, in sweetly sad reminiscence, in wan
dering among the graves of the departed,
under the boughs of the weeping willow, of
the pine and of the cedar, we see black
veiled figures stealing througn the morning
to pay another and yet another tribute of
love to their dead. It is the grief-stricken
widow, a heartbroken mother, but it is not
this grief that is the end of all. The mur
mur of the widow, the sob of the mother,
becomes a song, of triumph, for our dead
brothers still live for us and bid us think
of life, not of death.
ADDRESS OF HERMAN STRAUSS.
We are assembled to-day to commune
with the spirits of those of our members
who, during the past year, have crossed the
threshold leading towards a perfect state
of spiritual development. By this expres
sion of loyalty we prove that the bonds
uniting us reach beyond the tomb. Death,
enthroned for centuries as the king of ter
ror, is now often hailed as an emancipator,
by releasing the soul from a habitation no
longer suitable as a dwelling place. The
belief in immortality has taken possession
of all civilised races. It has been the dream
of the poet, the hope of the sorrowing and
the faith of the religious devotee. Prophets
and seers have seen the gates ajar, and en
riched us with their discovery. Plato, the
Athenian philosopher, said: “The soul is
everything,” followed by Emerson twenty
five centuries later: “The soul knoweth all
things.” Strangely enough, the same
thought should impress itself on their re
spective minds. The late Henry Ward
Beecher requested, when he died, to place
no crape, the sign of gloom, on the house,
but rather hang a basket of flowers at the
door as an emblem that a soul has passed
from death unto life. Only those living on
the physical plane alone can remain pessi
mistic as to the future state.
While this service is intended as a me
morial in honor of our absent brothers, it
ought to serve as a lesson to the Let
us do every act in life as if it were the'last,
for as we leave this stage, perfect or imper
fect, we shall enter the next. Let us live so
the past may have no regrets and the future
no terrors. The only checks honored at the
Celestial Bank are those drawn against the
balance of good deeds to our credit. The
obligations we subscribe to at the altar
upon joining this order, replete with pure
thoughts and high aspirations, if permitted
to shape our actions at our social gatherings,
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