Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924073574323 Copyright, 1906, by Small, Maijnard S,- Company (Incorporated) All rights reserved The University Press, Cambridge, U. 8. A. A FOREWORD To a scientist who asked of Walt Whitman if he believed that immortalitij would ever he proved, the old poet replied, " Proved — in reality proved: yes. Proved as you understand proved: no. There are certain sorts of truths that may yield their own sort of evidences. Immortality is not speculative — it does not come in response to investigation — it does not give its secret up to the chemist. Immortality is revelation: it flashes itself upon your conscious- ness out of God knows what." The purpose of this volume, therefore, is not to try to present an orderly, rhetorical argument for any theory of immortality, but to bring before the reader a composite picture, as it were of the spiritual intuitions of mankind through the ages. And in the comparison of the multiplicity of opin- ions thus brought together, not the least interesting feature will be to observe how the same basic thought finds its expression varied in transmission through different minds and how it has been affected by limitations of environment, mental training, or the general spirit of the epoch in which it has found utterance; as, indeed, the white light of the sun passing through a cathedral window floods the aisles with the most richly varied hues, which all unite to dispel darkness. It has not been the compiler's intention to select only the unqualified assents to any particular idea of immortality. More or less inherent in all human faith is the element of doubt; perhaps never better exemplified than by these lines, written not by a viii A FOREWORD in this way some idea may be gained of the evolu- tion of the expression of the belief in immortality. It must, however, be frankly admitted that it is only in the most general way that this evolution can be traced, since to no one age or school belongs the clearest perception of the doctrine, but rather to the most spiritually illumined, who appear here and there towering above the rank and file without regard to arbitrary divisions either of time or of geography. Laukens Maynaed. Messrs. Little, Brown, & Company : Lilian Whiting, " The World Beautiful " ; Helen Hunt Jackson, " At Last." Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Company : Frederick IV. H. Myers, " Survival of Personal Identity after Death." The Macmillan Company: Gokhnn Smith, "The Quest of Light"; Li^man Abbott, " The Other Room " ; Newell Dtvight Hillis, " The Influence of Christ on Modern Life." Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Company: Thomson J. Hudson, "A Scientific Demonstration of a Future Life"; Louis L. Bade (Louis Elbe), "Future Life." Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons: Antoinette Brown Blachvell, "The Physical Basis of Immortality " ; Minot J. Savage, " Life after Death." Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons : Henri/ Fan Dyke, " The Poetry of Tennyson " ; Newman Smyth, " The Reality of Faith." Messrs. Herbert B. Turner & Company : " Proofs of Life after Death," edited by Robert J. Thompson, from which the extracts from the following authors have been taken : William T. Stead, James Linjord, William Jennings Bryan, Alfred Russel Wallace, Dimilri Ivanovitch Mendelieff, William T. Harris, Cesare Lom- broso, Albert Etdenberg, Camille Flammarion, Nathaniel S. Shaler, Sir Oliver Lodge, Elmer Gates, Cardinal Gibbons. xu INDEX Page Barbauld, Anna Letitia (1743-1825), English Poet 185 Barnes, William (1801-1886), English Philologist and Poet 196 Barrows, Samuel J. (1845-), American Unitarian Clergyman and Congressman 167 Baxter, Richard (1615-1691), English Noncon- formist Divine 133 Beecher, Henry Ward (1813—1887), American Congregational Clergyman and Orator . . . 151 Beecher, Lyman (1775—1863), American Congre- gational Clergyman (father of preceding) . . 142 St. Bernard (1091-1153), French Ecclesiastic . . 128 Bhavagab-Gita, a religious metaphysical poem in- terwoven in the Maha-Bharata (q.v.) ... 9 Blackwell, Antoinette Brown (1825-), Ameri- can Unitarian Minister and Educator .... 106 Blake, William (1757-1827), English Mystic, Poet, and Engraver 61 Bloede, Gertrude ("Stuart Sterne") (1845-), American Writer (of German birth) .... 235 Bonnet, Charles de (1720-1793), Swiss Natural- ist and Philosopher 99 BowNE, Borden P. (1847-), American Professor of Philosophy 92 Braithwaite, Wm. Stanley (1878-), American Negro Poet 242 Bronte, Emily (1819-1848), EngHsh Novehst . . 216 Brooke, Stopford A. (1832-), Irish Unitarian Clergyman 156 Brooks, Phillips (1835-1893), American Protes- tant Episcopal Bishop 157 xiv INDEX Page Campbell, John McLeod (1800-1872), Scottish Divine 14<5 Caelyle, Thomas (1795-1881), Scotch Historian and Philosopher 67 Carman, Bliss (1861—), American Poet .... 238 Carus, Paul (1852-), American Editor (of German Birth) 81 Cary, Phcebe (1824-1871), American Poet ... 224 Cato, Marcus Pohcius (b. c. 234-149), Roman Phi- losopher 36 Chadwick, John White (1840-1904), American Unitarian Clergyman 164 Chandogya-Upanishad. Sec Upanishads .... 6 Channing, Willlvm Elleey (1780-1848), Ameri- can Unitarian Clergyman 142 Channing, William Ellery (1818-1901) (nephew of preceding), American Poet 212 St. Chrysostom (347P-407), Greek Christian Father, Patriarch of Constantinople .... 127 Chpang Tsze (flourished b. c. 338), Chinese Philoso- pher 35 Cicero, Marcus Tullius (b. c. 106-43), Roman Orator, Philosopher, and Statesman .... 36 St. Clement (P-100), Bishop of Rome from 92 to 100 125 Clough, Arthur Hugh (1819-1861), English Poet 213 CoLERLDGE, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834), Enghsh Philosopher and Poet 188 Confucius (Kong Fu Tsze)(b. c. 551P-473?), Chi- nese Sage 13, 14 Cope, Edward Drinker (1840-), American Zoolo- gist and Paleontologist 114 xvi INDEX Page Campbell, John McLeod (1800-1872), Scottish Divine 145 Caelyle, Thomas (1795-1881), Scotch Historian and Philosopher 67 Carman, Bliss (1861-), American Poet .... 238 Caeus, Paul (1852-), American Editor (of German Birth) 81 Caey, Phoebe (1824-1871), American Poet ... 224 Cato, Maecus Poecius (b. c. 234-149), Roman Phi- losopher 36 Chadwick, John White (1840-1904), American Unitarian Clergyman 164 Chandogya-Upanishad. Sec Upanishads .... 6 Channing, William Elleey (1780-1848), Ameri- can Unitarian Clergyman 142 Channing, William Elleey (1818-1901) (nephew of preceding), American Poet 212 St. Chrysostom (347P-407), Greek Christian Father, Patriarch of Constantinople .... 127 Chfang Tsze (flourished b. c. 338), Chinese Philoso- pher 35 CiCEEO, Maecus Tullius (b. c. 106-43), Roman Orator, Philosopher, and Statesman .... 36 St. Clement (?-100), Bishop of Rome from 92 to 100 125 Clough, Aethue Hugh (1819-1861), English Poet 213 Coleridge, Samuel Tayloe (1772-1834), Enghsh Philosopher and Poet 188 Confucius (Kong Fu Tsze)(b. c. 551.?-473?), Chi- nese Sage 13, 14 Cope, Edward Drinker (1840-), American Zoolo- gist and Paleontologist 114 xvi INDEX Page DwiGHT, Timothy (1752-1817), American Congre- gational Clergyman, President of Yale Univer- sity 139 Edda, The Eldek, ]\Iythical and Heroic Scandina- vian Songs, collected by Saemund Sigfusson, an Icelandic Priest of Eleventh Century .... 43 Edwards, Jonathan (1703-1757), American Con- gregational Divine and Metaphysician . . . 138 "Elbe, Louis" (Louis L. Bade) (184?-), French Mining Engineer 119 " Eliot, George " (Mary Ann Evans [Lewes] Cross) (1819-1880), English Novehst ... 213 Emeeson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882), American Philosopher and Poet 69, 198 Epictetus (50—125), Greek Stoic Philosopher . . 41 EuLENBEEG, Albert (1840-), German Neuro- pathologist 114 Euripides (b. c. 480-406), Greek Tragic Poet . . 31 Evelyn, John (1620-1706), English Diarist . . 48 Everett, Charles Carroll (1839-1900), Ameri- can Unitarian Clergyman 163 Fenelon, Francois de Salignac de la Motte (1651-1715), French Ecclesiastic and Writer . 134 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762-1814), German Philosopher 62 FiGuiEE, Louis (1819-1894), French Chemist and Scientist 102 FisKE, John (1832—1901), American Historian and Philosopher 75 xviii INDEX Page GoEDON, Geobge a. (1853-), American Congrega- tional Clergyman 169 Gould, Benjamin Apthorp (18241-1896), Ameri- can Mathematician and Astronomer .... 104 Geay, Asa (1810-1888), American Botanist . . . 101 Greeley, Horace (1811-1872), American Jour- nalist 70 St. Gregory the Great (540-604), Roman Pontiff 128 St. Gregory op Nyssa (332P-395?), Greek Chris- tian Father 126 Guthrie, Thomas (1803-1873), Scottish Divine and Moral Reformer 147 Hall, Asaph (1829-), American Mathematician and Astronomer 108 Hall, Robert (1764-1831), English Baptist Clergyman 140 Hanna, William (1808-1882), Scottish Free Church Clergyman 149 Hardenburg, Friedrich von (" Novalis ") (1772— 1801), Prussian Romancer and Poet .... 65 Harris, William Torre y (1835-), United States Commissioner of Education 112 Hayne, Paul Hamilton (1830-1886), American Poet 227 Hecker, Isaac Thomas (1819-1888), American Roman Catholic Priest, Founder of Paulist Fathers 152 Helmont, Jan Baptista Van (1577-1644), Flem- ish Physiologist and Chemist 99 Heeaclitos (flourished b. c. 500), Greek Philoso- pher 30 XX INDEX Page Innocent III, Roman Pontiff (1161-1216) ... 128 Jackson, Helen Hunt (" H. H.") (1831-1885), American Writer 229 James, William (1842-), American Psychologist . 82 Jeffries, Richakd (1848-1887), English Essayist 79 JoHNES, Edwakd Rodolph (1852-1903), American Lawyer and Author 78 Johnson, Samuel (1709-1764), English Essayist and Lexicographer 55 Johnson, Samuel (1822-1882), American Non- Sectarian Clergyman 154, 222 Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804), German Philosopher 56 Kaushitaki-Upanishad. See Upanishads ... 6 Kempis, St. Thomas a (1379-1471), German Monk, Reputed Author of The Imitation of Christ . . 129 King, Thomas Stare. (1824-1864), American Uni- tarian Clergyman 155 Knowles, Frederic Lawrence (1869—1905), American Poet 241 Knox, John (1505-1572), Scottish Theologian and Reformer 131 Koran, The Sacred Book of the Mohammedans, given by Mohammed (q.v.) 16 Lao-Tsze (flourished 500 b. c), Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Taoism 31 Leighton, Robert (1613-1684), Archbishop of Glasgow 132 Lincoln, Abraham (1809—1863), American States- man and President 70 xxii INDEX Page Maukice, Frederick Denison (1805-1872), Eng- lish Broad Church Divine 148 Maximus TvEirs (Second Century a. d.), Tyrian Philosopher 43 McLeod, Norman (1812-1872), Scottish Clergy- man and Author 150 Mencius (Meng Tsze) (b. c. 372-289), Chinese Philosopher 34 Mendelieff, Dimitri I. (1834-), Russian Chemist . Ill Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475—1564), Italian Sculptor, Painter, and Poet 47 Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873), EngHsh Philos- opher 71 Miller, Joasuin (1841-), American Poet . . . 226 Milton, John (1608-1674), Enghsh Poet and Statesman 180 Mohammed (570-632), Arab Prophet, founder of the Religion of Islam 16 Montesquieu, Charles de Second at. Baron (1689— 1755), French Jurist 52 Montgomery, James (1771-1854), English Poet . 188 MooEE, Charles Leonard (1854-), American Writer 236 MouNTFORD, William (1816-1885), American Uni- tarian Clergyman of Enghsh Birth .... 151 MoxoM, Philip S. (1848-), American Liberal Clergyman 168 MiJLLER, Friedrich Max (1823-1900), Geraian Orientalist 104 MiJNSTERBERG, HuGO (1863-), American Psycholo- gist of German Birth, Professor in Harvard University 93 xxiv INDEX Page Plato (b. c. 4>27-347), Greek Philosopher, Disciple of Socrates 33 Plotinus (206-270), Egyptian Neo-Platonic Phi- losopher 42 Plutarch (50-120), Greek Biographer .... 40 Pope, Alexakdee, (1688-1744), Enghsh Poet and Satirist 184 Pkemanand, Bhaeati Baba (186-.''-) Hindu Monk in America 86 Pythagokas (b. c. 586-497), Greek Philosopher . 29 Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552-1618), English Statesman and Navigator 175 Ramayana, One of the two great Epics of India forming a material part of her Scriptures . . 8 See also Mara-Bharata. Remsen, Ira (1846—), American Chemist and Edu- cator 120 Renan, Ernest (1823-1892), French Orientalist and Rationalist 75 Reynolds, Edward (1599-1676), English Bishop . 132 RiCHTER, JoHANN Paul Friedrich (" Jean Paul ") (1763-1825) German NoveKst 63 Rig Veda. See Vedas. Robertson, Frederick W. (1816-1853), English Anghcan Preacher 151 Rossetti, Christina Georgina (1830-1894), Eng- lish Poet 228 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882), English Pre-Raphaelite Painter and Poet 225 Rousseau, Jean Jacsues (1712-1778), French Philosopher 65 xxvi INDEX Page Stewaet, Dugald (1753-1828), Scotch Metaphy- sician 59 Stowe, Harkiet Beecheh (1812-1896), American Novelist 71,211 SwEDENBOKG, Emanuel (1688-1772), Swedish Mystic 136 Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-), EngHsh Poet 232 Symonds, John Adbington (1840-1893), English Critic and Essayist 233 Tabb, John Banister (1845-), American Roman Catholic Priest and Poet 235 Talavakara-Upanishad 7 See Upanishads. Taylor, Jeremy (1613-1667), EngHsh Bishop and Author 133 Tennyson, Alfred (1809-1892), English Poet Laureate 205 Thales (flourished B.C. 650), Greek Philosopher and Mathematician 28 Tolstoy, Count Lyoe Nicolaievitch (1828-), Russian Novelist and Social Reformer ... 74 Trench, Richard Chenevix (1807-1886), English Rhetorician, Archbishop of Dublin .... 244! Tyner, Paul (I860-), American Editor and Writer 91 Upanishads, That portion of the Vedas (q.v.) which contains the mystical doctrine of the Hindus on the Nature of God and his relation to the soul . 6, 7 Van Dyke, Henry (1852-), American Clergyman and Essayist 80 xxviii INDEX Page Zend-Avesta, The Sacred Book of the Parsees . . IS See Zoroastei'. ZoKOASTEE (Zarathustra) (probably flourished about 1000 B. c). The founder of the reHgion of the Parsees 11 ZSCHOKKE, JOHANN Heinkich D. (1771-1848), German Author 65 XXX T^ASSAGE indeed O Soul to primal thought, -* Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness. The young maturity of brood and bloom. To realms of budding bibles O Soul repressless, I with thee and thou with me. Thy circumnavigation of the world begin. Of man, the voyage of his mind's return. To reason's early paradise. Back, back to Wisdom's birth, to innocent intuitions Again with fair creation. Walt Whitman. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY WHERE is light inexhaustible; in the world where is placed the shining sky; set me in this immortal, unending world, O thou that puri- fiest thyself. Where is King, the son of Vivasvant, and the paradise of the sky; where are the flowing waters; there make me immortal. Where one can go as he will, in the third heaven, the third vault of the sky; where are worlds full of light, there make me immortal. Where are wishes and desires and the red [sun]'s highest place; where one can follow his own habits and have satisfaction, there make me immortal. Where exists delight, joy, rejoicing, and joj^ance; where wishes are obtained, there make me immortal. A Hymn from The Rig Veda. rp HE strong heroes, born together and nourished -*- together, have further grown to real beauty. They shine brilliantly like the rays of the sun; when they went in triumph the chariots followed. Your greatness, O maruts, is to be honored ; it is to be yearned for like the sight of the sun. Place us also in immortality; when they went in triumph the chariots followed. O maruts, strong and wise, with sun-bright skins, I choose the sacrifice for you here and there. We sacrifice to Tryambaka, the sweet- scented, wealth-increasing. May I be detached 4 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY and soars to the skies, so shall the soul soar to the dwelling of Brahnia, casting aside its perishable raiment. From the Laws of Manu. TNDRA said: I am prana, meditate on me as -'■the conscious self, as life, as immortality. Life is prana, prana is life. Immortality is prana, prana is immortality. As long as prana dwells in this body, so long surely there is life. By prana he obtains immortality in the other world, by knowl- edge of true conception. He who meditates on me as life and immortality, gains his full life in this world, and obtains in the Svarga world immor- tality and indestructibility. From the Kaushitaki-Upanishad. A S people who do not know the country, walk ■^*-again and again over a gold treasure that has been hidden somewhere in the earth, and do not dis- cover it, thus do all these creatures day after day go into the Brahma- world ; they are merged in Brah- man while asleep, and yet do not discover the true Self in Brahman, dwelling in the heart. Now that serene being which, after having risen from out this earthly body and having reached the 6 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY increase the other; i. e., they increase these bodies (by food), but this being (breath) is immortal. He who knows this becomes immortal in that world, and is seen as immortal by all beings; yea, by all beings. From the Aitareya-Aranyaka. "DE CAUSE, my boy, in innocence, by wicked ■'-' deed thou hast been slain, Rise, where the heroes dwell, who thence ne'er stoop to this dark world again. Those that to earth return no more, the sense-sub- dued, the hermits wise. Priests their sage masters that adore, to their eternal seats arise. Those that have studied to the last the Veda's, the Vedanga's page. Where saintly kings of earth have passed, Nahusa's and Yayate sage ; The sires of holy families, the true to wedlock's sacred vow; And those that cattle, gold, or rice, or lands, with liberal hands bestow. That ope th' asylum to th' oppressed, that ever love, and speak the truth; Up to the dwellings of the blest, th' eternal, soar thou, best-loved youth. For none of such a holy race within the lowest seat may dwell; 8 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY Of other and of other Hfe-abodes, Which the wise know, and. fear not. This that irks thy sense-life, thrilling to the elements — Bringing thee heat and cold, sorrows and joys, 'T is brief and mutable ! Bear with it, Prince ! As the wise bear. The soul which is not moved. The soul that with a strong and constant calm Takes sorrow and takes joy indifferently, Lives in the life undying! That which is can never cease to be ; That which is not will not exist. To see this truth of both Is theirs who part essence from accident. Substance from shadow. Indestructible, Learn thou! the life is, Spreading life through all ; It cannot anywhere, by any means. Be anywise diminished, stayed, or changed. * * * * He who shall say, " Lo! I have slain a man! " He who shall think, " Lo! I am slain! " Those both know naught! Life cannot slay. Life is not slain! Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never; Never was the time it was not; end and beginning are dreams! Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit forever; 10 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY TTEAVEN is lofty, exalted, and supreme, most ■*■ ■'■briUiant, most fragrant, and most pure, most [supplied withj beautiful existences, most desir- able, and most good, and the place and abode of the sacred beings. And in it are all comfort, pleas- ure, joy, happiness, and welfare, more and better even than the greatest and supremest welfare and pleasure in the world; and there is no want, pain, distress, or discomfort whatever in it; and its pleasantness and the welfare of the angels are from that constantly beneficial place, the full and un- diminishable space, the good and boundless world. And the freedom of the heavenly, from danger, from evil in heaven is like unto their freedom from disturbance, and the coming of the good angels is like unto the heavenly one's own good works pro- vided. This prosperity and welfare of the spiritual existence is more than that of the world, as much as that which is unlimited and everlasting is more than that which is limited and demoniacal. The man who has constantly contended against evil, morally and physically, outwardly and in- wardly, may fearlessly meet death; well assured that radiant Spirits will lead him across the lumi- nous bridge into a paradise of eternal happiness. . . . Souls risen from the graves will know each other, and say, That is my father or my brother, my wife or my sister. The wicked will say to the good. Wherefore, when I was in the world, did 12 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY npHEY [the spirits of ancestors] are everywhere, -■■ above us, to right, to left, and they encompass us on all sides. These spirits, however, for all that they are subtle and imperceptible, make themselves manifest in the corporeal forms of being. But by the very nature of their essence, they cannot mani- fest themselves independently under any real form whatever. Confucius. From the Yih-King. rpHE evil-doer mourns in this world, and he will -*- mourn in the next world : in both worlds has he sorrow. He grieves, he is tormented, seeing the evil of his deeds. The virtuous man rejoices in this world, and he win rejoice in another world: in both worlds hath he joy. He rejoices, he exults, seeing the virtue of his deeds. As kindred, friends, and dear ones salute him who hath travelled far and returned home safe, so will good deeds welcome him who goes from this world and enters another. From the Dhammapada of Gautama the Buddha. OOKING through all the conditions of life, 'from first to last nought is free from destruc- 14 IXTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY 'T^HE effect of water poured on the root of a -^ tree is seen aloft in the branches and fruit; so in the next world are seen the effects of good deeds performed here. From the Buddhist Scriptures; Siam. rpHERE are treasures laid up in the heart — ■ -'■ treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death, when he leaves this world. From the Buddhist Scriptures ; Ceylon. "IVTAN never dies. The soul inhabits the body ■^ -*-for a time, and leaves it again. The soul is myself; the body is only my dwelling-place. Birth is not birth; there is a soul already existent when the body comes to it. Death is not death; the soul merely departs, and the body falls. It is because men see only their bodies, that they love life and hate death. From the Buddhist Scriptures ; China. 17" NOW ye that this world's life is a cheat; the ■*^^ multiplying of riches and children is like the plants that spring up after rain, rejoicing the hus- 16 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God : Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me. From the Book of Job. T WILL ransom them from the power of the grave ; -'■ I will redeem them from death : O death, I will be thy plague ; O grave, I will be thy destruction. From the Prophecy of Hosea. A ND many of them that sleep in the dust of *~*-the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt, And they that be wise shall shine as the bright- ness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever. From the Book of Daniel. OUT 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, 18 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I wiU raise him up at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. * * * * Let not your heart be troubled: ye 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. I go to pre- pare a place for you. . . . Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I hve, ye shall hve also. The words of Jesus. From the Gospel according to St. John. T^OR God so loved the world, that he gave His •*- only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. St. John. 20 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal hfe through Jesus Christ our Lord. St. Paul. From the Epistle to the Romans. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of tlie flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. St. Paul. From the Epistle to the Galatians. A ND God shall wipe away all tears from their ■^*- eyes ; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And there shall be no more curse : but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there ; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for- ever and ever. 22 /^OD that made the world and all things therein, ^^-^ . . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. St. Paul to the Athenians. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY all the sins of their lives, and to wash them away they must go back to earth. But the strong and the pure depart to the sun of Dionysus. From the Orphic Hymns. "l^rRAPPED in fluid-like envelopes rendering ' ' them invisible, the souls of the righteous wan- der over the earth wielding their regal powers. They mark the good and evil deeds, and they extend their special protection to such as they have loved in life. As to the souls of the wicked, they are held in Tartarus, where they are punished by the ever-present memory of the crimes which they committed. Hesiod. Death does not differ at all from life. Thales. 'T^O one who said to Anaxagoras, " Hast thou *■ no regard for thy fatherland? " " Softly," said he, " I have great regard for my fatherland," pointing to heaven. Related by Diogenes Laertius. 28 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITV l\/r OTHER, leave thy grief, remembering the ■^ -'-soul which Zeus has rendered immortal and undecaying to me for all time, and has carried now into the starry sky. Greek Epitaph on a Daughter's Grave. "V/TY child, the consuming fire of the funeral pile -'■ -■-quells not the spirit of the dead, but in after times he shows his math. The dead is bewailed, and he who wrongs him is discovered. Aeschylus. AN honorable, virtuous man may rest assured as to his future fate. The souls of the lawless, departing from this life, suffer punishment. . . . But the good lead a life without a tear among those honored by the gods for having always delighted in virtue. Pindar. m; FY body must descend to the place ordained, '■but my soul will not descend: being a thing immortal, it will ascend on high, where it will enter a heavenly abode. HeracHtus. 30 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY It would be MTong for me not to be grieved to die, if I did not think I should go to wise and good deities, and dwell with men who have departed from this life, and are better than any who are here. That I shall go to deities who are perfectly good, I can assert positively, if I can assert anything of the kind. And be assured . . . that I entertain a good hope that something awaits those who die, and that it will be better for the good than for the evil, as has been said long since. There can no evil befall a good man, whether he be alive or dead. ^h^>mk|, He who fulfils his duty here on earth with Constancy, despite all difficulties, and who bears all adversities with resignation to the Divine will, must enjoy the reward of his virtues hereafter. Socrates. T FOR my part, my dear children, can never be -■-' quite persuaded that the soul only lives so long as it inhabits this mortal body, and dies when it is separated from it. Nor have I been able to take for granted that the soul loses its power of thought when it is separated from the body, which certainly cannot think. At the very moment when the spirit is set free, unalloyed and pure, will it not naturally also become more inteUigent? . . . Remember, too, 32 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY from a prison, will arrive at a pure abode above, and live Avithout bodies through all fuLure time. They will arrive at habitations more beautiful than it is easy to describe. Plato. XTOW then, if it is as has been said, you must ^^ then plainly acknowledge that the body can neither see nor hear nor comprehend anything with- out the power of the soul which dwells in it during life: but the body itself, which has a longing for eating and drinking, and for amusements, is a hin- derance to the soul to acquire the great preferences. When the soul separates from the body, however, it parts with that which prevented its perfection. Hence you who maintain to be wise and learned, who despise all earthly pleasures as you are obliged to do, why do you fear and recoil at death? If the root is already agreeable to you how much more so must be the fruit? Happy is the soul which has not contaminated itself and which comprehends its Creator, for it re- turns to the place of its origin, joyful and blissful. Aristotle. THE body is our dwelling-place and the soul the immortal guest which lodges there. Mencius. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY /^H, glorious day, when I shall remove from ^^this confused crowd to join the divine assembly of souls! For I shall go not only to meet great men, but also my own son Cato. His spirit, looking back upon me, departed to that place whither he knew that I should soon come; and he has never deserted me. If I have borne his loss with courage, it is that I consoled myself with the thought that our separation would not be for long. Attributed by Cicero to Cato the Elder. n^HERE is, I know not how, in the minds of -^ men, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence; and this takes the deepest root, and is most discernible in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls. If a life of happiness is to end, it cannot be called a happy life. . . . Take away eternity, and Jupiter is not better off than Epicurus. What signify descendants, a famous name, the adoption of children, solicitude about the disposal of money, monuments on graves, panegyrics on the dead, if we do not think of the future? 36 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY the darkness of the grave, all an emjity name, mere themes for poets, and fables of a world that never was! Whether the body be consumed by fire or moulder away in the ground, think not that it suffers. It is the soul that is undying, which, when it has left its former habitation, dwells forever in new abodes, and repeats new life in other forms. ^^ Ovid. I S there a doubt that a God dwells in our breast, and that souls return to heaven and reach it? Manilius. TT is childish to go out of the world groaning -'■ and wailing, as we came into it. Our bodies must perish, as being only the covering of the soul. We shall then discover the secrets of nature: the dark- ness shall be dispersed, and our souls irradiated with light and glory — a glory without a shadow ; a glory that shall surround us, and from whence we shall look down and see day and night beneath us. If we cannot lift up our eyes toward the lamp of heaven without dazzling, what shall we do when we come to behold the divine light in its illustrious original? That death which we so much dread, and decline, is not a termination, but the intermission of a life which will return again. 88 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY "VT'E deem that the shades are not interred in -■■ Erebus' dark reahn, but that the soul returns to people other bodies in new worlds. The same soul rules other limbs in other worlds. If that which your hymns sing is truth, death is but an interlude in a long life. But his soul was not laid in ashes at Pharos, nor could a little heap of dust contain so great a shade ; it leapt from the pyre, and . . . sprung toward the vaulted throne of the Thunderer. . . . After he had feasted himself on the pure light, and ad- mired the wandering planets and pole-fixed stars, he beheld the mist of darkness that enfolds our brightest days and mocked the farce called death, in which his own maimed body lay. Lucan. "VTOT by lamentations and mournful chants -*- ^ ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns ; for in ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a di- viner hfe. Can we think that God so little considers his own actions, or is such a waster of his time in trifles, that if we had nothing of divine within us, . . . nothing permanent and stable, but were only poor creatures that (according to Homer's expression) faded and 40 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY own time to come into existence, but when the universe had need of thee. A bad man loses all in Death; but Virtue is eternal. Epictetus. "PPICTETUS would have a man when he is ■■-^kissing and caressing his child, say to himself at the same time: To-morrow perhaps you may die and leave me. These are words of evil omen, you will say. That is your mistake; the conse- quences of mortality and the course of nature are no ominous things to think on, otherwise it would be an ominous business to cut down a little grass or corn. Grapes are first sour, then ripe, then raisins ; these are all no more than bare alterations; not into nothing, but into something which does not appear at present. Marcus Aurelius. 'T^HE soul leaving the body becomes that power -*- which it has most developed. Let us fly, then, from here below, and rise to the intellectual world, that we may not fall into a purely sensible life, by allowing ourselves to follow sensible images; or into a vegetative life, by abandoning ourselves to 42 'PHILOSOPHY , when superficially studied, -*■ excites doubt; when thoroughly explored it dispels it. A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to athe- ism, but depth of philosophy bringeth a mans mind about to religion. The road to true philosophy is precisely the same with that which leads to true religion; and from both one and the other, unless we would enter in as little children, we must expect to be totally excluded. Lord Bacon. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY fear either love or hatred of things mortal. Con- sidering himself as the master, and that he ought not to be servant and slave to his body, which he \\'ould regard as only the prison which holds his liberty in confinement, the glue which smears his wings, chains which bind fast his hands, stocks which fix his feet, veil which hides his view. Let him not be servant, captive, ensnared, chained, idle, stolid, and blind; for the body which he himself abandons cannot tyrannize over him; so that thus, the spirit in a certain degree comes before him as the corporeal world, and matter is subject to the divinity and to nature. Thus vdll he become strong against fortune, magnanimous toward injuries, intrepid toward poverty, disease and persecution. Giordano Bruno. WE adorn graves with flowers and redolent plants, just emblems of the life of man, which has been compared in the Holy Scripture to those fading beauties whose roots, being buried m dishonor, rise again in glory. John Evelyn. I THANK God I have not those straight hga- ments or narrow obligations to the world as to dote on life, or be convulst and tremble at the name 48 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY makes me naturally love a soldier, and honor those tattered and contemptible regiments that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a pagan, there may be some motives to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma, that he is too sen- sible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come. Sir Thomas Browne. rr^HE immortality of the soul is a matter that -^ concerns us so much, that affects us so deeply, that we must have lost all sentiment if its investiga- tion leaves us indifferent. All our actions and thoughts follow paths so different, varying accord- ing to the hope of gaining eternal blessings or not, that it is impossible to take any sensible or judicious step without regulating it from this standpoint, which must be our final object. Let us not consider the faithful, who are de- parted in the grace of God, as having ceased to live; although Nature suggests it; but as begin- ning to live, which is the testimony of truth. Let us not consider their souls as perished and anni- hilated, but as quickened and united to the Sover- eign of life. . . . The soul suffers and dies to sin, in repentance and baptism. The soul is raised to a new life in the 50 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY knowledge of God, we may know God better than we know ourselves. This knowledge in time, leads to the love of God which is the soul's union with him. The union of the soul with God is its second birth, and therein consists man's immortality and freedom. Benedict Spinoza. TF the immortality of the soul were an error, I -^should be sorry not to believe it. I avow that I am not so humble as the atheist ; I know not how they think, but for me, I do not wish to exchange the idea of immortality against that of the beati- tude of one day. I delight in believing myself as immortal as God himself. Independently of re- vealed ideas, metaphysical ideas give me a vigorous hope of my eternal well-being, which I would never renounce. Baron Montesquieu. rr^HERE is not, in my opinion, a more pleasing -■■ and triumphant consideration in religion than this, of the perpetual progress which the soul makes toward the perfection of its nature, without ever arriving at a period of it. To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength; to consider that she is to shine forever, with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will 52 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY effectual means to awaken in us an ambition raised above low objects and little pursuits, than to value ourselves as heirs of eternity. John Huo-hes. T IFE is rather a state of embryo, a preparation -*— 'for hfe. A man is not completely born until he has passed through death. I look upon death to be as necessarj'^ to our con- stitution as sleep; we shall rise refreshed in the morning. Benjamin Franklin. The Boby OF Benjamin Franklin Printer (Like the Cover of an old Book Its contents torn out And stript of its lettering and gilding) Lies here food for worms. But the work shall not be lost For it will (as he believed) appear once more In a new and more elegant edition Revised and corrected by The Author. Benjamin Franklin's Epitaph, written by himself. 54 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY of the elements, and the endless vicissitudes of human affairs, he is assured of an immortal fame among all the sons of men. There surely is a Being who presides over the universe; and who with infi- nite wisdom and power has reduced the jarring elements into just order and proportion. Let spec- ulative reasoners dispute how far this beneficent Being extends his care, and whether he prolongs our existence beyond the grave, in order to bestow on virtue its just reward, and render it fully tri- umphant. The man of morals, without deciding anything on so dubious a subject, is satisfied with the portion marked out to him by the supreme Dis- poser of all things. Gratefully he accepts of that further reward prepared for him; but if disap- pointed, he thinks not virtue an empty name, but justly esteeming it its own reward, he gratefully acknowledges the bounty of his Creator, who, by calling him into existence, has thereby afforded him an opportunity of once acquiring so invaluable a possession. D^vid Hume. T HE summum bonum is only possible on the supposition of the immortality of the soul. The death of the body may indeed be the end of the sensational use of our mind, but only the begin- ning of the intellectual use. The body would thus 56 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun which seems to our eyes to set in the night, but is really gone to diffuse its light elsewhere. Even while sinking it remains the same sun. It is to a thinking being quite impossible to think himself non-existent, ceasing to think and live; so far does every one carry in himself the proof of immortality quite spontaneously. But as soon as the man determines to be objective and go out of himself, so soon as he thinks dogmatically to grasp a personal duration in order to bolster up in cockney fashion that inward assurance, he is lost in contradictions. To me, the eternal existence of my soul is proved from my idea of activity. If I work incessantly till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of existence, when the present can no longer sustain my spirit. I am not dreaming, I am not deluded. Nearer to the grave new light streams for me. We shall continue to exist. We shall see each other again. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 68 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY the hypothesis of annihilation for those sufferings which commonly put a period to the existence of man. 7. The discordance between our moral judg- ments and feelings and the course of human affairs. 8. The analogy of the material world, in some parts of which the most complete and the most sys- tematical order may be traced; and of which our views always become the more satisfactory the wider our knowledge extends. It is the supposition of a future state alone that can furnish a key to the present disorders of the moral world ; and without it many of the most striking phenomena of human life must remain forever inexplicable. 9. The inconsistency of supposing that the moral laws which regulate the course of human affairs have no reference to anything beyond the limits of the present scene; when all the bodies which compose the visible universe appear to be related to each other, as parts of one great physical system. Of the different considerations now mentioned, there is not one perhaps which, taken singly, would be sufficient to establish the truth they are brought to prove, but taken in conjunction, their force appears irresistible. They not only all terminate in the same conclusion, but they mutually reflect light on each other; they have that sort of consis- tency and connection among themselves which could hardly be supposed to take place among a series of false propositions. Dugald Stewart. 60 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY on the planets, for whose sake the planets were prepared, is not as closely connected? In Nature everything is connected, like body and spirit. Our future destination is a new link in the chain of our being, which connects itself with the present link most minutely, and by the most subtle progression ; as our earth is connected with the sun, and as the moon is connected with our earth. When death bursts the bonds of limitation, God will transplant us, like flowers, into quite other fields, and surround us with entirely different circumstances. Who has not experienced what new faculties are given to the soul by a new situation? — faculties which, in our old corner, in the stifling atmosphere of old circum- stances and occupations, we had never imagined ourselves capable of? In these matters, we can do nothing but conjecture. But whatever I may be, through whatever worlds I may be led, I know that I shall forever remain in the hands of the Father who brought me hither, and who calls me further on. Johann Gottfried von Herder. T SHALL not die for myself, but only for others -'■ — for those surviving me, from whose company I shall be torn ; for myself the hour of death is the hour of birth to a new glorious life. . . . All death in nature is birth, and at the moment of death appears visibly the rising of life. There G2 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY T^EATH is not a cutting off of being, but a ■■—'transition, a passing from one form of being to another. Both conditions, here and hereafter, so depend on each other, and are so inseparably con- nected, that the first moment there can only com- mence with the last moment here^ when the perfect development of the being is completed. Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt. T T is only our mortal duration that we measure by -"■visible and measurable objects; and there is nothing mournful in the contemplation for one who knows that the Creator made him to be the image of his own Eternity, and who feels that in the desire for immortality he has sure proof of his capacity for it. Robert Southey. " "pAID the debt of nature." No; it is not pay- -■■ ing a debt: it is rather like bringing a note to a bank to obtain solid gold in exchange for it. In this case you bring this cumbrous body, which is nothing worth, and which you could not wish to retain long: you lay it down, and receive for it from the eternal treasuries, liberty, victory, knowl- edge, rapture. John Foster. 64 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY THE sublime attainments which man has been capable of making in science, and the wonders of his own creative art in that magnificent scene to which he has known how to give new magnifi- cence, have been considered by many as themselves proofs of the immortality of a being so richly endowed. When we view him, indeed, compre- hending in his single conception, the events of ages that have preceded him, and not content with the past, anticipating events that ai'e to begin only in ages as remote in futurity as the origin of the universe is in the past, measuring the distance of the remotest planets, and naming in what year of other centuries, the nations that are now gazing with astonishment on some comet, are to gaze on it on its return, it is scarcely possible for us to believe that a mind which seems equally capacious of what is infinite in space and time, should only be a crea- ture whose brief existence is measurable by a few points of space and a few moments of eternity. Dr. Thomas Brown. T^OES this soul within me, this spirit of thought, -*-^ dissolve as well as the body? Has nature, who quenches our bodily thirst, who rests our weariness, and perpetually encourages us to endeavor on- wards, prepared no food for this appetite of immortality? Leigh Hunt. 66 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY passage. Can the earth, which is but dead, and a vision, resist Sjsirits, which have reality, and are ahve? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped in. The last rear of the host wiU read traces of the earliest ^-an. But whence? O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; faith knows not; only that it is through mystery into mystery, from God to God. Eternity, which cannot be far off, is my one strong city. I look into it fixedly now and then. All terrors about it seem to me superfluous. The universe is full of love and of inexorable sternness and veracity: and it remains forever true that God reigns. Patience, silence, hope. Thomas Carlyle. T CANNOT beheve that earth is man's abiding- -'■ place. It can't be that our life is cast up by the ocean of eternity to float a moment upon its waves and then sink into nothingness: else why is it that the glorious aspirations which leap like angels from the temple of our heart are forever wandering about unsatisfied? . . . We are born for a higher destiny tlian that of earth : there is a realm where the rain- bow never fades, where the stars will be spread before us like islands that slumber in the ocean; and where the beings that pass before us Uke shadows will stay in our presence forever. Edward George Buhver (Lord Lytton). 68 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY give grounds for. The real evidence is too subtle or is higher than we can write down, and therefore Wordsworth's " Ode " is the best modern essay on the subject. It is curious to find the self-same feeling, that it is not immortality, but eternity, — not duration, but a state of abandonment to the Highest, and so the sharing of His perfection, — appearing in the farthest east and west. The human mind takes no account of geography, language or legends, but in all utters the same instinct. Our dissatisfaction with any other solution is the blazing evidence of immortality. R. W. Emerson. OURELY God would not have created such a ^ being as man, with an ability to grasp the infi- nite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality. Abraham Lincoln. nPHOSE who discharge promptly and faithfully -*- all their duties to those who still live in the flesh, can have but little time left for prying into the life beyond the grave ; and it is better to deal with each in its proper order. Horace Greeley. 70 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY away whose reality is justified only in transitory phase of the world's cause. That this principle admits of no further appHcation in human hands need hardly be said. We surely know not the merits which may give to one being a claim on eternity, nor the defects which would cut others off. Rudolph Hermann Lotze. VX fHAT the thing is which we call ourselves we * * know not. It may be true, and I for one care not if it be, that the descent of our mortal bodies may be traced through an ascending series to some glutinous jelly formed on the rocks of the primeval ocean. It is nothing to me how the Maker of me has been pleased to construct the organized substance which I call my body. It is mine, but it is not me. The intellectual spirit, being an essence, I believe to be an imperishable something engen- dered in us from a higher source. James Anthony Froude. "V/TOST earnestly would I again urge upon those -^ -'- who cherish the doctrine of immortality, not to defend it, as they too often do, by arguments which have a basis smaller than the doctrine itself. I long to see this glorious tenet rescued from the juris- diction of a narrow and sectarian theology, which, 72 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY mental depend upon the casual ; they support what is permanent by what is ephemeral; and with their books, their dogmas, their traditions, their rituals, their records, and their other perishable contriv- ances, they seek to prove what was known to the M'orld before these existed, and what, if these were to die away would still be known, and would remain the common heritage of the human species, and the consolation of myriads yet unborn. The belief in a future state approaches certainty nearer than any other belief, and it is the one which, if eradicated, would drive most of us to despair. Henry Thomas Buckle. ATEN who have renounced their individual hap- -^'^-'- piness, never doubt their immortality. Christ knew that he would continue to live after death because he had already entered into the true life which cannot cease. He lived even then in the rays of that other centre of life toward which he was advancing, and he saw them reflected on those who stood around him. And this every man who renounces his own good beholds; he passes in this life into a new relation with the world for which there is no death, and this experience gives him an immovable faith in the stability, immortality, and eternal growth of life. Count Tolstoy. 74 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work. Who can tell but that this which we call life is really death, from which what we call death is an awakening? From this vantage ground of thought the human soul comes to look without dread upon the termination of this terrestrial existence. The failure of the bodily powers, the stoppage of the fluttering pulse, . . . the breaking of the ties of love, the loss of all that has given value to exist- ence, . . . aU this is seized upon by the sovereign imagination of man and transformed into a scene of transcending glory, such as in all the vast career of the universe is reserved for humanity alone. In the highest of creatures the Divine immanence has acquired sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the dissolution of the flesh and assert an individuality untrammelled by the limitations which in the present life everywhere persistently sur- rounds it. Upon this view death is not a calamity but a boon, not a punishment inflicted upon Man, but the supreme manifestation of his exceptional prerogative as chief among God's creatures. John Fiske. pENSIVE and faltering, ■^ The words the Dead I write. For living are the Dead, 76 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY The facts are well known to every intelligent student of psychic science. The conclusions are my own. But I submit that I am justified, upon a careful analysis of man's subjective faculties thus revealed, in holding that they proclaim his Divine origin, and enable us to declare that if Nature is constant there cannot have been created such a man- hood without a mission, such powers without a pur- pose, such faculties without a function, other than those in evidence in our earthly environment. What the nature of the future life may be no one this side of the grave can know with certainty. But, since there can be no faculty without a func- tion, the same analysis of our subjective faculties reveals the fact that we shall enter the future life well equipped for a highly intellectual and social existence. Thomson J. Hudson. npHE real life of the wheat commences when its -^ delicate and tender shoots appear above the ground to be soothed by the rain and caressed by the breeze, and to feel the gentle kisses of the warming sunbeams. Let us think of our spiritual substance as real, animating our whole body, and yearning to throw aside its worn-out garb, to drink in the joy of unfettered life in Heaven, which is here all around us, and where we will know as we are known. Edward Rodolph Johnes. 78 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY /^F immortality I say nothing. That cannot, ^^fi'om the nature of things, be demonstrated. But of a hfe after death — a hfe in which those who hve on this side of the grave retain their iden- tity in the other world — that may yet be demon- strated by tests as exact and as conclusive as any of which the science of psychology admits. . . . When dust returns to dust and ashes to ashes, the ego lives on; the personal identity, the con- sciousness of the individual, does not seem to be even momentarily impaired. It does not seem to be too bold a speculation to believe that the patent methods of inductive science, the careful examina- tion of evidence, and the repeatedly renewed exper- iments of investigators will before long completely re-establish the failing belief in the reality of the world beyond the grave, and leave us with as little room for doubt as to the existence of the spirit after death as we have now for doubting the existence of Behring Straits or of the Pyramids. William T. Stead. "jV/TEN have assured us, in these latter days, that ■^■^ faith and art have parted company; that faith is dead, and art must live for itself alone. But while they were saying these things in melancholy essays and trivial verses, which denied a spiritual immor- tality and had small prospect of a literary one, the two highest artists of the century, Tennyson and 80 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY The continuity of man's soul-life is not limited to the span of time that lies between birth and death; it extends beyond the boundary line of individual existence, and links the after-life of each single person to the lives of his ancestors and con- temporaries, as well as to the generations to come. Before the comprehension of the true natui'e of the soul, birth as an absolute beginning vanishes; and so does death as an absolute annihilation. We learn to recognize the intimate interconnection of ourselves with the life of the distant past as well as with the life of the ages to come. He who attains to this height lives on the summit of existence and breathes the air of immortality. His soul has arisen into the domain of the superindividual life; death has no sting for him; he has conquered the ills that flesh is heir to ; and he looks upon the world with the eye of divine enlightenment. In him deity has become incarnate. Paul Carus. 'T^HE Universe, with every living entity which -■- her resources create, creates at the same time a call for that entity, and an appetite for its contin- uance, — creates it, if nowhere else, at least within the heart of the entity itself. 82 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY " npHERE is a natural body and there is a spir- -^ itual body." Here is the basis of the true explanation. This spiritual body is the real, the permanent being. We are all, here and now, spir- itual beings in a spiritual body, and in touch with spiritual forces. But — this spiritual body is tem- porarily clothed with a physical covering, in order that the individual may temporarily enter into relations with the physical world. -* » * * The law of evolution is as constant on all planes as are the laws of gravitation and attraction that hold the stars in their courses. The change of form produces no violent or mysterious alteration. The man who died last night is the same in all essentials to-day that he was yesterday, except that he has withdrawn from the visible form. Lillian Whiting. OCIENCE has given us a past. Too long has ^she left it to faith to give us a future. Human love cannot be contented out of the forces of nature; and earth-bound human knowledge turns to lift its lowered eyes toward the firmament of immortal life. * * * * In the strife for eternal existence, it may be true that the amount of contending desire represents the 84 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY motion and nothing else," says modern science. As such, how can the motion of the atoms of the body produce consciousness? That must be due to some higher power or force. This force is ordinarily called " soul." The soul is not subject to the atomic or molecular changes in the body; it is rather the cause of them. It is beyond all change, and con- sequently, beyond death. It is the basis of the con- tinuity of the conscious state and of the sense of identity in the individual. As we survive and retain our individuality after each seven years of change and renewal, so we shall live as individual souls after the final dissolution of the form of our bodies. In the Bhagavad Gita it is said: " As during our lifetime we survive the death of the baby body, the young body, and the mature body, successively, and retain our individu- ality, so after the death of the old body we shall survive, live, retain our individuality, and continue to exist through eternity." Swami Abhedananda. A LL is infinite — all that you see around you, ■^*-or perceive within you. There is no such word as finite in the dictionary of Nature, in the lexicon of Creation. All, all that looks ever so small and circumscribed to the fleshly eye of ignorance, is vast and endless to the eye of spiritual wisdom. All 86 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY Every day we find that the wall that was thought to be dividing one substance and another is being broken down, and all matter is coming to be recog- nized by modern science as one substance, manifest- ing in different ways and in various forms the one life that runs like a continuous chain throughout, of which all these various forms represent the links, link after link, extending almost infinitely, but of the same chain. This is what is called evolution. It is an old, old idea, as old as human society, only it is getting fresher and fresher as human loiowl- edge is going on. There is one thing more, which the ancients per- ceived, and that is involution; but in modern times this is not yet so clearly perceived. The seed is becoming the plant ; a grain of sand never becomes a plant. It is the father that becomes the child. A lump of clay never becomes a child. Out of what this evolution comes is the question. What was the seed? It was the same as the tree. All the possibilities of a future tree are in that seed; all the possibilities of a man are in the little baby; all the possibilities of a future are in the germ. What is this? The ancient philosophers of India called it involution. We find then that every evolution pre- supposes an involution. Nothing can be evolved which is not already in. There is nothing new ; there will be nothing new. The same series of manifestations are presenting themselves alternately, like a wheel coming up and 88 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY materialists perceive as a force, whom the agnostics perceive as that infinite, inexpressible beyond. This is that infinite cosmic life, cosmic intelli- gence, cosmic power, and we are all parts of that. Swami Vivekananda. UNDER normal conditions the " eternal pro- gression " noted in the intellectual life of man is very significant. There is not observed a rise, culmination, and decline in the mind of those living an intellectual and spiritual hfe, the ideal life, in my opinion, of man; but a gradual development to the end. If this life is to end all, why this loss of energy? Why not the usual law, " rise, culmina- tion, and, decline," noted in earthly experiences? So far as the body of man is concerned this law holds good; but the soul, the intellect, does not show, to any marked extent, this deterioration ; but on the contrary, a development to the last. The soul under the new conditions following death will continue to develop. Eternal progression is the watchword God has set for the soul — onward and upward — no inactivity, no stagnation. In my opinion God Himself is an illustration of this law. To-day the idea of stagnation is inconsistent with the teachings of science and philosophy. The future state of man is more or less a principle of continu- ous progression marked out in this hfe. The behef 90 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY a state of consciousness of the fact of immortality. Belief in Jesus, in any real sense, is belief in the immortaUty of man. It is a belief in him who is " the way, the truth, and the life " — in body and soul together; and with behef, a realization of oneness with him. Pg^^l Tyner. nnHE decay and failure of the body do not ana- -'■ lytically imply the destruction of the soul, as would be the case if the body were its casual ground. The soul, when the body fails, has not to go wander- ing through space to find another home ; it is contin- uously comprised in the thought and activity of the infinite. God, gave it life, and if he wills he will maintain it. The actual existence of all things is in God; while it does not remove the mystery of our being, does diminish the sense of grotesque forlornness which the conception of our disem- bodied existence is pretty sure to awaken when we conceive it in spatial forms. Speculation makes room for belief, but for posi- tive faith we must fall back on the demands of our moral and religious nature, or on some word of revelation, or on both together. Our metaphysical reasonings on the nature of substance do not help us here. Speculatively we can lay down only a formal principle without being able to draw any concrete inferences from it. As all finite things have the ground of their existence in the divine 92 IXTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY See, even these ashes of the wood which burns in the fireplace are made up of atoms which will last throughout all future time; I do not long for that repulsive, intolerable endlessness which we should have to share with those ashes. They are in time, and can never escape the tracks of time, and how- ever long they may last, there will be endless time still ahead of them. We are beyond time; our hope and our strife is eternally completed in the timeless system of wills, and if I mourn for our friend, I grieve, not because his personality has be- come unreal like an event in time, but because his personality as it belongs eternally to our world aims at a fuller realization of its intentions, at a richer influence on his friends. This contrast between what is aimed at in our attitude and what is reached in our influence is indeed full of pathos, and yet inexhaustible in its eternal value. We ought to submit to its ethical meaning as we submit to the value of truth and beauty and duty and sanctity. It belongs to the ultimate meaning of each of us; through our aims, through our influences, through our relations to the aims of our fellows and to the ideals of the Absolute, and, finally, through these pathetic contrasts between aims and influences we enter as parts into the absolute reality, — not for calendar years and not for innumerable aeons, but for timeless eternity. Hugo Miinsterberg. 94 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY coming into touch with the reaUties beyond our imagination, we stand a much greater chance of hghting upon a fragment of truth by imagining the most unimaginable things than by striving to lead the dreams of that imagination, through the midst of eternity, between the dikes of logic and of actual possibilities. Let us therefore try, whenever a new dream presents itself, to snatch from before our eyes the bandage of our earthly life. Let us say to ourselves that, among the possibilities which the universe still hides from us, one of the easiest to realize, one of the most palpable, the least ambi- tious and the least disconcerting, is certainly the possibility of a means of enjoying an existence much more spacious, lofty, perfect, durable, and secure, than that which is offered to us by our actual consciousness. Admitting this possibility ■ — and there are few as probable — the problem of our immortality is, in principle, solved. It is now a question of grasping or foreseeing its ways and, amid the circumstances that interest us most, of knowing what part of our intellectual and moral acquirements will pass into our eternal and univer- sal life. Maurice Maeterlinck. 93 J ACCEPT Reality and dare not question it, ■* Materialism first and last imbuing. * * * * This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of the old cartouches. These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas. This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician. Gentlemen to you first honors always! Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling, I hut enter by them to an area in my dwelling. Walt Whitman. IXTIMATIOXS OF IMMORTALITY profession but vci}' imperfectly, and with innumer- able deviations; ^Ye encounter frequent interrup- tions ; but ^ve know well that these gulfs belong far less to the chain itself than to our own powers of comprehension. When it shall be permitted us to contemplate that chain, as I suppose those intelligences do for whom our world was mainly created; when we can, like them, follow its prolongation into other M^orlds, then and then only shall v>'e recognize their recip- rocal dependencies, their hidden relations, and the proximate reason of each link, and shall rise by a ladder of relative improvements even to the most transcendent and glorious truths! Charles de Bonnet. rpHE caterpillar, on being converted into an -*- inert scaly mass, does not appear to be fitting itself for an inhabitant of the air, and can have no consciousness of the brilliancy of its future being. We are masters of the earth, but perhaps we are the slaves of some great and unknown being. The fly that we crush with our finger or feed with our viands has no knowledge of man and no consciousness of his superiority. We suppose that we are ac- quainted with matter and all its elements; yet we cannot even guess at the cause of electricity, or explain the laws of the formation of the stones that fall from meteors. There may be beings, thinking 100 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY that light were quenched, " I know not where," in modern science alone, " is that Promethean heat that can that light relume." Yet I would not quite consider the question out of the pale of science altogether. In the interpreta- tion of Nature — therefore not beyond the highest scientific consideration — there are two consistent hypotheses, that of theism and that of non-theism. The former of these is the best I know of for the explanation of the facts: the latter does not try to explain anything. Immortality of the personal consciousness is a probable but not unavoidable inference from theism. Asa Gray. I HAVE the fullest confidence that there is noth- ing in science, or in any possible results from investigations of Nature, against immortality. James Dwight Dana. DESCARTES said: " I think, therefore I am." This reasoning, so much admired in the schools, always seemed to us a piece of simplicity. He should have said, to give his syllogism force: " I think, therefore I am immortal." My soul is immortal, because it exists; and it does exist, because I think. L^uis piguier. 102 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY other agencies in the universe than matter and force. Facts however are stubborn things. My curiosity «as at first excited by some shght but inexphcable phenomena occurring in a friend's family, and my desire for knowledge and love of truth forced me to continue the inquiry. The facts became more and more assured, more and more varied, more and more removed from anything that modern science taught or modern philosophy speculated on. The facts beat me. They compelled me to accept them as facts long before I could accept the spiritual ex- planation of them; there was at that time " no place in my fabric of thought into which it could be fitted." By slow degrees a place was made; but it was made, not by any preconceived or theoretical opinions, but by the continuous action of fact after fact, which could not be got rid of in any other way. Alfred Russel Wallace. T^T^ITHOUT a belief in personal immortality ^ » religion is surely hke an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss. Friedrich Max Miiller. rr^HAT a profound and unbiassed study of any -■■ branch of natural science should lead to dis- belief in immortality seems to me preposterous. 104< INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY faith in reunion with our beloved, which pervades every human race — all of which seem to form an integral part of the spiritual constitution of mankind, — it seems a waste of words to base ar- guments on the subject upon physical data. Benjamin Apthorp Gould. rpO know that a great hope cannot be positively -'- disproved on the testimony of Nature, is cer- tainly not valueless. But we can assilredly gain a clear conception of a necessary mutual dependence between the physical and the psychical phases of being which can give to both an underlying reality, and an immutability which shall guarantee the eternal conservation of both. Science must yet admit the constitutional inde- structibility of every mind. * * *■ * I would single out the self-conscious mind, en- abled steadily to acquire wisdom, to grow in happi- ness, to gain in power; learning to guide its own destinies, yet leading always by the hand the weak and the erring toward a better eminence; I would convince him that this vast delicate incarnation of beneficent purpose, of manifested thought, of em- bodied adaptation, must hang but as a fringe upon the garment of the Infinite Thinker. There must 106 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY firmed by the evidence of sense. Our whole being- is a mystery. Try to reahze in thought eternity and infinity, and you become conscious of that fact. Our sense probably tells us little more of the uni- verse in which we are than sense tells the purblind mole which no doubt thinks it sees all that there is to be seen. We are happily casting off superstition, but there may still be some scope for faith. Not for the faith which would reject or supplant reason, but for the faith ^^'hich is the evidence of things unseen. Goldwin Smith. JT THINK the arguments from the facts of -^ modern science are rather contrary than favor- able to the doctrine of a future life. Nevertheless, I believe in a conditional immortality, in an eternal life begun already in this world, which is not man's birth-right but the gift of God. My reasons for this belief are, however, psychological, and not physiological. T. Sterry Hunt. THINK the discoveries of modern science strengthen the belief in immortality. During the last three centuries, these discoveries have greatly changed the position of man with respect to the objects of nature. They have enlarged the domain of investigation, so that now the thought 108 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY sonality, ... his hopes of a Hf e to come . . . will stand firm, whatever discoveries may be made of the evolution of life, the relation of soul and body, the nature of atoms and of force, and the conceptions of time and space. Science shows us that all knowl- edge proceeds from faith, — the assumption of premises in which the investigator believes. In- deed, if I may use the words of another, " some of these very discoveries, on closer and larger view, seem destined to be the chief support of those cherished convictions to which they at first seemed hostile." I anticipate that the day is not dis- tant . . . when science will be openly proclaimed the handmaid of religion. Daniel Coit Gilman. T THINK it is true that certain scientific facts -^ and general laws — such as the indestructibility of matter, the conservation of energy, and the ap- parent sameness of physical law and material sub- stance in all parts of the universe which we can reach in our investigations — make it easier to accept the idea of human immortality than it would be if no such facts were recognized. But they amount to nothing more than a faint corroboration. In my judgment, the knowledge of " life and im- mortality " comes only by revelation, like our knowledge of the moral character and attributes of God. Charles A. Young. 110 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY rectly the resuH of experience. But no one now living has had any experience on the subject in question; and, even if we admit the hypothesis of immortality, it is difficult to see how we could ever reach any proof of it derived from experience. Our nervous systems are so constituted that they can perceive only the material in form; and thus even if disembodied spirits exist, there is no way in which they could make their existence known ''° ^^' * » * * A consciousness which can survive the dissolution of the material organism and a consciousness which cannot, are of two distinct orders, between which no connecting link is possible. If man, as now con- stituted, is only the last in a series of forms of organic existence, starting from the lowest, and if consciousness itself has been a gradual develop- ment, akin to that of awaking slowly and gradually from a profound sleep, then it seems difficult to assign any link in the series at which we can suppose so great a break to have occurred as is implied in the passage from mortality to immortality. Simon Newcomb. PERSONALLY, I have felt as certain about the immortality of the individual as I have about the truth of mathematics, being sure that any theory that any one may form of the world will logically 112 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY of accounting for this unanimity but by admitting the truth of the doctrine. ... A judgment held so long, so widely, and by such different races, must be deemed to be correct. George Frederick Wright. T DARE say that we cannot sharply enough ■*■ distinguish between the general results of scien- tific conviction and our subjective ideas and senti- ments, or what we may call our Credo. As for the first, I think we hitherto are not aware of a single fact or argument objectively and scientifically proving or even favoring indi- vidual immortality; whilst on the contrary, there exists no fact or argument absolutely refuting and excluding that hypothesis. " Ignoramus " and (as we may say with Du Bois-Reymond) " ignorabimus." Albert Eulenberg. A S to the nature of this supposed immortality, ■^*- science can have little to say. One thing, how- ever, can be asserted. We cannot be sure of re- taining our personality intact, although a great change might not be any cause for regret. As we change our personality in the course of time during this life, we cannot be sure of retaining it in an- other. But we do not always regret the change INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY scientific investigation, and susceptible of being answered by science in a way which goes far toward justifying faith by knowledge of the truth. When our scientists as a body shall have recog- nized the reality and grasped the significance of the alleged phenomena of so-called " modern spirit- ualism ; of telepathy ; of mesmerism or hypnotism ; of clairvoyance and clairaudience ; of phantasms of the living and phantoms of the dead; of sundry other occurrences already well known, and to some extent understood by competent psychic scientists, — then, and not till then, will formal science furnish the natural basis of religious belief. In my judg- ment that time is nearer than many of us suppose. Elliott Coues. PHYSIOLOGISTS who affirm that the soul *- does not exist, are like their ancestors who affirmed that thej^ felt pain in their finger or their foot. They are little less far from the truth, but they stop on the way when they stop at the brain, and make the human being consist only of brain impressions. This theory is all the less excusable because these same physiologists know perfectly Avell that personal sensation is always accompanied by a modification of substance. In other words, the ego of the individual only continues when the identity of its matter ceases to continue. * * * » 116 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY terest in the inquiries of the few true observers who are dredging in that turbid sea. Trusting to the evident scientific f aithfuhiess of these hardy explor- ers, it appears evident that they have brought up from that deep sea certain facts which, though shadowed by doubt, indicate the persistence of the individual consciousness after death. It has, more- over, to be confessed that these few, and as yet im- perfect, observations are fortified by the fact that through all the ages of his contact with Nature man has firmly held to the notion that the world was peo- pled with disembodied individualities which could appeal to his own intelligence. Such a conviction is itself worth something, though it be little; sup- ported by any critical evidence it becomes of much value. Thus we may fairly conjecture that we may be on the verge of something like a demon- stration that the individual consciousness does sur- vive the death of the body by which it was nurtured. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler. ^T^HE vague question of former times narrows -*- down then to the more precise question: Are there still coincidences, is there still evidence of some such definite type as this, showing that a phan- tasm can appear not only at, but after, a man's bodily death, and can still indicate connection with a persistent and individual life? 118 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY the invisible world whence it emanated, there to ful- fil the course of its unending destinies. Thus formulated faith in survival seems to us to be the inevitable consequence of the scientific conception of the human soul ; but although it may furnish us in principle with the formal affirmation for which we sought, it cannot satisfy our restless curiosity, for it knows nothing of the conditions in which that future life shall be passed. Louis L. Bade (Louis Elbe). nnHE whole tendency of modern science is to ^ show that immortality, not necessarily of " per- sonal consciousness," but immortality in a broad sense, appears to be a necessary consequence of the workings of the laws of nature. Investigations in every subject are leading us to a clearer recognition of the truth ; and I have strong faith that the more clearly we recognize it, the better we shall be. Our views on many subjects are undergoing change, ■ — in most cases, I am convinced, for the better. Should our ^iews regarding the immortality of " personal consciousness " undergo a radical change, higher views of man's relations to the uni- verse would take their place, and still stronger reasons for living honest, righteous lives would be recognized. Ira Remsen. 120 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY I said before, an intellectual conclusion, but an emotive or esthetic insight. . . . I find in the very nature of my consciousness a feeling of immeasurable oldness — an echo of time immemorial as well as a feeling of necessary end- lessness, and I cannot reason away these feelings. Do not understand me to say that I have memories of any former existence or previsions of any future existence, — that to which I refer is far more funda- mental than would be such reminiscences and previ- sions : I cognize in the very nature of consciousness a characteristic that is eternally old and co-eternal with Space, Duration, and Truth. When I am aware of my consciousness I feel and know that there is in it a factor that was present primordially in the beginningless Cosmos. This feeling is part of my consciousness just as surely as is my love for scientific research or my desire for world-betterment or my veneration for the All; I did not put these feelings there — I found them there when I grew old enough to introspect my mind, and there, in spite of recurrent doubt and criticism, they have remained. This feeling-insight of the endless per- petuity of my conscious identity is one of great certainty — I feel entirely sure that there is for my consciousness a To-morrow after death. Elmer Gates. 122 nr^HE Church knows two lives which have been ■*- divinely declared and commended to her: of these one is in faith, the other in appearance; one is in the time of pilgrimage, the other in the eternity of habitation; one in toil, the other in rest; one on the way, the other in the kingdom; one discerns good and evil, the other gazes only at what is good. The first is only spent here until the end of the world, and there finds its end; the second has its completion deferred until after the end of this world, but in the world to come has no end. St. Augustine. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY npHE soul is immortal, and all souls are alike, -*■ both of men and women; only there is a dif- ference of person. There is not one order of souls which by nature sin, and another order of souls which by nature act righteously, but both act from choice, the essence of the soul being one in kind and ahke in all. St. Cyril. T S it a misfortune to pass from infancy to youth? -'- Still less can it be a misfortune to go from this miserable life to that true life into which we are introduced by death. Our first changes are con- nected with the progressive development of life. The new change which death effects is only the passage to a more desirable perfection. To com- plain of the necessity of dying is to accuse Nature of not having condemned us to perpetual infancy. St. Gregory of Nyssa. rr^OGETHER we two held converse very sweet, A and " forgetting those things which were be- hind, and reaching forth unto those things which were before" (Phil, iii : 13), we were discussing between us in the presence of the truth, which Thou art, of ^vhat kind would be that eternal life of the Saints, which " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 126 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY OUR Redeemer underwent death that we might not fear to die ; He manifested the resurrection that we might have a sure hope that we are capable of rising again. St. Gregory the Great. T^EATH is the voice of my Master caUing me -"-^home. St. Anselm. MAN, if thou desirest a noble and holy life, and unceasingly prayest to God for it, if thou continue constant in this thy desire, it will be granted unto thee without fail, even if only in the day or hour of thy death; and if God should not give it thee then, thou shalt find it in Him in Eternity: of this be assured. g^ Bernard A ND grant us Lord who cry to Thee, ■^*-And hold the faith in unity! Thy precious gifts of charity. That we may live in holiness; And find in death our happiness, And dwell with Thee in lasting bhss! From " Veni, Sancte Spiritu." Attributed to Pope Innocent III. 128 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY There I will give the glory for the reproach which here thou sufFeredst, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, for the lowest place a kingly throne forever. There shall the fruit of obedience appear, the labor of repentance shall rejoice, and humble sub- jection shall be gloriously crowned. Thomas a Kempis. "1^7'HAT is our death but a night's sleep? For ' ' as through sleep all weariness and faintness pass away and cease, and the power of the spirit comes back again, so that in the morning we rise fresh, and strong, and joyous; so at the last day we shall rise again, as if we had only slept a night, and shall be fresh and strong. Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrec- tion, not in books alone, but in every leaf in the springtime. " Reserved in heaven for you." It is certain that this imperishable, undefiled, and unfading inherit- ance is ours. It is only for a little while concealed from us, until we close our eyes and are buried, when we shall surely find and behold it if we be- lieve. We wait for this priceless inheritance in the hope to which we have attained through faith. Martin Luther. 130 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY ing with him in bodye and soule, to remayne ever- lasting in glorie, where ^xe shall see God face to face, and shall no more nede one to instructe an other ; for we shall all kno\\'e him, from the hyghest to the loweste : To whome, withe the Sonne and the Holy Ghost, be all praise, honor, iuid glorie, nowe and ever. So be it. John Knox. T ET a man never so much smother and suppress ■*— ^the truth; let him, with all the art he can, divert his conceits and entangle his thought in secular cases, let him shut his eyelids as close as his nail is to his flesh, yet the flashes of immortality are of so penetrative and searching a nature, that they will undoubtedly get through all the obstacles which a mind not wholly overdaubed with worldliness and ignorance can put between. Bishop Reynolds. THE world dares say no more of its devices than " dum spiro spero " (whilst I breathe, I hope) ; but the children of God can add, by virtue of this living hope, " dum expiro spero " (whilst I expire, I hope) . Archbishop Leighton. 132 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY in heaven, should you be dispossessed after the age of a miUion of worlds! This word, everlasting, contains the perfection of their torment and of our glory. " And must I, Lord, thus live forever? Then will I also love forever. Must my joys be immortal? and shall not my thanks be also immor- tal? Surely, if I shall never lose my glory, I will never cease thy praises. . . . And as thy glory was thy ultimate end in my glory, so shall it also be my end, when thou hast crowned me with that glory which hath no end. ' Unto the King eternal, im- mortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory, forever and ever.' " Richard Baxter. T ET dissolution come when it will, it can do the -'—^Christian no harm, for it will be but a passage out of a prison into a palace ; out of a sea of troubles into a haven of rest; out of a crowd of enemies to an innumerable company of true, loving, and faith- ful friends ; out of shame, reproach, and contempt, into exceeding great and eternal glory. John Bunyan. T^ROM whence comes it that men are so reluc- -*■ tant and incredulous, in accepting this happy revelation of their immortality? The impious say that they are without hope; that in a few days 134 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY and that in the Uteral perfection of it, that he might dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Isaac Watts. OINCE it has pleased the Lord to open the eyes ^of my spirit ... it has been given me to see the things which are in the spiritual world, as well as to describe them. I can asseverate that they are not visions but things seen in all wakefulness. I have been permitted to hold intercourse with the angels, and also to converse with the inhabit- ants of hell; and this now for many years. . . . I have been permitted to converse with all whom I have ever known in this life of the body ... so many that I should not exaggerate were I to say a hundred thousand, — of whom many were in the heavens, and many in the hells. . . . They wished me to say that they were not dead but alive, being men now just the same as before, and they had only migrated from one world to another; and that they were not conscious of having lost anything, since they were in a body and in the possession of bodily senses as before; and in the enjoyment of understanding and will as before; and that they had thoughts, affections, sensations, and desires, similar to those which they had in the world. 136 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY of the earth, who dwell in houses of clay. Their bodies indeed are " crushed before the moth " ; but their souls will never die. God made them, as an ancient writer speaks, to be " pictures of his own eternity." Indeed all spirits, we have reason to believe, are clothed in immortality; having no in- ward principle of corruption, and being liable to no external violence. John Wesley. TT is an argument that the Old Testament affords ■'■for the proof of a future life and immortality, that we are then taught, that mortality is brought in by sin, and comes as a punishment of sin. There- fore, it is natural to suppose, that when complete forgiveness is promised, and perfect restoration to favor, and deliverance from death, and the bestow- ment of life, as the fruit of this favor, eternal life and immortality is intended. ... It is not to be supposed that God would make man such a creature as to be capable of looking forward beyond death, and capable of knowing and loving Him, and de- lighting in Him as the fountain of all good, and should make it his duty so to do, which will neces- sarily increase in him a dread of annihilation, and an eager desire of immortality; and yet, so order it, that that desire should be disappointed; so that his loving his Creator should in some sense make him the more miserable. 138 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY home is to the exile ; what the loved one given back is to the bereaved. As we draw near to it, a solemn gladness should fill our hearts. It is God's great morning hghting up the sky. Our fears are the terror of children in the night. The night with its terrors, its darkness, its feverish dreams, is passing away; and when we awake it will be into the sun- light of God. Andrew Fuller. rpHE enlightened, the confirmed Christian, can- -'- not doubt his own immortality. As Christians, we are bound to give a fair exemplification of our religion before the world. As candidates for im- mortality, it is our first duty and our highest interest to walk worthily of our Christian vocation. Aaron Bancroft. TF the mere conception of the reunion of good -'■men in a future state infused a momentary rap- ture into the mind of TuUy; if an airy speculation, for there is reason to fear it had little hold on his convictions, could inspire him with such delight, ■what may we be expected to feel who are assured of such an event by the true sayings of God! How should we rejoice in the prospect — the certainty, rather, of spending a blissful eternity with those whom we loved on earth; of seeing them emerge 140 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY T HAVE been reviewing my evidences, and I -■• conclude that I have a right to hope. Lyman Beecher. IMMORTALITY is the glorious discovery of ■*■ Christianity. . . . Before Christ immortality was a conjecture or a vague hope, Jesus, by his teach- ing and resurrection, has made it a certainty. How full, how bright are the evidences of this grand truth. How weak are the common argu- ments which scepticism arrays against it. To me there is but one objection against immortality, if objection it may be called, and this arises from the very greatness of the truth. My mind sometimes sinks under its weight, is lost in its immensity; I scarcely dare believe that such a good is placed within my reach. When I think of myself as exist- ing through all future ages, ... as exempted from every imperfection and error of my present being, ... as looking on the outward universe with an organ of vision that will reveal to me a beauty and harmony and order not now imagined, and as having an access to the minds of the wise and the good, which will make them in a sense my own; . . . when this thought of my future comes to me, whilst I hope, I also fear, the blessedness 14.2 INTIMATIONS OF, IMMORTALITY glorious doctrine; but not given us for specula- tion or amusement. Its happiness is to be realized only through our own struggles with ourselves, only through our reaching forward to new virtue and piety. To be joined with Christ in Heaven, we must be joined with him now in spirit, in the conquest of temptation, in charity and well-doing. William Ellery Channing. A DD together ages of ages, multiply them by ■^* the leaves on the trees, the sand on the seashore, and the dust of the earth, still you will be no nearer the termination of Jehovah's existence than when you first began your calculation. And let us remember that the duration of his existence is the only measure of our own. As it respects futurity, we are all as immortal as Jehovah himself. Edward Payson. nnO live one's self again, but in a glorified body, -■- a new and glorious life, such is the promise of the Gospel. Souls who have met each other here below, and who have learned to know and love each other mutually, will know and love each other far more intimately when they find themselves in the presence of God. When imperfection will be lost 144! INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY TTEAVEN is as much a necessity to men as -*■ -■■ bread, and souls can no more live without the supernatural than the senses without matters of sense. In the same way we have given back to us here the most sohd, only sufficient proof of immor- tality. How often do we stagger at this point, even the best of us. All mere rational arguments here fall quite short of the mark. They never establish any body. And yet every man ought to know his immortality, even as he knows that he is ahve. He is made to have an immediate, self- asserting consciousness of immortality, and would never have a doubt of it if he had not shut up and darkened the divine side of his soul. And for just the same reason Christ, when he opens the soul, opens immortality also. * * * * Immortality! why, the dead Christ proves it. And again the resurrection proves it; for what could such a being do but rise? It would even be a greater wonder if he did not. Away to their native abyss fly all our doubts — life and immor- tality are brought to light through the gospel! Horace Bushnell. A S an instance of a great spirit that bears no -^*-mark of mortality, in a word, as the Represent- ative Man of our race, in whom the transcendent 146 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY of their dead. This hope has been a star that shone in every sky, a flower that bloomed in the poorest soil, a flame that burned in the coldest bosom. Thomas Guthrie. rrrO think, then, that we are honoring the resur- -^ rection by dishonoring the expectations of immortality which men in the foregone ages had derived from one source or another, is surely mon- strous. Supposing they were only the guesses of half a dozen earnest and thoughtful men, would those guesses be confounded and not established by the later discovery? Does any scientific man scoff at Galileo or Copernicus, because they had adopted a conclusion which Newton proved? It is not true that those who brought forward these arguments for immortality were opposing themselves to the rest of the world. They were trying to justify a belief. Frederick Denison Maurice. WE do not believe immortality because we have proved it, but we forever try to prove it be- cause we believe it. James Martineau. 148 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY It is of great comfort to have in your soul a sure trust in Immortality: of great value here and now to anticipate Time and live to-day the Eternal Life. That we may all do. The joys of heaven will begin as soon as we attain the character of heaven and do its duties. That may begin to-day. It is everlasting life to know God — to have his spirit dwelling in you — yourself at one with Him. Try that and prove its worth. Justice, usefulness, wisdom, religion, love, are the best things we hope for in Heaven. Try them on — they will fit you here not less becomingly. They are the best things of earth. Think no outlay of goodness and piety too great. You will find your reward begin here. As much goodness and piety, so much heaven. Men will not pay you — God will; pay you now; pay you hereafter and forever. Theodore Parker. l^rE picture death as coming to destroy; let us » ^ rather picture Christ as coming to save. We think of death as ending ; let us rather think of life as beginning, and that more abundantly. We think of losing; let us think of gaining. We think of parting; let us think of meeting. We think of going away ; let us think of arriving. And as the voice of death whispers, " you must go from earth," let us hear the voice of Christ, saying, " you are but coming to me! " Norman McLeod. 150 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY gratify thirst. If we are susceptible of attachment, there are beings to gratify that love. If we thirst for life and love eternal it is likely that there are an eternal Hfe and an eternal love to satisfy that craving. Frederick W. Robertson. "PXPERIENCE and science do not find in -*--^ Nature any such thing as annihilation and ex- tinction of being. Modes and forms resulting from, or dependent on, organic or mechanical ar- rangements of parts or elements are destroyed. But this destruction is not an annihilation. It is an alteration or transformation. ... In bodies, the first elements, the Something, whatever that may be supposed to be, which is the subject of the action of force, is indestructible ... so, even death is a change in the things which have had life, a dissolu- tion, but not an annihilation. The human soul is a substance simple, indivisible, immaterial, spiritual, having subsistence and life in itself. This is proved by the nature of its highest operations. The senses and sensitive cognition cannot go beyond the material phenomena of single bodies. The human intellect pierces through these to their immaterial ratios and to ideas which are 153 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY A FTER we come to mature years, there is noth- •^*-ing of which we are so vividly conscious as of the swiftness of time. Its brevity and littleness are the themes of poets, novelists, and preachers. Yet there is nothing of which there is so much — nor day nor night, ocean nor sky, winter nor sum- mer equal it. It is the perpetual flow from the inexhaustible fountain of eternity : — And we have no adequate conception of our earthly life until we think of it, and live in it as a part of Forever. Now is eternity and will be, to-morrow and next day, through the endless years of God. Horatio Stebbins. WHETHER we walk in the morning light or in the night shadows, — over, around, and be- neath us are spread these Everlasting Arms. . . . How real becomes the unseen world, no longer unfamiliar, but warm with the treasures and light of home! How we look through the half -opened gates into its glory and its peace, where the inno- cence and beauty of childhood must dwell in the life of which they are the image ; and the ties that have been broken must be preserved in the love that made them ours; and the powers we would have trained here must be unfolded in the same care that inspired our striving, and will not let it be in vain. 154i INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY most perfect expression of that divine meaning which is embodied in the vmiverse. And so in this matter of the hfe to come, when I have thought and thought, and sometimes become dazed with think- ing, I turn to Christ. I see how his teachings are ahve with this feehng of immortahty; how he could never think of death except as a f alhng asleep or as going to the Father. There I finally rest. Humanity, at its highest, where it seems consciously to touch the divine, utters the same thought which speaks in the dumb instincts of human nature at its lowest — that this life is not all, that man is to live again. Brooke Herford. WE rest on this : " I go to prepare a place for you," ... a place not only for us, but for all our peculiar powers. Our ideals shall become more beautiful, and minister continually to fresh aspiration so that stagnation will be impossible. Feelings for which we found no food here shall then be satisfied with work, and exercised by action into exquisite perfection. Faint possibilities of our nature, which came and went before us here like swallows on the wing, shall there be grasped and made realities. The outlines of life shall be filled up, the rough statue of life shall be finished. We shall be not only spiritual men, but men com- plete in Christ, the perfect flower of humanity. Stopford A. Brooke. 156 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY us which is to outlive the grave, and to go on and on and on into a length of life where the imagina- tion and the faith ache when they try to follow it, is to have that superior continuance only because it has now a superior nature, and is to be the per- manent part of us because it is now the great and significant part of us. * * * * We feel that a loftier spirit might be in all our human life, that there might be more nobility in humanity. Where shall it come from? Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in His resurrection. Let him say not merely, " Christ has risen," but " I shall rise." Not merely, " He, underneath all death and change, was unchangeable," but " in me there is something that no stain of earth can tarnish and no stroke of the world can bruise. I, too, am a part of God and have God's immortality in me." Then nobility must come. Until men's souls shall be full not merely of the knowledge, but of the genius of immortality, we shall be the ignoble things we are. Phillips Brooks. WE have no scientific demonstration of immor- tality. No future event can be scientifically demonstrated. All the astronomers and physicists on earth cannot prove that the sun will rise to- 158 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY no argument to prove the life to come; it is assumed as one of the indubitable certainties. Nay, our Lord domesticates it, as it were; he brings it right home to our every-day experience; his word is not immortality — that seems something future, and far away; he calls it eternal life. It begins here, he tells us; we may be living it now. There is a kind of life that in its very nature is deathless ; it goes on by its own momentum. This is the life that he is living. They who share his life have the witness in themselves; for them there is no death. The testimony of Jesus is to me a great and solemn assurance, and I rest my soul upon it without fear. » * * * Every man, at his best, has the consciousness not only of incompleteness, but of unexhausted powers. As we draw toward the end of life our conception of the vastness of the work opening before us, of the multitude of the things that we might do if there were only time, constantly enlarges. . . . We are just getting ready to work, just beginning to feel the pressure of the great motives of hfe, when the evening shadows fall, and the day's work is done. If this is the end, existence is a mockery; if God is good, those whose deepest desire is to glorify Him will have another day. . . , Our confidence in the integrity of Nature and in the persistence of spiritual forces; our beUef that evolution does not bring us up to the summits of existence, there to plunge us back again into non- 160 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY than be immortal without a right to be? For my- self, I can think of no doom so terrible as that I should live on an endless and worthless life: like the Wandering Jew, condemned to wander through all the ages with nothing in life to live for. What would life be without faith or hope or love? If we are to pluck the fruit from the tree of life, we must have a right to it. If we would have a rational hope in life hereafter, we must have the immortal life here. To have faith in immortality we must practice immortality. Lyman Abbott. OBSERVE the passage in 2 Timothy 1:10, as setting forth what Jesus accomplished for us by His resurrection. That is a beautiful and sig- nificant verse : " Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light." Did not the philosophers bring immortahty to light? So many believe. But mark the difference between the immortality of faith and the immortality of philosophy. Plato said, " I hope that the dead will live beyond the grave; " Paul said, " I know that the dead will live again this side of the grave. Plato said, " I hope that when the body returns to the grave the soul will go forth like an uncaged eagle and soar away to realms of freedom and tran- quillity, forever free from the trammels and fetters of a material body; " Paul knew that the spirit 162 INTIMATIOXS OF IMMORTALITY struggling with some vice that wraps its folds ever more closely about you; O mourner! stretching forth eager arms after the loved and lost, — how blessed would we all be, if we could open our hearts to the fulness of this promise, to the brightness of this hope! Charles Carroll Everett. npHE doubt of immortality, that has been of late ■*- so common, has been a very serviceable doubt; for it has set men to work in many different ways to find some substitute for immortality as an ob- ject of hope when this has been destroyed forever. There could be no grander tribute to the hope of immortality than the high character of the substi- tutes that men have felt obliged to offer us. Let us be glad that for such as cannot hope for immor- tality, there are such things for them to stay their hearts upon a little. Let us be glad that these things can be ours, together with the hope of im- mortality. They are no substitutes, but they are splendid complements. The one book of the time that deals with the great problem of social regenera- tion, when it has chanted in such tones, as are not elsewhere to be heard, the future of a redeemed and glorified humanity upon the earth, is still unsatis- fied. It has a palinode, an after-song of personal immortality. I welcome all of you, who care to cherish it, to 16i INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY will increase, instead of diminish, at every step. So I can believe that the hope of an immortal life is a sensible hope, because I know I can study and think and advance forever and ever and ever, and never approach getting through; for there is no pos- sibility of getting through with the Infinite, So let us be content with so much as must be mys- tery, not be discouraged by it, — but regard it as what it is, — the ground of our noblest and most magnificent hopes. Minot J. Savage. /^ OD gives to common people this opportunity ^^of winning on earth souls large enough and good enough to appreciate by and by what heaven is. . . . If you keep up heart in your life of trial, by patience what a soul for God's kingdom may be won! God in his own gracious Christianity is now ever round about us; our true life is in that divine air and element of being. The one thing needful for us is for our souls to breathe and live again in this aU-vitalizing presence and grace of God. We must come into entire, happy harmony with eternal things, or perish. Newman Smyth. IMMORTALITY — what a sweet word it is, -■•and what a weighty word! Whilst death is the sworn enemy of the human race and a very king 166 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY scientific tests. When one demands scientific proof of immortality, it is as if he demanded the linear measurement of a principle, or the Troy-weight of an emotion, or the color of an affection; or as if he should insist on finding the human soul with his scalpel or microscope. Immortality is inseparable from personality. The whole significance of man's nature lies ulti- mately in its discreetness, in the evolution and per- sistence of the self-conscious ego. Ip ifr 7P TP Immortality is necessary to the realization of man's moral ideals. Belief in immortality is neces- sary to the perpetuation of those ideals, and to save him from falling into utter confusion and despair in view of the inequities of human life. . . . Groodness and blessedness alike are dreams un- realized, and, but for immortality, unrealizable. * « * * To the soul that knows God and strives toward the ideals of culture and character which rise in divine beckonings before us, immortality draws in growing reasonableness and attractiveness, grows from a hope into an assurance, and from a serene faith deepens into a conscious experience which time nor death can bring to an end. Philip S. Moxom. 168 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY but mighty forces of sentiment that have carried manldnd into the highest in civihzation and into the ideals that are the condition and inspiration of all human progress, rise in the heart of the solitary thinker of to-day. History is a river increasing in volume with every mile of its length, and the tribu- taries that join it nearer and nearer the sea are taken up and swept onward by a current that grows ever mightier. Belief in immortality will one day be- come inevitable. Inevitableness of belief is the goal toward which history is moving, and we who live in the present are in the midst of this sublime tendency. Confidence in the increasing world- current is the meaning of taking immortality on trust. George A. Gordon. BECAUSE man's mind is keyed to God's mind, the great truths of conscience and beauty, the new heart, the heavenly mansions, the immortal life, the largest truths in the universe slip smoothly and easily into the mind of the waif, the Hottentot, and the slave. . . . Chiefly is Christ's intellectual supremacy indi- cated by His view of immortality. In the last hour, looking upward, man gazes not toward an empty throne. He flings his imploring arm not into vacancy, nor does he sob out his confessions into a heaven that is deaf and dumb. Silent indeed seem 170 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY exhausted, his willing hand is out-stretched. Be- tween the workman and his work Death intervenes. So far and no further, he says : forever and forever the work must remain incomplete. A work abruptly- broken off. A marvellous dawn ending in sudden eclipse; a glorious promise unfulfilled. Is this all? V V V V Know, man hath all that Nature hath, but more. And in that moee lie all his hopes of good. It is with the fate of that something more that we are concerned. Or would it not be truer to say that when we once are deeply persuaded that there is something more that is in its nature spiritual, we cease to be anxiously concerned about its fate. Its essential nature is the best argument for its perpe- tuity. There is a serene mood that is not impatient for further proof. " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." Conscious of the divine quality of the human life, one can be content to wait for the things which do not yet appear, and to trust With faith that comes of self-control. The truths that never can be proved Until we close with all we loved. And all we flow from, soul in soul. Samuel McChord Crothers. 172 W~\OWN from the gardens of Asia descending, radi- .£— y ating, Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them. Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations. With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never- happy hearts. With that sad incessant refrain. Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither mocking Hfe? Ah wlio shall soothe these feverish children? Who justify these restless explorations ? Who speak the secret of impassive earth? * * * * After the seas are all cross'd (as they seem already cross'd). After the great captains and engineers have accomplish d their work. After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist. Finally shall come the poet worthy that name. The true Son of God shall come singing his songs. Then not your deeds only voyagers, scientists and inventors shall be justified. All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth'd. All affection shall be responded to, the secret shall be told. All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook'd and link'd together. * * * '* Nature and Man shall be disjoined and diffused no more, The true Son of God shall absolutely fuse them. Walt Whitman. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days : But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust. Sir Walter Raleigh. SOUL AND BODY "pOOR Soul, the centre of my sinful earth, -'- (Foil'd by) those rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth. Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess. Eat up thy charge? is this the body's end? Then, Soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss. And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross ; Within be fed, without be rich no more : — So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men. And Death once dead, there 's no more dying then. William Shakespeare. 176 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me. From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men with thee do go — Rest of their bones and souls' delivery ! Thou 'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men. And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell ; And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more : Death, thou shalt die I John Donne. BEYOND ONO! Beloved! I am most sure These virtuous habits we acquire As being with the soul entire Must with it evermore endure. Else should our souls in vain elect ; And vainer yet were Heaven's laws, When to an everlasting cause They give a perishing effect. 178 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY More and more approaching nigh Unto young eternity, Uniting In that whiter Island, where Things are evermore sincere — Candor here and lustre there Delighting: — There no monstrous fancies shall Out of hell an horror call, To create, or cause at all, Affrighting ; There in cahn and cooling sleep We our eyes shall never steep, But eternal watch shall keep. Attending Pleasures, such as shall pursue Me immortalized, and you — And fresh joys, as never too Have ending. Robert Herrick. From PARADISE LOST TO whom the Father, without cloud, serene : All thy request for Man, accepted Son, Obtain : all thy request was my decree. But longer in that Paradise to dwell The law I gave to nature him forbids : Those pure immortal elements that loiow 180 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY I see them walking in an air of glory, Whose light doth trample on my days : My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, Mere glimmering and decays. O holy Hope ! and high Humility, High as the heavens above! These are your walks, and you have shew'd them me, To kindle my cold love. Dear, beauteous Death! the jewel of the just, Shining no where, but in the dark ; What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust. Could man outlook that mark! He that hath found some fledg'd bird's nest may know At first sight, if the bird be flown ; But what fair well or grove he sings in now. That is to him unknown. And yet, as Angels in some brighter dreams Call to the soul, when man doth sleep; So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes. And into glory peep. Henry Vaughan. 182 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years. But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amid the war of elements. The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds, Joseph Addison. From NIGHT THOUGHTS 'rp IS immortahty — 't is that alone -■- Amid life's pains, abasements, emptiness, The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill; That only, and that amply this performs. Edward Young. THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL VITAL spark of heavenly flame I Quit, oh, quit this mortal frame! Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying. Oh the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life! Hark! they whisper; angels say. Sister spirit, come away! What is this absorbs me quite? Steals my senses, shuts my sight, 184 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY From the ODE ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY /^UR birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: ^^ The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting. And Cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness. Nor yet in utter nakedness, But traihng clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home : Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! Shades of the prison house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows He sees it in his joy; At length the Man perceives it die away And fade into the light of common day. * * * * Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own. Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind; And, even with something of a mother's mind And no unworthy aim. The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her foster child, her inmate man, Forget the glories he hath known. And that imperial palace whence he came. 186 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY Nor man, nor boy. Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy ! Hence in a season of cahn weather, Though inland far we be. Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither. Can in a moment travel thither. And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. William Wordsworth. From THE GRAVE PHE soul, of origin divine, ^ God's glorious image, freed from clay. In Heaven's eternal sphere shall shine A star of day ! The sun is but a spark of fire, A transient meteor in the sky. The soul, immortal as its sire. Shall never die! James Montgomery. From RELIGIOUS MUSINGS ■p ELIEVE thou, O my soul, ■'-'Life is a vision shadowy of truth; And vice and anguish and the wormy grave 188 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state, Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears, The counter-weights ! — Thy laughter and thy tears Mean but themselves each fittest to create. And to repay the other! Why rejoices Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood. Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf. That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold? Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold These costly shadows of thy shadowy self? Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun! Thou hast no reason why ! Thou can'st have none ; Thy being's being is a contradiction. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. EPITAPH ONLY that which was of earth Hath perish'd ; only that which was infirm, Mortal, corruptible, and brought with it The seed connate of death. A place in Time Is given us, only that we may prepare Our portion for Eternity : The soul Possesseth there what treasures for itself, 190 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY Of morning sang together, sound forth still The song of our great immortality : Thick clustering orbs, and this our fair domain, The taU, dark mountains, and the deep-toned seas, Join in this solemn, universal song. O, listen ye, our spirits ; drink it in From all the air! 'T is in the gentle moon-light. 'T is floating in day's setting glories; Night, Wrapt in her sable robe, with silent step Comes to our bed and breathes it in our ears : Night and the dawn, bring day, and thoughtful eve, All time, aU bounds, the limitless expanse. As one vast mystic instrument are touched By an unseen, living Hand; the conscious chords Quiver with joy in this great jubilee; The dying hear it, and as sounds of earth Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls To mingle in this heavenly harmony. Richard Henry Dana. From MANFRED rpHE mind which is immortal makes itself -■■ Requital for its good and evil thoughts — Is its own origin of ill and end — And its own place and time — its innate sense. When stripped of this mortality, derives 192 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY And my frame perish even in conquering pain — But there is that within me which shall tire Torture and time, and breathe when I expire. George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron. From ADONAIS "DEACE! peace! he is not dead, he doth not -^ sleep — He hath awakened from the dream of life — 'T is we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings. — We decay Like corpses in a charnel ; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day. And cold hopes swarm like worms within our hving clay. He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny, and hate and pain. And that unrest which men miscall dehght. Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain; Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn. With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 194 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. Percy Bysshe Shelley. From THANATOPSIS OO hve, that when thy summons comes to join ^The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death. Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. William Cullen Bryant. THE MOTHER'S DREAM T 'D a dream to-night -'• As I fell asleep. Oh! the touching sight Makes me still to weep : 196 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY Suffices me : I break the bounds : I see, And nothing more; believe, and nothing less. My future is not one of my concerns. YOU STRAY, MY SOUL You stray, my soul! whilst gazing on the sky; The path of duty is the path of life; Sit by the cold hearth where dead ashes lie; Put on the captive's chain, endure the strife ; Be but a servant in this realm of night, O child of Light! To lost and wandering feet deliverance bring; Fulfil the perfect law of suffering ; Drink to the dregs the bitter cup ! Remain In battle last — be first in tears and pain; Then praying still that much may be forgiven Go back to heaven! Victor Hugo. From THRENODY "C^AIR the soul's recess and shrine, ■'■ Magic-built to last a season; Masterpiece of love benign. Fairer that expansive reason Whose omen 't is and sign. 198 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY As men account of death, as long as God Stands witnessing for life perpetually, By being just God. The cygnet finds the water; but the man Is born in ignorance of his element. And feels out bhnd at first, disorganized By sin i' the blood, — his spirit-insight dulled And crossed by his sensations. Presently He feels it quicken in the dark sometimes; When mark ; be reverent, be obedient, — For such dumb motions of imperfect life Are oracles of vital Deity Attesting the Hereafter. FUTURITY And, O beloved voices, upon which Ours passionately call, because erelong Ye brake off in the middle of that song We sang together softly, to enrich The poor world with the sense of love, and witch The heart out of things evil, — I am strong. Knowing ye are not lost for aye among The hills, with last year's thrush. God keeps a niche In Heaven to hold our idols : and albeit He brake them to our faces and denied That our close kisses should impair their white, — 200 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY She is not dead, — the child of our affection, — But gone unto that school Where she no longer needs our poor protection. And Christ himself doth rule. In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led. Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution She lives, whom we call dead, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. From, ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER OCARCELY Hope hath shaped for me ^What the future life may be; Other lips may well be bold, Like the publican of old, I can only urge the plea, " Lord, be merciful to me! " From SNOWBOUND Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, (Since He who knows our need is just,) That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees I 202 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY And so beside the Silent Sea I wait the muffled oar ; No harm from Him can come to me On ocean or on shore. I know not where His islands lift Their fronded pahns in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. John Greenleaf Whittier. Frcm THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS "DUILD thee more stately mansions, O my soul, ■*-' As the swift seasons roll ! Leave thy low- vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last. Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! Oliver Wendell Holmes. I From the RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAm SENT my Soul into the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return'd to me. And answered " I myself am Heav'n and Hell." 204. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why He thinks he was not made to die ; And thou hast made him: thou art just. My own dim life should teach me this, That life shaU live f orevermore, Else earth is darkness at the core And dust and ashes all that is. The wish that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul? Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems. So careless of the single life, That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds. And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear — I falter where I firmly trod; And, falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs, That slope through darkness up to God, 206 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY That God which ever Hves and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-ofF divine event. To which the whole creation moves. CROSSING THE BAR Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me ! And may there be no moaning of the bar. When I put out to sea. But such a tide as moving seems asleep. Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twihght and evening bell, And after that the dark ! And may there be no sadness of farewell. When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face. When I have crossed the bar. Alfred Tennyson. 208 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY PROSPICE Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat. The mist in my face, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm. The post of the foe ; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go : For the journey is done and the summit attained. And the barriers fall, Though a battle to fight ere the guerdon be gained. The reward of it all. I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. The best and the last ! [forbore, I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and And bade me creep past. No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old. Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute 's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave. Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain. Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest! Robert Browning. 210 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY To close the eye and close the ear, Wrapped in a trance of bhss. And gently draMTi in living arms, To swoon from that to this : — Scarce knowing if we wake or sleep, Scarce asking where we are, To feel all evil sink away, All sorrow and all care! Sweet souls around us! watch us still, Press nearer to our side; Into our thoughts, into our prayers, With gentle helping glide. Let death between us be as naught, A dried and vanished stream; iYour joy be the reahty. Our suffering hfe the dream. Harriet Beecher Stowe. A POET'S HOPE OTIME! O Death! I clasp you in my arms, For I can soothe an infinite cold sorrow, And gaze contented on your icy charms And that wild snow-pile which we call to-morrow; Sweep on, O soft and azure-lidded sky, Earth's waters to your gentle gaze reply. 212 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face, Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace; Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below The foaming wake far widening as we go. On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave. How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave! The dripping sailor on the reeling mast Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past. Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is aU that they can say. Arthur Hugh Clough. Bl 1 From AGASSIZ • UT such was not his faith, 'Nor mine: it may be he had trod Outside the plain old path of God thus spake. But God to him was very God, And not a visionary wraith Skulking in murky corners of the mind. And he was sure to be Somehow, somewhere, imperishable as He, Not with His essence mystically combined. As some high spirits long, but whole and free, A perfected and conscious Agassiz. 214 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY That flow from God's own footstool, and behold Sages and martyrs, and those blessed few Who loved us once and were beloved of old, To dwell with them and walk with them anew, In alternations of sublime repose. Musical motion, the perpetual play Of every faculty that Heaven bestows Through the bright, busy, and eternal day. Thomas William Parsons. FRONTING DEATH "VTO coward soul is mine, ■^^ No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere ; I see heaven's glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. O God, within my breast Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life, that in me has rest, As I — undying life — have power in thee. Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts; unutterably vain; Worthless as ^nthered weeds, Or idle froth amid the boundless main. 216 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one sup- posed, and luckier. * * 0, * I know I am deathless, I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass, I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. * * * * And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheer- fulness I can wait. My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution. And I know the amplitude of time. * * * * My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, The Lord will be there and wait tiU I come on perfect terms. The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there. * * * * 218 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY From TO THINK OF TIME The earth is not an echo, man and his life and all the things of his life are well consider'd. You are not thrown to the winds, you gather cer- tainly and safely around yourself. Yourself! yourself! yourself, for ever and ever! ASSURANCES I need no assurance. I am a man who is preoccu- pied of his own soul ; I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and face that I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of, cahn and actual faces, I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world, I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless, in vain I try to think how limitless, I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their swift sports through the air on pur- pose, and that I shall one day be eligible to do as much as they and more than they, I do not doubt that temporary aifairs keep on and on millions of years, I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and ex- teriors have their exteriors, and that the eye- sight has another eyesight, and the hearing, and the voice another voice, 220 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY No, no ! the energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun; And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength, advancing — only he, His soul weU-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. From RUGBY CHAPEL O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force. Surely, has not been left vain! Somewhere, surely, afar. In the sounding labour house vast Of being, is practised that strength Zealous, beneficent, firm. Yes, in some far-shining sphere, Conscious or not of the past Still thou perf ormest the word Of the Spirit in whom thou dost live. Matthew Arnold. THE CITY OF GOD CITY of God, how broad and far Outspread thy walls sublime I The true thy chartered freemen are. Of every age and chme. 2£2 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY By thoughts and wishes manifold, whose breath Is freshness and whose mighty pulse is peace. Palter no question of the dim Beyond; Cut loose the bark; such voyage itself is rest, Majestic motion, unimpeded scope, A widening heaven, a current without care. Eternity! — Deliverance, Promise, Course! Time-tired souls salute thee from the shore. Joseph Brownlee Brown. NEARER HOME ONE sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er; I am nearer home to-day Than I ever have been before; Nearer my Father's house, Where the many mansions be; Nearer the great white throne, Nearer the crystal sea; Nearer the bound of hfe. Where we lay om" burdens down; Nearer leaving the cross, Nearer gaining the crown! 224 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY In death's despite, And day and night yield one delight once more? Dante Gabriel Rossetti. THAT LIGHT rpHAT hght -■■ Fringing the far hills, all so fair, so fair, Is it not dawn? I 'm dying, but 't is dawn. " Upon the mountains I behold the feet Of my beloved; let us forth to meet " — Death. This is death, I see the hght no more; I sleep, But like a morning bird my soul Springs singing upward, into the deeps of heaven. Through world on world to follow Infinite Day. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. , From EVEN SO "pvEATH is dehghtful. Death is dawn, -*— 'The waking from a weary night Of fevers luito truth and light. * * * * Therefore I say, Look up; therefore I say. One little star has more Bright gold than all the earth of earth. Yet must we labor, plant to reap, — 226 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY From the ravage of life, and its riot, What marvel I yearn for the quiet Which bides in the harbor at last, — For the lights with their welcoming quiver That throbs through the sanctified river. Which girdle the harbor at last. This heavenly harbor at last? I know it is over, over, I know it is over at last ! Down sail! the sheathed anchor uncover. For the stress of the voyage has passed : Life, like a tempest of ocean. Hath outbreathed its ultimate blast: There 's but a faint sobbing seaward. While the cahn of the tide deepens leeward; And behold! like the welcoming quiver Of heart-pulses throbbed through the river. Those lights in the harbor at last, The heavenly harbor at last! Paul Hamilton HajTie. UP-HILL T^OES the road wind up-hill all the way? -■--' Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend. 228 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY From AFTER DEATH IN ARABIA Tj^AREWELL, friends! Yet not farewell; ■'■ Where I am, ye, too, shall dwell, I am gone before your face, A moment's time, a little space. When ye come where I have stepp'd Ye will wonder why ye wept ; Ye will know, by wise love taught. That here is all, and there is naught. Weep awhile, if ye are fain, — Sunshine stiU must follow rain; Only not at death, — for death, Now I know, is that first breath Which our souls draw when we enter Life, which is of all life centre. Be ye certain all seems love, View'd from Allah's throne above; Be ye stout of heart, and come Bravely onward to your home ! La Allah ilia Allah! Yea! Thou love divine! Thou love alway! He that died at Azan gave This to those who made his grave. Edwin Arnold. 230 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY Whose going hence made black the noonday sun? Strange is it that across the narrow night They fling us not some token, or make sign That all beyond is not Oblivion. Thomas Bailey Aldrich. PLUS ULTRA "C^AR beyond the sunrise and the sunset rises ■■- Heaven, with worlds on worlds that lighten and respond : Thought can see not thence the goal of hope's sur- mises Far beyond. Night and day have made an everlasting bond Each with each to hide in yet more deep disguises Truth, till souls of men that thirst for truth de- spond. All that man in pride of spirit slights or prizes, All the dreams that make him fearful, fain or fond. Fade at forethought's touch of life's unknown sur- prises Far beyond. Algernon Charles Swinburne. 233 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY THE FUTXIRE WHAT may we take into the vast Forever? That marble door Admits no fruit of all our long endeavor, No fame-wreathed crown we wore, No garnered lore. What can we bear beyond the unknown portal? No gold, no gains Of all our toiling : in the life immortal No hoarded wealth remains. Nor gilds, nor stains. Naked from out that far abyss behind us We entered here : No word came with our coming, to remind us What wondrous world was near. No hope, no fear. Into the silent, starless Night before us. Naked we glide : No hand has mapped the constellations o'er us. No comrade at our side. No chart, no guide. Yet fearless toward that midnight, black and hol- low. Our footsteps fare : The beckoning of a Father's hand we follow — His love alone is there. No curse, no care. Edward Rowland Sill. 234 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY LIFE AND DEATH /^ YE who see with other eyes than ours, ^-^ And speak with tongues we are too deaf to hear. Whose touch we cannot feel yet know ye near, When, with a sense of yet undreamed-of powers. We sudden pierce the cloud of sense that lowers, Enwrapping us as 't were our spirit's tomb. And catch some sudden glory through the gloom. As Arctic sufferers dream of sun and flowers ! Do ye not sometimes long for power to speak To our dull ears, and pierce their shroud of clay. With a loud cry, " Why, this grief at ' death '? We are the living, you the dead to-day! This truth you soon shall see, dear hearts, yet weak, In God's bright mirror cleared from mortal breath! Lilla Cabot Perry. THOU LIVEST, O SOUL! rp^HOU livest, O Soul! be sure, though earth be -^ flames, Though lost be all the paths the planets trod. Thou hast not aught to do with signs and names, With Life's false art or Time's brief period. Thy being wast ere yet the heavens were not. Gently thy breath the waves of ether stirred. And often hast thou feared and oft forgot, 236 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY From NON OMNIS MORIAR 'T^HERE is a part of me that knows -^ Beyond incertitude and fear I shall not perish when I pass Beyond mortahty's frontier; But greatly having joyed and grieved, Greatly content, shall hear the sigh Of the strange wind across the lone Bright lands of taciturnity. Bliss Carman. From QUATRAINS WE Rail at Time and Chance, and break our hearts To make the glory of to-day endure. Is the sun dead because the day departs? And are the suns of Life and Love less sure? From the Death Song of TALIESIN Joy, joy, joy in the height and the deep; Joy like the joy of a leaf that unfolds to the sun; Joy like the joy of a child in the borders of sleep; Joy like the joy of a multitude thrilled into one; 238 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY IN PATRIS MEMORIAM GREAT men of science say we vainly dream When hoping for a hfe beyond this soil. Or that reward will crown our ceaseless toil; They say " we do not know." And it doth seem To these revealers of Earth's mighty scheme A poorer faith to trust, than to recoil From hope unproved. They hold, in life's turmoil, To wait at peace, though blind, the hour supreme. In doubt I mused on one whom Death had claimed. Now, when I die, he may not welcome me I sighed . . . Across my brain a mean thought brushed, A buzzing petty thing I swiftly shamed, For suddenly I knew his soul was free To read my thought, and in the dark I blushed. Eliza Boyle O'Reilly. S LITE AND DEATH TRONGER than life is death, for all things die. Stronger than death is life, for death is nought. Life, — what is hfe? A flash that streaks the sky. Death, — what is death? A name, a haunting thought. 240 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY Dreading no unseen knife, Across Death's threshold step from hfe to lifel O all ye frightened folk, Whether ye wear a crown or bear a yoke. Laid in one equal bed. When once your coverlet of grass is spread, What daybreak need you fear? — The Love will rule you there that guides you here. Where Life, the sower, stands, Scattering the ages from his swinging hands. Thou waitest, Reaper lone, Until the multitudinous grain hath grown. Scythebearer, when thy blade Harvests my flesh, let me be unafraid. God's husbandman thou art. In His unwithering sheaves O bind my heart! Frederic Lawrence Knowles. THE ETERNAL SELF rpHIS earth is but a semblance and a form • -^ An apparition poised in boundless space ; This life we live so sensible and warm Is but a dreaming in a sleep that stays T SAY to thee, do thou repeat -* To the first man thou mayest meet In lane, highway, or open street —7 That he and ive and all men move Under a canopy of love. As broad as the blue sky above; That doubt and trouble, fear and pain. And anguish, all are shadows vain; That death itself shall not remain; That weary deserts we may tread, A dreary labyrinth may thread. Through dark ways underground be led, — Yet if we will one guide obey. The dreariest path, the darkest way Shall issue out in heavenly day; And we on divers shores now cast. Shall meet, our perilous voyage past. All in our Father's house at last. Archbishop Trench. 244)