Typed as spelled and written
Kay Cunningham

THE MARLIN DEMOCRAT
Fifteenth Year - Number 22
Marlin, Texas, Thursday, July 28, 1904

AN APPRECIATION, NOT AN
OBITUARY, OF FRITZIE.
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     I cannot realize that Fritzie is dead. I am gIad I cannot. I would be a mourner and put on sack cloth and ashes if I thought death could rob Life of power of love; of intelligence. If death could take from life one of its attributes, then I could look on death as real. Life could not be
God with all power, with all intelligence and be present everywhere if death was real. For death to be real it must have some power, some life. I look on life as the whole truth. I define death as the colossal he of all times - a twin brother of the devil.
     Soul, spirit being, substance, love, truth and life are all words to we with the same meaning - God.
     When Jesus of Nazareth made the statement that he was "Life, Truth and the Way," be never made a more scientific statement. When he said "What I am you are" it was full of truth. It does not take Life and death to make the whole - Life is complete. It does not take truth plus the lie to make the Universal One. It does not take, spirit plus mortality to make God. There is but one Life. That Life cannot die - no part of it can die. There is but one truth - it cannot be divided. There is but one spirit, it fills the universe.

"Life is Earnest, Life is Real,
The Grave is not Its Goal;
Dust thou art to dust returneth,
Was not spoken of the Soul"

     My vision brings to me Fritzie as a soul with a body and not a lady with a soul. The, soul is life, truth and love. The soul is divine. Yes it is a spiritual being. Fritzie, the soul incarnated and created her body that she might express her Godship - her love - her life. The body is no part of the soul but only a creation of the soul. When she laid aside her body and we took it up and gave it to the grave, I did not feel like we were committing to the earth Fritzie or any part of her.
     Death has no sting - the grave no victory.
     We are all what Jesus and Fritzie are, whether we are conscious of it as Jesus was or unconscious of it as she was - mental creatures, divine beings. It cannot be otherwise if God is universal. It cannot be otherwise if there is but one God.  It cannot be otherwise if God is our life, our being - our locomotion. It is the mind of mortality that tells us God is divided.  It is the mind of the unawakened that can see or think it sees opposition to God. Let us with the mind of the soul know that God is all in all. With the mind of the Truth that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. With the mind of Love that it is law is so attractive that nothing can be detracted. With the mind of Life that there can be no death, with the mind of Christ that I and my father are one.

W. J. DEBARDELEBEN.
 

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Copyright permission granted to Theresa Carhart and her volunteers for printing
by The Democrat, Marlin, Falls Co., Texas