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THE CHEISTIAN HOPE 
 A STUDY IN THE DOCTEINE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
STUDIES IN THEOLOGY 
 
 12wj, cloth. 76 cenit net per tol. 
 
 NOW READY 
 A Critical Introduction to the New Testament 
 
 By Ahthur Samuel Peake, D.D. 
 
 Faitli and Its Psychology 
 
 By the Rev. WnxiAM R. Inge, D.D. 
 
 Philosophy and Religion 
 
 By the Rev. Hastings Rashsall, D.Litt. (Oxon), 
 D.C.L. (Durham), F.B.A. 
 
 Revelation and Inspiration 
 
 By the Rev. James Orr, D.D. 
 
 Christianity and Social Questions 
 
 By the Ven. W. Cunningham, F.B.A., D.D., D.Sc. 
 
 Christian Thought to the Reformation 
 
 By Heebekt B. Workman, D.Litt. 
 
 Protestant Thought before Kant 
 By A. C. McGiMEET, Ph.D., D.D. 
 
 The Christian Hope : A Study in the Doctrine of Im- 
 mortality 
 By William Adaus Brown, Ph.D., D.D. 
 
 IN PREPARATION 
 Redemption and Atonement 
 
 By the Right Rev. the Bishop of Gloucester. 
 
 A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament 
 
 By the Rev. George Buchanan Gray, D.D., D.Litt, 
 
 Christian Thought Since Kant 
 
 ^ the Rey. Edward' Caluwell Moore, D.D. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 A STUDY IN THE 
 DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ADAMS BROWN, Ph.D., D.D. 
 
 ROOSEVELT PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN THE UNION 
 
 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK CITY 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 *THB ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY*; 'CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN 
 
 OUTLINE,' ETC 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1912 
 s 
 
TO 
 MY FATHER 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 TO THE SERIES 
 
 Man has no deeper or wider interest than theology ; 
 none deeper, for however much he may change, he 
 never loses his love of the many questions it covers ; 
 and none wider, for under whatever law he may live 
 he never escapes from its spacious shade ; nor does 
 he ever find that it speaks to him in vain or uses a 
 voice that fails to reach him. Once the present 
 writer was talking with a friend who has equal fame 
 as a statesman and a man of letters, and he said, 
 "Every day I live. Politics, which are affairs of 
 Man and Time, interest me less, while Theology, 
 which is an affair of God and Eternity, interests me 
 more." As with him, so with many, though the many 
 feel that their interest is in theology and not in dogma. 
 Dogma, they know, is but a series of resolutions 
 framed by a council or parliament, which they do 
 not respect any the more because the parliament was 
 composed of ecclesiastically -minded persons ; while the 
 theology which so interests them is a discourse touching 
 Grod, though the Being so named is the God man con- 
 ceived as not only related to himself and his world but 
 also as rising ever higher with the notions of the self and 
 the world. Wise books, not in dogma but in theology, 
 may therefore be described as the supreme need of our 
 
GENERAL tNTKODUCTION 
 
 day, for only such can save us from much fanaticism 
 and secure us in the full possession of a sober and 
 sane reason. 
 
 Theology is less a single science than an ency- 
 clopaedia of sciences ; indeed all the sciences which 
 have to do with man have a better right to be called 
 theological than anthropological, though the man it 
 studies is not simply an individual but a race. Its 
 way of viewing man is indeed characteristic; from 
 this have come some of its brighter ideals and some of 
 its darkest dreams. The ideals are all either ethical 
 or social, and would make of earth a heaven, creating 
 fraternity amongst men and forming all states into a 
 goodly sisterhood ; the dreams may be represented by 
 doctrines which concern sin on the one side and the 
 will of God on the other. But even this will cannot 
 make sin luminous, for were it made radiant with 
 grace, it would cease to be sin. 
 
 These books then, — which have all to be written by 
 men who have lived in the full blaze of modern light, 
 — though without having either their eyes burned 
 out or their souls scorched into insensibility, — are in- 
 tended to present God in relation to Man and Man 
 in relation to God. It is intended that they begin, noi 
 in date of publication, but in order of thought, with a 
 Theological Encyclopaedia which shall show the circle 
 of sciences co-ordinated under the term Theology, 
 though all will be viewed as related to its central or 
 main idea. This relation of God to human know- 
 ledge will then be looked at through mind as a com- 
 munion of Deity with humanity, or God in fellowship 
 with concrete man. On this basis the idea of Revela- 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 tion will be dealt with. Then, so far as history and 
 philology are concerned, the two Sacred Books, which 
 are here most significant, will be viewed as the scholar, 
 who is also a divine, views them; in other words, 
 the Old and New Testaments, regarded as human 
 documents, will be criticised as a literature which 
 expresses relations to both the present and the future ; 
 that is, to the men and races who made the books, 
 as well as to the races and men the books made. 
 The Bible will thus be studied in the Semitic family 
 which gave it being, and also in the Indo-European 
 families which gave to it the quality of the life to 
 which they have attained. But Theology has to do 
 with more than sacred literature; it has also to do 
 with the thoughts and life its history occasioned. 
 Therefore the Church has to be studied and presented 
 as an institution which God founded and man ad- 
 ministers. But it is possible to know this Church 
 only through the thoughts it thinks, the doctrines 
 it holds, the characters and the persons it forms, the 
 people who are its saints and embody its ideals of 
 sanctity, the acts it does, which are its sacraments, and 
 the laws it follows and enforces which are its polity, 
 and the young it educates and the nations it directs 
 and controls. These are the points to be presented in 
 the volumes which follow, which are all to be occupied 
 with theology or the knowledge of God and His 
 ways. 
 
 A. M.F. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The ground covered in the following pages is so extensive 
 that it has been necessary to pass lightly over many 
 matters both important and interesting. The author has 
 tried ever to keep in mind the main purpose of the 
 book, which is to tell in as clear and simple language as 
 possible the story of the rise, history, and the present state 
 of the Christian hope of immortality. While no exhaustive 
 bibliography has been attempted, it is hoped that enough 
 has been given in the brief notes appended to the several 
 chapters, as well as in the supplementary list at the close 
 of the book, to point the way for further study to those 
 who desire it. This has been the easier because within 
 recent years a number of monographs have appeared 
 which treat in a suggestive way of selected portions of the 
 field. 
 
 Among the many to whom the thanks of the author are 
 due for stimulus and suggestion, he desires to make special 
 mention of his colleagues of the Faculty of the Union 
 Theological Seminary, whose counsel in the fields in which 
 they are specialists has been freely put at his disposal. 
 To Professor James Everett Frame, Professor George 
 A. Coe, and Dr. JuUus A. Bewer especially, he is under 
 obligation for helpful criticism. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 CHAP. PiOE 
 
 I. THE RBASON TOR TBLLIira THE 8T0ET ... 3 
 
 II. THE NATURE OP THE CHRISTIAN HOPE ... 9 
 
 1. The Place of Hope in Religion. 
 
 2. The Permanent Content of the Christian 
 
 Hope. 
 
 II 
 
 HISTORICAL 
 
 ill. EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF THE FUTURE LIFE . . 23 
 
 1. Life in an Underworld without Moral Dis- 
 
 tinctions. 
 
 2. Resurrection. 
 
 3. Judgment after Death. 
 
 IV. THE RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY IN 
 
 INDIA AND GREECE 35 
 
 1. Immortality in Greece. 
 
 2. Immortality in India, 
 
 V. THE PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 HOPE 51 
 
 1. The Early Conception of Sheol. 
 
 2. The Messianic Hope. 
 
 3. Intimations of Immortality. 
 
 4. The Doctrine of the Resurrection. 
 
 5. The Moralisation of Sheol. 
 
X THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 CHAP. Txat 
 
 VI. THE CONTRIBUTION OF JESUS TO THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 HOPE 74 
 
 1. The Method of Jesus. 
 
 2. The Gospel of the Kingdom. 
 
 3. Jesus' View of Immortality. 
 
 VII. THE EFFECTS OF THE RESURRECTION UPON THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN HOPE 89 
 
 1. The Fact of the Kesurrection. 
 
 2. The Meaning of the Kesurrection. 
 
 3. The Evidence of the Resurrection. 
 
 4. The Consequences of the Resurrection. 
 
 VIII. THE CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 HOPE 109 
 
 1. PremiUenarianism. 
 
 2. Purgatory. 
 
 3. Instant Sanctification at Death. 
 
 IX. PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR THE CHRISTIAN HOPE . 129 
 
 1. The Decline of Faith in Personal Im- 
 
 mortality. 
 
 2. Social Immortality. 
 
 3. The Immortality of Influence. 
 
 4. The Immortality of Value. 
 
 X. THE RECOVERY OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITT . . 145 
 
 1. The Bearing of Physical Science upon the 
 
 Hope of Immortality. 
 
 2. The Argument from Evolution. Conditional 
 
 Immortality. 
 
 3. The Spiritistic Hypothesis. 
 
 4. The Argument from Value. Universalism. 
 
 Ill 
 
 CONSTRUCTIVE 
 
 XI. THE DEFINITION OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE . . 167 
 
 1. Individual and Social Aspectsof the Christian 
 Hope. 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 2. The Permanent Content of the Christian 
 Hope. 
 
 XIL THE GROUNDS OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE , , 178 
 
 1. The Historical Argument. 
 
 2. The Philosophical Argument, 
 
 3. The Ethical Argument. 
 
 4. The Religious Argument. 
 
 XIII. THE VALUE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE . . , 192 
 
 1. The Value for the Individual. 
 
 2. The Value for Society. 
 
 APPENDIX. A Selected Bibliography . , . 203 
 
 IKDEX 209 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE EEASON FOE TELLING THE STORY 
 
 ' If a man die, shall he live again ? ' It is an old question, 
 but it has not yet lost its freshness. It has been asked 
 many times, and answered many times, and the answers 
 have often differed widely from one another. Sometimes 
 it has been answered with a confident Yes ; again with an 
 equally confident No ; often, and of late years increasingly, 
 in tones which, whether the conclusions they voice be Yes 
 or No, are alike lacking in confidence. Among the subjects 
 upon which the minds of men are most unsettled in our 
 day, this of the continued existence of the spirit after 
 death is certainly one. Who can tell what shall follow the 
 great change we call death ? Who can promise us definite 
 news from the undiscovered country ? How can we even 
 be sure that there is a country to be visited, or news which 
 would be worth the hearing, could some messenger be found 
 to bring us a trustworthy report ? 
 
 In all this there is nothing novel. Doubt is no modem 
 invention. In every age the note of question has made 
 itself heard. It is as old as the famous saying with which 
 Socrates concludes his Apology : ' The hour of departure 
 has arrived, and we go our ways, I to die, and you to Uve. 
 Which is better, God only knows.' It goes back further 
 etill to the day, hidden from us in the mists of a past which 
 
4 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 seems ever to recede, when man first faced the twin 
 mysteries, life and death, and asked himself in awe what 
 they meant. It is this ancient wonder, ever recurring 
 with each new generation, which gives point to Job's 
 question to the Almighty : If a man die, shall he hve 
 again ? 
 
 What is new is not the doubt, but the spirit of the doubters. 
 There are many people in our day to whom uncertainty as 
 to the possibility of answering Job's question no longer 
 causes distress. Our lack of knowledge is regarded with 
 complacency, or even welcomed with enthusiasm. It is 
 a good thing, we are told, that we can know nothing 
 definite of the life to come, for this helps us to concentrate 
 our attention upon the life that now is. It safeguards us 
 against unprofitable speculation. By robbing us of our 
 fancied security in a beneficent future when all shall be 
 made right, it keeps us from easy acquiescence in pre- 
 ventable wrongs. It reminds us that now is the appointed 
 time for work and for play, for study and for service, for 
 experience and for insight, for repentance and for conse- 
 cration, for justice, for Judgment and for mercy. What 
 to-morrow may bring forth no one can foretell. Let us 
 work, then, with our might, while our day lasts. 
 
 There is much that is noble in this mood. It accords 
 well with the active energetic spirit of the age. Among 
 those to whom it makes appeal are some of the finest and 
 most self-sacrificing men and women whom we know, 
 leaders in the battle against oppression and injustice, 
 lovers of knowledge and of beauty, and of every sweet and 
 true and humane thing. They are out of patience with 
 an other-worldly religion which is ready to make terms 
 with present evil at the cheap price of a salvation to be 
 enjoyed by and by. They wish a salvation for to-day, 
 and believe it is their part to be saviours. Such an example 
 is salutary. It is a Warning against sloth, a call to present 
 duty. 
 
I.] THE REASON FOR TELLING THE STORY 6 
 
 And yet we cannot help wondering whether this attitude, 
 appeaUng as it is, can permanently satisfy. There are 
 phases of experience — and these not the least important — 
 for which it makes no provision. I well recall an address 
 delivered by a well-known social worker only a few 
 months before his death, in which he voiced with rare 
 eloquence his generous impatience with any remote 
 Gospel which had no promise of present deliverance 
 for the oppressed and unfortunate, to whose service 
 his life was given. ' It is all very well to talk about 
 the Kingdom coming by and by,' he said. ' But I am 
 not willing to wait. I want my Kingdom to come in 
 my own lifetime, here and now.' Before the year 
 was over, the tireless brain was still, and the plans 
 that seemed so near accomplishment were left for other 
 hands to execute. Who of us has not felt this insis- 
 tent longing for some visible, tangible fruit of our plans — 
 all the more if, like the friend's in question, they were 
 not for ourselves, but for others ? And who of us has 
 not felt the shock of disappointment that comes with the 
 realisation that our ideal has outleaped the possibility of 
 present accomplishment, and that the consummation, if 
 at all, must be for other eyes and other years than ours ? 
 It is in such hours that the old question stirs again, and 
 we wonder whether in truth this life ends all, and long 
 for some assurance that the unanswered question has its 
 answer, and that that answer is Yes. It is in such hours 
 that the faith of those who have believed makes its 
 appeal to some deep-seated need within us, which we 
 had but half-suspected, and we wonder whether they 
 have reasons sufficient to justify their faith, and whether 
 those reasons may not be cogent for us. 
 
 It is, then, no mere academic question to which this 
 book is devoted, but one which addresses itself to a per- 
 manent human need. I propose to tell the story of the 
 most famous of all the answers that have been given to 
 
6 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oh. 
 
 Job's question. My theme is the Christian hope, as it has 
 expressed itself in faith in personal immortahty. I shall 
 try to define the nature of the hope, to explain its origin 
 and antecedents, to trace its history, and to show its 
 relation to other forms of hope, which have preceded or 
 accompanied it. I shall consider the different forms 
 which it has assumed at different periods in its history ; 
 the reasons which in our day have led many to abandon it, 
 the substitutes which have been proposed for it, and the 
 new attempts which have been made to restate and defend 
 it in the light of modem knowledge. Finally, I shall 
 consider the grounds on which it rests, the need which it 
 answers, and the reasons for believing that it is still a hope 
 which it is possible for a sensible man to cherish as an 
 assured conviction. 
 
 But, if the importance of the subject needs no defence, 
 a word may not be out of place as to the reasons for writing 
 another book about it. Of books on immortality there are 
 enough and to spare, and every volume that treats of the 
 Christian reUgion has its word to say upon the Christian 
 hope. The ivriter who proposes to add another volume 
 to the well-filled shelf may Justly be required to show 
 cause. 
 
 A word in defence might be said on general grounds. 
 In themes which deal with the ultimate mysteries one 
 cannot hope to have new ideas to impart. The value of 
 a book consists largely in the personal equation — the 
 extent to which the old question has made fresh appeal to 
 some new experience. It is so with all the deeper truths 
 of religion — the existence of God, the freedom and responsi- 
 bility of man, the possibility and reality of prayer, the 
 fruitfulness and beneficence of sacrifice. These are 
 themes on which one needs no apology for writing, for 
 they deal with questions of vital moment to everyday 
 living. Every man who has put them to the test in his 
 
1.] THE REASON FOR TELLING THE STORY 7 
 
 own experience has a right to expect that his fellows will 
 be interested to hear what he has to report. We do not 
 think it strange that each year sees a new anatomy, or a 
 new psychology. We ought not to be surprised that it 
 should bring a new treatise on the being of God or the 
 immortality of the soul. 
 
 But I have a more definite motive for taking up my 
 pen than the desire to express my personal conviction on 
 a theme of absorbing human interest. I believe that there 
 is real need of a book in English which shall cover in brief 
 compass and in simple, untechnical language the subjects 
 which I have outlined. The changes which have been 
 wrought in our estimate of Christianity by modem critical 
 thought are nowhere more apparent than in connection 
 with its eschatology. In place of a simple consistent 
 behef, historical research shows us a complex history, in 
 which many different strands cross and recross. Greece 
 has contributed its quota, as well as Israel, and the differ- 
 ent threads have been woven and rewoven into different 
 patterns in the loom of the years. Where there are so 
 many figures in the picture there is need of an interpreter. 
 It is my hope that this book may serve as such a guide to 
 those who are interested to follow the history of the 
 Christian hope of immortaUty, as modem science enables 
 us to retrace it. It is a story of wonderful fascination, for 
 it reveals to us the working of some of the greatest intel- 
 lects that have ever lived, upon one of the most enthralling 
 problems that has ever challenged the intellect. But it 
 shows us also — and this is even more important — the way 
 in which the human spirit has triumphed over intellectual 
 difficulty, and won peace and security through faith in a 
 God whose love and power extend beyond the grave. 
 
 What is offered, then, in the pages that follow is a 
 history of the Christian hope. And yet my purpose is 
 not merely historical. I believe that faith in immortaUty, 
 as Jesus has enabled men to conceive it, is an enlarging 
 
8 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oh 
 
 and ennobling faith, without which life must necessarily 
 be the poorer. If the story these pages tell shall enable 
 any one who has lost this faith to recover it, or any one 
 who holds it insecurely to grasp it more firmly, it will 
 have accomplished its purpose. 
 
u.] THE NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 1. The Place of Hope in Religion 
 
 Cheistiaitity has no monopoly of hope. Every great 
 religion has been in a real sense a religion of hope. This 
 is true even of Buddhism, which is often cited as the con- 
 clusive example of a religion of despair. If it seems so to 
 us, trained through centuries of activity to regard life as 
 the supreme good, that is only because we have not learned 
 to put ourselves in the position of its devotees, and to 
 realise the situation in which they found themselves when 
 Gautama first preached to his disciples his gospel of deliver- 
 ance through utter passivity and renunciation, even to 
 the renunciation of life itself. Picture to yourself the 
 prospect to which the Hindu looked forward in the sixth 
 century before our era. He was bound forever to the 
 wheel of life, which in its ceaseless revolution carried bin 
 from one existence to another in never-ending succession. 
 What the new life was to be which would succeed the 
 present he could not tell. It might be that of beast, or 
 bird, or insect — the tiger in the jungle, the seagull on the 
 wave, the fly buzzing over its carrion. He might awake 
 as a noxious serpent, feared and hated, with a price set 
 upon his head. He might live again as a beast of burden, 
 the slave of some ignorant or brutal master. He might 
 inhabit the body of some deformed or crippled specimen of 
 humanity — the beggar nursing his sores by the wayside, 
 
10 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [cH. 
 
 eking out a precarious livelihood from the charity of the 
 passers-by. The one thing certain was that the life to 
 come would be no finality. It would be but one in a chain 
 of lives, each linked to its predecessor by an inexorable 
 necessity, each the payment of debts incurred in some 
 previous existence, the atonement of sins, the very memory 
 of which had vanished from the mind. Ever weariness and 
 pain, ever longing unsatisfied, desire unfulfilled, ever a 
 certain fearful looking for a future big with possibilities of 
 nameless terror: — such was life as it looked to the con- 
 temporaries of the Buddha, and to such his message of the 
 possibility of a dehverance from life through the renuncia- 
 tion of desire opened the door of a great hope. If it were 
 not for this fact, Gautama might have left a great name in 
 the history of philosophy ; but he would not have foimded 
 a religion, for religion everywhere and always lives by 
 hope. 
 
 But if hope is a common feature of all rehgions, the 
 nature of the hope fostered by particular religions differs 
 widely. Sometimes it is confined to this hfe, and exhausts 
 itself in the expectation of earthly prosperity. The 
 worshipper hopes for success in the enterprises undertaken 
 or planned, for victory over his enemies, for fertile fields 
 and abundant harvests, for a fruitful wife and a quiverful 
 of children, for health and strength and many days. It 
 is the hope which Job's friends hold up to him as the 
 natural lot of the righteous man, and which many of the 
 Psalms celebrate with a lyric beauty which is still unsur- 
 passed in its appeal : — 
 
 ' Blessed is every one that feareth Jehovah, that walketh in 
 
 his ways. 
 For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands. 
 Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. 
 Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, in the innermost 
 
 parts of thine house : 
 Thy children hke olive plants, round about thy table. 
 
n.] THE NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 11 
 
 Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth 
 
 Jehovah. 
 Jehovah shall bless thee out of Zion : 
 And thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of 
 
 thy life. 
 Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children.' (Ps. cxxviii.) 
 
 Or again, the social aspects of the hope may be more 
 prominent, as in the Messianic expectation of Israel. 
 Here it is the nation rather than the individual which is 
 the centre of interest, and the future to which the wor- 
 shipper looks forward with pious confidence, is that of the 
 renewed and re-established state. It is the peace of 
 Jerusalem for which he prays, and the prosperity of her 
 palaces in which he exults. 
 
 'And it shall come to pass in the latter days that the 
 mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established in the top of the 
 mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; and all nations 
 shall flow into it. And many peoples shall go and say, Come 
 ye and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house 
 of the God of Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, and we 
 will walk in his paths : for out of Zion shall go forth the law, 
 and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.' (Isa. ii. 2-3.) 
 
 Or, it may be that thought turns inward to the deeper 
 needs of the spirit — the ceaseless conflict between good 
 and evil which has its seat in the heart of man. The 
 deliverance here desired is from this internecine conflict, 
 and the hope is of an inner harmony brought about 
 through the complete conformity of the will to the ideal. 
 It is the hope of Paul in Romans, when, wearied by his 
 long struggle for a legal righteousness which he despairs 
 of attaining, he cries out in despair : ' Who shall dehver 
 me from the body of this death ? ' and finds his answer 
 in the new law of the Spirit of hfe in Christ Jesus, which 
 even here and now has made him free from the law of sin 
 and of death (Rom. viii. 2) 
 
12 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [CH. 
 
 Or still again, as in the special case which interests us 
 here, the span of life may seem too narrow to hold all 
 that the desire of man would crowd into it, and hope may 
 reach out beyond the grave to claim for its own possession 
 the Umitless region which the passage of this ancient 
 barrier opens to the imagination of man. Here, for the 
 first time, room is found for the complete possession of all 
 the things hoped for here, but unattained ; room for the 
 satisfaction of individual desires, so cruelly mocked by 
 disease and famine, poverty and oppression, so untimely 
 cut short by the summons that always comes too soon ; 
 room for the realisation of the social ideal, so continually 
 postponed, so inadequately fulfilled, even when it is pos- 
 sible to speak of fulfilment at all ; room, most of all, for 
 victory in the moral struggle which here so often ends in 
 defeat, or, at best, in a victory which is half defeat. 
 
 Finally, as in the Buddhist hope, already referred to, 
 satisfaction may be sought in rest rather than in activity. 
 What profit, one may ask, is there in life with its ceaseless 
 alternations of satiety and want, its ever-recurring suc- 
 cession of desires and disappointments, of aspirations and 
 failures ? What reason is there for believing that the 
 future, however extended, can furnish what the past has 
 failed to provide ?' If hope is not to delude itself with 
 empty dreams, some more radical solution must be sought. 
 Not self-expression, but self-renunciation, is the path of 
 peace. What is needed for the soul's salvation is not 
 simply deliverance from individual desires, but from desire 
 itself ; not a longer term of hfe, but a different kind of life, 
 if indeed one can call life at all that utter passivity and 
 emptiness of self which is enjoyed in the dreamless sleep of 
 Nirvana. 
 
 It is, then, a many-coloured picture which meets us when 
 we retrace the history of man's hope, a picture as varied 
 as the desires and longings of the painter, and that is 
 only another way of saying, as various as the desires and 
 
n.] THE NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 13 
 
 longings of man himself. Our special theme is but a 
 chapter, although the most important, of the great book of 
 hope at which man has been at work siace the beginning 
 of his life on earth. 
 
 It is my purpose in the pages that follow to tell the story 
 of the Christian hope as it has expressed itself in faith in 
 personal immortality. It is important, therefore, for us 
 at the outset to understand just what this is, and wherein 
 it difEers from other forms of belief in a life after death. 
 
 2. The Permanent Content of the Christian Hope 
 
 By the Christian hope, for the purposes of the present 
 discussion, we shall understand that form of hope for the 
 future of the human spirit after death which owes its 
 origin to the life,- teaching, resurrection and continued 
 influence of Jesus, the founder of the Christian religion, 
 and which has maintained itself in some form in the 
 experience of His disciples ever since. It is a definite 
 hope in that it relates itself to the life and teaching of a 
 definite historic personality, and may be tested continu- 
 ally by reference to Him. But it is not rigid or inflexible. 
 It has expressed itself in different forms from time to 
 time, as it has come into contact with other forms of hope 
 and been modified consciously or unconsciously by the 
 influences which have given birth to them. So extensive 
 has been this influence, so numerous these points of con- 
 tact, that it is not always easy to tell where the common 
 human inheritance ends and the distinctive contribution 
 of Christianity begins. Like the tree that draws its 
 nourishment from mother earth, transmuting into new 
 forms and uses the moisture which it draws up from the 
 mould of the decaying vegetation of the past, Christianity 
 is rooted in the soil of humanity, and appropriates to its 
 own purposes the ideas and customs which constitute its 
 spiritual antecedents and environment. As the immanent 
 
14 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [cH. 
 
 life of the tree gives vitality to the materials from which it 
 draws its subsistence, so the genius of Christianity renews 
 the life of these ancient beliefs and practices by making 
 them partakers of its own immortal youth. The story of 
 the Christian hope is thus the story of a constant assimila- 
 tion and transmutation, a process begun nineteen centuries 
 ago and still going on. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is a unity in the process, and it is 
 important to recognise it. The Christian hope may 
 change its form, but it is a change within limits. There is 
 a Christian hope, and there is a hope which is not Christian, 
 and it is possible to distinguish between them. In the 
 present chapter we propose to point out the distinguish- 
 ing characteristics of the Christian hope, in order that we 
 may be able to see wherein it differs from other forms of 
 hope which have made their appearance in human history. 
 
 In the first place, then, the Christian hope anticipates 
 the survival of the individual personality after death in 
 a form which makes possible the continuity of conscious 
 moral hfe. It assumes the immortality of the soul — using 
 the word soul in the familiar untechnical sense, to denote 
 iihe self-conscious personal spirit, the subject of hope and 
 fear and desire, of joy and grief, of love and hate, of worship 
 and aspiration, of consecration and communion, in a word, 
 of moral and spiritual experience in all its forms. The 
 Christian hope is of the continued existence of the self- 
 conscious ego, the I that wills and thinks and feels and 
 sins and repents and is conscious through it all of capa- 
 cities and aspirations as yet unrealised, too great indeed 
 to be capable of realisation within the span of years ope 
 to our vision here. 
 
 There are many perplexing questions which suggest 
 themselves as soon as we attempt to define the mysterious 
 thing we call personality. What are its constituerit 
 elements ? Are they two or three ? Is man body and 
 soul simply, or body, soul and spirit ? Does personality 
 
n.] THE NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 16 
 
 involve the continued union of body and spirit, or is it 
 the attribute of spirit alone, capable of perpetuation with- 
 out the material basis with which it is always associated 
 in our personal experience ? These are questions which 
 will engage our attention as we go on, but they need not 
 detain us here. The Christian hope is compatible with 
 many different answers to these questions. It has co- 
 existed with more than one psychology, and may prove 
 able to make itself at home with still others, of which we 
 have as yet no knowledge. But, whatever the view taken 
 of the nature of self-conscious spirit and its relation to the 
 physical organism in which it has its present home, it is 
 the spirit which is the subject of the Christian hope. The 
 immortality for which the Christian looks is personal 
 immortality. 
 
 Again, the Christian hope is social. While it postulates 
 individual immortahty, its primary interest is not in the 
 individual, but in society. The Ultimate goal of faith is 
 the coming of God's Kingdom, and the Kingdom is a 
 community of individuals living together under the law 
 of love in the spirit of brotherhood. As the Christian 
 ideal for the individual in this life is not self-centred 
 righteousness, but sympathetic fellowship, so the Christian 
 interest in the continuance of the individual after death is 
 that he may take his place and fulfil his function in the 
 life of the brotherhood. The two sides are complementary. 
 Each assumes the other ; neither can exist alone. If ever 
 a man felt the zest of life, it was the Apostle Paul. But 
 Uving, to Paul, meant serving, here and hereafter. ' For 
 what,' he asks his Thessalonian friends, 'is our hope or 
 Joy or crown of glorying ? Are not even ye, before our 
 Lord Jesus at His coming ? For ye are our glory and our 
 joy ' (1 Thess. ii. 19). A lonely immortahty would be no 
 object of hope to the Apostle. The heaven to which he 
 looks forward includes his friends at Thessalonica and 
 Corinth, as well as himself. 
 
16 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [CH. 
 
 It is important to emphasise this aspect of the Christian 
 hope because it is so often overiooked. The hope of 
 immortality is contrasted as a matter of individual con- 
 cern with the social gospel which has primarily to do with 
 the conditions of life here. It is well to remember, there- 
 fore, that this contrast is foreign to primitive Christianity. 
 The individual hope is an integral part of the social gospel, 
 and both alike have reference to life here as well as to the 
 life beyond the grave. 
 
 Here again, there are many perplexing questions which 
 may be asked as to the nature and manner of the social 
 consummation. When will the Kingdom come, and how 
 and where ? What will be the scene of the redeemed 
 society ? Here, or in some other world ? What will be 
 the relation of the new tasks and experiences to those 
 already undertaken and undergone here ? These questions 
 have not always been answered in the same way. The 
 difference between the answers given and the reasons for 
 them will engage us by and by. Here we are concerned 
 only with the common features of the Christian hope and, 
 among these, the relation of the hope of individual per- 
 fection to the social purpose of the Kingdom is one. 
 
 In the third place, the Christian hope is a religious hope, 
 that is to say, a hope which has its root in an underlying 
 faith in God. It springs from confidence that man is a 
 child of God, and that the Father who made man in His 
 own image will not sufier the child of His Spirit to perish. 
 
 This, too, is of fundamental importance for the defini- 
 tion of our theme. \The Christian hope is not primarily 
 the outcome of philosophical speculation, but the creation 
 of religious faithTj The forms which it has assumed from 
 time to time have been determined by contemporary 
 theories of the nature of reality, the constitution of the 
 world, and the relation of body and spirit. Its more 
 enlightened holders have gladly welcomed the arguments 
 which philosophy could bring to the support of their faith, 
 
n.] THE NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 17 
 
 but the faith itself has had a deeper and a more abiding 
 spring. It was the outgrowth of the soul's communion 
 with God, and stands or falls with the Christian view of 
 the relation between the divine Father and His human 
 child. 
 
 We have spoken of the Christian view, and the word 
 suggests a final characteristic of the hope which we are 
 studying, which needs attention at the outset, namely, 
 its close connection with the historic Jesus. It is that 
 form of hope which owes its origin to the life, teaching 
 and especially to the resurrection of Jesus, and which is 
 distinguished from other forms of belief in immortality 
 by the central place which it gives Him in its thought of 
 the future. 
 
 There are two ways in which the Christian's attitude to 
 Christ affects his belief in immortality. In the first place, 
 it defines the nature of his hope ; and, in the second place, 
 it reinforces his confidence in it. 
 
 I say, it defines the nature of his hope. It is the hope of 
 continued fellowship with and ultimate conformity to 
 Jesus Christ. Before Jesus came, men had believed in a 
 life after death, but not in the kind of life in which He 
 taught them to believe. He set the standard for their 
 thought of the future. Dying means to Paul going to be 
 with Christ, which is far better (Phil. i. 23). It means to 
 enjoy uninterrupted communion with the divine Saviour 
 and Friend whose fellowship gives life here its highest 
 charm. It means to be conformed to Him in character, 
 one with Him in purpose, dominated by His spirit, member 
 of a society in which He is everywhere recognised as 
 Master. ' We shall be hke him,' writes John, ' for we 
 shall see him as he is ' (1 John iii. 2). The goal of the 
 Christian hope is Christlikeness. 
 
 And, as Jesus' character defines the nature of the 
 Christian hope, so His personality is the ground of 
 Christian confidence. By this it is not meant, as is often 
 
 B 
 
18 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [cH. 
 
 asserted, that the Resurrection of Jesus is the only con- 
 vincing argument for immortality. Men have believed 
 in immortality who never knew of the resurrection. But 
 it is meant that faith in the particular kind of immortality 
 to which the Christian looks forward finds its strongest 
 support in the life, character and continued influence of 
 Jesus. It is hterally true of Him, as the Apostle says, 
 that He brought life and immortality to light through 
 the Gospel (2 Tim. i. 10). In His own person He showed 
 men what life at its best may be, and so made faith in its 
 endless continuance easy and natural. 
 
 This is a point of the highest importance. Too often in 
 the past the contrast between the present and the future 
 has been imduly exaggerated. The Ufe after death has 
 been isolated from all relation to the present, and defined 
 purely by contrast. The result is a certain hoUowness 
 and unreahty in the picture which all the glowing imagery 
 of Apocalypse, biblical or uninspired, has been powerless 
 J; to warm into the semblance of a true life. How empty 
 ' and shallow the heaven to which we have often been 
 asked to look forward, a heaven of untroubled bliss, with 
 nothing to achieve and nothing to anticipate, a heaven 
 freed from suffering indeed, but free also from the struggle 
 of which suffering is bom, a heaven in which there is 
 nothing to do but to enjoy, year after year, and seon after 
 seon, through a monotonous eternity. It is not strange 
 that men and women of high purpose and generous resolu- 
 tion should find httle in such a future that is tempting. 
 
 We need to remember, then, that this isolation of the 
 future from the present is not Christian. Our hope for 
 the life to come is not different from our hope for the life 
 here. There is but one Ufe here and hereafter, and the 
 change we call death is but opening the door from one room 
 to another in the Father's house. All the elements which 
 we have distinguished in our analysis of the idea of immor- 
 tality are present in our ideal for the present life. Indeed, 
 
n.] THE NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 19 
 
 it is the fact of their presence here which makes possible 
 their projection upon the larger canvas. The ideal of 
 individual perfection sets the task for our daily liv ing 
 Every victory over self, every true impulse loyally followed, 
 each day's growth in clearness of vision, definiteness of 
 purpose, warmth of sympathy and assured self-control, 
 is a foretaste of what we may expect by and by. The 
 ideal of brotherly service, too, is an ideal for to-day. The 
 Kingdom in its completeness may belong to the future, 
 but it has its beginnings here and now. We pray that 
 God's will may be done on earth as it is done in heaven, 
 and we are to work for the answering of our prayers. 
 Communion with God, too, is a present experience. We 
 believe that we shall have fellowship with Gc-\ beyond the 
 grave, because we have felt His creative Spirit at work in 
 our lives here and now. Christlikeness, finally, the most 
 distinctive, as it is the most difficult, element in the 
 Christian hope, owes its place in our thought of the future 
 to its anticipation here. Fellowship with our Master is 
 one of the most familiar facts of the religious hfe. He sets 
 us a model which we are to imitate in our own hves ; His 
 purpose gives definiteness to our social effort and rein- 
 forces our flagging zeal. His attainment sustains us in 
 hours of disappointment, and makes it possible for us to 
 believe, in spite of failures apparently the most irremedi- 
 able, that His plan for us and for the world shall yet be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 So much, then, in definition of our theme. It is no 
 narrow or insignificant one. It is not a httle section of 
 Christianity which can be isolated from the rest, as one 
 might close a room in a house, leaving all the rest 
 unaffected. It is that without which all the rest would 
 be marred and incomplete, a beginning without an end, 
 a root without a blossom, a longing without its satisfaction, 
 an ideal without its fulfilment. 
 
II 
 
 HISTORICAL 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF THE FUTURE LIFE 
 1. Life in an Underworld without Moral Distinctions 
 
 In order to begin our story at the beginning, we must go 
 back many centuries, and put ourselves in the position of 
 primitive man,i as he looked forward to the great change 
 we call death. This is not easy to do, for many of the 
 ideas which are inost famihar to us had no place in his 
 thinking, and it is only by an effort of the imagination 
 that we can overcome the difficulty and think ourselves 
 back into the conceptions which filled his miad, and in 
 which his thought found itself at home. 
 
 Fortunately, there is no lack of evidence at our disposal. 
 We have only to open our Homer or, for that matter, the 
 Psalms, in order to have the essential features of the picture 
 brought vividly before us. Let us take the former as our 
 guide, since we shall be less likely to be confused by ideas 
 read in as a result of later associations.^ 
 
 For one thing, the contrast between matter and spirit, 
 which is axiomatic for all our thinking, does not exist for 
 Homer. Everything that is real is physical, that is to 
 
 ' By primitive man, as the term is used here, I do not refer to the pre- 
 historic man of the anthropologiats, but only to man in that comparatiTely 
 early stage of his development at which we find him when our assured 
 knowledge of his history begins. 
 
 2 On the Homeric idea of the future life cf. Salmond, Christian Doctrine 
 of Immortality, p. 116 sq. ; Adam, Religioua Teachers of Greece, p. 54 sq., 
 and references there given. Os the development of thought in Homer cf. 
 also Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, pp. 116-208, p. 232 tq. 
 
 23 
 
24 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 say, it can be seen or heard or felt or touched or handled. 
 There is a difierence, of course, between soul and body, 
 but it is not the difference between the material and the 
 immaterial, but between the more or the less real. The 
 soul is not less material than the body, but it is thioner, 
 less substantial, less capable of exerting force, or resisting 
 pressure, less capable, in a word, of doing the things in 
 which a vigorous personality delights. Indeed, if one had 
 to choose between body and soul for the seat of what we 
 call personality, it is to the former rather than the latter 
 that we must look. We read in the Iliad that the deadly 
 wrath of the son of Peleus despatched to Hades many 
 stalwart souls of heroes, but themselves (i.e. their bodies) 
 he gave to be a prey to dogs.* The passage, though of 
 comparatively late origin, perfectly reproduces the point 
 of view of primitive man. The soul is not the man ; it 
 is only his shadow or image. The real man who lives and 
 loves and desires and achieves and enjoys, is the moving, 
 breathing presence which you can touch and embrace and, 
 if need be, if you are strong enough, destroy. When 
 Achilles left Hector's dead body on the plains of Troy, in 
 a true sense he put an end to the man himself. 
 
 This does not mean that Hector's existence ceased at 
 death. That would have been a fate to contemplate with 
 resignation, but it was not the fate in store for the dying 
 hero. The soul still survived to carry on its independent 
 existence as best it could without the help and protection 
 afforded by the body, and the accounts which have come 
 down to us from our earliest records of the experiences of 
 the bodiless soul are of almost unrelieved gloom. 
 
 In a famous passage in the eleventh book of the Odyssey 
 Homer describes the meeting of Odysseus with the dead 
 Achilles. When that wily adventurer addresses to hia 
 former companion and fellow-warrior some word of pioua 
 consolation he is met by the hopeless answer : ' Speak not 
 
 1 Iliad, I. 1 sq., cf. xxiii., 106 sg. 
 
m.] EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF THE FUTURE LIFE 25 
 
 consolingly of death to me, O great Odysseus ; sooner 
 would I be the slave of another in the house of a penniless 
 wight who had no great livelihood, than king of all the 
 dead ' {Od., xi. 488 sq.). 
 
 How could it be otherwise to a man who associated life 
 with bodily activity ? When Achilles lost his body he 
 lost all that made life worth living to him. What re- 
 mained was but a phantom of the living man. The bodi- 
 less soul is described in the Odyssey as a shadow, a vapour, 
 a smoke which eludes contact. It lacks the qualities of 
 resistance and of solidity which characterise the present 
 body. When the soul of Patroclus met Achilles in a vision 
 it was ' in all things like the man himself, in stature and 
 fair eyes and voice, and the raiment on his body was the 
 same,' but when Achilles ' reached forth his hands he 
 grasped him not, for, like a vapour, the soul was gone 
 beneath the earth with a faint shriek ' (Iliad, xxiii. 66 
 sq. ; 99 sq.). 
 
 Even more important for our present purpose than the 
 unsubstantial character of the life after death is its com- 
 plete lack of moral meaning. The values which give worth 
 to life have disappeared. There is indeed a realm of the 
 dead, Erebus, where the shades live together under their 
 king. Hades,* but it is marked by barrenness and gloom. 
 Its dwellings are ' dank and gruesome, the abomination of 
 the very gods.' Its meadows are of asphodel, ' the dreariest 
 of plants.' ^ Its groves shed their fruit before the season. 
 In this dark and desolate region the souls of the departed 
 flit to and fro like shades. ' Their very utterance is but 
 the shadow or ghost of that which we call voice. It is 
 a shrill attenuated shriek, a timorous inarticulate cry, 
 compared by Homer, when it issues from many ghostly 
 
 ' This conception of an underworld in which the dead dwell together is an 
 advance upon an earlier view, in which the dead are conceived as haunting 
 their graves, and enjoying certain magic powers which render them objects 
 of worship. For our present purpose, however, the difference is negligible. 
 
 ' Adam, Religious Teachers of Oreece, p. 67. 
 
26 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [cH. 
 
 throats at once, to the squeaking of a flock of bats when it 
 is disturbed.' ^ The earthly diSerences of rank and task 
 are indeed preserved ; the king remains a king, the servant 
 a servant, the hunter a hunter, the judge a judge, but the 
 distinction is only in name. So far as the real values of 
 life are concerned, all alike remain on the same level of 
 monotony and emptiness. In the underworld there is 
 nothing to be done or to be achieved, or to be enjoyed.^ 
 
 Substitute Sheol for Erebus, and you might transfer 
 Homer's words almost without change to tl^e Old Testa- 
 ment. Here, too, we have the conception of the under- 
 world as a land of darkness and of the shadow of death, of 
 the spirits of the dead as shades leading an empty desolate 
 existence, without hope and joy, of the obliteration of aU 
 the distinctions which separate men on earth, and, worst 
 of all, of the severance of the soul from its God. ' What 
 profit is there in my blood when I go down to the pit ? ' asks 
 the Psalmist. ' Shall the dust praise thee ? Shall it declare 
 thy truth ? ' (Ps. xxx. 9). 
 
 It is difficult to conceive a greater contrast than between 
 this gloomy prospect and the glad anticipation with which 
 the Christian contemplates the life to come. In the one 
 case death is something to be feared ; in the other, to be 
 welcomed. In the former case, it is the object of dread ; 
 in the latter, of hope. How was the transition made ? 
 By what steps did the human spirit free itself from the 
 pall of dread which darkened its thought of the future, and 
 rise to a faith in the persistence of moral values after death ? 
 
 There are three different paths which the human spirit 
 has followed in its quest for a Hf e worth Uving after death. 
 One path leads back again to this pleasant world of earthly 
 
 1 Adam, Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 68. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 60. The reference to the Elysian fields in Od. rv. 559 sq. is to be 
 understood, not so much as a description of the state of the dead, as a 
 promise of escape from death, granted to exceptionally favoured individuals, 
 Tartarus, on the other hand, 'the prototype of the Miltonic hell,' ... is 
 'appropriated to the generation of gods whom Zeus dethroned.' Cf. II. viii. 
 18 «2. ; 478 sq. 
 
m.] EARLY CONCEPTION OF THE FUTURE LIFE 27 
 
 experience. It is the doctrine of the resurrection. A 
 second finds in the underworid moral values no less real 
 and no less enduring than those met with here. It is the 
 conception of a judgment in the realm of the dead. The 
 third ascends the unsealed peaks where the human spirit 
 had its birth, and finds an unsuspected kinship between 
 the soul and its Maker, which warrants behef in its endless 
 existence. It is the doctrine of the immortahty of the 
 soul. All three of these had been travelled centuries 
 before Jesus was bom, and the results to which they lead 
 constitute the remoter preparation for the Christian hope. 
 What these results were, and what was their relation to 
 the more immediate preparation for the Christian hope 
 in the reUgion of Israel, we have now to inquire. 
 
 The inquiry is not a simple one. All beginnings are 
 obscure, and nowhere more so than in the story of man's 
 thinking about the hfe after death. The records that 
 have come down to us are comparatively late, and, in the 
 form in which we now have them earlier ideas are overlaid 
 with later speculation. Often independent lines of thought 
 meet and mingle in the same religion, and we cannot 
 certainly tell on which side the priority belongs. Fortun- 
 ately, however, we are not interested in the details. The 
 points which are of importance for our present purpose 
 are sufficiently clear. 
 
 It is clear, in the first place, that the motive which led 
 to the quest was a moral motive. All three of the different 
 forms of thought which we have distinguished have this 
 in common, that they give the life after death a moral 
 meaning. It is a Hfe of ethical readjustment, of retribution 
 for deeds done in the body, with a double issue of good or 
 evil, as the case may be. Where we can follow the history 
 in detail, as we can, for example, in the reUgions of Persia 
 and of Greece, we see that the impelling cause of the new 
 faith was the belief in a moral government of the universe 
 so comprehensive that its effects could not be hmited to 
 
28 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 this life, but must extend beyond the grave and afFect the 
 character and determine the destiny of the hfe there as 
 well. 
 
 The form which the new hope assumed in detail was 
 determined by the prevailing philosophy. Where reality 
 was conceived in physical terms, as in the unreflective 
 world in which Homer's heroes move, the life after death 
 is pictured in terms of bodily activity, and hope looks 
 forward either to a resurrection from the underworld, or 
 to a material existence in the realm of the dead. Where 
 the inner world of spirit has been discovered, and reality 
 is defined as thought, or feeling, or will, the body is given 
 a very different place in the picture of the future. It is 
 no longer a help, but a hindrance. It is a prison-house 
 from which man desires to escape to the free life of the 
 spirit, a life transcending the bounds of time and space, 
 eternal and unchanging as that of God Himself. All 
 these different conceptions reappear in Christian thought, 
 and have affected the statement of the Christian hope. 
 
 2. Eesurredion 
 
 Of the three diSerent ways of conceiving the life after 
 death, the simplest in form, if not the earliest in time, is 
 the resurrection. To understand it we must go back to 
 the primitive conception of death, of which we have 
 already spoken, and conceive the soul as living its aimless, 
 hopeless existence because it lacks the physical organism 
 through which alone it can achieve a life which is worthy 
 of the name. If escape is to be had from such a future, 
 body and spirit must be reunited, and this reunion is 
 effected by the resurrection. 
 
 Examples of such a view meet us in the miracles of 
 resurrection recorded in the Old Testament {e.g. the raising 
 of the widow's son by Elijah, 1 Kings xvii. 21 ; or of the 
 Shunammite's son by Elijah, 2 Kings iv. 32-5). Here 
 
m.] EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF THE FUTURE LIFE 29 
 
 the spirit returns to the same conditions which it left at 
 death. But such instances are isolated and sporadic, and 
 involve at most a postponement of death, not its defeat. 
 
 It is otherwise where the anticipation of resurrection 
 becomes general. Here the reunion of soul and body is 
 regarded as introducing man into a new and higher stage 
 of life. It opens the door to Joys which are impossible 
 here under the limitations of sufiering and sorrow to which 
 this mortal life is heir. Yet the ideal remains essentially 
 an ideal of sense. The resurrection is desired because it 
 promises the gratification of those common human needs 
 of food and shelter and sex which fill so large a place in the 
 life of the earth. We have a relic of this early view in the 
 prophecy attributed by Papias to Jesus concerning the 
 remarkable fertility of the soil in the Messianic kingdom, 
 when vine and wheat shall yield ten thousandfold ' and the 
 other fruits, seeds and the grass shall produce in similar 
 proportions, and all the animals, using these fruits which 
 are products of the soil, shall become in their turn peace- 
 able and harmonious, obedient to men in all subjection.' ^ 
 
 With deepening moral insight this early interest wanes. 
 The contrast between this life and the next is emphasised. 
 Resurrection is not simply a return to this present life 
 even under the most favourable conditions. It is the 
 entrance of the spirit upon a new environment with an 
 organism fitted to new uses and new experiences. To 
 Paul the body that is raised is not the body that was laid 
 aside ; it is a spiritual body, incorruptible and glorious. 
 
 It is in the latter form rather than the former that the 
 doctrine of the resurrection meets us in the religions which 
 have contributed most directly to the development of the 
 Christian hope. Here the primitive view of death with 
 which our story began has long been outgrown. The moral 
 values which give meaning to life have made their presence 
 felt in the underworld as well, and the reason why the 
 
 1 The passage is cited in full on p. 113. 
 
30 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 resurrection is desired is not so much that it makes pos- 
 sible a moral life after death for the individual as that it 
 opens a way by which he may share the social consumma- 
 tion in which God's purpose for mankind on earth 
 culminates. This is notably true in the religion of Persia, 
 that one of the great religions in which the doctrine of 
 the resurrection first meets us in a fully developed form.* 
 
 The Persian religion, as is well known, is an uncom- 
 promising ethical dualism. Two rival powers wage 
 ceaseless warfare for the mastery of the world, Ormuzd 
 (Ahura-Mazda), the ruler of the forces of righteousness, 
 and Ahriman (Angro-Mainyush), the leader of the hosts 
 of evil. The scene of their warfare is the soul of the 
 individual man, and the test which determines the issue 
 of the contest is his conduct during his Ufe on earth. 
 When a man dies, the reckoning of his life is taken. The 
 spirits of good and evil contend for the possession of his 
 soul. If the good prevail, he makes his way to Paradise, 
 the dwelling-place of the good. If, on the other hand, 
 the evil dominate, he sinks into the abyss which is tenanted 
 by the spirits of evil. ' If the balance is equal and the 
 judgment indeterminate, there is an intermediate state, in 
 which he is reserved tiU the decision of the last day.' ^ 
 
 But this contest for the possession of the individual is 
 only a stage in a greater contest whose scene is the uni- 
 verse itself. Society, as well as the individuals which 
 compose it, is the scene of this momentous struggle. Often 
 it seems as if the forces of evil would prevail, but in the end 
 they are destined to defeat. There is to be a final conflict 
 in which the hosts of good will triumph over the evil spirits. 
 There will be a universal judgment, as a result of which 
 all the wicked are to be cast into hell, and the good received 
 into the fellowship of the god of hght and into the happi- 
 ness of his everlasting kingdom. 
 
 1 On the eachatology of Persia, cf. Salmond, op. cit. p. 97 sq. , and literature 
 cited in the Appendix. 
 ' Salmond, op. cit. p. 107. 
 
III.] EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF THE FUTURE LIFE 31 
 
 It is in connection with this belief in a final judgment that 
 the doctrine of the resurrection makes its appearance in 
 Persia. The great struggle which is to issue in the final 
 triumph of the good is inaugurated by the advent of the 
 Messiah, the way for whose coming has already been pre- 
 pared by two prophets. At his coming the dead are to be 
 raised up, after which will follow the general judgment, 
 with its separation of the evil from the good. In the end 
 all evil will be destroyed, hell itself brought to nought, and 
 the earth renovated by a purifying fire.' 
 
 There is much in this doctrine which reminds us of the 
 Christian eschatology : the Messianic faith, the preliminary 
 prophets, the final contest, the general judgment and 
 resurrection, all reappear in the Christian teaching con- 
 cerning the future, as in that of Israel before it. Many 
 scholars believe that we have to do with more than a 
 parallel, and that through Israel the Persian reUgion has 
 exercised a direct influence upon Christian eschatology. 
 We shall recur to this opinion in a later chapter. ^ 
 
 _^ 3. Judgment after Death 
 
 In the doctrine of the resurrection the judgment to 
 \ which the soul looks forward takes place on earth, and the 
 i rewards which follow it are enjoyed here. But there is 
 j another possibility open, which promises an even speedier 
 I satisfaction. Instead of being confined to earth and 
 ' associated with the relation between soul and body, 
 retribution may be placed in the underworld, i The con- 
 ception of the realm of the dead may be transformed and 
 become richer, more varied. The interests and values 
 which give meaning to life here may be carried over to 
 the other world, and the judgment which the resurrection 
 defers to the great assize at the end of the age may take 
 
 1 For further details, cf. Salmond, op. cit. and references there given, 
 a Cf. p. 66. 
 
32 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 place for each soul immediately after death. This is the 
 view taken in the religion of Egypt.'^ 
 
 The central feature in the Egyptian thought of the 
 future is the judgment to which each individual must 
 submit upon his entry to the underworld. When the 
 dead man reaches the Hall of the Double Truth, he is 
 brought before Osiris, the divine judge^ ' The goddess 
 Maat, the goddess of Justice, Truth or Law, is there holding 
 a sceptre and the symbol of life. The jcajes are set, th e 
 man's heart in the one, the image of Maat in the other. 
 Sorus watches the index, Thoth or Tehuti, the^god of 
 letters, takes the record. The standard of judgment is 
 high. It covers all the great requirements of truth, purity, 
 righteousness, charity, piety. Above the balance are the 
 forty-two assessors, whose office is with the forty-two 
 great forms of sin. The departed makes his confession, 
 which takes the form of a negative statement denying his 
 guilt in respect of these sins. His conscience, or moral 
 nature, symbolised by the heart in the scale, speaks for 
 him. If the judgment is favourable, he regains the use 
 of hands, limbs and mouth. He receives back what he 
 had lost by death. His soul, his Ka^ his shadow, are 
 restored, and hei begins a new life.' If the judgment is 
 unfavourable, he bears the penalty of loss and pain.' ^ 
 
 We must be on our guard against reading our own later 
 ideas into these early records of man's thought about 
 the after life. The conception of a judgment after death 
 is compatible with a very crude psychology, and may be 
 pictured in very material forms. This is notably true in 
 the case in point. The care given by the Egyptians to 
 the preservation of the dead, and the provision made for 
 their physical wants in the underworld, show that we are 
 still moving in the primitive world of thought which con- 
 
 1 On the Egyptian eschatology, cf. Salmond, p. 46 sq., and literature cited 
 in the Appendix. 
 
 2 Salmond, p. 60. 
 
m.] EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF THE FUTURE LIFE 33 
 
 ceives spirit as a finer and more tenuous form of matter. 
 The scene of man's existence has changed, but the con- 
 ditions which make it effective are not essentially different 
 from those which obtain on earth. The point that interests 
 us here is that these conditions were present in the 
 Egyptian thought of the future. He had freed himself 
 from the idea that the life after death must necessarily be 
 a gloomy and hopeless one, and had found room in the 
 underworld for all the moral values that give meaning and 
 worth to life here.^ 
 
 The conception of a judgment immediately after death 
 is not confined to the Egyptian religion. It meets us in 
 Persia and in Greece as well. In each case it is the result 
 of a deepening moral sense which is not satisfied to confine 
 the operation of divine Providence to this life, but pro- 
 jects the moral issues raised here into the Ufe beyond the 
 grave. 
 
 It is clear that where such a faith is held the original 
 motive for believing in the resurrection is no longer 
 present. If life in the underworld admits of all the joys 
 that give value to life here, why should one wish to return 
 to earth at all ? What place has the resurrection in a 
 religion like that of Persia, which has already attained a 
 moral conception of the life immediately after death ? 
 
 To answer this question we must recall the connection 
 in which the doctrine of the resurrection meets us. We 
 
 ' There are many perplexing questions concerning the Egyptian religion, 
 into which we need not enter here : as to the nature of the rewards and 
 punishments which follow this judgment; as to the probation through 
 which the righteous hare to go before they finally reach the Elysian plains 
 where they take up anew their old life ; of the enlarged powers given to 
 them, such as the privilege of assuming other forms ; of the complex 
 psychology of the Egyptian religion ; of the nature of the KJ, or spirit, in 
 its relation to the body ; of the ultimate fate of the wicked, the question 
 whether it involves conscious existence in suffering, or issues finally in 
 annihilation — all these are interesting questions, but they need not concern 
 us here, for they have no direct bearing upon the story of the Christian hope, 
 which is our theme. The one point to be emphasised is this, that in the 
 religion of Egypt the underworld is conceived as a place of morqj values 
 with rewards and punishments, similar to those experienced by the righteous 
 and the wicked during their life upon earth. 
 
 C 
 
34 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 saw that it was an accompaniment of the great moral 
 crisis which issues in the estabhshment of the Kingdom of 
 God on earth. In other words, the interest has been shifted 
 from the individual to society, and the return of the former 
 to earth is not for his own sake alone, but that he may 
 share the triumph and contribute to the completeness of 
 the final social consummation.^ 
 
 Thus, while the interest in the doctrine of a judgment 
 after death centres in the individual, the primary motive 
 for the doctrine of the resurrection is social. Inde- 
 pendent in origin, the two conceptions are complementary, 
 and each contributes its share to the preparation for the 
 Christian hope, which is at once individual and social. 
 
 But there is still a third step in the preparation to be 
 considered, and that is the doctrine of the immortality 
 of the soul. This introduces us into a circle of ideas so 
 different from those which we have been considering 
 hitherto that we shall do well to give it a chapter by itself. 
 
 1 Here again we may distinguish two forms of this interest. In the earlier 
 and iimpler the redemptive interest predominates. The resurrection is 
 necessary that the individual may share the joys of the Messianic salvation. 
 In the later, the ethical interest becomes dominant. The wicked must be 
 raised as well as the good, that the divine justice may be publicly 
 vindicated. Cf. p. 67. 
 
IV.] IMMORTALIIY IN INDIA AND GREECE 35 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY IN 
 INDIA AND GREECE 
 
 We have been dealing thus far with comparatively simple 
 conceptions, conceptions which take life at its face value, 
 as it presents itself to unreflective thought. Our picture 
 of the future has been simply a projection on the larger 
 canvas of figures made familiar through long association 
 here. But our story would be incomplete if it did not 
 take account of another factor. Not all thought of the 
 future life conceives it as similar to life here. Sometimes 
 it is defined by its contrasts rather than by its likenesses. 
 Instead of introducing man into a material life of a happier 
 and more desirable kind, death may be thought of as 
 delivering him from bodily existence altogether, and 
 introducing him into the life of pure spirit. This is the 
 view taken in the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. 
 
 By the doctrine of immortality in the technical sense is 
 meant the belief that the soul or spirit of man is an inde- 
 structible substance, more real, and therefore more enduring 
 than the body in which it is temporarily housed ; indeed, 
 with the exception of the absolute Spirit, the most real 
 and the most enduring thing in the entire universe.'- This 
 is a view which presupposes a comparatively advanced 
 stage of mental development, since it involves the re- 
 
 1 The word 'immortality' is, to be sure, often used in a less teclinical 
 sense to include any view of the life after death which gives it moral value. 
 I have mvaelf used the word in this more general sense in the later chapters. 
 
36 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 versal of man's earliest standard for judging reality. It 
 is a philosophical rather than a rehgious conception, and 
 it made its first appearance in the two great centres of 
 philosophical speculation, India and Greece. 
 
 It is not my desire to enter needlessly into philosophical 
 questions, but it will help us to understand several per- 
 plexing things about the history of the Christian hope if 
 we remind ourselves for a moment what this change of 
 estimate involves, and how it came about. 
 
 1. Immortality in Greece ^ 
 
 We all remember the story of Socrates, how he went 
 about asking disagreeable questions, and making himself 
 unpopular by showing those whom he could persuade to 
 listen to him how little they knew of the real meaning of 
 the words which were continually on their lips. Of all 
 men who ever lived, Socrates was perhaps the least like 
 a professional philosopher. Yet, it is with him that we 
 associate one of the greatest revolutions in the history of 
 thought. I mean the revolution which shifted the centre 
 of interest from the outer world to the inner, from matter 
 to spirit, from the cosmos to the self. Before Socrates 
 men had endeavoured to interpret the inner life by that 
 which was without. Socrates reversed the process, and 
 taught them to interpret that which is without by that 
 which is within. This fundamental change of emphasis 
 is the most important step in the rise of the doctrine of 
 immortahty. 
 
 Let us recall for a moment the picture of the world as it 
 appeared to the early Greek philosophers. Like all con- 
 
 1 On the rise of the doctrine of immortality in Greece, of. Salmond, op. 
 cit. p. 133 sq. ; Wheeler, Dionysos and Iminortality, New York, 1899; 
 Gaye, The Platonic Conception of Immortality, and its connexion with the 
 theory of Ideas, London, 1904, and esp, Adam, The Religious Teachers of 
 Greece, to whose illuminating discussion I desire here to express my 
 indebtedness. 
 
IV.] IMMORTALITY IN INDIA AND GREECE 37 
 
 sistent thinkers, they were in search of a principle of unity, 
 and they found it in some element in the material universe, 
 air, fire, water, as the case might be, from whose changes 
 were evolved all the other elements which together make 
 up the complex and many-featured world in which we live. 
 In other words, they thought of God, or the absolute 
 Spirit, very much as primitive man thought of the soul. 
 They pictured him as a quasi material substance, only 
 more mobile and tenuous. Socrates, and Plato after 
 
 him ^onceive d of God as spirit ; that i s to say7"meY looke d 
 witVii p for T'*''" quanties with Wlll ch to^describ e the 
 Riip Tfimp RY iHt^ppp, njiff ^ad ot w ithou t, w hej:s_jb hey ha ^ 
 be en jj nughti hithrrrtn They iound these quahties in 
 thought, purpose, meaning, affection, in a word, in the 
 ideal elements of the Ufe of the spirit. As Plato conceives 
 him God is the idea, the supreme reason who contemplates 
 all things, but who abides himself unchanged. 
 
 How, then, shall we account for the world of actual 
 experience, the world of change and uncertainty, of sorrow 
 and disappointment ? Whence shall we derive the physical 
 universe with its birth and death, its growth and its decay, 
 its possibihties unrealised, its promise unfulfilled ? What 
 place has matter in the life of spirit, and what is its relation 
 to the supreme spirit we call God ? 
 
 Here we find the most original part of the Platonic 
 philosophy. Plato answers that you cannot account for 
 these things by spirit alone. The efforts of the early 
 philosophers to derive all things from a single principle 
 he pronounces a failure. The world which we see and 
 touch, in which we are bom and grow up, in which we hve 
 and die, is a compound of two rival principles, matter and 
 spirit, each inconsistent with the other. It is a world 
 formed by God out of a pre-existing chaos, and preservii^ 
 in its corruption and decay the evidences of the imperfect 
 material out of which it was made. And what is true of 
 the world as a whole is true of each individual existence 
 
38 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 in it. It, too, is a compound of two rival and incon- 
 gruous elements, material and spiritual, and the strife of 
 which it is conscious within itself is the reproduction 
 within the microcosm of the more ancient struggle which 
 has been going on throughout the entire universe ever 
 since the dawn of time. 
 
 Here we have the background against which to place 
 the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The soul, 
 or, as Plato would say, the reason (Nous),^ is the divine 
 element in man, a spark of the eternal reason which is 
 the creative principle in the universe. As such it is as 
 imperishable as God Himself. The body is only the 
 tenement in which it is housed, a prison from which it 
 longs to be delivered. As reason, man shares the divine 
 nature, and is able to contemplate the ideas of the good, 
 the beautiful and the true, which are the objects of the 
 divine thought, but as body he is a part of the material 
 universe, a prey to corruption and death. This unequal 
 combination explains the strange incongruities of human 
 experience, the struggle of the higher and the lower in 
 man, the law of the spirit making war against the law of 
 the flesh, the one aspiring upward, the other dragging 
 downward, as two unruly steeds strugghng for the mastery 
 tax the strength of the most skilful charioteer. 
 
 Two corollaries follow from this conception of the soul. 
 In the first place, it is pre-existent.^ Like the divine 
 Reason to which it is akin, man's reason is eternal, and 
 eternity knows as little of a begiiming as of an end. Be- 
 fore the physical universe began, the soul had its inde- 
 pendent existence as pure spirit, and only afterwards was 
 united with the body through the strange marriage we call 
 birth.3 The little segment of experience which constitutes 
 the story of a human life is only a chapter in a longer 
 
 • On Plato's terminology, of. Adam, op. cit. p. 381 sq. 
 
 2 This, to be sure, as Dr. Adam well remarks, applies only to 'the 
 rational part of the sonl which is in the strictest sense divine,' p. 377. 
 
 3 Cf. the striking account in the Timaeus, quoted by Dr. Adam, p. 376 sq. 
 
IV.] IMMORTALITY IN INDIA AND GREECE 39 
 
 history reaching backward as well as forward, the major 
 part of which is hidden from our ken. One thing only we 
 can know, that the story is one, and that which we see and 
 feel here is bound by inexorable law to all that has gone 
 before, and all that shall follow after. 
 
 The second corollary is even less familiar to our Western 
 thought. It is that of transmigration. If the soul's 
 existence is independent of the body, and incarnation is 
 an episode in its never-ending life, there is no reason why 
 we should think of it as taking place only once. On the 
 contrary, it may be repeated many times and in many 
 forms. The soul may pass successively from one incarna- 
 tion to another, and the same individual who now hves 
 as hero or sage may have visited the earth before as beast 
 or bird. This was the conviction of many serious thinkers 
 both in India and in Greece. ' Ere now,' Empedocles is 
 reported to have said, ' I, too, have been a boy, a girl, a 
 bush, a bird and a scaly fish in the sea.' ^ Pythagoras 
 cherished a similar beUef, if we may trust the satire of 
 Xenophanes : — 
 
 ' Once he was moved to pity, — so men say, — 
 Seeing a dog rough handled by the way. 
 Forbear thy hand ; housed in yon cur doth lie 
 A friend of mine ; I knew him by his cry.' ^ 
 
 Socrates' defence of the doctrine in the Phaedo is 
 familiar to every reader of Plato.* 
 
 It is evident that where such is the view of the relation 
 of body and soul, hope must take a very different form 
 from that which has met us in the simpler philosophies 
 which we have hitherto been studying. In the Ufe to 
 which Plato looks forward, the body has no place. It is a 
 curse rather than a blessing, a shackle rather than an aid. 
 Not activity, but thought, not struggle but contemplation, 
 
 1 Adam, op. cit. p. 101. ' Ibid., p. 193. 
 
 ' Jowett'a tr., i. p. 469 sq. 
 
40 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oh. 
 
 not passion but peace, characterise the immortal U£e for 
 which he longs. For God, the supreme object of desire, 
 is pure beauty, pure goodness, pure reason, and in union 
 with Him in the untroubled world in which He dwells the 
 soul fulfils its true destiny.* 
 
 Such, then, in briefest statement, is the doctrine of 
 immortaUty as it is conceived by the great thinker who, 
 outside of the prophets and psalmists of Israel, has exer- 
 cised the most powerful influence upon Christian thought. 
 It is an infinite distance which separates his view from 
 that of Homer, and the story of the steps by which the 
 Greek mind passed from one to the other is one of the 
 most fascinating in the history of human thought. We 
 have not space to linger over it here, but it may be worth 
 while to recall the chief factors which had a part in bring- 
 ing about the result. 
 
 The most important of these we have already mentioned, 
 namely, the philosophical revolution which shifted the 
 centre of interest from the outer world to the inner. I 
 have spoken of Socrates as the first of the Greek thinkers 
 to find in the spirit of man the key to the understanding of 
 the universe, but the statement is only half true. No 
 great change in human thinking comes unheralded. For 
 many years before the great Athenian troubled men with 
 his insistent questions, his predecessors had been feeling 
 their way toward a spiritual conception of reality. Xeno- 
 phanes had spoken of ' one God greatest among gods and 
 men, resembling mortals neither in form nor in thought, 
 evermore abiding in the same place, moving not at all, 
 
 1 In what has been said above I have made no attempt to distinguish the 
 different strands in Plato's thought, and the different interests which 
 determine it. For such a detailed study the reader may be referred to 
 Gaye, The Platonic Conception of Immortality, especially chap, xii., in 
 which he discusses the question whether we note any waning of interest in 
 the subject in the later dialogues. His general conclusion is that, in spite 
 of a shifting of metaphysical interest, immortality retains its ethical value 
 for Plato, as a motive reinforcing the influences which make for self- 
 discipline. 
 
IV.] IMMORTALITY IN INDIA AND GREECE 41 
 
 without toil, ruling all things by the purpose of his mind.' ^ 
 Heraclitus had conceived of a divine essence which he 
 described now as fire, but again as Logos, or Word, the 
 unity in which all opposites are reconciled.^ Anaxagoras 
 had explained creation as due to the activity of reason, 
 ' the subtlest and purest of all things.' ' Protagoras had 
 uttered his famous saying, ' Man is the measure of all 
 things.' * By these and similar speculations the way 
 had been prepared for the last great step taken by Socrates 
 and his greater disciple Plato. 
 
 The second factor was the deepening moral insight 
 which in Greece, as in Egypt and in Persia before it, had 
 transformed the underworld of Homer from the scene of 
 an empty and unreal existence into a place of moral retri- 
 bution. Just when the change took place, and what were 
 the factors which brought it about, we cannot fully say, 
 but in Pindar it is already complete. The underworld of 
 Pindar is the scene of a divine judgment for the deeds 
 wrought on earth, and in it the righteous and the wicked 
 are rewarded or punished according to their desert. ' The 
 sins committed in the kingdom of Zeus {i.e. the earth) are 
 judged by one beneath the ground, hateful Necessity 
 enforcing the doom he speaks. But ever through nights 
 and ever through days the same, the good receive an un- 
 laborious life beneath the sunshine. They vex not with 
 might of hand the earth or the waters of the sea for food 
 that satisfieth not, but among the honoured gods, such as 
 had pleasure in the keeping of oaths enjoy a tearless life 
 but the others have pain too fearful to behold.' ^ 
 
 More familiar is the picture of the future Ufe in Plato's 
 famous dialogue. When Socrates discourses with his 
 disciples on the last night before he is to drink the hemlock, 
 he lets his imagination play about the fate in store for him 
 
 1 Fragments 23, 26, 25, cited by Adam, op. cit. p. 201. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 225. 3 Frag. 12, cited by Adam, p. 266 
 » Frag., 1, Adam, p. 274. 
 
 ' 01. n. 67 sq., cited by Adam, ep. cit. p. 132i 
 
42 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 in the underworld, and indulges the hope that he may 
 there hold fellowship with the mighty dead — Orpheus, 
 Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer. What greater happiness 
 could be his ' than to continue in the other world the 
 service to which God had called him here, examining the 
 heroes of old, Agamemnon, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, to 
 see which of them was wise and which foolish, though wise 
 in his own esteem — a missionary, as it were, to the spirits 
 in prison ? ' ^ 
 
 What interests us in this picture is the continuity of 
 experience. The tasks and interests which give meaning 
 to life here are continued there. The moral values persist. 
 Life is all of a piece ; its two scenes part of a single drama, 
 chapters in a single story. 
 
 This consciousness of the unity of life was powerfully 
 reinforced by the work of the great dramatists. Like the 
 prophets of Israel, with whom it is so natural to compare 
 them, Aeschylus and his successors wrought into the 
 consciousness of the Greek people the conviction of a moral 
 government of the universe. While they contribute little 
 directly to the development of the doctrine of immortality, 
 they purify and spiritualise the conception of God which 
 is its necessary presupposition. Aeschylus breaks with 
 the naive polytheism of the Homeric Pantheon. Zeus 
 to him is the creator and lord of all, who governs the 
 universe in wisdom and justice : — 
 
 ' Unto what other one 
 Of all the gods should I for justice turn 1 
 
 From him our race did spring ; 
 
 Creator he and King, 
 Ancient of days and wisdom he, and might. 
 
 As bark before the wind, 
 
 So, wafted by his mind. 
 Moves every counsel, each device aright. 
 
 ' Adam, np. cit. p. 346. 
 
IV.] IMMORTALITY IN INDIA AND GREECE 43 
 
 Beneath no stronger hand 
 
 Holds he a weak command, 
 No throne doth he abase him to adore ; 
 
 Swift as a word, his deed 
 
 Acts out what stands decreed 
 In counsels of his heart, for evermore.' ^ 
 
 Sophocles contrasts the traditions of men with 
 
 ' Unwritten laws eternal in the heavens. 
 Not of to-day or yesterday are these, 
 But live from everlasting, and from whence 
 They sprang none knoweth.' ^ 
 
 His cheerful optimism invades the other world. Antigone 
 hop.es that when she reaches Hades 
 
 ' My father's love will greet me, yea and thine, 
 My mother, — and thy welcome, brother dear. 
 Since when ye died I with mine own hands laid 
 And dressed your limbs and poured upon your graves 
 Libations.' ^ 
 
 With Euripides a more sceptical spirit makes itself 
 felt, but he, too, has his part in the development through 
 his remorseless criticism of the fables which ascribe immor- 
 aUty to the gods : 
 
 ' It cannot be that Zeus' bride Leto bare 
 Such folly. Nay, I hold unworthy credence 
 The banquet given of Tantalus to the gods. 
 As though the gods could savour a child's flesh ! 
 Even so, this folk, themselves man-murderers, 
 Charge on the goddess their own sin, I ween ; 
 For I believe that none of go'ds is vile.' * 
 
 But neither philosophical speculation as to the nature 
 of reality, nor ethical assurance as to persistence of moral 
 
 1 Suppliants, 598 sq., Morsliead's tr., cited by Adam, p. 143. 
 
 2 Antigone, 450 sq., Whitelaw's tr., cited by Adam, p. 167. 
 » Rid., m sq.,v. 173. 
 
 « Iphigeneia, 385 tq., Way's tr., cited by Adam, p. 297. 
 
44 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oh. 
 
 values is sufficient alone to account for the form which the 
 doctrine of immortality assumed in Greece. Both in 
 Plato and in Pindar before him,^ we find evidence of a 
 third factor which needs to be taken into the account. 
 This is the strange religious movement associated with 
 the name of Orpheus, which made its appearance in 
 Greece some time during the sixth century. ^ Just how 
 and when it arose we do not know, but it is certain that 
 from the sixth century on httle groups of persons were 
 found in the difierent cities of Greece who had united for 
 the purpose of certain religious practices, based upon a 
 common faith in immortality. They believed that the 
 soul was divine in origin and spiritual in nature ; that it 
 had been imprisoned in the body as a penalty for sins 
 committed in a former existence, and that deliverance 
 was possible only through purification and abstinence. 
 They believed that until such deliverance had been 
 attained, the sinner must continue to pass from one 
 incarnation to another until he had fulfilled to the utter- 
 most the measure of his alloted penalty. Empedocles 
 gives us an account of the vicissitudes of the wanderer 
 during his age-long Journeying as he is ' bom into all 
 kinds of mortal forms, passing from one laborious path of 
 life to another. For the mighty air changes him into the 
 sea, and the sea spits him forth upon the dry land, and 
 earth casts him into the light of the blazing sun, and the 
 sun hurls him into the eddies of air. One takes him from 
 the other, and he is hated of them all.' ' From such a 
 dreadful fate the Orphic communities promised deliver- 
 ance to their devotees through the rehgious observances 
 into which they initiated them, and the ascetic rule of life 
 which they laid upon them. 
 
 1 Cf. the conclusion of the passage already cited (p. il) from the second 
 Olympian, Adam, p. 132 ; cf. also p. 133 sq. 
 
 2 Cf. Adam, p. 92 sq. ; Wheeler, Dionysos and Immortality. 
 
 3 Fr. 115, 6 sq., cited by Adam, p. 100. 
 
IV.] IMMORTALITY IN INDIA AND GREECE 45 
 
 Here first in the Western world we meet with transmi- 
 gration as a religious doctrine, a living faith affecting 
 conduct and determining hope. We shall see presently 
 how the same faith reappears in an even more intense 
 and far-reaching form in the great religions of the 
 East. 
 
 These, then, are the three factors which prepare the 
 way for the doctrine of im.mortality in the form in which 
 it has passed over from Greece to Christianity : the 
 philosophical belief that the nature of ultimate reality is 
 spiritual, the ethical conviction that the world is governed 
 by moral law, and that the principles of this government 
 extend beyond the grave, and the reUgious faith that this 
 world is a place of retribution for sins committed in a 
 previous existence, and that the way of dehverance is to 
 be sought through purification and abstinence. 
 
 2. Immortality in India 
 
 I have gone so fully into the story of the Greek hope 
 because of its intimate connection with Christianity. But 
 we must not forget that long before Plato had conceived 
 the idea of immortahty it had been a familiar thought to 
 the sages of India. A word as to the older form of the 
 doctrine will not be out of place.^ 
 
 In the Indian religions the doctrine of immortality is 
 inextricably interwoven with that of transmigration. 
 This present existence is but one of an infinite series reach- 
 ing backward and forward in endless sequence as far as 
 the imagination can reach. Each living creature that 
 inhabits the universe down to the tiniest insect that lives 
 its fieeting life upon the lily pad in some quiet pool is an 
 incarnate soul doing penalty for the sins committed in 
 some previous Ufe. Pythagoras's counsel to his friend is 
 
 1 On the Indian eschatology, cf. Salmond, op. eit. 25 <;., and the literature 
 cited in the Appendix. 
 
46 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 taken very seriously by the Hindu, but it is not limited 
 to the dog, but extends to every form of animal life. The 
 fly you crush against the pane in some moment of petu- 
 lance may, for aught you know, have been a mighty 
 monarch, and you yourself, in turn, may some day buzz 
 out a similar existence at the mercy of any heavy hand 
 which may fall upon you. Where such is the fate in store 
 for high and low alike, the only mood worthy of a rational 
 man is an infinite pity. 
 
 Theoretically, there is nothing in the doctrine of trans- 
 migration which need necessarily make it an object of 
 dread. One might conceivably awake to a happier 
 existence as well as to one more miserable. Retribution 
 may take the form of reward for the righteous as well as 
 of doom for the wicked, and the hope of such reward might 
 well prove a consolation to the just man under the trials 
 and injustices of his present life. This is indeed the form 
 which the development of the idea took in Greece. As it 
 meets us in Pindar, the doctrine of transmigration seems 
 to have been a doctrine of hope as well as of despair. It 
 was the stair-way up which the soul passed on its journey 
 toward heaven.^ 
 
 Very different was the course of things in India. Here, 
 as we have seen, the doctrine was one of almost unrelieved 
 gloom. While there were heavens to which the righteous 
 might attain by merit,^ they were beyond the range of 
 the common man's expectation. For him there remained 
 only the dreary round of existence, whether in the form 
 of man or of beast or of insect, each required for the 
 atonement of past sin, and each, in turn, preparing the way 
 through new sin for the life of new atonement. There was 
 not even the satisfaction of understanding why the doom 
 took the form it did, for while the individual survived to 
 fulfil his justly appointed destiny, there was no continuity 
 of individual self-consciousness, and hence no personal 
 
 1 Cf. Adam, op. cit. p. 132. 2 Salmond, p. 35. 
 
IV.] IMJIORTALITY IN INDIA AND GREECE 47 
 
 immortality in the Christian sense. Thus, for the ordinary 
 man the doctrine of transmigration proved no advance 
 over the earlier view of the life after death. It, too, was 
 a doom to be feared rather than a blessing to be desired. 
 
 To understand this contrast we must take account of 
 another aspect of the Hindu philosophy, namely, its low 
 estimate of personality. To the Greek, with his love of 
 life and his enjoyment of beauty, as to the Egyptian and 
 the Persian before him, individuality was a good thing. 
 The particular form which life might assume for any 
 individual might be evil, but the way of escape was through 
 a new environment, not through the loss of personality. 
 To the Hindu, on the other hand, with his pantheistic 
 world view, self-consciousness itself was a form of im- 
 perfection. The real unity of existence lay below thought, 
 even below feeling. It had its root in the substance of 
 things, the eternal structure of the universe which assigns 
 to each its place and determines for each its destiny. 
 What we know and see and feel is mere appearance. It is 
 illusion, vanity, the changing manifestation of a reality 
 which abides ever unchanged. The philosopher perceives 
 this and seeks to escape from the illusions of the senses 
 by withdrawing from the material world and fixing his 
 thought upon the Absolute. His ideal is one of absorption 
 rather than of continued individuality. He would become 
 one with the infinite, as the stream loses itself in the sea, 
 or the breath becomes absorbed in the surrounding air. 
 It is the mystic ideal of Gelassenheit, of complete self- 
 abnegation and passivity. 
 
 With this conception before us we can easily understand 
 the appeal of Buddhism to the Hindu mind. Gautama 
 carried the criticism of Hinduism one step farther. He 
 added to the illusions from which the wise man seeks to 
 be delivered the idea of the Absolute itself. He asks the 
 reason for the misery of individual life, and he finds it in 
 desire. Why can man never be content ? Because he 
 
48 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 is always in search of something, and each longing satisfied 
 only opens the way to a new longing even more insatiable. 
 What, then, is the remedy ? Clearly the suppression of 
 all desire, even the desire for happiness, even the desire 
 for goodness, nay, more, even the desire for union with the 
 Absolute. From the misery of existence there is but one 
 certain way of escape, the way of utter renunciation, even 
 to the renunciation of life itself. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than between 
 this gospel and that of Jesus. Face to face with the 
 misery of existence the two follow opposite paths. 
 Buddhism accepts the estimate placed upon life by the 
 contemporary religion at its face value, nay, it accentu- 
 ates its misery and hopelessness, and offers as its solution 
 of the world's woe escape into the dreamless sleep of 
 Nirvana. Christianity finds the remedy for the disap- 
 pointments of life in life more abundant, for unsatisfied 
 desires in the awakening of desires still more insatiable. 
 Instead of cessation of existence, it promises endless 
 continuance, since only so can scope be found for com- 
 munion with that God, ia whose service — which is at the 
 same time the service of his fellows — the spirit of man 
 finds rest and peace. 
 
 This is not due to any lack of sympathy with the mood 
 to which the Buddhist gospel makes appeal. Christians 
 have experienced to the full the misery and incom- 
 pleteness of life. There are sentences in Augustine, 
 and even in the New Testament, which Gautama himself 
 might have uttered. Again and again the mystic note 
 has made itself heard in Christian history. Again and 
 again the contemplative ideal has been exalted above the 
 ideal of action, and union with God been described as 
 involving the complete suppression of individual desire. 
 There have been Christian pantheists as well as Indian, 
 but Christianity as a religion has never been permanently 
 satisfied with the pantheistic view of the world. It ia 
 
IV.] IMMORTALITY IN INDIA AND GREECE 49 
 
 interesting, even at this early stage of our inquiry, to ask 
 the reason why. 
 
 The answer is a very simple one. It is because the 
 ideal of Christianity, while ia the fullest sense an individual 
 ideal, is not simply individual. The person whom Jesus 
 promises to save is not an isolated personaUty, but a 
 member of a community, and the failure which from 
 the point of view of the individual alone would be fatal 
 is seen to be a step in the complex social process, whose 
 end is the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Here is the great significance of the doctrine of the 
 Resurrection as an element in the preparation for the 
 Christian hope, for the central interest in the Resurrection 
 faith, as we have already seen, is social. The rehgions 
 of India concern themselves purely with the fortunes of 
 the individual soul. Age after age, seon after seon, the 
 wheel of life works out its ceaseless revolutions, bringing 
 us in the end to the same place where we began. There 
 can be no progress, for progress is an affair of relations, 
 and relations are determined for the individual by contact 
 with other individuals in society. There must be real 
 issues to be worked out, causes to be served, common 
 ideals and purposes to be reaUsed, if we are to talk of 
 progress in the true ethical sense. But, for such progress 
 as this the religions of India make no place. 
 
 It is otherwise with the Resurrection faith. Here 
 society rather than the individual holds the centre of 
 interest. There is a great contest going on between the 
 forces of good and evil, ' one far-off divine event to which 
 the whole creation moves.' The importance of resurrec- 
 tion is not simply that the individual may fulfil his own 
 destiny in a more fortunate state on earth, but that he 
 may have part in the new social order we call the Kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 It is evident that in such an ideal as this the conscious 
 Ufe of thought, purpose and emotion, which constitutes 
 
 D 
 
50 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 what we call personality, has a very difierent significance 
 from that assigned to it in the doctrine of transmigration. 
 There it is an incident in a larger whole, to be succeeded 
 by others equally transitory. Here it is the very heart 
 and centre of the process, necessary to give it moral value, 
 since without self-consciousness those social contacts and 
 relationships through which the destiny of the individual 
 is to be realised could not take place. 
 
V.J PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 51 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PREPARATION I,, ISRAEL FOR THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 The conceptions of the future life which we have thus 
 far passed in review have all had their origin independ- 
 ently of Christianity. They represent, as we have said, 
 the remoter preparation for the Christian hope. Brief as 
 has been our survey, it is a picture of extraordinary com- 
 plexity which has unrolled itself before us. The varying 
 estimate of life, from a cheerful optimism to a settled 
 pessimism; the difference in relative importance assigned to 
 the body and the soul in the life that follows death ; the 
 shifting of interest from society to the individual, and from 
 the individual back to society again, as it meets us in the 
 doctrine of the resurrection ; the deepening moral sense, 
 with its emphasis upon righteousness as the thing of 
 supreme importance, and its conviction that the laws of 
 Justice are of universal validity, extending their influence 
 beyond the grave ; the birth of philosophical speculation, 
 with its increasing distrust of the report of sense and its 
 new definition of reality : these are some of the factors 
 which have met us in our survey, and which we must keep 
 in mind, as we address ourselves more directly to our 
 immediate theme. We are to consider in this chapter 
 the direct preparation for the Christian hope, and this, 
 as is well known, we find in the religion of Israel. * 
 
 At first sight the preparation seems less full and clear 
 
 • On the eschatology of Israel, of. the literature cited in the Appendix. 
 
52 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 than we should expect. Coming to the Old Tastament 
 with our Christian inheritance, much of its teaching 
 concerning the future life seems surprisingly hesitant and 
 meagre. Indeed, we are so accustomed to treat the Old 
 Testament as a Christian book, reading into 11; ideas made 
 familiar to us by later association, that it is difficult for us 
 to take its most direct statements at their face value and 
 realise that we are dealing with the dawn of revelation 
 instead of its full and glorious noon. The difficulty of 
 thinking ourselves back into the methods of thought of a 
 bygone civilisation, already noted in our study of the 
 religions of Persia and of Greece, reappears here in accentu- 
 ated form. Here, too, to quote the words of Dr. Salmond, 
 one of the most cautious and sane of recent writers on our 
 subject, we have to transport ourselves ' into a world of 
 ideas on the present and on the future, on good and on 
 evil, on what makes life and what makes death, which are 
 singularly unlike all that the Western and modem mind 
 is accustomed to. We have to place ourselves outside a 
 vast environment of intellectual habit, the late result of 
 the thoughts of men as for many centuries they have 
 been directed to the problems of the future. We have to 
 unlearn those philosophical conceptions and distinctions 
 which rule our modem thinking. Above all, we have to 
 retire behind those specifically Christian views which 
 have become a second nature to us.' In a word, ' we have 
 to divest ourselves for the time of our entire mental equip- 
 ment, and transfer ourselves back to the position of thinkers 
 and beUevers on whose horizon such things have not 
 risen.' ^ 
 
 Yet, difficult as is the readjustment required, the effort 
 will prove well worth while. We shall find in the end, as 
 in the case of every honest search for truth, that we have 
 gained more than we have lost. If the preparation for 
 the Christian hope in the religion of Israel is glower than 
 
 1 Salmond, op. oil, p. 162. 
 
v.] PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 53 
 
 we had supposed, it is none the less definite and sure. As 
 we follow the course of the development we shall see how, 
 starting on the same basis as other primitive peoples, the 
 rehgious thinkers of Israel won their way step by step to 
 an assured faith in God's universal moral government, in 
 the continuance of His love and power in the realm of the 
 dead, in the extension and ultimate triumph of His King- 
 dom on earth, and in a universal resurrection and final 
 Judgment ushering in the rewards and punishments of the 
 last day. It is a story which does not end with the hmits 
 of the Old Testament, but includes among its sources the 
 later non-canonical literature of Israel, and extends in 
 unbroken course from the earliest records of which we have 
 knowledge to the year when Jesus first made His public 
 proclamation of the approaching Kingdom of God.^ 
 
 1. The Early Conception of Sheol 
 
 To begin at the beginning, we must go back to the time 
 when the future life was still an object of dread rather 
 than of desire. When we make our first acquaintance 
 with Israel's hope it is confined entirely to the present Ufe. 
 The righteous may look forward to long Ufe, prosperity, 
 riches, earthly success and happiness of every kind. The 
 years of his life may extend to threescore years and ten, 
 or even to fourscore, but when at last the summons comes 
 to die it rings down the curtain upon all that makes life 
 worth hving. In the grave, whither man goes at death, 
 there is neither knowledge nor activity, neither happiness 
 nor usefulness, neither moraUty nor religion. The earth 
 God has given to the children of men, but those who go 
 down into the silence of the grave caimot praise Him 
 
 ' The importance of the contribution of the non-canonical books is 
 obscured in Dr. Salmond's otherwise excellent discussion. He passes 
 immediately from ' The Old Testament Preparation ' to ' Christ's Teaching,' — 
 a method which does inadequate justice to the signiflcance of the intervening 
 development. 
 
54 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oh. 
 
 (Ps. cxv. 16, 17). ' In death there is no remembrance of 
 thee ; in Sheol who shall give thee thanks ? ' (Ps. vi. 5).^ 
 We must not think of the life after death as one of active 
 misery. The translation of the Hebrew word Sheol by 
 our English hell in the authorised version gives a wholly 
 misleading impression. Sheol is not a place of suffering 
 so much as of emptiness and monotony. It is a land of 
 darkness and of chaos. It is a land of desolation and dust. 
 Its inhabitants are described as Rephaim,^ that is, shades, 
 a feeble, ineffective folk. In a famous passage in Isaiah 
 the prophet pictures the commotion in Sheol when the 
 King of Babylon joins the Kings of the shades. ' Sheol 
 from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming. 
 It stirreth up the shades for thee, even all the chief ones of 
 the earth. It hath raised up from their thrones all the 
 kings of the nations. All they shall answer and say imto 
 thee, Art thou also become weak as we ? Art thou become 
 like unto us ? Thy pomp is brought down to Sheol and 
 the noise of thy viols. The worm is spread under thee, and 
 worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, 
 O day star, son of the morning ? How art thou cut down 
 to the ground, that didst lay low the nations. . . . They 
 that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee. They shall 
 consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth 
 to tremble, that did shake kingdoms, that made the world 
 as a wilderness and overthrew the cities thereof ? ' It is 
 
 1 In Israel, as among other nations, we can distinguish between an earlier 
 and a later conception of the state of the dead. At first, the departed 
 spirits were thought of as haunting the grave where the body was laid, and 
 dependent for their happiness or misery upon the ministrations of the living. 
 Only later, with the beginning of reflective thought, does the conception of 
 Sheol as an underworld arise. In Israel this was due, doubtless, to contact 
 with the cosmogony of Babylonia, an influence which we can trace in other 
 phases of Hebrew thought (e.g. the creation and flood stories). In Babylonia 
 we meet the conception of an underworld (Aralfi) in highly developed form. 
 It seems not unlikely, therefore, that to this source the Hebrews owed their 
 idea of Sheol. 
 
 Cf Paton, rfce Hebrew Idea of the Future Life, in the Biblical World, 
 March 1910. On the eschatology of Babylonia and Assyria, cf. Salmond, 
 op. cit. p. 76 sq. 
 
 2 E.g. Job xxvi. 5 ; Isa. xiv. 9 ; xxvi. 14. Cf. Salmond, op. cit. p. 204. 
 
v.] PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 55 
 
 the weakness which is in store for the once mighty king 
 when he reaches Sheol which gives point to the prophet's 
 taunt, ' Art thou become hke one of us,' that is to say, 
 as impotent as we are ? (Isa. xiv. 9-17). 
 
 There are indeed moods when even this empty shadow of 
 life seems preferable to the acute misery of man's existence 
 here. Job in his wretchedness longs for death, or better 
 still, wishes that he had never been bom. ' Wherefore,' 
 he asks, ' is light given to him that is in misery, and life 
 unto the bitter in soul : that long for death, but it cometh 
 not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures; that rejoice 
 exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave ' 
 (Job iii. 20-22). What cares the sufferer for its monotony 
 and emptiness ? These are the blessings which he most 
 desires. To be where ' the wicked cease from troubling,' 
 and ' the weary are at rest ' ; where ' the prisoners are at ease 
 together, and they hear not the voice of the task-master ' 
 (Ibid., vv. 17, 18). But such cases are the rare exception. 
 To most Israelites life seems too good a thing to be parted 
 with without regret, and hope seeks its satisfaction within 
 the compass of this present life. 
 
 There is something wonderfully pathetic in the eagerness 
 with which the most earnest spirits in Israel cling to life. 
 The note struck by Achilles in his answer to Odysseus 
 meets us again and again in the Psalms. The pious man 
 prays to Jehovah for many days, for he knows that it is 
 only thus that he can retain his hold upon the things he 
 values. ' What man is he that feareth Jehovah ? Him 
 shall he instruct in the way that he shall choose. His 
 soul shall dwell at ease, and his seed shall inherit the land ' 
 (Ps. XXV. 12, 13). ' My son,' says the wise man, ' forget 
 not my law, but let thy heart keep my commandments ; 
 for length of days and years of life and peace shall they add 
 unto thee ' (Prov. iii. 1, 2). Wisdom holds in her left 
 hand ' riches and honour,' but in her right hand ' length 
 of days,' wherewith to enjoy them (Prov. iii. 16). Long 
 
56 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oh. 
 
 life is the blessing promised to those who honour their 
 parents in the fifth commandment, and prolongation of 
 days the reward held out to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 
 as an inducement for keeping the law (vi. 2). We must 
 do our work with our might while life lasts, for ' there is 
 no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol,' 
 whither we are going (Eccles. ix. 10). 
 
 2. The Messianic Hope 
 
 But what of those to whom this good gift is denied, 
 those who have been cut ofE in their prime by war or pesti- 
 lence, or, hving to old age, have found their days, hke Job's, 
 full of labour and sorrow ? What compensation has reh- 
 gion to offer to such as these within the compass of the 
 present hfe ? 
 
 The answer given by Israel's prophets is a social one. 
 It is the Messianic hope. What the span of individual 
 life cannot contain, the hfe of the nation makes room for. 
 The individual may perish, the nation lives on, and on 
 the wider theatre of the national life scope is found for the 
 reahsation of the hope for which the individual life provides 
 no satisfaction. 
 
 I use the word, Messianic hope, in this connection in 
 the widest sense, to denote that expectation of a time of 
 future prosperity for Israel which runs like a golden thread 
 through the sombre pages of the national history. ^ It is 
 the expression of Israel's confidence that in spite of appar- 
 ent disappointment and failure the national destiny is 
 ultimately to be fulfilled, and the divine deliverance so 
 eagerly anticipated and so often deferred is finally to be 
 accomplished. It is a hope which assumes many forms. 
 Sometimes Israel alone stands in the centre of the canvas, 
 
 1 The term is often used in a narrower sense to denote that form of hope 
 which connects the promised deliverance with a personal Saviour, a prince of 
 the lineage of David. 
 
v.] PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 57 
 
 and again, all nations share the blessings of the Messianic 
 era. Sometimes the great crisis which introduces the new 
 age is represented as a battle in which the armies of the 
 Lord defeat the hosts of wickedness. At other times it 
 is a judgment in which Jehovah sits upon His throne and 
 apportions reward or punishment to each according to 
 his desert. Sometimes it is Jehovah Himself who comes 
 in person to deliver His people and re-establish His King- 
 dom, and again, it is a human deliverer who is to be His 
 representative in the great salvation. Now it is a single 
 individual for whose coming the prophets look ; now it is 
 a dynasty, a line of kings of the Davidic lineage who shall 
 rule successively in Jerusalem. And still again the prophet 
 or the priest takes the place of the king as mediator of 
 the divine salvation. But whatever the variations in 
 detail, these three elements are always present in the 
 thought of the future. It is to be a time of national pro- 
 sperity, of national righteousness, and of religion pure and 
 undefiled. 
 
 In the first place, it is to be a time of prosperity. Israel 
 is to be delivered from the enemies who had oppressed her. 
 In the later prophets this involves the restoration of the 
 national independence. Jerusalem is to be rebuilt, and 
 the exiles who have been carried into captivity are to 
 return to their native land (Jer. iii. 14-18 ; xxxi. 6-14 ; 
 Ps. cvii. 1-3). Nature will smile on them, and they will 
 be blessed with fertOe fields and abundant harvests. Each 
 man will dwell under his own vine and fig-tree with his 
 children and his children's children about him (Micah 
 Iv. 4 ; Isa. Ixv. 19-22 ; Jer. xxxi. 5). 
 
 In the second place, it is to be a time of righteousness. 
 No one can hope to share the blessings of the future salva- 
 tion who is not clean of hand and pure of heart. Jerusalem 
 will be the centre of justice and of judgment. Brotherly 
 kindness and sympathy will be the law of human life. 
 The broken hearts are to be bound up, the captives freed. 
 
58 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 and the prison doors thrown open (Isa. iv. 3, 4 ; Ixi. 
 1-3). 
 
 Above all, it is to be a time of religion pure and unde- 
 filed. Idolatry is to cease, the false gods will be forsaken, 
 the communion between the nation and Jehovah, which 
 has been interrupted by sin, will be re-established. 
 
 ' And it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain 
 of Jehovah's house shall be established in the top of the 
 mountains and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations 
 shall flow unto it. . . . For out of Zion shall go forth the law, 
 and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.' (Isa. ii. 1-3 ; 
 cf. Ps. li. 18, 19.) 
 
 In order to understand the place held by the Messianic 
 hope in the spiritual life of Israel, we must forget the 
 individualism in which we have been trained and put our- 
 selves in the position of men to whom the moral unit is not 
 the individual but the nation. In every age there have 
 been men who have so identified themselves with their 
 country that their own interests have been forgotten and 
 their very personality merged in the larger whole. But, 
 in the case of the religious teachers of Israel, this attitude 
 is not exceptional but characteristic. They are not 
 primarily concerned with their own fortunes, but with 
 the destiny of their people. It is not the individual 
 Israelite, but Israel as a nation who is the child, the wife, 
 the son of Jehovah. That the apostasy of the nation 
 should involve all the individuals in it, that the sins of the 
 fathers should be visited upon the children, of the sovereign 
 upon the people, of the evil on the good, seemed to the pious 
 Israelite as natural as it was inevitable. And conversely, 
 the assurance of the ultimate victory of Israel was the 
 sufficient consolation for the misfortunes which he might 
 suffer in the present. Apart from the institutions of 
 the national religion the life of the best of men was 
 maimed and ineffective. When the exiles in Babylon 
 
v.] PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 59 
 
 are asked by their captors for a song, they have none 
 to give. 
 
 ' How shall we sing Jehovah's song, 
 In a strange land 'i 
 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, 
 Let my right hand forget her skill. 
 Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, 
 If I remember thee not ; 
 If I prefer not Jerusalem 
 Above my chief joy.' (Ps. cxxzvii. 4-5.) 
 
 But let the edict of restoration go forth, and in a moment 
 all is changed. 
 
 ' When Jehovah brought back those that returned to Zion, 
 We were like unto them that dream. 
 Then was our mouth filled with laughter. 
 And our tongue with singing : 
 Then said they among the nations, 
 Jehovah hath done great things for them. 
 Jehovah hath done great things for us ; 
 Whereof we are glad.' (Ps. cxxvi. 1-3.) 
 
 3. Intimations of Immortality 
 
 It is obvious that where such a viewpoint is dominant 
 the hope of individual immortality must occupy a subordin- 
 ate place. Since the sorrows and trials which plague 
 individuals were connected directly or indirectly with the 
 national sin, their remedy was to be found in the national 
 restoration, and this the pious in Israel confidently expected 
 in the near future and in an enduring form. Before faith 
 in immortality can arise this expectation must be shaken. 
 The bond which unites the individual Israelite to the 
 nation must be weakened, and the belief arise that each 
 human soul has a value of its own for God quite apart 
 from the social group of which it is a part. This we find 
 actually taking place in Israel in connection with the 
 
60 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oh 
 
 experiences of the exile, and it is this new conviction, 
 voicing itseK in the utterance of great thinkers like 
 Jeremiah and Ezekiel, which is the distinctive con- 
 tribution of the religion of Israel to the doctrine of 
 immortality. 
 
 The first to give clear utterance to this new note in 
 Israel is Jeremiah. The failure of the outward support 
 on which he had been accustomed to rely forced him to 
 seek some new and deeper foundation for his faith, and he 
 found it where the devout in every age have found it, in 
 the commimion of the soul with God. His own experience 
 as he wrestled with God taught him a new and deeper 
 conception of the divine purpose. He learned to think 
 of God not simply as the deUverer from outward danger, 
 but from inward corruption, as the creator of the clean 
 heart, the one who dwells with the man of humble and 
 contrite spirit, the patient, long-suffering friend whose 
 love abides unchanged in spite of man's infirmity, and 
 who will in the end prevail. 
 
 Under the influence of this new insight we see the 
 gradual transformation of the Messianic hope. It becomes 
 less outward, more inward. It deals less with institutions, 
 and more with persons. Isaiah's teaching concerning the 
 ' Remnant ' (Isa. x. 20-23) is reasserted by Jeremiah in 
 more emphatic form. Not Israel as such, but the pious 
 in Israel constitute the true object of Jehovah's care and 
 the subject of his redemptive purpose. They are the good 
 figs which he separates from the bad figs which are destined 
 for destruction (Jer. xxiv. 1-10). They are the good seed 
 from which the house of Israel and of Judah is to be 
 renewed (Jer. xxxi. 27). Upon their hearts, as upon a 
 living tablet, the new covenant of Jehovah is to be in- 
 scribed (vv. 33, 34). They shall no longer be involved in 
 the consequences of their neighbour's sins. ' In those 
 days they shall no more say. The fathers have eaten sour 
 grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge, but every 
 
v.] PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 61 
 
 one shall die for his own iniquity. Every man that 
 eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall he set on edge ' 
 (vv. 29, 30). 
 
 Ezekiel is even more outspoken in his individualism. 
 Taking up Jeremiah's words, he enlarges upon them. 
 ' What mean ye,' he asks, ' that ye use this proverb con- 
 cerning the land of Israel, saying. The fathers have eaten 
 sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge ? As 
 I hve, saith the Lord Jehovah, ye shaU not have occasion 
 any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls 
 are mine. As the soul of the father, so also the soul of 
 the son is mine. The soul that sinneth, it shall die, but if 
 a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right . . . 
 he shall surely live ' (Ezek. xviii. 1-9.) 
 
 This new and profounder conception of the worth of 
 the individual reaches its finest expression in the great 
 prophet of the exile, to whom we owe the last part of the 
 Book of Isaiah. Here Jeremiah's distinction between the 
 true and the false Israel is combined with the new teaching 
 that the mark of the true Servant of Jehovah is sacrificial 
 service (Isa. xlix. 6, 7 ; liii. 4-6). Whatever our inter- 
 pretation of Isaiah liii., the great passage which has given 
 Christian thought its clearest picture of the suffering 
 Christ, whether we interpret the servant as an individual 
 or as the personification of all the faithful sufferers of 
 Israel, it is clear that we are dealing with convictions bom 
 of the profoundest personal experience, and only to be 
 understood in the Hght of the new ideals of salvation whose 
 rise we have been considering. The passion of redeeming 
 love, in which Hosea had discovered the characteristic 
 mark of God (Hos. i., ii.), is here extended to man, and so 
 the communion between the two is established on the 
 firmest possible basis. 
 
 Such a conception could not fail to issue in the behef 
 in individual immortality. Had this not been the case, 
 Israel must have been the exception to what we find 
 
62 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 taking place everywhere else under similar conditions. 
 The wonder is not that with such a conception of 
 God and of salvation the belief should have made 
 its appearance, but that it should have been so long 
 deferred.^ 
 
 Just when the new hope first makes its appearance, it 
 is not easy to say with certainty. Critical questions still 
 remain, upon which scholars are not yet agreed. Yet, in 
 general, the main lines of the development are clear. At 
 first, the hope appears in sporadic utterances as an asser- 
 tion of individual faith, leaving the old conception of 
 Sheol still imchanged. Devout men here and there dared 
 to believe that God would yet deliver them from its power, 
 or continue even in Sheol the communion with Him- 
 self which they had enjoyed here. Later, this individual 
 expectation unites with the broader stream of the national 
 hope and, in the doctrine of the resurrection, we have the 
 affirmation that the pious souls who have passed away 
 before the future consummation, shall not be deprived 
 of its Joys. Finally, under the rising tide of faith Sheol 
 itself is transformed. It becomes the scene of ethical 
 values, and a place where the pious may still enjoy 
 uninterrupted communion with God.^ 
 
 1 A possible reason for the later appearance of the hope of immortality 
 in Israel was the opposition of the prophets to ancestor worship, traces of 
 which many scholars find in early portions of the Old Testament. 
 Against this practice the prophets resolutely set their face, and the effect 
 of their attitude was to intensify still further the Hebrew view of the 
 hopelessness and ineffectiveness of the life after death. Cf. Paton, op. cit. 
 p. 253 sq. 
 
 2 Anticipations of the doctrine of the resurrection have been found in the 
 miracles of Elijah and Elisha, recorded in 1 Kings xvii. 8-24, and 2 Kings 
 iv. 8-S7. But the cases are not parallel. We have to do here with a simple 
 prolongation of life, to be succeeded in due time by the death from which 
 none can escape. Much closer is the parallel in the case of Enoch (Gen. 
 T. 24), and Elijah (2 Kings ii. 1-11), who at death are caught up to heaven 
 with God. But here again we have to do with exceptional cases, from which 
 no general doctrine can be drawn. Similar cases of exceptions to the 
 common lot of mankind meet iis in religions like that of Babylonia, which 
 have never developed any general doctrine of a moral life after death, 
 Cf. Paton, Biblical World, March 1910, p. laa. 
 
V.J PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 63 
 
 The most notable expression of the first form of hope 
 is Job's famous saying in xix. 25-27 : — 
 
 ' I know that my Redeemer (i.e. vindicator, champion) liveth, 
 And at last he shall stand up upon the earth, 
 And after my skin, even this body, is destroyed. 
 Then without my flesh shall I see God, 
 Whom I, even I, shall see on my side. 
 And mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.' ^ 
 
 To appreciate the significance of this great utterance, 
 one of the noblest expressions in literature of the triumph 
 of faith over obstacles apparently insuperable, we must 
 recall the context. Job does not question the prevailing 
 estimate of Sheol. As we have already seen, there are 
 times in which he even welcomes its darkness and in- 
 effectiveness as a refuge from the acute torments of his 
 life here. But the mood is a transient one. His trust in 
 God is too strong to make the thought of final separation 
 tolerable. Hope wrestles with despair in his thought of 
 the future. Now hope has the ascendant, as in chapter xiv. 
 13-15 :— 
 
 ' Oh that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol, 
 That thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past. 
 That thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember 
 me ! . . . 
 
 ' Interpreters differ in their rendering of the passage, some, as in the 
 Revised Version quoted above, interpreting the word — '''1B'3D1 ' apart from 
 
 my flesh,' that is to say, in disembodied form ; others, ' from my flesh,' or in 
 other words, re-embodied. An advocate of the later view is Professor Paton, 
 in his Hebrew Idea of the FtUwre Life (op. cit. May, p. 345). Following the 
 revised text of Duhm, he renders the passage as follows : — 
 ' But I know that my avenger liveth. 
 
 And one who shall survive after I am dust ; 
 
 And that another shall arise as my witness. 
 
 And that he shall set up his mark. 
 
 From my flesh shall I see God, 
 
 Whom I shall see for myself, 
 
 And mine eyes shall behold, and no stranger,' 
 
 This difference of opinion does not affect the main point involved, which is 
 that the sufferer expects to see God for himself in the life after death 
 
64 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 All the days of my warfare would I wait, 
 
 Till my release should come. 
 
 Thou shouldest call, and I would answer thee : 
 
 Thou wouldest have a desire to the work of thy hands.' 
 
 But the hope fades almost as soon as it is born. 
 
 ' " But now," he goes on, " thou numberest my steps : 
 Dost thou not watch over my sin ? . . . 
 My transgression is sealed up in a bag, 
 And thou fastenest up mine iniquity. 
 Ajid surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, 
 And the rock is removed out of its place ; 
 The waters wear the stones ; 
 
 The overflowings thereof wash away the dust of the earth : 
 So thou destroyest the hope of man. 
 Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passe th.'" 
 
 (vv. 16-20.) 
 
 All the more significant is it that the last word should 
 be one of triumph, and that the sufierer, conscious of his 
 integrity, should dare to affirm his ultimate vindication 
 by God in the life after death. 
 
 A similar confidence finds expression in several of the 
 psalms. '^ Thus in Psalm xlix. the Psalmist pictures the 
 death of the wicked who descend as a flock to Sheol, where 
 death is appointed for their shepherd. But as for him, 
 he is confident that God will deliver him from such a fate. 
 
 ' God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, 
 For he shall receive me.' (v. 15.) 
 
 So, in Psalm Ixxiii., the writer, perplexed by the pro- 
 sperity of the wicked, finds consolation in the thought 
 that their triumph is temporary, whereas he himself is 
 
 ' Continually with thee : 
 Thou hast holden my right hand. 
 
 ' If the Servant be regarded as an individual, we must add Isa. liii. 10-12, 
 to the passages cited from the Psalms, as giving us our first Intimations of 
 immortality in the Old Testament. 
 
v.] PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 65 
 
 Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel. 
 And afterward receive me to glory. 
 
 My flesh and my heart faileth : 
 
 But my God is the strength of my heart and my portion 
 forever.' (vv. 23, 24, 26.) 
 
 Even clearer is the tea<;hing of Psalms xvi. and xvii. 
 
 ' I have set Jehovah always before me : 
 
 Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. 
 
 Thereforth my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth : 
 
 My flesh also shall dwell in safety. 
 
 For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol : 
 
 Neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruptioi!S 
 
 Thou wUt show me the path of life : 
 
 In thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' 
 
 (xvi. 8-11.) 
 ' As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness : 
 
 I shall be satisfied, when I awake, vyith beholding thy 
 form.' (xvii. 15.)^ 
 
 4. The Doctrine of the Resurrection 
 
 The passages which we have thus far been considering 
 are the utterances of strong men in their isolation. The 
 hope they express is purely individual, but in a nation 
 with so highly developed a social consciousness as Israel, 
 this isolation, could not permanently continue. Sooner 
 or later the individual hope and the national hope must 
 come together, and this is what takes place in the doctrine 
 of the resurrection. 
 
 When and where this doctrine first makes its appearance 
 
 1 Some recent commentators interpret these Psalms as expressions of the 
 national consciousness ; others, adopting the individual interpretation, 
 understand the deliverance referred to as taking place in the present life. 
 Neither view seems to the present writer to do full justice to the context. 
 It seems simpler and more natural to understand these passages, like the 
 parallel passage in Job, as intimations of immortality springing up in the 
 souls of men of vital faith and preparing the way for the fuller and more 
 systematic expressions of the hope which meet us in the later history. 
 
66 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 in the religion of Israel is still in dispute. The first un- 
 mistakable evidence of the new faith is found in Isaiah 
 xxvi. 19, 20, where the prophet reassures his troubled 
 readers as follows : — 
 
 ' Thy dead shall live ; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake 
 and sing, ye that dwell in the dust : for thy dew is as the dew 
 of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead.' 
 
 The best critics regard this passage as part of an apoca- 
 lypse of the late Persian period. In view of the closeness 
 of contact between Israel and Persia at the time, it is 
 natural to attribute the appearance of the doctrine of the 
 "■esurrection in Israel to Persian influence,^ but while it is 
 quite hkely that such may have been the case, it is not 
 necessary to assume this in order to account for the facts. 
 The premises of the resurrection faith, as we have seen, 
 had long been laid by Jeremiah and Ezekiel in their con- 
 ception of God and of His relation to the individual. All 
 that was needed was that some thinker should arise, 
 clear-sighted and bold enough, to draw the conclusion. 
 Such a thinker we have in the unknown writer of 
 Isaiah xxvi. To him it was not sufficient that Israel as 
 a nation should rise from the dead, as Ezekiel had taught 
 before him ; ^ the individual Israelites, too, who had 
 passed away in the cruel days of oppression God must 
 bring again, that they may share the joy of the final 
 triumph. , 
 
 In the apocalypse of Isaiah the resurrection is confined ! 
 to the righteous. The oppressors of Israel, hke the wicked \ 
 whom death shepherds, descend to Sheol, and for them 
 there is no deliverance (v. 14). A different view appears 
 in the well-known passage in Daniel xii. 2, 3 : — 
 
 ' And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall 
 
 1 Cf. on this subject Stave : Einjluss des Parsismus auf das Judentum, 
 1898; Cheyne: Possible Zoroastrian Influence on the Religion of Israel ; Ex- 
 pository Times, vol. ii. pp. 202, 224, 249 sq. 
 
 2 Cf. zzzvii, , the vision of the valley of dry bones. 
 
v.] PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 67 
 
 awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and ever- 
 lasting contempt. And they that are wise shall shine as the 
 brightness of the firmament ; and they that turn many to 
 righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.' 
 
 Here, as in the later judgment scene in Matthew xxv., 
 the vidcked rise as well as the righteous, and the purpose of 
 the return of the dead to earth is not simply salvation, 
 but punishment. It is true that not all the dead are 
 raised, but only many of them, the conspicuous saints 
 and the conspicuous sinners.^ But the inclusion of sinners 
 with saints proves that a new interest has emerged. The 
 close connection between resurrection and judgment 
 which plays so conspicuous a rdle in Christian theology 
 has begun. 
 
 The doctrine of the resurrection is a familiar one in 
 the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era.^ 
 Sometimes, as in Enoch 91 : 10, only the righteous are 
 raised, and again as in Enoch 51, Ezra and Baruch, the 
 wicked rise for judgment. Now, as in Second Maccabees,^ 
 the resurrection restores the dead to conditions similar to 
 those which prevail here ; and again, as in Enoch 62 : 11- 
 16,* the contrast between the condition before and after 
 resurrection is emphasised.^ Now there is but one resur- 
 rection, introducing those who share it at once into the 
 joys of the final state, and again there are two, a pre- 
 liminary resurrection introduciug the Millennium, or reign 
 
 1 Possibly, as Paton suggests {op. cil. p. 347) 'the righteous priests and 
 scrihes who suffered martyrdom in the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes.' 
 
 2 It appears in various portions of the Book of Enoch {e.g. 51 : 1 ; 62 : 
 11-16 ; 91 : 10 ; 92 : 3), in the Psalms of Solomon (3 : 16), in Second 
 Maccabees (7 : 9, 14, 23), as weU as in such later books as Fourth Ezra (7 : 
 32), and the Apocalypse of Baruch (30 : 1-5 ; 50 ; 51 : 1-6). 
 
 ' At the resurrection the martyr expects to receive back the tongue and 
 hands of which he has been deprived here (7 : 11). 
 
 * ' And these shall be your garments, garments of life, aaith the Lord of 
 spirits, and your garments will not grow old and your glory will not pass 
 away before the Lord of spirits ' (v. 16). 
 
 s In Baruch 60 ; 51 : 1, the dead rise in the same form for judgment, but 
 after judgment their aspect changes, that of the righteous for the better, 
 that of the wicked for the worse. 
 
68 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 of the saints on earth, to be succeeded at its close by the 
 final resurrection which is to usher in the heavenly 
 kingdom which shall know no end.^ 
 
 The reader who tries to thread his way without a guida 
 through this tangled maze speedily finds himself involr^d 
 in almost inextricable difficulties. Some of these ar» 
 critical and literary. Many of the books he studies (as 
 for example Enoch) are composite in origin, and critics 
 are not agreed as to the relation and date of the several 
 parts. Some portions of the literature (like Baruch and 
 Fourth Ezra) are post-Christian, and it is a disputed 
 question how far they show traces of Christian influence. 
 Moreover, there is the ever-present difficulty caused by 
 the prevalence of an unfamiliar literary form. In the 
 apocalypses, Jewish as Christian, earthly events and 
 experiences are pictured in symbolic form, and it is not 
 always easy to tell where fact ends and symbol b^ins. 
 For all these reasons interpretation is peculiarly difficult, 
 and the student whose interest, like our own, is in following 
 the main line of religious development, must be ever on 
 his guard lest he be led into some by-way of speculation 
 apart from the high-road of progress. 
 
 From the confused variety of opinion which the apoca- 
 lypses present, one fact of outstanding importance emerges, 
 and that is the growing transcendence of Israel's hope. 
 By this we mean the extent to which, in Jewish thought of 
 the future, interest is shifted from the familiar and the 
 near to the strange and the remote ; or, as we should put 
 it in more theological language, from the earthly to the 
 heavenly. 
 
 The importance of this change can hardly be exagger- 
 ated. At first, the hope of the nation, as well as of the 
 individual, is confined to this earth. Jerusalem is to be 
 rebuilt, the supremacy of Israel among the nations is to 
 
 1 So in Enoch 91 : 3-10, and more clearly in Baruch 40 : 3, and Fourth 
 Ezra 7 : 28, 29. 
 
v.] PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 69 
 
 be re-established, and the nature of the blessings to be 
 enjoyed in the Messianic age differs from those which 
 may be enjoyed here only in their completeness and in 
 their permanence. But, before the beginning of the 
 Christian era this early expectation had been weakened. 
 Earth had become too narrow a stage for the consummation 
 which is expected. There is to be a sudden crisis, a great 
 catastrophe. Messiah will come in the clouds of heaven, 
 the conditions of life will be transformed, a new environ- 
 ment created, and the consummation impossible of attain- 
 ment by the methods of God's present working will be 
 brought about by a stupendous miracle. This shifting 
 of interest from the familiar to the strange, from earth 
 to heaven, is what we mean by the transcendence of the 
 later Messianic hope.^ 
 
 The causes of this change we can only conjecture. They 
 were partly theoretical, and partly practical. For one 
 thing, the repeated postponements of the earthly hope led 
 men to despair of the possibility of its ever being realised. 
 For one brief moment indeed, when Cyrus allowed the 
 exiles to return, it seemed as if the longed-for day had come, 
 and the Messianic era was at hand. And again in the 
 period of heroic struggle under the Maccabees the old hope 
 revived, but the successes gained were altogether in- 
 commensurate with the anticipations cherished, and when 
 the Roman domination succeeded those which had gone 
 before, the more thoughtful among the Jews realised the 
 hopelessness of any conquest to be won by natural means. 
 
 I This does not mean, of course, that the older view was crowded out 
 altogether. On the contrary, it lived on side by side with the new, and 
 meets us in strange and often unexpected connections. An instance in point 
 is the doctrine of the Millennium, already referred to. Here we have the 
 aombination of the earlier conception of the resurrection as a restoration of 
 the dead to the conditions which had existed before their departure with the 
 later transcendent form of the doctrine. There are two resurrections, the 
 first of the righteous saints who enjoy on earth the blessings of the Messianic 
 lalvation ; the second, of all men good and evil at the final judgment which 
 ushers in the world to come. Cf. my article 'Millennium': Hastings' 
 Dictionary of the Bible, and references there given. 
 
70 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 Moreover, tlie rise of philosophical speculation had led to 
 the conception of another kind of reality than that with 
 which we are familiar here. Earthly existences were held 
 to have their heavenly counterparts, waiting to be revealed 
 at the proper time to those for whom God had designed 
 them. The earthly tabernacle was the copy of a heavenly 
 tabernacle ; the temple at Jerusalem, of a heavenly 
 temple ; Jerusalem itself of a heavenly city prepared 
 by God to be the home of the saints (cf. Heb. xi. 10 ; Rev. 
 xxi. 2). So Messiah was no longer an earthly prince, but 
 a superhuman being hidden with God from the beginning 
 until the appointed time, when at the end of the age he 
 should descend to earth to undertake his supernatural 
 salvation.^ 
 
 5. The Moralisation of Sheol 
 
 Side by side with this change went another scarcely 
 less important. I refer to the transformation of Sheol 
 from a place of colourless and ineffective existence 
 into a scene of active moral life. This took place at 
 least as early as 100 B.C., possibly much earlier. Thus 
 in the first portion of the Book of Enoch, which some 
 critics date as early as 170 B.C., Sheol is described as 
 containing four divisions, two for the righteous, and two 
 for the wicked. The first contains the souls of the righteous 
 who in this life have met with persecution and have suffered 
 a violent death. These cry continually to God for ven- 
 
 • The most striking example of this tranjcendent eschatology is found in 
 the Similitudes of Enoch (37-70). Here we read of a Son of Man ' with whom 
 dwelleth righteousness and who reveals all the treasures of that which is 
 hidden, because the Lord of spirits hath chosen him, and his light before the 
 Lord of spirits hath surpassed everything in uprightness forever' (46: 3). 
 Before the sun and the stars were created ' his name was named before the 
 Lord of spirits ' (48 : 3). ' In him dwells the spirit of wisdom and the spirit 
 of him who gives knowledge . . . and he will judge the secret things, and 
 no one will be able to utter a lying word before him ' (49 : 3, 4). The Lord 
 of spirits will place him ' on the throne of glorv, and he will judge all the 
 works of the holy in the heaven and weigh their deeds in the balance ' (61 : 8). 
 By the word of his mouth he shall slay all the sinners, and all the unrighteous 
 shall be destroyed before his face (62 : 2). With his appearing all evil will 
 pass away, aud from henceforth there will be nothing that is corruptible 
 
 (O^ ' 2jaf. 
 
v.] PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 71 
 
 geance on those who have wronged them. The second 
 contains the souls of the righteous who have not shared 
 these painful experiences. Their lot is pleasant. In 
 their dwelling-place ' there is a spring of water, and light 
 above it.' The third is for the sinners who have died, 
 and been ' buried in the earth without incurring judgment 
 in their lifetime. Here their souls are placed apart in 
 this great pain unto the day of judgment and punishment 
 and torture of the revilers forever.' The last is for the 
 souls of the wicked who have received their punishment 
 in this life. These ' complete in their crimes,' shall remain 
 there forever, and will not be raised at the last day.^ 
 
 Even more striking is the teaching of the Similitudes 
 of Enoch (chapters 37-70) which were probably written 
 shortly before the Christian era. Here we read of a garden 
 of life, in which the elect dwell (61 : 12). When Enoch is 
 translated and carried to Paradise, he finds it aheady 
 tenanted by the ' first fathers and the righteous who from 
 the beginning dwell in that place ' (70 : 4). One is reminded 
 of Jesus' words to the dying thief, ' This day shalt thou 
 be with me in Paradise.' To the author of the Similitudes, 
 as to his greater successor, death has lost its terrors. It 
 is a door that opens into the Father's house. 
 
 What a contrast these passages present to the Sheol 
 to which Job looks forward, a place of gloom and monotony, 
 to be desired in spite of its emptiness for its one good gift 
 of rest ! Here we have consciousness and activity, varieties 
 of experience and distinctions of moral value. It is not 
 necessary to wait until the soul escapes from Sheol in 
 order to commune with God, for His power extends even 
 to the grave. The sentence to be pronounced upon the 
 wicked is anticipated in the underworld,^ and after death 
 as before the righteous are still with Him. 
 
 1 Enoch 22. Charles's edition, pp. 94, 95. 
 
 2 As to the nature of the punishment of the wicked »fter death, cf. Volz : 
 Jvdische Eschatologie, p. 282 sq. It is partly negative, — separation from 
 God ; partly positive, — suffering in body and in spirit. The figures of the 
 worm, the fire, and darkness are frequently used. In duration it is endless. 
 
72 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 Thus in various ways we see the older eschatology 
 of Israel being modified and transformed. Attention has 
 shifted from the outer to the inner, from the body to 
 the soul, from earth to heaven. The great transition 
 which we have already witnessed in Greece is repeating 
 itself in Israel. 
 
 What part did Greece play in this transition ? Inter- 
 esting as this question is, long as it has engrossed the 
 attention of scholars, it is not possible to answer it with 
 certainty. In some later Jewish books, notably the 
 Wisdom of Solomon, Greek influence is unmistakable 
 Here immortality is taught in the Platonic form. Birtl: 
 is represented as a fall from a higher existence (7 : 3) 
 the body is a clog upon the immortal spirit (9 : 15), and 
 death a blessed relief from imprisonment. Similar is the 
 teaching of Fourth Maccabees, as well as of the famous 
 thinker Philo of Alexandria, the great mediator between 
 the thought of Israel and Greece.* These writings, passing 
 over from Israel to the youthful Christian Cihurch, played 
 an important part in the later history, and helped to bring 
 about that contact between Greek and Christian thought 
 which we shall have occasion to study in the chapters that 
 follow. But the story belongs to a later date than the 
 period which we are now considering, and we need not 
 linger over it now. 
 
 The question as to Greek influence on the earlier develop- 
 ment is more difficult. Some scholars make Greece re- 
 sponsible for the change in the conception of Sheol, to 
 which reference has already been made.^ But the case 
 is by no means clear. Here, as in the parallel case of 
 the resurrection, the change may well have been due 
 to inherent causes. Other peoples besides the Greeks 
 nave come to believe in the possibility of a moral life 
 
 I According to Josephua ( Wan, ii. 8 ; Antiquities, xviii. 5) similar viewi 
 were held by the Essenes. 
 ' E.g. Paton, op. cit. p. 340 
 
v.] PREPARATION IN ISRAEL FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 73 
 
 in the underworld. Why not Israel ? The premises, 
 as we have seen, were already laid. If God could bring 
 the soul back from Sheol, why could He not reach His 
 faithful servants even there ? What limit could faith 
 set either to His power or to His love ? The God of 
 Jeremiah and of the second Isaiah, the Creator of the 
 heavens and the earth, the Father who had made man in 
 His own image for commimion with Himself, could not 
 permanently be banished from any part of His creation. 
 
 It is this unshakable conviction of God's love and power 
 which constitutes the direct preparation for the Christian 
 hope. Each of the many forms assumed by Israel's thought 
 of the future during the long history which we have been 
 retracing has its parallel in other religions. The earlier 
 and the later view of Sheol, the simpler and the more 
 transcendent conception of the resurrection, the union 
 of the earthly with the heavenly hope, as we have it in 
 the Milleimium of the apocalypses, the doctrine of immor- 
 tality as it meets ue in the Wisdom literature, all these 
 we have learned to know through our earlier study. But 
 the deep conviction that God had made man in His own 
 image for communion with Himself, that salvation was a 
 moral process involving the transformation of character 
 in individuals as well as the alteration of social conditions, 
 and above all, the central place given self-sacrificing love 
 as the characteristic attribute of God and the bond of 
 union between Him and His creature, this was Israel's 
 own, and it was upon this foundation that Jesus built His 
 own teaching concerning the future. 
 
74 a:HE CHRISTIAN HOPE! [oh. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CONTRIBUTION OF JESUS TO THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 Brief as has been our survey of man's thought of the 
 future Hfe before Christ, it has made two things clear ; 
 first, the wide extent of the preparation for the Christian 
 hope, and secondly, the great variety of forms which it 
 has assumed. We have seen that long before Jesus came 
 man's thought had been busy with the mystery of death, 
 and his consciousness of the persistence of moral values 
 had asserted itself. In Egypt, in India, in Persia, in Greece, 
 as well as in Israel, we have seen the primitive conception 
 of the life of the spirit after death replaced by other and 
 more hopeful convictions. We have traced the different 
 paths by which this new faith was won, and the different 
 forms which it had assumed. We have seen that many of 
 the essential constituents in the later Christian hope had 
 their anticipations in pre-Christian thought. The doctrine 
 of the immortality of the soul, the conviction that the 
 continuity of the moral life persists without break, and 
 the expectation of a final social consummation in which 
 living and dead alike share, all of these have their parallels 
 in other religions. This being the case, the question is a 
 fair one, what Christ has added which was not there before ? 
 What right have we to speak of a Christian hope as distinct 
 from a Jewish or a Greek, or indeed, from a hope which is 
 merely human ? 
 
 The answer can be given very simply. Christianity 
 has added to man's belief in the life after death two things : 
 
VI.] CONTRIBUTION OF JESUS TO CHRISTIAN HOPE 75 
 
 first, a new evidence of the fact ; secondly, a new defini- 
 tion of its nature. The new evidence for the fact is the 
 personality of Jesus ; the new definition of its nature is 
 Christlikeness. Each of these is the direct contribution 
 of Jesus to man's thought of the future. Both together 
 constitute the distinctive content of the Christian hope. 
 
 It is always so in connection with Christianity. \Mien 
 we touch Jesus we reach that which is distinctive. No- 
 where is this more apparent than in connection with the 
 subject of our present interest. 
 
 There are three ways in which Jesus contributes to the 
 Christian hope, first, by His teaching ; secondly, by His 
 character, and thirdly, by His Resurrection. In the present 
 chapter we shall consider the first two of these, leaving 
 the third for the chapter that follows.* 
 
 1. The Method of Jesus 
 
 The first way in which Jesus contributes to faith in 
 immortality is by His teaching. He reaffirms in unequi- 
 vocal manner the great truths which constitute Israel's 
 distinctive preparation for the Christian hope : the truth 
 of the fatherhood of God, of His purpose to establish a 
 righteous society among men, of His compassionate care 
 for the individual, of the persistence of the human spirit 
 after death under conditions which make possible the 
 continuance of a self-conscious moral life, of the union of 
 Uving and dead in the all-embracing commonwealth of the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 This He does, to be sure, by indirection. That is always 
 
 1 On the eschatological teaching of Jesus, cf. the literature cited in 
 the Appendix. It is manifestly impossible within the limits of the 
 present essay for the author to enter into a detailed discussion of the 
 critical questions connected with the Gospels. It is sufficient for him to 
 say that he accepts in general the two-source theory, i.e. the theory that 
 the earliest sources of our synoptic gospels were a gospel like our present 
 Mark, and a document (commonly known as Q) containing the bulk of tha 
 discourses not giren in Mark which are common to Luke and to Matthew, 
 
76 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [CH, 
 
 Jesus' way. Nothing is more surprising, had not familiarity 
 dulled our sense of the fact, than the incidental way in 
 which Jesus enunciates His most revolutionary principles. 
 He assumes rather than asserts. He takes for granted 
 that the message which He brings is one with which His 
 hearers are already well acquaiated. It is so with His 
 teaching about God. Jesus does not tell men that God 
 is their Father, as though He were uttering something 
 new and startling. He speaks of Fatherhood as a well- 
 known fact, from which He proceeds to draw the conse- 
 quences. ' Ye shall be perfect,' He says, ' as your Heavenly 
 Father is perfect ' (Matt. v. 48). Our Father is com- 
 passionate. We ought therefore to forgive our enemies 
 (Matt. vi. 14, 15 ; cf. Luke vi. 35, 36). He is righteous. 
 We must be uncompromising in our resistance to evil 
 (Matt. vi. 1-4; cf. v. 16-20). He makes His sun to shine 
 on the evil and the good, and sends His rain on the just 
 and the unjust. We ought to imitate His impartial 
 benevolence (Matt. v. 45, 46). 
 
 Even more important than His enunciation of principles 
 are the illustrations by which He drives them home. The 
 trouble with the men to whom Jesus spoke was not so 
 much that they denied His teaching as that they did not 
 ^ realise what it meant. Jesus could adopt without change 
 the Scribe's reading of the great commandment, but their 
 ways parted when the Master extended neighbourhood 
 to include the Samaritan (Luke x. 25-37). That God 
 was forgiving every Jew was ready to admit, but when 
 Jesus interpreted God's forgiveness in terms of the fatted 
 calf for the returning prodigal, rigorous moralists felt 
 that He was going too far. Revolution is always a matter 
 of application rather than of theory. Most men are ready 
 enough to grant you your principles if only you do not 
 insist on drawing the consequences. 
 
 It was so in our subject of the Christian hope. The 
 novelty of Jesus' teaching about the life after death was 
 
VI.] CONTRIBUTION OF JESUS TO CHRISTIAN HOPE 77 
 
 not so much in the matter as in the manner of it. ' He spoke 
 of immortality as a familiar fact, too well known to need 
 defence or definition. As with the prophets, who were 
 His predecessors, it was a corollary from another truth 
 to which He attached supreme importance. This was 
 God's purpose to establish His kingdom. Here therefore 
 we must begin. 
 
 2. The Gospel of the Kingdom 
 
 Jesus, we know, began His public ministry as a preacher 
 of the kingdom. This was the good news He was sent to 
 proclaim. He declared Himself the Messiah, for whom 
 Israel looked, and it was this claim which sent Him to the 
 Cross. 
 
 In Jesus' teaching concerning the kingdom we see the 
 same blending of the old and the new to which reference 
 has already been made. He described the kingdom in 
 language made familiar by His predecessors. He spoke 
 of it as a hope so well known that description was needless. 
 He came to take up John's work where he laid it down. 
 The consummation John had declared to be imminent He, 
 too, felt was at hand. 
 
 To Jesus the kingdom meant three things : first, the 
 reign of God ; secondly, the sphere in which that reign 
 is exercised ; thirdly, the consequences which it brings 
 with it. In the first sense, the kingdom expresses the 
 principles of God's government as Jesus Himself under- 
 stood and proclaimed them (e.g. Matt. vi. 10) ; in the 
 second sense, it denotes the society in which these principles 
 are to be realised (e.g. Mark x. 14) ; in the third sense, it 
 expresses the blessings which accompany the acceptance 
 of these principles and membership in this society (e.g. 
 Matt. V. 3). In its most comprehensive sense it is the new 
 social order which Jesus felt Himself sent to establish. 
 
 In its form Jesus' teaching attaches itself to the tran- 
 
78 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 scendent form of the Messianic hope, of which we have 
 already spoken in the last chapter, that is to say, the 
 form which regards it as inaugurating a new era and 
 introducing men into radically different conditions. He 
 speaks of a great catastrophe preceded by signs and 
 portents. '^ He describes the Son of Man as coming on the 
 clouds of heaven and sitting at the right hand of power.* 
 He looks for the resurrection of the dead and a final judg- 
 ment, in which He will be the Judge. ^ This creates a 
 difficulty for our thought which, unlike that of the Jew, is 
 not accustomed to the imagery of apocalyptic, and is apt 
 to take literally what to the eastern mind is only a form of 
 symbolism. 
 
 It is all the more important to remember the points 
 in which the transcendent eschatology represented an 
 advance upon the earlier and simpler conception. For 
 one thing it helped to spiritualise the thought of the future. 
 It removed the emphasis from the things of sense and con- 
 centrated attention upon moral values. Not marriage 
 and giving in marriage, but righteousness and communion 
 with God were to be the chief concerns of the citizenship 
 of the kingdom. Again, it helped to universalise the 
 Messianic hope. The narrow nationalism which made 
 Jerusalem the world's capital and the temple the centre 
 of the world's worship was not so easy to men who looked 
 for a new heaven and a new earth. If contact was to be 
 made with the past, here was the line which promised most. 
 
 This contrast between earth and heaven is quite con- 
 sistent in Jesus' case with a keen sense of the values of the 
 Ufe here. He delighted in the beauty of Nature, and saw 
 His Father's hand at work in the painting of the lily and 
 the care of the birds. He was a lover of children and a 
 welcome guest at the marriage feast. He was so far from 
 being an ascetic that he was reproached for laxity because 
 
 1 Mark xiii. , and parallels. a Matt. xivi. 64. 
 
 3 Matt, xxii, 29-31 ; xxy. 31-45. 
 
VI.] CONTRIBUTION OF JESUS TO CHRISTIAN HOPE 79 
 
 of the company he kept. With suffering in every form 
 he had the keenest sympathy. Much of His time was 
 given to ministry to the sick, and no prophet was more 
 uncompromising in His denunciation against the oppressors 
 of the poor. 
 
 But our interest here is in the novel element in Jesus' 
 teaching. This is to be found in the extent to which He 
 made the divine Fatherhood controlling for His thought 
 of the kingdom. However it is to be introduced, the 
 future society is to be one in which men shall live the 
 lives of children with their father, and act toward one 
 another as brothers. 
 
 This explains, for one thing, the spirituaUty in Jesus' 
 view of the kingdom. The kingdom is spiritual, not be- 
 cause it introduces its members into conditions different 
 from those which obtain here, but because it is the scene 
 of those relations of filial trust and brotherly service 
 which Jesus regards as the normal law of human life. 
 
 Again, this explains the sense in which Jesus thought 
 of the kingdom as universal. It is universal, not primarily 
 because it is destined to conquer all opposing forces, as 
 the people of Israel conquered the Canaanites who resisted 
 their entrance into the Promised Land, but because the 
 relations of love and brotherhood in which its life consists 
 are open to every child of man. 
 
 Finally, this explains the fact that, while its full con- 
 summation belongs to the future, the kingdom is, in a 
 true sense, present here and now (Luke xvii. 21). It is 
 present because the relations in which it consists are 
 present, in the life of Jesus Himself, and of all who have 
 learned His lesson and, denying themselves, take up the 
 Cross and follow Him. 
 
 This reference to the Cross suggests the point at which 
 Jesus' view differs most widely from that of His pre- 
 decessors, and that is in the emphasis which He lays upon 
 self-sacrificing love as the law of Ufe in the kingdom. 
 
80 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 The lesson is taught in difierent ways. Sometimes it is 
 taught indirectly, as when Jesus makes service the test of 
 greatness in His kingdom (Luke xxii. 24-27 ; cf. John xiii. 
 14). Sometimes, by direct injunction, as where He bids 
 His disciples imitate Him in self-denial (Mark viii. 34, 35). 
 Most clearly and most constantly, by His own example. 
 
 We see here the reflex influence of Jesus' own Messianic 
 consciousness. There are two views which have been 
 taken of Jesus' Messianic claim. According to the first, 
 Jesus' thought of His Messiahship did not differ essentially 
 from that of the prophets and seers who had preceded 
 Him. To be Messiah meant to be a king after the fashion 
 of David or Hezekiah, exerting indeed a wider sway and 
 commanding powers more extensive, but in the last 
 analysis depending as they did upon force to estabUsh 
 their supremacy. The shifting of the scene from earth 
 to heaven, which, as we have seen, characterised the later 
 development of the Messianic hope, served indeed to en- 
 large the scope of Messiah's activity, but it did not alter 
 its nature. Messiahship, whether here or hereafter, meant 
 a world-wide dominion, established and maintained by 
 force.* 
 
 According to the second view, Messiahship was the form 
 in which Jesus expressed His consciousness of His own 
 divine calling to be the Redeemer of His people. It must 
 be interpreted by what we know of Jesus' own character 
 and ideals. It involved the claim of sovereignty indeed, 
 but a sovereignty of spirit won, as all true mastery is won 
 in the realm of spirit, by the constraint of love. It is the 
 sovereignty which the mother exerts over the child for 
 whom she has given her life, which the teacher exerts over 
 
 1 This is the view of Eenan, who sees in the Messianic claim a dream into 
 which Jesus allowed himself to be led against his better judgment, and 
 which involved the surrender, or at least the subordination, of the epiritual 
 principles which were controlling in his earlier ministry. (Vie de Jlsus, 
 chapter xv.) Martineau (who interprets Messiahship in the same way) 
 avoids the difficulty by denying that Jesus ever made the claim. 
 
VI.] CONTRIBUTION OF JESUS TO CHRISTIAN HOPE 81 
 
 the pupils who have fallen under the spell of his ideals, 
 of the friend who freely shares his best with his friend. 
 It is the sovereignty of the suffering servant of Isaiah Uii., 
 who proves his right to rule by his willingness to serve. 
 It is the sovereignty which mounts to the throne by way 
 of Gethsemane and Golgotha. 
 
 Can we doubt which of these views most truly expresses 
 the thought of Jesus, the friend of man who came not to 
 be ministered unto, but to minister ? Can we beUeve 
 that He who in His exposition of the law clothed old words 
 with a new meaning (cf. Matt. v. and vi.), had no fresh 
 content to put into the Messianic hope ? If, as no one 
 doubts. His own character and conduct have something 
 to tell us about the sense in which His ethical teaching is 
 to be understood, we cannot be wrong in using them as a 
 clue to the interpretation of His eschatological doctrine. 
 The surest way to discover what kind of sovereignty He 
 expected in the future is to learn what kind of authority 
 He claimed in the present. If we would understand the 
 nature of the Messianic kingdom, we must study the 
 character of the Messianic King. 
 
 But there is another side to the picture which must 
 not be forgotten. Jesus conquers by love, but He is 
 certain that He will conquer. Calvary is the price which 
 He must pay to rule, but He knows that the price is not 
 in vain. 
 
 This is the meaning of the advent message, the coming 
 again of the Messiah on the clouds of heaven to receive 
 the heritage which He has rightfully won.^ The form may 
 
 1 Cf. Mark ziii. and par. , Matt. xzvi. 64, etc. As to the sense in which 
 these passages are to be understood, cf. my article in Hastings' Dictionary 
 if the Bible, vol. iii. p. 674. Three possibilities may be distinguished, each 
 of which has its advocates : (1 ) Jesus used the words attributed to Him in 
 the Gospels in a literal sense, to teach a physical advent in the clouds during 
 the lifetime of the generation then living. (2) The evangelists have attri- 
 buted to Jeaus sayings which originally made part of an early Jewish 
 apocalypie, the main outlines of which it is still possible for ns to recon- 
 struct. (3) Jesns used the language attributed to Him, in whole or in part, 
 in a symbolic sense, to teach spiritual truths. 
 
82 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 belong to the day, as all forms do, but the substance is 
 immortal truth, the truth that love, however it may seem 
 to fail, is certain in the end to win its way to victory. 
 
 3. Jesus' View of Immortality 
 
 We are ready now to understand the place which Jesus 
 assigned to immortality. It was the necessary condition 
 for the fulfilment of His Messianic work. It was the 
 corollary of the doctrine of the divine Fatherhood. This 
 comes out most clearly in His answer to the Sadducees, 
 recorded in Matthew xxii. 23-33. The Sadducees were 
 the conservatives in Jewish society. They represented 
 the old Hebrew tradition which confines hope to the 
 present Ufe. To them Sheol was still what it had been to 
 Job, a place of monotony and gloom, the bourne from 
 which no traveller returns. Unlike the Pharisees, at this 
 point the progressives in thought, they had never moved 
 forward on to the new ground of the resurrection faith. 
 
 One day, near the close of His ministry, a group of these 
 conservatives came to the new teacher with a clever 
 question. ' Master,' they began, planting themselves Hke 
 all traditionalists on the authority of the past, ' Moses 
 said, if a man die having no children, his brother shall 
 marry his wife and raise up seed unto his brother. Now 
 there were with us seven brethren, and the first married 
 and died, and, having no seed, left his wife unto his brother. 
 In Uke manner the second also, and the third unto the 
 seventh, and after them all, the woman died. In the 
 resurrection therefore whose wife shall she be of the seven, 
 for they all had her 1 ' (vv. 24-27). But Jesus was not 
 to be caught in the trap so skilfully laid for Him. The 
 resurrection life for which He looked was not to be simply 
 a continuation of the present life of sense and of sex. 
 It was to be a life of a different kind, such as that which 
 is lived by the angels who wait continually in the presence 
 
VI.] CONTRIBUTION OF JESUS TO CHRISTIAN HOPE 83 
 
 of God. ' Ye do err,' He said to His questioners, ' not 
 knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For in 
 the Resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in 
 marriage, but are as angels in heaven. But as touching 
 the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which 
 was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of 
 Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ? 
 God is not the God of the dead, but of the hving. And 
 when the multitudes heard it, they were astonished at 
 His teaching ' (vv. 29-33). 
 
 Two points are made clear by this significant pas- 
 sage : first, the ground of Jesus' faith in immortality ; 
 and secondly, its nature. The ground is the inherent 
 relationship between the spirit of the human child and 
 that of the divine Father in whose image he is made. All 
 secondary considerations are passed over, and hope is 
 planted upon this unshakable foundation. God is not 
 the God of the dead, but of the living. That which He 
 has made and for which He cares cannot perish. 
 
 No less instructive is the light shed upon Jesus' view of 
 the nature of the life after death. It is a Hfe of spiritual 
 communion with God, such communion as is enjoyed by 
 the unfallen spirits, the clearness of whose vision sin has 
 never dimmed, and the completeness of whose service 
 selfishness has never impaired. Everything else is dis- 
 missed as irrelevant. The nature of the resurrection body, 
 the conditions of knowledge and of activity in the unseen 
 world — of these we learn nothing from Jesus' answer. 
 This only is clear, that to Him there is moral continuity. 
 Death may be a change, but it is not a break. The hfe that 
 Abraham began to live with God in the plains of Haran 
 centuries ago he is still living to-day. 
 
 The same impression of continuity is confirmed by the 
 other passages in which Jesus refers to the life after death. 
 In the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 19-31), 
 we see the deeds done here bearing their inevitable fruit 
 
84 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 in the life to come. Dives reaps what he has sown, and 
 recognises the justice of his fate. Lazarus in Abraham's 
 bosom enjoys at last the peace which was his rightful 
 desert even when he lay a beggar at the rich man's door. 
 
 This sense of the oneness of the moral life is still further 
 confirmed by Abraham's answer to Dives. When the 
 rich man, moved with compassion for his brothers on 
 earth, pleads that Lazarus be allowed to return with a 
 message of warning, he is told that it is impossible. ' They 
 have Moses and the prophets,' replies Abraham, ' let 
 them hear them.' And he said, ' No, Father Abraham,' 
 but if one go to them from the dead they will repent. 
 And he said unto him, ' If they hear not Moses and the 
 prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise 
 from the dead ' (vv. 29-31). 
 
 Even more striking in its witness to the persistence of 
 moral values in the life after death is Jesus' word to the 
 dying thief on the cross. ' To-day shalt thou be with me 
 in Paradise ' (Luke xxiii. 43). What Jesus had done for 
 the outcast woman and the penitent sinner in Gahlee and 
 Jerusalem, that He expected still to be able to do in the 
 new country toward which He was travelling. 
 
 What the nature of that country is hke in detail we 
 learn httle from Jesus. The words in which He describes 
 it. Hades, Paradise, Abraham's bosom, are taken from the 
 Jewish apocalypses,^ but we must be on our guard not to 
 be deceived by words. Here, as in the case of the Messianic 
 idea itself, we must remember that Jesus used old words 
 as the vehicle of a new teaching, and that what He said 
 must be interpreted in the light of what He was. 
 
 This transformation of an old form is illustrated most 
 clearly in the great judgment parable which concludes 
 the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. The scene is that 
 already made familiar to us by our study of the apoca- 
 
 1 Cf. Baruch li. 11, ir. Mac. xiii. 16. 
 
VI.] CONTRIBUTION OF JESUS TO CHRISTIAN HOPE 85 
 
 lyptic literature of Judaism. It is the great assize where 
 all men living and dead are gathered to give account of 
 their deeds before the final judge, but the figure who sits 
 upon the throne is new, and the principles which deter- 
 mine his decision unfamiliar. The judge is Jesus, and the 
 test on which He makes everything depend is simple 
 kindliness to those in need. 
 
 'Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, 
 Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
 for you from the foundation of the world : for I was hungry 
 and ye gave me meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink : 
 I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; naked, and ye clothed 
 me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye 
 came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, 
 Lord, when saw we thee hungry and fed thee ? or athirst, and 
 gave thee drink 1 And when saw we thee a stranger, and took 
 thee in ? or naked, and clothed thee ? And when saw we thee 
 sick, or in prison, and came unto thee 1 And the King shall 
 answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you. Inasmuch 
 as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye 
 did it unto me.' (Matt. xxv. 34-40.) 
 
 One is struck, as one reads these words of Jesus, with 
 the rigorousness of His judgment. Gentle as He is in 
 spirit, tender and compassionate to all in need, there in 
 yet a sternness in His condemnation all the more impressive 
 because it springs from a heart surcharged with love. The 
 Saviour who wept over Jerusalem could pronounce the 
 woes upon the Pharisees. The Judge who welcomed the 
 righteous to His right hand could say to the wicked on His 
 left. Depart from Me, ye cursed. Those who desire an 
 easy gospel must look elsewhere than to Jesus. There is 
 no standard more uncompromising than that of redemptive 
 love. 
 
 As to the nature of the fate that will befall those who are 
 finally impenitent, we learn nothing new from Jesus. 
 Here, too, we move in the familiar imagery of apocalyptic. 
 
86 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [CH. 
 
 the fire, the worm, Gehenna, the weeping and gnashing 
 of teeth."^ We must be on our guard against interpreting 
 literally what is obviously intended as symbol. We must 
 remember too Jesus' purpose, which was not to explain the 
 nature of punishment after death, nor to define its dura- 
 tion, but to declare the principles by which the issues of 
 life and death are finally determined. 
 
 The passages which we have thus far been considering 
 have all been taken from the Synoptics. We have based 
 our study of Jesus' teaching upon them rather than upon 
 the Fourth Gospel, partly because we are on firmer ground 
 critically, partly because the Fourth Gospel raises questions 
 of interpretation which needlessly complicate the issue. 
 In the Synoptics we hear Jesus speaking as He was heard 
 by those to whom His words first came on the mountain- 
 side or by the lake-shore.^ In the Fourth Gospel we have 
 His teaching reflected through the medium of another 
 consciousness, interpreting the Master's words in the 
 light of His own experience and of the experience of the 
 later Church. There is a mystic tone in the utterances 
 of the Jesus of John's Gospel which is not so apparent 
 in the utterances recorded by Matthew or Mark. The 
 sense of a great crisis impending is no longer prominent. 
 Here and now the issues of life are decided, and resurrection 
 and judgment are present facts as well as future events. 
 
 ' Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, 
 and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh 
 not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life.' 
 
 (v. 24.) 
 
 ' I am the resurrection, and the life : he that believeth on 
 me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth 
 and believeth on me shall never die.' (xi. 25.) 
 
 1 Cf. note 2, p. 71. 
 
 2 This is not intended to deny the presence of a subjective element even in 
 the Synoptics, but only to emphasise the fact, now very generally admitted, 
 that as compared with the Fourth Gospel, this is less prominent, and, fop 
 our present purpose, negligible. 
 
VI.] CONTRIBUTION OF JESUS TO CHRISTIAN HOPE 87 
 
 Yet, when we read between the hnes the impression 
 gained is the same which we have carried away from the 
 Synoptic teaching. It is that of the continuity of moral 
 hfe — the assurance that the values here experienced can 
 never be lost because they are grounded in the nature of 
 things, which is only another way of expressing the loving 
 purpose of God, our Father. 
 
 'Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe 
 also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions ; if it 
 were not so, I would have told you ; for I go to prepare a 
 place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I 
 come again, and will receive you unto myself ; that where I 
 am, there ye may be also. And whither I go, ye know the 
 way. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither 
 thou goest ; how know we the way 1 Jesus saith unto him, I 
 am the way, and the truth, and the life : no one cometh unto 
 the Father, but by me.' (xiv. 1-6.) 
 
 ' No one cometh unto the Father but by me.' So we are 
 brought back again to Jesus. He is in the way to the 
 Father, and so to the mansions which the Father has 
 prepared for His children in the unseen home beyond the 
 veil. 
 
 We are brought back, I say, to Jesus, but we only half 
 express what He means for our hope when we confine our 
 attention to His teaching. He Himself is more than all 
 He said, and the greatest of His contributions to faith in 
 immortality is His own character. 
 
 This, too, is characteristic of Jesus everywhere. What 
 He taught gets its flavour from what He was. Others 
 besides Jesus had called God Father, and assured men of 
 His righteousness and of His love. Jesus lived such a hfe 
 that men understood more fully than ever before what 
 it means to be righteous and loving. His person became 
 the symbol by which men visualised the unseen God. He 
 that had seen Him had seen the Father. 
 • So it is with our matter of immortality. Jesus Hved such 
 
88 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oh. 
 
 a life as to make it incredible that He should die. He was 
 so one with the Father in thought and feeling, so loyal to 
 God's purpose of salvation, so generous in His devotion 
 to His fellow-men, so lavish in His gift of Himself to all 
 in need, that it was impossible to believe that the time 
 would ever come when His loving ministry would cease. 
 To do this would be to throw doubt upon the cause itself, 
 for with Jesus person and work were blended into an 
 indissoluble unity. How intimate this connection was in 
 the thought of the first disciples we can measure in some 
 degree by the shock which came to them from the cruci- 
 fixion. To them it meant the failure of all to which they 
 had looked forward for this life and the next as well. If 
 God suffered His dearly beloved Son Jesus to perish on 
 the Cross, what hope was there for common men and 
 women ? It is against this background that we must set 
 the Resurrection of Jesus if we are rightly to understand 
 its contribution to the Christian hope. 
 
vn.] EFFECTS OF IHE RESURRECTION 89 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE EFFECTS OF THE RESURRECTION UPON THE 
 CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 History records no more amazing transformation than 
 that which took place in the attitude of the disciples 
 between the Friday afternoon of the Crucifixion and the 
 Sunday evening following. Then they were utterly down- 
 cast, in despair for themselves and hopeless for their cause. 
 The Messiah, in whom they trusted, had been nailed to the 
 Cross between two thieves, and with Him was crucified 
 all the new hope which He had brought into their lives. 
 
 Yet within three days these same men were transformed. 
 They had recovered their lost confidence, and were as bold 
 as they had hitherto been fearful. They began to gather 
 in their old haunts and to resume their old practices. The 
 song that Good Friday had banished, as they supposed 
 forever, was again upon their lips. Messages were sent 
 to the absent of the strange experiences which had befallen 
 their friends, experiences so singular as to be incredible 
 until confirmed by personal experience. Yet, as the days 
 passed, this sudden confidence did not wane. Those who 
 had doubted at first joined the ranks of believers. What 
 had been whispered in secret was now proclaimed from 
 the housetops. Soon word reached the authorities that 
 the disciples of the Nazarene were still loyal to their old 
 allegiance. Indeed, they were preaching their crucified 
 leader as God's Messiah risen from the dead. 
 
 What had happened to account for this revolution ? 
 
90 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [cH. 
 
 The answer which the disciples gave was as strange as it 
 was decisive. They had seen Jesus alive after His death.' 
 He had appeared at first to two or three, to a woman 
 watching by the grave for the dawning of the first day 
 of the week that she might pay the last tribute of affection 
 to the dear body that was all that was left to her ; to Peter 
 and John, hurried to the sepulchre by the rumour of the 
 extraordinary event ; then on Sunday evening to a com- 
 pany of disciples gathered, as was their custom, in the upper 
 room for prayer. Still other appearances followed, some 
 in Galilee, others in Jerusalem. The doubter Thomas 
 beholds and is convinced. The fishermen plying their 
 trade on Gennesaret see the Master walking by the lake- 
 shore as of old. James, the Lord's kinsman after the 
 flesh, meets the brother whose claim he had rejected 
 during His life and joins the company of disciples. Once 
 Jesus appears to over five hundred brethren at once. So, 
 by one experience after another, the first testimony is 
 confirmed, and the disciples realise that their Master is 
 risen indeed. 
 
 But more wonderful things still are to happen. The 
 authorities, alarmed at this unexpected recrudescence of 
 a superstition which they believed themselves to have 
 stamped out forever, resort to sterner measures. The 
 leaders are beaten and forbidden to preach the risen 
 Master. When this fails Peter and John are imprisoned, 
 and Stephen is put to death. The disciples, fieeing to 
 other cities for safety, are followed by emissaries of the 
 Sanhedrim. Among others there is one extremely zealous, 
 a young man named Saul, who had received a commission 
 from the chief priests to follow the fugitives to Damascus. 
 Asjjhe nears the city, intent upon his self-appointed task, 
 he 'is suddenly arrested in mid course. He falls to the 
 ground overcome by some cause which is hidden from his 
 companions, and when he reaches the city, instead of 
 persecuting the Christians, as had been his first intention. 
 
vn.] EFFECTS OP THE RESURRECTION 91 
 
 he is found in their company, and presently makes pubhc 
 confession of his faith in Jesus. 
 
 What has Jiappened to Saul to change the current of his 
 life ? He tells us that it was the same experience which 
 had come to Peter and James before him. He had seen 
 Jesus, and the meeting had transformed the persecutor 
 into the apostle. 
 
 We have no detailed account of what Saul saw from liis 
 own hand, but we know that he believed himself to have 
 seen what the other disciples saw. He parallels his own 
 experience with theirs as similar in kind, and the change 
 which it brought about in his life was no less revolutionary.* 
 Henceforward, as he tells us himself, he determined to 
 know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor. 
 ii. 2). He became the foremost Christian missionary, 
 carrying the message of the risen Saviour to regions where 
 no other foot than his had penetrated. Year after year 
 passed, but the strength of his conviction never wavered. 
 Wherever he went, he was conscious of an unseen presence. 
 Whatever he did, he claimed the sanction of an invisible 
 authority. The Christ whom he had once persecuted was 
 now the constant companion of his spirit, so that he could 
 say of himself with truth, ' It is no longer I that live, but 
 Christ hveth in me ' (Gal. ii. 20). 
 
 The experience of Paul is typical of that of his fellow- 
 Christians. They were conscious of serving a hving and 
 risen Saviour. Not all realised the fact as keenly as Paul, 
 or expressed what they beheved in the same way. But 
 they were all at one in accepting the fact of the Resurrec- 
 tion, and for the faith of all it was fundamental. ' This 
 Jesus,' says Peter in Acts, ' did God raise up, whereof 
 we are witnesses ' (ii. 32). ' Having then a great high priest 
 who hath passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of 
 God,' says the writer to the Hebrews, ' let us hold fast 
 our confession. For we have not a high priest that cannot 
 
 I 1 Cor. XT. 7 ; cf. Gal. i. 15, 16 ; Acts ii. 1-9 ; iiii. 3-21. 
 
92 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one that 
 hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without 
 sin ' (iv. 14, 15). ' My little children,' says John, ' if any 
 man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus 
 Christ, the righteous ' (1 John ii. 1). ' Jesus Christ,' says 
 the writer of Eevelation, ' who is the faithful witness, the 
 firstborn from the dead ' (Rev. i. 5). So faith in the 
 risen Jesus weaves its golden thread throughout all the 
 literature of the apostolic age. 
 
 It has been the same ever since. The faith which has 
 conquered the world has been faith in the risen Jesus. 
 The Christ of history has been not simply the prophet of 
 Nazareth, not even the atoning Saviour, but the conqueror 
 of death, the one who has brought life and immortality 
 to light through the Resurrection. 
 
 ' I believe,' so run the words of the ancient creed, ' in Jesus 
 Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the 
 virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead 
 and buried. He descended into hell, the third day he rose 
 again from the dead, he ascended into heaven and sitteth at the 
 right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From thence he 
 shall come to judge the quick and the dead.' 
 
 It is clear, then, that with the Resurrection of Jesus 
 we have to do with a fact of far-reaching importance for 
 Christian faith and life. It is necessary, therefore, to 
 consider in some detail what its significance is. Four 
 points will require our attention : first, the fact ; secondly, 
 its meaning ; thirdly, its evidence ; fourthly, its conse- 
 quences.^ 
 
 1. The Fact of the Resurrection 
 
 And first, of the fact. What was it that actually 
 happened in those momentous days that witnessed the 
 rebirth of Christian faith ? The disciples asserted that 
 they saw Jesus alive after His death under conditions 
 
 1 On the Kesurrectlon cf. the literature cited in the Appendix. 
 
TO.] EFFECTS OP THE RESURRECTION 93 
 
 which made mutual recognition possible, and the most 
 rigorous criticism sees no reason to question the sincerity 
 of their belief. 
 
 To be sure, there are differences in the details of the 
 report. The list of appearances given by the Apostle 
 Paul, the earliest documentary evidence which has come 
 down to us, does not agree at all points with the account 
 in the Gospels. Nor are these altogether easy to reconcile 
 one with another. Matthew puts the appearance to the 
 eleven in Galilee, Luke and John make Jerusalem the 
 scene of the first appearance. Criticism has been busy 
 with these discrepancies, and has evolved many theories 
 to account for the records as we have them.^ 
 
 But whatever may be the difficulties as to order or 
 date, no sober critic doubts that at the basis of the Gospel 
 story there lies a core of solid fact. The old theories of 
 deceit on the part of the disciples, of the resurrection of 
 a body only in appearance dead, have been hopelessly 
 discredited. We may take for granted that within a 
 very few days after the Crucifixion the disciples actually 
 saw what they believed to be their Master, and that no 
 subsequent experience was able to shake their confidence 
 in the fact that He had risen from the dead. 
 
 When we ask more particularly as to the nature of the 
 appearances, we are involved in greater difficulty. Two 
 different answers are suggested by the records which have 
 come down to us. According to the first, Jesus appeared 
 to the disciples in the same body of flesh and blood in 
 which His earthly Ufe had been lived. He ate in their 
 presence (Luke xxiv. 42, 43) ; He showed them the prints 
 in His hands and His feet (39, 40) ; He bade Thomas thrust 
 his hand into His side that he might be sure that it was 
 indeed his Master whom he saw (John xx. 20, 27). 
 
 1 A convenient summary of the different possibilities, with the arguments 
 for and against each, is given by Lake: The Historical Emdtnce for tht 
 Resurrection of Jesus Christ, New York, 1907, pp. 201-219. 
 
94 THE CHRISTIAN HOPIfi [ch. 
 
 But, even here the record is not clear. The same Gospel 
 which insists upon the identity of Christ's physical body 
 relates facts which seem inconsistent with what we know 
 of the properties of matter. The body appears and dis- 
 appears, passes through closed doors, has strange qualities 
 which prevent immediate recognition (Luke xxiv. 16, 31, 
 37 ; John xx. 19, 26). It is not easy to see how both 
 accounts can be harmonised. The suggestion is natural 
 that we have to do with two different conceptions, an 
 earlier tradition which in the course of time has been modi- 
 fied by later reflection. ^ 
 
 This conclusion is reinforced by the testimony of our 
 earUest eye-witness. St. Paul, as we have seen, regards 
 his own experience as parallel with that of the earlier 
 disciples. Yet, when we study his own account of the 
 Resurrection body,^ we find the features emphasised in 
 the Fourth Gospel conspicuously absent. The body 
 which is raised is not a physical but a spiritual body 
 (1 Cor. XV. 44). It is no more like the old than the plant 
 is like the seed from which it springs (vv. 37, 38). That 
 was corruptible, but this is incorruptible (v. 42), that 
 mortal, but this immortal (v. 53). Indeed, this must be 
 so if it is to be fitted for the service of the risen Messiah, 
 for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, 
 which is the realm of the spirit (v. 50). 
 
 This conception of a spiritual body presents difficulties 
 to our thought, for we have lost the presuppositions 
 which made it natural. Our world is no longer like that 
 of the ancients, made up of heaven and earth and an 
 underworld, places each of them with as definite a location 
 and as detailed a geography as the familiar planet on 
 which our lot is cast. We no longer think of ourselves as 
 
 1 Cf. Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, pp. 131, 132 ; Bruce, The Expositor's 
 Greek Testament, Londoiij 1897, vol. i. p. 650 ; Lake, op. cit., pp. 219-226. 
 
 2 It is trae that the object of Paul's description is primarily the resurrec- 
 tion body of Christians, but the parallelism in tt. 20-23 makes it clear that 
 the description is valid also for that of Christ, ' the first fruits.' 
 
VII.] EFFECTS OF THE RESURRECTION 95 
 
 Burrounded by hosts of spirits, good and evil, angels and 
 demons, as the case may be. We have long outgrown the 
 primitive conception still familiar to the contemporaries 
 of the Apostle, of spirit as a more tenuous form of matter. 
 To us the terms, body and spirit, are mutually exclusive. 
 Spirit we can understand. It is that which thinks and 
 feels and wills. Body we can understand. It is that 
 which has extension, location and motion. But a spiritual 
 body is a union of opposites which conveys no clear mean- 
 ing to our imagination.^ 
 
 Two methods have been suggested to overcome the 
 difficulty. One is to seek the clue to the Resurrection 
 experience in some hitherto undiscovered property of 
 matter. The other is to conclude that in 1 Cor. xv., we 
 have the description in terms, of sense of what we should 
 call an inner experience, the revelation of spirit to spirit. 
 Each has its disadvantages. The difficulty with the first 
 is that it is unable to explain the method of Jesus' self- 
 manifestation to His disciples. In order to be true to the 
 description of the risen Jesus given in the New Testament, 
 we are obliged so far to emphasise the contrast between 
 the body of the glorified Saviour, and this present body of 
 flesh and blood, as to remove it to a realm inaccessible 
 to our present organs of sense. The difficulty with the 
 
 ' This difficulty is frankly recognised by recent writers on the subject. 
 Thus, Dr. Denney, even while insisting in the strongest terms upon the bodily 
 character of the resurrection appearances, admits our inability to penetrate 
 into the nature of the experiences they describe. The terms used by the 
 Apostle, such as power and glory, record the impression produced upon his 
 own mind, but beyond this they do not carry us, *It is no use asking for 
 a definition of such words. Paul could no more have given them than we 
 can. It is no nse asking for an explanation of the precise relation between 
 the body of humiliation and the body of glory. Such an explanation was 
 entirely out of his reach. All he could have asserted and what he un- 
 doubtedly did assert, was that the same Jesus whose body had been broken 
 on the cross had manifested Himself to him in divine splendour and power, 
 and though he should never be able to say anything about the connection of 
 the two modes of being further than this, that Jesus had been raised from 
 the dead by the glory of the Father, it would not in the least affect his 
 assurance that the exaltation of Jesus was as real as His crucifixion.' (Jesus 
 and the Gospel, p. 106). 
 
99 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 second is that it seems to resolve the whole experience 
 into a purely subjective phenomenon without objective 
 basis, and so to destroy its significance for Christian faith 
 as a divine revelation.* 
 
 It is not strange, in view of these facts, that there should 
 be many in our day who find in the doctrine of the Resur- 
 rection a cause of serious perplexity. Some put it aside 
 altogether as belonging to a world of thought which they 
 have outgrown. Others hold the fact indeed, but without 
 clear understanding of its significance. It no longer holds 
 the central place in their gospel. It makes no positive 
 contribution to their religious life. It is a survival rather 
 than a support of faith. 
 
 Such a situation is full of danger. A doctrine that is 
 held half-heartedly is of little value either to the holder 
 or to others. If the Resurrection faith is to survive, it 
 must be held triumphantly as a satisfying and an inspiring 
 conviction. It must be to us what it was to those who 
 first held it, a gospel, — good news for the world. 
 
 But is this possible to-day ? Have not the changes 
 already alluded to so far altered the situation that our 
 attitude toward the Resurrection must also necessarily 
 change ? Granting its historical importance for the first 
 disciples, does it follow that it still has a positive contri- 
 bution to make to our hope to-day ? This brings us to 
 our second question, — the question of the meaning of the 
 Resurrection. 
 
 1 Cf. Denney, op. cit. , p. 109. Dr. Denney vigorously protests against the 
 disposition, manifest in certain quarters, to resolve the resurrection into 
 ' a pathological phenomenon, belonging to disease and disorder, not to the 
 health and sanity of the human spirit.' A» he truly says, ' It is not easy to 
 discredit offhand as a mere illusion what has meant so much in the life of 
 the human race' (p. 109). With the spirit that prompts these words every 
 Christian must feel himself in sympathy. It must be remembered, however, 
 that among those who have adopted the so-called vision hypothesis have 
 been some who have been firm believers in the fact of the resurrection. It 
 is important to distinguish between the position of those men who use the 
 psychological approach as a means of making real to themselves the method 
 of Jesus' self-manifestation, and those who use it, not so much to explain, aa 
 to explain away the central reality of Christian faith. 
 
vn.] EFFECTS OF THE RESURRECTION 97 
 
 2. The Meaning of the Resurrection 
 
 Why, then, I repeat, is it so important to believe that 
 Jesus was raised from the dead ? What difference does 
 it make to us to-day whether or no we share the faith of 
 the first disciples concerning the risen Jesus. 
 
 To answer this question aright we must begin by re- 
 minding ourselves what difference it made to them. To 
 Paul certainly it made the greatest possible difference. It 
 made all the difference between happiness and misery, 
 between salvation and perdition, between heaven and hell. 
 If Christ has not been raised, he declared to his converts, 
 ' then is our preaching vain ; your faith also is vain ' 
 (1 Cor. XV. 14). 
 
 Why was this true ? It was because the resurrection 
 established Jesus' Messiahship. It was the method which 
 God took to convince those whose faith had been staggered 
 by the Crucifixion that Jesus was really what He claimed 
 to be, the Lord of the world, and the Saviour of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Consider the situation in which the disciples found 
 themselves on the evening of Good Friday. They had 
 accepted the Messiahship of Jesus — not at once, to be sure, 
 nor with clear understanding of all that their own accept- 
 ance meant — but definitely and, as they supposed, irre- 
 vocably. They believed that He was the promised 
 deliverer whom the prophets of Israel had foretold, who 
 was to inaugurate the Kingdom of God upon earth, and 
 introduce the new age of righteousness and love. To be 
 sure, Jesus Himself had warned them that He must suffer 
 and die, but His words had fallen upon deaf ears. Suffer- 
 ing and death were the last things that a Jew associated 
 with Messiahship — least of all the shameful death of the 
 Cross. To the disciples there could be but one interpre- 
 tation of Calvary. It was the proof that God had dis- 
 
 G 
 
98 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 owned Jesus, and by suffering Him to die the death which 
 the law called accursed, definitely disproved His Messianic 
 claim. 
 
 Imagine, then, what it must have meant to Peter and the 
 rest to have the lost faith restored. The Resurrection, 
 I repeat, was God's way of informing them that the un- 
 believable had happened, that the crucified Jesus was in 
 fact what they had supposed Him to be, God's appointed 
 Saviour, and, therefore, still the central factor in human 
 life and destiny. 
 
 It will help us to understand the real significance ol the 
 Resurrection for the Christian hope, if we contrast this 
 answer with one or two others which are often given. The 
 effect of the Resurrection was not, as we are sometimes 
 told, to estabhsh the fact of a life after death, still less 
 was it to satisfy men's curiosity as to its nature. It was 
 rather to shed new light on the meaning and value of life 
 here. 
 
 It was not to establish the fact of a life after death. 
 It is often said that belief in immortality stands or falls 
 with the Resurrection of Jesus. But it needs only a 
 moment's reflection to perceive that this is not true. 
 Certainly the fact of Jesus' Resurrection has made it 
 easier to believe in immortality than it was before. It has 
 added another convincing argument to those already in 
 our possession, but it has confirmed a pre-existing faith. 
 It has not brought a new faith into existence. If our 
 study of the preparation for the Christian hope proves 
 anything, it should have made this clear. 
 
 Let us recall again the situation as we have already 
 outlined it. What was it that explained the disciples' 
 despair ? The fact that they had lost their faith in 
 immortaUty ? But they had not lost it. They still 
 believed, as they had always believed, in the Hfe after 
 death. They still looked, as they had always looked, for 
 the Resurrection and Judgment to come. Even concerning 
 
TO.] EFFECTS OF THE RESURRECTION 99 
 
 Jesus they did not doubt that He was still alive, any more 
 than their ancestors believed of the meanest slave that his 
 •pirit ceased to exist at death. But Jesus was not what 
 they had believed Him to be. That was the root of their 
 bitterness. He was not God's chosen Messiah. He was 
 not the promised deliverer for whom, in common with all 
 devout Israelites, they had been looking. The word of the 
 disciples to the risen Saviour on the Emmaus road tells 
 the whole story. ' We hoped that it was He that should 
 redeem Israel ' (Luke xxiv. 21). We hoped, but it seems 
 that we were mistaken. That lost confidence the Resur- 
 rection restored. 
 
 Nor was the significance of the Resurrection to be found 
 in its revelation of the nature of the fife after death. This, 
 too, is often asserted, but incorrectly. Whatever view 
 we may take as to the nature of the Resurrection, whether 
 we regard it as exceptional, or as typical ; as physical, 
 or as spiritual — in either event we are involved in all the 
 difficulties which hide from our ken the conditions in the 
 unseen coimtry. We cannot pass the veO which hides 
 from our sight those who have gone before. If we might 
 venture to paraphrase the words of Abraham to Dives, 
 it is true here, too, that there are things which it would be 
 impossible for us to understand, even if one were to rise 
 from the dead. 
 
 If proof were needed we have only to consider the facts. 
 If it was God's purpose through the Resurrection of Jesus 
 to inform us as to the conditions of Ufe after death. He has 
 failed in His purpose, for certainly we are as far as ever 
 from agreement. As there were different views of the 
 future before Christ came, so there have been differences 
 ever since. AU the old types with which we have become 
 familiar, from that of a physical resurrection in the literal 
 sense to that of immortality pure and simple, still persist, 
 and each appeals for confirmation to the Book which tells 
 us the story of Jesus' Resurrection. Certainly if the 
 
100 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 Resurrection is to deserve the central importance given 
 it by Paul, it must have some other meaning. 
 
 What that meaning was we have already seen. It was 
 .,, the proof of the Messiahship of Jesus. It was God's 
 witness that His claim was true, and it carried with it as 
 -.'■■ corollary the entire conception of life, of salvation and of 
 service with which Jesus was identified. 
 - This was indeed a matter of supreme importance. It 
 meant that the communion which the disciples had enjoyed 
 with their Master was not to be interrupted. It meant 
 that in hours of discouragement and gloom they could 
 still turn to Him for help. It meant that what He had told 
 them about God as their Father, and man as God's child, 
 and God's purpose to establish His Kingdom in the world, 
 was all true. But it meant also, and this was the new and 
 revolutionary thing, that they had a new understanding 
 of the nature of this Kingdom and of the method by which 
 its establishment was to be brought about. It meant that 
 they realised for the first time the cost of salvation, and the 
 price, in self-sacrificing love, which God was willing to pay 
 to win men for Himself. It meant that the Cross, which 
 had been to them, as to all their contemporaries, a stum- 
 bling block and foolishness, was now the centre of their 
 religion, the supreme proof of God's wisdom and power. 
 It meant, in a word, that they had seen God in Christ 
 reconciling the world unto Himself. 
 
 In the light of this discussion we must re-define the 
 fact which is at stake. It is not simply the fact that God 
 raised the body of Jesus from the grave, but that Jesus 
 survived death in such a form as to manifest to His dis- 
 ciples His continued interest in and presence with them, 
 and to assure them that in spite of crucifixion and appar- 
 f" ent failure. He was still what they had hoped and believed 
 ^ Him to be, God's promised Messiah, the central figure in 
 I human history, and the Mediator of the world's salvation. 
 ^ This, then, is the fact which is the object of Christian 
 
vn.] EFFECTS OF THE RESURRECTION 101 
 
 faith ; not simply an event in the past, whose significance 
 was exhausted in its happening, but a continuing reaUty 
 which evidences its presence through the effects which it 
 is still producing in human experience. 
 
 3. The Evidence of the Resurrection 
 
 We are ready now to turn to our third question, the 
 question of the evidence for the Resurrection. It is clear 
 that if our definition is correct, this must include much 
 more than the testimony which established the events 
 of Easter and the days which immediately followed. It 
 must include all that bears directly or indirectly upon the 
 great fact which these events attest, the fact namely, 
 of the continued existence and spiritual supremacy of 
 Jesus. Even to the first disciples it was true that their 
 faith in the Resurrection rested upon deeper grounds than 
 the evidence of their senses that they had seen Jesus alive 
 after His death. What was at stake was not simply the 
 revival of a human body after the experience we call 
 physical death. If that had been all, Jesus' Resurrection 
 would not have differed from that of Lazarus, or even from 
 the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, as to the reality of which 
 no one in the ancient church doubted. But these carried 
 with them no such consequences for faith as the Resurrec- 
 tion of Jesus. What gave Jesus' Resurrection its unique 
 significance was its setting in human history, its relation 
 to that which had gone before, and to that which followed 
 after and, above all, the nature of the person who was 
 raised. 
 
 I say, the nature of the person who was raised. This 
 is the fact upon which everything turns. If the Resur- 
 rection of Lazarus is to Christians simply one of a series 
 of miracles through which God's presence and power are 
 manifested in human history, it is because Lazarus was 
 simply an ordinary man. If, on the other hand, we 
 
102 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [CH. 
 
 separate the Resurrection of Jesus from all other events, 
 and make it the central fact in history, it is because Jesus 
 is more than an ordinary man. It is because he is to us 
 what He was to the first disciples, God's promised Messiah, 
 the central figure in human history, the Saviour of the 
 world. 
 
 This Judgment, in turn, rests upon two grounds, each 
 of which adds new force to the events recorded in the 
 Gospels. First, the impression produced by the character 
 of Jesus, and secondly, the influence which He has exerted 
 in human history. 
 
 Both of these influences affected the faith of the first 
 disciples. The Jesus whom they saw on that first Easter 
 Sunday was no stranger to them. He was the Master 
 with whom they had walked in famihar intercourse during 
 many months, whom they had heard speaking the words 
 of hfe, whom they had seen working the works of love, to 
 whose claim to be Messiah their own conscience had yielded 
 a willing assent. He was one whose personality had already 
 so strongly impressed them that they were eager to believe 
 in His divine authority, if only faith were possible. The 
 Resurrection removed the obstacle which Good Friday 
 had put in their way and gave their faith free course. 
 
 But this alone is not all. Faith in the Resurrection 
 carried with it certain consequences as to the presence 
 and power of Jesus in human history. These consequences 
 must follow, if the faith were to be Justified. Jesus must 
 show Himself in the future, as He had shown 
 Himself in the past, the central factor in the disciples' 
 lives, and the controlling influence in the movement with 
 which they were identified, and this, as a matter of fact, 
 is what we find to be the case. 
 
 One is impressed again and again, as one reads the New 
 Testament, how large a place the risen Christ holds in the 
 experience of the disciples. This is all the more significant 
 when we remember the different viewpoints from which 
 
vn.] EFFECTS OP THE RESURRECTION 103 
 
 the different books were written. Thus, in Acts attention 
 is fixed upon the future and, in expectation of Christ's 
 speedy coming, the interests of the present Ufe fade into 
 insignificance. The Resurrection is God's witness that 
 ' this Jesus who was received up from you into heaven 
 shall so come in hke manner as ye beheld Him going Lato 
 heaven ' (i. 11). Yet, even in Acts the Resurrection has a 
 present as well as a future meaning. The risen Jesus is 
 active in His church by His Spirit, and the new conscious- 
 ness of power in which the disciples rejoice is recognised 
 as His gift (ii. 33). 
 
 In the Letter to the Hebrews, on the other hand, greater 
 emphasis is laid upon the past. In the light of the Resur- 
 rection the earthly life of Jesus receives a new meaning. 
 It was the means by which He was trained for the heavenly 
 priesthood which He now fulfils. It was the time when, 
 being conformed in all things to his brethren. He learned 
 obedience by the things which He suffered (v. 8), and so 
 was fitted for the great sacrifice of Himself on Calvary, 
 which has opened once for all, for all who trust Him, that 
 free access to God which the old sacrifices were unable to 
 secure (x. 19). 
 
 With Paul and John it is the present significance of the 
 Resurrection which is most in evidence. They, too, look 
 for a future coming, a social consummation when the goal 
 for which we here strive in vain shall be perfectly realised 
 {e.g., 1 Thess. iv. 13-v. ; Romans viii. 18-24 ; 1 John 
 iii. 2), but the life for which they look by and by is not 
 different in kind from the Hfe which they enjoy here and 
 now. Through Christ sin has already been conquered, 
 darkness dispelled, the dead in trespasses made aUve. 
 Already the Christian is a new man, Uving in the Spirit and 
 enjoying daily communion with his risen Saviour. He 
 does not need to wait for another life to enter into com- 
 munion with his Master, for to him to live is Christ (Phil, 
 i. 21). He does not depend upon the testimony of others 
 
104 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 for the truth which he proclaims, for he has the ever- 
 present witness of Christ's Spirit (Rom. viii. 10). What 
 though the outward man perish, the inward man is renewed 
 day by day (2 Cor. iv. 16). He is conscious that nothing 
 can separate him from the love of Christ (Rom. viii. 35). 
 He is more than conqueror through Him that loved him 
 {Ibid., V. 37). 
 
 This present Christian experience, it cannot be too often 
 repeated, is the convincing evidence of the Resurrection 
 of Jesus. It is not simply the fact that certain early 
 documents report that the grave where Jesus' body was 
 laid was found empty. This, as Dr. Denney has well 
 said, is ' the least important part of the evidence with 
 which we have to deal. . . . The real historical evidence for 
 the Resurrection is the fact that it was believed, preached, 
 propagated, and produced its fruit and effect in the new 
 phenomenon of the Christian Church, long before any of 
 our gospels was written. ... It is not this or that in the 
 New Testament — it is not the story of the empty tomb, - 
 or of the appearing of Jesus in Jerusalem or in Galilee — 
 which is the primary evidence for the Resurrection ; it is 
 the New Testament itself. The life that throbs in it from 
 beginning to end, the life that always fills us again with 
 wonder as it beats upon us from its pages, is the life which 
 the risen Saviour has quickened in Christian souls ' 
 (pp. 100, 101). 1 
 
 The bearing of this upon our matter of the Resurrection 
 is plain. The fact for faith is the continued existence and 
 supremacy of Jesus, and this is a fact in the realm of spirit. 
 The significance of the events recorded in our Gospels is 
 that they are God's method of bringing this fact to the 
 consciousness of the disciples, and so to the Christian 
 community as a whole. Any interpretation of the 
 facts which is consistent with this double conviction 
 
 ' On the question of the empty grave, of. Lake, op. cit. pp. 169-201 ; 
 211-253 ; Denney, op. cit. p. 107. 
 
TO.] EFFECTS OF THE RESURRECTION 105 
 
 conserves the interests which are vital to Christian 
 faith.i 
 
 In the Ught of this discussion we are prepared to answer 
 the question raised at the outset, as to the present signifi- 
 cance of the Resurrection for Christian faith. Considered 
 as an aid to faith, a historical event to be established by 
 testimony, it is less important for us than for the first 
 disciples, because we have other evidence of Jesus' Messiah- 
 ship not at their disposal, namely, the experience of Jesus' 
 spiritual supremacy through all the intervening centuries. 
 Considered as an object of faith, a fact in the larger and 
 more comprehensive sense in which we have just defined 
 the term, it is Just as important to-day as it ever was, 
 since it is the expression of the central reality of the 
 Christian religion, the Lordship and Saviourhood of 
 Jesus. 
 
 We have considered the fact of the Resurrection ; we 
 have considered its meaning ; we have considered the 
 evidence upon which it rests. It remains, finally, to 
 remind ourselves of the consequences which follow from it 
 for the Christian hope. These have already been so far 
 anticipated by what has gone before that they can be 
 summed up very briefly. 
 
 ' Much confusion ia often caused in religious discussion from failure to 
 remark the ambiguity of the word, fact. Christianity, it cannot be too 
 often reasserted, is a religion of reality and, like everything that deals with 
 reality, must make its final appeal to the facts. But there are facts and 
 facts ; facts inner and facts outer ; realities of nature and realities of spirit, 
 and we must be on our guard lest in our anxiety to establish realities of one 
 order we seem to throw discredit upon realities of the other. The fact of 
 facia for Christian faith is the existence of God, but it is a reality in the 
 world of spirit. The truth of truths for Christian experience is God's 
 presence in the world to-day as a liYing, active personality, manifesting 
 Himself spiritually to the spirit of man. His child. This manifestation takes 
 many forms, and uses many methods, some exceptional, some regular ; some 
 outward, some inward. But in the last analysis it is always the manifesta- 
 tion of Spirit to spirit, carrying with it, as all spiritual experience does, its 
 own immediate attestation. To discredit the sufficiency of such evidence is 
 to throw doubt upon the reality of religion itself, and to open the way to 
 an all-devouring scepticism. 
 
106 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [cH. 
 
 4. The Consequences of the Resurrection 
 
 We have seen that the first effect of Jesus' Resurrection 
 was to transform the disciples' view of the present life. 
 It made them conscious of communion with a living 
 Master and gave them access to unsuspected resources of 
 power. But this is only half the story. The Resurrection 
 had a future as well as a present reference, and powerfully 
 affected their view of the life to come. 
 
 How could it be otherwise ? For one thing, it reinforced 
 the evidence of the fact. ' If we believe that Jesus died 
 and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in 
 Jesus will God bring with Him ' (1 Thess. iv. 14). The 
 comfort which the anticipation of a meeting with friends 
 who have gone before has always brought to sorrowing 
 hearts belonged to the early Christians in full degree. 
 Like Abraham, their faces were turned toward ' a better 
 country, that is, a heavenly ' (Heb. xi. 16). Bearing within 
 themselves the witness of the Spirit, it was easy to believe 
 in the redemption of the body which was to take place in 
 that new day when creation itself should be delivered from 
 its bondage through the revelation of the Sons of God 
 (Rom. viii. 18-25). 
 
 Even more important than reassurance as to the fact 
 was the new insight as to the nature of the life after death. 
 Not indeed that the Resurrection of Jesus satisfied the 
 CTU-iosity of the mind as to the conditions under which 
 the new life is to be hved, — that, as we have seen, was 
 not the case — but that it met the deeper needs of the 
 heart. It brought assurance that the life to come would 
 be a hfe of fellowship with Christ. If to Paul to live was 
 Christ to die was gain, for dying meant departing to be 
 with Christ, which was very far better (Phil. i. 23). ' In My 
 Father's house,' Jesus had said, ' are many mansions. . . . 
 I go to prepare a place for you. And, if I go and prepare 
 
VII.] EFFECTS OP THE RESURRECTtON 161 
 
 a place for you, I come again and will receive you unto 
 Myself, that where I am there ye may be also ' (John xiv. 
 1, 2). The Resurrection was God's witness that this word 
 of Jesus was true. He who had come once would come 
 again, and so they were content to work and wait in 
 peace, knowing that whether living or dying they were 
 with the Lord.i 
 
 To realise what this assurance meant for the experience 
 of the earliest Christians we must recall again Socrates' 
 memorable word recorded in an earlier chapter. ' We go 
 our ways, I to die and you to hve. Which is better, God 
 
 1 An interesting question, not without importance in its bearing upon the 
 subjects already discussed, is as to the effect of the resurrection faith upon 
 the view taken in the New Testament of the life immediately after death. 
 The clearest reference to this is the famous passage (1 Peter iii. 19 sq.) in 
 which Jesus is represented as going in the spirit to preach to the spirits in 
 prison. This would seem to point to a moral life in Sheol similar to that 
 which we have found in the later Jewish apocalypses. The significant thing 
 about the Petrine passage is that the fate of the wicked in the underworld 
 is not regarded as irrevocable, but the redemptive ministry of Christ is 
 extended to the antediluvian dead. 
 
 On the other hand, we have passages which speak of the dead in Christ as 
 asleep (e.g. 1 Thess. iv. 13), from which it has been argned that in their 
 speedy expectation of the Advent the early Christians passed lightly over 
 what we have since come to call the intermediate state, confining their 
 expectation of future communion with Christ to the Parousia. I cannot 
 believe that this view is well founded. Even though we should refer to the 
 Advent the passages commonly interpreted as applying to the life im- 
 mediately after death {e.g. 1 Cor. v. 1-4 ; Phil. i. 23), the fact would still 
 remain that Paul's entire conception of the relation between the Christian 
 and his Master is such that it is unthinkable that he should regard it as 
 interrupted by death. 
 
 Worthy of more serious consideration is the opinion that it is possible to 
 trace a development in the apostle's thought of the future. (So Charles, 
 Eschatology, pp. 395-401. Further references in Kennedy : St. Paul's Con- 
 ception of the Last Things, p. 262.) Thus in Thessalonians, we are told, the 
 impending Advent is so present to the apostle's imagination that he gives no 
 thought to the intermediate state : whereas, in 2 Cor. v. 1-4, he has begun 
 to speculate as to the conditions of the soul immediately after death. 
 ' Here, too, the probabilities seem opposed to such a development. The 
 motives which led to the Christiauisation of Sheol were presmit from the 
 very first in the new relation established between Paul and his Master on the 
 Damascus road. It is difficult to believe that a man so acute as the apostle 
 should have failed to follow them to their legitimate conclusion. In this 
 connection it is worth while to recall the remark of Wemle, quoted by 
 Kennedy, op. cit. p. 271, ' The man who wrote the great resurrection chapter 
 in 1 Cor. did not possess the capacity for altering his opinions which belongs 
 to the modem theologian.' 
 
108 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [CH. 
 
 only knows.' In the unknown country whither he was 
 journeying, what experience might await the traveller ? 
 Perhaps high communion with the spirits of the past, 
 ' Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer ' ? But again, 
 perhaps not. God only knew, and the veil which hid the 
 future from the present He had not vouchsafed to raise. 
 The Resurrection of Jesus was to the early Christians 
 God's raising of the veil. It assured them that dying 
 ^eant going to be with Christ, which was very far better. 
 \ Such, then, in briefest compass, was the contribution of 
 ,y the Resurrection to the Christian hope — a new assurance 
 of the fact of immortality, a new conception of its value. 
 The faith which had accepted the Lordship of Jesus here 
 now reached across the grave in confident anticipation 
 of renewed communion with Him in the new service to 
 which He was still to call. 
 
vm.] CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OF CHRISTIAN HOPE 109 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CHIEF HISTORIC FOBMS OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 We have reviewed the antecedents of the Christian hope. 
 We have considered the contribution of Jesus through 
 His teaching, His character, and, above all, His Resurrec- 
 tion. We have studied the effects of the Resurrection 
 upon the men who stood nearest to Him and observed its 
 influence both on their experience here and on their hope 
 for the future. It remains to follow the later development 
 of the new hope, and to consider the chief forms which it 
 has assumed in the course of the succeeding centuries. 
 
 Foremost among the influences to be taken into account 
 is the inheritance of Christianity from Judaism. This 
 inheritance, as we have seen, included much that was 
 noble and uplifting. But it included also elements which 
 were less advanced, and which acted as a hindrance rather 
 than a help. Side by side with the spiritual ideal of a 
 Jeremiah, or of the great prophet of the exile, the primitive 
 hope of an earthly kingdom and the apocalyptic despair 
 of the present world lived on, and their effect upon the 
 Christian hope was often to obscure the distinctive con- 
 tribution of Jesus. 
 
 Scarcely less important was the influence of Greece. 
 Here, too, the effect of the contact was both good and evil. 
 It was good in that it reinforced the spiritual elements 
 in the Christian ideal, and gave Christian apologists new 
 weapons in their battle against materialism and idolatry. 
 
110 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 It was evil in that it obscured the concrete elements in 
 the Christian hope, and substituted for the ethical and 
 religious grounds on which it originally rested, arguments 
 which were abstract and speculative. 
 
 Under this double influence the eschatology of the 
 Church was developed. In its present form it is a complex 
 structure, into the making of which many elements have 
 entered. From Israel came the doctrines of the Resur- 
 rection and of the Advent ; from Greece, the doctrine of 
 natural immortality ; ^ from Jesus, the new content which 
 Christianity has put into both. 
 
 We are not interested in the details of the development, 
 but only in the main forms of thought which emerge. 
 Three such forms meet us, all claiming the name Christian, 
 each difiering in important respects from the others, all 
 three persisting to our own day. The first centres expecta- 
 tion upon the personal return of Jesus to earth to estab- 
 lish His kingdom, and postpones till after the Advent all 
 hope of permanent progress and happiness. The second 
 concentrates attention upon the Ufa immediately after 
 death. It makes the other world the scene of a progres- 
 sive purification, a training school in which the temptations 
 not completely conquered here are mastered, and the 
 penalties still due for sins committed here are paid. The 
 third makes death itself the turning-point of destiny, 
 
 ' The doctrine that the soul or spirit is a simple substance and therefore 
 imperishable. We have traced the rise of this doctrine in Plato and his suc- 
 cessors. We have noted its influence upon Alexandrian Judaism, but it is 
 not found in our Bible, either in Old or New Testament. Like other 
 elements in later speculative theology it enters Christianity by way of Alex- 
 andria. Origen teaches it in its original Greek form, including the doctrine 
 of pre-eiistence on the one hand, and of reincarnation on the other. It is 
 true that in Origen's teaching this reincarnation does not take place in the 
 present world. He holds that there is to be a succession of wonds, in each 
 of which the spirit will continue the process of training begun here, until at 
 last, perfectly purified from sin, it will leave matter behind and enter its 
 final form of existence as pure spirit. The later Church rejected this 
 doctrine of a aeries of lives in successive worlds. In like manner it rejected 
 the doctrine of pre-existence, confining immortality to the life that follows 
 death. Finally, it extended immortality to all souls, the good and the evil 
 alike, whereas in Greek thought immortality is confined to the good. 
 
vm.] CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OP CHRISTIAN HOPE 111 
 
 introducing those who pass its gates at once into the highest 
 heaven or the lowest hell. 
 
 1. Premillenarianism 
 
 Of the three the first is the earliest in time. It is indeed 
 the survival within Christianity of a type of thought about 
 the future with which our study of the Jewish apocalyptic 
 has already made us familiar. In these books, as we have 
 seen, the early consciousness of God's presence with His 
 people had faded. Hope was pushed forward into the 
 future when by a stupendous miracle God would again 
 intervene in the affairs of earth to reassert the supremacy 
 which for the moment He seemed to have renounced, and 
 inaugurate under the Messiah, His representative, the 
 kingdom promised long ago. 
 
 The forms in which this future kingdom was pictured 
 varied widely. Sometimes it was conceived in physical 
 terms, as a continuation, under conditions miraculously 
 heightening man's power of enjoyment, of the pleasures 
 of sense which are for so many the summum bonum of their 
 desire. Sometimes it was conceived in terms of spirit, 
 and the contrast between this world and the next was 
 emphasised. There were to be new heavens and a new 
 earth, and the redeemed, transformed to correspond with 
 their new environment, were to live an angehc existence 
 to which their experience here afforded no parallel. And 
 again, as in the doctrine of the Millennium, both concep- 
 tions were combined. The Advent was to inaugurate a 
 preliminary kingdom on the earth, to be succeeded after 
 a time, longer or shorter, by the final and heavenly state. 
 But, whatever the variations in detail, all were agreed that 
 there could be no hope of permanent progress or happiness 
 during the present aeon. The one fixed point to which 
 expectation clung was the Advent. Before this, man was 
 a stranger and an orphan, helpless himself, and unable to 
 be of help to others. 
 
112 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 A similar attitude reappears within Christianity in the 
 type of thought we call premillenarianism.^ The pre- 
 miUenarian, as the name implies, is one who expects the 
 second Advent of Christ before the Millennium, and who, 
 because of that fact, postpones till after the Advent all 
 hope of true progress or prosperity. 
 
 Traces of this view meet us in the New Testament itself, 
 though qualified, as we have seen, by other conceptions.^ 
 In the literature of the early Church it finds frequent 
 expression. Among its representatives were men as 
 eminent as Justin, Irenseus, and TertuUian.^ As in the 
 
 1 It is important to distinguish between premillenarfiinism as a general 
 type of tliought with reference to the future, and the view of those who dis- 
 tinguish two stages in the coming of Christ's kingdom : a preliminary period 
 of blessedness on earth, the Millennium in the technical >ense, and the final 
 consummation in heaven. The word is here used in the widest sense to 
 include all who despair of progress in the present, and centre hope upon 
 a miraculous transformation to be introduced at the Advent of Christ. 
 A synonym of premillenarianism is Chiliasm, from the Greek x^^'^i * 
 thousand. 
 
 2 The clearest example is the Millennium of Revelation, but it is not 
 the only one. The tense expectation which vibrates in the early speeches 
 of the Acts is evidence of a kindred spirit. Many sayings attributed to 
 Jesus in the Synoptics {e.g. Mark ii. 1 ; Luke xxii. 14-18 ; Matthew xxiv. 
 27, and in general the Advent prophecy in Mark xiii. and parallels) lend 
 themselves to this interpretation. Paul's description of the groaning and 
 travailing of creation in Komans viii. and his warning words to the 
 Thessalonians who, in their eager anticipation of Christ's coming, were 
 neglecting present duty and falling into idleness and insubordination (2 
 Thess. iii. 11, 12), and indeed all the passages which emphasise the transi. 
 toriness of the present life and express a longing for the heavenly city which 
 alone has permanent foundations— all these have been claimed by premillen- 
 arians as arguments for their own view. It is quite true that they do not 
 represent the whole of the New Testament teaching. There is another side, 
 even more important, which expresses the Christian's consciousness of the 
 sanctity of the present life and the joy of communion with God here and 
 now. But the former is more obvious to the superficial reader, and it was 
 this aspect of the Christian hope which first received emphasis in history. 
 
 On the biblical evidence for premillenarianism cf. my article ' Millennium ' 
 in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. 
 
 s Justin, philosopher though he was, was a premillenarian of a very literal 
 type. Asked by Trypho whether he really expected Jerusalem to be rebuilt, 
 he answers in the affirmative. While admitting that many who belong to the 
 pure and pious faith and are true Christians think otherwise, he declares 
 that he and others 'who are right-minded Christians on all points, are 
 assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead and a thousand years at 
 Jerusalem which will then be rebuilt, adorned and enlarged as the prophets 
 Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare ' (80). The anti-Gnostic fathers of the 
 
vin.] CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OF CHRISTIAN HOPE 113 
 
 Apocalypses of Judaism, it meets us now in a more literal, 
 now in a more spiritual form. Papias, one of our earliest 
 witnesses to the authorship of the Gospels, quotes as a 
 genuine word of Christ a prediction which sets forth the 
 remarkable fertility of the vine in the Messianic kingdom : 
 
 ' The days will come, in which vines shall grow, each having 
 ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, 
 and on each branch again ten thousand twigs, and on each twig 
 ten thousand clusters, and on each cluster ten thousand grapes, 
 and each grape when pressed shall yield five and twenty 
 measures of wine. And when any of the saints shall have 
 taken hold of one of their clusters, another shall cry, I am a 
 better cluster ; take me, bless the Lord through me. Likewise 
 also a grain of wheat shall produce ten thousand heads, and 
 every head shall have ten thousand grains, and every grain ten 
 pounds of fine flour, bright and clean, and the other fruits, 
 seeds and the grass shall produce in similar proportions, and 
 all the animals, using these fruits which are products of the 
 soil, shall become in their turn peaceable and harmonious, 
 obedient to man in all subjection.' i 
 
 Barnabas, on the other hand, emphasises the ethical 
 and spiritual features of the future Kingdom. He looks for 
 a millennium of rest, following the present six millenniums 
 of work. This, he declares, will be the true Sabbath 
 rest for which Christians look, a time when, having been 
 themselves justified and having received the promise, 
 they will be able to keep the Sabbath holy, because they 
 have first been sanctified themselves (15. 1-7). 
 
 In both these forms, the more literal and the more 
 spiritual, premillenarianism has hved on in the Church 
 until this day. Though never the faith of the majority 
 of Christians, it has drawn to itself in every age some of 
 
 close of the second century, IrenaBus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus, were all 
 pronounced premillenarians. In their writings they give us full descrip- 
 tions of the millenarian kingdom, and Tertullian wrote an entire book on the 
 subject, which has unfortunately perished. 
 1 Lightfoot, Avostolic Fathers, p. 633 
 
 H 
 
114 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 the most earnest and devout spirits in Christendom. It 
 has a considerable Uterature, and is carrying on an active 
 and not InefEective propaganda. 
 
 It is important, therefore, to understand what is the real 
 basis of its appeal, and wherein its strength consists. 
 
 The grounds on which premillenarians rely to prove 
 their case are two : first, a literal exegesis, and secondly, 
 a pessimistic philosophy. The former is made more 
 prominent in argument, but the latter is the underlying 
 premise of their reasoning. 
 
 The first ground on which premillenarianism relies is a 
 literal exegesis. It claims to be the only eschatology 
 which does exact justice to the letter of Scripture, and it 
 must be admitted that the claim is a plausible one. In 
 the Bible, Old and New Testaments alike, we have various 
 prophecies concerning events in the future which can only 
 be provided for by sonie such scheme as the premillenarians 
 offer. There is to be an earthly kingdom at Jerusalem, 
 the restoration of the scattered Jews to their own country, 
 the destruction or conversion of the nations, the re-estab- 
 lishment of the temple ritual and of the Davidic monarchy. 
 There is also to be a great catastrophe, signs and portents, 
 in heaven and on the earth. The present order of things is 
 to be transformed. Nature is to be renewed, the lion is to 
 lie down with the lamb, and the wilderness blossom like the 
 rose. Human nature, too, is to be changed. Disease will 
 cease, and death itself be done away. How, we are asked, 
 can all these things come to pass save by some series of 
 miracles such as that for which the premUlenarian looks ? 
 
 But premillenarianism has a deeper root than this. Its 
 ultimate appeal is to a pessimistic philosophy which 
 banishes God from the present world, and despairs of any 
 permanent progress by present methods. Thus, according 
 to Dr. Andrews,^ the fvmdamental sin of Christianity 
 
 1 Christianity and Anti-Christianity in their Final Conflict, 2nd ed. 
 New York, 1899, 
 
vra.] CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OF CHRISTIAN HOPE 115 
 
 is the rejection of the direct authority of Christ, 
 and the enthronement in His stead of the false god, 
 Humanity. This primitive apostasy Dr. Andrews puts 
 very early — indeed, before the close of the Apostolic Age. 
 To it he attributes ecclesiasticism in all its forms ; for 
 what is the Church as we know it but the attempt to 
 substitute the rule of man for the rule of God ? This 
 perversion is not confined to Catholicism. Protestantism, 
 too, has been guilty of it. Indeed Protestantism, through 
 its greater humanitarianism, is more guilty, for it pushes 
 God and His Christ still further into the background. All 
 the boasted progress of our time, our charities and our 
 philanthropies, our philosophy and our science, our Hague 
 courts and our Parhaments of Religion, what are these 
 but so many manifestations of the spirit of anti-Christ, 
 which is Humanity enthroning itself upon the seat which 
 belongs to God alone ? From this evil, daily increasing, 
 there is but one way of escape. Christ must return to 
 earth, from which He has been banished, to subdue His 
 enemies and to resume the throne from which He has been 
 wrongly deposed. 
 
 Not all premillenarians would go as far as Dr. Andrews 
 in his opposition to modem humanitarianism. Many of 
 them are zealous workers in every good cause, and their 
 positive contribution to social progress is far from 
 negligible. Nevertheless, it is true of premillenarianism 
 as a type of thought, that, so far as it is consistent, it is 
 pessimistic in its Judgment of the present age, and post- 
 pones all hope of permanent progress or betterment until 
 after the Advent. 
 
 The statement of the arguments in favour of premillen- 
 arianism is at the same time the explanation of the reasons 
 why it has failed to prove permanently satisfying. Neither 
 in its interpretation of Scripture, nor in its interpretation 
 of life, has it been able to command the assent of the great 
 majority of Christians. 
 
116 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 It has been unable to command assent to its inter- 
 pretation of the Bible. To the early Christians, fresh from 
 the experience of the Resurrection, it was natural to inter- 
 pret Jesus' prophecy of His Advent literally, and to look 
 for His coming in the immediate future. But with the 
 passage of the years this attitude of eager expectation 
 became increasingly difficult to maintain. Even from the 
 beginning, as Justin admits, there were good Christians 
 who held aloof from it. The extravagances of the Montan- 
 ists who predicted the very day and hour of Christ's return 
 and looked for the establishment of an earthly kingdom at 
 Pepuza in Phrygia, served to discredit the movement 
 with sober and fair-minded men. Above all, the growth 
 of the allegorical exegesis in the older Church, and in more 
 recent times the application of critical methods to the study 
 of the Bible, have made possible a different interpretation 
 of prophecy and so removed one of the foundations upon 
 which premillenarianism rests. 
 
 Quite as momentous is the change which has taken 
 place in our estimate of the present life. This change is 
 the direct result of the growth of the influence of Chris- 
 tianity in the world. During the first and second centuries 
 the Christians were a little group, without power or social 
 prestige, yet their ideal involved the reorganisation of 
 society according to the principles of Jesus Christ. How 
 was it possible to imagine such a result imder present 
 conditions ? How else could it conceivably take place 
 than in some such way as premillenarianism anticipated ? 
 But, by the fourth century after Christ, conditions had 
 radically changed. Christianity had become the official 
 religion of the Roman Empire. The Church was an 
 institution powerful enough already to exercise a profound 
 influence upon social conditions, and every year growing 
 more powerful. Under the circumstances, it was not 
 strange if men's thought should have turned from the 
 future to the present, and the Millennium, hitherto post- 
 
vin.l CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OP CHRISTIAN HOPE 117 
 
 poned to the Advent of Christ, have been identified with 
 the reign of the Church on earth. ^ 
 
 2. Purgatory 
 
 This double change is the background against which 
 we must set the second type of thought to be considered, 
 that namely which meets us in the Catholic doctrine of 
 Purgatory. This differs from the premillenarian view 
 in three respects : (1) in the subordination of the social 
 to the iiidividual aspect of the Christian hope ; (2) in the 
 shifting of emphasis from the Advent to the state of the 
 soul immediately after death ; (3) in the importance 
 assigned to the Church as mediator of the future salvation. 
 
 There is no surer way to gain an insight into Catholic 
 thought and feeling concerning the life after death than 
 through a reading of the great poem in which Dante has 
 described his visit to the other world.^ Let us follow the 
 poet on his journey and see for ourselves what he saw. 
 
 The first thing that strikes us is the great variety of the 
 prospect. It is not one country which he visits, but three 
 — Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise — and each has its own 
 divisions and subdivisions. Over the portals of the first 
 we meet the famous legend : ' All hope abandon, ye who 
 enter here.' It is the abode of those who are finally lost. 
 Paradise, on the other hand, or heaven as we should say, 
 is the home of the angels and of the saints, those who have 
 finally conquered in the battle with sin, and who now, in 
 the presence of God and of Christ, enjoy the rewards of 
 their victory. And between the two lies Purgatory, an 
 intermediate region in which those who are neither perfectly 
 good nor hopelessly bad work out the consequences of 
 their former sins, and are gradually fitted by discipline, 
 more or less painful, for the blessed life of heaven. 
 
 1 So by Augustine in his City of Ood, xx. 7-9. 
 
 > The Divine Comedy, English translation with notes by Norton, 
 
118 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oh. 
 
 Each of these realms, I repeat, has its divisions and 
 its subdivisions. Hell consists of nine concentric circles, 
 one below the other, at the bottom of which Lucifer, 
 Prince of Evil, lies embedded in a lake of ice up to his 
 waist. In the first circle are the souls of the ancient poets 
 and sages who died without knowledge of the historic 
 Christ. They suffer no pain save such as is involved in 
 desire without hope.^ Here in the pre-Christian days 
 the patriarchs and prophets of the old dispensation had 
 their abode until delivered from it by Christ, during the 
 fateful visit which He made to the underworld between His 
 Crucifixion and His Resurrection. 
 
 Beneath this we find in successive circles different 
 groups of sinners, arranged according to the heinousness 
 of their sin. In the second circle are the carnal, then the 
 gluttonous, the avaricious and prodigal, the wrathful, the 
 heretics, the violent, the fraudulent, and finally, in the 
 lowest circle, which contains Lucifer himself, the traitors : 
 all, in short, who have departed this life in mortal sin. 
 Each in his own compartment, or sub-compartment, receives 
 the special punishment which is appropriate to his own par- 
 ticular sin. The carnal are hurried along by a resistless 
 hurricane. The gluttonous are ceaselessly drenched with 
 rain and hail. The avaricious wheel weights back and 
 forth ; the heresiarchs are buried in coffins with the followers 
 whom they have deluded, and so on in endless succession. 
 
 As Hell consists of a pit opening circle after circle, each 
 lower than the other, so Purgatory is a mountain rising 
 in a series of ledges one above the other, in the arduous 
 ascent toward Paradise. Here, too, we find the same 
 gradations of merit and demerit, the same exact balancing 
 of punishment and crime. At the foot of the mountain, 
 the so-caUed ante-Purgatory, are the spirits who have 
 died in contumacy, or who for one reason or another have 
 postponed repentance until too late. Then on successive 
 
 1 Inferno, iv. p. 23. 
 
vm.] CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OF CHRISTIAN HOPE 119 
 
 ledges are the proud, the envious, the wrathful, the sloth- 
 ful, the avaricious, the gluttonous, and finally, nearest the 
 top, the lustful, each undergoing the purificaticto which is 
 fitted to cleanse them from their sin. The wrathful con- 
 template visions of forbearance, the lustful cry aloud the 
 names of those who have been chaste, the slothful run to 
 atone for their former negligence, and as they run they 
 cry, ' Swift, swift, that time be not lost by little love, so 
 that zeal in well-doing may make grace green again.' ^ 
 
 Even in Paradise, whither the poet penetrates at last, we 
 find the same gradations of state, the same exact balancing 
 of merit. Some spirits dwell in the moon, others in the 
 successive planets. Only the most favoured reach the 
 Empyrean where is the great rose of Paradise, and share 
 the beatific vision which God reserves for His greatest 
 saints. Yet, there is this difference between Paradise 
 and the regions below, that in heaven these differences of 
 state cause no envy. Each in his own place, high or low, 
 is perfectly content. To Dante this is a great mystery 
 till Piccarda, the moon spirit, imparts to him the secret. 
 
 ' Brother, virtue of charity quiets our will, and makes us 
 wish only for that which we have, and quickens not our thirst 
 for aught else. If we desired to be more on high, our desires 
 would be discordant with the will of Him who assigns us here, 
 which thou wilt see is not possible in these circles, if to exist 
 in charity is here of necessity and if thou dost well consider its 
 nature. Nay, it is the essence of this blessed existence to hold 
 itself within the divine will, whereby our wills themselves are 
 made one. So that as we are, from seat to seat throughout 
 this realm, to all the realm is pleasing, as to the King who 
 inwills us with His will ; and His will is our peace ; it is that 
 sea whereunto everything is moving which It creates and which 
 nature makes.' ^ 
 
 With variations in detail which for our present purpose 
 are negligible, the hope of Dante is still the hope of CathoUc 
 
 1 Pwgalorio, xviii. p. 140. ' Paradiso, m. p. 22. 
 
120 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 Christianity. 1 It is instructive, therefore, to notice 
 wherein it differs from the premillenarian ideal which it 
 succeeds. 
 
 Of the shifting of interest from the more distant to the 
 nearer scene we have already spoken. The attention of 
 the premillenarian is fixed upon the Advent, and the 
 condition of the individual during the intermediate state 
 is ignored, or at most, Ughtly touched upon. To the 
 Catholic the life immediately after death stands in the 
 foreground, and the fate of the soul in its painful struggle 
 upward and onward engrosses attention. If heaven is to 
 be attained at all, it will be by most men only after a long 
 and arduous journey. And it is only natural that the 
 traveller should be most concerned for his lodgings during 
 the stages that lie nearest. 
 
 More important is the contrast in the view of the goal 
 itself. For the premillenarian this is a new social order 
 introduced by a great miracle and requiring for its realisa- 
 tion a transformation of the external environment. For 
 the Catholic it is an inner experience involving complete 
 freedom from sin, and culminating in the supreme blessed- 
 ness of the vision of God.^ This vision, indeed, cannot 
 be described, but only experienced. Only the greatest 
 saints attain to it, and they cannot translate what their 
 eyes have seen into words. 
 
 'As is he who dreaming sees, and after the dream the 
 passion remains imprinted, and the rest returns not to the 
 mind, such am I ; for my vision almost wholly departs, while 
 the sweetness that was born of it yet distils within my heart. 
 
 1 Tliis does not apply, of course, to the details of Dante's imagery, but only 
 to the main lines of his teachinp, e.g. (1) The division of the future life into 
 Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven ; (2) The Doctrine of Limbo ; (3) The difference 
 in the degrees of bliss or of suffering in each ; (4) the exact balancing of 
 merit and reward ; (5) the mystic ideal of the beatific vision as constituting 
 the supreme bliss of the saints. In all this, as in much else, Dante la a true 
 Catholic. 
 
 ^ I do not mean, of course, that these elements are absent from the pre- 
 millenarian ideal, but that they are secondary, not primary. 
 
rai.] CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OF CHRISTIAN HOPE 121 
 
 Thus the snow is by the sun unsealed ; thus by the wind, on 
 the light leaves, was lost the saying of the Sibyl.' ^ 
 
 Protestants often fail in their appreciation of Catholic 
 piety because they ignore this aspect of the Catholic ideal. 
 No one can do justice to Dante's version of the Christian 
 hope whose reading stops with the Purgatorio. Side by 
 side with the complex machinery of punishment provided 
 for the discipline of the imperfect there is an inner pathway 
 of the spirit open to the pure in heart. To them, even in 
 this life, the promise is fulfilled that they shall see God, 
 and at death they pass at once to the heaven which He 
 has reserved for those who love Him. 
 
 But those who find this path are few in number. To 
 most men salvation comes only through painful discipline, 
 and between them and the heaven which is the ulti- 
 mate goal of their hope lies the weary ascent of the 
 Purgatorio. 
 
 How came this way to be discovered ? What causes 
 led to the replacement of the early Christian hope by the 
 new doctrine of Purgatory ? Among the many different 
 influences at work, only one need be referred to here, 
 namely, the growth of the disciplinary power of the Church 
 as exercised through the sacramental system. 
 
 We learn from Augustine's Confessions what an impres- 
 sion was produced upon inquiring spirits sensitive to the 
 changes and evils of the time by the Catholic Church. 
 In the midst of distress and confusion, inner and outer, 
 that majestic institution, already inspiring in its antiquity, 
 and through its appropriation of the Old Testament 
 carrying back its origin to the dawn of human history, 
 stood out as the one unchanging fact. The Church was 
 God's spokesman in time, and the mediator of His salvation. 
 It was no longer necessary to wait for the future to commune 
 with God. Here and now He was present in the institu- 
 
 > Paradiso, xxxiii. p. 254. 
 
122 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [cH. 
 
 tion which was His appointed representative, the custodian 
 of His truth, and the channel of Hie grace. Through 
 baptism the guilt of sin was blotted out. In the Eucharist 
 man could partake of the Body and Blood of Christ. By 
 penance a way of escape was provided from the guilt of 
 sins committed after baptism. In the course of the later 
 centuries the sacramental system was further developed 
 until it touched human life at all points and made pro- 
 vision for every form of human need. So the machinery 
 was brought into existence by which in case of need God's 
 grace could reach across the grave and be made available 
 for those who had died in sin. 
 
 To understand the bearing of this change upon the con- 
 ception of the life after death, we must recall the CathoUc 
 view of the process of salvation here. While its goal, as 
 we have seen, is the salvation of the soul from sin, its 
 machinery is especially designed to deal with the conse- 
 quences of sin in penalty. It is a complex process through 
 which httle by little, through satisfaction and penance, the 
 guilt of sins committed after baptism ^ is atoned for, and 
 the way opened for the ultimate entrance of the soul into 
 heaven.^ 
 
 The bearing of this conception upon the future hfe is 
 clear. The soul which enters the other world before the 
 process of purification is complete must finish that process 
 
 1 In Catholic theory baptism removes the guilt of Adam's «in, but it is 
 left for penance to deal with the guilt incurred for sins committed after 
 baptism. 
 
 " The history of this legalistic conception of salvation need not detain us 
 here. Suffice it to say that as a result of a series of influences, some internal 
 and some external, the Pauline conception of salvation as a life of present 
 communion with God through vital union with the living Christ was replaced 
 by the conception of salvation as remission of future penalty on the basis of 
 a substitutionary atonement. The Germanic law made men familiar with 
 the idea of satisfaction (i.e. money payments calculated on a basis of equival- 
 ence as a substitute for punishment). Anselm, in his Gur Deus Some, 
 formulated the philosophy of this new conception of salvation, and the sacra- 
 ments of the Church, above all, penance, with the indulgence system, which 
 was its logical extension, furnished the machinery by which its benefits were 
 made practically effective to those who needed them. 
 
VIII.] CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OP CHRISTIAN HOPE 123 
 
 there, and the doctrine of Purgatory is the natural result. 
 Purgatory is simply the extension to the hfe' after death 
 of the principles which determine the Catholic ideal for 
 the life here. 
 
 What shall we say of this new form of the Christian 
 hope ? How far is it adequate and satisfying ? 
 
 We note, in the first place, the extraordinary vividness 
 which the belief in Purgatory gives to the thought of the 
 future. It is indissolubly connected with the present life. 
 There is no break in the continuity. The discipline 
 begun here is completed there. The guilt incurred here 
 meets there with its deserved penalty. No doubt to many 
 thoughtful Catholics the language of the Purgatorio and 
 the Inferno is symbolic, but the symbols are symbols of 
 reality. For the devout Catholic the world to come is 
 never negUgible. The thought of what it may contain 
 for him and for those he loves is his constant companion. 
 
 Nor can it be denied that for many the influence is a 
 salutary one. It is an incentive to watchfulness and a 
 warning against sloth. When a man is tempted to sin, 
 there is ever present the thought of the inevitable penalty 
 which sin brings with it. 
 
 Even more significant is the close relationship which it 
 establishes between the hving and the dead. It is char- 
 acteristic of the Catholic belief, as we have seen, that the 
 power of the Church extends to Purgatory, and through her 
 good offices invoked on behalf of the dead by the living, the 
 period of probation may be shortened and the pains of the 
 suffering soul mitigated. This opens the way to the satis- 
 faction of one of the deepest of human instincts, the long- 
 ing for communion with the loved ones who have passed 
 away. CathoUoism not only claims to give information 
 as to the state of the dead ; it provides the machinery for 
 helping them at the point of their direst need.* 
 
 • E.g. through masses and indulgences for the dead. Cf. Wilhelm and 
 Scannell : A Manual of Catholic Theology, vo\. ii. pp. 463, 480. 
 
124 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 But these advantages are balanced by disadvantages 
 of the most serious kind. The power thus claimed for the 
 Church is so great as to invite abuse, and in fact it has 
 been abused in the most shameful way. The practice of 
 indulgences, growing up naturally as the development of 
 the penitential system, speedily developed into an agency 
 of superstition and tyranny.^ It was interpreted as a 
 licence to commit sin. It was used as a means of 
 extortion. Under the exploitation of men like Tetzel 
 it developed into a scandal so flagrant as to arouse the 
 indignation of Luther. The Reformation was the answer 
 of Protestantism to the Church that administered the 
 authority it claimed over the dead by methods so un- 
 worthy. With the abuses of the indulgence system it 
 swept away also the underlying faith to which it appealed. 
 It rejected Purgatory as well as Penance and the Mass. 
 We have to consider finally the substitute by which it 
 replaced it. 
 
 3. Instant Sanctification at Death 
 
 The distinctive feature of the Catholic doctrine of 
 Purgatory is the extension of discipline to the life after 
 death. The contention of Protestantism, on the other 
 hand, has been that discipline ceases with death. The 
 destiny of the soul for weal or woe is settled here and now, 
 and death introduces man at once, as the case may be, 
 into the pains of Hell or the bliss of Heaven. 
 
 We may take as an example the statement of the West- 
 minster Confession : — 
 
 ' The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see 
 corruption ; but their souls (which neither die nor sleep), 
 
 1 On the history of the indulgence system, of. Lea, A History of Auricvlar 
 Confession and Indulgences, vol. iii. Cf. also Catholic Encyclopcalia, article 
 ' Indulgencies ' ; Wilhelm and Scannell, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 477 J?. An in- 
 dulgence, it must be remembered, is not a licence to commit sin, but the 
 remission, in whole or in part, of the temporal punishment of sin. 
 
vni.] CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OF CHRISTIAN HOPE 125 
 
 having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God 
 ■who gave them. The soifls of the righteous, being then made 
 perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where 
 they behold the face of Gk)d in light and glory, waiting for the 
 full redemption of their bodies : and the souls of the wicked 
 are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter 
 darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Besides 
 these two places for souls separated from their bodies, the 
 Scripture acknowledgeth none.' (xxxii. 1.) 
 
 What a contrast to the vision in the Divine Comedy ! 
 The nine circles of Hell and the seven ledges of Purgatory 
 have disappeared. Even in Heaven one star dififereth not 
 from another star in glory ; for all alike occupy the highest 
 heaven and behold the face of God.^ 
 
 How shall we account for this transformation ? What 
 has happened to blot out all the intermediate tints in the 
 picture and dyed the brush of the painter with so dazzling 
 a white, and so uncompromising a black ? 
 
 We may find our answer suggested by the adjective 
 with which we have phrased the question. We have the 
 reflection here of the uncompromising spirit of the Reforma- 
 tion, facing the momentous questions of the soul in the 
 spirit of Ibsen's Brand with his ' Nought or all.' The 
 Reformation was the effort to restore Christianity to its 
 pristine purity. Born of immediate personal experience, 
 it claimed for the humblest beUever the same freshness 
 and certainty which great spirits Uke Luther had enjoyed. 
 It banished the hierarchy and proclaimed the universal 
 priesthood of behevers, and the same parity of rights and 
 experiences which it tried to establish here, it carried 
 over into its thought of the life immediately after death. 
 There, too, as well as here, there were to be no inter- 
 mediaries, but each soul would receive its desert for good 
 or evil directly from the hand of its Creator. 
 
 1 It is to be noted that for the Protestant, too, the highest ideal is the 
 beatific vision. His criticism of Catholicism has reference not to the goal, 
 but the path by which it is reached. 
 
126 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 There was tonic in the thought. For strong men 
 it was inspiring to feel that they stood on the verge of the 
 final experience. It was refreshing to know that whatever 
 trials this life might still hold, a few years would end all 
 uncertainty and bring the utmost fruition of desire. 
 Men hke Calvin, Knox, and Cromwell could face misfor- 
 tunes with an even mind because they were conscious of 
 their own election by God. 
 
 But what of those who were not elect ? Here, indeed, 
 the prospect was one of unrelieved gloom. When once 
 the play was over and the curtain had been rung down, 
 there was no longer any hope for those who had died in 
 sin. Jonathan Edwards has pictured in unforgettable 
 language the fate which Protestant orthodoxy predicted 
 for those who were finally impenitent. Not only were they 
 cut off from the grace of God, but they were deprived of 
 the sympathy of men. 
 
 ' You that have godly parents,' he says, pleading with 
 the impenitent among his Northampton parishioners, 
 
 ' who in this world have tenderly loved you, who were wont 
 to look upon your welfare as their own, and were wont to 
 be grieved for you when anything calamitous befell you in 
 this world, and especially were greatly concerned for the good 
 of your souls, industriously sought, and earnestly prayed for 
 your salvation, how will you bear to see them . . . now with- 
 out any love to you, approving the sentence of condemnation, 
 when Christ shall with indignation bid you depart, wretched, 
 cursed creatures, into eternal burnings'! How will you bear 
 to see and hear them praising the Judge for His justice 
 exercised in pronouncing this sentence, and hearing it with holy 
 joy in their countenances, and shouting forth the praises and 
 hallelujahs of God and Christ on that account? . . . You 
 that have godly husbands or wives or brethren or sisters, with 
 whom you have been wont to dwell under the same roof, 
 and to eat at the same table, consider how it will be with you 
 when you shall come to part with them ; when they shall be 
 taken and you left. . . . However you may wail and lament 
 
vm.] CHIEF HISTORIC FORMS OF CHRISTIAN HOPE 127 
 
 when you see them parted from you . . . you ■will see in them 
 no signs of sorrow that you are not taken with them.' ^ 
 
 What room is left here for the alternations of hope and 
 fear with which the Catholic contemplates the fate of those 
 dear to him in the other world ? From the fires of Purga- 
 tory there was at least hope of escape, but now no such 
 refuge remains. Dante's mountain has vanished, and only 
 heaven and hell remain, and what is more significant, with 
 Purgatory have vanished all the sentiments and emotions 
 to which its presence led. In the heat of the divine 
 judgment, glorious as it is terrible, the springs of natural 
 afiection have been dried up. 
 
 We have come a long way from the primitive hope with 
 which we started, the eschatology of the Resurrection and 
 of the second Advent. These doctrines, to be sure, still 
 retain their place in the Creed, but they no longer hold 
 the centre of interest. If at death, as the Westminster 
 Standards assert, the righteous enter the highest heavens, 
 while the wicked are plunged into the lowest hell, it is 
 difficult to see what new experience can be added by the 
 resurrection of the body for which they still wait. The 
 dead may still rise for judgment, but the purpose of their 
 summons to the bar is simply to make public a decision 
 which has been rendered long ago — and what is more im- 
 portant still — which is already in process of execution. 
 
 In recent times there has been increasing dissatisfaction 
 among thoughtful Protestants with the traditional eschat- 
 ology. It has been felt that in their protest against the 
 abuses of Catholicism the Reformers went too far, and 
 various attempts have been made to restore to Protestant 
 theology those elements of truth in the Catholic faith which 
 have been too lightly sacrificed. This attempt has taken 
 different forms. Sometimes Peter's words about the 
 spirits in prison have been taken as the point of departure, 
 and we have a revival of Dante's teaching concerning the 
 
 1 SermOD xiii. {Works, New York, 1869, vol. iv. pp. 296-7). 
 
128 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 mission of C!hrist to the souls in the under- world. Theoi? 
 logians of Armini an and semi-Arminian tendencies have 
 extended the time of probation beyond the grave, and 
 taught that those who have never heard of Christ in this 
 hfe will be given an opportunity of repentance and faith 
 in the Hfe to come. Others, while confining regeneration 
 to this life, have taught a progressive sanctification after 
 death, which makes room in the other world for differences 
 of character and of development no less marked than those 
 which meet us here."^ 
 
 Nor has criticism of the older eschatology been con- 
 fined to the intermediate steps in the process of salvation. 
 The goal itself has been called in question. In the tradi- 
 tional eschatology, both Catholic and Protestant, this has 
 been defined, in individualistic fashion, as the immediate 
 vision of God. Heaven has been thought of as a place of 
 rest rather than of activity, of fruition rather than of 
 service. To many modem thinkers such a view seems to 
 overlook the essential elements in Jesus' teaching. The 
 God He reveals is the Father of many brethren, and the 
 kingdom for which He looks, a new social order in which 
 service will have place as well as worship. There is a 
 truth here for which premillenarianism stood, to which the 
 later eschatology has done scant justice. This forgotten 
 aspect of truth it is the effort of recent writers to recover. 
 Thus in various ways the rigidity of the older doctrine 
 is being modified, and room is sought for a freer treatment 
 more in accordance with the spirit of the age. 
 
 But before we consider this latest phase in the history 
 of the Christian hope there is a prehminary question which 
 requires our attention, so far-reaching in its importance as 
 to take precedence of all matters of detail. This is the 
 question whether life after death is possible in any form, 
 and to this we now turn. 
 
 1 E.g. Dr. Charles A. Briggs; cf. his Church Unity, New York, 1909, 
 p. 350 sq. 
 
IX.] PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 129 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 In Leibnitz' Theodicee, the famous essay in which the 
 philosopher gives his solution of the problem of evil, there 
 is a passage in which he speaks of Jesus as the Teacher 
 who brought to the common consciousness of mankind 
 the truths of natural religion. Among these truths was 
 immortality. Moses, while holding the beUef, failed to 
 include it in his public teaching. It remained a kind of 
 esoteric doctrine until Jesus brought it out into the 
 clear hght, and made it the assured possession of all 
 men.i 
 
 The attitude of Leibnitz was typical of the age.^ Rigor- 
 ous though they were in their criticism of supernatural 
 religion, the deists never questioned the fact of immortality. 
 With the existence of God and the authority of the moral 
 law, it was a fixed point in their scheme of things. Kant 
 reckons it with God and freedom as one of the three ideas 
 whose vaHdity the practical reason supports. It was the 
 premise upon which Butler relied in his argument in sup- 
 port of revealed religion.^ 
 
 How different the situation to-day ! In his lectures 
 on Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testa- 
 ment, George Adam Smith refers to the widespread loss 
 
 1 Leibnitz, Works, edited Gerhardt, Berlin, 1885, vol. vi. p. 26. 
 
 2 The Tkeodicle was written in 1710. 
 
 3 Hume's scepticism, to be sure, did not spare even belief in immortality. 
 But his case was exceptional. Of. M'Giffert, Protestant Thought he/art 
 Kant ; 1911, p. 241 sj. 
 
 I 
 
130 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 of faith in immortality as one of the gromids which rein- 
 force the appeal of the Old Testament to modem men.' 
 We find in the pages of Isaiah and of Micah a situation 
 not unlike that which faces us to-day when men of sincere 
 faith in God and of high ethical purpose have no hope 
 which goes beyond the present life. It was a situation 
 which passed away with the rise of faith in the resurrec- 
 tion, and which has not recurred until comparatively 
 recent times. 
 
 How has the change come about ? What causes have 
 shaken the faith which has maintained itself unbroken for 
 more than two thousand years ? And, above all, what 
 substitutes are proposed to replace the hope which is 
 challenged ? These are the questions to which the present 
 chapter will- be devoted. 
 
 1. The Decline of Faith in Personal Immortality 
 
 And first, of the causes of the recent decline of faith in 
 immortality. They are a part of the complex movement 
 which we call modem thought, which at so many points 
 has been reconstructing our view of the world in which we 
 live, and which has led to the challenge of the Christian 
 faith all along the line. 
 
 For one thing, modern science has profoundly altered 
 our conception of the physical structure of the universe. 
 The earth is no longer for us a flat surface with the firma- 
 ment above and the under-world below. The boundaries 
 of the universe have enormously expanded. We recog- 
 nise that our earth is but one of the planets of a sun which, 
 vast as it is, is but one of an innumerable company of stars. 
 What place is there in such a world for the heaven and hell 
 of Dante's imagery ? Where shall we locate the circles of 
 the Inferno or the ledges of the Purgatorio ? 
 
 But, great as are the changes in the geography of the 
 1 P. 209 ^?, 
 
IX.] PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 131 
 
 universe, the changes in our chronology are even greater. 
 Instead of inhabiting a world which began at a fixed point 
 of time, created by God in six days of twenty-four hours, 
 and having a history which can be compressed into six 
 thousand years, our thought ranges backward and forward 
 through unnumbered ages without finding any stopping- 
 place. We see the whirling gases which constitute the raw 
 material of worlds contracting into suns, and these suns 
 throwing off planets which in turn cool until they reach a 
 temperature capable of supporting life. We see species 
 appearing, one after another, in the vegetable kingdom 
 and in the animal. We behold a ruthless struggle for 
 existence, in which the weak go to the wall. We see the 
 same struggle repeating itself in human history, race 
 contending with race for the mastery, and individual with 
 individual. Civilisation succeeds civilisation, and philo- 
 sophy philosophy. New religions rise upon the ruins of 
 l3ie faiths which have preceded them ; and within each 
 ' the old lives on in new forms and under different names. 
 The accepted formulae of the past no longer do justice to 
 the complexity of the phenomena. The lines that used 
 to mark off period from period, and age from age, are 
 blurred. All seems in a state of flux. 
 
 Nor is it otherwise with the inner life. Indeed, here 
 we meet the greatest change of all. The same methods 
 which have rewritten our history have revolutionised our 
 psychology. When we study the processes of the mind, 
 we find the same law of cause and effect at work. The 
 development without is marked by a corresponding 
 development within. Instead of one self, modem psy- 
 chology discovers many selves. Each moment, indeed, 
 creates its own self, if not a ' new and unique self,' to 
 use Mr. Henry Rutgers Marshall's * striking language — at 
 least, a self differing in some respects from all that have 
 gone before, and from all that will follow after. Plato's 
 
 ' Consciousness, p. 622. 
 
132 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 soul, the simple substance that abides unchanged in the 
 midst of change, seems to have vanished for ever. 
 
 More startling still in its effects upon the Christian hope 
 is the intimate connection discerned between soul and 
 body. It is an axiom of our modern psychology that each 
 change in the mental state has its parallel in some corre- 
 sponding change in the nervous system. The health of 
 the mind and the health of the body seem indissolubly 
 connected. A clot of blood pressing upon a certain spot 
 in the brain may change a kind and upright man into a 
 morose and brutal one, and conversely, a successful opera- 
 tion may bring about a moral regeneration incapable of 
 production by any other means. It is not strange that 
 men whose lives have been given to the study of such 
 phenomena should confine consciousness to the present 
 life, and regard the conception of a disembodied spirit as 
 a contradiction in terms. 
 
 These tendencies are reinforced by the breaking down 
 of the older conception of religious authority. The same 
 influences which have been at work in secular history 
 have made themselves felt in religion as well. The con- 
 ception of the Bible as an inerrant book, consistent in its 
 teaching from cover to cover, equally authoritative for 
 history and science as for ethics and religion, has been 
 replaced for many by the new view which sees in it the 
 record of a progressive revelation. Helpful as the change 
 has been in many respects, there can be no doubt that one 
 of its effects has been to weaken the authority of the older 
 dogma, and in the case of those whose faith is insecurely 
 grounded, to open the way to a far-reaching scepticism. 
 
 Nor have the causes of the change been intellectual 
 merely. Ethical influences also have been at work. There 
 has been a shifting of interest from the future to the 
 present. The marvellous achievements of modern science 
 have made the world more interesting than ever before. 
 The great increase in wealth and comfort has multiplied 
 
IX.] PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 133 
 
 the number of those who feel so much at home on earth 
 that they have little time or energy left to think of 
 heaven. The idea of progress, with its promise of a con- 
 stantly improving future, has made work for others better 
 worth while than ever before, and questions as to the 
 distant future have lost their interest. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, the opposite motive has been at 
 work. The spectacle of human misery, all the more 
 keenly felt because of the splendid achievements with 
 which it is contrasted, has kindled men's desire for immedi- 
 ate relief. They have been unwilling to postpone to the 
 future the help which is needed now, and have regarded 
 the Church's promise of immortality as an unworthy 
 palliative, designed to make men content with conditions 
 against which they ought rather to rise in protest. 
 
 Such are some of the motives which have produced the 
 revolution of thought which this chapter is designed to 
 record. The effects are patent to every open-eyed observer. 
 In his well-known Ingersoll Lecture on Human Immor- 
 tality ^ Professor William James begins by explaining that 
 he wishes some one else had been chosen to render the 
 service, some one whose ' personal feeling ' about the 
 future life was ' of the keenest order,' for, as for him, he 
 frankly confesses that ' among the subjects which give 
 his mind solicitude, this one does not take the very fore- 
 most place.' Could there be a more striking indication 
 of the change of mood which has come over our age than 
 that William James, that most human of all philosophers, 
 should approach this topic, so vital to multitudes of his 
 fellow mortals, in so unimpassioned a mood ? 
 
 But indeed we do not need to turn to philosophers for 
 our evidence. It meets us on every hand, in quiet con- 
 versation with familiar friends, at the bedside of the sick, 
 in the Christian Church, by the open grave. From the 
 most unexpected quarters, and at the most unlooked for 
 
 1 Boston, 1898, p. 3. 
 
134 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 times, we discover how many tliere are from whose Uvea 
 this great hope has gone out. Sometimes indifferently, 
 more often with heavy hearts, they will tell us of some dear 
 friend who has gone that they never expect to see him again. 
 The glad confidence which has lightened the separation for 
 so many in the past is no longer theirs. 
 
 What is to be the effect of this change ? Is it only a 
 passing phase, or will it last, and, if so, what will be its 
 consequences for good or foi" evil ? Will it leave life per- 
 manently impoverished, or can some substitute be found 
 which will preserve the values of the old hope even when 
 its substance is gone ? Three such substitutes have actu- 
 ally been proposed. The first is social immortality, the 
 second, the immortality of influence, the third, the immor- 
 tality of value. 
 
 2. Social Immortality 
 
 An example of the first substitute is the ideal of the 
 more radical socialists.^ These men abandon the world 
 to come altogether, and concentrate their attention upon 
 the present life. Here, they tell us, is to be found the only 
 salvation of which we have any certainty. The part of 
 the wise and the good is therefore to let the other world 
 go, and to concentrate every effort upon the reconstruction 
 of the present social order. 
 
 There is indeed no necessary connection between social 
 ism and the denial of immortality. Sociahsm is an 
 economic programme, and concerns itself with the equit- 
 able distribution of wealth. It is based upon certain 
 theories as to capital and wages which have been formu- 
 lated by Karl Marx, and adopted with more or less modifi- 
 cation by his followers. It is quite possible to hold these 
 theories and still beUeve in God and immortality. In- 
 
 1 A well-selected bibliography of socialistic literature is given by Hall in 
 his Social Solutions, 1910, pp. 377-81. 
 
IX.] PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 135 
 
 deed, one miglit accept the socialistic state as the ideal 
 for this life, and yet postpone its complete realisation to 
 another world. 
 
 This is the position which is taken by those who call 
 themselves Christian Socialists. They see in the social- 
 istic theory an effort to apply Jesus' doctrine of the King- 
 dom of God to the conditions of life here. They find 
 inspiration in their struggle for social and economic recon- 
 struction in His teaching concerning the Fatherhood of 
 God, and compensation for the slow progress made toward 
 the realisation of their ideal in faith in that hfe beyond 
 in which the hopes unfulfilled here will have their final 
 fruition. 
 
 Our interest here, however, is with the radicals who do 
 not share this faith. For them the horizon is bounded by 
 the present life. Religion in the conventional form is looked 
 upon with suspicion because of its other-worldly character. 
 It is represented as a device for making men content with 
 injustice and oppression. Through its inculcation of 
 submission to authority, it is an obstacle to that class 
 consciousness through which alone the better social order 
 can be introduced. I have heard Bebel, before a great 
 audience which cheered him to the echo, attack Christianity 
 as the chief foe to social progress, and plead with the 
 mothers of the future citizens to emancipate themselves 
 from the tyranny of the Church. For the city of God, 
 which has so long deluded men with false promises, this 
 advocate of a new social order would offer us as a 
 substitute the city of man. 
 
 There are many who do not accept the economic doctrines 
 of socialism who sympathise with this point of view. 
 What may be in store for man after death they do not 
 know. But they know that this world is full of prevent- 
 able wrongs, and they believe that it is man's first duty and 
 his highest happiness to see that these wrongs are righted. 
 They claim Jesus as authority for their attitude. They 
 
136 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 remind us that He coupled with His prayer for the coming 
 of God's kingdom the petition that God's will should be 
 done on earth as in heaven. They take Matthew xxv. 
 very seriously, and find in the struggle against poverty, 
 sickness, and oppression a sufficient outlet for all their 
 energies. Like the author of Second Peter, they hope for 
 ' a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness ' (2 Peter 
 iii. 13). 
 
 There is much that is noble in this attitude. It repre- 
 sents the natural reaction against a one-sided religion. It 
 emphasises anew aspects of Jesus' Gospel which should 
 never have been forgotten. It is a question, however, 
 whether it can prove permanently satisfying. 
 
 What shall we say, for example, of all those individuals 
 who have died before the coming of the new social order ? 
 This is a very pressing question. The world is full of 
 underfed, imperfectly developed men and women, cripples 
 physically and morally, the victims of the social mal- 
 adjustment which socialism and its allied reforms are 
 trying to abolish. No doubt it will be a splendid thing to 
 bring about such a state of affairs that there will be no 
 more suffering and no more sin, but what are we to do in 
 the meantime ? These people are here to-day. What can 
 we do for them ? The old Gospel had a message of hope 
 for the most unfortunate of humanity. It promised him a 
 future life in which he might fulfil the destiny which he 
 had failed to realise here. It assured him that as a child 
 of God he was heir to the Kingdom, and so gave dignity 
 to the most trying fate. For this promise the earthly 
 hope provides no substitute. 
 
 Or, let us suppose the ideal realised. The efforts of 
 reform have finally succeeded, and the perfect social order 
 has been established. Still, we must face the uncertainty 
 which is involved in all earthly existence. Scientists tell 
 us that the earth, which has been formed by the gradual 
 cooUng of molten matter to a temperature capable of 
 
IX.] PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 137 
 
 supporting life, will some day be resolved into its elements, 
 carrying with it to destruction all the complex life which 
 it has produced. What, then, will become of the ideal 
 society, which has been brought into existence at the 
 cost of so much labour ? It too, hke the greater system 
 of which it is a part, will have had its day and ceased to be. 
 Or, if this contingency seem too remote to trouble the 
 imagination of practical men, how shall we deal with the 
 problem presented by the brevity of individual life ? 
 Even under the best conditions hfe is transitory, and the 
 most that can be crowded into it falls lamentably short of 
 the capacities of the human spirit to acquire and to enjoy. 
 The sense of incompleteness which makes so much of the 
 tragedy of our life here will still be present under the new 
 conditions, enhanced, if anything, by the greater oppor- 
 tunities they present. Here again the Christian hope had 
 its solution to ofiEer, but what remedy can be found for this 
 discrepancy between individual capacity and individual 
 attainment in a purely earthly ideal ? 
 
 3. The Immortality of Influence 
 
 We are led therefore to consider the second of the pro- 
 posed substitutes for the Christian hope, that namely 
 of the immortality of influence. According to this view 
 the individual, while ceasing to exist as a separate self- 
 consciousness, continues after death to live on in the 
 efiects for good or evil which he produces in the lives of 
 those who come after him. In Ibsen's great play, The 
 Pretenders, there is a famous scene which describes the 
 death of Nicholas, Bishop of Oslo, who lived in Norway in 
 the thirteenth century. A restless and grasping spirit, 
 he has sown dissension between the rival claimants for the 
 Norwegian throne, and, unsuccessful himself, has found his 
 satisfaction in preventing others from attaining the power 
 which he liimself has failed to win. With the approach 
 
138 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 of death, however, he sees his plans imperilled and the 
 work of his life threatened with shipwreck. He pleads 
 with his physician in vain for an extension of life. ' The 
 miserable hound,' he exclaims, ' what boots all his learning 
 when he cannot add an hour to my life ? There sits he 
 in his closet day by day, piecing together his cunning 
 wheels and weights and levers ; he thinks to fashion a 
 machine that shall go and go and never stop — 'perfduum 
 mobile he calls it. Why not rather turn his art and his 
 skill to making man such a perpetuum mobile ? ' At the 
 words he stops and thinks ; then his eyes light up with a 
 sudden flash of insight. ' Perpetuum mobile,' he continues, 
 ' I am not strong in Latin — but it means somewhat that 
 has power to work eternally, through all the ages. If I 
 
 myself, now, could but That were a deed to end my 
 
 life withal ! That were to do my greatest deed in my 
 latest hour ! To set wheel and weight and lever at work 
 in the King's soul and the Duke's ; to set them agoing so 
 that no power on earth can stop them ; if I can but do 
 that, then shall I live indeed, live in my work — and, when 
 I think of it, mayhap 'tis that which is called immortahty.' ^ 
 
 Here we have a singularly forceful illustration of what 
 is called the immortality of influence. Not many men 
 would wish the particular kind of immortality which 
 satisfied Bishop Nicholas. Moat men prefer George 
 Eliot's kind of immortality, and if they desire to hve 
 at all, would live ' in lives made better by their presence.' 
 But there is no doubt that in this thought of self-perpetua- 
 tion in other lives many earnest spirits have found and are 
 finding to-day a compensation for the loss of the old hope. 
 
 Such, for example, is the solace offered by Professor 
 Miinsterberg in his suggestive book. The Eternal Life.^ 
 Answering the charge that he does not believe in immor- 
 tality because, unlike the one for whom the book is 
 
 1 The Pretenders, edited Archer, Act iii. p. 210. 
 
 2 Boston, 1905. 
 
IX.] PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 139 
 
 written, he never expects to meet again the friend whose 
 untimely death they both mourn, he thus expresses his 
 own faith in the immortaUty of influence :— 
 
 'Who dares to speak the word "uncompleted"? Are the 
 influences of our will confined to those impulses which work 
 directly and with our knowledge on the nearest circle of our 
 neighbours? Will not our friend, who left us in the best 
 energy of his manhood, influence you and me and so many 
 others throughout our lives, and what we gained from his noble 
 mind — will it not work through us further and further, and 
 may it not thus complete much of that which seemed broken 
 off so uncompleted ? ' ^ 
 
 We have here a modem rendering of Bishop Nicholas's 
 perpetuum, mobile. 
 
 It cannot be denied that these words express a great 
 truth. Personality is self-perpetuating. We live in the 
 Uves we have helped to create. 
 
 There is a passage in John Stuart Mill's Autobiography 
 which admirably illustrates this influence of spirit upon 
 spirit. It was during his editorship of the Westminster 
 Review. He had been throwing himself with all the 
 energy of his generous nature into various causes of social 
 and ethical reform, when all of a sudden he found himself 
 the prey of a singular depression of spirit. ' It occurred 
 to me,' he says, ' to put the question directly to myself : 
 suppose that all your objects in life were realised ; that 
 all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are 
 looking forward to could be completely effected at this 
 very instant, would this be a great Joy and happiness to 
 you ? And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly 
 answered, No. At this my heart sank within me, and 
 -the whole foundation on which my hfe was constructed 
 fell down. ... I seemed to have nothing left to live for.' 2 
 For some time this mood continued ; but little by little 
 he succeeded in throwing off his depression, and recovering 
 
 1 P. 66. 2 Autobiography, p. 183. 
 
140 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 his lost interest in life. Among the influences which helped 
 to bring about this salutary change he mentions as one of 
 the chief, the reading of Wordsworth's poems. Through 
 Wordsworth he discovered the world of value to which 
 poetry and religion alike hold the key. He felt the 
 
 ' sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns 
 And the round ocean and the living air. 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 AU thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, 
 And rolls through all things.' 
 
 And with the experience there came to him a new content- 
 ment, ' a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imagina- 
 tive pleasure which could be shared in by aU human 
 beings ; which had no connection with struggle or imper- 
 fection, but would be made richer by every improvement 
 in the physical or social condition of mankind.' He 
 learned, in short, ' what would be the perennial sources of 
 happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been 
 removed.' ^ 
 
 It is so with all the great teachers of humanity. Their 
 influence transcends the bounds of time and space. What- 
 ever may be true in the unseen country toward which we 
 are Journeying, certain it is that here we can commune 
 with the great spirits of the past, ' Orpheus, Musseus, 
 Hesiod, or Homer.' Martineau tells us that with his 
 discovery of Plato he experienced what he can only de- 
 scribe as ' a new intellectual birth.' ^ When Kant road 
 Hume it waked him from his dogmatic slumbers. Who 
 that has been at Hampton but has felt the influence of 
 General Armstrong ? What lover of humanity but feels 
 
 1 Autobiography, p. 148. 
 
 » Types of Ethical Theory, Preface, p. xiii. 
 
[X.] PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 141 
 
 himself sustained in his struggle by the thought of 
 Lincoln and of Mazzini ? 
 
 It is so supremely with the great leaders of religion. 
 Paul's word about Christ, ' It is no longer I that Uve, but 
 Christ liveth in me,' has been verified in countless lives. 
 Confucius hves on in the lives of Chinamen, and Mohammed, 
 of Mohammedans. Augustine and Luther and Calvin and 
 Wesley are still forces actually working for the ends they 
 had proposed for themselves hundreds of years ago. 
 Bishop Nicholas is right. Death is not the end but the 
 beginning of influence, and personality is the true per- 
 petuum mobile. 
 
 But when we have said this, we have not reached the 
 end of the matter. How comes man to exert so far-reach- 
 ing an influence ? What is the nature of this personality 
 that can work without end ? If consciousness can pro- 
 duce such great results during the few years alloted to it 
 here, why may it not be possible that it is still exerting 
 similar influence under conditions hidden from our ken ? 
 Why, in other words, need the immortality of influence be 
 a substitute for personal immortality in the full Christian 
 sense ? Why may it not rather be its supplement and its 
 evidence ? 
 
 The question is certainly a legitimate one. But before 
 we attempt to answer it, there is still a third possibility 
 which demands our attention. Besides the two substi- 
 tutes for personal immortality already considered, a third 
 is proposed. We may call it the immortality of value. 
 
 4. The Immortality of Value 
 
 According to this view, the significance of life consists 
 not in what we do but in what we mean. Each life is the 
 expression of some purpose, some desire, some ideal. This 
 ideal may never be realised in experience, or, if at all, 
 most imperfectly. It has its value in itself, independent 
 
142 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 of time and of all consciousness that is temporally con- 
 ditioned. Time is the mark of finiteness and imper- 
 fection, characteristic indeed of all human consciousness, 
 but without place in the eternal mind of God. Within 
 his all-embracing intuition all human meanings are con- 
 tained and fulfilled. Each human life in its ideal aspect 
 is an object of the divine thought, a part of the divine 
 experience, a necessary element in the totality of values 
 which constitutes the divine blessedness, and in this fact 
 its immortality consists. 
 
 It is not easy for most of us, creatures of time as we are, 
 to rise to the somewhat rarified atmosphere where this 
 ideal has its home. Let me therefore try to make my 
 meaning clearer by an illustration. A little while ago I 
 cited Miinsterberg as an example of the immortality of 
 influence. The paragraph that immediately follows gives 
 us a good illustration of the immortality of value. 
 
 He has been speaking, you remember, of the influence 
 which his friend continues to exert after death as ' com- 
 pleting much of that which seemed broken off.' ' And 
 yet,' he goes on, ' who dares to speak the word, completed ? 
 Do not our purposes grow, does not . . . every new signifi- 
 cance which our will reaches aim towards new infiuences ? 
 Does not every newly created value give us the desire for 
 further achievement ? ... Is our life-work really ever so 
 completely done that no desire has still a meaning ? ' 
 
 What follows from this haunting sense of incomplete- 
 ness that seems the very law of our life in time ? This 
 clearly, that the true meaning of our life is not to be found 
 in time at all. ' In eternity lies the reality of our friend 
 who will never sit with us again here at the fireplace. I 
 do not think that I should love him better if I hoped that 
 he might be somewhere waiting through time and space 
 to meet us again. I feel that I should take his existence 
 in the space-time world as the real meaning of his life, and 
 thus deprive his noble personality of every value and of 
 
IX.] PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR CHRISTIAN HOPE 143 
 
 every meaning. The man we love was not in space and 
 time. . . . He lived his life in realising absolute values 
 through his devotion to truth and beauty, to morality and 
 religion. You and I do not know a reality of which he 
 is not La eternity a noble part. The passing of time 
 cannot make his personality unreal, and nothing would 
 be added to his immortal value if some object like him 
 were to enter the sphere of time again ' (pp. 67-69). 
 
 Here again we may readily assume that there is a truth 
 in this doctrine of the immortality of value. It is true 
 that there is something in every human life worthy the 
 name, that transcends time, something which has its 
 value in and of itself, and abides unchanged through all 
 the changes that time brings with it. ' Love,' says Paul, 
 meaning by the word that glad self-surrender to the 
 highest, which is our final proof of the kinship between man 
 and his Maker, ' Love never faUeth.' It is new every 
 morning and fresh every evening. It is complete and 
 perfect in every expression. Nothing needs to be added 
 to it. When once we have touched it, we recognise it 
 everywhere and always, for it is as eternal as God 
 Himself. 
 
 It is so with all the permanent values that give dignity 
 to human life. It is true of justice and of beauty, of 
 loyalty and consecration and worship, that they have a 
 certain changeless quality which characterises them every- 
 where and always, something that justifies the great 
 surrender which men have gladly made in their behalf, and 
 leaves Ufe empty and meaningless when they are gone. 
 
 But it is one thing to say this, and quite another to 
 suppose that the time element in our consciousness is 
 negligible. How should we ever have come to appreciate 
 the permanent value of these great ideals except against 
 the background of the changing ? What made Professor 
 Miinsterberg's friend the man he was if not the struggle 
 against obstacles in this world of incompleteness ? Where 
 
144 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 else did he find the opportunity to call forth that human 
 love which led to the dialogue we have been reviewing ? 
 
 But, if time has meaning for the eternal, now, why 
 may it not continue to do so in the future ? Why may not 
 new struggles in the life to come win new victories and 
 inspire new love ? Here again we cannot help suspecting 
 that we are dealing with an unreal antithesis. As the 
 immortality of influence may prove consistent with a 
 continuance of the individual self-consciousness, why may 
 not this also prove true of the immortality of value ? ^ 
 
 At all events, the question is worth asking. If the 
 modern view of the world requires the sacrifice of the 
 Christian hope, we must face the issue with what courage 
 we may ; but it is well to look before we leap. Our hope 
 may prove to be more firmly rooted than is realised by 
 those who are ready so lightly to discard it. There was a 
 time when men supposed that modern science had made 
 an end of faith in God, but to-day we see that it has estab- 
 lished religion more securely than ever. May it not prove 
 so with the matter of immortality ? This is a question 
 which many in our day are asking. In the chapter that 
 follows we shall consider the more important answers 
 which they have given. 
 
 1 On the significance of individuality cf. Professor Royce in his Ingersoll 
 Lecture on The Conception of Immortality, Boston, 1900. He argues that we 
 are not yet true individuals, but only on the way to individuality. This 
 ' various and genuine individuality, which we are now loyally meaning to ex- 
 press, gets, from the absolute point of view, its final and conscious expression in 
 a life that, like all life such as idealism recognises, is conscious, and that in its 
 meaning, though not at all necessarily in space or in time, is continuous with 
 the fragmentary and flickering existence wherein we now see through a glast 
 darkly our relations to God and to the final truth ' (pp. 79-80), 
 
X.] THE RECOVERY OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 145 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE RECOVERY OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 The chief attempts which have been made in our day to 
 justify the Christian hope in the hght of modem thought 
 have followed one of three different lines. The first takes 
 its departure from the theory of evolution. It reasons 
 from the analogy of natural selection to the fact of con- 
 ditional immortality, the fact, that is to say, that immor- 
 taUty, so far from being a universal endowment of human- 
 ity, is the prize of a selected group, those, namely, who 
 through moral and spiritual discipline have fitted them- 
 selves to survive in the struggle for existence. The second 
 bases its conclusions upon the experiments of psychical 
 research. It claims that the fact of the continuance of 
 personaUty after death has been proved by communica- 
 tions of the spirits of the dead to the living. The third 
 founds faith in immortality upon the inherent worth of 
 personahty and, in the case of many of its representatives, 
 extends this judgment of value to include all individuals 
 who have ever lived, or who may hve in the future. This 
 is the theory of universalism. 
 
 Before we consider these more ambitious attempts to 
 penetrate the mystery of death, we must linger for a 
 moment on the threshold and consider what has been done 
 to break the force of the most serious obstacle in the way 
 of beUeving in the continuance of personal existence after 
 death, that namely which grows out of the apparent 
 dependence of consciousness upon the nervous system. 
 
 K 
 
146 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oh. 
 
 1. The Bearing of Physical Science upon the Hope of 
 Immortality 
 
 When modem physical science first began the remarkable 
 series of achievements which have transformed our con- 
 ception of Nature and placed at our command resources 
 of power hitherto undreamed of, it was natural for those 
 who stood under the spell of the new magician to exagger- 
 ate the extent of the revolution which had been accom- 
 plished. The ideaUsm of the past was lightly brushed 
 aside, and materialism confidently proclaimed as the only 
 satisfying philosophy. In his famous Belfast address 
 Tyndall discovered in matter the promise and potency of 
 every form of life. Others,^ less cautious in their state- 
 ments, declared consciousness to be a function of the 
 brain which secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. 
 
 This confident dogmatism is no longer characteristic 
 of our men of science. Materialism still has its advocates, 
 even its miUtant advocates, but the power of materialism 
 as a philosophy is waning. Helpful as it has proved in 
 practice, the new method leaves the ultimate mysteries 
 still unsolved. What we call matter and mind are only 
 names for experiences whose ultimate cause remains 
 hidden. We can trace their interplay, classify their 
 sequences, predict with reasonable certainty the method 
 of their activity, but no analysis has yet been able to 
 resolve one into the other. If we are in quest of ultimate 
 causes, it is at least as reasonable in face of the evidence 
 that is open to us to assert that mind is the cause of matter 
 as vice versa. Many prefer not to raise the question at all, 
 and confess themselves frankly agnostic. 
 
 From the point of view of Christian faith this is a dis- 
 tinct gain. The door that leads to the future may be 
 closed, but it is not locked, and it is possible for any 
 
 I Rg. Cabanis. 
 
X.] THE RECOVERY OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 147 
 
 man of robust faith to open it for himself and enter into 
 his rightful heritage of hope. 
 
 This is the note struck by Dr. William Osier in his 
 recent IngersoU Lecture on Science and Immortality.^ 
 He divides his contemporaries into three groups with 
 reference to their attitude to the future life. The attitude 
 of the majority is one of indifference. ' While accepting 
 the phases and forms of the prevailing religion,' they 
 ' live practically uninfluenced by it except in so far as it 
 ministers to a wholesale dissonance between the inner 
 and the outer life, and diffuses an atmosphere of general 
 insincerity. A second group, larger perhaps to-day 
 than ever before in history, put the supernatural alto- 
 gether out of man's life, and regard the hereafter as only 
 one of the many inventions he has sought out for himself. 
 A third group, ever small and select, lay hold with the 
 anchor of faith upon eternal life as the controlling influ- 
 ence in this one ' (p. 8). 
 
 As between the three, science has nothing decisive to 
 say. ' In the presence of so many mysteries which have 
 been imveiled, in the presence of so many yet unsolved,' 
 (p. 39), dogmatic denial is ruled out of court. Each must 
 choose for himself that which satisfies his own inner needs. 
 Some may ' wander through all phases to come at last,' 
 the writer trusts, ' to the opinion of Cicero, who had rather 
 be mistaken with Plato than be in the right with those who 
 deny altogether the life after death ' (p. 43). And this, 
 the author concludes, is his own Confessio Fidei. 
 
 William James goes even further. He not only admits 
 the possibility of continued self-consciousness after death ; 
 he shows the fallacy of the chief argument against it — that 
 namely which is based upon the assumed dependence of 
 consciousness upon the brain. Most of those who deny 
 the possibility of immortality assume that the function 
 of brain with reference to thought is productive. But 
 I Boston, 1904, 
 
148 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 this, Professor James reminds us, is a pure assumption. 
 ' In the world of physical nature productive function . . . 
 is not the only kind of function with which we are familiar. 
 We have also releasing or permissive function, and we have 
 transmissive function.' ^^ The trigger of a cross-bow is an 
 example of permissive function. ' It removes the obstacle 
 . . . and lets the bow fly back to its natural shape' (p. 14). 
 A prism is an example of transmissive function. It sifts 
 and limits the energy of hght and determines it to a certain 
 path and shape. So it may well be with the human brain. 
 It is the instrument by which we transmit our thoughts, 
 but thought is not therefore necessarily dependent for its 
 existence or for its persistence upon the transmitter. For 
 aught we know, there may be a world of spirit quite inde- 
 pendent of this present world of sense experience, having 
 its own means of communication, of which we know no- 
 thing. The fact that we cannot imagine the nature of 
 the spirit world is no argument against its existence. In 
 either case we are deahng with hypothesis, and, theory 
 for theory, the transmissive view of the function of brain 
 with reference to consciousness presents less difficulty 
 than the productive theory (p. 22). ^ 
 
 2. The Argument from Evolution. Conditional Immortality 
 
 But we pass from these considerations of a purely 
 permissive kind to the more positive arguments for the 
 Christian hope. The first of these, as has been said, takes 
 its departure from the theory of evolution, and reasons 
 from the analogy of God's method in Nature to the 
 
 1 Human Immortality, p. 13. 
 
 2 Dr. Thompson, in his Brain and Personality (New York, 1906) argues 
 from the assured results of brain physiology for the independence of the 
 mind and the brain. The latter, he contends, is a tool which the mind forms 
 for its own uses. This being the case, there is no more reason to suppose 
 that the life of the spirit ceases with physical death than there is to suppose 
 that it ceases with that temporary suspension of consciousness which we call 
 sleep. 
 
X.} THE RECOVERY OP FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 149 
 
 presence of similar processes in the spirit of man. We 
 may take John Fiske as representative of this type of 
 thought.^ 
 
 Dr. Fiske first enunciated his argument for immortality 
 in a Httle book called The Destiny of Man.^ He there took 
 the position that, apart from personal immortality, the 
 entire process of the universe, as modern science has dis- 
 closed it to us, is irrational and unmeaning, a beginning 
 without an ending, a foundation without a superstructure. 
 The argument has been restated and amplified in his recent 
 IngersoU Lecture on Life Everlasting.^ 
 
 In common with many other thoughtful observers, 
 Dr. Fiske is impressed with the evidences of design in 
 Nature. The world, as modern science has taught us to 
 think of it, is the scene of a continuous process in which, 
 through steps more and more complicated, Nature is 
 producing ever higher forms of life. Man, as we know 
 him, is the last step in the process of evolution, the being 
 to whose making the entire process of development has 
 contributed. But here we face a diflSculty. Since man 
 appeared there has apparently been, in his branch of the 
 animate world, no further step in the evolutionary process. 
 No further species has been developed, nor is there any 
 likelihood that any new species will be developed. Pro- 
 gress still continues, but it is within man, not beyond him. 
 Man is growing abler, wiser, better able to control his 
 environment, but he still remains man. 
 
 Man, I repeat, is growing abler and better, but it is a 
 development within limits. For the race it is limited by 
 the duration of life upon earth, and for the individual by 
 the ever-recurring fact of death. Death interrupts even 
 for the best of men the adaptation which life has begun, 
 
 1 For a fuller statement cf. Armand Sabatier, Sssai sur V ImmortalUS au 
 Point de Vue du Naturalisme Evolutioniste, Paris, 1896. Cf. also Smyth, The 
 Place of Death in Evolution, New York, 1897. 
 
 2 The Destiny of Man, viewed in the Light of hit Origin, Boston, 1884. 
 » Boston, 1901. 
 
150 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 and leaves the evolutionary process arrested and incom- 
 plete. Here is the point upon which Dr. Fiske bases his 
 argument for immortality. What if the interruption be 
 only apparent and not real ? What if this life is a training- 
 school ia which the spirit of man is being fitted for a life 
 beyond ? Then indeed the difiiculty would be removed. 
 The continuity of the evolutionary process would be 
 established, and with the discovery of a plan beneficent, 
 wise, and comprehensive, we should be able to rise through 
 Nature to God. 
 
 The argument, it will be observed, is frankly teleological. 
 Dr. Fiske assimies that the demand of our nature for a 
 rational universe is legitimate and trustworthy. He 
 believes that the evidences of reason in Nature are valid 
 as far as they go, and he accepts immortaUty because it 
 supplies the keystone to the arch, which is necessary to 
 give the entire structure firmness and consistency. Such 
 acceptance is to him ' a supreme act of faith in the reason- 
 ableness of God's work.' ^ How else, he asks, shall we 
 account for the intimations of immortality which meet us 
 in human history almost from the beginning ? Man is 
 the only being who believes in his own continued existence 
 after death. ^ Why should this be ? Nature does not 
 ordinarily create capacities which have no use. If she 
 has put this hope into the heart of man, it is prima facie 
 evidence that it will somewhere have fulfilment. As for 
 the objection that we have no direct evidence of another 
 life. Dr. Fiske rules it out of court as irrelevant. How can 
 we have evidence of a kind of existence which by defini- 
 tion lies beyond our present experience ? (p. 61). It is no 
 argument against human life that the unborn child knows 
 nothing of the conditions that await him after birth. 
 Why then should we expect to anticipate the hfe which 
 we shall enter through the second birth that we call death ? 
 
 But the analogy of the evolutionary process suggests 
 
 1 Human Destiny, p. 116. a Life Everlasting, p. 38. 
 
X.] THE RECOVERY OP PAITH IN IMMORTALITY 151 
 
 another conclusion which, if vahd, would require the 
 modification of earUer statements of the Christian hope. 
 Evolution, as science reveals it, is a process of natural 
 selection, a process, that is to say, through which Nature 
 exercises choice as to the types or individuals who shall 
 survive. Not all the forms which have appeared upon 
 earth persist, and of the individuals who make up any 
 particular species the great majority perish. What does 
 this suggest for our thought of the hfe after death ? 
 
 This obviously, that immortality is not so much a 
 natural as an acquired characteristic. It belongs not to 
 all men, but to the favoured few. It is a prize to be won 
 by those who prove themselves worthy. This is the view 
 taken by those who hold the theory of conditional im- 
 mortahty.i 
 
 According to this view life is a training-school in which, 
 out of the raw material of the natural, God is forming for 
 Himself a spiritual humanity. Every child is bom with 
 the capacity for an immortal life, but whether that life 
 will actually be realised depends upon the use made of the 
 opportunities which are enjoyed here. Some men misuse 
 their opportunities. They resist the appeal of the Christ 
 for obedience and service. They stifle the voice of their 
 own higher nature. They close their ears to the cry of 
 suffering humanity. They live for the gratification of 
 their own selfish appetites and passions. They care for 
 nothing but to heap up money or pleasure or power. So, 
 Uttle by Uttle, the powers which might have fitted them 
 for another Ufe are atrophied, and when death comes there 
 is nothing left to survive. 
 
 It is otherwise with those who heed the Christian 
 message. In them ' the powers of the world to come ' 
 are already present. Each loving thought, each imselfish 
 
 1 It is only fair to state that this conclusion is not drawn by all who use 
 the argument from evolution. Thus Dr. Gordon in his Immortality and the 
 New Theodicy (p. 81), finds the adoption of the evolutionary view consistent 
 with universalism. 
 
152 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 deed, each generous impulse, is so much nourishment to 
 the seed of immortaUty which God has planted in every 
 human heart. In the measure that men become conformed 
 to Christ is the certainty of their future existence assured. 
 For as surely as God raised Christ from the dead will He 
 preserve for the Joy and service of His kingdom those who 
 in this life become conformed to His Son. 
 
 This theory of conditional immortahty is widely held 
 among Christians to-day.^ It is defended both on rational 
 and on bibhcal grounds. It corresponds, we are told, with 
 what we know in other realms. It afiirms one law for 
 Nature and for grace. It harmonises the bibhcal passages 
 which assert the final loss of some with those others which 
 anticipate the complete triumph of Christ's cause in 
 the universe {e.g. 1 Cor. xv. 28). It avoids the horror 
 of the older eschatology, with its eternity, not only of 
 sufEering, but of sin, while at the same time it does full 
 justice to the doom which Christ pronounces upon the 
 impenitent. Above all, it bases faith in immortality 
 where the Bible bases it, upon moral and rehgious grounds. 
 It substitutes for the Greek conception of natural immor- 
 tahty — a view read into the Bible by later speculation — 
 the Christian dpctrine that the xyae sure ground for hope in 
 immortahtvis Christlikeness. 
 
 A theor/^so ably supported is worthy of serious atten- 
 tion. We may readily admit that in challenging the 
 conception of natural immortality in its traditional form 
 and recalling attention to the moral and religious basis of 
 the Christian hope, the advocates of conditional immor- 
 taUty have rendered a real service to theology. At many 
 points their criticism of the older eschatology is justified, 
 and the view which they propose as a substitute is at once 
 more rational and more biblical. 
 
 ^ Among its advocates, present and past, may be mentioned E. Schultz 
 and Rothe in Germany, Petavel and Armand Sabatier in France, Edward 
 White and Bow in England, and Huntington and M'Connell in America. 
 For references in detail of. the Bibliography in the Appendii 
 
X.] THE RECOVERY OP FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 153 
 
 Yet, in spite of these excellencies, the theory is not 
 without its difficulties. It divides mankind into two 
 groups, the natural man who, like the beasts that perish, 
 is destined to literal destruction, and the spiritual man, 
 who alone is destined to immortality. Where shall we 
 draw the line between the two groups ? How shall we 
 discriminate the natural man from his brother who is 
 spiritual ? How, above all, shall we reconcile this dis- 
 tinction with Christ's estimate of the infinite worth of 
 every individual ? If all men are, as he taught, really 
 sons of God, how can we conceive that any can perman- 
 ently perish ? On the older theory the issue of life may 
 have been terrible, but it was at least glorious. Even in 
 hell the lost retain traces of their original calliag, and in 
 their punishment glorify the justice of God. But here 
 they are mere refuse, thrown out on the rubbish-heap of 
 the universe, to meet a fate as ignominious as that which 
 befalls the basest forms of matter. It is difficult to see 
 how those who contemplate this issue for any considerable 
 number of their fellow men can retain that sense of im- 
 measurable values which has been the inspiration of the 
 highest Christian service. 
 
 3. The Spiritistic Hypothesis 
 
 From the theory of conditional immortality we pass 
 to the next of the three forms of argument which will 
 engage our attention, that namely which is based upon 
 the fact of alleged communications from the spirit world. 
 Thus far we have been dealing with probable evidence. 
 Here we are offered what claims to be direct proof. 
 
 We may take as our representative of this point of view 
 the late Frederic Myers, whose massive volumes entitled 
 Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death} 
 
 1 London, 1903. A popular edition in a single volume much condensed 
 was issued by his son in 1907. For further references of. the Bibliography 
 in the Appendix. 
 
154 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 constitute the most imposing collection of testimony as 
 to alleged communications from the spirit world which is 
 in our possession. 
 
 The subject is one of such dijB&culty, both on account 
 of the mass of material involved, the delicacy of the 
 questions at issue, and the lack of agreement on the part 
 of those who have studied the evidence, that it is impos- 
 sible to discuss it with the thoroughness which its import- 
 ance deserves. All that I can hope to do within the limits 
 which are at our disposal is, first, to state the grounds on 
 which the argument is based ; secondly, to explain the 
 value ascribed to it by its advocates ; and, thirdly, to 
 estimate the importance of its contribution to the Christian 
 hope. 
 
 And first, as to the nature of the argument. In principle 
 it is very simple. In detail it is extraordinarily complicated. 
 
 In principle, I say, it is very simple. It may be summed 
 up in a single sentence, that it is reasonable to believe in 
 the continuance of human personality after death because 
 it is possible to communicate with men and women who are 
 actually living in the other world. 
 
 Evidently, all turns on the nature of the proof, and it is 
 here that the complications to which reference was made 
 begin. 
 
 The argument falls into two parts. The first deals with 
 the possibility of communication between persons who 
 are physically separated in this life, and the second applies 
 the conclusion reached to the case of alleged communica- 
 tions between the livrag and the dead. 
 
 So far as the first is concerned, the author takes his 
 departure from the fact of telepathy, or the ability of spirit 
 to communicate with spirit ' independently of the recog- 
 nised channels of sense.' ^ This he regards as a well- 
 
 1 The defiuition of telepathy by the Soaiety of Psychical Research is as 
 follows : ' The commimication of impressions of any kind from one mind to 
 another independently of the recognised channels of sense.' Cf. Hyslop, 
 Science and a Fuiwre Life, p. 34. 
 
X.] THE RECOVERY OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 155 
 
 established psychological law, affording at least presump- 
 tive evidence of the possibility of communication with 
 disembodied spirits.^ 
 
 The author then considers in detail the forms which 
 communication may take between spirit and spirit here. 
 He includes in his survey the phenomena of abnormal 
 psychology, or, in other words, those which deal with the 
 psychology of the subnormal and the supernormal man. 
 He finds that there are three ways in which spirit may act 
 upon spirit : first, by the suggestion of an idea, the method 
 made famihar to us by hypnotism ; secondly, by phan- 
 tasms of various kinds, or, in other words, appearances to 
 the senses (as by a vision at the moment of death) ; and 
 finally, in the third place, by motor automatisms, or, in 
 other words, activities produced in the subject by another 
 subject without his own knowledge or voluntary partici- 
 pation (as in the case of table- tipping, or automatic writing). 
 All these modes of communication obtain between the 
 living. Dr. Myers argues. Therefore they may conceivably 
 obtain between the Uving and the dead. 
 
 The second part of the argument is devoted to estabhsh- 
 ing this thesis. It is contended that such communica- 
 tions have actually been proved by evidence adequate to 
 convince any person of fair mind who will consider it. 
 This evidence consists in the fact that through one or 
 other of the methods above described there has been 
 imparted through mediums {i.e. persons of pecuUarly 
 sensitive temperament to such communication) facts 
 concerning the personal histpry of persons who have died, 
 of which they (i.e. the mediums) had no previous know- 
 ledge, and of which it was impossible for them to have 
 learned save by the personal communication of the spirits 
 in question. Upon this fact the author bases his faith 
 
 1 It is to be noted that this assumption is not shared by all who 
 
 sympathise with Dr. Myers in his general endeavour. On the limitation of 
 
 the telepathic hypothesis, cf. Hyslop, op. cit. p. 248 iq. ; Psychical 
 Research and the Resurrection, p. 305 sq. 
 
156 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 in the continuance of the human personality after 
 death. 
 
 It is obvious that such an argument must involve an 
 infinity of detail and deal with matters of little interest to 
 any but those personally acquainted with the subject in 
 question. To the scientific value of the results obtained 
 I shall return in a moment. Here I wish to call attention 
 to the practical value which Dr. Myers assigns to them. 
 
 This can hardly be exaggerated. According to Dr. 
 Myers the importance of the results which he has obtained 
 is so great that upon their acceptance or rejection will 
 turn the future of the Christian religion. Let us hear 
 his own words : — 
 
 'I venture now on a bold saying; for I predict that, in 
 consequence of the new evidence, all reasonable men, a century 
 hence, will believe the Resurrection of Christ, whereas, in 
 default of the new evidence, no reasonable men, a century 
 hence, would have believed it. The ground of this forecast is 
 plain enough. Our ever-growing recognition of the continuity, 
 the uniformity of cosmic law has gradually made of the alleged 
 uniqueness of any incident its almost inevitable refutation. 
 Ever more clearly must our age of science realise that any 
 relation between a material and a spiritual world cannot be an 
 ethical or emotional relation alone ; that it must needs be a 
 great structural fact of the Universe, involving laws at least as 
 persistent, as identical from age to age, as our known laws of 
 Energy or of Motion. And especially as to that central claim, 
 of the soul's life manifested after the body's death, it is plain 
 that this can less and less be supported by remote tradition 
 alone ; that it must more and more be tested by modern 
 experience and inquiry. Suppose, for instance, that we collect 
 many such histories, recorded on firsthand evidence in our 
 critical age ; and suppose that all these narratives break down 
 on analysis ; that they can all be traced to hallucination, mis- 
 description, and other persistent sources of error ; — can we 
 then expect reasonable men to believe that this marvellous 
 phenomenon, always vanishing into nothingness when closely 
 scrutinised in a modern English scene, must yet compel adoring 
 
X.] THE RECOVERY OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 157 
 
 credence when alleged to have occurred in an Oriental country, 
 and in a remote and superstitious age 1 Had the results (in 
 short) of " psychical research " been purely negative, would not 
 Christian evidence — I do not say Christian emotion, but 
 Christian evidence — have received an overwhelming blow ? 
 
 As a matter of fact— or, if you prefer the phrase, in my own 
 personal opinion — our research has led us to results of a quite 
 diflferent type. They have not been negative only, but largely 
 positive. We have shown that amid much deception and self- 
 deception, fraud and illusion, veritable manifestations do reach 
 us from beyond the grave. The central claim of Christianity 
 is thus confirmed, as never before. If our own friends, men 
 like ourselves, can sometimes return to tell us of love and hope, 
 a mightier Spirit may well have used the eternal laws with a 
 more commanding power. There is nothing to hinder the 
 reverent faith that, though we be all "the Children of the 
 Most Highest," He came nearer than we, by some space by us 
 immeasurable, to That which is infinitely far. There is nothing 
 to hinder the devout conviction that He of His own act " took 
 upon Him the form of a servant," and was made flesh for 
 our salvation, foreseeing the earthly travail and the eternal 
 crown.' 1 
 
 Certainly these are noble words. No one can read 
 them without profound respect for the writer and deep 
 sympathy with the purpose that inspired him. If we 
 question the conclusion he draws, it is not because we 
 belittle the issue, but because we rate it so highly that we 
 are unwilling to imperil our faith by committing it to any 
 basis which may prove unstable. 
 
 Is it true, then, that faith in the Resurrection of Jesus 
 stands or falls with the acceptance of the results of the 
 Society of Psychical Research ? I for one cannot believe 
 this. These results (could they be estabhshed) might 
 indeed be fruitful helps to faith, but faith itself rests upon 
 a deeper foundation, namely, the overwhelming impres- 
 sion made by the personality of Jesus upon the moral 
 consciousness of mankind. This it is which for centuries 
 
 1 Op. cit. p. 351 sq. 
 
158 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [cH. 
 
 has carried faith in Jesus' Resurrection in default of such 
 evidence as Dr. Myers now believes he is able to furnish, 
 and this, I am persuaded, will stUl continue to carry it 
 even in default of such evidence in the centuries that are 
 to come. 
 
 But, though such evidence may not be necessary to 
 maintain Christian faith in the Resurrection, it would 
 afford a welcome confirmation of that faith if it could be 
 adduced. How do matters stand here ? 
 
 So far as the present writer is able to judge, our con- 
 clusion must be, not proven. The facts which have con- 
 vinced Dr. Myers have seemed to other observers to admit 
 of a different explanation. Further evidence may require 
 a revision of opinion, but for the present the proper attitude 
 of an impartial observer would seem to be one of reserve.^ 
 
 There is one point, however, in connection with the 
 alleged proofs which requires a word of further comment. 
 Objection is often made to the spiritistic hypothesis on the 
 ground of the extraordinary emptiness of the communi- 
 cations which have been received. Granting their genuine- 
 ness, we are told that they have not added to our stock of 
 knowledge a new idea or done anything to strengthen our 
 desire to share in the hfe of the departed. 
 
 Professor Hyslop, to be sure, finds a ready answer to 
 this objection. He tells us that it is not fair to argue as 
 to the state of the dead from the nature of the communi- 
 cations which have thus far been received from them. In 
 the nature of the case the matters of which they speak must 
 be trivial, since the main object is to convince the living 
 of their personal identity, and in the proof of personal 
 identity it is only the trivial that counts. We must 
 remember, moreover, the abnormal conditions under which 
 
 1 Some eminent psychologists go considerably farther. They hold that 
 while the facts gathered by the Society of Psychical Research have been use- 
 ful in increasing our knowledge of abnormal psychology, they have not 
 sDcceeded in adducing a particle of evidence of the existence of disembodied 
 spirits, 
 
X.] THE RECOVERY OP FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 159 
 
 the communication is made.^ By and by, when the fact 
 is estabhshed, and the channel of commimication is open 
 more freely, it is possible that we may receive other infor- 
 mation of a more satisfying kind. In the meantime, we 
 must be content to wait with patience.^ 
 
 It may be so. We are not prepared to deny it; and 
 when that time comes, we shall be the first to honour the 
 brave pioneers whose persistent labour has opened to us 
 this new and fruitful source of inspiration. But for the 
 present all that we can say is that we must look elsewhere 
 for the foundation of our Christian hope. The life for 
 which we look is a life hke that of Christ, and for this we 
 must still continue to build our faith upon Jesus. 
 
 It is Just at this point that the parallelism which Dr 
 Myers draws between the appearances of Jesus and the 
 commimications alleged to have been received from dis- 
 embodied spirits to-day breaks down. Even if the latter 
 could be proved, they remain isolated phenomena, dis- 
 connected with the interests and needs of our daily life. 
 Jesus' appearance was the source of a moral dynamic 
 which transformed the lives of His disciples. If the 
 Resurrection was the confirmation of faith in His Messiah- 
 ship, it was Just as true that the experience of His con- 
 tinued influence was the confirmation of faith in His 
 Resurrection. The two go together, the past event and 
 the present experience, and without the latter, faith in 
 the former could not permanently have maintained itself. 
 
 4. The Argument from Value. Vniversalism 
 So we are led naturally to consider the third method of 
 
 1 Science and a Futmre Life, p. 300 sq. 
 
 2 On this last point investigators differ. Dr. Myers is optimistic, expect- 
 ing that ' as our link with other spirits strengthens ... we shall feel love 
 more ardent, wider wisdom, higher joy ' (p. 354). Dr. Hyslop, on the other 
 hand, recognises inherent limitations in our relation to the spirit world, 
 which preclude the possibility of any large or fruitful increase in our know- 
 ledge of the conditions of another life (op. cit. p. 304). 
 
160 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 Justifying the Christian hope, that which is based upon 
 the inherent worth of personaUty. This indeed has 
 always been the real foundation of belief in immortality. 
 Men have anticipated a life after death because life here 
 seemed so worthful that they could not bring themselves 
 to believe in its cessation. What is new in the modem 
 statement of the argument is simply the frankness with 
 which this fact is recognised. 
 
 We may take Dr. Dole as representative of this point 
 of view. In his recent suggestive Ingersoll Lecture on The 
 Hope of Immortality ^ he plants himself squarely on this 
 ground. He beUeves in immortaUty because it seems to 
 him inextricably interwoven with all the values that give 
 meaning and beauty to the universe. For the mere dura- 
 tion of life he cares nothing, but for the meaning and uses 
 of life he cares much. And these uses are all wrapped up 
 in that familiar yet most mysterious fact we call person- 
 ality. ' The more we care for personahty, the higher we 
 conceive it, the more we grow toward it, the more instinc- 
 tively we are possessed with the fact that it cannot die ' 
 (p. 51). And again, ' The idea of immortality is an asser- 
 tion of the indestructible worth of the values that char- 
 acterise humanity at its best. The lower values, even 
 force and motion and the atoms of matter, appear to 
 persist even while they change their forms. At any rato 
 they affect something in exact proportion to their bigness. 
 They all make the way and lead up to the fruitage of the 
 universe in its high values of truth, wisdom, justice, and 
 good- will. To affirm immortality is simply to say that in a 
 world where other and lower values all accomplish something 
 and pass on and up in the trend of their action, where even 
 a grain of sand on the seashore has its place and does not 
 exist for nought, where the spring flower has its chance 
 to die in order to live again in the form of fruit at the 
 harvest, the greatest of all values to which the others are 
 
 1 New York. 1906. 
 
X.] THE RECOVERY OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 161 
 
 mere counters, must likewise go on in their proper sphere 
 and not come to naught ' (p. 17). 
 
 For there is no such thing, we must remember, as 
 ' Justice, or truth, or love in the abstract. All these are 
 terms by which we describe persons. Where no persons 
 are, there is no conceivable thought, or righteousness, or 
 will either good or bad. Expel, if you can, the idea of 
 personality from the universe, and it is doubtful whether 
 anything would be left, for everything appears to exist in 
 some relation or other to conscious and intelligent, that 
 is, personal life.' Thus faith in immortality seems the 
 inevitable corollary of our faith in the existence of a 
 rational universe (p. 19). 
 
 How far does this faith carry us ? What does it involve 
 for the myriads of human beings who have hved on earth, 
 or who shall live hereafter ? That the great heroes and 
 prophets of humanity, ' Isaiah, Jesus, Dante, Lincoln ' 
 (p. 27), should continue to live seems reasonable ; that all 
 generous and noble spirits should be preserved for future 
 usefulness and future service is only what we should expect 
 of a wise and just God, but what of the Neroes and the 
 Borgias ? What of those who deliberately follow the path 
 of selfishness and sensuality ? What, above all, of the 
 colourless personalities, neither good nor bad, flittiag 
 ineffectively across the stage of life like the ghosts of the 
 old Sheol, to which the imagination of the ancient world 
 consigned them ? The frustrate souls, the Tomlinsons 
 and the Peer Gynts of life — what place shall we assign them 
 in our thought of the future ? Is the theory of conditional 
 immortality right in its picture of their fate ? Is their 
 destiny utter destruction, or at best to fall a victim to the 
 ladle of the great button-moulder. Death, there to be 
 melted up into the raw material of other and more effective 
 hves ? 
 
 This is a question which has called forth much earnest 
 thought in our day, and which not a few have found 
 
 L 
 
162 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 themselves unable to answer in the affirmative. What, 
 they ask, does Christianity mean, if not the discovery 
 of values in that which has hitherto been dismissed 
 as valueless ? What was the new and distinctive thing 
 in Jesus' teaching, if not His insistence upon the worth 
 of the human soul as such ? We read in John's Gospel 
 that ' God so loved the world that he gave his only be- 
 gotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not 
 perish, but have everlasting life ' {iii.l6) . How can we claim 
 that He has fulfilled His purpose if the final outcome 
 of the universe involves the permanent destruction of 
 millions of His children ? 
 
 The theory of the ultimate salvation of all souls, or 
 Universalism as it is commonly called, is a very ancient 
 one. Origen, the first and in many respects the greatest 
 theologian of the ancient Church, formulated it more than 
 sixteen centuries ago. It has been cherished as a personal 
 hope by individuals from time to time, but the Church 
 as a whole, both in its Catholic and Protestant branches, 
 has rejected it. Only comparatively recently has it 
 been revived, at first as the faith of a single group of 
 Protestants, more recently by individual thinkers within 
 the larger bodies of Christendom.^ An instance of such a 
 revival is Dr. Gordon's recent IngersoU Lecture on Immor- 
 tality and the New Theodicy.'^ 
 
 As the title of the lecture indicates. Dr. Gordon takes 
 his departure from the problem of evil. How, he asks, 
 can you reconcile the goodness of God with the sin and 
 suffermg of which this world is so full ? (p. 48). And he 
 finds his answer where all profound thinkers have found it, 
 in the making of personahty. It is a process painful and 
 costly enough, God knows. ' The way up from the animal 
 condition into that of the perfect Son of God remains an 
 agony and a bloody sweat. Nothing can change that 
 
 1 Cf. the literature cited in the Appendix, 
 a Boston, 1897. 
 
X.] THE RECOVERY OF FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 163 
 
 pathway of torture and tears. Nothing can mitigate its 
 iron and everlasting necessity ' (p. 93). Still, dreadful 
 as it is, we would not shrink from following it, if only we 
 could be sure that it would lead us to the goal. But it is 
 here that the difiBculty begins ; the cost is so enormously 
 great and the outcome so pitifully small. A little group 
 of noble spirits meets us, the martyrs and saints, the 
 heroes and prophets, the poets and teachers of human- 
 ity, but they are balanced by so vast a number with whom 
 God seems to have failed. If all men were like Christ, or 
 even on the way to Christlikeness, Calvary would cease 
 to be a stumbling-block, but what makes faith hard is the 
 fact that in spite of Calvary the Herods and the Pilates 
 still continue. 
 
 In every age this difficulty has been a real one. But in 
 our own it has been enormously increased by ' the new 
 vista of humanity ' which modem knowledge has ' opened 
 to the mind of our time ' (p. 81). ' With the entire field 
 of humanity fairly within sight, with even but an imper- 
 fect sense of the reach and the fulness of the spaces that 
 beings hke ourselves have peopled, standing only in the 
 early dawn of this wide and wondrous day, it has been 
 found impossible to work the old ideas of Umitation, 
 whether remnant, election, or probation restricted to this 
 life ' (p. 81). How in the face of such facts can we still 
 maintain our faith in God's wise and loving purpose for 
 mankind ? How else, asks Dr. Gordon, than by recognis- 
 ing that what we see is only the begiiming of the process ? 
 Life is a great training-school, of which the earth is only 
 the primary department. Christ is the firstfruits, the 
 example, after which Uttle by little our Father is pattern- 
 ing all His children. We must give Him time. In the 
 end He will have His way. 
 
 Here, according to Dr. Gordon, is the great significance 
 of faith in immortality. It , makes room for God to 
 accompUsh His purpose. It is the school in which He 
 
164 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. x. 
 
 trains His backward children. It is the necessary condi- 
 tion of the only satisfying theodicy. 
 
 It is a great mistake to think of Universalism as an 
 easy-going theory, indifferent to sin or lightly estimating 
 its consequences. Universalism believes in punishment, 
 and in punishment after death. Indeed punishment is 
 the necessary means for that process of purification by 
 which mankind is finally to be redeemed. Universalists 
 accept Christ's words in Matthew as a truthful descrip- 
 tion of the doom that must finally follow unrepented sin. 
 They have no other standard for salvation than that which 
 the Master Himself has laid down. They can promise 
 no easier conditions in the life after death. For them, as 
 for the orthodox, sin brings punishment, and the longer 
 it continues, the more severe will be the punishment, and 
 the more difficult the way of recovery. But they believe 
 that in the end recovery is certain. God, who has made 
 man for Himself, will not be defeated in His redemptive 
 purpose. Sooner or later, by one road or another, Christ 
 will draw all men unto Himself. 
 
 Thus, while the old Calvinism extended Hell till it 
 included Purgatory, Universalism extends Purgatory till 
 it takes in Hell. Both believe in punishment after death. 
 Both accept the principle of retribution, but while Calvin- 
 ism regards retribution as an end in itself, Universalism 
 makes it the means of another and a higher end, namely, 
 redemption. 
 
 Such, then, are some of the lines along which modern 
 thought has been working in its effort to recover and to re- 
 state the Christian hope. In the remaining chapters we shall 
 try to sum up the conclusions to which the recovery leads. 
 
Ill 
 
 CONSTRUCTIVE 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE DEFINITION OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 We have come to the end of our story. Before we take up 
 the final questions which it raises, let us pause for a moment 
 and recall the ground which we have traversed. 
 
 We have seen that so far back as we can go we find 
 man believing in his own continued existence after death, 
 but this existence is at first no object of desire, for it is 
 empty and ineffective and joyless. We have seen that 
 at a certain stage in his development man has broken with 
 this primitive conception and dared to hope for a life worth 
 living after death. We have seen that this hope has taken 
 various forms ; sometimes that of a return to this earth, 
 as in the doctrine of the Resurrection ; sometimes that of 
 a moral life in the underworld, and again that of a purely 
 disembodied existence, as in the philosophical conception 
 of immortality. We have traced the antecedents of the 
 Christian hope in the religion of Israel and seen how in 
 historic Christianity all three of these different forms of 
 preparation meet and mingle. We have found the dis- J 
 tinctive contribution of Christianity to faith in immortality^ 
 to be Christ Himself — a contribution made through His 
 Deaohing, character, and Resurrection. We have studied 
 the evidence for the Resurrection and traced its effects upon 
 the Christian hope, and we have seen that its significance 
 was not so much in its proof of the fact of a life after death, 
 or even in its disclosure of the conditions under which 
 such a life is lived, as in the assurance that Jesus was what 
 
 167 
 
168 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 He professed to be, God's chosen Messiah and Saviour, 
 and hence the key to the meaning of life both here and 
 hereafter. We have traced the chief forms which the 
 Christian hope has assumed in the later centuries, such as 
 the premillenarian expectation of a speedy advent, the 
 Catholic doctrine of a progressive purification in purgatory, 
 and the Protestant affirmation of immediate sanctification 
 or condemnation at death. We have seen how the doctrine 
 of immortality, after passing practically unscathed through 
 the radical criticism of the deistic controversy, has been 
 rudely challenged in our day, and we have considered the 
 substitutes which have been proposed for it. Finally, we 
 have seen the lost hope revived, and have studied the chief 
 forms of restatement which have been suggested by its 
 modern advocates. It remains to ask, what conclusions 
 are to be drawn from the history which we have passed in 
 review. Three questions emerge as of supreme importance. 
 The first has to do with the content ; the second with the 
 ground ; the third with the value of the Christian hope. 
 For what do we hope ? Why do we hope it, and what 
 consequences may we expect to follow for our daily hving ? 
 In the present chapter we shall consider the first of these 
 questions, leaving the other two to be dealt with in the 
 chapters that follow. 
 
 And first, of the content of our hope. What does our 
 imagination picture as it turns toward the future ? How 
 far do we twentieth century men and women share the 
 anticipation of the Christians who have preceded us, and 
 how far has our hope been modified by the changes which 
 we have passed in review ? This is a question of funda- 
 mental importance, for upon our answer to it will depend 
 our answer to both the questions that follow. 
 
 1. Individual and Social Aspects of the Christian Hope 
 Let us remind ourselves again of the definition with which 
 we began. We saw that the Christian hope is at once 
 
XI.] THE DEFINITION OP THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 169 
 
 individual and social, that it involves on the one hand a 
 belief in the continuance of personal existence after death 
 under conditions which insure the continuity of the self- 
 conscious moral life, and at the same time (and this is just 
 as important) that it anticipates continued fellowship 
 with God, our Father, and continued service of our fellow- 
 men in the new social order which Christ came to establish, 
 and the principles of which He exemplified in His own 
 life. It is at once the synthesis and the Christianisation 
 of the two great lines of hope which have preceded it, 
 the individual hope which culminates in the doctrine of 
 immortality, and the social hope which expresses itself in 
 the doctrine of the Resurrection. 
 
 How far is this definition adequate as a description of 
 our present hope ? To answer this we must consider more 
 in detail what it involves in each of its aspects. 
 
 In the first place, then, the Christian hope involves 
 belief in the continuance of personal existence after death 
 under conditions which make possible the continuity of 
 the individual self-consciousness. It is the afi&rmation of 
 personal immortality. But it is much more than this. 
 It is the affirmation of the kind of immortality which Christ 
 has brought to light, a life which involves growing con- 
 formity to His character, and which issues ultimately into 
 complete transformation into His hkeness. 
 
 This opens up to us at once further possibilities of 
 definition. Whatever quahties mark the character of 
 Christ during His earthly life must reappear in our thought 
 of our own future. Like His, our life must be one of filial 
 trust. Like His, it must be one of brotherly service. 
 
 In the older discussions of the Christian hope the former 
 aspect of the fife after death was chiefly emphasised.^ 
 It was represented as a life of perfect rest and confidence in 
 God, free from the doubt and uncertainty which characterise 
 
 1 This was true, as we have seen, both of its Catholic and of its Protestant 
 forms. 
 
170 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 our present experience, a life of attainment rather than of 
 struggle, of peace rather than of effort. The figures of 
 the crown, the palm, and the harp, symbols of triumph and 
 of victory, have been central in the imagery, and the 
 relation of the Christian to his fellows overshadowed, if not 
 wholly forgotten, in the overwhelming impression of the 
 realised presence of God. 
 
 We gladly admit that this sense of attainment is an in- 
 tegral element in the Christian hope. We long for the 
 day when the uncertainty and doubt which characterise so 
 much of our living here shall cease, when the veil that so 
 often hides from our vision the presence of God shall be 
 taken away, and we shall be as conscious of His nearness 
 as we are of the ground we tread, or of the hand-grasp that 
 assures us of the presence of a friend. 
 
 But a hope that contains no more than this is one-sided 
 and inadequate. It is as true of the life to come as of the 
 life that now is, that, if it is to be Christian, it must be a 
 life of service. Can we really believe that He who on earth 
 went about doing good ceased His loving ministry with His 
 earthly life ? Are we to think of death as rendering 
 obsolete the lesson that He had been all His life teaching, 
 that it is more blessed to give than to receive ? Shall we 
 suppose that the strong men from whose heroic struggles 
 mankind has drawn inspiration for its best living, Peter 
 and Paul, Benedict and Francis, Luther and Cromwell, 
 Wesley and Livingstone, have found no outlet in the new 
 life for the missionary zeal which was the very breath of 
 their life here ? To suppose this would be to cut the nerve 
 of the Christian hope, for it would make heaven less 
 desirable than earth. Whatever else may be true of the 
 future, we may be sure that it will give us something 
 to do. 
 
 This is only another way of saying that our hope is not 
 merely individual but social. It is not only a hope ot 
 personal salvation but of the Christianisation of society 
 a.8 a whole. Here, too, we must ask just what it is that we 
 
XI.] THE DEFINITION OP THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 171 
 
 expect. What would it mean to have Christ's prayer 
 answered and God's kingdom come ? 
 
 It is easier to answer this question in words than to 
 realise all that the words mean. It would mean no less 
 than the transformation of human life in all its relations 
 into the likeness of Jesus Christ. It would mean the 
 substitution of sympathy for suspicion, generosity for 
 meanness, loyalty for treachery, justice for oppression, 
 humility for pride, love for hate. It would mean this not 
 only in the relation of individual to individual, but in those 
 complex social relationships which express themselves 
 through institutions and which yield most slowly to the 
 growing pressure of the ideal. Above and beyond all 
 else, it would involve the transfiguring of human relations 
 by the consciousness of the divine Fatherhood. It would 
 mean the breaking down, once and for all, of the age-long 
 barrier between the sacred and the secular, the coming of 
 the time when in very truth holiness should be written 
 ' upon the bells of the horses ' (Zech. xiv. 20), and school 
 and state and workshop as well as church be recognised 
 as the dwelling-place of God. 
 
 It needs only the statement of this ideal to see how 
 impossible it is to conceive of its complete realisation 
 within the limits of our earthly life. We are indeed to pray 
 the Master'-s prayer that the kingdom may come on earth 
 as in heaven, and to work for the answer to our prayer ; 
 just as we are to pray that here and now we may be con- 
 formed to Christ's character and are to work for the answer 
 to our prayer. But in the one case as in the other we deal 
 with an ideal that outreaches the possibility of present 
 attainment, and requires for its complete realisation the 
 broad expanses of the hfe to come. So far is it from being 
 true of Christianity that the social hope can take the place 
 of the individual hope that each requires the other for its 
 complement, and the former even more than the latter 
 forces us beyond the limits of the present life for the scope 
 and reach which it requires for its fulfilment. 
 
172 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 2. The Permanent Content of the Christian Hope 
 
 This is the permanent truth which finds expression in 
 the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. This doctrine, 
 as we have already seen, has social as well as individual 
 significance. It is the form in which we express our faith 
 in the conservation of the full value of personality in both 
 the aspects in which it is known to us here. In this life 
 the body fulfils for us a double function. It is at once the 
 means by which we realise our own purposes, and the 
 channel by which we enter into social intercourse with 
 others. We cannot doubt that in the life to come these 
 two needs will still be present and will still be met. Like 
 Paul we ' would not be unclothed but clothed upon ' 
 (2 Cor. V. 4), furnished, that is to say, with whatever 
 instrument we need for the effective execution of our social 
 purposes. Body is the term which lends itself most readily 
 to the expression of this vital faith. 
 
 Beyond this we need not go. Indeed, it is difficult for 
 us to go further if we would. When we seek to make real 
 to ourselves the conditions of existence in the undiscovered 
 country we are involved in all the difficulties which we have 
 already noted. How shall we conceive the spiritual body, 
 of which Paul speaks ? How can we picture an existence 
 which is definite and real, and yet which has left behind all 
 that we associate with this present body of flesh and 
 blood ? Has matter wider possibilities than our senses 
 have yet been able to discover, and must we conceive of 
 the new body as physical, though of an organisation as 
 much finer than that of the present body as that of the air 
 is than the liquid into which extreme cold is able to pre- 
 cipitate it ? * Or, is spirit able to communicate directly 
 
 J The subject of the physical conditions of the future life has long had a 
 fascination for thinkers. Among older books may be mentioned Taylor's 
 Physical Theory of another Life (New York, 1852). More recently the 
 subject has been discussed by Stewart and Tait in their book on the Unseen 
 
XI.] THE DEFINITION OP THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 173 
 
 with spirit in ways for which our present experience affords 
 no analogy ? Here is a field fascinating in its invitation 
 to the imagination, but in which we lack the solid frame- 
 work of assured fact. There is nothing in this to cause 
 anxiety or to disturb faith. No description, however 
 detailed and accurate, can anticipate experience. To 
 understand life we must be bom. To vmderstand im- 
 mortality we must die. Then doubtless it will seem to us 
 so simple that we shall wonder that we ever doubted. 
 For the present it is enough to know that when we awake 
 we shall be satisfied. 
 
 Are we then shut up to complete ignorance as to the 
 nature of the life to which we look forward ? If the door 
 of sense is closed, may not a glimpse be had through the 
 window of spirit ? As Christians we believe that we are to 
 live like Christ and for Christ. Can we draw no further 
 conclusion from this central faith ? 
 
 One conclusion certainly would seem to follow, that life 
 then as now will be one of progress. There will still be 
 new lessons to be learned, new battles to be fought, new 
 experiences to be gained, new services to be rendered. 
 It will not be a life of stagnation, but of activity, not of 
 monotony, but of change. 
 
 This would seem to follow, in the first place, from the 
 very nature of personality as we know it. Everything 
 that is alive grows, and the higher the form of life the 
 greater the capacity for growth. That which separates 
 personality from all other forms of hfe is the fact that in 
 the case of persons we can discover no limits to this capacity. 
 This is, indeed, as we shall see, the crowning argument for 
 
 Universe (London, 1894), and by Feohner, in his work entitled, On Life after 
 Death (Eng. tr., Chicago, 1906). In this interesting, but fanciful work, 
 Fechner attempts to show in detail how the continued activity of the dis- 
 embodied ipirit is possible. He assumes a hierarchy of consciousnesses, 
 higher and lower, interpenetrating and interacting upon one another, and 
 making use of processes of perception not at present open to us. For the 
 details of his theory, which is too complicated to be reproduced here, 
 of. especially Appendix, p. 112, on the principle of heavenly vision. 
 
174 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 immortality, that we need limitless time to satisfy the needs 
 of the limitless spirit. 
 
 These considerations, drawn from the nature of spirit, 
 are reinforced by our observation of the moral Ufa. How 
 far we are, even the best of us, from the perfection to which 
 we aspire ! How much of our living is still selfish and 
 narrow ; how many bad habits still persist, from which 
 as yet we have been unable to free ourselves ! Shall we 
 imagine all this changed in an instant by the mere fact 
 of death ? Will all the differences in character and attain- 
 ment which this life reveals be merged in one dead level 
 of sinlessness ? Will there not still be room for moral 
 struggle and moral victory ? 
 
 Such an expectation of moral progress need not involve 
 the persistence of wilful sin. Indeed, there are many who 
 believe that in this life it is possible by divine grace to 
 become so conformed to God's will that all wilful sin 
 will be left behind.^ But such victory over the more 
 obvious forms of temptation is quite another thing from 
 that complete moral perfection which is the goal of 
 Christian hope. For this, time is needed and training, a 
 training to which we can perceive no limits. 
 
 And what shall we say of the infant and the backward 
 souls, the little children who have slipped from us into 
 the care of that ' shepherd of tender youth,' to whom the 
 great eastern poet ^ has lovingly consigned them ? What 
 
 1 Such was the view of Wesley. Cf. Works, viii. p. 294 sq., 328 sq., and 
 especially his Plain Account of Chrittian Perfection (xi. p. 366 sq.). 
 
 2 Bphraim, the Syrian. Professor Gilbert thus translates his beautiful 
 hymn : 
 
 ' Our God, to Thee sweet praises rise 
 From youthful lips in Paradise ; 
 From boys fair robed in spotless white, 
 And nourished in the courts of light. 
 In arbours they, where soft and low 
 The blessed streams of light do flow : 
 And Gabriel, a shepherd strong, 
 Doth gently guide their flocks along. 
 
XI.] THE DEFINITION OP THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 175 
 
 of the half-developed personalities whom some clot on the 
 brain has robbed of their rightful share of human experi- 
 ence ? For these, surely, the life hereafter must mean 
 growth in knowledge and character. 
 
 The argument becomes even more convincing when we 
 shift our point of view from the individual to society. In 
 this Ufe progress takes place through adaptation to a chang- 
 ing environment, and we cannot think that it will be 
 otherwise in the life to come. There too, as here, we shall 
 have to do with conditions that are constantly altering. 
 There too, as well as here, we shall be members of a society 
 that is ever facing new problems, ever calling for new 
 consecration. There too, as well as here, we may be sure, 
 there will be lessons to be taught as well as learned, help 
 to be given as well as received, experiences to be shared as 
 well as enjoyed. There too, as well as here (unless we are 
 to deny Christians their share in the highest experience 
 of the Master), we shall be ever conscious of the struggle 
 going on on earth, where sin is still alive and active, and 
 poverty and shame and ignorance and despair daily claim 
 their toU of human hves. Can we believe that this appalling 
 tragedy, so central in our experience here, will there have 
 lost its meaning ? Can we be content to have no part in 
 the moral issues that are being decided, if it be only by the 
 yearning sympathy of our prayer ? Can we be content 
 to see those whom we love in hell (if it be only this 
 human hell of misery and sin and hate that we know), 
 and praise God for the sight because we have attained ? 
 That was not Paul's idea of heaven. That would have 
 been to him a failure worse than heU. 
 
 Are we then to admit suffering into our thought of the 
 future ? I do not see how we can banish suffering while 
 the cause of it still exists. I am sure we should not 
 
 Their honours higher and more fair 
 Than those of saints and virgins are ; 
 God's sons are they on that far coas^ 
 And nuraelings of the Holy Ghost.' 
 
176 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 wish to. But we can do something better. We can rob 
 suffering of its terror through the discovery of the uses 
 it is meant to serve. Even while we suffer, we can be 
 assured of victory for ourselves and, what is even more 
 important and more difficult, for others, and the assurance 
 can turn our sorrow into joy. 
 
 Here, as always, we turn back to Christ. He is our 
 great model for the life to come as for the life here. As 
 in this hfe He met sin and sorrow in the most acute forms 
 and conquered them by His cross, so we must believe He 
 is ever meeting and conquering them to-day. Still, as in 
 the days when He wept over Jerusalem, His heart is broken 
 by men's hypocrisy and tyranny. Still, as with the young 
 ruler whose discipleship He sought in vain. His love goes 
 out in earnest quest, only to return empty handed. Still 
 in your heart and mine He is crucified afresh day by day. 
 Still in and through all the sacrifice He is more than 
 conqueror through the assurance that the sacrifice is not 
 in vain. Ever He anticipates the victory which is to 
 come, the final conquest which, however long delayed, will 
 not fail. So, He can say to us, as He said to His disciples 
 long ago, ' My peace I give unto you ' (John xiv. 27). 
 ' Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 
 and I will give you rest ' (Matt. xi. 28). 
 I In some such way, it seems to me, we must picture 
 the future to which Christ invites us, a life not less earnest 
 but more restful, not less sympathetic but more confident. 
 Tears there may still be, but ever a Christ to share them 
 and a God to wipe them away. This confident rest with 
 Christ in God in ceaseless labour and unbroken trust is 
 what the Christian means by heaven. ^ 
 
 It is this assurance of ultimate triumph which gives its 
 
 1 The word heaven may be used in three senses: (1) of the place of 
 future blessedness ; (2) of the state of the finally blessed ; (3) of the qualities 
 which enter into that state {e.g. consecration, peace, the consciousness of 
 communion with God). In the latter sense heaven may be a present 
 experience, differing only in degree from the blessedness of the future state. 
 
XI.] THE DEFINITION OP THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 177 
 
 permanent meaning to the doctrine of the Advent. The 
 Advent means far more than the physical return of Qirist 
 to earth. It means the complete victory of His cause 
 and the universal reign of His Spirit. It is the promise of 
 the day ' when the kingdom of the world ' shall ' become 
 the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ ' (Rev. xi. 15). 
 
 But, if we cherish this hope, it must be in a Christian 
 way. We cannot think of God as an easy-going Deity, 
 too kindly to punish, ready to take man on his own terms. 
 We dare not make light of sin, or underestimate the conse- 
 quences it brings for the inner life as for the outer. We 
 must not play fast and loose with the principles which 
 Jesus enunciated in His solemn parables of the judgment, 
 with their terrible warnings as to the consequences of 
 unrepented sin. We must believe that salvation when it 
 comes will be according to truth and right, the tmning of 
 the soul from evil to good and from selfishness to service. 
 We must believe, in a word, that Christlikeness will be the 
 standard by which every life must be finally tested. 
 
 This is the permanent truth in the doctrine of the 
 Judgment, the third of the three great doctrines in which 
 Christian faith has expressed its conviction concerning 
 the future. It is the assertion that the final outcome of 
 the universe will be ethically satisfying, an outcome 
 satisfying the conscience as well as the heart of man. 
 
178 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE GROUNDS OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 It may seem to some readers of the preceding chapter 
 that we have raised many questions only to leave them 
 unanswered. It is well, therefore; to remind ourselves 
 before we go further how much has been affirmed. The 
 hope we have described includes the expectation of self- 
 conscious existence and moral progress after death for the 
 individual, and of the steady growth and final triumph of 
 Christ's cause in society. It makes room for trust in God, 
 and service of man, for continued fellowship with Christ, 
 and ultimate conformity to His character, for labour for 
 and joy in the transformed humanity for which He gave His 
 life. These are great things for which to hope. If we can 
 be assured that our confidence is justified so far, we shall 
 be well content. 
 
 What reason, then, have we for believing that our hope 
 is well founded ? Granting that we have correctly defined 
 its nature, what are the grounds on which it rests ? This 
 is the second of our three questions, and to it we shall 
 devote the present chapter. 
 
 In the past at least four kinds of argument have been 
 used in support of the Christian belief in immortality ; 
 arguments historical, philosophical, ethical, religious. 
 Let us see how far they are able to bear the weight which 
 is put upon them. 
 
xn.] THE GROUNDS OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 179 
 
 1. The Historical Argument 
 
 On the face of it the historical argument seems the most 
 simple, direct, and convincing that can be given. This 
 bases faith in immortality upon the Resurrection of Jesus. 
 We believe that we shall Uve again after death with Jesus 
 because Jesus Himself has come back from the grave to 
 assure us of the fact. 
 
 For those who on other grounds believe in immortality 
 the Resurrection is indeed, as we have seen, a powerful 
 reinforcerrient of faith. The assurance that Jesus is living 
 fco-day makes it easy for us to beUeve that we too shall 
 survive death. It gives vividness and reality to our 
 thought of the future, and turns what would otherwise be 
 but a vague hope into an assured conviction. 
 
 ' Jesus lives ; no longer now 
 
 Can thy terrors, Death, appal us, 
 Jesus lives. By this we know 
 From the grave He will recall us.' 
 
 But useful as is the argument from history in its place, 
 it is important to remember its limitations. The most 
 that we can hope to prove by testimony is that something 
 happened in the past; but the faith which interests us 
 here concerns the present and the future ; and the ques- 
 tion naturally arises whether there is not other evidence 
 available of a more direct and first-hand kind. 
 
 The experience of the disciples is instructive here. For 
 them, as we have already seen, the Resurrection was not 
 an isolated fact.^ It was confirmed both by what went 
 before and by what followed after. It was confirmed by 
 what went before. This was not the first time that Jesus 
 had appeared to His disciples. They had been His familiar 
 companions during His earthly ministry. They had 
 followed His teaching, witnessed His miracles, owned His 
 
 * Cf. Denney, op. cit. p. 100 sg. 
 
180 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 authority, and been drawn by the spell of His personaUty 
 to acknowledge His Messiahship. ' Who say ye that I 
 am ? ' Jesus asks of Peter. ' Thou art the Christ, the Son 
 of the living God,' was the answer (Matt. xvi. 16). This 
 was weeks before the Crucifixion. Long before Easter 
 came the disciples were persuaded that they had to do 
 with a unique personality. The Resurrection was for them 
 the confirmation of a pre-existing faith. 
 
 Even in the case of Paul there was a preparation for 
 the Damascus experience. Saul may never have seen 
 Jesus in the flesh, but he was no stranger to His Spirit. 
 He had followed the fortunes of the strange group who 
 owned the Nazarene as Master. He had been present when 
 Stephen was stoned, and heard his dying words : ' Lord 
 Jesus, receive my spirit ' (Acts vii. 59). As he journeyed 
 to Damascus, his thoughts must have been busy with what 
 he had seen and heard. When Jesus appeared to him on 
 that momentous journey He came to a spirit already 
 prepared. 
 
 Still more significant as a confirmation of the Resurrection 
 faith was the experience which followed. I have already 
 described this so fully in another connection ^ that it is 
 only necessary to recall what was there said. We have 
 seen that for the disciples the Resurrection was not an 
 isolated occurrence. It was the beginning of a continuing 
 experience. The appearances of the risen Christ ceased, 
 to be sure, but in other ways He made His presence manifest 
 to their spirits. Their life was still as it had been in the 
 days before He was taken away, a life of communion with 
 His Spirit. He was still their teacher and friend and 
 constant companion, unseen but none the less real and 
 near, and the intercourse to which they looked forward 
 by and by was only a new chapter in an unbroken story. 
 
 Is there not a suggestion here for us ? If we are to 
 win men to faith in the risen Jesus, we must be able to 
 
 1 P. 102 »g. 
 
xn.] THE GROUNDS OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 181 
 
 show that it is a faith which is concerned with the present 
 as well as with the past. We must show that the Christian 
 hope of immortaUty, as Jesus exemplifies it, answers to 
 a permanent need of man, and is confirmed by what we 
 know of God's working elsewhere. 
 
 So we pass naturally from the argument from history, 
 in the narrower sense, to those more general arguments, 
 philosophical, ethical and religious, which have their basis 
 in human nature as we know it to-day. 
 
 2. The Philosophical Argument 
 
 And first, of the philosophical argument. This finds 
 confirmation of the Christian hope in the laws of the 
 human mind. Man longs for the assurance that this is a 
 rational universe, and this assurance we find only in per- 
 sonal immortality. Only in persons, as we have seen, 
 are the great values experienced. Only through the con- 
 tinuance of personality, therefore, can we have any 
 guarantee that the things for which we most care will 
 persist. 
 
 For consider for a moment what it means to be a person. 
 To be a person means to be a creator of values. It means 
 to be forming out of the raw material of experience which 
 pours in upon us through the senses, pictures that have 
 beauty and meaning. We call these pictures ideals. 
 They represent not what is, but what is to be, purposes 
 which are still to be realised, lessons which are still to be 
 learned, songs which are still to be sung, prophecies which 
 are still to be fulfilled. A person is a being who is all 
 the time making over the world after the pattern of his 
 ideals, acting out his purposes, learning his lessons, singing 
 his songs, fulfilling his prophecies. A person, in the measure 
 that he is really a person and not simply the raw material 
 of personality, is, I repeat, a creator, a bringer to pass of 
 that which is new and beautiful and valuable and enduring; 
 
182 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 a being who meets obstacles only to overcome them, who 
 falls only to rise, who is banished from one world only to 
 find other worlds to conquer ; who out of sin and suffering 
 and failure is ever fashioning anew the shining raiment of 
 unconquerable hope. 
 
 ' Along the earth and up the sky 
 
 The Fowler spreads his net : 
 O soul, what pinions wild and shy 
 
 Are on thy shoulders set ? 
 What wings of longing undeterred 
 Are native to thee, spirit bird t 
 
 What sky is thine behind the sky, 
 
 For refuge and for ecstasy 1 
 
 Of all thy heavens of clear delight 
 
 Why is each heaven twain, 
 
 O soul, that when the lure is cast 
 
 Before thy heedless flight, 
 
 And thou art snared and taken fast 
 
 Within one sky of hght. 
 
 Behold the net is empty, the cast is vain, 
 
 And from thy circling in the other sky the lyric laughters 
 rain ! ' ^ 
 
 But this is only half the story. To be a person means 
 to be a sharer as well as a creator. It means to be capable 
 of entering into the experiences of other persons. It means 
 to rejoice in their achievements, sympathise in their 
 weaknesses, bear their burdens, fight their battles. To be 
 a person means to love and to be loved, to bear and to 
 forbear, to yearn and agonise, to take up one's cross at 
 another's command, to give one's life a ransom for many. 
 To be a person, in short, means to be a social being, multi- 
 plying every value which you have created by the new 
 experiences of the infinite series of other persons who will 
 appreciate it after you. 
 
 What kind of a world, then, shall we think it to be 
 
 1 Moody, The Fire Bringer, pp. 16, 17. 
 
xn.] THE GROUNDS OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 183 
 
 which has produced and sustains such wonder-workers as 
 these ? It is an old proverb that ex nihilo nihil fit. The 
 stream will not rise higher than its source. If we are ade- 
 quately to account for the world which has brought persons 
 into being we must posit personality at its source, ana 
 unless we are to suppose that the Master Workman has 
 failed in His own creative purpose, we must believe that He 
 will still continue to maintain in existence the lesser spirits 
 whom He has brought into being. 
 
 This is the famihar idealistic argument for immortaUty 
 as it has been used by theists in every age. Plato's form 
 of the argument, based upon the alleged simpUcity of the 
 soul, has passed away with the realism of which it was a 
 part. But the essence of it is as valid to-day as ever. 
 It is as true for us, as for the Greeks, that spirit — by which 
 Plato means the ideal or creative principle in hfe, that 
 which we know at first-hand only in our own self-conscious- 
 ness — is the enduring thing, the explaining thing, that by 
 which alone we can adequately account for the presence and 
 the persistence of our actual world of meanings and of 
 values. 
 
 In its broadest sense idealism is quite compatible with 
 the denial of individual immortahty. All that is necessary 
 is that spiritual values should persist, and this is sufficiently 
 conserved if with ideahstic monism we believe in the 
 Absolute Spirit in whose infinite experience all values are 
 embraced and persist. This is a view which has been taken 
 by many thinkers, modem as well as ancient. To them 
 we are but transient modes of the Infinite Spirit, temporaiy 
 vehicles through which, for His own purposes, He expresses 
 a part of His meaning. When we have served our day 
 our place will be taken by other modes, who will serve the 
 divine purposes as well as we. Our real significance as 
 individuals is not in time but in eternity, in the meaning 
 that we have for God, and that meaning, existing once for 
 all, does not require the time relation for its perpetuation. 
 
184 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 But however attractive this conception may be to 
 speculative thinkers, it is certainly very different from 
 the Christian hope. The values with which we are con- 
 cerned are the values of personality as we know it, and 
 require for their conservation the individual lives in which 
 they are reahsed. Is there any philosophical ground for 
 believing that this hope is Justified ? 
 
 Obviously there is all the ground that we have for 
 beheving in the persistence of our highest values in any 
 form. As our behef in the personality of God stands or 
 falls with our demand for a rational universe, so our belief 
 in personal immortality stands or falls with the insight 
 that the moral values we count highest are indissolubly 
 interwoven with the personal life, in the form in which it 
 is known to us here. 
 
 In his suggestive essay on Human Immortality, printed 
 in his volume entitled Limits of Evolution and other Essays} 
 Professor Howison has recently restated this argument. 
 The essay was suggested by Professor James's IngersoU 
 lecture of the same title, and is the attempt to supplement 
 the Harvard professor's contention that immortality is 
 possible, with the positive conviction that immortality is 
 real. 
 
 Professor James suggests, as you may remember, that we 
 may be living on the hither side of a great sea of spirit 
 which from time to time finds entrance into our little world 
 through the chaimel that we call the nervous system. 
 This, according to Professor Howison, is good as far as it 
 goes, but it does not go far enough, for it leaves the nature of 
 this parent source undefined. How shall we pass from the 
 vague background of spirit, which is all Professor James's 
 argument requires, a background which, for all we know, 
 may be nothing more than the Absolute of transcendental 
 idealism, to the personal immortahty we require ? Ac- 
 cording to Professor Howison there is only one way, and 
 
 1 Second edition, New York, 1904, pp. 279-312. 
 
xn.] THE GROUNDS OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 185 
 
 that is ' to adopt the hypothesis, not simply that there are 
 many minds behind the scenes, but that these minds are 
 our minds — our veritable and genuine selves ; and that the 
 summaries of sense-coloured experiences which Professor 
 James ... is led to call the only verifiably real meaning 
 of our self, or our mind, are but the more or less dimmed 
 and darkened expressions of those our real spirits, inhabi- 
 tants of eternity ' (p. 292). 
 
 Into the detaUs of the argument I cannot go here. It 
 takes its departure from the creative aspect of personality, 
 to which we have already called attention, and amounts 
 to this, that as we ourselves are the creators of our own 
 world, as Kant has long ago shown, we are the most real 
 beings in that world, and therefore that faith in our own 
 continued existence is rationally justified. 
 
 To Professor Howison this insight goes a long way. It 
 provides not only for the continued existence of the self, 
 but also for the continuance and final triumph of all the 
 values it has created. ' Once let us settle that we are 
 inherently capable of everlasting existence, we are then 
 assured of the highest worth of our existence as measured 
 by the ideals of Truth, of Beauty, and of Good, since these 
 and their effectually directive operation in us are insured 
 by their essential and constitutive place in our being ' 
 (p. 310). For those who are not philosophers, however, it 
 will seem to provide at most for the possibiHty of such 
 triumph. If persons as such exist, just because they are 
 persons, then all kinds of persons must exist, and with 
 them all kinds of values, the good and the evil, the ugly 
 as the beautiful. Wherein, then, will the life to come differ 
 from this ? Where shall we find the guarantee of the 
 moral victory we desire ? For this assurance we must 
 leave the philosophical argument ia its more general form 
 and consider the contribution of ethics to the Christian 
 hope 
 
186 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 3. The Ethical Argument 
 
 The moral argument is at once tlie most ancient and the 
 most influential of all the arguments for immortality. 
 It reasons from the disproportion of desert and happiness 
 in the life here to the fact of another life in which this 
 inequaUty will be rectified. It is the most ancient, for 
 so far as we can see, it was the demand for such a readjust- 
 ment which led to the replacement of the primitive con- 
 ception of the life after death as a life empty of moral 
 meaning, with the various positive conceptions whose rise 
 and history we have been considering. It is the most in- 
 fluential, for it retained its hold upon even so acute a critic 
 as Kant. It is to-day, I suppose, the argument which 
 makes the strongest appeal to most of those who accept 
 the fact of a Hfe after death on any other ground than that 
 of authority pure and simple. There is in every one of us 
 an instinctive feeUng that good deserves to be rewarded 
 and evil to be punished. For us, as for the generations 
 that have preceded us, the fact that this is so often not the 
 case constitutes the most serious difficulty in the way of 
 our believing in the moral government of God. For us 
 too, as for them, faith in immortality afiords a welcome 
 relief from this difficulty by furnishing a sphere for that 
 final adjustment of moral values upon which every healthy 
 conscience insists. 
 
 We cannot overlook the fact, however, that there are 
 many earnest people in our day for whom this argument 
 in its older form has lost its force. This is due to the 
 fundamental change which has come over our conception 
 of punishment. We no longer think of punishment as 
 retributive, at least not primarily and exclusively so, but 
 as disciplinary. We recognise that retribution has its 
 place, a necessary and important one, but it is means, not 
 end. The end is moral education, the reformation of the 
 criminal, not his suffering or loss, and it M-ill not be finally 
 
xn.] THE GROUNDS OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 187 
 
 attained until he has been transformed into a useful and 
 law-abiding member of society. 
 
 It is inevitable that such a change should have its effect 
 upon our thought of the hfe after death. The old con- 
 ception of the judgment as an act which simply registers 
 issues decided here and assigns to each individual the 
 reward or punishment to which his desert entitles him, 
 seems to ascribe to the life after death a significance 
 infinitely less than the present life, where character is 
 being moulded and destiny shaped. The remedy provided 
 by the older theodicy does not seem really to touch the 
 main issue, which is the fact of moral failure itself. It is 
 not the prosperity of the wicked which is the staggering 
 fact, but his sin, and the real reason why we should desire 
 a life after death is not so much that we may be rewarded 
 for being as good as we are, but that we may have a chance 
 to become better. 
 
 There is, however, another form of the moral argument 
 which is not open to this objection. It is the argument 
 from the incompleteness of human life. All about us we 
 see in human nature undeveloped possibilities, beginnings 
 that have no ending, prophecies that have no fulfilment. 
 We have already referred, in connection with the philo- 
 sophical argument for immortality, to the capacity for 
 development which characterises personality, but the 
 observation acquires far greater significance when con- 
 sidered from the point of view of ethics. We carry, each 
 one of us, within ourselves a better self, a soul as yet 
 unborn which is struggling toward the Ught. Is it never 
 to come to its own ? 
 
 In Gorky's play, A Refuge for the Night, he pictures 
 under the guise of a chapter of life in contemporary Russia 
 an ever-recurring human experience. We may call it the 
 tragedy of the ideals. It is the birth of these fragile 
 children of the spirit, and their death before they have 
 grown strong enough to stand alone. 
 
188 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 The scene is an underground, cellar in one of the crowded 
 quarters of a Russian city. As the name indicates, it is 
 the refuge by night of the flotsam and jetsam of the city 
 streets. We see the drunkard, the thief, the harlot, the 
 tramp, the clever vagabond too lazy to work, the sodden, 
 brutaUsed workman too poor to find a home of his own — 
 birds of prey, all of them, hopeless for themselves and 
 dangerous to others — who have gathered for shelter and 
 refuge in this human nest. 
 
 Into this forbidding hostelry drifts one fine morning 
 a singular character. No one knows whence he comes, and 
 no one knows what he wants. He is clad in peasant's 
 clothes and is readily contented with the simplest fare, but 
 he is evidently a man of superior education who has seen 
 better days. He speedily makes himself at home in his 
 new quarters, and one by one makes friends with its 
 denizens. His indomitable cheerfulness attracts them, and 
 his ready sympathy breaks down the barrier of reserve 
 behind which suspicion and jealousy have led them to 
 entrench themselves. He is an apostle of hope who 
 believes in better days coming, not for Russia only but for 
 them. He tells the drunkard of a place where drunkenness 
 can be cured, and bids him prepare for the miracle by be- 
 lieving in the possibility of his own sobiiety. He tells the 
 thief that he has the capacity to earn an honest liveUhood, 
 and that it is a shame to waste such cleverness as he 
 possesses in a way so unworthy of his true destiny. He 
 makes the harlot believe in purity and the tramp in 
 industry. So, one by one, we see the ideals bom, the 
 seeds of hope that have lain forgotten in the darkened 
 souls pressing their way up through the cramping mould of 
 circumstance to the light. 
 
 And then — and this is the heart-break of the play — we 
 see them wither and die before they have taken firm root. 
 There is a quarrel and a murder ; the police enter the 
 cellar ; the strange guest vanishes never to return. GThe 
 
xn.] THE GROUNDS OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 189 
 
 thief is carried ofE to Jail, the drunkard returns to his cups, 
 the wanton to her sordid trade ; the night of despair settles 
 again into the same impenetrable gloom on which the 
 curtain first rose. 
 
 But it leaves behind — and this, I suspect, was Gorky's 
 purpose — a haunting sense of what might have been. If 
 only the chance had lasted a little longer, if only the 
 environment had been a little more favourable, all that the 
 friendly stranger saw as possible might have been made 
 real. For there is no one so low, so degraded, so utterly 
 dehumanised, but carries within him, could you but find it, 
 and cherish it, and nourish it, some seed of beauty or of 
 heroism which is worthy of immortal Ufe. 
 
 We did not need Gorky to tell us this story, though we 
 thank him for reminding us of what we are too often 
 tempted to forget. We have seen this ancient tragedy 
 repeat itself again and again at our own doors, in the 
 crowded tenements of our great cities, in the loneliness of 
 the farm, in the cramping pettiness of village life. We 
 have seen ideals born only to die, and hopes grow green 
 only to wither. Is this really to be the end of all ? Are 
 these prophecies to have no fulfilment ? Is this hope bom 
 to have no resurrection ? If so, how vain to call this a 
 moral universe or to believe in the conservation of moral 
 values which alone makes life worth living ! 
 
 Or, suppose we shift our point of view and consider the 
 matter not from the side of the helped but of the helper. 
 Must we really believe that when the stranger vanished it 
 was to leave his work undone ? Was the scene on which 
 the curtain fell really the last ? Had he gone never to 
 return ? Must we believe that all the great hearts that 
 have broken over human misery and failure have broken 
 in vain ; that all the lessons half taught are blotted out 
 never to be releamed ? Or is this really only the beginning 
 of a drama that is going on, the first scene of a play that 
 will have its ending in the life to come ? Everything 
 
190 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 within us that believes that truth is better than falsehood, 
 and love than hate, and heroism than meanness, and beauty 
 than ugliness, cries out that the latter is the true answer, 
 and this instinctive faith in the persistence of the highest 
 values is the true moral argument for immortality. 
 
 4. The Religious Argument 
 
 But we have not yet completely stated the case. There 
 IS one step more to be taken before we feel the full force of 
 the evidence. As we have passed from history to philo- 
 sophy, and from philosophy to ethics, we must pass, 
 finally, from ethics to religion, for only here shall we reach 
 the full assurance which the soul desires. 
 
 In order to appreciate the force of the religious argument 
 for immortality, it is only necessary to recall a familiar 
 story. It is the story that Jesus told nearly nineteen 
 centuries ago, and that we know to-day as the parable of 
 the prodigal son. 
 
 This old story gives us in briefest compass the religious 
 argument for immortality. The prodigal is man, and the 
 father is God, and the bond that drew the wanderer home 
 from the far country to the open arms that were waiting to 
 receive him is a bond that it will take more than death to 
 sever. If Jesus is right in His teaching about the divine 
 fatherhood, immortality follows as a matter of course. 
 
 Here first we reach the true foimdation of the Christian 
 hope. It is not based simply or chiefly upon the capacity 
 of man, valuable as this may be in its witness to a life to 
 come, but upon the purpose of God. ' God,' said Jesus, 
 ' is not the God of the dead, but of the living : for all live 
 unto him ' (Luke xx. 38). Can we beUeve that the Father, 
 who has made man in His image for fellowship with Himself, 
 will suffer His child to perish ? 
 
 Here, too, we recognise the real contribution of Jesus 
 to faith in immortality. It was not merely that He rose 
 
xn.] THE GROUNDS OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 191 
 
 from the dead but that He lived such a life that resurrection 
 seems credible. It was because He realised as no one before 
 Him had ever realised, what divine Fatherhood might 
 mean for a human life, and because He entered so com 
 pletely into the experience of sonship. It was, in a 
 word, because He showed us once and for all what man 
 at his best may be, and so made belief in his ultimate 
 destruction for ever impossible. 
 
 In the light of this insight we must revise our statement 
 of the historical argument for immortality. What Jesus 
 gives us is not simply a new fact but a new value. He 
 raises our conception of humanity as a whole to a higher 
 level. He gives such dignity to human nature that its 
 endless continuance seems natural and worthy. He dis- 
 closes to us all capacities within ourselves which justify 
 our instinctive hope, and in the new experience of sonship 
 into which He leads, gives us the pledge of endless life in 
 the Father's house. 
 
 So it must continue to be if faith in immortality is to 
 maintain itself. The Christian hope stands or falls with 
 the Christian experience. As the chief argument against 
 immortality is the apparent worthlessness of human life as 
 we know it, so the chief argument for immortaUty is the 
 existence of men and women who deserve it. In the 
 measure that humanity produces characters that are like 
 Christ will faith in an immortality of Christlikeness seera 
 reasonable. 
 
192 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE VALUE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 We have considered the different arguments for the 
 Christian hope : historical, philosophical, ethical, and 
 religious, and have found that they all reduce to a form of 
 the argument from value. It is because immortality seems 
 supremely worthful that we desire it, and because we 
 expect the universe to answer our highest desires that we 
 beheve in it. 
 
 In this respect our faith in immortaUty rests on 
 the same basis as all our other ultimate convictions. 
 All that makes life beautiful, and society noble, and 
 character secure, we hold in the last analysis by the 
 venture of faith. Our belief in God as well as in man, in 
 society as well as in the individual, in science and art and 
 civilisation as well as in religion, in the possibilities of 
 progress in this life as well as in the life to come — all 
 ahke persist because we dare to trust where we cannot 
 prove, and act where we do not know. The leaders of 
 humanity in its forward movement have been men who 
 have made this venture, who have trusted the best they 
 knew, and dared to believe that the universe would sus- 
 tain their trust. If we can prove that our faith in im- 
 mortality belongs to the best we know, we shall have 
 placed it upon a foundation on which we may safely 
 leave it. 
 
 Here is the point at which the modem challenge of 
 immortality is most formidable, since it takes the form 
 
xm.] THE VALUE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 193 
 
 not so much of a denial of the fact as of scepticism as 
 to its value. This final doubt we must resolve if we are 
 to establish our hope upon a firm foimdation, and to this 
 attempt we turn in our last chapter. 
 
 A word at the outset as to the principle by which our 
 judgment is to be determined. What is the standard by 
 which we should test the value of the Christian hope ? 
 
 Clearly it must be the standard by which all our highest 
 values are tested. It is the standard of the ideal per- 
 sonality in its twofold aspect of individual efficiency and 
 of social serviceableness. Judged by this double test, 
 what has faith in immortality to contribute to our life ? 
 
 What, in the first place, has the Christian hope to 
 contribute to the efficiency of the individual ? What can 
 it do to make us happier, stronger, and more successful in 
 our daily living ? 
 
 The answer most commonly given to this question is 
 that it contributes comfort. The hope of immortaUty is 
 the great solace for life's misfortunes. It is our consolation 
 in bereavement, our compensation for failure. When 
 death robs us of the familiar presence on whose companion- 
 ship we have relied, it is reassuring to know that we may 
 look forward to a meeting by and by. When injustice has 
 defrauded us of our rightful place here, we may find satis- 
 faction in the promise that in a world to come the wrong 
 will be righted. 
 
 But much as we need comfort, there are things in 
 life that we need more. Strength is more important, 
 and courage, enthusiasm and loyalty, consecration and 
 heroism. You cannot win battles with doctors and trained 
 nurses alone. It is good to be helped up when you are 
 down, but better never to fall. Even on the bloodiest 
 field the whole outnumber the wounded, and the condition 
 of barracks and of camp counts more for the welfare of the 
 army than the hospital. What has the Christian hope to 
 offer us here ? Can faith in immortality reinforce the 
 
 N 
 
194 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [CH. 
 
 motives which make for effective living as well as insure 
 against the penalties of failure ? 
 
 I do not see how any one, who has once faced in his own 
 thinking what the Christian hope really means, can doubt 
 this for a moment. We value life in proportion to its pos- 
 sibilities, the satisfactions that it offers, the powers that it 
 commands and the prospects that it opens. The man who 
 believes in immortality sees opening before him an endless 
 vista of new experience, and so a limitless sphere for the 
 acquisition of new knowledge and the exercise of new power. 
 Such a consciousness cannot fail to give a new dignity to 
 personality and a new joy to living. 
 
 My thought goes back to a day not many years ago when 
 I stood by the bedside of a friend whose earthly life was 
 drawing to a close. He was a man of whom it could be 
 said with more truth than of most men that he had used 
 his opportunities to the full, and could look back over the 
 record of his life without regret. And yet it was impossible 
 to associate him with the thought of death. His mind was 
 active and alert, eagerly interested in every new experience, 
 never more just and delicate in its adjustment than in the 
 weeks which had cut him off from outer contacts and shut 
 him up to the world of his own thoughts. He was a man 
 who had schooled himself by unremitting discipline to a 
 loyalty to duty which shrank from no sacrifice, but he had 
 learned also that other and rarer lesson that duty willingly 
 followed leads at last into paths of pleasantness and peace 
 He was a man who had borne great responsibilities greatly , 
 adding year by year new burdens, but never laying down 
 what he had once taken up ; yet with all, he was never too 
 busy to lend his ear or his heart to a child's need. He 
 had, indeed, a genius for friendship. No one touched him 
 without trusting him, and to many who were not his kindred 
 after the flesh, he stood in a father's place. Wise in counsel, 
 he was tender in sympathy, yet he dared to blame as well 
 as praise when blame was needful, A, humble Christian, 
 
xm.] THE VALUE OP THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 195 
 
 he walked daily with his God, and in his presence doubt 
 could not live. 
 
 Is it possible to think that it would make no difference 
 if one were to be persuaded that there was no further 
 work in store for such a personality ; that this finely 
 tempered instrument, fashioned by the Master Workman 
 at so great a cost, and fitted to such high and sacred 
 uses, was to be cut off by the accident we call death, from 
 all possibility of further service ? Would it not, on the 
 other hand, be an inspiring and uphfting thought, stimulat- 
 ing to new self-discipline and completer consecration, to 
 believe that what we saw here was only the beginning of a 
 service that would have no end ; that as each year had 
 brought new opportunities of growth and new experiences 
 of friendship, human and divine, so it would continue to 
 be through all the years that were to come ? We feel 
 that there is something in humanity at its best that de- 
 serves to live for ever, and it will make a difference in 
 our estimate of the significance of living whether or no we 
 believe that what we feel ought to be, will be. 
 
 In fact, when men tell us that they do not desire im- 
 mortality, they are thinking of something very different 
 from the hope we have in miad. They are thinking 
 not of life as it may be, but as it too often is. They are 
 making their past the measure of their future. They are 
 thinking of the monotony of life, its weary repetition of 
 familiar experiences, its empty formalities, its deadening 
 routine. Why, they ask, should we desire to perpetuate 
 that which we have found so little satisfying ? What is 
 there in life as it is lived here to make its endless con- 
 tinuance desirable ? 
 
 But it is not such a life as this for which the Christian 
 looks. His standard is not quantitative, but qualitative, 
 not more existence, but richer experience. His mood as 
 he contemplates the future is one of adventurous curi- 
 osity. He looks upon the next life as a boy looks upon 
 
196 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. 
 
 this, as a wonderland of undiscovered possibilities, full of 
 things to be done and to be learned and to be enjoyed. 
 There are men who in this life have seen the boy's dream 
 realised. Life has been better to them than they ex- 
 pected. Why may not this be the case in the life to come ? 
 It is conceivable that this hope may prove mistaken, but 
 of one thing we may be sure, that it would be a good thing 
 if it were true. If we define immortality in the Christian 
 sense, it is a thing devoutly to be desired. 
 
 The same conclusion is reinforced when we pass from 
 the standpoint of individual efSciency to that of social 
 serviceableness. Here, too, faith in immortality proves 
 an asset of the highest value. 
 
 For consider what this faith really means. It means 
 that in all the complex relations which constitute what we 
 call our social life, we are dealing with beings who are 
 capable of an unending development. We are not simply 
 working for to-day or for to-morrow, but for imnumbered 
 ages, not simply for what we can crowd into a single life- 
 time, but for issues of a significance so momentous as to 
 stagger the imagination. Here surely is a motive too 
 powerful to be neglected by any who have seriously 
 measured the forces which are making for and against the 
 welfare of society. 
 
 I am well aware that faith in immortality has often 
 been held in such a way as to discourage social effort. 
 The other world has loomed so large that the concerns of 
 this world have seemed petty, and its interests negligible. 
 Soul has been set against body, heaven against earth, the 
 life to come against the life here. 
 
 It was inevitable that such undue depreciation of the 
 present world should lead to a reaction. We are 
 coming to realise the unity of life as never before. We 
 see how inextricably personality is interwoven with its 
 environment ; how intimately and in how many ways body 
 and soul are related ; how large a part is played in spiritual 
 
xm.] THE VALUE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 197 
 
 development by the outer forces and activities which an 
 other-worldly Christianity lightly dismissed as physical. 
 We are not trying to destroy the world but to transform it, 
 not to crucify the flesh but to sanctify it. We are beginning 
 to take Christ's prayer literally, and instead of abandon- 
 ing earth that we may win heaven, we are trying to make 
 earth like heaven. 
 
 We cannot doubt that this is a great gain. It gives 
 reality and naturalness to the religious life. It presents a 
 firm foothold for faith in the facts and experiences of every 
 day. It makes room in the service of Christ for every 
 talent and for every activity. It consecrates science and 
 industry and art, as well as religion, to the service of God. 
 
 But the question still remains : What is to be the 
 outcome of it all ? What is the end which the complex 
 machinery which we call modern civilisation is designed to 
 serve ? Is it simply the perfecting of the race for the hfe 
 that they have still to Uve on earth ? Or, is it the training 
 of humanity for the heavenly citizenship that shall have 
 no end ? 
 
 This is a question which deserves far more serious 
 consideration than is often given to it. If it is a worthy 
 object of effort to work for a better social order to be 
 reaUsed some time in the future, even if that order be 
 confined to the comparatively small group of beings who 
 may be living on earth at the time, how much more 
 splendid and inspiring will it be to feel that we are work- 
 ing for a society which includes the living and the dead, 
 and will endure throughout all ages. 
 
 We are not dealing here with vague generahties. We 
 are discussing practical motives which affect daily living 
 and bear in the most direct way upon our famihar activities. 
 
 Let us make the issue quite concrete by considering 
 some specific form of human activity. There is, for 
 example, the question of education. We hear much on 
 every side of the need of more practical methods of educa- 
 
198 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [CH. 
 
 tion. The demand is for a training that will fit men for life. 
 But what kind of life is it for which men are to be fitted ? 
 How long is it to last, and under what conditions is it to 
 be hved ? If its sphere is to be the particular trade or 
 profession which is chosen, and its limit three score years 
 and ten, then one kind of training will be sufficient. But, 
 if the person to be trained is an immortal soul, destined for 
 communion with God, and the service of humanity through 
 endless time, then a new factor is introduced which alters 
 the problem. There is not less need of technical training, 
 so that the specific thing first to be done shall be done well, 
 but there is need also of a wider culture. The imagination 
 and the sympathy need to be trained. The pupil needs 
 to be shown what are the permanent values, equally 
 important in all ages and for all persons. We are learning 
 that even for this life culture may be an asset of the 
 highest practical importance. We work better when we 
 understand the end for which we work, and we work more 
 contentedly when we can relate our o^vn work to that of 
 others as parts of a single comprehensive plan. But 
 often the plan seems so narrow, the end so httle worth 
 while. Faith in immortality meets this difficulty by pro- 
 viding a new outlet adequate to the highest capacities of 
 the soul, and so a new motive for self-development. The 
 teacher who feels that he is dealing with a deathless per- 
 sonality will bring a fresh enthusiasm to his work. 
 
 Or, take that most perplexing and many-sided pro- 
 blem of improving the economic condition of the wage- 
 earner. How little has been accomplished in propor- 
 tion to the effort that has been expended. Consider, for 
 example, the matter of housing, as it meets us in the 
 congested centres of our great cities, or the problem of 
 unemployment, with its terrible accompaniment in social 
 degradation and vice. In face of the sheer magnitude of 
 the task, how easy to be discouraged ! How pitifully 
 small what we can accomplish for any single generation. 
 
xm.] THE VALUE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 199 
 
 measured by the greatness of the need ! But, if we are 
 working not for one generation, but for all time ; if it is 
 not simply the question of raising the standard of comfort 
 one peg higher, but of opening the door for immortal 
 spirits into a larger life ; if the beginning that we see here 
 is really the beginning and not the ending, then the case is 
 altered. A new and higher motive has been introduced, 
 and effort that seemed Quixotic becomes legitimate and 
 rational. 
 
 So, we might multiply illustrations indefinitely. There is 
 the problem of the backward races. If this life ends all, 
 how plausible the argument of those who tell us that all 
 attempt to introduce these hewers of wood and drawers of 
 water for humanity to the ideal interests to which we our- 
 selves ascribe the highest value, is a mistake ; that it must 
 only make them discontented and impatient, and unfit them 
 for the humbler tasks for which they were designed. But 
 if they, hke ourselves, are really God's children, meant to 
 live for ever, and with eternity to grow in, how splendid a 
 thing it becomes to have a part in awakening them to a 
 consciousness of their immortal destiny. 
 
 The practical value of faith in personal immortality 
 as a motive to social service has been verified over 
 and over again in experience. The men who have been 
 pioneers in social regeneration have, with few exceptions, 
 been men who have had exalted views of the dignity of the 
 individual. Long before our modern economists had begun 
 to tell us of the dependence of vice upon an unfavourable 
 social environment. Christian missionaries had established 
 in the slums of our great cities centres of helpfulness and 
 sympathy which were a practical demonstration of this 
 truth. 1 And to the darkest and most destitute regions of 
 
 1 It 13 a suggestive fact that the first step in the regeneration of the 
 notorious Five Points, the most dangerous section of New York City, was 
 the establishment there in the year 1854 by the Reverend Mr. Pease, a 
 Methodist missionary, of what has since come to be known as the Five Points 
 
200 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE [oH. 
 
 the earth the hospital, the workshop, and the school have 
 been carried by men and women who have been sustained 
 in the sacrifice and the renunciation which the task required, 
 by their faith that the little they were able to do to help 
 men here was so much contribution toward preparing them 
 for an eternal destiny. 
 
 There are many persons to-day who are ready to recognise 
 the beneficent work done by foreign missionaries for the 
 social welfare of the peoples among whom they have been 
 working, who have no sympathy with the religious motives 
 which animate them. Why, they ask, can we not have the 
 hospital and the school without the doctrines that go with 
 them ? They forget that it is faith in the realities which 
 the doctrines express which alone has made the missionary 
 enterprise possible. Had it not been for the belief that 
 man is an immortal spirit capable of communion with 
 God, and meant for fellowship with Him throughout all 
 eternity, we should have had no Livingstone or Moffat or 
 Paton. James Russell Lowell saw this clearly when he 
 spoke the striking sentences which have often been quoted, 
 but which will bear quoting again : — 
 
 ' When the keen scrutiny of sceptics has found a place on 
 this planet where a decent man may live in decency, comfort, and 
 security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and 
 unpolluted, a place where age is reverenced, infancy protected, 
 womanhood honoured, and human life held in due regard, — 
 when sceptics can find such a place ten miles square on this 
 globe, where the Gospel of Christ has not gone before and 
 cleared the way and laid the foundations that made decency 
 and security possible, it will then be in order for these sceptical 
 literati to move thither and there ventilate their views. But so 
 long as these men are dependent on the very religion which they 
 discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate 
 
 House of Industry. Mr. Pease was led to take this step because he dis- 
 covered that it was impossible to save individuals without changing their 
 environment. The social work of the Salvation Army is a more recent 
 example of the same kind. 
 
xm.] THE VALUE OP THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 201 
 
 to rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in 
 that Saviour who alone has given to men that hope of Eternal 
 Life which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs 
 death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.' 
 
 So far, then, is it from being true that the hope of 
 individual immortality is inconsistent with the social wel- 
 fare, that the two go hand in hand. Whatever heightens 
 the value of the individual heightens the value of the 
 society to which he belongs, and reinforces the motives 
 which are making for social regeneration.^ 
 
 If you wish great results you must command great 
 motives. If man is to live at his best, his face must be 
 turned to the stars. There is no motive comparable in 
 power to the faith which believes that man is an immortal 
 being, made for God, who in His own person has given the 
 great example of service, and destined some day to be 
 conformed to Him. 
 
 Here, as always, we come back to God. It is faith in 
 
 1 From a recent number of the Swrvey, the official organ of the charitable 
 workers of America, I quote the following significant sentences. They are 
 taken from a letter protesting against the disposition manifest in certain 
 quarters to make comfort the standard of progress, and to confine social effort 
 to a purely economic programme : — 
 
 'There are stages, the author writes, 'in the formation of a social ideal. 
 For many of us social workers the first stage was represented by an extreme 
 pietism. We were brought up in an atmosphere of soul-saving and world- 
 storming. In some of us the missionary zeal burned to incandescence. No 
 peaceful, comfed philosophy was ours, but we were ever battling against ' the 
 strong salt spray of some Urge sea.' With a point of view overlooking all 
 time and all worlds, we could not very well construct a village ideal of life. 
 We had a peculiar scale of values, one in which the value of a single human 
 soul outweighed all else, not only power, and fame and gold, but also homely 
 human happiness. The intrinsic worth of the individual was the cornerstone 
 of our faitn, and had no relation to his social environment or personal quali- 
 ties or achievements. For the lowest and most loathsome human creature 
 that ever wallowed in the mire of crime or bred in the fetid pens of degeneracy 
 we must dare all, sacrifice all, even our own normal development, for we had 
 in our hands his eternal destiny of glory or pain. No one who has once 
 entertained views like these, however time and experience may have modified 
 them, can ever accept with complacency or final satisfaction the picture of a 
 well-fed, and well-housed, efficient and orderly people that you now present 
 as an ideal. Much less will such a picture stir him to his best efforts. 
 
 I believe that these words give a true insight into the psychology of 
 service. 
 
202 THK CHRISTIAN HOPE [ch. xui. 
 
 Him, and the experience to which it leads, which alone 
 give to I^uman life value enough to make its endless con- 
 tinuance seem a thing to be desired. ' After all,' as Dr. 
 Rainy once said, near the close of a life which had been 
 more than usually full of sustained and satisfying activity, 
 ' immortaUty is a dreary prospect if our Father is not in it.' ^ 
 In these words of the venerable Principal of the New 
 College, we have, in a single sentence, the Christian apolo- 
 getic of immortality. If we wish to make faith in another 
 life credible we must fill this life with value. And the one 
 sure way to do this is to discover with Dr. Rainy that 
 ' our Father is in it ' — the Father whose loving purpose 
 for us and for all mankind Jesus has revealed, and in 
 whose service, which is at the same time the service of 
 our fellowmen, we find our freedom and our peace. 
 
 ' Life of Principal Rainy, vol. ii. p. 29Z 
 
A SELECTED BIBLIOGEAPHY 
 
 On the history of the doctrine in general, c/. Salmokd, S. D. F., 
 The Christian Doctrine of Immortality (2n(i ed., Edinburgh and New 
 York, 1896). A full bibliography of the older literatuM by Ezea 
 Abbot is given in Alobr's Critical Hiitory of the Doctrine of a 
 Future Life (Philadelphia, 1864). 
 
 1. THE PREPARATION IN THE ETHNIC FAITHS. 
 
 On the eschatology of primitive and savage peoples, cf. Salmond, 
 op. cit. pp. 9-24, and references there given ; Ttloe, Primitive 
 Culture (2 vols., London, 1871 — vol. ii. pp. 1 seq.) ; and Paton, L. B., 
 ' The Hebrew Idea of a Future Life ' (Biblical World, January 1910, 
 pp. 8-20 ; February, pp. 80-92). 
 
 For Egyptian views of the future life, cf. Salmond, op. cit. pp. 46 
 seq. ; Budge, The Book of the Dead (London, 1898) ; Wiedemann, 
 The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Irwmortality of the Soul (New 
 York, 1895) ; Religion of the Ancient Egyptians (New York, 1897, 
 pp. 254-261). 
 
 For Assyria-Babylonia, cf. Salmond, pp. 76 seq. ; Paton, op. cit. 
 {Biblical World, March, pp. 158-171) ; Jastrow, The Religion of 
 Babylonia and Assyria (Boston, 1898, pp. 556-611). 
 
 For Persia, cf. Salmond, op. cit. p. 97 seq. ; Chetne, 'Possible 
 Zoroastrian Influence on the Religion of Israel ' (Expository Times, 
 vbl. ii. pp. 202, 224, 249 seq.) ; Stave, Ueber den Einfluss des Par- 
 sismus auf das Judentum (Haarlem, 1898) : Soderblom, N., La Vie 
 future d'apres le Mazddisme A la lumihre des croyances paralUles dans 
 les autres religions (Paris, 1901). 
 
 For India, cf. Salmond, op. cit. pp. 25 seq. ; Hopkins, Religions 
 of India (Boston, 1895) ; Home, An Interpretation of India's Re- 
 ligious History (l^ew York, 1911, pp. 114 seq.) ; Oldenbeeg, Buddha, 
 sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Oemeinde (Berlin, 1881, pp. 269 seq. ; 
 MoNiER Williams, Buddhism (New York, 1889, po. 93-122) ; Rhys 
 
 203 
 
204 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 Davids, Hibbert Lectures for 1881 (New York, 1882) ; Dahlke, 
 Buddhist Essays (London, 1908, pp. 194-205). 
 
 For Greece, cf. Salmond, op. cit. pp. 116 seq. ; Adam, J., The 
 Religious Teachers of Oreece (Edinburgh, 1908) ; Eohdb, Psyche; 
 Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglauben der Grieehen (2nd ed., Frei- 
 burg, 1898) ; Wheeler, Dionysos and Immortality (Boston, 1899) ; 
 Gate, The Platonic Conception of Immortality, and its Connexion 
 with the Theory of Ideas (London, 1904) ; Caird, E., The Evolution 
 of Theology in the Cheek Philosophers (Glasgow, 1904, 2 vols.) ; 
 Plato, Dialogues (Jowett's translation), especially the 'Apology,' 
 the 'Phaedo,' and the 'Timaeus' ; Wobbermin, Religions geschicht- 
 liche Studien zur Frage der Beeinflussung des Urchristentum,s durch 
 das antike Mysterienwesen (Berlin, 1896) ; Ebitzenstein, Die hellen- 
 istischen Mysterienreligionen (Leipzig, 1910). 
 
 2. THE PREPARATION IN ISRAEL. 
 
 On the esohatology of Israel, cf. Salmond, op. cit. pp. 161-279 ; 
 Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in 
 Israel, in Judaism and in Christianity (London, 1899) ; Schurer, 
 Geschichte des jilditchen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (4th ed., vol. 
 ii. Leipzig, 1907, pp. 579-651 ; Bng. tr., Edinburgh, 1885, div. ii. voL ii. 
 pp. 126-187) ; Tot, Judaism and Christianity (Boston, 1891, pp. 372- 
 414) ; Paton, op. cit. {Biblical World, January-May 1910) ; Volz, 
 Judische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba (Tubingen, 1903) ; 
 BotrssET, Religion des Judentums (Berlin, 1903, pp. 195-290) ; Grbss- 
 MANN, Der Ursprung der Israel-jiidischen Eschatologie, (Gdttingen, 
 1905) ; ScHULTZ, H., Die Voraussetzungen der christlichen Lehre von 
 der Unsterblichkeit (Gdttingen, 1861). 
 
 On the eschatological teaching of the later Judaism may be con- 
 sulted, in addition to the works cited above, the articles on eschato- 
 logy by Charles in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, and the 
 Encyclopedia Biblica, as well as his editions of Enoch, Baruch, The 
 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, etc. ; cf. also Thackeray, The 
 Relation of St. Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought (London, 
 1900). 
 
 3. EARLY CHRISTIAN ESOHATOLOGY. 
 
 On the eschatological teaching of Jesua, cf. Salmond, op. cit. pp. 
 283 seq. ; Charles, op. cit. pp. 314 seg. ; Wendt, Lehre Jesu (Got- 
 tingen, 2nd ed., 1901, vol. ii. pp. 249 seq., 623 seq. ; Eng. tr., vol. i. 
 pp. 364 seq., vol. ii. pp. 265 seq.) ; Muirhead, The Eschatology of 
 
A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 205 
 
 Jetut (1904) ; Dobschutz, E. von, The Eschatology of the Gospels 
 (London, 1910) ; cf. also the article ' Parousia ' in Hastings' I)ic- 
 tionwry of the Bible, and the literature there cited. 
 
 From the voluminous literature on the Resurrection the following 
 may be cited : — Lake, The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection 
 of Jesus Christ (New York, 1907) ; Dennet, Jesus and the Gospel 
 (New York, 1909, pp. 97-143) ; Salmond, op. cit. pp. 548 seq. ; 
 Charles, op. cit. pp. 379-417 ; Milliqan, The Resurrection of our 
 Lord (1881); The articles 'Jesus Christ' (Sanday) and 'Resurrec- 
 tion' (Bernard), La Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, and 'Re- 
 surrection and Ascension Narratives ' (Schmiedel) in Enc. Biblica ; 
 Wbstcott, The Gospel of the Resurrection (1874) ; Loofs, Die 
 Auferstehungsberichte (1898) ; Meter, Die Auferstehung Ghristi 
 (1905) ; DoBSCHiJTz, von, Ostem und Pfingsten (1903) ; Rioobn- 
 BACH, The Resurrection of Jesus (1907) ; Simpson, Our Lord's Resur- 
 rection (1905). Further bibliographical material is given in Lake, 
 op. cit. pp. 283, 284, and by Moffatt, J., Enc. Bib., iv. pp. 4086, 7. 
 
 On the eschatology of St. Paul and the other New Testament 
 writers, cf. Salmond, op. cit. pp. 399-577 ; Charles, op. cit. pp. 345- 
 417 ; Kennedt, St. Paul's Conceptions of the Last Things (New 
 York, 1905) ; Kabisch, Die Eschatologie des Paulus (Gbttingen, 1893); 
 Thackerat, op. cit. ; Muirhead, The Terms ' Life ' and ' Death ' in 
 the Old and New Testaments (London, 1908) ; Mathews, The Mes- 
 sianic Mope in the New Testament (Chicago, 1905) ; Russell, The 
 Parousia (London, 1887); and the articles on 'Millennium' and 
 'Parousia' in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. 
 
 4. THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 On premillenarianism, cf. the article ' Millennium,' in Hastings' 
 Dictionary, and references there given ; Salmond, op. cit. pp. 43T seq.; 
 ScHURBR, op. cit. ; Charles, op. cit. passim {cf. Index under 
 Kingdom) ; Seiss, The Last Times (1878) ; Briqgs, C. A., Origin 
 and History of Premillenarianism ; in Lutheran Quarterly (1879), 
 pp. 207-245 ; Andrews, Christianity and Anti- Christianity in their 
 Final Conflict (2nd ed.. New York, 1899) ; BonssBT, The Anti- 
 Christ Legend (Eng. tr., London, 1896). A good example of modem 
 prendllenarianism is Campbell Morgan's God's Methods with Mem 
 m Time (New York, 1898). A full bibliography of the older 
 premUlenarian literature is given by Seiss, op. cit. 
 
 On the eschatalogy of Catholicism, cf. the various eschatological 
 articles in the forthcoming Catholic Encyclopedia (e.g. ' Hell,' ' Purga- 
 tory,' etc.) ; The Roman Catechism (Eng. tr. by Donovan, pp. 64 seq.; 
 WiLHBLM and ScANNELL, A Manual of Catholic Theology (2nd ed.. 
 
206 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 1901, vol. ii. pp. 535 seg.) ; Dante, The Divine Comedy (Eng. tr. by 
 Norton, with Notes ; Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and 
 Indulgences (Philadelphia, 1896, vol. iiL pp. 296 seq.). 
 
 On the eachatology of the older Protestantism, cf. West. Conf., 
 chaps, xxxii., xxxiii. ; Larger Catechism, Questions 86-90 ; Edwards' 
 Works (New York, 1869, vol. iv.) ; Sermons, 8-15, pp. 202-321 ; 
 Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, vol. ii. pp. 591-754 ; Beiggs, Whither f 
 (New York, 1889, pp. 195-224) ; Church Unity (New York, 1909, 
 pp. 334 seq.) ; PnsBT, What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment 
 (2nd ed., Oxford, 1880). 
 
 5. RECENT THOUGHT ABOUT THE FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 On the bearing of modern physical science upon the Christian 
 hope, cf. James, Human Immortality (Boston, 1898) ; Osler, 
 Science and Immortality (Boston, 1904) ; Lodge, Scien,ce and Im- 
 mortality (New York, 1908) ; Thomson, Brain and Personality 
 (New York, 1910). 
 
 Attempts to construct a physical theory of the future life have 
 been made by Isaac Taylor, Physical Theory of Another Life 
 (New York, 1852) ; Stewart and Tait, The Unseen Universe 
 (London, 1894) ; and Feohner, Life after Death (new ed., Chicago, 
 1906). 
 
 The evolutionary argument for immortality has been presented by 
 FisKE, Destiny of Man (Boston, 1884) ; The Life Everlasting 
 (Boston, 1901) ; Smyth, The Place of Death in Evolution (New 
 York, 1897). 
 
 Among the advocates of conditional immortality may be men- 
 tioned H. ScHULZ, op. cit. ; R. Rothe, Dogmatik, iii. pp. 132-169, 
 291-336 ; Petavel, The Problem of Immortality (Eng. tr., London, 
 1892) ; Armand Sabatibr, Immortalite au point de vue du 
 Naturalisms Evolutioniste (Paris, 1895) ; White, E., Life in Christ 
 (London, 1875, 3rd ed., 1878) ; W. R. Huntington, Conditional 
 Immortality (New York, 1878) ; Row, Future Betrihution (London, 
 1889) ; M'CoNNELL, The Evolution of Immortality (New York, 
 1901). Cf. also Salmond, op. cit. pp. 594 seg. Further biblio- 
 graphical references may be found in Petavbl, op. cit. 
 
 On the argument for immortality based upon alleged spirit com- 
 munications, cf. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of 
 Bodily Death (2 vols.. New York, 1903 ; condensed and edited by 
 his son in one volume. New York, 1907) ; Gurney, Meyers, and 
 PoDMORE, Phantasms of the Living (London, 1886, 2 vols.); Hyslop, 
 Science and a Future Life (Boston, 1905) ; Psychical Research and 
 
A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 207 
 
 the Resurrection (Boston, 1908) ; Schiller, Biddies of the Sphinx 
 (London, 1894, pp. 375 seq.); Humanism (London, 1903, pp. 228 seq.); 
 William Jaubs, The Will to Believe, pp. 299 seq.) ; Hodgson, R., 
 ' Observations of certain phenomena of Trance ( Mrs. Piper),' in 
 Proc. Soc.for Psychical Research, part 21. 
 
 On Universalism, cf. S almond, op. cit. pp. 630 seq.) ; Farear, 
 Mercy and Judgment (New York, 1881) ; The Mernal Hope 
 (London, 1892) ; Petavbl, The Extinction of Evil (1899) ; Jukes, 
 The Second Death and the Restitution of all Things . . . (2nd ed., 
 London, 1869); Cox, Salvator Mundi (New York, 1878 ; pp. 172 seq.); 
 Pdsbt, op. cit. ; Gordon, Immortality and the New Theodicy 
 (Boston, 1897). 
 
 Besides the works cited above, the following may be mentioned : — 
 Dahle, Life after Death, or the Future of the Kingdom of God 
 (Eng. tr., Edinburgh, 1896) ; Edoae M'C, The Gospel of a Risen 
 Saviour (Edinburgh, 1892) ; Latham, The Risen Master (1901) ; 
 Beet, The Last Things (New York, 1897) ; Warren, The Parousia 
 (Portland, Me., 2nd ed., 1884) ; Whiton, The Gospel of the Resurrec- 
 tion (Boston, 1881) ; Bunze, Psychologic des Unsterblichkeitsglaubens 
 und der Unsterblichheitsleugnung (Berlin, 1894) ; Wblldon, The 
 Hope of Immortality (New York, 1908) ; Howison, ' Human 
 Immortality,' in The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays (New 
 York, 1904, pp. 279-312) ; Munsterbbrg, The Eternal Life (Boston, 
 1905) ; RoTCE, The Conception of Immortality (Boston, 1900) ; 
 Abbott, The Other Room (New York, 1903) ; Dickinson, Is 
 Immortality Desirable ? (Boston, 1909) ; Gordon, The Witness 
 to Immortality (Boston, 1893) ; C C. Hall, The Redeemed Life 
 after Death (New York, 1905) ; Crothers, The Endless Life 
 (Boston, 1905) ; Smyth, Modern Belief in Immortality (New York, 
 1910) ; Ostwald, Individuality and Imrniortality (Boston, 1906) ; 
 Dole, Hie Hope of Immortality (New York, 1906). 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbah^u, 83, 84. 
 
 Abraham's bosom, 84. 
 
 Absolute, 35, 47, 48, 184. 
 
 Absolute spirit, 183 ; view of, in early 
 Greek philosophy, 37 ; change in- 
 troduced by Socrates and Plato, 
 37. 
 
 Absorption, 47. 
 
 Achilles, 24, 25, 65. 
 
 Adam, .lames, 23, 25, 26, 36, 38, 39, 
 41, 42, 43, 44, 46. 
 
 Advent, 110, 111, 112, 116, 117, 120, 
 127 ; possible interpretations of, 
 81 n. ; permanent meaning of, 177. 
 
 ^schylus, 42. 
 
 Agamemnon, 42. 
 
 Ahriman, 30. 
 
 Ahura-Mazda, 30. 
 
 Alexandrian Judaism, 110. 
 
 Anaxagoras, 41. 
 
 Ancestor worship, 62 ». 
 
 Andrews, 114, 116. 
 
 Angro-Mainyush, 30. 
 
 Anselm, 122. 
 
 Antediluvian dead, 107. 
 
 Anti-Chiist, 115. 
 
 Antigone, 43. 
 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, 67 n. 
 
 Apocalypses, 68, 73, 84, 113. 
 
 Apocalyptic, 78. 
 
 Appearances of the risen Jesus : to 
 the disciples, 90; difference in 
 the order of, 93 ; nature of, 93 ; 
 possible explanations of, 98, 95, 
 96. 
 
 Aralfi, 54. 
 
 Arminian, 128. 
 
 Armstrong, General, 140. 
 
 Asphodel, 25. 
 
 Assessors, the Forty-two, 32. 
 
 Atonement, 46. 
 
 Augustine, 48, 117, 121, 141. 
 
 Authority in religion, 132. 
 
 Babylon, 54. 
 
 Babylonia, influence of upon escha- 
 tology of Israel, 64. 
 
 Backward races, problem of, 199. 
 
 Baptism, 122. 
 
 Barnabas, 113. 
 
 Baruoh, 67, 68. 
 
 Beatific vision, 120, 128. 
 
 Bebel, 136. 
 
 Benedict, 170. 
 
 Bible, 132. 
 
 Body, place of, in primitive thought, 
 24 ; view of, in Platonic philo- 
 sophy, 38 ; spiritual, 94 ; resur- 
 rection, parallel between that of 
 Christ and Christians, 94 ; relation 
 to soul, 132. 
 
 Briggs, 128. 
 
 Bruce, 94. 
 
 Buddha, 10. 
 
 Buddhism, 9, 47 ; contrast with Chris- 
 tianity, 48. 
 
 Buddhist hope, 12, 
 
 Butler, 129. 
 
 Cabanis, 146. 
 
 Calvary, 81, 97, 103, 163. 
 
 Calvin, 126, 141. 
 
210 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 Calvinism, 164. 
 
 Canaanites, 79. 
 
 Catholic conception of salvation, 122 ; 
 view of the future life, 120, 121. 
 
 Encyclopaedia, 124. 
 
 Catholicism, 115, 123, 127. 
 
 Charles, 71, 107. 
 
 Cheyne, 66. 
 
 Chiliasm, 112. 
 
 Christ, 17 ; the living, 91 ; ministry 
 of, to the spirits in prison, 107 «. 
 
 Christlikeness, 17, 19. 
 
 Christian experience as witness to 
 the resurrection, 102-104. 
 
 Christian hope. See Hope. 
 
 relation to other forms of 
 
 hope, 13 ; social aspects of, 15 ; a 
 religious hope, 16 ; relation to 
 philosophical speculation, 16 ; con- 
 nection with the historic Jesus, 
 17 ; contribution of Jesus to, 17 ; 
 bearing upon the present, 18, 19 ; 
 remoter preparation for, 27-50 ; 
 preparation for, in Israel, 51-73 ; 
 distinctive contribution of Israel 
 to, 73; contribution of Jesus to, 
 74-88 ; chief historic forms of, 109- 
 128; definition of, 167-177; in- 
 dividual and social aspects of, 168- 
 172; permanent content of, 172- 
 177 ; place of Christ in, 169 ; how 
 far realisrble in this life, 171 ; 
 grounds of, 178-191 ; historical 
 argument for, 179 - 181 ; philo- 
 sophical argument for, 181-185; 
 etliical argument for, 186-190; re- 
 ligious argument for, 190 - 191 ; 
 value of, 192-202; for the in- 
 dividual, 193-196 ; for society, 196- 
 202. 
 
 Christian Socialists, 136. 
 
 Missions, contribution of to 
 
 social progress, 200. 
 
 Church, eschatology of, 110 ; com- 
 plex character of, 110 ; most im- 
 portant forms of, 110, 
 
 Cicero, 147. 
 
 Conditional Immortality, 148-153 ; 
 
 advocates of, 152; weakness of, 
 
 153. 
 Confucius, 141. 
 Corinth, 15. 
 Cromwell, 126, 170. 
 Cross, 79, 89. 
 Crucifixion, 89, 180. 
 Owr Dews Homo, ViS,. 
 Cyrus, 69. 
 
 DAMASotrs, 90, 180. 
 
 Dante, 119, 121, 127, 130, 161 ; view 
 of the future life, 117. 
 
 David, 56, 80. 
 
 Dead : care of, in the Egyptian re- 
 ligion, 32. 
 
 Deists, acceptance of immortality 
 by, 129. 
 
 Denney, 94, 95, 96, 104. 
 
 Destiny of Man, 149. 
 
 Dives, 83, 84. 
 
 Divine Gomedy, 117, 125. 
 
 Dole, 160. 
 
 Dualism : in Persia, 30 ; in Greece, 
 37. 
 
 Duhm, 63. 
 
 Easter, 101, 102. 
 
 Economic condition of wage earner, 
 
 198, 199. 
 Education, 197, 198. 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 126. 
 Egypt, 32, 41, 74. 
 Egyptian view of life after death, 
 
 32, 33. 
 Elijah, 28, 62, 101. 
 Eliot, George, 138. 
 Elisha, 62, 101. 
 Elysian Fields, 26 »., 33 n. 
 Emmaus, 99. 
 Empedocles, 39, 44. 
 Empty grave, importance of, 100. 
 Enoch, 62 ; Book of, 67, 68, 70, 71. 
 Ephraim, 174. 
 
INDEX 
 
 211 
 
 Erebus, 26, 26. 
 
 Eschatology of Israel, 51 - 73 ; of 
 Babylonia-Assyria, 54 ; of Egypt, 
 32, 38 ; of Persia, 28-31 ; of India, 
 46-60 ; of Greece, 23-31, 35-45. 
 
 Eucharist, 122. 
 
 Euripides, 43. 
 
 Evil, problem of, 129. 
 
 Evolution, argument for immortality 
 from, 148. 
 
 Ezekiel, 60, 61, 66. 
 
 Ezra, Fourth, 67, 68. 
 
 Fbohner : On Life after Death, 172, 
 
 173 ». 
 Fiske, view of immortality, 149, 150. 
 Five Points, 199. 
 Five Points, House of Industry, 
 
 200 ». 
 Fourth Gospel, 86. 
 Francis, 170. 
 Future life, early conceptions of, 
 
 23, 24; a life of progress, 173; 
 
 place of service in, 175 ; place of 
 
 suffering in, 175, 176. See further 
 
 under Eschatology. 
 Future punishment in the religion 
 
 of Egypt, 33 ; Jesus' view of, 
 
 85, 86 ; in Protestantism, 126 ; 
 
 Jonathan Edwards's view of, 85, 86. 
 
 Galilee, 84, 90, 93. 
 
 Gautama, 9, 10, 47. 
 
 Gaye, 36. 
 
 Gehenna, 86. 
 
 Oelassenheit, 47. 
 
 Germanic law, 122. 
 
 Gethsemane, 81. 
 
 Gilbert, 174. 
 
 God, view of, in Greek philosophy, 
 37, 38, 42, 43 ; in Israel, 63, 75 ; 
 Jesus' view of, 76, 190, contribu- 
 tion of faith in, to the Christian 
 hope, 190, 191, 201. 
 
 Golgotha, 81. 
 
 Good Friday, 89, 97, 102. 
 
 Gordon, 162, 163. 
 
 Gorky, 187, 189. 
 
 Grave, empty, importance of, 104. 
 
 Greece, 27, 33, 85, 36, 39, 40, 41, 
 44, 45, 46, 52, 72, 74, 110 ; contri- 
 bution of, to the Christian hope, 110. 
 
 Greek view of the life after death, 
 23-31, 35 - 45 ; influence upon 
 eschatology of Israel, 72. 
 
 Hades, 24, 25, 43, 84. 
 
 Hall of the Double Truth, 32. 
 
 Hall, Thomas, 134. 
 
 Hampton, 140. 
 
 Haran, 83. 
 
 Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, 
 69, 81, 112. 
 
 Heaven, 18, 125, 128 ; Catholic view 
 of, 120 ; different meanings of, 
 176 «. ; Christian view of, 176. 
 
 Heavens in Indian religion, 46. 
 
 Hebrews, 103. 
 
 Hector, 24. 
 
 Hell, 117, 118, 125, 164 ; in religion 
 of Persia, 30 ; Dante's description 
 of, 118; Jonathan Edwards's de- 
 scription of, 126. 
 
 Heraclitus, 41. 
 
 Herod, 163. 
 
 Hesiod, 42, 108, 140. 
 
 Hezekiah, 80. 
 
 Hindu, 9, 46, 47. 
 
 Hinduism, 47. 
 
 Homer, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 40, 41, 
 42, 108. 140. 
 
 Hope, place of, in religion, 9 - 13 ; 
 Messianic, 11, 56-59; Buddhist, 
 9-12; Christian, see Christian 
 hope. 
 
 Horus, 32. 
 
 Hosea, 61. 
 
 Howison, 184, 185. 
 
 Hume, 129, 140. 
 
 Huntington, 152. 
 
 Hypnotism, 155. 
 
 Hyslop, 154, 158, 16». 
 
212 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 Ibsen, 125, 137. 
 
 Idealism, 183. 
 
 Idealistic argament for immortality, 
 183. 
 
 Ideas, Plato's view of, 38. 
 
 Idolatry, 68. 
 
 ILidd, 24, 25. 
 
 Illusion, 47. 
 
 Immortality of the soul: meaning 
 of the doctrine, 35 ; different uses 
 of the term, 35 ; in Greece, 36-45 ; 
 in India, 45 - 50 ; Socrates' con - 
 tribution to the doctrine of, 36, 
 37 ; steps in the development of 
 the doctrine in Greece, 40 - 45 ; 
 intimations of, in Israel, 59-65 ; in 
 Job, 63, 64 ; in Psalms, 64, 65 ; 
 in Isaiah, 64 ». ; Jesus' view of, 
 82-88; natural, 110; decline of 
 faith in, 130-134 ; personal, substi- 
 tutes for, 134-144 ; social, 134-137 ; 
 of influence, 137-141; of value, 
 141-144; recovery of faith in, 146- 
 164 ; bearing of physical science 
 upon, 146-148 ; argument for, from 
 evolution, 148-153 ; argument for, 
 from spiritism, 153 - 159 ; argu - 
 ment for, from value, 160 - 162 ; 
 historical argument for, 179-181 ; 
 philosophical argument for, 181- 
 186 ; ethical argument for, 186- 
 190; religious argument for, 190, 
 191 ; Jesus' contribution to faith 
 in, 190, 191. 
 
 India, 35, 36, 39, 45, 46, 49, 74. 
 
 Individual, place of, in Christian 
 ideal, 49. 
 
 Individualism, 58 ; rise of, in Israel, 
 60. 
 
 Indulgence system, 122, 123, 124. 
 
 Inferno, 123, 130. 
 
 Infinite Spirit, 183. 
 
 Instant sanctiflcation at de&th. See 
 Sanctification. 
 
 Intermediate state, view of, in the 
 New Testament, 107. 
 
 Iphigeneia, 43. 
 
 Irenaeus, 112. 
 
 Isaac, 83. 
 
 Isaiah, 54, 60, 61, 66, 73, 130, 161. 
 
 Israel, 11, 27, 31, 40, 74, 77, 97, 
 110 ; eschatology of, 51-73 ; con- 
 tribution of, to the Christian hope, 
 73, 109, 110. 
 
 Jacob, 83. 
 
 James, 90, 91. 
 
 James, William, view of immortality, 
 133, 147, 148, 184, 185. 
 
 Jehovah, 55, 57, 58, 59, 65. 
 
 Jeremiah, 60, 61, 66, 73. 
 
 Jerusalem, 67, 58, 69, 68, 70, 78, 84, 
 86, 90, 93, 176. 
 
 Jesus, 7, 27, 53, 129 ; historic Jesus, 
 17 ; contribution of, to Christian 
 hope, 74-88 ; method of, 75-77 ; 
 view of Kingdom, 77-82 : teaching, 
 novel element in, 79 ; view of 
 immortality, S2-88 ; resurrection 
 of, 17, 18, 89-108, 179-181, charac- 
 ter of, as a contribution to faith in 
 immortality, 87, 101, 102, 191. 
 
 Jewish Apocalypses. See Apoca- 
 lypses. 
 
 Job, 4, 6, 10, 65, 68, 66, 71. 
 
 John, 17, 90, 92, 93, 103. 
 
 Josephus, 72. 
 
 Jowett, 39. 
 
 Judah, 60. 
 
 Judaism, apocalyptical literature of, 
 85 ; influence of, upon the Christian 
 hope, 109. 
 
 Judgment after death, 27, 187; in 
 religion of Persia, 30, 31, 33; in 
 Greece, 33, 41 ; in Israel, 67, 70, 
 71 ; Jesus' view of, 84-86 ; per- 
 manent meaning of, 177. 
 
 Justin, 112. 
 
 Ka_32^^. 
 
 Kant, 129, 140, 186, 186. 
 
 Kennedy, 107. 
 
INDEX 
 
 213 
 
 Kingdom of God, 15, 16, 49, 53, 57, 
 75, 100 ; different meanings of word 
 in Jesus' teaching, 77 ; Jesus' 
 view of, 77-82. 
 
 Knox, 126. 
 
 Lake, 93, 104. 
 
 Lazarus, 83, 84, 101. 
 
 Lea, 124 ». 
 
 Legalism, 122. 
 
 Leibnitz' Theodicle, 129. 
 
 Leto, 43. 
 
 Limbo, 120. 
 
 Lincoln, 141, 161. 
 
 Livingstone, 179, 200. 
 
 Logos, 41. 
 
 Lord of spirits, 70. 
 
 Lowell, James Bussell, 200. 
 
 Lucifer, 118. 
 
 Luke, 75, 93. 
 
 Luther, 125, 141, 170. 
 
 Maat, 32. 
 
 Maccabees, 69 ; Second, 67 ; Fourth, 
 72. 
 
 Mark, 75, 86. 
 
 Marshall, Henry Rutgers, 131. 
 
 Martineau, 80, 140. 
 
 Marx, Karl, 134. 
 
 Mass, 124. 
 
 Materialism, 146. 
 
 Matthew, 75, 84, 86, 93, 164. 
 
 Mazzini, 141. 
 
 McConnell, 152. 
 
 McGiffert, 129. 
 
 Mediums, 155. 
 
 Messiah: in the religion of Persia, 
 31 ; in the religion of Israel, 56, 
 69, 70; Jesus' claim to be, 80; 
 different views of, 80. 
 
 Messianic consciousness of Jesus, 80. 
 
 hope, in Persia, 31 ; in Israel, 
 
 56-59, 69, 70 ; Jesus' attitude to, 
 77-82; Bearing of Jesus' resurrec- 
 tion upon, 97-101. 
 
 Micah, 130. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 139. 
 Millennium, 67, 69, 73, 111, 112, 
 
 113, 116. 
 Moffat, 200. 
 Mohammed, 141. 
 Montanists, 116. 
 Moody, William Vaughan, 182. 
 Morshead, 43. 
 Moses, 84, 129. 
 Motor automatisms, 155. 
 Miinsterberg, 138, 142, 143. 
 Murray, 23 n. 
 Musaeus, 42, 108, 140. 
 Myers, Frederic, 163, 165, 168, 159. 
 Mysteries, 44. 
 Mysticism, 48. 
 
 Nationalism, 78. 
 
 Nature, Jesus' view of, 78. 
 
 Nazareth, 92. 
 
 Necessity, 41. 
 
 Nicholas, Bishop of Oslo, 137, 138. 
 
 Nous, 38. 
 
 Odysseus, 24, 25, 42, 55. 
 Odyssey, 24, 25. 
 Origen, 110, 162. 
 Ormuzd, 30. 
 
 Orpheus, 42, 44, 108, 140. 
 Orphic communities, 44. 
 Osiris, 32. 
 Osier, 147. 
 
 Pantheism, 48. 
 
 Papias, 29, 113. 
 
 Paradise, 30, 71, 84, 117, 118. 119 ; 
 Dante's description of, 119. 
 
 Paton, L. B., 54, 62, 63, 67, 72. 
 
 John, 200. 
 
 Patroclus, 25. 
 
 Paul, 11, 15, 17, 29, 91, 93, 94, 97, 
 100, 103, 106, 112, 141, 143, 170, 
 172, 175, 180 ; his account of the 
 resurrection, 94 ; his description of 
 the spiritual body, 94. 
 
 Pease, 199, 200. 
 
214 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 Peer Gynt, 161. 
 
 Peleus, 24. 
 
 Penance, 122, 124. 
 
 Pepuza, 116. 
 
 Perfection, 174 ; how far possible in 
 this life, 174. 
 
 Persia, 27, 30, 31, 33, 41, 62, 66, 74 ; 
 influence upon esohatology of 
 Israel, 66 ; parallels with Christian 
 esohatology, 31. 
 
 Personality, constituent elements of, 
 14 ; low estimate of, in Indian philo- 
 lophy, 47 ; meaning of, 181, 182. 
 
 Petavel, 152. 
 
 Peter, 90, 91, 98, 127, 170, 180. 
 
 I Peter, 107. 
 
 Phaedo, 39. 
 
 Pharisees, 82, 85. 
 
 Philo of Alexandria, 72. 
 
 Philosophy : eflfect upon view of 
 immortality, 28, 36-41, 181-185. 
 
 Physical science, bearing upon im- 
 mortality, 146-148. 
 
 Piccarda, 119. 
 
 Pilate, 92, 163. 
 
 Pindar, 41, 44, 46. 
 
 Plato, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 45, 110, 
 147, 183. 
 
 Platonic philosophy, 37, 38. 
 
 Pre-existence of soul, 38, 110. See 
 Transmigration. 
 
 Pre-eiistent Messiah, 70. 
 
 Premillenarianism, 111-117, 120, 168; 
 in Judaism, 111 ; different forms 
 of. 111 ; in Christianity, 112 ; New 
 Testament evidence for, 112 ; Chili- 
 asm, a synonym for, 112 ; causes 
 of, 114, 115 ; arguments against, 
 115, 116. 
 
 Pretenders, The, 137. 
 
 Primitive man, 23. 
 
 Problem of evil, 37, 129. 
 
 Prodigal Son, 190. 
 
 Progress, absence of, in Indian re- 
 ligion, 49. 
 
 Prophet of the Exile, 61. 
 
 Protagoras, 41. 
 
 Protestant view of the future life, 
 124-128 ; contrast with Catholicism, 
 125 ; explanation of, 125 ; recent 
 attempts at modification of, 127, 
 128. 
 
 Psalms, 23, 64, 66. 
 
 of Solomon, 67. 
 
 Psychology, 15, 131. 
 
 Punishment after death in Jewish 
 religion, 71 ; Jesus' view of, 85, 
 86; Catholic view of, 117-124; 
 Protestant view of, 126, 127. 
 
 change in our conception of, 186. 
 
 Purgatorio, 121, 123, 130. 
 
 Purgatory, Catholic view of, 117; 
 Dante's description of, 118 ; causes 
 which led to the doctrine of the, 
 121 ; criticism of the doctrine, 
 124 ; merits of the doctrine, 123. 
 
 Pythagoras, 45. 
 
 Eaiht, 202. 
 
 Reality : primitive view of, 23, 24, iS. 
 
 Bedeemer, 63. 
 
 Reformation, 124, 125. 
 
 Reformers, 127. 
 
 Reincarnation, 110. See Tranu- 
 migration. 
 
 Religious argument for immortality, 
 190, 191. 
 
 Remnant, 60. 
 
 Renan, 80. 
 
 Rephaim, 64. 
 
 Retribution. See Punishment. 
 
 Resurrection, 27, 28-31, 78, 83, 109, 
 110, 116, 156, 157, 168, 167, 169; 
 primitive conception of, 28 ; early 
 examples of, 28 ; later form of, 29 ; 
 in Persian religion, 30, 81 ; two 
 forms of, 34 ; social significance 
 of, 34, 49 ; in the religion of Israel, 
 66-70 ; first appearance, in Isaiah, 
 66 ; in Daniel, 66 ; in apocalyptic 
 literature, 67-70; Paul's view of, 
 29, 94, 97 ; of Jesus, 89-108, 179 ; 
 
INDEX 
 
 215 
 
 fact of, 92-96 ; meaning of, 97-101 ; 
 eTidence of, 101-105 ; consequences 
 of, 106-108 ; pathological explana- 
 tion of, 98 ; Christian experience 
 in its bearing upon, 101, 102-104 ; 
 place of, in Christian faith to-day, 
 105, 179, 180 ; permanent truth in 
 doctrine of, 172. 
 
 Righteousness in Messianic age, 57. 
 
 Boman Empire, IIS, 
 
 Romans, 11. 
 
 Rothe, 162. 
 
 Row, 152. 
 
 Royce, 144. 
 
 Russia, 188. 
 
 Sabatieb, Armand, 149, 152. 
 
 Sacraments, 122. 
 
 Saddncees, 82. 
 
 Salmond, 23, 30, 31, 82, 36, 46, 52, 
 63, 54. 
 
 Salvation, Pauline conception of, 
 122 ; conception of, in Catholicism, 
 122. 
 
 Samaritan, 76. 
 
 Sancti&cation instant at death, 124- 
 128. 
 
 Sanhedrim, 90. 
 
 Satisfaction, 122. 
 
 Saul, appearances to, 90 ; conversion 
 of, 91. 
 
 Saviour, 168. See Messiah. 
 
 Scannell, 123, 124. 
 
 Sohultz, E., 152. 
 
 Science, modern, changes produced 
 by, 130-132. 
 
 Servant of Jehovah, 61, 64, 81. 
 
 Shades, 26, 54. 
 
 Sheol, 62, 63, 64, 66, 82, 107, 161 ; 
 primitive view of, 23-28; unsub- 
 stantial character of life in, 25 ; 
 lack of moral meaning in, 25 ; 
 moralisation of, 27, 31-34 ; effect 
 upon the doctrine of the resurrec- 
 tion, 33 ; conception of, in religion 
 of Israel, 53-56 ; causes of the rise 
 
 of the doctrine in Israel, 64 ». ; 
 moralisation of, in religion of 
 Israel, 70-7S ; divisions of, 70. 
 
 Similitudes of Enoch, 70, 71. 
 
 Sisyphus, 42. 
 
 Smith, George Adam, 129. 
 
 Social Gospel, 16. 
 
 aspects of Israel's hope, 56. 
 
 immortality, weakness of, 136, 
 
 137. 
 
 Socialism, attitude to Christianity, 
 134, 135. 
 
 Society of Psychical Research, 157. 
 
 Socrates, 3, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 107. 
 
 Son of God, 163. 
 
 Son of Man, 70, 78. 
 
 Sophocles, 43. 
 
 Soul : view of, in Homer, 25 ; view of, 
 in the Egyptian religion, 32 ; rela- 
 tion to body, 132. 
 
 Spirit: early conception of, as material, 
 23. 
 
 Spiritism, argument for immortality 
 from, 154-156 ; weakness of, 157- 
 159. 
 
 Spirits in prison, 107, 
 
 Spiritual body, difficulty in concep- 
 tion of, 94, 95. 
 
 Stave, 66. 
 
 Stephen, 90. 
 
 Stewart and Tait, 172. 
 
 Suggestion, 155. 
 
 Suppliants, 43. 
 
 Survey, letter in, 201. 
 
 Symbolism, 68, 78. 
 
 Synoptics, 86, 87. 
 
 Tabernacle, pre-existence of, 70. 
 
 Tantalus, 43. 
 
 Tartarus, 26. 
 
 Taylor, 172. 
 
 Tehuti, 32. 
 
 Telepathy, 154. 
 
 Temple, pre-ezistence of, 70, 
 
 TertuUian, 112. 
 
 Tetzel, 124. 
 
216 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
 Thessalonioa, 15. 
 
 Thomas, 90, 93. 
 
 Thompson, W. H., 148. 
 
 Thoth, 32. 
 
 Timaeua, 33. 
 
 Transcendence of later Messianic 
 hope, 68, 69 ; causes of this, 69. 
 
 Transcendent eschatology, merits of, 
 78. 
 
 Transmigration, 9, 10 ; in Greece, 39, 
 46 ; in India, 45 ; depressing char- 
 acter of doctrine, 46 ; Origen's view 
 of, 110. 
 
 Troy, 24. 
 
 Tyndall, 146. 
 
 Undbr-woeld. See Sheol. 
 Universalism 159 162-164. 
 
 VOLZ, 71. 
 
 Wat, 43. 
 Wernle, 107. 
 "Wesley, 141, 170, 174. 
 Westminster Confession, 124, 127. 
 Wheeler, 36, 44. 
 White, Edward, 152. 
 Whitelaw, 43. 
 Wilhelm, 123, 124. 
 Wisdom of Solomon, 72. 
 Wordsworth, 140. 
 
 Xbnophanes, 39, 40. 
 
 Zeus, 26, 41, 42, 43. 
 Zion, 58, 69. 
 
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 Bampton Lecturer, Oxford, 1899. Author of "Studies of the 
 English Mystics," " Truth and Falsehood in Religion," " Personal 
 Idealism and Mysticism," etc. [Ready. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. By the Rev. Hastdjos Rash- 
 DALL, D.Litt. (Oion.), D.C.L. (Dunelm), F.B.A. Fellow and 
 Tutor of New College, Oxford. Author of " The Theory of Good 
 and Evil," etc., etc. [Ready. 
 
REVELATION AND INSPIRATION. By the Rev. James Orr, 
 D.D., Professor of Apologetics in the Theological College of the 
 United Free Church, Glasgow. Author of "The Christian View 
 of God and the World," "The Ritschlian Theology and Evangelical 
 Faith," " The Problem of the Old Testament," etc. [Ready. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL QUESTIONS. By the Rev. WitL- 
 lAM Cunningham, D.D., F.B.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge. Hon. Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. 
 Archdeacon of Ely. Formerly Lecturer on Economic History to 
 Harvard University. Author of "Growth of English History and 
 Commerce," etc. [Ready. 
 
 CHRISTIAN THOUGHT TO THE REFORMATION. By 
 
 Herbert B. Workman, D.Litt., Principal of the Westminster Train- 
 ing College. Author of "The Church of the West in the Middle 
 Ages," "The Dawn of the Reformation," etc. [Ready. 
 
 PROTESTANT THOUGHT BEFORE KANT. By A. C. 
 
 McGiFFERT, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of Church History in the 
 Union Theological Seminary, New York. Author of "The His- 
 tory of Christianity in the Apostolic Age" and "The Apostles' 
 Creed." [Ready. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE: A STUDY IN THE DOCTRINE 
 OF IMMORTALITY. By William Adams Brown, Ph.D., D.D., 
 
 Professor of Systematic Theology in the Union Theological Semi- 
 nary, New York. Author of "The Essence of Christianity" and 
 " Christian Theology in Outline." [Ready. 
 
 A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 By the Rev. George Buchanan Gray, D.D., D.Litt., Professor 
 of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, Mansfield College, Oxford. 
 Author of "The Divine Discipline of Israel," "Studies in Hebrew 
 Proper Names," etc. 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT SINCE KANT. By the 
 
 Rev. Edward Caldwell Moose, D.D., Parkman Professor of 
 Theology in Harvard University. Author of "The New Testa- 
 ment in the Christian Church," etc. 
 
 Other volumes are in preparation and will be announced later. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
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