Cibrar^ of Che Cheological Seminary 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER 
 
 'N 
 
 BT 701 .W45 1884 
 Westbrook, Richard Brodhead. 
 Man--whence and whither? 
 

MAN 
 
 WHENCE AND WHITHER? 
 
 RICHARD B. WESTBROOK, D.D., LL.B., 
 
 Author of “Marriage and Divorce” and “The Bible— 
 Whence and What?” 
 
 “A man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon 
 the thick trees.”—Ps. lxxiv. 5. 
 
 “ Every undertaking is involved in its faults, as the fire in its 
 smoke.”—H indu Bible. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1884. 
 
COPYRICHT, 1884, BY RlCHARD BrODHEAD WESTBROOK. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The present is an age of intense mental curiosity. 
 There is an increasing disposition to inquire into the 
 reason of things. Men are not content with superficial 
 appearances; they want to examine the foundations. 
 Man is a fact in the universe. What is his nature, his 
 constitution, and personality? Where did he come from? 
 Where is he going ? Books relating to these subjects are 
 generally large and expensive, and, with few exceptions, 
 are too professional; they abound with technicalties. 
 Many cannot afford to purchase them. Few have the 
 leisure and patience to plod through them. The average 
 reader cannot comprehend them. 
 
 This plain, cheap little book is intended for busy, 
 active people, who have but little time to read and no 
 taste for metaphysics. High-sounding words have been 
 avoided or explained. Evolution, as defined by one of 
 its most learned champions, is “a change from an indef¬ 
 inite and incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent 
 heterogeneity through continuous differentiations and in¬ 
 tegrations.” No real conception is formed by the ordi- 
 
 m 
 
IV 
 
 Preface . 
 
 •/ 
 
 nary reader from these jingling words, but a child can 
 understand when told that evolution is the orderly process 
 of Nature by which one thing comes out of another, and 
 succeeds another as the effect follows the cause. 
 
 No pretence is made to profound learning or scientific 
 knowledge. Things are taken as they are, or as they are 
 supposed to be, and natural conclusions are drawn from 
 them. The substance of these essays, has recently been 
 delivered in a course of Free Lectures in the Hall of the 
 Philadelphia City Institute to large and highly apprecia¬ 
 tive audiences, but they were stereotyped for this book 
 before they were delivered in the form of lectures. The 
 publication is not an after-thought, an attempt to utilize 
 ephemeral oral discourses. The author believes that he 
 has something to say for the public good that he can 
 better say outside of the Church and the conventional 
 ministry, and therefore chooses to write and lecture as an 
 independent , untrammelled by ecclesiastical supervision 
 and control, and free from that bias which is quite insep¬ 
 arable from sectarian connections and partisanship. For 
 the views presented the author is alone responsible, though 
 he has freely availed himself of the thoughts of many 
 others. 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 April 8, 1884. 
 
 1 
 
 R. B. Westbrook, 
 
 No. 1707 Oxford St. 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PREFACE.vii, viii 
 
 INTRODUCTION. .ix-xxiii 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Is Man a Mere Animal? 
 
 At birth he seems inferior to brutes, but the scale soon turns. 
 Develops a capacity to learn. Sense of personality. The 
 Ego purely human; so with moral sense. Intuitive recog¬ 
 nition of God. ' Hope of immortality. Language. The Ego 
 independent of, and superior to, physical organism. Per¬ 
 sonal identity notwithstanding physical changes. Heredi¬ 
 tary desent. Somnambulism. Dreams. Clairvoyance—ex¬ 
 amples. Medical authority. Doctors La Roche, Nichols, 
 Clark, and Holmes. Clairvoyant description of the process 
 of death. “Outer” and “inner” man. The “spiritual 
 body”—criticism on Luke 24:39. Spirit as realas light, 
 heat, magnetism, electricity, and gravitation .... 1-30 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Common Dogma of Man’s Origin. 
 
 Not a divine revelation by special inspiration. Substantially 
 the same narrative found among nations before the Hebrew 
 story. Babylonians and Akkadians. British Museum cunei¬ 
 form tablets. The story in Genesis a compilation, and con¬ 
 tradictory. The Pentateuch contains many statements not 
 
 V 
 
VI 
 
 Synopsis of Contents . 
 
 historically true, and unscientific. Attempts of theologians 
 to reconcile Genesis and geology a failure. The Mosaic 
 (so called) account not as scientific as the Persian. Old-Tes¬ 
 tament chronology discredited. Age of the earth. The story 
 in Genesis not held as literal history by early Jews and Chris¬ 
 tian Fathers. Children in Sunday-schools taught fables as 
 facts. Danger of reaction when the fraud is discovered. 
 Parallels to Bible-myths. The allegory in Genesis contains 
 many important truths, but is incredible and absurd regarded 
 as literal history . 3 I_ 5 ^ 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Evolution Hypothesis. 
 
 Universe governed by the same general laws. Evolution a 
 characteristic of the constitution of Nature. Evolution in 
 plain words. Nebular hypothesis—what? Creation by evo¬ 
 lution. Same principle of development applies to animals 
 and men. Theories of Huxley and Haeckel stated. Man 
 and all other animals now developed from eggs. Primaeval 
 man ape-like, but not an ape. General tendency of humanity 
 upward. Was man developed from a brute, or was he an 
 original creation ? All evolutionists not Darwinians. The 
 evolution doctrine before Darwin. Material evolution ex¬ 
 plained. It cannot account for the origin of man. Sponta¬ 
 neous generation. Evolution does not imply direct descent 
 from immediately preceding types. If man is related to the 
 monkey, it is not by lineal descent, but by widely-divergent 
 lines, constituting a distcml cousinship .57 - ^3 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Answer of Theism as to Man’s Origin. 
 
 Materialism ignores the question of the absolute origin of 
 things, and is based upon assumptions. What it assumes. 
 Natural selection—what? Purely chance. It may be a pro¬ 
 cess, but not a cause. Darwin not an atheist. Admissions 
 
Synopsis of Contents. vii 
 
 of Tyndall, Haeckel, Spencer, and Arnold. May not atheists 
 and theists mean the same thing, though using different 
 words ? Conceptions of God, false and true. The Unknow¬ 
 able of Spencer and the Unsearchable of Zophar. Where 
 did God originate ? Theists have one assumption, and prove it 
 by the facts of the universe, a posteriori. Materialists ascribe 
 to matter all that theists ascribe to God. Theism rational 
 and scientific. It is impossible to account for the existence 
 of man without admitting the existence of God, though we 
 cannot comprehend him.S4-117 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Is Death the End of Man? 
 
 The majority of men have not so believed. Some disbelievers 
 have always existed. The Old Testament full of scepticism. 
 Agnosticism—what ? Robert G. Ingersoll at the funeral of 
 his brother. Why the future life is unattractive to many 
 persons. Positivism of Comte. Huxley’s estimate of it. 
 How John W. Chadwick characterizes it. The “ succes¬ 
 sion ” and “ annihilation ” dogmas. The materialistic hy¬ 
 pothesis on physiological grounds answered by Prof. Draper. 
 Prof. Hseckel confounds force and motion. Conceptions of 
 spirit as unlike gross matter. The continuance of life no 
 more marvellous than its beginning. The hypothesis of 
 man’s animal descent not opposed to immortality. Facts in 
 school-books show that the existence of mind does not depend 
 upon the brain. Orthodox dogmas of material resurrection 
 and future judgment make sceptics. Arguments from alleged 
 resurrection of Jesus worthless. Liberal ministers criti¬ 
 cised . . 118-147 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Foundation of Faith in a Future Life. 
 
 The scientific principles of “ conservation of energy,” “ persist¬ 
 ency of force,” “indestructibility of matter,” and “natural 
 
viii Synopsis of Contents. 
 
 selection” favor the future life. Difference between the 
 material and immaterial not defined. Human intuitions not 
 to be compared to ignorant beliefs. Men do not desire and 
 hope for the impossible. Dr. James E. Garretson’s theorem. 
 Some men may not be immortal. Future life not necessarily 
 immortal. Human apparitions after death. Dr. Clark, Rich¬ 
 ard Watson, and John Wesley on the appearance of Samuel. 
 New-Testament cases. Melanchthon, Luther, and Oberlin. 
 The “ Apostles’ Creed.” Witchcraft. Baron Louis Gulden- 
 stubbe’s book. Communication from Luther to the bishop of 
 Orleans. Why these cases are introduced. Scientific inves¬ 
 tigations of Zollner and other German scholars as described 
 by Rev. Joseph Cook. English scientists convinced by super- 
 sensuous phenomena—Wallace, Crooks, and Varley. Amer¬ 
 ican judges, lawyers, physicians, college professors, and 
 bishops convinced. Morse’s telegraph ridiculed in Congress 
 in 1843. President Lincoln, United States Senators, and Rep¬ 
 resentatives in Congress converts. A prediction . 148-173 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 After Death—What? 
 
 Why this question has such absorbing interest. Agreement of 
 Catholics and Protestants. Where are heaven and hell ? 
 Jeremy Taylor, D. D., Jonathan Edwards, D. D., Nathaniel 
 Emmons, D. D., and Rev. Thomas Bolton, on the happiness of 
 the elect in view of the torments of reprobates. Hell as de¬ 
 scribed by Dr. Edwards, Rev. Charles Spurgeon, and Rev. 
 J. Furniss. Doom of the majority. Romish purgatory. 
 Priestly origin of hell and purgatory. Description of pagan 
 hells from Rev. W. R. Alger. Anguish of Rev. Albert 
 Barnes and Saurin. Dr. Whedon and the quaint Scotch 
 epitaph. Popular notions of hell irrational, but the doctrine 
 of future punishment is not. What constitutes heaven and 
 hell. The true idea of punishment. The ideal heaven. The 
 future life a counterpart of this. Heaven and hell depend 
 
Synopsis of Contents. ix 
 
 upon character. The true answer to After death —what? is 
 interrogative: In life—what?.174-196 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Science and Theology. 
 
 Both imperfect. Science and religion defined. Not antago¬ 
 nistic. Scientists opposed to each other. Tyndall and 
 Renan on religion. The Church as an institution a com¬ 
 parative failure. Matthew Arnold on religion. The dogma 
 of total depravity an unscientific myth. Logical consequence, 
 the fall of dogmatic theology as a system. The redemptive 
 contrivance founded on the fall of Adam, and must have the 
 same fate. Likewise, the dogma of sacred order of priests. 
 Vicarious atonement through blood of pagan origin, and 
 thoroughly unphilosophical. Material resurrection, literal 
 hell-torments, and other assumptions of dogmatic theology 
 must fall with their foundations. Demoralizing influence of 
 the dogmas of total depravity and free pardon through a 
 divine device. Scepticism does not come from opposition 
 to religion, but to theological dogmas, which can be sur¬ 
 rendered to advantage. Faith of the future as to God, mira¬ 
 cles, origin of man, heredity, original sin, salvation, resurrec¬ 
 tion, punishment, prayer, public worship, priests, and the 
 Bible.197-224 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 It was a suggestive remark that the children 
 of Issachar were “ men that had understanding 
 of the times to know what Israel ought to do ” 
 (i Chron. 12 : 32). A Prophet who lived in 
 Nazareth more than eighteen hundred years ago 
 is said to have recognized the same principle in 
 rebuking his dull disciples for failing to “ discern 
 the signs of the times/' and to anticipate coming 
 events from present circumstances, just as they 
 were accustomed to give probabilities of the 
 weather from appearances in the sky (Matt. 
 16 : 3). 
 
 Men are generally optimists or pessimists ac¬ 
 cording to constitutional temperament, personal 
 experience, or theological bias, but it is the policy 
 of true wisdom to rise above these influences and 
 to look at things as they really exist, and to act 
 accordingly. That man must be comparatively 
 blind who does not know that the theological 
 skies are at present black with clouds of menace 
 
 xi 
 
• • 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 Xll 
 
 and peril, and that signs of devastating cyclones 
 are visible in every direction, and, indeed, that 
 the work of destruction is already going on with 
 fearful sweep. To drop the metaphor, is it not 
 evident that the cultured thought of this age is 
 in open antagonism to the prevalent theological 
 dogmas ? Matthew Arnold, who needs no intro¬ 
 duction to men of reading, says: 
 
 “The partisans of traditional religion in this country 
 [England] do not know, I think, how decisively the 
 whole force of progressive and liberal opinion on the 
 Continent has pronounced against the Christian religion. 
 They do not know how surely the whole force of progress¬ 
 ive and liberal opinion in England tends to follow, so far 
 as traditional religion is concerned, the opinion of the 
 Continent.” . . . “The undoubted tendency of liberal 
 opinion is to reject the whole anthropomorphic and mi¬ 
 raculous religion of tradition as unsound and untenable. 
 On the Continent such opinion has rejected it already. 
 
 . . . “A greater force of tradition in favor of religion is 
 all which now prevents the liberal opinion of England 
 from following the Continental opinion. That force is 
 not of a nature to be permanent, and it will not, in fact, 
 hold out long.” 
 
 It must be admitted that this drifting away 
 from the ancient fetichism, as now represented 
 in a perverted theology, is not confined to the 
 scholastic classes, but, as appears from an official 
 report made to the Registrar-General of England, 
 the masses of the working population are drift¬ 
 ing in the same direction, and are becoming thor¬ 
 oughly estranged from religious institutions in 
 
Introduction. 
 
 • • • 
 
 xm 
 
 their theological aspects. Every observing man 
 must know that what is true of Europe is true 
 of America. 
 
 A distinguished Scotch Presbyterian minister, 
 in a recent public discourse to a Young Men’s 
 Christian Association, said: 
 
 “The great, the mighty, the wise, are not with us. The 
 best thought, the widest knowledge, and the deepest phil¬ 
 osophy have discarded our Church. They detest what 
 they call the inhumanities of our creed. They step out 
 into speculative Atheism, for they can breathe freer there.’’ 
 . . . “They shun us because of our ignorant misconcep¬ 
 tions and persistent misrepresentations of heaven and 
 man and God.’’ 
 
 Even the conservative Dr. Richard S. Storrs 
 of Brooklyn, in a discourse delivered to a similar 
 association, said: 
 
 “There is a fatal tendency to scepticism and unbelief 
 which threatens to sap the foundations of society itself. 
 It pervades the literature of the day, it stands behind our 
 science, and it is broadly proclaimed from the rostrum.” 
 
 Similar quotations might be made from sev¬ 
 eral cautious ministers of various denominations, 
 and a whole volume might be filled with lugu¬ 
 brious lamentations over the decline of religion 
 from the utterances of all the great ecclesiastical 
 bodies. 
 
 Every close observer knows that multitudes 
 of people in this country are rapidly drifting 
 toward Materialism and Agnosticism. An ex- 
 
XIV 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 governor of Pennsylvania, in a recent college 
 address, mentioned the fact of the sceptical tend¬ 
 encies of science, and called upon the learned 
 professors to prepare to meet the emergency. 
 
 CLERICAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 That the professional clergy are largely respon¬ 
 sible for the prevailing scepticism seems never to 
 have occurred to them, and but few of the laity 
 have had courage enough to say what they 
 think. Meanwhile, the work of disintegration 
 goes on. Intelligent men and women are drift¬ 
 ing away from the dogmas of myth and supersti¬ 
 tion, and the falsities of legend are scouted by 
 the conclusions of true science and the deduc¬ 
 tions of enlightened reason. Not one minister 
 in a thousand “ discerns the signs of the times ” 
 or is prepared for the crisis. Few pastors ever 
 read anything beyond their own denominational 
 literature. Their education is partial, one-sided 
 —professional. They cling to mediaeval super¬ 
 stitions with the desperate grasp of drowning 
 men. The great majority of the clergy are 
 not men of broad minds and wide and deep 
 research, and have not the ability to meet the 
 vexed questions of to-day. 
 
 CLERICAL INSINCERITY. 
 
 But ministers who know more than they open¬ 
 ly admit are not a few. Insincerity in the Pulpit 
 
Introduction. 
 
 XV 
 
 is the title of an able essay recently published in 
 the North American Review, from the facile pen 
 of Dr. Edward Everett Hale, which caused great 
 squirming among the clergy, though it did not 
 tell more than half the truth. 
 
 The Rev. Philips Brooks, the popular Episcopal 
 orator of Boston, has admitted in these words, 
 in the Princeton Review , what Dr. Hale charged 
 regarding clerical disingenuousness: 
 
 “A large acquaintance with clerical life has led me to 
 think that almost any company of clergymen talking 
 freely to each other will express opinions which would 
 greatly surprise, and at the same time greatly relieve, the 
 congregations who ordinarily listen to these ministers.” . . . 
 “How many men in the ministry to-day believe in the 
 doctrine of verbal inspiration which our fathers held, and 
 how many of us have frankly told the people that we do 
 not believe it?” . . . “ How many of us hold that the ever¬ 
 lasting punishment of the wicked is a clear and certain 
 truth of revelation ? But how many of us who do not 
 hold it have ever said a word ?” . . . ‘‘There must be no 
 lines of orthodoxy inside the lines of truth. Men find 
 that you are playing with them, and will not believe you 
 even when you are in earnest.” . . . ‘‘The minister who 
 tries to make people believe that which he questions in 
 order to keep them from questioning what he believes, 
 knows very little about the certain workings of the human 
 heart, and has no real faith in truth itself. I think a great 
 many teachers and parents are now in just this condi¬ 
 tion.” 
 
 Professor Fisher, the orthodox champion of 
 Yale College, has recently admitted in the North 
 American Review that at least one of the causes 
 
XVI 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 of the decline of clerical authority and influence 
 is the increased intelligence of the laity. If the 
 people cannot get the truth from the pulpit, they 
 will seek it from the platform and the press. It 
 is no longer to be hidden in cloisters and theo¬ 
 logical seminaries, but it is to be proclaimed 
 from housetops and in language understood in 
 every-day life. It is a suggestive fact that some 
 of the ablest theological works of modern times 
 have been written by laymen. 
 
 CLERICAL EMBARRASSMENTS. 
 
 On the one hand, the modern pulpiteer is in 
 terror of canonical thumbscrews in the form of 
 prosecution for heresy and the loss of good 
 standing and official patronage and preferment. 
 On the other hand, he cannot be indifferent to 
 the prepossessions and prejudices of his parish¬ 
 ioners, while he is dependent upon them for a 
 common livelihood for himself and his family. 
 The presence, in every congregation, of the ex¬ 
 tremes of ancient orthodoxy and modern liberal¬ 
 ism makes the task of the preacher embarrassing 
 in the extreme. It would be amusing indeed, if 
 it were not so humiliating, to see the popular 
 Sunday orator balancing between what he does 
 and does not believe, for fear of possible conse¬ 
 quences. Professional standing, sectarian habits 
 of thought, false pride of opinion, and pecuniary 
 
Introduction. 
 
 XVII 
 
 dependence are shackles that now encumber the 
 free, fearless, and independent march of the cleri¬ 
 cal corps. 
 
 The position occupied by many pastors is 
 most embarrassing, not to say humiliating, de¬ 
 grading, and demoralizing, and they deserve 
 sympathy. But many of them are presuming 
 too much upon the ignorance and credulity of 
 the masses. There is a crisis at hand, and it 
 will be found that the people are in advance of 
 their priests. Wise ones will not much longer 
 stultify themselves by attempting to defend the 
 silly superstitions of the Dark Ages, but will 
 yield to the urgent demand for the revision of 
 creeds. The people are ready for it, and so are 
 many clergymen who have not yet had the cour¬ 
 age to admit the fact—except among their con¬ 
 fidential friends. 
 
 Public teachers of religion have dwarfed them¬ 
 selves and blunted their own moral sense by the 
 suppression of the true and the suggestion of 
 the false, until they have been deceived by their 
 own deception. The people are discovering the 
 imposition, and the reaction must be terrific. 
 The fear now is, that the pendulum will swing 
 violently into the opposite extreme. The work 
 of destruction is now going forward like the 
 sweeping of the tempest or the tread of an earth¬ 
 quake, and the work of construction must be 
 
 B 
 
xviii Introduction. 
 
 prosecuted without fear or favor, and in no hesi¬ 
 tating or ambiguous language. 
 
 In the discussions upon which we are to enter 
 this principle will be kept in constant view: viz. 
 to tear down only to build up. It may be found 
 necessary to abandon many a cherished dogma 
 of our fathers, but at the same time it may be 
 shown that by so doing we only lay aside much 
 that has always been a dead weight to true re¬ 
 ligion. 
 
 CHANGE OF CREED DIFFICULT. 
 
 A long and varied experience and observation 
 have given the author a consciousness of the ag¬ 
 onizing pain that must be endured by a sensi¬ 
 tive man as he realizes that the foundations of a 
 dearly-cherished religious faith are crumbling 
 beneath his feet, and that he must find more 
 rational ground or be plunged into the abyss of 
 Atheism or Agnosticism. The difficulty, amount¬ 
 ing in some cases to almost an impossibility, of 
 casting aside a system of religious belief in 
 which one finds himself settled, is shown by the 
 fact that the large majority of men live and die 
 in the faith in which they are born and educated, 
 however absurd and contradictory it may be. 
 Given the locality of one’s birth and the faith of 
 his ancestors, and you can almost always divine 
 what one believes. There has been very little 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xix 
 
 independent and rational thinking on religious 
 questions, but happily it is on the increase. But 
 when men begin to “ reason on righteousness, 
 temperance, and judgment to come” (Acts 24 : 
 25), and even “reason together” with God (Isa. 
 I : 18), and to act upon the principle suggested 
 by the Prophet of Nazareth to “judge for your¬ 
 selves what is right” (Luke 12 : 57), they are 
 sure to find that true religion is not a synonym 
 of superstition—that it is not necessary to sacri¬ 
 fice sound reason for a blind faith, even if some 
 of the dogmas of priestcraft are shown to be 
 cunning perversions of an effete paganism. 
 When a man has found a religion that is in 
 harmony with the order of the universe, that 
 requires the highest morality and inspires the 
 most unselfish “enthusiasm of humanity,” and 
 he feels always ready to give a reason for the 
 hope that is in him” (1 Pet. 3 : 15), then, and 
 then only, will he rise to the dignity of true 
 manhood. 
 
 SCOPE OF THIS BOOK. 
 
 The character and object of the discussions that 
 are to follow can be inferred from what has now 
 been said. There is a true religion and there is 
 a true science, and between them there is no 
 necessary antagonism. The real assaults of sci¬ 
 ence are on the accretions, perversions, and super- 
 
XX 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 stitions of theology and priestcraft. Against 
 these assaults the orthodox clergy are power¬ 
 less. They cannot answer the objections of sci¬ 
 ence to their absurd dogmas. The ecclesiastical 
 ship must be lightened, or it must go down in 
 the pitiless storm. That it can with advantage 
 throw overboard very much that has been deemed 
 important to the success of the voyage and the 
 safety of the ship can clearly be demonstrated. 
 Let the images and fetiches of dogmatic the¬ 
 ology be broken and destroyed, and the essen¬ 
 tial truth of religion will only shine forth more 
 refulgently. Let not materialists and agnostics 
 suppose that when they have vanquished the 
 superstitions of dogmatic creeds they have anni¬ 
 hilated the religious nature of man, and destroyed 
 that principle of reverence, veneration, and wor¬ 
 shipfulness which is just as much a part of the 
 human constitution as any other faculty of mind 
 or body. Many conservative and timid persons 
 will be pained by some of these utterances. 
 They have no faith in human nature, no faith in 
 any religion but the religion of supernatural 
 authority, no faith in fundamental truth. And 
 even when truth has been discovered, moral 
 cowards do not think it judicious to publish it, 
 at least to the masses, lest their blind faith be un¬ 
 settled and they rush headlong to speedy ruin. 
 
 Away with the old fraud of the exoteric and 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xxi 
 
 esoteric —truth for the few and lies for the com¬ 
 mon people ! Let the whole truth be published, 
 for its own inherent sake, regardless of imme¬ 
 diate consequences. The ultimate result is not 
 doubtful. If the false heavens of dogmatic the¬ 
 ology fall, so much the better. Let them fall! 
 The people have a right to demand the whole 
 truth, and they will have it in spite of the timid¬ 
 ity of their public teachers. The day of conceal¬ 
 ment and suppression has passed away. The 
 schoolmaster is abroad. The platform is free, 
 if the pulpit is barricaded. The discoveries of 
 modern science are pouring floods of light upon 
 dark subjects which have long been deemed too 
 sacred for investigation. 
 
 Not one article of popular faith will be at¬ 
 tacked in these discussions without an honest 
 and loving effort to give something better in its 
 place. 
 
 In the mean time, let no one be anxious about 
 the foundations of true religion. Even the 
 apostle Paul said, “ We can do nothing against 
 the truth but for the truth” (2 Cor. 13 : 8). If 
 its principles are not ineradicable in human na¬ 
 ture, it is of no account to man. 
 
 THE TRUE STANDPOINT. 
 
 We have chosen to discuss living questions 
 of to-day from the human standpoint. We be- 
 
xxii Introduction . 
 
 gin with man, the natural instead of the super¬ 
 natural. If there be anything supernatural, we 
 can best understand it through the visible and 
 tangible. The real history of man is the true 
 history of religion. We take as our motto, 
 Humanity—Heretofore and Hereafter. 
 What are we? What is our origin? Where 
 did we come from? Whither are we going? 
 What is our destination ? These questions are 
 living questions of to-day, and all thoughtful 
 persons are interested in them. The discussion 
 of these inquiries will involve the incidental con¬ 
 sideration of the whole circle of religious dogma 
 and duty. With a rational mind all truth is con- 
 notative, connected like the links of a chain. 
 
 The credibility of the dominant theology is 
 involved in the investigations upon which we 
 now enter. We may not have all the truth. 
 We have often been obliged to revise dearly- 
 cherished opinions, and further revisions may 
 be found necessary. We may be wiser to-mor¬ 
 row than we are to-day. Science has not yet 
 spoken its final word, neither has rational re¬ 
 ligion. To give the best light and the purest 
 truth we have to-day, without regard to what 
 we thought yesterday or may think to-morrow, 
 is the highest duty of an honest man. The 
 fool sticks to his folly and never changes his 
 mind; he has none to change. A wise, consist- 
 
Introduction. xxiii 
 
 ent man often has cause for putting away child¬ 
 ish things when he reaches the maturity of true 
 mental manhood. A man is to be pitied who 
 tenaciously holds the opinions of his childhood 
 and of his ancestors for fear of being thought 
 fickle and changeable. The representative men 
 of all ages have always been deemed heretics 
 and infidels by the bigoted, lazy, and stupid 
 croakers of their times. The heretics of one 
 age are often the acknowledged oracles of the 
 next. Those who are denounced as “infidels” 
 in one generation are often canonized as saints 
 by succeeding ones. Universal history “asserts 
 eternal providence and vindicates the ways of 
 God to man.” 
 
 “Ever the truth comes uppermost, 
 
 And ever is justice done.” 
 

Man-Whence and Whither? 
 
 i. 
 
 WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 ' THYSELF!” was the laconic motto 
 
 inscribed in golden Greek upon the por¬ 
 tico of the gorgeous temple of Delphi five cen¬ 
 turies before the Christian era. “ The chief 
 study of mankind should be man,” was the wise 
 exclamation of Alexander Pope, the great Eng¬ 
 lish poet and essayist, two hundred years ago. 
 To these aphorisms every thoughtful man gives 
 a hearty assent as he fully realizes that self- 
 knowledge lies at the foundation of all true 
 knowledge. Certain it is, that in an intelligent 
 discussion of questions relating to the origin 
 and destination of man we are logically bound, 
 first, to consider the question, What is Man? 
 To this question the anatomist would p-ive a 
 
 o 
 
 learned disquisition on the structure of the hu¬ 
 man frame, with an appropriate name for every 
 part; the physiologist would confuse and con¬ 
 found ordinary minds with high-sounding words 
 
 l 
 
2 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 portraying the functions of the different parts; the 
 histologist, microscope in hand, would enter into 
 minor details that would cause the brain to swirl 
 with delirium ; and the chemist would follow up 
 the work by reducing all that can be seen or felt 
 or tasted of the human form to its sixty-five 
 primal elements, so that all that is left of the 
 physical form is nothing or next to nothing. 
 
 That man has a material body very similar in 
 many things to the brute creation will not be 
 denied, and that he has instincts in common 
 with them is equally evident; but whether man 
 is anything more than an animal of more than 
 ordinary development is a question of vital in¬ 
 terest—one to which every person of thoughtful 
 mind should be able to give an intelligent an¬ 
 swer in this age of materialistic science and 
 agnostic philosophy. 
 
 Several pretentious volumes, with numerous 
 engravings, have been published to show that 
 the embryo human body at an early stage can¬ 
 not be distinguished from the embryo fish, horse, 
 dog or hog. 
 
 Huxley says : “ It is very long before the 
 body of the young human being can be distin¬ 
 guished from that of the young puppy.” Other 
 writers of equal intelligence maintain that these 
 resemblances are largely fanciful and imaginary. 
 There are wide gaps between the brain of the 
 
What is Man? 
 
 3 
 
 lowest human being and the highest ape; and 
 one learned writer has pointed out fifteen par¬ 
 ticulars in which the brain of a man differs from 
 that of the highest brute. The theory that the 
 human embryo at a certain stage has the gill of 
 the fish has been exploded by Dr. Wilford Hall 
 in his Problem of Human Life. According to 
 certain engravings in a popular work by Pro¬ 
 fessor Haeckel, a tortoise is shown to have been 
 evolved from man, instead of man from the 
 tortoise—the renowned materialistic writer, or 
 his engraver, having placed the tail of the tor¬ 
 toise upon the human embryo, and the human 
 head upon the foetal tortoise! The common 
 argument for the animal origin of man from the 
 supposed rudimentary tail, the simple elongation 
 of the spinal column, is very far-fetched, and is 
 simply a matter of merriment with many learned 
 anatomists. But we must not be drawn aside 
 from our main object of investigation by ques¬ 
 tions of minor importance which have no essen¬ 
 tial bearing upon the matter directly at issue. 
 
 It is admitted that man has a material organ¬ 
 ization—that in many things his body is very 
 much like the corporeal forms of irrational 
 animals. How much, or in what particulars, 
 the human body resembles or differs from the 
 other animal organisms, is not the problem that 
 we seek to solve. The question is, What is 
 
4 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 Man ? Is he a mere animal ? Is he so much 
 like common animals as to make the inference 
 justifiable that the same destiny awaits him? 
 Let us inquire into some of those things in 
 which it cannot be denied that man differs from 
 the brute. 
 
 There is a wide difference in the degree of 
 intelligence and self-helpfulness between a human 
 being and a brute at the time of, and a long while 
 after, birth ; and in the struggle for existence the 
 advantage is largely in favor of the brute. Man 
 at birth is the most ignorant, helpless and de¬ 
 pendent of all beings. He has no natural cov¬ 
 ering, like the lamb or pig, cannot walk or 
 change his position, does not know his mother, 
 cannot seek or provide his own food, and would 
 as soon grasp a serpent as a ribbon, and would 
 utterly perish but for the constant supervision 
 of others for months and years of his early life. 
 The chicken, the kitten, the puppy and the pig 
 are brighter, more intelligent and less depend¬ 
 ent at birth than the human babe. If we should 
 judge by comparison in the first six months, we 
 should say that the brute is the superior animal. 
 This does not look as if man is a descendant of 
 common animals, and suggests some difficulties 
 in the way of “ natural selection ” and the “ sur¬ 
 vival of the fittest.” 
 
 But the scale soon turns. With almost infinite 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 5 
 
 care and pains the human parent commences and 
 carries forward the education of the offspring ac¬ 
 cording to his or her capacity and attainments, 
 and the puling child soon emerges from its blank 
 ignorance and semi-idiocy, and evinces more or 
 less desire and capacity to obtain knowledge. 
 The common animal transmits to its descend¬ 
 ants, without any thought or intelligent purpose, 
 a certain degree of intelligence called instinct, 
 so that the puppy and the pig soon know as 
 much as their parents, and indeed as much as 
 any and all of their ancestors have known for 
 long centuries of the past. But the human 
 parent transmits none of his knowledge or at¬ 
 tainments. The child of the philosopher is as 
 ignorant as the child of a peasant; and if man 
 has instinct at all, it is inferior to that of the 
 bird and the bullock. Here comes in the differ¬ 
 ence between brute instinct and human intelli¬ 
 gence. The common animal involuntarily and 
 unconsciously gives to its descendants all the 
 ancestral wisdom ever possessed by its species, 
 while the human parent only transmits a desire 
 and capacity to acquire knowledge. The one 
 we call instinct, the other intelligence; and the 
 difference between these suggests an essential 
 and insuperable difference between a brute 
 and a man, the latter having a mental consti¬ 
 tution or capacity to teach and to be taught to 
 
6 
 
 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 an indefinite extent, which the former has 
 not. 
 
 Then we soon find in man a self-conscious¬ 
 ness, a sense of his individuality and personality, 
 which does not belong to brutes. The Ego is 
 purely human. We cannot conceive of a brute 
 using a personal pronoun, even if he could 
 make himself understood by vocal utterances. 
 
 This sense of personality in man, the sense of 
 independent being, soon leads to self-inspection, 
 introversion, and a desire to know himself—to 
 know what he is, to analyze his own powers and 
 capacities, to inquire into his own origin and 
 destiny. None of these questions ever trouble 
 dogs or horses, apes or orangs. That mere ani¬ 
 mals should ever think of such things is not 
 supposable. 
 
 A moral sense, a conscience, an abstract con¬ 
 ception of the essential difference between right 
 and wrong, is soon found to be a human charac¬ 
 teristic, which indicates that man is something 
 more than an animal. This principle is innate 
 in him, exists to some extent among the most 
 ignorant and degraded of the human race, and is 
 susceptible of high cultivation; while it does 
 not even have the shadow of existence in the 
 inferior creatures. The bull will gore to death 
 his kind keeper, the horse will drive his iron- 
 bound hoof into the temple of his groom, and 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 7 
 
 animals commit every grade of cruelty and in¬ 
 gratitude without compunction or self-reproach. 
 This moral sense in man extends to the finest 
 principles of casuistry, and comprehends the 
 spirit and intent of actions, as well as actions 
 themselves, and requires the strict regulation of 
 the thoughts, desires and affections. 
 
 In connection with this high ethical sense— 
 and probably anterior to its development—man 
 has an intuition, or inward and spontaneous per¬ 
 ception and recognition, of some Intelligence 
 and Power higher than himself, and an inherent 
 disposition to worship that Being. All of us 
 are more or less familiar with the manner in 
 which some persons attempt to account for 
 these things. It is easy to talk of fear, and su¬ 
 perstition, and fetichism, and the like, but it 
 cannot be denied that man has a natural sense 
 of the divine, the supernatural, the spiritual, and 
 that these faculties proclaim him superior to the 
 brute creation, which has none of these sublime 
 perceptions and aspirations. 
 
 A strong desire and hope for continued future 
 existence is another human attribute which dis¬ 
 tinguishes him from mere animals. Such de¬ 
 sires and hopes never exist in an ox or an ass, 
 nor in an ape or a monkey. In humanity they 
 are universal and ineradicable, and can only be 
 accounted for as the manifestations of an innate 
 
8 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 spiritual nature, which, conscious of its capacity 
 for unlimited progress and elevation, can be sat¬ 
 isfied with nothing short of immortality. In 
 these holy hopes and heavenly aspirations mere 
 animals have no share; and he is no true man, 
 whatever his intellectual capacity may be, who 
 has extinguished within himself this supernal 
 flame of divinity. 
 
 And then, as if to utilize and give efficiency 
 and full exercise to his wonderful endowments 
 above the animal creation, we find man possess¬ 
 ing the strange gift of language. Aristotle well 
 said: “Animals have voice, but man alone has 
 speechand Prof. Max Muller is right in re¬ 
 garding “ language as the true barrier between 
 man and beast.” 
 
 There is no more interesting study than the 
 origin and progress of language. It is only 
 necessary, in this connection, to say that the 
 more profoundly the many distinct languages 
 among men are analyzed and the farther 
 back they are traced, the stronger is the evi¬ 
 dence of their independent origin in the in¬ 
 tellectual and spiritual pre-eminence of man 
 over the inferior orders of animals. No man 
 has written more intelligently upon this subject 
 than Prof. Muller of the great English Univer¬ 
 sity. It is most marvellous that this distin¬ 
 guishing attribute of man should have been so 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 9 
 
 foolishly and voluminously used in the vain at¬ 
 tempt to belittle man to the virtual level of a 
 chattering ape. While man has the gift of lan¬ 
 guage it will be impossible to make him out a 
 mere animal. 
 
 From the points made in the foregoing para¬ 
 graphs the suggestion is natural and rational 
 that man has certain attributes which distin¬ 
 guish him from the brute; and further, that he 
 is distinct from, superior to and independent of, 
 his external, visible material organization. The 
 brute has the vital principle of life in common 
 with man, but the contrast between their mental 
 and moral endowments is almost infinite. The 
 dog, the horse, the lion and the elephant show a 
 degree of intelligence amounting to a glimmer 
 of rationality, but it is so inferior in degree as 
 to become a difference in kind. No animal but 
 man has ever learned the use of fire and tools, 
 does not prepare and season food, nor use other 
 animals to lessen its own exertions. The cor¬ 
 poreal organization of the brute is very similar 
 to that of man in complexity and perfection, so 
 that man’s superior mental and moral qualities 
 cannot be the result of mere material organiza¬ 
 tion ; and, moreover, the organization of the 
 human body is sometimes as complete after 
 death as before. It is therefore evident that 
 some other way must be found to account for 
 
io Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 the divine endowments of humanity. The intel¬ 
 ligent and moral Ego called man must be an 
 entity , a real essence, an actual existence, a per¬ 
 sonality superior to and independent of his phys¬ 
 ical organism. 
 
 This position is evident from the well-known 
 fact that man’s physical organization undergoes 
 many and wonderful changes from infancy to 
 old age without affecting his personal identity. 
 Scientific writers allege that a complete change 
 of material in the human body occurs once in 
 every seven years, so that a man of threescore 
 years and ten has had ten new bodies, entirely 
 distinct in material. Whatever may be said as 
 to the frequency of these changes, no man of 
 education will deny that these material changes 
 do take place several times in the course of an 
 ordinary life—that the processes of waste and 
 supply are continually going on. And yet the 
 real man is not affected by these bodily changes. 
 From birth to death he preserves his personal 
 identity—the same mental and moral character¬ 
 istics, the same desires, hopes and fears; and 
 hence it must logically follow that the intelligent 
 Ego is superior to and independent of his mate¬ 
 rial organization. 
 
 This principle is further illustrated by the 
 well-known law of hereditary descent. Even 
 the physical resemblance of the offspring to the 
 
What is Man? 
 
 11 
 
 parent cannot be accounted for without admit¬ 
 ting that man is something more than a physical 
 organism. The atom from which the human 
 body develops is only about the one-hundred- 
 and-twenty-fifth or the one-hundred-and-fiftieth 
 part of an inch in diameter, and is furnished 
 exclusively by the mother; and the additional 
 part contributed by the father is so minute 
 that it can only be closely studied by the most 
 powerful microscope. After the conjunction 
 the mother furnishes from her own body all 
 the material of which the infant body is com¬ 
 posed, and yet the child often resembles the 
 father rather than the mother, when, on the 
 hypothesis that man is a mere physical organ¬ 
 ism, he should resemble the mother a thousand 
 times more. And then if the human ovule 
 differs in no respect from that of the inferior 
 animals, as Darwin and his disciples assert, why 
 does one develop into a man and the other into 
 a brute? There must be some inherent, essen¬ 
 tial, though invisible, difference. We talk of 
 blood relations, and our law-books have tables 
 and charts to illustrate the laws of inheritance 
 on the basis of blood of the first, second, third 
 and fourth degrees, and yet not one drop—nay, 
 not one single corpuscle—of blood ever de¬ 
 scends from the grandfather to the grandson, 
 and, strictly speaking, not even from the father 
 
1 2 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 to the child. This is not only evident from the 
 facts just stated, but is corroborated by the 
 physiological changes always going on in the 
 body, as already set forth. 
 
 The conclusion is inevitable, that all hered¬ 
 itary transmissions, organic and mental, must 
 be referred to some agency superior to mere 
 matter and quite independent of it. The phys¬ 
 iological facts upon which this argument is 
 based are not imaginary or speculative, but are 
 acknowledged by the highest authority. Prof. 
 Huxley says, in his Origin of Species and Ele¬ 
 mentary Physiology: “ So constant and universal 
 is this absorption, waste and reproduction that 
 it may be said with perfect certainty that there 
 is left in no one of our bodies at the present 
 moment one-millionth part of the matter of 
 which they were originally formed.” He also 
 admits that this applies to our very bones. 
 These views are maintained with equal explic¬ 
 itness by Dunglison and other eminent scien¬ 
 tists. It will be found, upon careful reasoning, 
 that the mysteries of physiology, the persistence 
 and fixity of species, the wonders of hereditary 
 descent and inheritance, the transmission of cha¬ 
 racteristic traits and tendencies, can only be ex¬ 
 plained by postulating the obvious fact that the 
 real man is superior to, and is comparatively in¬ 
 dependent of, his corporeal form—that his ma- 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 13 
 
 terial body is an adjunct, and not the human 
 personality. 
 
 We have a further intimation of the independ¬ 
 ence and superiority of the human intelligence 
 over material organization in the mysterious 
 phenomena of somnambulism and dreams. Ele¬ 
 mentary school-books on mental science and 
 philosophy are so full of facts upon these sub¬ 
 jects that it is not necessary here to go into 
 details. All thoughtful persons know that the 
 human intelligence is often most active when 
 the physical senses are worn out with fatigue 
 and locked up in profound slumber. The som¬ 
 nambulist performs mental tasks to which he is 
 not competent when his physical senses are in 
 full play. The real human intelligence seems 
 to have its relaxations and amusements, and to 
 exert its higher faculties without restraint, when 
 the physical organs are in a state of repose. It 
 is not probable that the mind of man ever grows 
 weary and exhausted. Then there is that strange 
 power of divining in dreams of which Tertullian 
 and other Christian Fathers made so much; and 
 no one who has the least degree of historical 
 faith or of confidence in the Jewish and Chris¬ 
 tian Scriptures can doubt that many cases of 
 prevision in dreams have actually occurred. 
 There are also many such cases reported in 
 modern times. Of the precise source of these 
 
14 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 nocturnal visions none can be sure, but this does 
 not affect the position that the phenomena of 
 somnambulism and dreams show, at least in 
 some cases, the independence of the human 
 Ego of physical environments. 
 
 A very singular experience is recorded by 
 Lord Brougham, which may be thus epitom¬ 
 ized: In youth he had a schoolmate with whom 
 he often conversed regarding death and the 
 future state. They promised each other that, 
 if possible, the one dying first should commu¬ 
 nicate with the other. Lord Brougham had 
 
 o 
 
 almost forgotten his friend, who had gone to 
 India in the civil service. He was about leav¬ 
 ing the bath one day when, upon turning his 
 eyes toward the chair upon which he had de¬ 
 posited his clothes, he was amazed to behold his 
 friend seated upon it. He called it a vision, 
 and was very much affected by it. Fie supposed 
 he had been asleep and dreaming, but made a 
 careful record of the facts and date—the 19th 
 of December. Soon a letter arrived from India 
 
 announcing the death of G-on December 
 
 19th! Sixty years afterward Lord Brougham 
 copied this statement from his journal, with 
 comments that showed the deep impression 
 made upon his mind. This might be called a 
 coincidence if modern times did not furnish 
 so many similar examples. 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 15 
 
 It is acknowledged that dreams generally are 
 automatic and have a physiological explanation; 
 but that some dreams show the independence 
 of mind over matter is a proposition that is sup¬ 
 ported by many well-authenticated facts. Cases 
 are numerous, and beyond doubt or suspicion, 
 in which the most creditable literary work has 
 been performed when the bodily senses were in 
 death-like sleep, and the most difficult problems 
 have been solved in the same state; and it is 
 simply ridiculous to call these exploits the result 
 of “ unconscious cerebration,” and to attempt to 
 account for them by any laws known to phys¬ 
 iology. 
 
 But we now advance a step, and attempt to show 
 by the phenomena observed in clairvoyance and 
 clairaudience that the human personality is inde¬ 
 pendent of its corporeal form. If man is not capa¬ 
 ble of seeing without the use of his physical eyes, 
 and of seeing through objects absolutely impene¬ 
 trable by the sight which passes through out¬ 
 ward eyes, and at distances which cannot be 
 traversed by ordinary sight, and of hearing in 
 like manner, then human experience and testi¬ 
 mony are of no value. Deleuze, a French author 
 of high repute, says: “ In somnambulism there 
 are developed faculties of which we are deprived 
 in the ordinary state, such as seeing without the 
 aid of eyes, hearing without the aid of ears, 
 
16 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 seeing at a distance, reading thoughts,” etc. 
 Many astounding facts, authenticated by per¬ 
 sonal knowledge and experience, are given by 
 Henry George Atkinson, joint-author of the Har¬ 
 riet Martineau Letters , also by Dr. Gregory, pro¬ 
 fessor of chemistry in the University of Edin¬ 
 burgh, and many other European scientists of 
 renown, including a committee of physicians 
 appointed by the Royal Academy of Medicine 
 in Paris. In a standard French dictionary of 
 medicine, Rostan, a distinguished professor, 
 says : “ There are few facts better demonstrated 
 than clairvoyance;” and then gives many strik¬ 
 ing examples in his own investigations. Dr. 
 James R. Nichols, author of several scientific 
 works and now editor of the Boston Journal 
 of Chemistry, in his admirable book Whence? 
 What? Where? says: “Several persons are 
 known to me who, while in a peculiar condi¬ 
 tion called ‘ trance,’ can tell the time by a watch 
 with great accuracy when the hands are moved 
 to any position on the dial, and the watch, cov¬ 
 ered by double cases, is wrapped in a napkin. 
 The watch in these instances may be placed on 
 the back of the head of the person or held in 
 the hand of the experimenter.” He relates the 
 following remarkable case: “A young lady of 
 the highest culture and respectability, connected 
 with the family of a former neighbor and friend, 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 17 
 
 has in my presence recited whole pages of a 
 sermon as it was written by a clergyman on a 
 Sunday morning in his study half a mile away. 
 While this recitation was proceeding (the trans¬ 
 action was new and wholly unexpected to the 
 family) the father visited the study of the cler¬ 
 gyman and brought back the manuscript, with 
 ink scarcely dry, and compared it with the 
 words of his daughter as I had faithfully taken 
 them from her lips. The two were precisely 
 alike, hardly differing in a single word. In this 
 instance there was no collusion, no trick; such 
 would have been impossible if the high posi¬ 
 tion of the parties had not forbidden suspicion. 
 Instances of this so-called ‘ second sight ’ are 
 plenty enough, and they rest on testimony 
 which silences incredulity. They are, however, 
 not more numerous perhaps than instances of 
 exalted hearing. Music has been heard by 
 many persons, and every stage in the progress 
 of a concert in a distant city correctly de¬ 
 scribed.” 
 
 The author has himself personal knowledge 
 of many cases of clairvoyance and clairaudience. 
 He has given much attention to the case of 
 Miss Fancher of Brooklyn, and is convinced 
 that she can see without using her natural or 
 external eyes. She has just completed a most 
 elaborate work of embroidery for a member of 
 
 2 
 
18 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 his own household, requiring the most dexterous 
 use of the needle and the combination of colors 
 of the finest shades, though she has had no use 
 of her natural eyes for several years. 
 
 These facts are not new or peculiar to mod¬ 
 ern times; history is full of them. Swedenborg 
 saw and described the progress of the fire that 
 came within a few feet of destroying his own 
 house, and accurately portrayed the scene in 
 detail, though he was more than three hundred 
 miles away. This fact is proved by the per¬ 
 sonal testimony of the philosopher Kant, and 
 authenticated by the public civil authorities. 
 Similar cases have occurred in all times, and are 
 well attested. The wonder is, that any intelli¬ 
 gent person can doubt the reality of this phe¬ 
 nomenon, dismiss it with a sneer, and class it 
 with the tricks of the conjurer and showman. 
 Any person who desires to know the truth re¬ 
 garding this matter need not remain long in 
 doubt. 
 
 In view of these incontrovertible facts man 
 must be superior to his physical organization, 
 and does sometimes show his independence of 
 it and of his material environments. 
 
 Another fact bearing upon this subject, and well 
 known to medical practitioners, is the manner 
 in which the human intelligence often asserts its 
 superiority and independence when the hour of 
 
What is Man f 
 
 19 
 
 bodily dissolution approaches and is actually 
 going on. The editor of the-Boston Journal of 
 Chemistry , before mentioned, refers to a most 
 important paper published a few years ago by a 
 Philadelphia physician, Dr. La Roche, on the 
 “ Resumption of the Mental Faculties at the 
 Approach of Death,” which was extensively 
 copied by the medical journals of America and 
 Europe with favorable comment: “ Its object 
 was to show that sick persons, when the mental 
 faculties are clouded by delirium, will in the 
 hour of death become perfectly lucid and speak 
 with wisdom, with power of memory and with 
 pleasure, their whole past lives coming in dis¬ 
 tinct review.” Dr. Nichols goes on to say: “ It 
 is common for patients prostrated by disease, 
 and who rave like maniacs or talk irrationally, 
 or who sink into a deep lethargic sleep from 
 which they cannot be aroused, to suddenly ac¬ 
 quire consciousness again, their natural condi¬ 
 tion 'of mind, become clear in their perceptions, 
 and then in a few moments fall back and die. 
 This fact has been noticed by physicians as far 
 back as the time of Hippocrates, and indeed is 
 spoken of by Hippocrates himself. This ancient 
 physician closes a description of some similar 
 cases in the following language: ‘ As to the 
 state of the soul, every sense becomes clear and 
 pure, the intellect acute, and the gnostic powers 
 
20 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 so prophetic that the patients can prognosticate 
 to themselves, in the first place, their own de¬ 
 parture from life, then what will take place to 
 those present.’ ” Dr. La Roche in the paper 
 alluded to shows that “ the mind often becomes 
 clear in death when the brain is greatly diseased, 
 when inflammation of the coverings is present, 
 and even when there is change in the brain- 
 substance itself.” This certainly indicates that 
 the real man is superior to and independent of 
 his physical condition, and not entirely depend¬ 
 ent upon his material organism. Physicians of 
 high standing say there is good reason to believe 
 that in the dissolution of the body the mind 
 always becomes lucid, though attendants may 
 not always observe it, and that even in cases of 
 insanity the patient generally evinces mental 
 soundness before death occurs. It is certain 
 that mental exaltation amounting to the pro¬ 
 phetic and clairvoyant state often occurs in the 
 article of death. 
 
 All persons have become more or less famil¬ 
 iar with those miraculous mental exercises which 
 have been experienced by persons in the agony 
 of drowning, but who were rescued and restored 
 before life was extinct. The greatest mental 
 power has been displayed under these circum¬ 
 stances, and in the course of a few seconds the 
 history of a whole life has been portrayed with 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 21 
 
 astounding distinctness and detail, even includ¬ 
 ing things which had been entirely forgotten. 
 With these brief hints this subject must, if fol¬ 
 lowed up, become one of great interest to the 
 student of human nature. 
 
 Even at the risk of being suspected of undue 
 credulity, one thing more must be introduced 
 here to show the superiority and independence 
 of the real man of his physical body. It is the 
 claim that in the moment of death the spectator 
 has with his natural eyes often seen something, 
 and by spiritual intuition realized that the real 
 personality withdrew from the corporeal form 
 and entered upon a separate existence. Dr. 
 Edward H. Clark, late of Boston, was the author 
 of several able works on abstruse medical sub¬ 
 jects, one of which is entitled Visions: A Study 
 of False Sight. For this book Dr. Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes wrote an introduction and memorial 
 sketch. Dr. Clark reports a striking case of a 
 lady patient of his as follows: “ After saying a 
 few words she turned her head upon her pillow 
 as if to sleep; then, unexpectedly turning it 
 back, a glow brilliant and beautiful exceedingly 
 came into her features, and her eyes, opening, 
 sparkled with singular vivacity. At the same 
 moment, with a tone of emphatic surprise and 
 delight, she pronounced the name of the earthly 
 being nearest and dearest to her, and then, 
 
22 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 dropping her head upon her pillow as unex¬ 
 pectedly as she had looked up, her spirit de¬ 
 parted to God who gave it. The conviction 
 forced upon my mind that something departed 
 from her body at that instant of time , rupturing 
 the bonds of flesh , was stronger than language 
 can express .” Dr. Holmes says that Dr. Clark 
 mentioned to him a similar case not reported in 
 his book. At the very instant of dissolution it 
 seemed to him (in this second case), as he sat 
 at the dying lady’s side, that “ there arose some¬ 
 thing —an undefined yet perfectly-apprehended 
 somewhat —to which he could give no name ) 
 but which was like a departing presence .” In 
 this connection Dr. Holmes mentions the fact 
 that “ he had heard the same experience, almost 
 in the very same words, from the lips of one 
 whose evidence is eminently to be relied upon. ’ 
 “ With the last breath of the parent she was 
 watching she had the consciousness that some¬ 
 thing arose, as if the spirit had made itself cog¬ 
 nizable at the moment of quitting the mortal 
 tenement.” Many similar experiences could be 
 furnished from the note-books of physicians of 
 the highest professional standing. 
 
 Having introduced the subject of clairvoy¬ 
 ance, it is not improper to introduce testimony 
 from that source. Myra Carpenter, whose moral 
 character is above suspicion, was a clairvoyant, 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 23 
 
 and had acquired the power of inducing this 
 lucid condition at pleasure. She had been re¬ 
 quested by her mother to watch clairvoyantly 
 at the time of her death, and to publish what 
 she saw. Her report on her mother’s death is 
 in part as follows: 
 
 “First the power of sight departed, and then a veil 
 seemed to drop over the eyes; then the hearing ceased, 
 and next the sense of feeling. The spirit began to leave 
 the limbs, as they died first, and the light that filled each 
 part in every fibre drew up toward the chest. As fast as 
 this took place the veil seemed to drop over the part from 
 whence spiritual life was removed. A ball of light was 
 now gathering just above the head, and this continued to 
 increase as long as the spirit was connected with the 
 bodv. The light left the brain last, and then the silver 
 cord was loosened. The luminous appearance soon be¬ 
 gan to assume the human form, and I could see my 
 mother again, but oh, how changed! She was light and 
 glorious, arrayed in robes of dazzling whiteness, free 
 from disease, pain and death. She seemed to be wel¬ 
 comed by the attending spirits with the joy of a mother 
 over the birth of a child. She paid no attention to me or 
 any earthly object, but joined her companions, and they 
 seemed to go through the air. ... I saw them ascend 
 till they seemed to pass through an open space, when 
 a mist came over my sight and I saw them no more. 
 This vision, far more beautiful than language can ex¬ 
 press, remains stamped upon my memory. It is an un¬ 
 failing comfort to me in my bereavement.’’ 
 
 In this connection it is proper to introduce 
 the description of a death-bed scene as clair¬ 
 voyantly given by that wonderful man, Andrew 
 
24 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 Jackson Davis. Those who would fully appre¬ 
 ciate him should read his Autobiography and 
 some others of his numerous books. His clair¬ 
 voyance has been established beyond a doubt. 
 What follows is his description of a female pa¬ 
 tient about sixty years of age who died of a 
 cancerous disease of the stomach. He says: 
 
 “ Now the process of dying or of the spirit’s departure 
 from the body was fully commenced. The brain began 
 to attract the elements of electricity, of magnetism, of 
 motion, of life and of sensation into its various and nu¬ 
 merous departments. The head became intensely bril¬ 
 liant, and I particularly remarked that just in the same 
 proportion as the extremities of the organism grew dark 
 and cold the brain appeared light and glowing. Now I 
 saw in the mellow spiritual atmosphere which emanated 
 from and enriched her head the indistinct outlines of the 
 formation of another head. . . . The new head unfolded 
 more and more distinctly, and so indescribably compact 
 and intensely brilliant did it become that I could neither 
 see through it nor gaze upon it as steadily as I desired. 
 . . . With inexpressible wonder and with a heavenly and 
 unutterable reverence I gazed upon the holy and harmo¬ 
 nious processes that were going on before me. In the 
 identical manner in which the spiritual head was elimin¬ 
 ated and unchangeably organized I saw unfolding in 
 their natural progressive order the harmonious develop¬ 
 ment of the neck, the shoulders, the heart and the entire 
 spiritual organization. . . . But immediately previous to 
 the final dissolution of the relationship which had for so 
 many years subsisted between the spiritual and material 
 bodies, I saw playing energetically between the feet of the 
 elevated spiritual body and the head of the prostrate 
 physical body a bright stream or current of vital electricity. 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 25 
 
 This taught me that what is customarily termed death 
 is but the birth of the spirit from a lower into a higher 
 state. 
 
 “ I learned that the correspondence between the birth 
 of a child into this world and the birth of the spirit from 
 a material body into a higher world is absolute and com¬ 
 plete, even to the umbilical cord, which was represented 
 by the thread of vital electricity which for a few minutes 
 subsisted between and connected the two organisms to¬ 
 gether. ... As soon as the spirit whose departing hour 
 I thus watched was wholly disengaged from the tenacious 
 physical body, ... I saw her begin to breathe the most 
 interior or spiritual portion of the surrounding terrestrial 
 atmosphere. At first it seemed difficult, . . . but in a 
 few seconds she inhaled and exhaled the spiritual ele¬ 
 ments of nature with ease and delight. And now I saw 
 she was in possession of exterior and physical proportions 
 which were identical in every particular—improved and 
 beautiful—with those proportions which characterized her 
 earthly organization. . . . 
 
 “ The period required to accomplish the entire change 
 which I saw was not far from two hours and a half, but 
 this furnishes no rule for every spirit to elevate and reor¬ 
 ganize itself above the head of the outer form. . . . Im¬ 
 mediately upon emergment from the house she was 
 joined by two friendly spirits from the spiritual countiy, 
 and after tenderly recognizing and communing with each 
 other, the three in the most graceful manner began as¬ 
 cending obliquely through the ethereal envelopment of 
 our globe. They walked so naturally and fraternally 
 together that I could scarcely realize the fact that they 
 trod the air. . . . When I returned to my ordinary con¬ 
 dition, oh, what a contrast! Instead of beholding that 
 beautiful and youthful and unfolded spirit, I now saw, in 
 common with others about me, the lifeless, cold and 
 shrouded organism of the caterpillar which the joyous 
 b, tterfly had so recently abandoned.” 
 
26 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 In answer to the question, What is Man? we 
 are now ready to answer: Man is a complex 
 being—has a dual or twofold, if not triple, na¬ 
 ture. This is no new doctrine. It is as old as 
 the history of our race. Homer and Hesiod, 
 Plutarch and Bacon, and all the great poets and 
 philosophers, held it. The literature of all 
 countries and peoples is full of it. What nearly 
 all great minds have credited is at least worthy 
 of respectful consideration. The doctrine may 
 be thus summarized: Man has an external, 
 visible body. We know its constituent ele¬ 
 ments to be “of the earth earthy.” Leibnitz and 
 other chemists analyze it and reduce it to im¬ 
 palpable gases which may be inhaled into our 
 lungs and absorbed and appropriated by the 
 plants. But within this “outer” man there is 
 an “ inner ” man, which is called the “ spiritual 
 body.” What are its constituent elements is not 
 known. The line of demarcation between the 
 material and the spiritual is not fixed, and it is 
 not the object of this paper to go into metaphys¬ 
 ical distinctions, and thus run the risk of divert¬ 
 ing attention from the main subject under con¬ 
 sideration. If the inner body is material, it is at 
 the same time so ethereal as not to be subject to 
 the test and laws of matter in its grosser forms. 
 Swedenborg has written extensively upon this 
 subject. Wesley thought it might be composed 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 27 
 
 of ethereal or the finest of electric matter. The 
 late Professor Bush of the New York University 
 said : “ It performs for the spirit the office of a 
 body, and is therefore so termed.” Professor 
 Benjamin Pierce, the eminent mathematician of 
 Harvard University, says: “Body and matter 
 are essential to man’s true existence. . . . The 
 soul which leaves this earthly body still requires 
 incorporation. The apostle Paul has told us in 
 one of his sublime Epistles that there are celes¬ 
 tial bodies as well as bodies terrestrial.” These 
 were the views of the New-Testament writers 
 and of the Christian Fathers. Paul further said: 
 “ There is (not, will be) a natural body, and there 
 is a spiritual body; ” “ It is sown a natural body, 
 it is raised a spiritual body.” If Moses and 
 Elias appeared upon the Mount of Transfigura¬ 
 tion, it was in their spiritual bodies. If Jesus 
 appeared after his resurrection, it was in his 
 spiritual body. The passage lound in Luke 
 (24 : 39), “ Handle me and see, for a spirit hath 
 not flesh and bones as ye see me have,” has evi¬ 
 dently been tampered with by compilers and 
 translators who believed in the literal resurrec¬ 
 tion of the physical, animal body. Ignatius, 
 bishop of Antioch about A. D. 70, and who 
 wrote before the Gospel ascribed to Luke was 
 written, thus rendered it: “ Handle me and see, 
 for I am not a spirit without body (dainiomon 
 
28 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 asomaton ).” This is doubtless the true reading, 
 and explains the statements that Jesus after his 
 resurrection entered a closed room without 
 opening the door, was transported to a distant 
 place without the ordinary means of locomotion, 
 was not always readily recognized by his friends, 
 and at pleasure “ vanished out of their sight.” 
 It is said “ flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
 kingdom of God,” but a body is not necessarily 
 flesh and blood. Even matter in its different 
 forms is not subject to the same conditions and 
 laws. Light and electricity are very unlike 
 glass and iron, and to a certain extent independ¬ 
 ent of them, and pass through them without 
 any apparent displacement of their constituent 
 particles. Nor is the doctrine of a spiritual 
 body within the natural body scouted by true 
 science and the analogies of nature. Duality 
 in man’s physical nature is suggestive of dupli¬ 
 cation in his spiritual nature in association with 
 his animal form. Those who have lost limbs 
 agree in affirming that at times the lost mem¬ 
 ber is as really subject to sensation as before 
 amputation. The outer member has perished, 
 but the inner member still remains, though in¬ 
 visible to natural eyes. Many mysteries of 
 physiology can only be explained upon the hy¬ 
 pothesis of the spiritual, duplicate body. Let 
 scientists postulate this, and they will have no 
 
What is Man ? 
 
 29 
 
 difficulty in explaining the work of bioplasts in 
 weaving and working the delicate tissues of the 
 physical organism. Even Paul says: “ Though 
 the outer man perish, the inner man is renewed 
 day by day.” The outer caterpillar contains the 
 inward butterfly. Nature is full of analogies of 
 the dual nature of man, and when scientists be¬ 
 come thoroughly scientific they will not limit 
 their observations to the crust of things, but 
 will acknowledge that there must be a kernel, 
 and that there are things in heaven and earth 
 not dreamed of in their philosophy—that there 
 are things that cannot be tasted, seen and 
 handled with physical organs. “ The natural 
 man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
 God, because they are spiritually discerned,” is 
 a philosophical principle of which materialists 
 seem ignorant. 
 
 Light, heat, magnetism and gravitation are as 
 real as the more ponderous substances of nature, 
 and we have as good evidence of the entitative 
 existence of the imponderable and the invisible 
 as of the grossest material formations. Indeed, 
 we know that the most powerful forces and 
 agencies of nature are the unseen and incom- 
 prehensible, just as we have reason to believe 
 that the more important part of man is his spir¬ 
 itual body, which is the perisprit or envelope of 
 his divine spirit , just as the decaying mortal 
 
30 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 body is the external crust or shell in which the 
 real man is for the present enshrined. If these 
 views are well founded, what is called death 
 should be regarded as birth. Death is transi¬ 
 tion. It is the beginning of a higher life. The 
 second birth is no more wonderful than the first. 
 One is ^carnation, and the other ^carnation, if 
 we may be permitted to coin a word. Man is a 
 spirit, and is surrounded by spirits enveloped in 
 physical forms. We are now in a spirit-world. 
 “ Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom 
 of God,” but there may be bodies which are not 
 flesh and blood. We may be “ unclothed ” at 
 death of our gross covering, and yet be “clothed 
 upon ” with finer but not less real material. A 
 Persian poet has well said: 
 
 “What is the soul ? The seminal principle from the loins 
 of destiny. 
 
 This world is the womb ; the body its enveloping mem¬ 
 brane ; 
 
 The bitterness of dissolution, Dame Fortune’s pangs of 
 childbirth. 
 
 What is death ? To be born again an angel of eternity.” 
 
 But more of this in considering the questions 
 of a future life and immortality. 
 
II 
 
 THE COMMON DOGMA OF THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 
 O man of reflection can be indifferent to 
 
 IN the question regarding the origin of the 
 race to which he belongs. Few persons who 
 have allowed themselves to think seriously upon 
 this problem have been satisfied with the com¬ 
 mon answer given in the nursery, Sunday-school 
 and church. And yet the prevailing belief of 
 Christendom to-day is, that about six thousand 
 years ago the Supreme Being, somewhere in 
 Asia, took common clay and moulded it into 
 the form of a man, somewhat as a sculptor 
 forms the model from which the marble statue 
 is to be copied; and when shaped to his liking 
 he breathed into the cold, inanimate figure the 
 breath of life, and it became a living soul. This 
 miraculous work is believed to have been begun 
 and completed on a particular day, so that in 
 the morning the earth contained not a man, but 
 in the afternoon or evening a full-grown man 
 stood up in his majesty and assumed supremacy 
 over all living things. This God-like man find- 
 
Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 3 2 
 
 ing himself lonely, the Creator put him to sleep 
 and opened his side, and took therefrom a rib, 
 out of which he formed a female man—a woman 
 —who was to be a companion, a wife, to the male 
 man, and from this human couple have come 
 by ordinary generation all the people dwelling 
 upon the face of the earth. There is no subject 
 upon which imagination has so exhausted itself, 
 or fancy been more free and poetry more florid, 
 than in describing the intellectual, moral and 
 physical perfection of these miraculously-cre¬ 
 ated beings. Unfortunately for their progeny, 
 this perfection did not long continue, for before 
 they were blessed with offspring they lost their 
 Creator’s favor and became fearfully demoralized, 
 and instead of begetting children endowed with 
 their own angelic qualities they became the un¬ 
 happy parents of a race of moral monsters, a 
 degraded and dishonored family, of which we 
 are all unfortunate members. 
 
 This story is to-day received as the true one 
 by the common people, and is taught every 
 Sunday by threescore thousand pulpiteers in 
 these United States, and in thousands and tens 
 of thousands of Sunday-schools to hundreds 
 of thousands of credulous and confiding chil¬ 
 dren. 
 
 The common ecclesiastical theory of the 
 origin of the human race, and the whole story 
 
 o 7 
 
The Common Dogma. 
 
 33 
 
 of Adam and Eve, the talking serpent, the sin¬ 
 ning woman and her unfortunate progeny, are 
 based upon the assumption that these matters 
 have been certainly revealed by the Creator and 
 written down in the oldest of all books by a 
 man specially chosen and plenarily inspired by 
 Omniscience, so that there can be no error or 
 mistake in the record; and to question this nar¬ 
 rative is most impious and blasphemous, and 
 generally subjects the doubter to the scandal of 
 infidelity. 
 
 If this were a mere theory, having no neces¬ 
 sary connection with great questions of religion 
 and practical morality, it might not be worth 
 our while to examine it. But, as will hereafter 
 appear in this discussion, this question is insep¬ 
 arably connected with every other question dear 
 to man, and lies at the very foundation of all 
 religion; and the great question of universal 
 humanity, Whither? cannot be intelligently an¬ 
 swered until we settle the question Whence? 
 
 A few obvious suggestions that bear upon this 
 vital question may with propriety here be intro¬ 
 duced. 
 
 It is a sheer assumption that the Creator has 
 made a written revelation regarding the origin 
 of the human race. There is not in the book 
 of Genesis, the first book in the Jewish Bible, 
 single sentence to show that God wrote it, 
 
 o 
 
 3 
 
 one 
 
34 
 
 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 or that he dictated it or inspired it, or that its 
 writer claimed or professed to write it under di¬ 
 vine or any other special inspiration. 
 
 It is not true, as is often asserted, that the 
 Hebrew book of Genesis is the oldest book in 
 the world, and that all other books, containing 
 the same matter on any given subject, derived 
 their knowledge from it. The most credulous 
 theologist does not claim for Genesis that it was 
 written more than fifteen hundred years before 
 Christ, and there is good reason for believing 
 that it was compiled from various sources in the 
 form in which we now have it, probably by the 
 Jewish priest Hilkiah, about the year 626 before 
 the Christian era. The arguments in favor of 
 this position are very conclusive, and are based 
 mainly upon historical, biographical and geo¬ 
 graphical allusions found in the Old-Testa¬ 
 ment Scriptures themselves, and have been 
 well summarized in New Researches of Ancient 
 History. The evidence in support of this is 
 as conclusive as that Chicago did not exist 
 at the period of the American Revolution. 
 The inquirer would do well to examine this 
 subject of the comparative antiquity of the so- 
 called sacred scriptures of pagans and Jews, and 
 he may be greatly assisted by the little book 
 The Bible—Whence and What? recently pub¬ 
 lished by Lippincott. According to Berosus, a 
 
35 
 
 The Common Dogma. 
 
 priest of the temple of Belus 276 years b. c., 
 often quoted by Josephus, fragments of Persian 
 history can be traced back fifteen thousand years. 
 The admissions of Renouf, Max Muller and other 
 learned orthodox scholars as to the greater an¬ 
 tiquity of scriptures called pagan should make 
 the modern exhorter blush when he asserts that 
 the Jewish Genesis is the oldest writing in the 
 world. 
 
 The story of the origin of our race, as re¬ 
 corded in Genesis, is not first found in writings 
 improperly, as many think, ascribed to Moses. 
 So far from this being true, we find the same 
 story, substantially, in documents written hun¬ 
 dreds if not thousands of years before Moses 
 was born, and among people who had never 
 heard of Jehovah and Elohim, the Gods of Gene¬ 
 sis. It would be superfluous, and not consistent 
 with the design of these papers, to transcribe at 
 length these ancient legends, found among Hin¬ 
 doos, Persians, Etruscans, Phoenicians, Babylo¬ 
 nians, Chaldaeans, Egyptians, Thibetans, and in 
 fact among nearly all the pagan nations of an¬ 
 tiquity, who flourished long centuries before 
 the Jews had an existence. These facts are ad¬ 
 mitted by the most learned writers of the or¬ 
 thodox school. The truth is, that any man who 
 dares now deny that the first and second chap¬ 
 ters of Genesis are compilations from older tra- 
 
36 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 ditions and legends must subject himself to the 
 charge of either ignorance or dishonesty. It is 
 not claimed that there is a literal agreement, in 
 every particular, between these pagan legends 
 and the Hebrew story, but that they agree in so 
 many particulars as to show a common origin. 
 There is good reason to believe that the He¬ 
 brews borrowed the story substantially from 
 the Babylonians, among whom they had been 
 captives, and they probably derived it from the 
 Akkadians, a highly-cultivated people who dwelt 
 in the valley of the Euphrates before Babylon was 
 founded. According to this account, the Supreme 
 Being (Ormuzd) divided the work of creation into 
 six parts: he created Adama and Evah on the 
 sixth day, and made all other creatures subser¬ 
 vient. This is not a recent discovery, as many 
 writers of distinction have been obliged to admit 
 the strong resemblance between the Zend narra¬ 
 tive and the Mosaic, so called. The Etruscan 
 story is substantially the same, with such slight 
 variations as to suggest that one of the accounts 
 in Genesis was partially taken from it. Dr. 
 Delitzsch, while vigorously maintaining the his¬ 
 torical truthfulness of the Hebrew narrative, yet 
 inquires : “ Whence comes the surprising agree¬ 
 ment of the Etruscan and Persian legends with 
 this section ? How comes it that the Babylo¬ 
 nian cosmogony in Berosus and the Phoenician 
 
37 
 
 The Common Dogma. 
 
 in Sanchoniathon, in spite of their fantastical 
 oddity, come in contact with it in remarkable 
 details ?” After enumerating many things in 
 which the identity is perfect, he says: “ For 
 such an account outside of Israel we must, 
 however, conclude that the author of Genesis 
 has no vision before him, but a tradition.” 
 
 The Persian account also agrees with the He¬ 
 brew in almost every particular regarding the 
 temptation of the first man and woman by a 
 serpent, the wonderful tree whose fruit imparted 
 immortality, their fall, the covering of their 
 nakedness, etc. etc. 
 
 But recent discoveries made by Mr. George 
 Smith of the British Museum for ever settle the 
 charge of plagiarism against the Hebrew author. 
 The cuneiform inscriptions prove conclusively 
 that the Babylonians had this legend of the cre¬ 
 ation and fall of man more than fifteen hundred 
 years before the Hebrews ever heard of it. A 
 representation of the principal objects, copied 
 from an Assyrian cylinder, may be seen in 
 Smith’s Chaldean Account of Genesis. He says: 
 “ We know well that in these early sculptures 
 none of these figures were chance' devices, but 
 all represented events, or supposed events, and 
 figures in their legends; thus it is evident that 
 a form of the story of the Fall similar to that of 
 Genesis was known in early times in Babylonia.” 
 
38 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 These things are not wonderful when we find 
 substantially the same fables among the ancient 
 Egyptians and Hindoos and other nations of 
 antiquity. It would be easy to fill volumes with 
 quotations proving and illustrating these facts. 
 Bearing in mind what is thus fully proved, there 
 is no difficulty in understanding why the entire 
 Old Testament is silent regarding the origin 
 and fall of man (except the short, contradictory 
 account in Genesis), and that Abraham, Isaac 
 and Jacob, Samuel and the prophets, and prob¬ 
 ably Moses himself, never heard of the marvel¬ 
 lous story. The Jews do not seem to have 
 heard of it in Egypt, but first obtained it from 
 the Babylonians; and thus is furnished another 
 evidence of the comparatively modern origin of 
 the Pentateuch, improperly credited to Moses. 
 
 Let it be distinctly understood that the popu¬ 
 lar ecclesiastical dogma regarding the origin of 
 man has been unmistakably traced to an unau- 
 thentic legend existing among many nations older 
 than the Hebrews, and who knew it to be a fable. 
 From these well-established facts the conclusion 
 is inevitable that if the popular story of the ori¬ 
 gin of man is a matter of divine revelation and 
 historically true, it was not first revealed to the 
 Jews, but to pagan peoples, from whom the 
 story was borrowed by the compiler of Gene¬ 
 sis. Where and in what manner these Oriental 
 
The Common Dogma. 39 
 
 legends originated it is not necessary here to 
 Inquire. 
 
 The so-called Mosaic narrative in Genesis 
 contains in itself evidence of having been com¬ 
 piled from traditions and legendary tales, and 
 that statements so contradictory could not have 
 been dictated by an infinite Creator. That there 
 are two fiatly-contradictory accounts of the cre¬ 
 ation of man and woman in Genesis every atten¬ 
 tive reader knows. And this fact is by candid 
 orthodox writers admitted, and by none more 
 frankly than by the late Dean Stanley of the 
 English Establishment. The first account of cre¬ 
 ation ends at the third verse of Genesis 2, and the 
 second account begins at the fourth verse, and 
 closes with the end of that chapter. In the first 
 account the man and woman are created together 
 on the sixth and last day of creation, as the com¬ 
 plement of each other and to be blessed together 
 (Gen. 1 : 28). In the second account the beasts 
 and birds are created after the creation of the man 
 and before the creation of the woman, and it was 
 not until after Adam had examined and named 
 all the beasts of the fields, and had failed to find 
 among the apes, chimpanzees and orangs a suit¬ 
 able companion for himself, that Eve was made 
 from one of Adam s ribs, taken from his piim- 
 eval anatomy while under the influence of a 
 divine anaesthetic (Gen. 2 : 7, 8, 15, 22). In the 
 
40 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 first account man was made on the last day, 
 and woman was made at the same time, with 
 him and for him. In the second account man 
 was made after the plants and herbs, but before 
 fruit trees, beasts and birds, and woman—who 
 was made after all things—was an afterthought, 
 a sort of necessary evil, for the comfort and 
 solace of man. These contradictions run through 
 the whole of the first and second chapters of 
 Genesis, relating to the entire work of creation, 
 and plainly show that these narratives were 
 written or compiled by two different persons 
 from indefinite traditions and from different 
 written documents. Had the Creator under¬ 
 taken to write or dictate an account of his own 
 work, he certainly would not have contradicted 
 himself in six particular items in the limit of a 
 few lines. 
 
 The credibility of the document in which is 
 found the commonly-received account of the ori¬ 
 gin of the human race is further impaired, and in¬ 
 deed destroyed, by the consideration that it con¬ 
 tains statements that are absurd and at variance 
 with the demonstrations of science. It teaches 
 not only that the world was made in six days 
 of twenty-four hours each, but that the universe 
 outside of this , earth was made in a single 
 day. 
 
 The Hebrew word translated “ days,” Angli- 
 
4 i 
 
 The Common Dogma. 
 
 cised, is yorns. It is admitted that this word, in 
 its plural form, sometimes means more than a 
 day of twenty-four hours, but it generally means 
 a single day; and all Hebraists know that when 
 a longer or an indefinite period is intended the 
 word olam is the proper word. If this word 
 had been used instead of the word yom, there 
 might have been some ground for the pretence 
 that the Mosaic account is consistent with the 
 demonstrations of modern science as to the 
 almost eternally long period of the creative 
 epoch. It would be easy to furnish almost in¬ 
 numerable admissions of orthodox scholars to 
 show that the six days of the creative week were 
 intended by the writer to describe ordinary, nat¬ 
 ural days of twenty-four hours each—days, in 
 fact, and not indefinite periods of long duration. 
 Any other interpretation Professor Hitchcock 
 has pronounced “ forced and unnatural, and 
 therefore not to be adopted without a very urgent 
 i necessity ” The venerable Moses Stuart, long 
 
 professor of biblical literature in the Andover 
 Theological Seminary, says: 
 
 “When the sacred writer in Genesis i says the first 
 day, the second day, etc., there can be no possible doubt 
 —none, I mean, for a philologist, let a geologist think as 
 he may—that a definite day of the week is meant. . . . 
 What puts this beyond all question (the learned theolo¬ 
 gian adds) is, that the writer says, specifically, ‘ the even-^ 
 ing and the morning were the first day, ‘ the second day, 
 
42 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 etc. Now, is an evening and a morning a period of some 
 thousands of years ? ... If Moses has given us an erro¬ 
 neous account of the creation, so be it. Let it come out, 
 and let us have the whole.” 
 
 To these honest words every sincere lover of 
 truth will give assent. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that while the writer 
 of Genesis taught the barbarian hordes—who 
 were more likely driven out of Egypt than that 
 they were miraculously led out—that the world 
 was made in six ordinary days, the Persian le¬ 
 gend represents that the supreme being Ormuzd 
 created all things in six thousand years, and that 
 man and woman were both made in the sixth 
 period of one thousand years, the man being 
 named Adama and the woman Evah. This 
 would at first seem to help the hypothesis of 
 some modern geologists of the Hugh Miller 
 and Dawson schools, but in point of fact the 
 “ indefinite-period ” theory does not, after all the 
 quirks and special pleadings, overcome the diffi¬ 
 culty. The question arises, Why six indefinite 
 periods ? One indefinite period is as long as 
 six or sixty. There is nothing in geology to 
 indicate six periods. Lyell counts fourteen gen¬ 
 eral periods and thirty-five subordinate periods. 
 Hitchcock specifies ten principal formative pe¬ 
 riods. One need only read the attempts to rec¬ 
 oncile Genesis and geology to be convinced that 
 
43 
 
 The Common Dogma. 
 
 the Mosaic record is to be taken in its obvious 
 sense, and that its writer knew little of the work 
 of creation ; but he probably did know, or might 
 have known, that among those for whom he 
 wrote there were none of sufficient intelligence 
 to discover and expose his absurditi.es. 
 
 Equally incredible is the Jewish chronology of 
 the creation of this earth six thousand years ago, 
 or, to speak more accurately, just five thousand 
 eight hundred and eighty-eight years ago. It 
 is hardly necessary to say in this connection 
 anything more than that no geologist now 
 speaks of anything less than millions of years 
 for the formation of this globe. Owen, the 
 well-known writer on palaeontology, speaks of 
 “ a period so vast that the mind, in the endeavor 
 to realize, is strained by the effortDr. Buck¬ 
 ingham and Professor Sedgwick speak of “ im¬ 
 measurable periods ” and “ countless succeed- 
 ing ages.” 
 
 We shall have occasion to speak of this mat¬ 
 ter more fully when we come to consider the age 
 of the human race as shown by modern science. 
 But what are we to think of the story that this 
 earth had existed three days—that is, as some 
 modern theologians tell us, three indefinite pe¬ 
 riods of thousands if not millions of years, 
 having day and night, morning and evening, its 
 surface covered with grass, herbs and fruit-trees 
 
44 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 —before the sun , moon and stars were created? 
 And then in a single day these vast portions 
 of the universe were created, and that, too, for 
 the special benefit of this pebble of a globe— 
 “ the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule 
 the night,” with the stars thrown in for orna¬ 
 ment ! The Rev. John Jasper of Richmond 
 and the Rev. De Witt Talmage of Brooklyn 
 see nothing in these things to discredit the Mo¬ 
 saic narrative, and call all men infidels who do; 
 yet no honest, intelligent investigator can read 
 their silly sayings in the light of modern geology 
 and astronomy without laughing at the drown¬ 
 ing victims of superstition and credulity catching 
 at imaginary straws. Let even a school-girl of 
 ordinary attainments read the Mosaic account 
 of the creation of the sun and moon, and their 
 relation to this acorn of a world, and then turn 
 to her elementary astronomy, and there learn 
 that the sun is eight hundred and sixty thou¬ 
 sand miles in diameter, enveloped in a sea of 
 flame thousands of miles in depth, every moment 
 throwing off as much heat as could be generated 
 by all the coal in the State of Pennsylvania. 
 Then ask her whether this huge globe of flam¬ 
 ing fire was made to “rule” and give “light” 
 to this speck of matter upon which we dwell, not 
 one-millionth part the size of the sun. Then, as 
 we consider the stars, and learn that the one 
 
45 
 
 The Common Dogma. 
 
 nearest to us is tzventy-one billions of miles dis¬ 
 tant, and the next thirty-severi billions of miles, 
 and that these stars are suns shining by their 
 own light—that Sirius is a sun twenty-six hun¬ 
 dred and eighty-eight times larger than our sun, 
 and that we have some knowledge of the Polar 
 Star, two hundred and ninety-two billions of miles 
 from us, and that there are stars in the infinite 
 abyss so distant that their light would not reach 
 this earth in five millions of years, though light 
 travels at the rate of one hundred and eighty- 
 five thousand miles in a second,—when we con¬ 
 sider these wonderful revelations of astronomy 
 how can we accept as literal historic truth the 
 story of Genesis, made more and more incredible 
 and grotesque as it has been altered from the 
 common fables of more ancient and more en¬ 
 lightened peoples ? 
 
 We might pursue these illustrations to an 
 indefinite extent, but enough has been presented 
 to show the utter incredibility of the anony¬ 
 mous, unauthenticated, comparatively modern 
 legend upon which nearly the whole religious 
 world relies for an answer to the question rising 
 naturally in every thoughtful heart: Whence? 
 
 It is only fair to state that the Mosaic account 
 of creation was not at first held as historic truth. 
 Early Jewish and Christian writers regarded it 
 as legendary and fanciful, and no attempt was 
 
46 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 made to palm it off as real until the demands 
 of dogmatic theology and priestcraft made it 
 necessary. Maimonides, Philo and Josephus 
 among the Jews, and Origen, St. Augustine, 
 Tertullian, Clement and Ambrose among the 
 Christian Fathers, fully realized that there was 
 no rational way to interpret Genesis but upon 
 the allegorical hypothesis. Since it is well 
 known that the original story as found in the 
 Zendavesta and other ancient Oriental scrip¬ 
 tures is purely a fanciful conception, the sub¬ 
 stantial copy in the Jewish Scriptures can have 
 no better foundation. Nothing can be more 
 absurd than the efforts of modern theologians 
 to reconcile the Mosaic account of creation with 
 the demonstrations of modern science, and to 
 make the account consistent with itself. Arbi¬ 
 trary translations are made, new versions con¬ 
 cocted and the wildest conceptions of human 
 ingenuity exhausted, and the mystery only 
 thickens. In fact, the assumption of one ab¬ 
 surdity only makes the invention of many 
 others necessary, just as one lie makes many 
 lies necessary to give color of truth to the 
 first. 
 
 “ What tangled webs we weave 
 When first we practise to deceive !” 
 
 It has been well said that “ a fact will fit every 
 other fact in the universe, because it is the prod- 
 
The Common Dogma. 
 
 47 
 
 uct of all other facts. A lie will fit nothing ex¬ 
 cept another lie made for the express purpose 
 of fitting it.” The forced interpretations put 
 upon the Hebrew story to make it appear to be 
 historical, literal truth make it more absurd 
 than it would otherwise appear. Think of 
 Adam, created, according to one account, on 
 the second day, and Eve on the sixth day, and 
 then accept the hypothesis that these creative 
 days represent long periods of thousands if not 
 millions of years to each day, so that four 
 periods of thousands of years passed away 
 before Adam had his Eve to be a helpmeet, 
 and what a long, lonely time he must have 
 had ! It would not have been strange if from 
 sheer solitariness he had “taken up” with some 
 frisky ape or vivacious chimpanzee. No won¬ 
 der that the American humorist on his travels 
 is said to have wept when he was shown the 
 grave of Adam. Then how small the human 
 census must have been for unnumbered ages ! 
 and how strange the fact that the same writer 
 says that “ Adam lived nine hundred and thirty 
 years, and he died”!—that is, he died several 
 hundred thousand years before the rib was taken 
 from his side to make him a wife. One cannot 
 resist the temptation to be facetious in contem¬ 
 plating the unsuccessful attempt of the Creator 
 to make Adam satisfied with the companionship 
 
48 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 of the beasts, as it would seem that it was only 
 when his virgin heart failed to feel the painful 
 pleasure of true conjugal love toward some 
 animal already made that God created lovely 
 woman. If you want your seriousness restored 
 in contemplating this subject, you can read the 
 grave and learned commentaries of orthodox 
 theologians on the pensive passage written after 
 Adam’s inspection of the “ greatest show on 
 earth,” which says, “ There was not found a 
 helpmeet for him.” 
 
 It is certainly a suggestive fact that while 
 nearly all Christendom professes to receive the 
 Adam-and-Eve story as a true record of biog¬ 
 raphy and history, the subject is hardly ever 
 mentioned outside of the pulpit except as a 
 huge joke. Even ministers who profess to 
 regard the story as divinely inspired, and re¬ 
 ceive it as literal truth, have been known to 
 grow merry over it, and to propose conun¬ 
 drums not characterized by their usual well- 
 known reverence for sacred things. 
 
 It is a great misfortune, and full of evil por¬ 
 tent, that the myths of Adam and Eve, Noah’s 
 deluge, the Tower of Babel, the stories of Sam¬ 
 son and Jonah and Joshua, and many other leg¬ 
 endary tales, are palmed off upon children as 
 historical truths , when with the increasing light 
 of the nineteenth century even the common 
 
49 
 
 The Common Dogma . 
 
 people will surely discover the imposition, and 
 find out for themselves that they are mere fic¬ 
 tions of the Oriental imagination. They will 
 soon be able to point out, as well-read men 
 now can, the pagan origin of these tales and 
 their simple original design to illustrate some 
 principle or passion of our common human 
 nature. 
 
 There is no more popular institution than the 
 Sunday-school. The Jewish and Christian Scrip¬ 
 tures are text-books in every school, and among 
 the orthodox, who are largely in the majority, 
 the Bible is represented to be fully inspired by 
 infinite Wisdom in every word and letter. Gen¬ 
 esis is as historically true as the Acts of the 
 Apostles or the Four Gospels, and the Song of 
 Solomon is as really a theograph —a divine writ¬ 
 ing—as the Psalms or the Sermon on the Mount. 
 Suppose a bright pupil in one of our public 
 grammar schools approaches his Sunday-school 
 teacher, Bible in hand, and inquires as to the 
 meaning of the letters and figures placed at the 
 head of the first chapter of Genesis: a.m. i, b.c. 
 4004. He is of course told that A. m. means 
 Anno Mundi, the age of the world, and that B. c. 
 means before Christ, so that 4004 years before 
 the Christian era the world was one year old ! 
 The meek-looking scholar may not disquiet his 
 pious instructor with “ infidel ” questions, but 
 4 
 
50 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 he studies geology, geography, astronomy and 
 other sciences, and he soon realizes that the 
 lessons of the day-school are in many things 
 flatly contradictory to the lessons of the Bible- 
 school; and as the teachings of the day-school 
 are corroborated by demonstrated facts that are 
 beyond controversy, and the lessons of the Sun¬ 
 day-school are not only not so supported, but 
 are often absurd and contradictory upon their 
 very surface, he either openly or secretly decides 
 in favor of his secular lessons, and rejects the 
 sacred lessons altogether, and begins to be 
 amused when his pastor quotes as historical 
 truths what even children know to be mere 
 fanciful stories. Then he is gravely told that 
 if everything in the Bible is not true, it is of 
 no account, as nothing in it can be true. The 
 preacher is taken at his word: the Bible is 
 scouted, and often with it the whole of religion 
 and morality. Who is to blame? That much 
 good is done through instruction in Sunday- 
 schools cannot be denied, because much that is 
 true and good and elevating is faithfully taught; 
 but who can doubt that much of what is taught 
 is puerile, false, unscientific and demoralizing ? 
 When it comes to be fully realized that there is 
 no conflict between science and real religion and 
 true morality, that the dogmas of the dominant 
 theology are based upon unscientific myths and 
 
5i 
 
 The Common Dogma. 
 
 a false philosophy, we shall have less atheism 
 and agnosticism, and more private purity and 
 public integrity. It is a most obvious fact that 
 the teachings of the Sunday-school and the pul¬ 
 pit are largely responsible for the increasing 
 materialism and scepticism of our day. 
 
 Every intelligent man knows that not only the 
 story of the miraculous creation of a first man 
 and woman on a certain day is an Oriental poem, 
 but that the principal events recorded in the Pen¬ 
 tateuch are mainly mythical and legendary, hav¬ 
 ing perhaps some foundation in persons then liv¬ 
 ing or events then transpiring, but nevertheless 
 largely borrowed from the traditions and writ¬ 
 ings of older and more cultivated nations ; so 
 that modern scholars and explorers can show just 
 where these sacred novels came from, and that 
 they were well known among many nations of 
 antiquity long centuries before the alleged rescue 
 of the Hebrew babe from the ark of bulrushes 
 on the Nile. Even that pretty story has its par¬ 
 allels in earlier annals, and is no doubt greatly 
 embellished, if, indeed, it had any foundation in 
 fact. The infant Bacchus was confined in a 
 chest, and by order of the king of Thebes was 
 cast upon the Nile, and, like Moses, had two 
 mothers. When Osiris was cast into the river 
 he floated to Phoenicia, was rescued, and his 
 mother became his nurse. Substantially the 
 
52 
 
 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 same stories are recorded of Demeter, and also 
 of the infant Perseus and others. 
 
 We have purposely omitted, thus far, the sci¬ 
 entific argument regarding the origin of man, 
 preferring to present this in discussions to 
 follow. The rejection of the ancient fanciful 
 tale does not leave us in doubt and confusion 
 regarding this matter, of so much interest to 
 every thoughtful person and having such an 
 important bearing upon so many questions of 
 absorbing interest. God has written a book 
 based upon the eternal facts of Nature, and 
 though we do not fully understand the divine 
 hieroglyphics, we have at least learned the 
 alphabet and can spell out words and sentences 
 which pour floods of light upon subjects which 
 have too long been treated in poems of the im¬ 
 agination. 
 
 And right here it is proper to admit that the 
 allegory found among all enlightened nations of 
 ancient times, and substantially copied in our 
 Jewish Genesis, though fanciful and even absurd 
 as to details, nevertheless contains some things 
 upon which all rational men in all countries and 
 in all times have agreed, and which do not con¬ 
 flict with the deductions of right reason and the 
 discoveries of science. We cordially accept the 
 doctrine of a wonderful creation by a divine 
 Creator, the earthy origin of physical man, the 
 
! 
 
 The Common Dogma. 
 
 53 
 
 spiritual nature of man as distinct from his 
 erial body, the oneness and natural unity 
 of man and woman, and the universal preva¬ 
 lence of the male and female principle. To 
 these questions attention will hereafter be 
 given. 
 
 All nations in all periods, the most benighted 
 as well as the most enlightened, have had their 
 cosmogonies (theories of creation) and their 
 theodicies (theories of the introduction of nat¬ 
 ural and moral evil); but it has been common 
 for Christian people to assert that but for our 
 Old-Testament records we should be for ever 
 in doubt on these important questions. They 
 are greatly shocked when they are told that the 
 claim is not justified by facts, and that about all 
 that can be learned from the Jewish Genesis was 
 known by preceding and contemporary genera¬ 
 tions, and that much of what has been regarded 
 
 o 
 
 as veritable history has been proved to be the 
 merest fiction. 
 
 To admit this is of course to give up our 
 cherished faith in the doctrine of the absolutely 
 infallible character of the writings accredited 
 to Moses, that these venerable writings were 
 fully inspired of God, and that nothing which 
 they contain can with safety be doubted. But 
 many men besides Bishop Colenso are begin¬ 
 ning to learn that the interests of truth do not 
 
54 
 
 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 require the defence of the absurd and impossible 
 —that there is nothing in the Pentateuch of any 
 real importance that men have not found out 
 without a miraculous written revelation from 
 Heaven. Every writing, ancient and modern, 
 must stand on its own merits. A writing is true 
 or false regardless of the question of its author¬ 
 ship. Truth is essential and eternal, and needs 
 neither special inspiration nor miracle to mani¬ 
 fest it. There is an inspiration common to all 
 men, and some men are more receptive than 
 others, and the many have always profited by 
 the superior gifts of the few. While the Church 
 claims infallibility for Genesis, and insists that 
 we must receive the Garden-of-Eden and the 
 Adam-and-Eve story as literal history, written 
 by the divine dictation, increasing multitudes 
 will throng public places to laugh at the “ mis¬ 
 takes of Moses ” and the preposterous pretences 
 of pulpit prophets as ridiculed by witty orators. 
 
 Let not the friends of true religion and moral¬ 
 ity be disquieted. The foundations stand sure, 
 and, though the dreams of childhood vanish, the 
 rising sun will dispel the mists of error’s long 
 night and gild with glory the dark places of this 
 improving globe. When Church creeds are 
 revised and made to conform to the light of 
 to-day—when ministers cease to stultify them¬ 
 selves by defending hoary absurdities, and no 
 
55 
 
 The Common Dogma . 
 
 longer raise the odious cry of “ infidelity ” 
 against independent and progressive thinkers 
 —when men learn to apply reason and com¬ 
 mon sense to religious questions, as they do to 
 political ones,—true religion will shine with 
 more refulgent flame, and practical morality 
 will be recognized as the highest wisdom. It 
 is the teaching of ancient fables for divine ver¬ 
 ities that brings the whole subject of religion 
 into disrepute and drives the more thoughtful 
 men and women into scepticism and agnos¬ 
 ticism. The real infidels are those who for any 
 reason are disloyal to truth—who sacrifice reason 
 upon the altar of dogmatic creeds and a sickly 
 sacerdotalism. It will be shown before these 
 discussions close that what is incredible in the 
 creeds can be given up—not only without loss 
 to true religion, but greatly to its advantage. 
 We have too long been hampered by Jewish 
 and heathen shackles, and many men have de¬ 
 termined henceforth to walk with free limbs on 
 the broad highway of truth. We will honestly 
 admit the conclusions of cultured reason and 
 the demonstrations of modern science, but we 
 will not admit that there is any necessary con¬ 
 flict between these and the essential principles 
 of that religion which mainly consists in rever¬ 
 ent worshipfulness toward God and perfect right- 
 doing in all our relations to men. The people 
 
56 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 will become familiar with the conclusions of a 
 truly independent scholarship, and the influence 
 of the pew will more and more be felt in the 
 pulpit. Even now priestly platitudes are nau¬ 
 seating to the man of average intelligence, and 
 he will not much longer silently submit to have 
 his children taught that of which they will be 
 sure to be ashamed before they reach their 
 majority. The successful champion of religion 
 will be found in the robust, courageous man 
 who dares to follow wherever truth leads the 
 way, firmly believing that truth lies at the foun¬ 
 dation of all righteousness. 
 
 Professor John Fiske has well said in his Cos¬ 
 mic Philosophy: “The experience of many ages 
 of speculative revolution has shown that while 
 knowledge grows and old beliefs fall away, and 
 creed succeeds to creed, nevertheless that faith 
 which makes the innermost essence of religion 
 is indestructible.” 
 
III. 
 
 THE EVOLUTION HYPOTHESIS OF THE ORIGIN 
 
 OF HUMANITY. 
 
 I T has been briefly shown that the popular 
 theory of the miraculous origin of man in a 
 comparatively recent period rests entirely upon 
 documentary evidence of a very uncertain and 
 contradictory character. The question now 
 comes up whether anything can be known 
 upon this important subject if a special divine 
 revelation has not been made and written down 
 in a book. If we reject the so-called Mosaic 
 account, are we not left in total ignorance upon 
 this and all collateral questions affecting the 
 history and doom of our race ? Let us take 
 a careful survey of the field of science and see 
 whether we can find a satisfactory hypothesis 
 regarding this great question of universal in¬ 
 terest. 
 
 The first thing that settles down into a rational 
 conviction as we look out upon the universe is 
 that all things, from a pebble to a planet, are 
 under the reign of law fixed and uniform, and 
 that the same laws that rule upon this globe 
 
 57 
 
58 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 prevail in the most distant spheres. Regarding* 
 some things we know as much of distant worlds 
 as we do of our own. The spectroscope has 
 taught us that the huge globes that revolve in 
 illimitable space are a growth, a product, and 
 we can now determine approximately their com¬ 
 parative ages and the materials of which they 
 are composed. We have reason for thinking 
 that Jupiter and Saturn are even now in the 
 primary stages of formation, and that the for¬ 
 mer is heavier than water, and the latter not so 
 light as cork, as was formerly supposed. We 
 are confident that Mars—and probably Venus— 
 is very much like our earth, but that Jupiter and 
 Saturn are too youthful to have attained the 
 same maturity; while the decrepit old moon is 
 in the decadence of her second childhood. 
 
 These well-established facts of modern science 
 show conclusively the fundamental principle of 
 the unity of the whole creation. We cannot 
 doubt that the same laws prevail in all por¬ 
 tions of the unbounded universe. Poets sing of 
 “ Chaos and old Night,” but there is no such 
 thing as chaos in this or in any other world. 
 “Cosmos” has made the word “chaos” obsolete 
 as applied to the material universe. All things 
 are governed by uniform law. The lightning 
 that tears to pieces the rocky peak of the cloud- 
 capped mountain is as much governed by law 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis . 59 
 
 as the simple spark of electricity that speeds 
 along the ocean cable and can only deliver its 
 message by reflection in a mirror. The cyclone 
 that devastates a prairie is as much governed by 
 law as the summer zephyr that cools the fevered 
 brow of the weary farmer. Rivers of fire and 
 smoke that burst from the crater of Vesuvius are 
 as really under law as the tiny flame that kindles 
 at the tip of a parlor-match. Law is eternal and 
 universal, and has never been known to be sus¬ 
 pended or to become inoperative. 
 
 No man can make himself familiar with the 
 demonstrated facts of astronomy, geology, palae¬ 
 ontology and their kindred sciences without 
 being driven to the conclusion that one of the 
 most obvious characteristics of the constitution 
 of Nature is that principle or law denominated 
 Evolution. Strip this simple word of its much- 
 perverted sense, and it merely means the uniform 
 processes in which every product has an antece¬ 
 dent, every effect a cause, and one thing follows 
 another and grows out of another in orderly suc¬ 
 cession. 
 
 Science shows that this principle not only 
 governs the world at the present time, but that 
 it dominated the processes by which it was 
 made at first. What was long known as the 
 “ nebular hypothesis ” has not been established 
 in its minute details, and never can be, but its 
 
6 o Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 general principles are so consonant with the 
 observed behavior of matter that men of learn¬ 
 ing have adopted it as beyond rational contro¬ 
 versy. It is briefly this: That the substance 
 of which this world was formed was a nebulous 
 vapor, a fiery mist, probably thrown off from the 
 sun in its revolutions as sparks are thrown off 
 from a whirling wheel in pyrotechnic exhibi¬ 
 tions ; and, taken up by the law of gravitation, 
 formed an orbit, and as it cooled down a crust 
 was created upon the outer rim, which by the 
 law of cohesion became solid; for millions of 
 years its revolutions rounded this globe, increas¬ 
 ing the thickness of its crust or shell and depos¬ 
 iting the various materials of which it is com¬ 
 posed, until, after the lapse of unnumbered ages, 
 it became possible for life to exist in its lowest 
 forms; but it was not until millions of years 
 more had passed away that man appeared and 
 claimed this globe as his dwelling-place. 
 
 In the light of geologic science we conjecture 
 that our earth has cooled down from a molten 
 mass and become spherical by revolution; and 
 man by long research has been able to classify 
 and appropriately name the numerous periods 
 and epochs through which it has passed, and to 
 show that the work of improvement is still going 
 on under the operation of the same laws which 
 first gave it form and motion. By the great 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis. 61 
 
 upheavals of time the earth’s crust to about 
 twenty-five miles in depth has been exposed to 
 human inspection, and while we cannot estimate 
 in definite numbers the years and the ages em¬ 
 ployed in the different formations, we are certain 
 as to the relative order of these marked eeolocric 
 periods. 
 
 No intelligent man can rationally doubt the 
 great antiquity of this globe. Darwin estimates 
 obvious marks in England as more than three 
 hundred millions years old, and estimates made 
 by high scientific authority upon facts found in 
 certain drifts on the continent of Europe double 
 these figures. We attach little importance to 
 definite calculations. We can calculate until 
 figures surpass the power of enumeration and 
 we are lost in the incomprehensible, and then 
 only approach the truth by millions or hundreds 
 of millions of years. But we are not in doubt 
 as to the order of events and their attendant cir¬ 
 cumstances. We know, and can demonstrate by 
 facts innumerable, that in the formation and im¬ 
 provement of this material world the principle 
 or law of evolution has been in full operation, 
 and that the earth in all its constituents is a 
 product, a development—one thing following 
 another and evolving out of another under 
 the operation of well-known laws. If the world 
 was made in six days or in six indefinite periods, 
 
62 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 then the Creator must have exercised infinite 
 skill to mislead his human children and to make 
 it appear as if unnumbered ages had been em¬ 
 ployed in a work which was done miraculously 
 by his simple fiat. A minute examination of 
 the surface of this earth to a depth of more than 
 a score of miles clearly indicates the slow but 
 sure work of progressive development and evo¬ 
 lution. 
 
 This same principle of development also applies 
 to the animal creation as we trace it back to its 
 beginnings. Below a well-known geologic pe¬ 
 riod no traces of human beings are found, but 
 the remains of apes and monkeys exist in 
 abundance, and as we go lower down or farther 
 back in geologic time these remains become less 
 perfect, until in still lower beds they entirely 
 disappear. Mammals appear in still lower de¬ 
 posits, and these too deteriorate, and as we go 
 back the largest of them are about the size of a 
 cat and begin to assume the appearance of birds. 
 As we push our investigations to lower depths 
 in the earth’s crust we find reptiles, and as we 
 go still lower these likewise disappear, and am¬ 
 phibians are exposed to view, and continue until 
 the early periods of the Carboniferous Age, when 
 they in turn vanish. As we dig down into the 
 Devonian Period enormous fishes are found, and 
 for millions of years these decrease in size until 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis . 63 
 
 they too slip away from observation. Still 
 we descend lower, and find shells, once the 
 homes of living creatures, some of them twenty 
 feet long, and we follow them back to a period 
 when they were not larger than a finger-nail. 
 We continue our excavations through the Silu¬ 
 rian and Cambrian deposits until we lose all 
 traces of living creatures, unless the fan-like 
 Protozoa shall be found to be an exception. 
 
 We thus trace back animal life to mere 
 masses of jelly or irregular cells, and millions 
 of years rolled away before a single vertebrate 
 animal appeared. The fishes then followed in 
 slow procession, and then the periods of 
 the frogs, the birds and the reptiles, mark¬ 
 ing several long geological epochs. In the 
 lapse of ages followed the huge mammals now 
 extinct, and after them the existing fauna, 
 with man as the crowning product. This 
 same principle of progress marks the entire 
 animal kingdom. Professor Huxley professes 
 to take the modern horse, the most beautiful 
 of all domestic animals, and to trace him back 
 through long geologic periods until he finds 
 him not larger than a fox, and yet with certain 
 marks of limb and hoof that show him to be 
 the legitimate ancestor of our modern thorough¬ 
 bred race-horse. 
 
 The same principle of development prevails 
 
64 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 even in the vegetable world, as all well know. 
 Our most delicious fruits have evolved from 
 bitter and unpromising beginnings—the apple 
 from the crabtree, the peach from a poisonous 
 shrub of Persia, and some of our most nutri¬ 
 tious vegetables from worthless sea-weeds. The 
 most rustic farmer acknowledges this principle 
 of development in the selection of his seed- 
 grains and in the improvement of his live-stock. 
 
 All this is preliminary to the great question 
 * of the origin of humanity. Does the principle 
 of evolution apply to the origin and progress 
 of our race ? Is it a fundamental article in the 
 creed of science that man has been evolved 
 from very low beginnings, and developed by 
 slow and gradual processes to his present proud 
 position ? These questions are answered in the 
 affirmative by many modern scholars of such 
 high respectability as to entitle them at least to 
 
 respectful consideration. 
 
 According to Huxley and Haeckel and many 
 others, a jelly-like substance found in the bottom 
 of the ocean, a simple lump of mucus or albu¬ 
 minous matter, which they denominate bcithybias , 
 is claimed to be the origin of all animal life on 
 this earth. This discovery—wonderful if true— 
 was announced in 1868 by Professor Huxley, 
 and ten years later Strauss, in his Old Faith and 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis . 65 
 
 New , used it to span the chasm existing between 
 the inorganic and organic in Nature. It is only 
 honest to state in this connection that in deep- 
 sea soundings made by the English ship Chal¬ 
 lenger in 1875 this glutinous protoplasmic mass 
 was found to be mainly sulphate of lime, which 
 when dissolved crystallized like gypsum. The 
 materialistic theory is that out of this formless 
 deposit without organs came all existing organ¬ 
 isms, that the moneron became a cell, and that 
 the development of the human race by the 
 operation of natural selection and the conser¬ 
 vation of force was only a question of time. It 
 does not comport with our present design to 
 mention the points from which this bold hypoth¬ 
 esis is argued, nor to enumerate the grounds 
 upon which a large number of scientists dissent 
 from it. The water is too deep and rough for 
 ordinary navigators, and we do not intend to 
 be dragged from our moorings, but prefer safely 
 to ride at anchor in a harbor in which even little 
 boats are safe. 
 
 It is a fact within our present knowledge that 
 the individual man is now developed from a cell 
 or egg so small that it merely covers the point 
 of a cambric needle, and can only be accurately 
 examined by the aid of a powerful microscope. 
 Professor Draper says: “ All animals proceed 
 from eggs as simple in structure as the simplest 
 5 
 
65 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 infusoria, and no art can distinguish one of the 
 highest class from one of the lowest. Pro¬ 
 fessor Clark of Harvard says : “ \ ou could no 
 more tell the one from the other than you could 
 distinguish a drop of water from Cochituate 
 Lake from one from the Mystic River.” This 
 simple speck of matter, under certain conditions, 
 enlarges and undergoes marvellous changes, un¬ 
 til in three-fourths of a year a perfect miniature 
 man is produced with his wonderfully complex 
 organism. Professor Agassiz says of the human 
 brain in its development: “Pirst it becomes a 
 brain resembling that of a fish, then it grows 
 into the form of that of a reptile, then into that 
 of a bird, then into that of a mammiferous 
 quadruped, and finally it assumes the form of 
 a human brain.” Some eminent persons think 
 this quite fanciful and not sustained by facts. 
 But it cannot be denied that man is evolved 
 from a mere speck of matter, and that there is, 
 in their early stages, no perceptible difference 
 between the embryos of frogs, fishes, dogs and 
 the human embryo. We know that what is 
 true of trees and vegetables and the inferior 
 animals is true of man. He is evolved by 
 slow, natural and well-known processes from a 
 very small and apparently inadequate speck of 
 matter. No reliable evidence exists of a man 
 having ever been produced in any other way. 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis . 67 
 
 Science and human observation and experience 
 are in perfect accord in this matter. Man now¬ 
 adays is a development, a product of evolution. 
 
 From the individual man, as we know him 
 now, and his immediate origin, we press our 
 inquiries back to a remote period, the childhood 
 of our race, with a view of finding out, if pos¬ 
 sible, the origin of the first human pair or pairs 
 from whom all men and women have descended 
 by natural generation. 
 
 The first thing that startles us in this direc¬ 
 tion is the almost inconceivable antiquity of the 
 human race, the almost incalculable number of 
 ages that men have dwelt upon this globe. It 
 is useless to attempt to state this in fixed and 
 accurate numbers. We can most certainly point 
 out the order of geological and historical periods , 
 but it is sheer presumption to attempt to use 
 specific dates, as we do in recording events of 
 modern occurrence. We only know that man 
 has been here for an incalculable time, covering 
 thousands if not millions of years. Professor 
 Draper wrote: “It is difficult to assign a 
 shorter date to the last glaciation of Europe 
 than a quarter of a million years, and human 
 existence antedates that.” Even in this New 
 World, so called, there is evidence most con¬ 
 clusive that man has existed for more than 
 one hundred thousand years, by the discov- 
 
68 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 ery of human remains in such a situation as 
 to demonstrate their undisturbed repose while 
 several successive forests have grown and de¬ 
 cayed over them. Books upon this subject are 
 numerous, and all can examine for themselves. 
 The latest conclusion of modern scholarship is, 
 that man has existed on this earth for millions 
 if not billions of years. 
 
 We now take man as we find him, and, with¬ 
 out attempting to trace his history in detail 
 through the unnumbered ages of his existence, 
 we make one general observation, and find that 
 the same principle of evolution that applies to 
 this material world, to all worlds and to the in¬ 
 ferior animals, applies with equal certainty to the 
 origin and development of man. Instead of 
 finding primeval man—if indeed we have found 
 the truly primal man, which is so doubtful as to 
 admit of a flat denial, but as far back as we have 
 been able to trace him—we find him not the 
 Adonis or Apollo described in Milton’s Paradise 
 Lost , but an ape-like being with a forehead as 
 “ villainously low ” as any deluded damsel of 
 modern times could desire to make hers appear 
 —stunted, brawny, coarse, long-armed, dumb, 
 stupid, not erect, but his hairy body forming 
 an angle of seventy-five or eighty-five degrees, 
 wandering through forests, first using a stick 
 as a weapon, living on worms and roots, fruits, 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis. 69 
 
 inferior animals—sometimes, a very cannibal, 
 eating his own kin—living in caves, having 
 little knowledge of himself or of the world 
 around him. But let us not be ashamed of 
 our ancestry. The simple stick will in a few 
 thousand years be superseded by a stone—at 
 first not ground, but afterward sharpened; and 
 then, as we follow on through hundreds of thou¬ 
 sands if not millions of years—through the ages 
 of Bronze and Iron and other marked periods— 
 we shall find that the ape-like man has become 
 a God-like philosopher and stands erect amid 
 the splendid civilizations of Greece and Rome, 
 Egypt and Babylon, a worthy predecessor of 
 Bacon and Shakespeare, Goethe and Chan- 
 ning. 
 
 The stream of human progress has not always 
 been uninterrupted. There have been ups and 
 downs in human history. The race has had its 
 cycles, but the general and ultimate tendency has 
 been upward , so that the contrast between man 
 as we first find him and man as we now know 
 him is almost infinite; and no wonder that we 
 are at first tempted to deny our relationship to 
 the naked savages of primeval periods. 
 
 The particular point to be here emphasized is, 
 that scientific discovery clearly demonstrates the 
 fact of the gradual and steady general improve¬ 
 ment of the human race from the earliest pe- 
 
70 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 riods of which we have any knowledge until 
 the present time. Many learned works have 
 been published, with illustrations, showing the 
 gradual development and progress of the human 
 brain and of all those features which distinguish 
 man from the brute; to which we must refer for 
 particulars. 
 
 All that has yet been said is preliminary to 
 the main question, Whence? What is the origin 
 of the first man ? 
 
 Let us meet this question fairly and squarely. 
 Certain scientists have maintained the hypoth¬ 
 esis that man has been evolved from inferior 
 animal forms to which the term brute is strictly 
 applicable. This theory can be made to appear 
 very plausible in view of certain resemblances 
 between physical man and the inferior creatures. 
 It is said that human anatomy was studied from 
 the skeletons of apes and monkeys down to the 
 sixteenth century. The five fingers of the hu¬ 
 man hand are said to be indicated in the five 
 bones in the foot of the muskrat, in the flipper 
 of the fish, the paw of the bear and the wing of 
 the bat. A great many “ pointers ” are specified 
 by the advocates of this hypothesis which can¬ 
 not here be introduced. Those who oppose this 
 assumption point out a great many objections to 
 it, and affirm that there is between men and 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis. 7 1 
 
 brutes many points of dissimilarity which can¬ 
 not be reconciled with the idea of their essential 
 unity —that there is such a contrast between the 
 highest anthropoid ape and the lowest man that 
 it is impossible to connect them. There is a 
 vast chasm which has not been bridged. There 
 is a “missing link”—nay, a series of links— 
 which have not been found. It is not accord¬ 
 ant with our purpose to enter this controversy. 
 Even if it were proved that men are the lineal 
 descendants of apes, that would not answer the 
 question we have under consideration. It would 
 only remove it farther back and give rise to the 
 query, Where did the ape come from that was 
 the ancestor of man ? 
 
 Many other questions would come up—such 
 as these: When did the ape cease to be an ape 
 and become a man ? Where shall we draw the 
 line of demarcation between apehood and man¬ 
 hood ? 
 
 Other investigators take the ground that man 
 is sui generis , and that, while he has certain 
 physical resemblances to inferior animals, he 
 has no essential connection with them; that 
 humanity is a separate, independent and dis¬ 
 tinct species—so to speak, an original creation; 
 that primitive man hundreds of thousands of 
 years ago was coarse and gross, but never¬ 
 theless a man , very superior to the highest apes 
 
72 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 —in many things like an ape, and yet a distinct 
 species, a primary product of creation. This 
 too can be presented in a very attractive man¬ 
 ner, and by some is supposed to be more in 
 accordance with our self-respect and dignity. 
 But even this does not answer the question, 
 What was the origin of man ? Evidence of the 
 existence of man is lost in the cavernous struc¬ 
 tures of remote geologic periods, and it is impos¬ 
 sible to predict whether he can ever be traced 
 farther back than has already been done. In 
 denying the development of man from the lower 
 animals we do but take the other horn of the 
 great dilemma, and get no nearer to the great 
 question of humanity, Whence? 
 
 It is only ingenuous to admit that the Dar¬ 
 winian theory of the animal origin of man is 
 the one most in favor with the weight of bio¬ 
 logical authority; and yet it cannot be denied 
 that the number or character of those scientists 
 who deny it is neither small nor insignificant. 
 Science has not yet given its final verdict nor 
 spoken its last word upon this subject, and it is 
 no part of our present purpose to settle this 
 mooted question. Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, 
 Spencer, Haeckel and scores of others in Europe 
 and America, have written voluminously upon 
 this subject, and a large number of learned 
 works have been written in opposition by men 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis. 73 
 
 well known in the literary world, which works 
 are accessible to every one. 
 
 And right here the fact should be recognized 
 that all evolutionists are not Darwinians, and 
 that Darwin was not the inventor or discoverer 
 of the law of evolution. The contemplative 
 philosophers of India had, centuries before he 
 was born, a theory of evolution far more exten¬ 
 sive and sublime than anything ever dreamed 
 of by the great British plodder. Indeed, there 
 is very little in modern science or philosophy 
 that had not been thoroughly canvassed by 
 esoteric Buddhism in long-lost centuries. For 
 more than two thousand years the theory of 
 evolution has had its promulgators, and even 
 in this New World of ours it had its advocates 
 before the name of Darwin, which has now be¬ 
 come a household word, reached our shores. 
 
 In the main principles of Darwin evolutionists 
 generally agree, but from his details and from 
 some of his assumptions and conclusions they 
 widely dissent. The system of evolution as 
 applied to the origin of man by the disciples 
 of Darwin may be thus summarized : All over 
 the bottom of the great oceans there is found 
 a slimy, jelly-like mass of albuminous matter 
 which has been named bathybius , and which is 
 said to be highly protoplasmic. We go to the 
 dictionary and find that protoplasm means “ the 
 
74 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 viscid, nitrogenous material in vegetable cells, 
 by which the process of nutrition, secretion and 
 growth goes forwardin other words, “ the 
 vital vegetable substance.” Out of this semi-flu¬ 
 idic deposit in the bottom of the ocean a simple 
 moneron is formed. Although this woi d is not 
 found in the lexicons, we know by analysis and 
 the connection in which it is used that it means 
 oneness, the opposite of complexity. The mon- 
 eron consists of one single substance, and by 
 a stretch of the imagination it is called an or¬ 
 ganism without organs. Haeckel, in his History 
 of Creation , says of the moneron : “ A pinching- 
 in takes place, contracting the middle of the 
 globule on all sides, and finally leads to the 
 separation of the two halves. Each half then 
 becomes rounded off, and now appeals as an 
 independent individual, which commences anew 
 the simple course of vital phenomena of nutri¬ 
 tion and propagation.” Propagation by self¬ 
 division is alleged to be “ the most universal 
 and most widely-spread of all the different 
 modes of propagation.” This work of devel¬ 
 opment went on for unknown ages until the 
 moneron became a mollusk, a sea-snail coveied 
 with a shell; and then, after the lapse of ages, 
 fishes were evolved from existing organisms, 
 and for other ages fishes were kings; and then, 
 in the course of time, there appeared frog-like 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis. 75 
 
 amphibians, living upon the land as well as in 
 the water, serpent-like creatures that began to 
 wriggle through swamps and even to climb 
 trees; and then, after the lapse of other ages, 
 reptiles were developed in the form of scaly 
 monsters, which in their turn became mon- 
 archs. Then marsupials, a sort of opossum, 
 were developed, having a large brain, nourish¬ 
 ing their young in the womb and at the breast. 
 Then huge mammals followed in the Tertiary 
 age of the world, until, after the lapse of millions 
 of years, the immediate hairy predecessor of man 
 was seen swinging by his long arms from the 
 boughs of trees, the old ape and the young one 
 soon recognizing the natural relation of father 
 and child. In fact, the brute began to play 
 humanity. And now, after the lapse of other 
 long centuries, the master of them all appeared 
 in the person of man. True, he was a sorry- 
 looking specimen, but by natural selection, the 
 struggle for existence, the survival of the fittest 
 and the happy influence of his environment, he 
 emerged from his brutal degradation, and is 
 now able to trace his own development from 
 the semi-fluidic speck of jelly reposing in abso¬ 
 lute unconsciousness in the deep caverns of the 
 ocean, and can even write whole libraries to 
 prove the doctrine of spontaneous generation, 
 to demonstrate the position that no evidence 
 
76 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 can be found in the universe of the existence 
 of any Being greater than himself, and, in fact, 
 that there is nothing for any such Being to do. 
 Every atom of matter in the material world is 
 alleged to contain in itself “the promise and 
 potency of all forms of terrestrial life,” and man 
 himself can be traced back, through the apes 
 and other animals, through the reptiles and 
 fishes and snails, to the moneron or lump of 
 jelly beneath the dark unfathomed caves of 
 old Ocean. 
 
 This is materialistic evolution, pure and sim¬ 
 ple. We may not have stated it with scientific 
 accuracy as to order and detail, but for “ sub¬ 
 stance of doctrine” the summary is reliable. 
 Man is of brutal descent according to this 
 school of philosophers, and at best is only a 
 superior and more highly-developed animal, 
 with intellectual, moral and social qualities 
 differing in degree, but not in kind, from sim¬ 
 ilar qualities found in the lower animals. 
 
 There are many objections to this theory, 
 deemed by those who make them to be abso¬ 
 lutely unanswerable; and, as before intimated, 
 there are many learned believers in the general 
 principle of evolution, such as President Mc- 
 Cosh of Princeton and Professor Gray of Har¬ 
 vard, who utterly dissent from the theories of 
 Huxley and Haeckel, and, while rejecting the 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis. 77 
 
 materialistic theory, propound a system of the- 
 istic evolution which they hold to be perfectly 
 consistent with the facts established by Darwin 
 and his coadjutors, while it is free, from its athe¬ 
 istic tendencies. 
 
 As before intimated, we shall not be drawn 
 into this controversy any farther than it has a 
 bearing upon the great question of the hereto¬ 
 fore of our humanity. There is some under¬ 
 lying truth in all systems of philosophy, with 
 much of assumption and “ learned conjecture.” 
 It may be possible to connect man with the 
 monkey by lineal descent; it may be possible 
 to trace him back to the moneron, the speck of 
 jelly in deep-sea soundings. But this does not 
 settle the question of the origin of man. The 
 questions arise, Where did the moneron come 
 from ? What formed the original speck of 
 mucus out of which the moneron was 
 “pinched,” as Huxley describes it? Where 
 did the earth and the sea themselves come 
 from ? We are pointed to the “ nebular hy¬ 
 pothesis ” of world-building, and, though this 
 can never be verified and will not admit of 
 demonstrative proof, we may in this argument 
 admit its truth, or at least its probability; but 
 this only pushes the question farther back, so 
 that we must look for man in the fire-mists 
 when this globe was a mass of consuming fire. 
 
78 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 And we cannot even stop there, but must go 
 still farther back, into the nebulous vapor before 
 the fires of creation were kindled upon the mass 
 of matter sloughed off from the sun or some 
 other body, out of which this world was 
 
 formed. 
 
 Walt Whitman has presented this theory in 
 his usual pungent style, as follows: 
 
 “Afar down I see the huge first Nothing; 
 
 I know I was even there. . , 
 
 I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethar¬ 
 gic mist, . 
 
 And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid 
 
 carbon. 
 
 Long I was hugged close—long and long. 
 
 Immense have been the preparations for me, 
 
 Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me , 
 Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheer¬ 
 ful boatmen. 
 
 For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings; 
 
 They sent influences to look after what was to hold 
 
 me. . ., , 
 
 Before I was born out of my mother generations guide 
 
 me. . , 
 
 My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could over¬ 
 lay it. 
 
 For it the nebula cohered to an orb, 
 
 The long slow strata were piled to rest it on, 
 
 Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 
 
 Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and 
 deposited it with care. 
 
 All forces have been steadily employed to complete and 
 delight me: 
 
 Now I stand upon this spot with my soul. 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis . 79 
 
 We know this is called poetry, but it is nev¬ 
 ertheless based upon the fundamental principles 
 of the materialistic theory of evolution. We 
 do not pronounce this hypothesis impossible. 
 We do not even say that Darwin and Huxley 
 and Spencer and their compeers did not come 
 out of the primeval nebula through the prevail¬ 
 ing fire-mist that once encircled this globe in a 
 sheet of fiercest flame, so that the globe itself 
 was in a molten condition; we do not say that 
 they did not once repose in the protoplasmic 
 jelly, until a lucky lump, “pinched in” and sep¬ 
 arating, became two instead of one; we do not 
 even say that they did not travel through all the 
 lower forms of animal life until they developed 
 into anthropoid apes, and at last into brainy 
 Englishmen. But we must affirm that the case 
 is “ not proven ” as yet, and that the material¬ 
 istic theory of evolution utterly fails to answer 
 the question, What was the origin of man? 
 
 Many experiments have been tried to establish 
 the theory of the spo7itaneous generation of life, 
 but without satisfactory results. Life is found 
 wherever conditions are favorable. Land and 
 ocean and air are peopled with living creatures, 
 and Tyndall and Huxley have admitted that 
 they can find no life without pre-existent life 
 to produce it, while Bastian and Wyman hold 
 the opposite. But if experiments should yet 
 
8 o Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 prove successful, and life should be produced 
 without the influence of any foreign agency, 
 how can we with strict propriety apply the 
 word spontaneous to it ? How do we know 
 that there was no agency employed independ¬ 
 ent of matter itself, though invisible and im¬ 
 palpable ? Can there, in fact, be any such thing 
 as simple spontaneity ? Is such a thing even 
 thinkable? But if matter has this wonderful 
 secret power of generating life out of its own 
 hidden womb—has “the promise and potency of 
 all forms of life ”—where and when and how did 
 every atom of matter become possessed of this 
 omnific power? But we are told that matter is 
 not dead, but wonderfully alive. The ablest of 
 materialistic writers affirm, as we may hereafter 
 have occasion to prove, that there is no dead 
 matter in the universe. It thence follows that 
 if matter is not dead, it is alive—has life in itself, 
 and under favorable circumstances manifests life; 
 and thus the idea of the spontaneous generation 
 of life becomes a contradiction, an absurdity. 
 
 In closing this part of the discussion we take 
 this ground: The general law of evolution 
 is as real as the law of gravitation. Science 
 has not yet pronounced its final verdict as to 
 the particular application of this law to the 
 great problem of human life, and while it may 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis. 8r 
 
 throw some light upon the great question of the 
 origin of humanity, it utterly fails to settle that 
 question. The scientific hypothesis of Darwin is 
 one thing, and the philosophical system founded 
 upon it by Haeckel and Spencer is quite another. 
 We may accept certain facts established by Dar¬ 
 win without accepting the so-called Darwinian 
 phil osophy of his materialistic disciples. Facts 
 are facts, but the interpretations given to them 
 are not always final and infallible in matters 
 of religion and morals. There may be a law of 
 Natural Selection, and a law of Conservation of 
 Energy and Correlation of Force, but besides 
 these there may be other things not dreamed 
 of in the materialistic philosophy. There may 
 be something before evolution, something back 
 of and behind the conservation and correlation 
 of energy. 
 
 In short, to many most thoughtful and logical 
 minds the conclusion seems inevitable that we 
 cannot satisfactorily account for the origin of 
 man, and for his slow but sure development 
 from his confessedly low estate where we first 
 find him to his present proud position, without 
 postulating the existence and reign of an infinite 
 and intelligent Power in and over what are called 
 the “ laws of Nature.” An examination of this 
 position shall be the scope of our next dis¬ 
 sertation. 
 
 6 
 
82 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 Mere physical science accounts for nothing. 
 It must involve all it can possibly evolve. A 
 simple mechanical process, without forethought 
 or guidance, without intelligent direction, is ab¬ 
 horrent to reason. Even Auguste Comte wrote : 
 
 “ However imperfect the natural order, its origin 
 would agree far better with the supposition of an 
 Intelligent Will than with that of blind mechan¬ 
 ism.” He said about two years before his death, 
 
 “ I am no atheist.” Prof. Marsh of Yale Col¬ 
 lege said at the Herbert Spencer dinner in New 
 York : “ As to the origin of species, once thought 
 to be the key to the position, no working natu¬ 
 ralist of to-day who sees the great problems of 
 life opening one after another before him will 
 waste time in discussing a question already 
 solved.” . . . “ All existing life on the earth is 
 now believed to be connected directly with that 
 of the distant past, and one problem of to-day is 
 to trace out the lines of descent.” 
 
 Evolution is an acknowledged fact among well- 
 educated men. Embryology, palaeontology, and 
 kindred sciences blend beautifully together, but 
 none of them can account for the beginning of 
 things. And especially should it be kept in 
 mind that the evolution hypothesis does not 
 necessarily imply that man is a lineal descendant 
 of the monkey. They may have had a common 
 remote origin, but they diverged or separated 
 
The Evolution Hypothesis . 83 
 
 millions of years ago, and formed distinct types, 
 similar in some respects, but very dissimilar in 
 others; one line of divergence developing into 
 a rational man, and the other into an irrational 
 animal. This would give to man the relation¬ 
 ship of a very remote cousin to the ape, rather 
 than that of a lineal descendant. Scientific evolu¬ 
 tion does not teach that types are derived directly 
 from preceding types either in order of time or 
 organic structure, but that widely divergent types 
 may proceed from a common source. There are 
 many things involved in impenetrable mystery. 
 Prof. Tyndall has said that, so far from having 
 a theory of the universe, he has not even a the¬ 
 ory of magnetism. Herbert Spencer has beau¬ 
 tifully said : “ But amid the mysteries, which 
 become the more mysterious the more they are 
 thought about, there will remain the one abso¬ 
 lute certainty, that man is ever in presence of an 
 Infinite and Eternal Energy , from which all things 
 proceed.” There is no Agnosticism here. The 
 felt and the seen have their fulness in the unseen 
 and intangible, and the visible impels us to seek 
 its counterpart and complement in the invisible. 
 In solving the problems presented to us by the 
 phenomena of Nature the scientist as well as the 
 theologian is driven to cross the boundary-line 
 which separates the visible from the unseen. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE ANSWER OF THEISM TO THE QUESTION, 
 
 WHENCE IS MAN? 
 
 M AN exists, and is conscious of marvellous 
 endowments, intellectual, moral and so¬ 
 cial. He is probably the only being upon earth 
 that ever raises the question of its own origin 
 or feels any concern about its ultimate destiny. 
 The so-called Mosaic account of the beginning of 
 humanity, elaborated by John Milton into a won¬ 
 derful poem, and also made the basis of dogmatic 
 theolosv, is found to have been borrowed, in 
 substance, from the more ancient nations, and to 
 be part of a grotesque cosmogony that is thor¬ 
 oughly unscientific and dependent upon a dis¬ 
 credited chronology and upon documentary evi¬ 
 dence extremely absurd and contradictory. 
 
 But when science is pressed for a rational ac¬ 
 count of the beginning of things, its answers 
 are often evasive and generally unsatisfactory. 
 It professes to have traced this globe back to 
 the nebulous vapor in which it appears to have 
 originated. It has theoretically traced the pro¬ 
 cesses of world-building through the fire-mists, 
 84 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 85 
 
 through the molten and cooling periods, until 
 the introduction of life and the appearance on 
 the surface of the globe of an almost innumer¬ 
 able variety of organized creatures. Beyond the 
 formation of the present physical universe sci¬ 
 ence has not presumed to press its curious in¬ 
 vestigations. When asked whether the matter 
 that now composes the sun and the earth and 
 other planets may not have been used in consti¬ 
 tuting older suns and planets which have been 
 worn out and dissipated, it has no answer, but 
 it confidently suggests that there is good reason 
 for believing that the present physical universe 
 must in the course of time be consumed and its 
 constituent elements be resolved into the orig¬ 
 inal atoms from which they were derived. It 
 has demonstrated the fact that this earth has not 
 always existed in its present form as a habitable 
 globe, and it even admits that the sun has not 
 had an eternal existence, because it is a consum¬ 
 ing fire, and must have become extinct long ago 
 from its own wasting flame unless often replen¬ 
 ished with new supplies of fuel, of which noth¬ 
 ing can be known. 
 
 Farther than this science does not essay to go. 
 When asked as to the origin of the materials of 
 which the universe and previous possible uni¬ 
 verses are and were composed, it is dumb and 
 opens not its mouth, except to lisp the assump- 
 
86 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 tion that matter must have had an eternal exist¬ 
 ence. We try to grasp the idea of the eternity 
 of matter, and find it impossible. It certainly 
 cannot be demonstrated, and therefore it is noth¬ 
 ing but a subterfuge for ignorance—a guess. The 
 basic assumption of science is, that at a remote 
 period in the aeons of the unmeasured past there 
 existed a certain given quantity of matter, which 
 has not been increased or diminished up to the 
 present time, though its forms have been changed 
 in innumerable instances. It also assumes that 
 matter has, and always has had, an inherent 
 potency, and by the operation of certain laws 
 this world was formed, and that man himself, 
 with all his endowments, is a product of natural 
 law. In point of fact, the materialistic philos¬ 
 ophy does not attempt to settle the question of 
 the origin of matter in its strict primary mean¬ 
 ing. It simply assumes that certain things ex¬ 
 isted at a remotely unknown period, and it essays 
 to trace them through their divers transforma¬ 
 tions to the present time. It does not even 
 hazard a conjecture as to the real origin of mat¬ 
 ter, but hands the question over to the mystery 
 of nescience, and is content with the assumption 
 of the eternal existence of all things. 
 
 But as our special investigations relate to the 
 origin of man, it is not necessary to go farther 
 back than to the introduction of life upon this 
 
The Theistic Postulate . 87 
 
 planet, though some materialistic scientists, like 
 Huxley, scent the existence of man in the fires 
 of the sun before this globe was formed from 
 the nebulous vapor. The theist can safely admit 
 the nebular hypothesis in its general principles as 
 probable, especially as elaborated by the authors 
 of The Unseen Universe , and can safely accept 
 the general principles of the evolution philos¬ 
 ophy. There is no necessary antagonism be¬ 
 tween Materialism and Theism regarding the 
 facts and processes of the physical world. The 
 difficulty is, that Materialism will not fairly meet 
 the question of original causation. It either ig¬ 
 nores it, pushes it farther and farther back into 
 the regions of the unknown, or else confounds 
 cause and effect, the thing made with the Power 
 that made it, the creation with the Creator. 
 When theists postulate the existence of an in¬ 
 finite First Cause, which by common consent is 
 denominated God, they are charged with assum¬ 
 ing the fact in question, and demand is made for 
 proof positive. To this it is answered that the 
 thing to be proved must be assumed before it 
 can be proved. It will not admit of a-priori 
 argument. In this case, as in many others, we 
 can only determine the cause from the effects. 
 But with what consistency can materialistic sci¬ 
 entists denounce the principle of primary as¬ 
 sumption when their whole system of science 
 
88 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 and philosophy rests upon a most stupendous 
 series of assumptions ? They assume the ex¬ 
 istence of matter from eternity, its essential po¬ 
 tency and cosmic capacity, the existence of 
 self-originating and self-executing laws, the con¬ 
 servation of energy, natural selection and the 
 whole of physical phenomena. In fact, it re¬ 
 quires much more postulation and primary cre¬ 
 dulity to be an atheist than it does to be a theist. 
 And right here is the point of divergence, the 
 real question at issue. Can we account for the 
 existence of man on strictly materialistic prin¬ 
 ciples, or must we, of logical necessity, postu¬ 
 late the existence and infinite efficiency of a 
 pre-existent intelligent Power? 
 
 Let us here examine the fundamental claim of 
 Materialism as to the development and progress 
 of humanity to its present degree of perfection. 
 Natural selection is credited as the efficient 
 agency in this wonderful work; and it is nothing 
 more nor less than a complicated, well-connected 
 and continuous process that has been in operation 
 through unimaginable ages, and is still in opera¬ 
 tion, under which the best and nearest perfect 
 of everything is elected to survive, and propagate 
 further improvements upon all that preceded. 
 This is the grand secret of Nature, recently 
 discovered and formulated by Charles Darwin 
 and Alfred R. Wallace. Natural selection sepa- 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 
 
 89 
 
 rated the different species of living creatures 
 from each other, gradually improved upon their 
 rough rudimentary organs, and fitted them to 
 each other and to their environments. It not 
 only thus improved the species by preserving 
 the best and destroying the poorest, but it 
 evolved higher and widely-differing types. By 
 this principle Nature “ slowly evolved the wing 
 of the bird, the fin of the fish and the foot of 
 the mammal;” . . . “from an optic nerve coated 
 with pigment and tingling in the sunlight she 
 elaborated and perfected the living miracle of 
 the human eye and adapted its lens to the prop¬ 
 erty of light; finally, by this means she evolved 
 the civilized man from the savage, the savage 
 from the brute, and the brute, through still 
 lower lines, from the mollusk and the moneron.” 
 The work of creating new species seems to have 
 ended millions of years ago, and but little alter¬ 
 ation has been made in types. The method of 
 Nature has always been to favor the strong, the 
 best, and so secure the “survival of the fittest” 
 in the struggle for life. 
 
 That this is the underlying principle upon 
 which the methods or processes of Nature have 
 been carried on, to a certain extent, may be freely 
 admitted, though some very formidable excep¬ 
 tions exist to its universal application. But, 
 conceding the principle, it does not follow that 
 
90 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 natural selection can account for the origin of 
 man. It has no doubt contributed to his im¬ 
 provement and elevation, but it is impossible to 
 conceive how it could have developed man from 
 a clot of jelly reposing in the depths of the 
 ocean. There can be no objection to the prin¬ 
 ciple of natural selection regarded as a process , 
 a means to an end, but when we convert it into 
 a cause without intelligence, without design, 
 without discriminating purpose, without the in¬ 
 tention of producing a certain result, we endow 
 it with a character and with attributes from 
 which reason turns in open revolt, as we have 
 before our eyes and in our very consciousness 
 results for the existence of which natural selec¬ 
 tion is not an adequate explanation. 
 
 Mr. William Graham, M. A., of England, has 
 
 conclusivelv shown in his masterly work entitled 
 * 
 
 The Creed of Science that the great objection to 
 the doctrine of natural selection, as applied by 
 materialists, is that— 
 
 “ It is purely a chance affair, an unconscious artist that 
 worked by seemingly disconnected efforts, without any 
 plan or preconception of the result to be achieved, but 
 who nevertheless, by the simplest means, reached at 
 length the most surprising and splendid results.” . . . 
 ‘‘There was no constant purpose in view, and no con¬ 
 trolling Power governing the process of evolution. Nature 
 had no special aims in view; anything, in fact, might 
 have happened.” . . . ‘‘When life first resulted, it was 
 
The Thcistic Postulate. 
 
 9 1 
 
 an accident, lucky or unlucky as we choose to regard it.” 
 
 . . . “Things might have taken a wholly different course.” 
 . . . “In particular, man himself . . . might not have ap¬ 
 peared at all. And after his appearance it was only 
 owing to the chapter of accidents unusually favorable 
 that he emerged victor from the general battlefield of 
 existence.” . . . “ He is here, too, because the particular 
 line of his brute progenitors, itself since extinct, survived 
 sufficiently long to launch him on a precarious world, not 
 too well provided. Had the latter circumstance been 
 other, or had the special branch of the tree of life from 
 which man is descended withered earlier, as other 
 branches have done, . . . man would not have appeared. 
 The splendid series of accidents which prepared the way 
 for him and made his advent possible could not have 
 happened twice; in which case Nature would have had 
 another master—the dog, the horse, the elephant or some 
 other promising species now kept in the background, and 
 whose ‘ genius is rebuked ’ by man’s overshadowing su¬ 
 periority.” 
 
 Even after the first appearance of man, his 
 continued existence must have been uncertain 
 and highly contingent. The chances were 
 largely against him. His immediate half-hu¬ 
 man and half-brutal progenitors did perish out 
 of existence, so that there is an acknowledged 
 “ missing link ” in the chain of descent. That 
 man escaped so many perils was due to his good 
 fortune and the chances of battle. 
 
 Although we have admitted the existence of 
 the law of natural selection as a process, the fact 
 cannot be disguised that it is far from being free 
 from many objections, both as a scientific hypoth- 
 
g 2 Man — I Vhen ce and TVhit her ? 
 
 esis and a philosophical theory, which even its 
 principal originator admitted, while Mr. Wallace, 
 who shares honors with Mr. Darwin, specifically 
 admits that it is inadequate to account for the 
 highly-developed brain of early savages, so far 
 in advance of their actual needs and uses, and 
 which, therefore, could not have been developed 
 by their past or their present needs. The fact 
 is, that all impartial and profound thinkers can¬ 
 not but feel at times that natural selection, either 
 as a vera causa or as a method of Nature, is 
 wholly inadequate to account for the stupen¬ 
 dous results which everywhere exist in the 
 world. It may perhaps, in a restiicted sense, 
 be deemed a cause, as it certainly is a process, 
 but it cannot be the sole cause and a sufficient 
 explanation for what we know exists in and 
 around us. There must have been other agency 
 at work than the play of contingency in natural 
 selection—some inner Intelligence and Foice 
 that was intent upon realizing life and the mar¬ 
 vellous faculties of the human mind some tran¬ 
 scendent Power behind natural selection in which 
 is so clearly manifested, in many things, an un¬ 
 faltering purpose and an infinite executive 
 
 skill. 
 
 This invisible and incomprehensible Power a 
 large class of truly scientific men choose to call 
 God. One of the strongest arguments they find 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 
 
 93 
 
 to support the theistic hypothesis is in the utter 
 inadmissibility of the materialistic hypothesis, 
 on the ground of the palpable inadequacy of its 
 alleged causes to produce well-known results. 
 It is impossible for Materialism to explain 
 a man, much less his origin. What is 
 known among scientists as the method of ex¬ 
 clusion may be legitimately applied in this in¬ 
 vestigation. Its principle consists in deter¬ 
 mining what a thing is and must be by ascer¬ 
 taining what it is not; and until some adequate 
 material cause is discovered it takes the ground 
 that it is perfectly rational to assume the exist¬ 
 ence of an infinite, intelligent Power behind, and 
 over, and in all things. 
 
 Even Darwin in his earlier writings incau¬ 
 tiously and inconsistently, as some think, postu¬ 
 lated an intelligent Creator, whom he placed at 
 the head of the process of organic evolution, 
 “who had nothing to do at the beginning save 
 to endow one or more primordial forms with the 
 lowest degree of elementary life, leaving the rest 
 to natural selection and the ordeal- of battle.” In 
 a recent publication there appears a letter of Dar¬ 
 win, in which he says : 
 
 “ It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man can be an 
 ardent theist and an evolutionist. . . . What my own 
 views may be is a question of no consequence to any one 
 but myself.” . . . “My judgment often fluctuates. More- 
 
 • • • 
 
94 
 
 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 over, whether a man deserves to be called atheist depends 
 upon the definition of the term, which is much too large 
 a P subiect for a note. In my most extreme fluctuations I 
 have J never been an atheist, in the sense of denying the 
 existence of a God. I think that generally (and more 
 and more as 1 grow older), but not always, an agnostic 
 would be the more correct description of my state of 
 
 mind.” 
 
 Count d’Alviella, in his History of Free Re¬ 
 ligion, well defines the real position of Darwin 
 
 thus: 
 
 “The alternative he presented was not between creation 
 and evolution, but between an organic creation by means 
 of evolution and one by successive interventions of an 
 exterior Power. Thus, he did not hesitate to declare that 
 his doctrine, far from banishing the idea of a First Cause, 
 supplied a more rational and lofty conception of one 1be¬ 
 cause, instead of a capricious, arbitrary or impotent God, 
 forced to correct himself often in order to perfect h.s 
 work, it permits the substitution of a Supreme Being who 
 has endowed his creation from the beginning with the 
 forces and laws necessary to ensure a regular and ad- 
 vancing march.” 
 
 Both Darwin and his ablest disciples have 
 more than once conceded that the development 
 hypothesis cannot account for the beginning of 
 things; and Herbert Spencer, the ablest ex¬ 
 pounder of the evolution philosophy, specif¬ 
 ically admits that there is a “Power behind 
 humanity and all other things—a Power of which 
 humanity is but a small and fugitive product a 
 Power which was, in the course of ever-chang- 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 
 
 95 
 
 ing manifestations, before humanity was, and will 
 continue through other manifestations when hu¬ 
 manity shall cease to be.” “Itwould be easier,” 
 he says, “ to translate so-called matter into so- 
 called spirit than to translate so-called spirit into 
 so-called matter (which latter is indeed wholly 
 impossible); yet no translation can carry us be¬ 
 yond our symbols.” He elsewhere says : “ This 
 Power is no more representable in terms of hu¬ 
 man consciousness than human consciousness is 
 representable in terms of a plant’s function.” 
 Immanuel Kant, who is now specially popular 
 with the natural-selection champions, makes 
 similar admissions, as do many other eminent 
 writers of the same philosophical school. Even 
 Professor Tyndall, who has been so denounced 
 for suggesting the “ prayer-gauge,” says in his 
 Fragments of Science: 
 
 “ Besides the phenomena which address the senses, 
 there are laws, principles and processes which do not 
 address the senses at all, but which can be spiritually 
 discerned.” 
 
 In his lecture on Radiation he says : 
 
 ‘‘We have been producing atoms, molecules, vibrations 
 and waves which eye has never seen nor ear heard, and 
 which only can be discerned by the imagination. This, 
 in fact, is the faculty w'hich enables us to transcend the 
 boundaries of sense and connect the phenomena of our 
 visible world with those of an invisible.” 
 
96 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 But the most astounding confession of all has 
 been made by Professor Haeckel, the renowned 
 German materialist, in these words : 
 
 “The more developed man of the present day is 
 capable of, and justified in, conceiving that infinitely 
 nobler and sublimer idea of God which alone is compat¬ 
 ible with the monistic conception of the universe, and 
 which recognizes God’s spirit and power in all phenomena 
 without exception. This monistic idea of God, which be¬ 
 longs to the future, has already been expressed by Gior¬ 
 dano Bruno in the following words: ‘A spirit exists in all 
 things, and no body is so small but contains a part of the 
 divine substance within itself, by which it is animated. 
 
 In another connection Hseckel has expressed 
 the opinion that “ all matter is, in a certain sense, 
 alive.” 
 
 It was once said by a master of English litera¬ 
 ture and a keen observer that “language is a de¬ 
 vice to conceal one’s ideas;” and may it not be 
 possible that, after all, truly scientific and candid 
 men have substantially the same theory of the 
 universe, and really mean the same thing, while 
 they use very different words to express their 
 meaning? The old-fashioned theist adheies to 
 the simple, short and comprehensive word God, 
 which in Anglo-Saxon is written in precisely the 
 same characters as good. This name has been 
 perverted to vile uses, and has been too long 
 associated with the many superstitious devices 
 of priestcraft; and it is no wonder that many 
 
The Theistic Postulate . 97 
 
 good men have a repugnance to both the words 
 God and religion. The particular character at¬ 
 tributed to God has been more a matter of the 
 fancy than of reason. The tendency is to ascribe 
 to God the qualities that we ourselves have or 
 admire in others. 
 
 God has generally been conceived to be a man 
 in extenso y a huge man; and a very imperfect 
 man too. The tribal Yahweh of the ancient 
 Jews not only fails to command our reverence, 
 but in some things excites our contempt. The 
 God of John Calvin is a demoniacal monster 
 who fills the human mind with dread and fear. 
 Even the ordinary conceptions of God by the 
 modern pietists, Catholic and Protestant, make 
 prayers and praises little less than idolatrous, if 
 not blasphemous. But these are perversions 
 and abuses. We can conceive of God as the 
 Over-all Spirit of the Universe; that this world 
 is not dead matter, but is wonderfully alive be¬ 
 cause there is a living spirit within it; that spirit 
 is the extreme of visible and palpable matter as 
 cognized by our physical organs of sense; that 
 spirit is causation, and matter in its palpable form 
 is one of its expressions or manifestations; that 
 what are called the laws of Nature are but modes 
 of the divine efficiency; that in accordance with 
 these fixed and uniform laws the infinite , divine 
 Over-Soul has made the worlds and all that they 
 7 
 
98 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 contain; and that this work has been going on 
 for innumerable aeons, and is still going on, 
 when we can form such conceptions of God we 
 have no difficulty as to the origin of man. God 
 made him—-just how, when and where is not 
 certainly known; but we do know that the 
 divine method of making worlds and animals 
 and men is by a uniform system of evolution, 
 causing one thing to come out of another, tak¬ 
 ing millions and billions of years to carry on his 
 work to the present time, and that probably he 
 will take millions more to perfect it. 
 
 Rationalistic theists do not profess to know all 
 about God. If pressed for an answer to the 
 question, What is God ? none better can be 
 given than il God is spirit; not a spiiit, but 
 spirit . When asked, What is spirit? we answer, 
 We do not know, neither do we know what elec¬ 
 tricity is, nor can we answer one of a thousand 
 questions that come up regarding the subtle and 
 occult principles and powers of matter. With 
 our present powers and attainments we admit 
 Herbert Spencer’s expression, the Unknowable , 
 as applied to God—unknown as to many things 
 relating to his origin, nature and mode of exist¬ 
 ence, yet well known in his manifestations. We 
 accept the expostulations of the ancient Zophar 
 with the old man of the land of Uz, as we find 
 them in the Hebrew' poem: “ Canst thou by 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 
 
 99 
 
 searching find out God? Canst thou find out 
 the Almighty unto perfection ? It is as high as 
 heaven : what canst thou do? deeper than sheol. 
 what canst thou know ?’’... “ Lo, these are 
 parts of his ways, but how little a portion is 
 heard of him! but the thunder of his powet- 
 who can understand ?” We see no difference 
 between the Unknozvable of Spencer and the 
 Unsearchable of Zophar. The Unknown Powei 
 is the “ Noumenon , the absolute, being in itself, 
 the inner nature of force, movement, time, 
 space, and even conscience.” 
 
 The question of personality as applied to God 
 is often raised, and in this case, as in many 
 others, words are used to darken knowledge. 
 The word “personality” originally meant an 
 actor's mask , words sounding through a dis¬ 
 guise in a theatre. If by “personality” is meant 
 reality , unity or oneness , we say God is personal. 
 But if you mean by personality limitation , any¬ 
 thing like a man, it cannot be properly applied 
 to the Infinite. Personality is one of the divine 
 characteristics, but one word cannot describe 
 any one of his attributes. He is personal, 
 in a certain sense, but he is more than personal. 
 We cannot ^fine without <rtf//fining, and when 
 we think of God as “ altogether like ourselves,” 
 we fall into confusion and doubt. 
 
ioo Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 It is a great mistake to think of God as out¬ 
 side of and distinct from the universe. If there 
 be a God at all, lie is in the universe, and in 
 every part of it. We cannot properly localize 
 him, and say that he is present in one place and 
 not in another, or that he is in one place more 
 than another. He must be everywhere and in 
 everything. Anthropomorphic (man-like) views 
 of God are what make atheists and agnostics. 
 
 Men constantly talk of the laws of Nature, 
 forgetting that law itself is a product and cannot 
 be a cause. The law of gravitation is not the 
 cause of gravitation. A self-originating and 
 self-executing law is unthinkable. If law is 
 the creator of all things, law is God, and has 
 intelligence and infinite efficiency. The preva¬ 
 lence of law supposes the existence of a law¬ 
 maker and a law-executor. We accept the law 
 of evolution, but cannot conceive of evolution 
 independent of involution and an Evolver. 
 
 Admitting these self-evident principles, we cut 
 the Gordian knot that must always puzzle and 
 confound the materialistic scientist. Whether man 
 came from a monkey or is a distinct type, an orig¬ 
 inal creation, is of no consequence to the argument. 
 Was man developed from a monkey ? If so, God 
 did it, and that is his method of making a man; 
 and man is as really the work of God as if he 
 had formed him out of clay, as a boy makes a 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 
 
 IOI 
 
 mud sparrow, and then gave him life. It must 
 have been as easy for infinite Power to make a 
 man out of a monkey as to make him out of 
 dust or a rhizopod. Did man have a distinct 
 typical origin ? He who could make an anthro¬ 
 poid ape could make an ape-like man, entirely 
 distinct from the ape. Nor is it important for 
 us to determine whether there was a one first 
 pair or several pairs from whom the diversified 
 races of humanity have descended. The Power 
 that brought one pair into existence could orig¬ 
 inate scores or hundreds of pairs. 
 
 It may be said that this is “ begging the ques¬ 
 tion ” by assuming the existence of an infinite 
 God. But we deny that it is an assumption in 
 its last analysis. What is known as the scien¬ 
 tific method leads logically to the conclusion that 
 there must be something that theists generally 
 name God. You may call it “protoplasm,” 
 “ molecular force,” the “ potentiality of matter,” 
 or even matter itself; and when you tell us what 
 these words mean we will tell you what we mean 
 by “God.” Possibly we all mean the same thing. 
 We know of the existence of God, as we know 
 other things, by palpable manifestations. 
 
 Astronomers assumed the existence of Neptune 
 from certain phenomena long before its existence 
 could be demonstrated; and if the discovery had 
 never been made, the perturbations so long ob- 
 
102 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 served would have nevertheless justified the con¬ 
 clusion that there must be some stupendous 
 cause for such unmistakable and marvellous 
 perturbations. 
 
 But we are pressed with the common queries, 
 Where did God originate? Who made him? 
 We cannot answer these questions, but it does 
 not follow that he does not exist. There are 
 many things we cannot account for, the reality 
 of which we never question. If we could answer 
 all possible questions about God, he would not 
 be God. If La Place had found God in scan- 
 nine the heavens with his telescope, or if Law- 
 rence had found him with his scalpel, he would 
 not have been the infinite Intelligence and Power. 
 Such a God as cultured reason discovers in the 
 scientific method cannot be seen with either tele¬ 
 scope or microscope. The finite cannot com¬ 
 prehend the Infinite; the lesser cannot contain 
 the greater. The child cannot tell where his 
 father came from, but he nevertheless had a 
 father. When men talk of the eternity of mat¬ 
 ter we do not even profess to understand them. 
 The most advanced scientists do not attempt to 
 explain one of a thousand mysteries in which 
 all of the phenomena of the material world are 
 enshrouded. Why should it be expected that 
 theists should explain where and how and when 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 103 
 
 God came into existence, or how he could have 
 had an eternal existence or be self-existent? We 
 affirm no more of God than materialists imply 
 of matter, and we endow him with no attributes 
 that they do not virtually ascribe to matter. So 
 far as assumption and incomprehensibility are 
 concerned, both stand on the same ground. In 
 point of fact, there is but little, if any, real dif¬ 
 ference between a rational theist and a scientific 
 materialist. They indeed call things by different 
 names, but mean about the same thing. What 
 theists prefer to call “ the works of God,” mate¬ 
 rialists call “Nature,” “cosmic laws,” “spontane¬ 
 ous generation,” “the potency of matter,” “con¬ 
 servation of energy,” “ correlation of force ” and 
 “ natural selection.” 
 
 The fundamental error of modern scientists is 
 that they confine their investigations to the phys¬ 
 ical and palpable, while we have demonstrable 
 evidence of the existence of the spiritual and 
 invisible. We know nothing of matter but from 
 its properties and manifestations, and we have 
 the same kind of evidence in regard to spirit, 
 and know that it is superior to gross matter, 
 and therefore cannot be tested by the same 
 crucibles. In the very nature of things a great 
 cause must ever be imponderable and invisible. 
 It cannot be weighed and measured, but must 
 ever remain intangible and incomprehensible. 
 
104 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 What is that hidden power that makes Bunker 
 Hill Monument perceptibly higher at noon than 
 at night, that causes a steel rail to become longer 
 or shorter at different hours of the day, and that 
 causes the hidden spark to dart from the flint 
 when smitten by the hardened steel ? 
 
 When we fully realize that this is not a soul¬ 
 less, corpse-like universe, that God is not outside 
 of it, but that he is in it—in all things and the 
 soul of all things—we shall have no difficulty 
 about “protoplasm,” “molecules,” the “cor¬ 
 relation of force” and other mystical and in¬ 
 comprehensible phrases. When science shall 
 cease its futile attempts to get along without 
 God, and acknowledges the reality of spirit and 
 its superiority to mere matter, the world will be 
 redeemed from an atheistic orphanage, and our 
 race will see the Fatherhood of God in the 
 brotherhood of man. 
 
 Science may go on with its ceaseless plod- 
 dings until it can show just how man was 
 evolved from matter; but let it not forget to put 
 in the qualifying adjective, physical man, for it 
 certainly goes outside of its legitimate work 
 when it undertakes to deny the existence of 
 the unseen Ego. “ There is a spirit in man, 
 and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him 
 understanding.” 
 
 The spirit in physical man, in its relation 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 105 
 
 to the Supreme Spirit, is as the drop of water 
 to the ocean or the single glimmering ray to 
 the full-orbed, refulgent sun. Men may talk 
 of “force correlation,” and trace its progress and 
 products, but they must remain dumb as to the 
 beginning or origin of force unless they accept 
 the doctrine of an intelligent First Force. There 
 is no way of accounting for the existence of 
 spirit, of life, of intelligence, but by premising 
 the prior existence of spirit, life and intelligence. 
 Like only causes like. An egg does not come 
 from a stone, and the ascidian did not come from 
 a lifeless rock. 
 
 The logical conclusion from the facts and 
 principles herein suggested is that there must 
 be an intelligent First Cause of all things—an 
 all-pervading, fecundating, animating Spirit of 
 the universe; and we prefer to call this God. 
 Science has taught us the processes of his work, 
 and denominates them the “ laws of Nature.” 
 In point of fact, as little is known of the origin 
 and essence of matter as of spirit, and there is 
 as good ground for agnosticism in the former as 
 in the latter. There is therefore no necessary 
 conflict between true science and a rational 
 theism. 
 
 It is a rational proposition that something 
 must have been before what is called creation. 
 There must have been an intelligent potency , and 
 
io 6 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 that Power theists prefer to call God. The ma¬ 
 terialistic philosophy in its basic principles is 
 contained in two propositions: (i) Matter has in 
 itself an intrinsic force which produces all the 
 forms of Nature. (2) Life, intellect, conscious¬ 
 ness, will, and all there is of man, came from 
 atomic and molecular combinations in the ma¬ 
 terials of which man is composed. According 
 to this theory, man is a conglomeration, mainly 
 of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, with a sprink¬ 
 ling of nitrogen and still more minute paitides 
 of phosphorus, calcium, sulphur, fluorine, chlo¬ 
 rine, sodium, iron, potassium, magnesium and 
 silicon. The existence of these elements has 
 been demonstrated by the chemist and patholo¬ 
 gist, but with all their knowledge they have 
 failed to account for the fact that there is asso¬ 
 ciated with this material conglomerate a person¬ 
 ality, an individuality , that reasons, remembers, 
 imagines, hopes, fears, loves, hates—that is am¬ 
 bitious to grasp the infinite and aspires to im¬ 
 mortality. 
 
 Matter is only known to us through the me¬ 
 dium of our external senses, but thought is known 
 through our inward consciousness. And by this 
 we learn that mind is greater than matter, and 
 very different from it as we know it in its gross 
 forms through our physical senses. Now, the 
 question arises, Can this intelligence be the re- 
 
The Theistic Postulate . 107 
 
 suit of the chemical and molecular action of 
 atoms which are in themselves without intelli¬ 
 gence ? Can we conceive of intelligence with¬ 
 out pre-existing intelligence? Can we conceive 
 of a time when intelligence first began to be ? 
 Certainly not, if intelligence could only come 
 from intelligence. Now, whatever begins must 
 have had a cause, and therefore there never 
 could have been a time when intelligence did 
 not exist, unless we credit the absurdity that 
 there was intelligence before there was intelli¬ 
 gence. Materialists say matter had an eternal 
 existence, and matter has intelligence; therefore 
 intelligence always existed. The logical error 
 lies in the falsity of the proposition that intelli¬ 
 gence is an inherent property of matter or the 
 result of certain combinations of matter; which 
 is manifestly absurd. To make mind a quality 
 of matter would be to make the original intelli ¬ 
 gence a quality of matter; that is, to make God 
 a quality of matter, and to make matter God. 
 And this is just what Materialism in its last 
 analysis does. It ascribes to matter all that 
 theists ascribe to God. It gives matter an 
 eternal self-existence—endows it with an in¬ 
 herent infinite intelligence and an omnipotent 
 potency. It spells “ God ” with six letters in¬ 
 stead of three. It makes a God of matter, and 
 then denies his existence. 
 
io 8 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 We now submit that it is more rational to pos¬ 
 tulate the existence of an eternal Supreme Intel¬ 
 ligence and Power, the Creator and Ruler of all 
 things visible and invisible, who is the Author 
 and^Executor of the laws by which both mind 
 and matter are governed. This Supreme Being 
 is alone the Self-existent One, and what are 
 called the properties and modes of ineit matter 
 are but the proofs and manifestations of his etei- 
 nal power and Godhead. There cannot be a 
 poem without a poet, nor a picture without an 
 artist. There cannot be a watch or other com¬ 
 plex machine without an inventor and artisan. 
 This universe is the sublimest of all poems, and 
 Cicero well said that it would be easier to con¬ 
 ceive that Homers Iliad came from the chance 
 shaking of the letters of the alphabet together 
 than that the atoms should have produced the 
 cosmos without a marshalling agency. The 
 visible and palpable compel us to acknowledge 
 their counterpart in the invisible and intangible, 
 and we cannot rationally account foi the oiigin 
 of man without postulating the existence of an 
 Intelligence and Power greater than humanity. 
 
 We submit that a rationalistic Theism is more 
 scientific, and better commends itself to the im¬ 
 partial and unprejudiced thinker, than the athe¬ 
 istic assumption of a self-originating, ceaseless 
 procession of cosmic potentialities, floating from 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 109 
 
 nobody knows where and to nobody knows 
 whither. Some day more will be known upon 
 this mysterious subject, but even now enough 
 is known to show that there is no inconsistency 
 between a rational faith in God and the most 
 marvellous discoveries of modern science. The 
 fundamental idea of the old Hebrew poem, bor¬ 
 rowed from older and more civilized peoples, 
 that God created man, is true, while it is the 
 legitimate province of science to explain the 
 divine-natural laws by which the work has been 
 carried on to its comparative completeness. All 
 Nature is vocal with the breath of the Eternal. 
 
 “O Earth ! thou hast not any wind that blows 
 Which is not music ; every weed of thine, 
 
 Pressed rightly, flows in aromatic wine ; 
 
 And every humble hedgerow flower that grows, 
 
 And every little brown bird that doth sing, 
 
 Hath something greater than itself, and bears 
 A living word to every living thing, 
 
 Albeit it holds the message unawares. 
 
 All shapes and sounds have something which is not 
 Of them ; a Spirit broods amid the grass ; 
 
 Vague outlines of the Everlasting Thought 
 Lie in the melting shadows as they pass; 
 
 The touch of an Eternal Presence thrills 
 The fringes of the sunsets and the hills.” 
 
 Let us now try to realize just where we 
 stand. There is very little of real science in 
 the world, taking the word in its primary 
 
I IO 
 
 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 meaning of knowledge. What we do not know 
 is stupendous. Every system of philosophy is 
 confronted with an overshadowing mystery as 
 to the actual beginning of things. Atheists and 
 theists, materialists and agnostics, are alike dumb 
 and silent. All theories of the universe start 
 with assumptions, but Theism has but one sin¬ 
 gle assumption, and argues that all the facts of 
 Nature go to show the reasonableness of that 
 assumption. It claims to show that a denial of 
 the existence of a First Cause involves infinite and 
 innumerable mysteries and absurdities, and that 
 all attempts to account for the origin and pro¬ 
 gressive development of man upon any other than 
 the theistic hypothesis are manifest failuies, even 
 in the light of the materialistic philosophy. Is it 
 not more rational to admit one incomprehensible 
 mystery that explains all other mysteries than to 
 for ever grapple with the millions of mysteries 
 that confront us on every side ? Is it not per¬ 
 fectly rational to credit the assumption of Theism 
 as to the existence of an Infinite Creator, or, if 
 you prefer, an Infinite Evolver, when all the facts 
 of the universe harmonize with this hypothesis, 
 and all other hypotheses are absolutely at open 
 variance ? Theism assumes, a priori , the exist¬ 
 ence of God, and proves it a posteriori. And 
 never does its arguments seem so absolutely 
 conclusive and invulnerable as when contrasted 
 
The Theistic Postulate . 111 
 
 with the attempts made by materialists to ac¬ 
 count for the facts of the universe without 
 admitting the necessity for the existence of 
 God. This seems to have been realized by the 
 evolution philosophers themselves, so that while 
 Darwin admitted that his mind fluctuated and 
 that he was generally agnostic, he never had 
 been an atheist in the sense of denying the 
 existence of God. We have already given quo¬ 
 tations from Herbert Spencer and Professors 
 Tyndal, Huxley and Haeckel virtually admitting 
 what rational theists contend for—viz. a living 
 something in matter which makes it just what it 
 is, and which these scientists themselves some¬ 
 times call life and spirit and other names entirely 
 acceptable to liberal theists. We are reproached 
 for the inconsistency of believing in a Power we 
 cannot comprehend, and endowing him with 
 attributes of which we can form no just concep¬ 
 tions. Atheists do not seem to realize that they 
 are guilty of a greater inconsistency. They tell 
 us that we believe in a Being of whom we can 
 form no conception, but they themselves must 
 form some conception of such a Being, else how 
 could they deny his existence ? Dr. Harris of 
 Yale College, in The Philosophical Basis of 
 Theism, puts this point very acutely. He says : 
 
 “This denial involves the assumption that man has 
 capacity to know God, has also the true idea of him, 
 
I I 2 
 
 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 knows all the evidence of his existence which the uni¬ 
 verse contains now or ever has contained or ever will 
 contain, and knows also that the evidence is inadequate 
 and that God does not exist. This form of Atheism 
 assumes as its basis the omniscience of the atheist, for 
 if he does not know everything, that which he does not 
 know may be God or the evidence of God’s existence. 
 
 There is no difficulty in admitting the exist¬ 
 ence of a Supreme Power if we do not attempt 
 to comprehend and describe it. Matthew Ar¬ 
 nold says: “ We too would say ‘ God ’ if the 
 moment we said ‘ God ’ you would not pretend 
 that you know all about him.” His definition 
 of God is indeed vague, but vastly suggestive: 
 
 A-ii enduring Power not ourselves that makes for 
 righteousness." Mr. Arnold further defines his 
 meaning thus: 
 
 “ For the total man, therefore, the truer conception of 
 God is as ‘ the Eternal Power, not ourselves, by which 
 all things fulfil the law of their being;’ by which, there¬ 
 fore, we fulfil the law of our being so far as our being is 
 sesthetic and intellective, as well as so far as it is moral. 
 And it is evident, as we have before now remarked, that 
 in this wider sense God is displeased and disserved by 
 many things which cannot be said, except by putting a 
 strain upon words, to displease and disserve him as the 
 God of righteousness.” 
 
 This suggests the moral element in the un¬ 
 known Power which finds such a ready le- 
 sponse in the human mind. There is not only 
 a spiritual sense in man which recognizes the 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 113 
 
 supersensuous, but there is an indwelling witness 
 to the eternal principle of rightfulness. The 
 sentiment of oiighlness is inherent and ineradi¬ 
 cable. Every man who is not a moral idiot has 
 a feeling that certain things ought and ought not 
 to be, that there is an essential right and wrong; 
 and when the noble mother of Theodore Parker 
 told him that it was the voice of God that bade 
 him not to crush the tortoise with his upraised 
 club, she was not mistaken, and it was his rev¬ 
 erent recognition of that divine Voice that made 
 him the unconquerable foe of all wrong. Hu¬ 
 man intuition sees and feels this mysterious 
 Power that answers to our Ego, and from which 
 it proceeds; and this inward conviction cannot be 
 eradicated from the average mind by the preten¬ 
 sions of science falsely so called. The patient 
 watcher in the dark room at the terminus of the 
 ocean cable sees in his suspended mirror the 
 reflection of an electric spark, and he at once 
 recognizes it as a message from the operator 
 three thousand miles away. So God is seen by 
 the aspiring and contemplative in the concave 
 mirror of man’s own spirit, and, though it is a 
 mere reflection, a spark, a flash, it clearly proves 
 the existence of the Central Magnet. It is this 
 recognition of the moral element that forms the 
 basis of moral government and of that worship¬ 
 fulness which has manifested itself among all 
 8 
 
114 Man—Whence and Whit he)'? 
 
 nations, barbarian and civilized. It was this 
 innate feeling of reverence that indited the sub¬ 
 lime words of the poet-philosopher Goethe: 
 
 “Him who dare name 
 And yet proclaim, 
 
 ‘Yes, I believe? 
 
 Who that can feel 
 His heart can steel 
 To say, ‘I disbelieve’?” 
 
 Herbert Spencer has well said that this Powei 
 “ is no more representable in terms of human 
 consciousness than human consciousness is rep¬ 
 resentable in terms of a plant’s function.” We 
 cannot describe the Infinite in language of the 
 finite. Man can much less comprehend God 
 than a plant can comprehend man. But human 
 consciousness feels that God is, and human 
 reason demonstrates that this is not a universe 
 without a Soul, and from phenomenon proves 
 the existence of Numenon. Theism thus starts 
 with an assumption suggested by intuition, and 
 proves the soundness of its basis by showing 
 that the facts of the universe justify the as¬ 
 sumption. 
 
 But “ no translation of the words ‘ God ’ and 
 ‘Spirit’ can carry us beyond our symbols” (as 
 Spencer has well said); so that our conceptions 
 of God must necessarily be symbolic, and noth¬ 
 ing more; and from the essential nature of 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 115 
 
 things there is nothing to which we can com¬ 
 pare him, and therefore we should not even 
 make the attempt. While we freely use the 
 word “ atheist ” as describing those who deny 
 the existence of God, it is doubtful whether 
 there are many, if indeed any, such persons, 
 especially among learned and truly scientific 
 men, though they call themselves by the name. 
 A close analysis of what they do believe would 
 probably reveal the fact that they are only 
 atheistic as regards the Yahweh of the Jews—• 
 whose general character, as portrayed by his 
 own worshippers and prophets, is so exceed¬ 
 ingly unlovely—and the God of dogmatic the- 
 ology, called Christian, who in many respects is 
 no better. It must have been disbelief of this 
 kind that Henry Thoreau had in mind when he 
 said it would seem as if Atheism must be com¬ 
 paratively popular with God. 
 
 Plutarch, though a pagan, had the same idea 
 when he said that it would be more pleasing to 
 God to deny his existence than to form mean 
 conceptions of his attributes. We know that 
 many who are called atheists are far in advance 
 of multitudes of theists in everything that con¬ 
 stitutes moral excellence and true manhood. 
 Theodore Parker once attended the funeral of 
 an avowed atheist, and in his prayer thus re¬ 
 ferred to the deceased: “ O God, he did not 
 
116 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 believe in thy existence, but he kept thy law.” 
 It is safe to assume that average Atheism is 
 disbelief in the God of the dominant theology, 
 and not in the Ultimate Pozver that makes for 
 righteousness. Vulgar, anthropomorphic con¬ 
 ceptions of God, which endow him with certain 
 speculative attributes, are condemned by reason 
 and science; but nevertheless phenomena have 
 something behind them, and energy has something 
 beneath it, and all things have something in them 
 which is the source of all phenomena and energy; 
 and this enduring, all-pervading Power is our 
 sure guarantee of the order of the universe. 
 And this Power theists persist in calling God. 
 Theologians may call this Pantheism, but it is 
 only seemingly so. There is a vast difference 
 between saying that everything is God, and that 
 God is in everything. The old watchmaker- 
 mechanician idea, a God separate and outside 
 of the universe, will yet become obsolete, and 
 science and reason and the law of progressive 
 development will compel men to reshape their 
 conceptions of God as identical with the Cos¬ 
 mos, plus the eternal Mystery, yet not forgetting 
 that there is a moral aspect to this subject, and 
 that there is a moral government of the universe 
 as real as what is called natural government. 
 The enduring Power is always on the side of 
 right. Of this we shall speak hereafter. 
 
The Theistic Postulate. 
 
 ii 7 
 
 “ I cannot picture God ! I cannot fathom 
 The mystery, the nature of his power, 
 
 Whose laws sublime, the universe controlling, 
 
 Rule suns and worlds and systems hour by hour. 
 
 “ But I can see his work in every flower, 
 
 In every daisy, every ^ iolet blue, 
 
 In every form of life, from clod upspringing 
 To laws divine, obedient and true. 
 
 “Still more in human hearts ! We love the beauty 
 Our eyes drink in by mountain and by sea; 
 
 We feel his power in evening sunsets golden ; 
 
 We love the flowers that bloom upon the lea; 
 
 “But more, still more, in noble deeds and loving 
 Of human souls, whose virtues radiant shine, 
 
 We see the Power within, the Power mysterious, 
 
 The Power in all, through all—the Power divine.” 
 
V. 
 
 IS DEATH THE END OF MAN? 
 
 I T is related by Montaigne of Pyrrho, the old 
 sceptical philosopher, who followed his pre¬ 
 ceptor in the expeditions of Alexander the Great, 
 nd afterward became a priest, that he was once 
 upon a ship when a terrific storm arose, and when 
 the affrighted passengers were frantic with appre¬ 
 hension he pointed them to a hog that happened 
 to be on deck as an example of serenity and in¬ 
 difference worthy of imitation in the hour of 
 peril. 
 
 There may be creatures in the form of man 
 even in our day whose instincts are so swinish 
 as to cause no apprehensions of the future and 
 no aspirations for a higher life after death; but 
 their number must be small and their influence 
 inappreciable. The great majority of men of 
 all ages have been profoundly interested in the 
 question of humanity, After death—what? In 
 view of the precious memories of many loved 
 ones who have gone away, and amid the increas¬ 
 ing monitions of wasting strength which sooner 
 118 
 
Does Death End All? 119 
 
 or later come to all, in the stillness of the calm 
 night which breedeth thought” the solemn ques¬ 
 tions will arise: Where are our depaited loved 
 ones? Do they still live? Have they utterly 
 perished, or shall we meet them again? As 
 soon as from this earth we go, what will become 
 of us ? Few men are so worldly or so busy as 
 not to find time to consider these questions. 
 
 The great mass of men, barbarian and civil¬ 
 ized, in all ages and countries, have believed 
 that man lives after death, and, but foi diverting 
 attention from the main question under consid¬ 
 eration, it would be interesting to draw a sketch 
 and make an analysis of the many different opin¬ 
 ions which have prevailed among the Druids, 
 Scandinavians, Etruscans, Egyptians, Persians, 
 Hebrews, Greeks and Romans, Brahmans and 
 Buddhists, including Christians of primitive, 
 mediaeval and modern times. Those who de¬ 
 sire to pursue this subject could not do better 
 than study A Critical History of the Doctrine 
 of a Future Life , by an accomplished Unitarian 
 clergyman, William R. Alger. It will be found, 
 contrary to the general impression, that in all 
 ages there have been those who were not only 
 sceptical on the question of the future life, but 
 who have not hesitated to affirm that death ends 
 all that there is of man. No people of ancient 
 or modern times were ever so indifferent and 
 
i 20 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 doubting on this subject as the ancient Jews. 
 In all the writings ascribed to Moses there is 
 not one allusion to a life after death, and there 
 is no sanction to his laws drawn from reward or 
 punishment after this life. It was not until after 
 the captivity in Babylon that the Jews knew 
 anything of the doctrine of a future life so dis¬ 
 tinctly taught by the Persians. There is no 
 book extant, not to say religious book, so full 
 of sceptical expressions regarding the utter 
 extinction of man at death as the Old Testa¬ 
 ment. Not to mention the scepticism with 
 which the book of Job abounds, take the fol¬ 
 lowing from David’s Psalms, so called: “ For in 
 death there is no remembrance of thee : in the 
 grave who shall give thee thanks?” (Ps. 6 : 5); 
 “ Wilt thou show wonders to the dead ? Shall 
 the dead arise and praise thee?” (Ps. 88 : 10); 
 “ The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that 
 go down into silence” (Ps. 115 : 17); “His 
 breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, 
 in that very day his thoughts perish ” (Ps. 146 : 
 4). Solomon was even more outspoken in his 
 materialism : “ Man has no pre-eminence above 
 a beast. . . . All go unto one place, all are of 
 the dust, and all turn to dust again ” (Eccles. 3 : 
 19, 20); “ For the living know that they shall 
 die, but the dead know not anything, neither 
 have they any more a reward ; for the memory 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 I 21 
 
 of them is forgotten. Also their love and their 
 hatred and their envy is now perished, neither 
 have they any more a portion for ever in any¬ 
 thing that is done under the sun ” (Eccles. 9 : 
 4-6). It would be easy to multiply these quo¬ 
 tations, but no man familiar with the Jewish 
 Scriptures can doubt the statement we have 
 made regarding their prevailing scepticism. 
 
 It must have been natural for primeval men 
 to look upon the death and decay of the body 
 as the end of all life, as they could only judge 
 from appearances. So far as they could see, 
 there was nothing of man but his material form, 
 and when that decomposed there was nothing 
 left but its original elements. But as intelligence 
 increased and reason assumed its rightful throne, 
 it became evident that external appearances are 
 not always sure guides to truth. A grain of 
 corn does not appear to contain the future har¬ 
 vest, nor is there any semblance of the majestic 
 oak in the tiny acorn. The beautiful butterfly 
 is not visible in the worm, nor the worm in the 
 egg. Millions of appearances are found by ob¬ 
 servation and experience and the demonstrations 
 of science to give no hint to inward truth, but 
 seem opposed to it. 
 
 In modern times the word agnostic has come 
 into common use, though Noah Webster never 
 heard of it. It conveys the idea of know-noth- 
 
122 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 ing. It is the plea of ignorance. It is not an 
 argument to say, “ I do not know.” It is the 
 diffident admission of suspense. It is a state 
 of mind with which no fault can be found if the 
 man is sincere. One can have more respect for 
 honest doubt than for blind faith. But it is not 
 rational or modest to assume that what is un¬ 
 known to us must be false, or what one does 
 not know himself cannot be known to others. 
 We cannot wisely accept the narrow horizon of 
 our feeble minds as the boundary-line of the 
 universe. “There are more things in heaven 
 and earth than are dreamed of in our philos¬ 
 ophy.” We now have perfect knowledge of 
 many things of which we were once ignorant. 
 The embryo man in the gestative period has no 
 knowledge of the wonderful career that awaits 
 him, and the child is an agnostic regarding 
 many facts well known in manhood. The tele¬ 
 graph and telephone were unknown within the 
 memory of men not yet hoary with age. The 
 learned professors in our medical colleges were 
 agnostics as to successful anaesthetics until yes¬ 
 terday. 
 
 We have great respect for agnostics—if they 
 are really willing to learn. A hesitating, inquir¬ 
 ing mind is not evidence of a vicious disposition 
 or of total depravity. When Robert G. Inger- 
 soll stood at the grave of his brother and ex- 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 123 
 
 pressed his agnosticism, he at the same time 
 gave vent to a feeling that was creditable to 
 both intellect and heart. Let us read his words: 
 
 “Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren 
 peaks of two eternities : we strive in vain to look beyond 
 the heights; we cry aloud, and the only answer is the 
 echo of our wailing cry ; from the voiceless lips of the 
 unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night 
 of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the 
 7 'ustle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying, mis¬ 
 taking the approach of death for returning health, whis¬ 
 pered with his latest breath, '/ am better 7iowi Let us 
 believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas and tears and 
 fears, that these dear words are true of all the countless 
 dead.” 
 
 Much of the scepticism of the past has arisen 
 from the assumptions and illogical conclusions 
 of a speculative philosophy now happily ex¬ 
 ploded. To many the doctrine of a future life 
 has been unattractive because of the severe 
 asceticism with which it has often been asso¬ 
 ciated. Others have been quite willing to forego 
 a future life because of their miseries in this, and 
 others have steadfastly refused to believe in the 
 future life because of the hellish pictures that 
 have been drawn of the doom of the majority 
 of our race. Multitudes have rejected the im¬ 
 mortality of the soul to get clear of the doctrine 
 of eternal torture taught by all the great theol¬ 
 ogies ; and many sagacious persons have denied 
 
124 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 the doctrine of a future personal conscious ex¬ 
 istence because they have fully realized that it 
 is the principal stock in trade of selfish priests 
 and preachers, who appeal to the fears of their 
 ignorant dupes, and offer their mediatorial ser¬ 
 vices to enable them to escape just punishment. 
 Of all the diabolical devices of priestcraft, none 
 can compare with the purgatorial fiction which 
 extends its power over the destinies of men 
 even after they have passed from earth. 
 
 But aside from these incidental matters, the 
 question still remains unanswered: “ If a man 
 die, shall he live again?” There is a handful 
 of mystical, well-meaning men who have adopt¬ 
 ed the fanciful, Frenchy conception of Auguste 
 Comte. They call themselves Positivists , and 
 claim to have discovered a scientific religion, 
 though had certain well-established principles 
 of science been known when Comte wrote, the 
 world would never have heard of his vagaries. 
 With them the future life of man is subjective, 
 not objective. A great and good man lives 
 after death, not in reality, but in the partial 
 thoughts of grateful friends. They say in their 
 catechism the dead have “ a subjective immor¬ 
 tality in the brains of the living.” It is, more¬ 
 over, an exclusive, select arrangement. Only 
 those are immortal who are made so by the 
 suffrage of survivors. But then they become 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 125 
 
 God, a “ Supreme Being ”—Le Grand Etre, “ the 
 fictitious product of a poetic personification ! 
 Great Humanity—whose very existence is a 
 pretence, a simulation, a shadow, a nothing— 
 is God ! How grand and noble men can satisfy 
 themselves with this illusive bubble is one of the 
 things that no man can explain. It makes God 
 a sort of <7?/^’-corporation, and the immortality 
 of man a memory , which of course may be lost, 
 or which may change if further light should 
 lead to a different estimate of the dead man. 
 
 No wonder that Professor Huxley said of 
 Positivism, “// is as thoroughly antagonistic to 
 the very essence of science as anything in ultra¬ 
 montane Catholicism .” In contrasting Comte 
 with Hume the same scientist speaks of the 
 former as “a French writer of fifty years later 
 date, in whose dreary and verbose pages we miss 
 alike the vigor of thought and the clearness of 
 style ” of Hume. John W. Chadwick well said 
 of Positivism, “ Is it not, after all, a sort of make- 
 believe religion? Its God, its immortality, its 
 prayer, are substitutes for the God, the immor¬ 
 tality and prayer of bona-fide religion,” etc. 
 
 But little better, if any, than these filmy French 
 fancies is the theory of succession—that all im¬ 
 mortality consists in living in one’s children or 
 descendants, that “ men are the mortal cells of 
 immortal humanity.” It would be a poor com- 
 
126 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 fort to think, in view of death, that though per¬ 
 sonal annihilation awaits us, others will live in 
 our stead, who in turn must themselves be 
 blotted out of existence. Real satisfaction can 
 never be found in any flimsy substitute for a 
 real future life. This age is too practical, too 
 realistic, to be put off with semblances and 
 shams. Another modern theory is, that the 
 wicked will be annihilated, but that through 
 Christ believers shall attain eternal life. This 
 scheme gets rid of the horrid dogma of the 
 eternal torture of the non-elect, and is capable 
 of a very plausible presentation. Dobney and 
 Ham of England, and Hudson of Massachu¬ 
 setts, and Professor Ives of Yale College, have 
 written ably in support of this hypothesis, and 
 the late Chancellor Halstead of New Jersey 
 published a book maintaining it on Scripture 
 grounds. Those who accept the verbal inspira¬ 
 tion and authority of the Old and New Testa¬ 
 ments would find it difficult to answer these 
 gentlemen and many others who have advocated 
 this view. On rational and philosophical grounds 
 but little can be said in its support. Science 
 teaches that there is no creation nor destruction, 
 but only change, and her doctrine of conserva¬ 
 tion of energy itself furnishes ground for the 
 belief in human immortality. But it cannot be 
 denied that there never was a time when the 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 127 
 
 denial of the future life of man has had so 
 many and such respectable supporters as at pres¬ 
 ent. The tendency of what is called “scientific 
 thought,” in England, France, Germany, and even 
 in these United States, is undoubtedly in this di¬ 
 rection. And yet the number of scientific men 
 who dissent from these gloomy conclusions, and 
 profess their faith in the continuity of human 
 life, is equally large and respectable. 
 
 The scientific disbelievers in life after death 
 take the ground that what constitutes the mental 
 part of man is the result of physical organiza¬ 
 tion, the brain and nervous system; that self- 
 consciousness, thought and intelligence are func¬ 
 tions or products of certain physical organs, 
 and that when these give out and lose their 
 vitality the effects will cease; that as the blood 
 ceases to flow when the heart ceases to beat, 
 and the loss of sight follows the destruction of 
 the eyeball, so all thought must perish when 
 the brain and nerves are paralyzed and worn 
 out. Then, in addition to this physiological 
 hypothesis, a certain school of evolutionists tell 
 us that man has been developed from an inferior 
 animal, and that his moral and intellectual facul¬ 
 ties differ from those of other animals in degree 
 only, and not in quality ; in short, that man is 
 only a more highly-developed animal, and that 
 he must therefore share the fate of all animals 
 
128 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 and cease to live after death. These suggestions 
 are so plausible, and put forth with such assur¬ 
 ance and show of learning, that a brief examina¬ 
 tion of them is proper. 
 
 The late lamented and justly-honored Pro¬ 
 fessor John W. Draper, M. D., in his work 
 Human Physiology (pp. 283, etc.), says that 
 from his study of “ cerebral mechanism ” he 
 finds that an automatic mechanism and the 
 agent which moves it are to be determined the 
 one by the other. The agent being known, the 
 effects may be anticipated, and the effects or 
 mechanism being known, the agent may be 
 determined. He says: 
 
 “ Now, the problem we are dealing with is of this 
 inverse kind. It may be stated: Given the structure 
 of the cerebrum, to determine the nature of the agent 
 that sets it in action. And herein the fact which chiefly 
 guides us is the absolute analogy in construction between 
 the elementary arrangement of the cerebrum and any 
 other nervous arc. 
 
 “ In it we plainly recognize the centripetal and cen¬ 
 trifugal fibres, and their convergence to the sensory 
 ganglia, the corpus striatum and optic thalamus; we 
 notice the vesicular material at their external periphery 
 as presented in the convolutions of the human brain; 
 and if in other nervous arcs the structure is merely auto¬ 
 matic, and can display no phenomena of itself, but 
 requires the influence of an external agent; if the 
 optical apparatus be inert and without value save under 
 the influences of light; if the auditory apparatus yields 
 no results save under the impressions of sound,—since 
 
Does Death End All? 129 
 
 there is between these structures and the elementary 
 structure of the cerebrum a perfect analogy, we are en¬ 
 titled to come to the same conclusion in this instance as 
 in those, and, asserting the absolute inertness of the 
 cerebral structure itself, to impute the phenomena it dis¬ 
 plays to an agent as perfectly external to the body and as 
 independent of it as are light and sound ; and that agent 
 is the soul. . . . Those who have accused physiology 
 of tending toward Materialism have never duly weighed 
 the accusation they make, and certainly have never 
 understood the arguments it can present.” 
 
 The claim that human mentality is purely the 
 result of physical causes and organic action is a 
 bold assumption, and nothing more. It would 
 be more rational to say that the action of a 
 material organ is the product and evidence of 
 an agent or cause superior to it. Materialists 
 assume that there is nothing but matter, and 
 generally recognize it in its grosser forms. But 
 those agencies which are most potential are not 
 gross, but invisible and intangible, like heat, 
 light, magnetism, electricity and gravitation. 
 We have as good evidence of the existence of 
 that which, for want of a better word, we call 
 spirit as we have of the existence of matter— 
 viz. by palpable manifestations. Every man has 
 an abiding consciousness that there is in and 
 behind his physical organs a something which 
 is the moving force. His external organs are 
 inert. They have no more power of self-moving 
 than the stones upon which he walks or the staff 
 
 9 
 
130 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 which he holds in his hand. He is sovereign. 
 His physical organs are his willing subjects and 
 slaves. And the conclusion is so inevitable as 
 to make it axiomatic, that what moves an inert 
 substance must itself be as real and substantial 
 as the thing acted upon. Professor Haeckel, 
 the acknowledged leader in the materialistic 
 school of Germany, affirms that “ the life-force 
 which moves our bodies is nothing but the 
 complicated motion of the material molecules 
 of the brain and other portions of our living 
 organism.” A child can be made to see his 
 fallacy of confounding two things which are 
 altogether different and distinct, and of using 
 words interchangeably that have an entirely 
 different meaning—viz. the words force and 
 motion. He says that motion moves, thus 
 making an effect a cause. There can be no 
 motion without a producing force. The cause 
 is substantial, entitative, a real something, but 
 the effect is phenomenal. Motion is a process 
 —the behavior of an inert body under the con¬ 
 tact of an adequate agency. Motion really 
 effects nothing, only as it is itself effected. 
 Back of motion there must be a force , an orig¬ 
 inal actual cause. And, as before suggested, 
 the real and most potential agencies of the uni¬ 
 verse are the invisible, impalpable and incom¬ 
 prehensible. Is gravitation less real than the 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 1 3 i 
 
 universe which it sustains and propels in order¬ 
 ly motion ? Is light less real than the glass 
 through which it passes ? Is electricity less 
 real than the magnet and the metal which it puts 
 in motion, even though a plate of glass intervene 
 between the magnet and the metal ? Is there 
 no such thing as spirit, because you cannot see 
 it, taste it, handle it and weigh it? Can you 
 put gravitation in your crucibles and ascertain 
 its component parts ? And yet men calling 
 themselves scientists decide that man has no 
 soul, is not a spirit, because spirit cannot be 
 weighed in scales or measured by tape-lines 
 and its dimensions described bv scale and di- 
 
 J 
 
 viders by the rules of trigonometry. That the 
 mental side of man results from the physical 
 is an assumption as unfounded as that the men¬ 
 tal must perish with the material. It is admitted 
 that there is a close connection and a present 
 mutual dependence, but there is good reason for 
 believing that man’s nature is dual; that he has 
 an interior, invisible body within and permeating 
 the gross external organism; that he has interior 
 organs that can see without the use of his mate¬ 
 rial eyeballs, and that he hears sweet voices and 
 celestial music which do not depend upon the 
 material tympanum. Materialists assume that 
 spirit cannot act without physical organs, and 
 that it has none other. It may be admitted that 
 
132 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 physical manifestations can only be made through 
 physical organs and be perceived by physical 
 senses, but it does not follow that there are no 
 other than physical organs. There may be ma¬ 
 terial organs in man so refined, so attenuated, 
 so subtile, as not to be subject to material tests 
 and observation by his gross material senses. 
 We can even conceive of spirit pure and sim¬ 
 ple, the very opposite of matter, and we can con¬ 
 ceive of something called spirit which never¬ 
 theless is material, but so rarefied and ethereal, 
 so unlike the grosser forms of matter cognized 
 by our present dull senses and rough, bungling 
 crucibles, as to be essentially unlike it, having 
 none of its apparent properties. 
 
 That there is some such principle or potency 
 in man is demonstrated by indubitable evidence. 
 When these visible organs disintegrate in death 
 there may be, and no doubt are, the equivalents 
 of what these organs were. But even if this 
 cannot be maintained, it does not follow that 
 the human Ego perishes with the physical 
 organism, as it may survive in some other 
 mode inconceivably higher and grander. It 
 may pass into other material bodies, or it may 
 enter into a new body specially prepared for it. 
 This would be no more marvellous than that 
 man should have first started from an ovum so 
 infinitesimal that the shell of a bird’s egg would 
 
Does Death End All? 133 
 
 hold a sufficient number of germs to populate 
 
 our earth. What we hope for man is no more 
 
 incredible than what has already been realized. 
 
 * 
 
 The argument in opposition to the doctrine 
 of the future life growing out of the alleged 
 animal descent of man is even less substantial 
 than the physiological hypothesis. The theory 
 that man is a lineal descendant of a common 
 irrational animal is also an assumption. It is 
 not proved, and cannot be proved. This is sub¬ 
 stantially admitted by Darwin and his ablest 
 disciples. As long as the search for the “ miss¬ 
 ing link” is unsuccessful, the chain is imaginary. 
 As far back as science can trace man he is a 
 man, and removed from the monkey and the 
 anthropoid ape so far, in almost innumerable 
 respects, as to make him an entirely distinct 
 species. Primeval man was ape-like in some 
 respects, but not an ape. He was inferior to 
 what he is now, but the contrast between man 
 as we first find him and man as we now know 
 him is very much less than the contrast be¬ 
 tween the lowest ancient man and the highest 
 ape, even as he exists after the lapse of millions 
 of years. If man is a development of the ape 
 or some other animal, why have no such devel¬ 
 opments taken place for unnumbered ages ? A 
 truly scientific system of evolution does not 
 necessarily involve the hypothesis of the devel- 
 
134 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 opment of man from one or another of the 
 lower animals. But should the animal descent 
 of man be admitted, it does not follow that he 
 will not survive the disintegration of his animal 
 body. If man is a highly-developed animal, a 
 capacity for continuous life may have been de¬ 
 veloped, and there may have been a time in the 
 progress of evolution when the mortal animal 
 merged into an immortal man. There is a time 
 when the unreasoning child begins to reason— 
 a line between childhood and manhood that 
 cannot be easily defined; so there may be an 
 indefinable point between apehood and man¬ 
 hood. Immortality may not be inherent, or a 
 necessary quality of even the highest type of 
 man, but that some men at least have a capacity 
 for continuous existence cannot be doubted. If 
 there is a Power or Force that made man out 
 of a monkey, that same Force can certainly 
 carry on the process until he becomes an angel 
 or something higher. 
 
 And then the scheme of evolution may not 
 be limited to this pebble of a world. Esoteric 
 Buddhism has been shown by Mr. A. P. Sinnett 
 to have a grander and more elaborate theory of 
 evolution than Darwin ever dreamed of, and that 
 centuries before he was born. May not man, 
 after the death of his animal form, enter into a 
 wider and deeper stream of evolution in this or 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 135 
 
 some other planet, just as naturally as he began 
 mysteriously to float in the present stream if 
 not with personal consciousness, with something 
 higher and better? There is ample time yet to 
 come. There are innumerable worlds. There 
 are infinite possibilities. The miracle of awak¬ 
 ing into conscious existence without any agen¬ 
 cy of our own has once occurred, and it may be 
 repeated on a grander scale in our second birth. 
 Even Haeckel admits that “all matter is in a 
 certain sense alive,” and approvingly quotes 
 Bruno, that “ a spirit exists in all things, and 
 no body is so small but contains a part of the 
 divine substance within itself, by which it is 
 animated.” These admissions favor the possi¬ 
 bility of a future conscious existence, to say 
 the least. While science whispers there is no 
 such thing as annihilation, we accept as a ne¬ 
 cessary corollary that the human Ego will not 
 cease to exist. 
 
 But the sceptic not only assumes the animal 
 origin of man, but also assumes the mortality 
 and destruction of all animals. How do we 
 know that animals have no future existence? 
 Agassiz, in his Contributions to the Natural His¬ 
 tory of the United States, advocates the idea that 
 animals as well as men have a future life. Cole¬ 
 ridge has beautifully defended the same idea, and 
 the doctrine of eternal monads, maintained by 
 
136 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 Leibnitz, favors the immortality of all creatures. 
 Richard Dean (many others have written on the 
 same subject) published a genial essay on The 
 Future Life of Brutes . John Wesley favored 
 this doctrine, and so does Joseph Cook of the 
 Boston Monday Lectureship . It is capable of 
 being presented in a very attractive aspect, as 
 was done by Goethe, who was a scientist as well 
 as a poet. 
 
 But it is easier to defend the doctrine of the 
 future life of man than of beasts. Man antici¬ 
 pates and provides for death; often dies with 
 unrewarded merit or guilt; dies with faculties 
 fitted for a more perfect state of existence; dies 
 with the expectation of another life; rears me¬ 
 morials to departed friends; and even makes 
 death a victory instead of a defeat by his patri¬ 
 otism and philanthropy. These suggestions, 
 formulated by Bretschneider and others, migfht 
 be indefinitely increased, showing the difference 
 between men and beasts. And it is just as 
 logical to argue the future life of the lower 
 animals from certain resemblances to man as 
 to argue the annihilation of man from his re¬ 
 semblance to beasts. It would be more easy 
 to believe in the future life of the noble horse 
 and faithful dog—nay, in the future life of the 
 lowest animal—than to believe in the utter 
 extinction of the god-like powers of the phil- 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 137 
 
 osopher, the poet and the philanthropist. The 
 universe is large enough for all, and the re¬ 
 sources of Infinity can never be exhausted. 
 
 Disbelievers in the future life never weary in 
 reiterating the cases recorded in school-books 
 on intellectual philosophy showing that in cer¬ 
 tain cases, where the brain has been injured, 
 thought ceased. For an example: A British 
 officer in a naval engagement was struck by a 
 shell when in the act of giving an order, and 
 became unconscious. Years afterward a sur¬ 
 gical operation was performed, and the instant 
 the fractured skull was raised from pressing on 
 the brain he finished the order which he was not 
 able to utter when struck by the missile. The 
 argument from this and similar cases is, that 
 mentality is a product of the brain, and dies 
 with it. This is not a necessary conclusion. 
 In this case the power of communicating thought 
 by speech was interrupted by the injury to the 
 brain, but that which thinks was not destroyed, 
 as shown by the promptness and precision with 
 which the interrupted order was finished. The 
 same power or capacity for thought must have 
 existed during the interval of the patient’s 
 physical derangement, and the case rather 
 proves the independent, substantial and enti- 
 tative character of the mind, which held the 
 order in abeyance, and then communicated it 
 
138 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 to the external organs of others as soon as the 
 only physical medium of communication was in 
 proper condition. When the telegraphic ope¬ 
 rator fails to communicate with his fellow-ope¬ 
 rator at a distant point, he does not conclude 
 that electricity has been annihilated and that 
 his battery has lost its power, but that the 
 medium of communication, the wire, has been 
 broken or deranged. The physical brain is 
 the medium of communicating thoughts to 
 others through their physical organism, but it 
 cannot be shown that the brain ever originated 
 a single thought. All the learned talk about 
 thought being produced by the “molecular mo¬ 
 tion ” of the atoms of the brain is the baseless 
 assumption of Materialism. There must be 
 something back of “ protoplasm ” and “ mole¬ 
 cules.” Force must exist before it can be “ cor¬ 
 related,” and “ natural selection ” destitute of 
 intelligent and discriminating purpose would be 
 nothing but blind chance. 
 
 Who can look upon the wondrous form of 
 man, and hear him talk and laugh and reason, 
 and contemplate his wondrous philosophical 
 achievements, and then rationally-conclude that 
 all is the result of the fortunate but automatic 
 “motion of the molecules” of his brain? Where 
 there is motion there must be a mover , and where 
 there is thought there must be back of it that 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 139 
 
 which has the power, the capacity, to think. 
 When you demand the proof and ask us to 
 tell you what the mind is, how it acts, we 
 answer that we will do so when materialists 
 tell us what mciltev is, and how and why it acts 
 in certain ways. We point them to the admis¬ 
 sions of science that there are in Nature all 
 around us many things that are invisible and 
 impalpable, entirely beyond the range of our 
 corporeal senses. It is therefore supeificial and 
 unscientific to assume that man has only a ma¬ 
 terial existence, and that there is nothing of 
 him but what our bodily senses cognize. The 
 whole analogy of Nature shows the absurdity 
 of such conclusions. We cast no reflections 
 upon the mental capacity of disbelievers. 
 Haeckel and Huxley are far removed from 
 idiocy, and it is a source of perpetual wonder 
 how such men, and multitudes of others of 
 equal mental capacity, should seem so anxious 
 to prove man mortal. They must be sincere. 
 They could have no motive to deceive and 
 mislead. The spirit of scientific sceptics, and 
 their lives too, are often more Christ-like than 
 the spirit and the lives of those calling them¬ 
 selves Christians. Some men are naturally 
 sceptical about spiritual things, while they are 
 wholly rational, and sometimes credulous, in 
 other matters. Can it be that they are deficient 
 
140 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 in what phrenologists call spirituality , possessed 
 in such large measure by others ? There are 
 occasions, perhaps, when all men have doubts and 
 fears regarding the future life, and their ques¬ 
 tionings should be respected, and, if possible, 
 answered. 
 
 Perhaps there is no class of persons in modern 
 times who so positively affirm their belief in a 
 future life, and yet strangely show so little real 
 faith in what they profess, as the great mass 
 of orthodox Christians. Their want of faith is 
 shown in their well-known dread of death, in 
 their distress and apprehension of mind in 
 sickness and the last hours of closing life, and 
 in their gloomy dress and immoderate mourn¬ 
 ing in bereavement. These things naturally 
 arise from their horrible tenets regarding the 
 fate of the non-elect, the inevitable doom of 
 the majority, which has thrown a pall of gloom 
 over this bright world and blighted the happi¬ 
 ness of many a genial soul in life and in death. 
 And then they have filled many rational minds 
 with doubt and uncertainty by making the future 
 life of man to depend wholly upon a single his¬ 
 torical fact—the resurrection of the material 
 body of Jesus of Nazareth, alleged to have 
 occurred nearly nineteen hundred years ago; 
 regarding which all candid investigators must 
 admit the evidence to be very incomplete and 
 
 
Does Death End All ? 
 
 141 
 
 contradictory. An incalculable amount of scep¬ 
 ticism has arisen from the orthodox dogma that 
 the future life of man depends upon the doctiine 
 of the literal resurrection of Jesus, and the con¬ 
 sequent literal physical resurrection of all hu¬ 
 man bodies. They say, “No resurrection of 
 the material body, no future life.” This is just 
 as foolhardy as their kindred alternative, If 
 every part of the Bible is not true, none of it is 
 true.” The doctrine of the literal resurrection 
 of the physical body is unscientific and impos¬ 
 sible. The body of Roger Williams was ab¬ 
 sorbed by an apple tree, and the fruit of this 
 tree was eaten and became part of other human 
 bodies; and the body of the Rev. Isaac Mc- 
 Inness of this city became part of a mulberry 
 tree, the berries of which were eaten by genera¬ 
 tions of happy children. 
 
 But these Christians are also guilty of the 
 absurdity of arguing the resurrection of all 
 human bodies from the alleged resurrection of 
 one whom they claim to have been superhuman 
 —without a human father. If one “ conceived 
 of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin 
 Mary ” did have a bodily resurrection, it does 
 not follow that those conceived of human fa¬ 
 thers and born of women not virgins are as a 
 consequence to have a similar resuilection, es¬ 
 pecially when it is affirmed that Jesus raised 
 
142 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 himself. And it does not follow that because 
 a body had a resurrection after having been in 
 a stone cave part of three days, all bodies must 
 have a resurrection though decomposed for mil¬ 
 lions of years and mixed with innumerable other 
 bodies. 
 
 Then our orthodox friends have other absurd¬ 
 ities relating to this subject that are equally pro¬ 
 ductive of scepticism. They believe that when 
 a man dies, he—that is, the spirit, the real man 
 —goes immediately to a place of happiness 
 which they call heaven, or to a place of torment 
 which they call hell. They believe that men 
 have a conscious existence of happiness or 
 misery while their bodies are decomposing in 
 the grave and their constituent elements are 
 being reabsorbed and worked over in the pro¬ 
 cesses of Nature. Then, after millions of aees 
 
 D 
 
 it may be, these happy or miserable spirits are to 
 return to the earth, to be reunited to the bodies 
 the elements of which have been mixed and 
 become parts of innumerable other bodies, hu¬ 
 man and brutal, to be judged according to the 
 deeds done in the body, and then be sent away 
 to places of happiness or misery for ever—pre¬ 
 sumably to the same heaven or hell in which 
 they have already lived for unnumbered ages. 
 Comment is useless. 
 
 We do not refer to this unpleasant aspect of 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 143 
 
 orthodoxy in any unkind spirit, and the painful 
 task would not be performed but for the abiding 
 conviction that the prevailing scepticism of the 
 day regarding the future life is largely charge¬ 
 able to the absurd dogmas of all branches of 
 the so-called evangelical churches, including 
 also the Roman Church. 
 
 Before closing these discussions it will be 
 shown how necessary it is to have a general 
 revision of church creeds, and how easy it is 
 to substitute a more rational faith without giv- 
 ing up one single principle or article of belief 
 fundamental to true religion and the highest 
 morality. It is to be regretted that our liberal 
 preachers are not more settled and outspoken 
 on the question of the future life. They speak 
 freely of the hope of immortality, and often 
 make admissions and suggest doubts that jus¬ 
 tify a recent description of them as “ sutlers 
 that trade with both armies,” and as “ not be¬ 
 lieving in hell, and having but faint hopes of 
 heaven.” We have too much from liberal 
 pulpits of diffidence and hesitation, too much 
 that is “poetically sentimental and floridly 
 vague.” “ Delightful sermons ” and “ scholarly 
 essays ” and “ aesthetic, ethical culture ” are 
 very common expressions, but, while seeking 
 to be as “ ecclesiastical as other churches,” 
 
144 Man — Whence a 7 id Whither ? 
 
 keeping up the appearance of priestly respect¬ 
 ability by aping the “ regular clergy ” and 
 using evangelical terminology, nibbling at the 
 orthodox cheese and seeking orthodox recog¬ 
 nition and commendation, it is questionable in 
 many independent minds whether they are not 
 unwittingly playing into the hands of their 
 enemies and doing more to retard robust, 
 healthy thinking than to advance it. 
 
 If at this late period of Christian and relig¬ 
 ious culture we have only ground to hope for a 
 future life, it is time that we turn to science for 
 light, and to those for instruction who profess 
 to have received “proof palpable” of immor¬ 
 tality. 
 
 The ethical bearing of believing or not believ¬ 
 ing in a future existence is not so great as has 
 been supposed. Many noble men who had no 
 faith in immortality have been consecrated to 
 right-doing and unselfish working for humanity. 
 There are persons who do right for the sake of 
 the right, and whose motto is, 
 
 “ Is there no second life ? 
 
 Pitch this one high.” 
 
 Paul was on a low plane of morality when he 
 said, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, 
 we are of all men most miserable. ... If after 
 the manner of men I have fought with beasts at 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 145 
 
 Ephesus, what advantageth me if the dead rise 
 not? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
 die.” Martin Luther and several of his coad¬ 
 jutors and successors thought that a life of 
 licentiousness was the natural outcome of dis¬ 
 belief in a future existence; and even Dr. 
 Chalmers wrote: “ If there be no future life, 
 the moral constitution of man is stripped of its 
 significaticy, and the Author of that constitution 
 is stripped of his wisdom and authority and 
 honor.” This is a mistaken idea. If life is 
 so soon to terminate, there is reason for making 
 the most and the best of it. Virtue has an 
 essential excellence and a present reward. Self¬ 
 ishness and vice are degrading now , and bring 
 sorrow and suffering as a consequence both to 
 the wrong-doer and others. And yet it cannot 
 be denied that while belief in the future life 
 imposes no additional moral obligation to duty, 
 yet a firm faith in a future state has a most salu¬ 
 tary influence. It ennobles man, increases his 
 self-esteem and self-respect, and “sheds an addi¬ 
 tional radiance upon the dim lights of life, gives 
 new motives to those which already stimulate 
 us, pours sweet comfort into desponding hearts, 
 hallows precious memories of those dear ones 
 who have gone before, and furnishes an abiding 
 inspiration for every high and manly purpose 
 and endeavor.” We rather commiserate than 
 
 10 
 
146 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 censure those who have no hope of immor¬ 
 tality. 
 
 It has not been our object in this chapter to 
 present the proof of a future life, but rather to 
 show that there is no good reason for denying 
 it, and to clear the way for a more direct pres¬ 
 entation of the evidence upon which faith in the 
 future is founded. 
 
 The following translation of the speech of 
 Cato will make a fitting close of our present 
 meditations: 
 
 “ It must be so. Plato, thou reasonest well. 
 
 Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
 
 This longing after immortality ? 
 
 Or whence this secret dread and inward horror 
 Of falling into naught ? Why shrinks the soul 
 Back on herself, and startles at destruction ? 
 
 ’Tis the divinity that stirs within us: 
 
 ’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 
 
 And intimates eternity to man. 
 
 Eternity ! thou pleasing, dreadful thought! 
 
 Through what variety of untried being, 
 
 Through what new scenes and changes, must we pass! 
 The wide, the unbounded, prospect lies before me; 
 
 But shadows, clouds and darkness rest upon it. 
 
 Here will I hold: If there’s a Power above us 
 (And that there is all Nature cries aloud 
 Through all her works), he must delight in virtue; 
 
 And that which he delights in must be happy. 
 
 But when, or where ? 
 
 I’m weary of conjectures : this must end them. 
 
 Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life— 
 
 My bane and antidote—are both before me. 
 
Does Death End All? 
 
 147 
 
 This, in a moment, brings me to an end; 
 
 But this informs me I shall never die. 
 
 The soul, secure in her existence, smiles 
 At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. 
 
 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 amidst the war of elements, 
 
 The wreck of matter and the crush of worlds.” 
 
VI. 
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE. 
 
 HERE never has been a time when faith in 
 
 the immortality of man was so general, and 
 yet there never was a time when the denial of 
 this doctrine was so bold, as at the present day. 
 The hypothesis of man’s descent from inferior 
 animals, and certain physiological and biological 
 theories regarding the dependence of man’s men¬ 
 tality upon his physical organism, lie at the foun¬ 
 dation of materialistic scepticism. But it has 
 not been proved that man is a descendant of a 
 brute, nor that brutes have not a capacity for 
 continued existence, nor that such capacity may 
 not hereafter be developed in brutes, nor that an 
 immortal man could not have been developed 
 from a mortal animal. When we consider the 
 millions of years that have been employed in 
 bringing man to his present high estate, it is 
 rational to assume that a capacity for such im¬ 
 mense progress is good ground for faith in still 
 greater progress, so that there shall be no end 
 to the advancement and attainments of human- 
 
 148 
 
149 
 
 Proof Palpable. 
 
 ity. If primitive man was not immortal, there 
 may have been a time when he became immor¬ 
 tal, just as there is a time when the embryo 
 becomes a conscious, breathing babe and when 
 the undeveloped child begins to exercise the 
 functions of rationality and becomes an account¬ 
 able being. It is not true that even the extreme 
 Darwinian doctrine is necessarily opposed to the 
 doctrine of a future life for man. On the con¬ 
 trary, its fundamental principles suggest the hy¬ 
 pothesis of immortality. 
 
 If the “ conservation of energy ” is a true 
 principle of science, it favors the faith of man 
 in the doctrine of a future life. Greatness and 
 goodness developed in man must be “con¬ 
 served,” and how can it be done if death is a 
 destroyer? The total annihilation of some men 
 at least is a proposition incapable of being 
 thought. The “ persistency of force ” in the 
 human personality must at least be equal to 
 the primary elements which environ that per¬ 
 sonality. Is it rational to suppose that the 
 sweep of evolution which has brought man 
 from such unfathomable depths will not carry 
 him up to still more illimitable heights? Are 
 these vast achievements of Nature to be so 
 unthriftily wasted ? Do not the products of a 
 past eternity point unmistakably to still greater 
 things in an eternity to come? 
 
150 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 And then does not the scientific doctrine of 
 the “ indestructibility of matter ” favor the doc¬ 
 trine of life after death? It is common to speak 
 of the soul of man as immaterial, but what do 
 we know of the difference between the material 
 and the immaterial ? Who has ever succeeded 
 in drawing the dividing-line ? Who can ever 
 say this is material and that immaterial, when 
 the profoundest philosopher acknowledges that 
 he does not even pretend to know what matter 
 is? We might say that the atmosphere in 
 which we live is immaterial, because we cannot 
 subject it to the test of some of our senses; 
 but we find by scientific experiment that it is 
 as material as iron or granite, and that its pres¬ 
 sure upon an ordinary man is about fifteen tons. 
 As we leave the surface of the earth it becomes 
 more and more rarefied, until we find a “ lumin¬ 
 iferous ether,” compared to which the air we 
 breathe is as mud or tar. 
 
 The time will probably come when acute 
 analytical minds will not attempt any distinc¬ 
 tion between the material and the spiritual, the 
 natural and the supernatural. That there is a 
 close connection between even gross matter and 
 the intellectual and emotional nature of man is 
 seen in the clouded brow of perplexed intellect, 
 in the witching light of a lover’s eye, and in the 
 crimson blush that mantles the maiden’s cheek. 
 
Proof Palpable. I 5 I 
 
 The internal man often photographs his spiritual 
 features upon the rough exterior of the physical 
 encasement. 
 
 The theory of “natural selection” also favors 
 the doctrine of a future life, and never appears 
 so real and so beautiful as when we realize that 
 as man progresses in everything that is giand 
 and good he voluntarily falls in with this natural 
 law, and of choice not only selects that which 
 is most to be desired, but by self-denial and 
 almost superhuman exertions strives to attain 
 the highest ideal of his heavenly aspirations. 
 The unwearied effort of the most highly-devel¬ 
 oped men to reach a higher perfection and a 
 more exalted excellence is evidence that Nature 
 is true to herself, and that man will not be 
 blotted out of conscious existence just as he 
 first clearly perceives the essential diffeience 
 between good and evil. Having tasted the 
 fruit of the tree of life, he is destined to live 
 
 for ever. 
 
 It is certainly a significant fact that the faith 
 of man in, and a desire for, a future life are 
 strongest in his moments of greatest mental 
 and spiritual exaltation. If this is an illusion, 
 it is strange that it should be particularly vivid 
 when he is in his most god-like moods and 
 when he is most in love with the beautiful, the 
 true and the good. Is it possible for Nature to 
 
152 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 thus trifle with and deceive and disappoint man 
 when he is most serious and truthful, and when 
 all the elements of his better nature are in the 
 ascendant and predominate over everything that 
 is gross and perishing ? There are times when 
 every man is glad to be alive, and so there are 
 times when men specially desire immortal life. 
 When crowned by the delights of his home; 
 when contemplating the wonders and beauties 
 of Nature from mountain-top or seaside, look¬ 
 ing up into the blue sky at noonday or into the 
 deep vault of celestial splendor in the calm 
 silence of midnight; when contemplating a 
 gieat work of art, or when overwhelmed with 
 the harmonious strains of classic music,—man 
 feels more distinctly than he can ever express 
 that he is not a mere insensate clod about to 
 drop into everlasting nothingness. 
 
 Too little has been made of human intuitions, 
 of the primitive conscious personality that exists 
 with more or less force in nearly all men. When 
 we point to the fact that men in all ages and in 
 all climes have generally believed in and desired 
 immortality, we are told that men have for ages 
 believed in what was false, that the general 
 picvalence of a belief is no evidence of its 
 truthfulness, that until a comparatively recent 
 period all men believed this earth to be flat 
 and that the sun moved around it once in 
 
■ 
 
 Proof Palpable. 1 5 3 
 
 twenty-four hours. This is true, but was this 
 belief an intuition, an abiding sentiment, in the 
 same sense in which men have passionately 
 clung to their faith in immortality? Was 
 belief in the Ptolemaic system of astronomy 
 innate , or was it not rather want of information 
 upon a subject of which they knew little and 
 
 cared less ? 
 
 Then we are told that men generally desire 
 to be rich, and that this and many other natural 
 desires are never gratified. But men would not 
 desire riches if there was no such thing. Men 
 do not desire and hope for the impossible. 
 Carefully analyze human desires, passions and 
 hopes, and see if they do not all relate to the 
 real, to something that corresponds and answeis 
 to the desire, passion or hope. The faculties 
 of spirituality, reverence and veneration are as 
 really part of the human personality as acquis¬ 
 itiveness and philoprogenitiveness; and the love 
 of life and of continuous existence is even 
 stronger than the love of money. Has the 
 God of Nature given these faculties to man 
 to mislead and disappoint him? 
 
 There is that in man which tells him that he 
 is something more than flesh and blood that 
 the body is a creature and servant of his will. 
 He says, I am, I think, I reason, I love and 
 hate, /move my hand at pleasure. / see you. 
 
 i 
 
154 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 Mine eyes are my lenses, but the seer is greater 
 than the instrument of sight, the hearer is 
 greater than the organ of hearing. You may 
 put out my external eyes, you may destroy 
 my external ears, and destroy my sense of 
 taste, smell and feeling; and / still exist. It 
 is rational to conclude that the existence of a 
 sense proves the existence of that which an¬ 
 swers to it, and as man has an innate sense of 
 a Supreme Power, and of his own spirituality 
 and superiority to mere matter, and an intuitive 
 consciousness and longing for the continuity 
 of life, these things must be realities. Dr. 
 James E. Garretson has laid down the premise, 
 and ably maintains it, that “A thing is to the 
 sense that cognizes it what to that sense it seems 
 to be." All the scientific twaddle about ancient 
 fetichism and inherited faiths from early ances¬ 
 tors, and other baseless assumptions, can never 
 shake the innate convictions and immortal hopes 
 of mankind. These are constituents of his very 
 nature, and are therefore ineradicable. 
 
 Then every cultivated man realizes as age 
 increases that his attainments and successes in 
 this ephemeral life fall far short of, and are 
 absolutely inadequate and disproportionate to, 
 his inherent powers; and it is irrational to con¬ 
 clude that his very existence is to be blotted 
 out and life itself become utterly extinct just 
 
Proof Palpable. 155 
 
 as he has learned how to live, what life is and 
 what is his “ being’s end and aim.” 
 
 A future life and an immortal one must exist 
 to enable man to reach that perfection to which 
 he aspires, and feels himself bound to attain as 
 the only end worthy of his being, and which, 
 during the brief span of mortal life, is never 
 reached even by the most virtuous. Nature 
 cannot be so blind, so stupidly improvident, as 
 to throw away her most precious treasures, 
 gathered by so much labor and suffering, and 
 not permit man to carry forward the great work, 
 in which he has just begun to succeed, to that 
 perfection to which all his aspirations unmis¬ 
 takably converge. 
 
 These and similar suggestions might be in¬ 
 definitely elaborated ; we only present them as 
 speculative, but as affording, nevertheless, strong 
 circumstantial evidence of the truthfulness of 
 the doctrine of a future life. 
 
 And here it should be premised that the in¬ 
 herent, absolute immortality of all men does 
 not follow even if we are persuaded that some 
 men have a future existence, nor is immortality 
 a necessary corollary of a future life. Man may 
 live after death, and yet not live for ever, and 
 there may be men so low in the scale of being 
 as to drop into nothingness when their mortal 
 
15 6 Man — Whence arid Whither ? 
 
 bodies dissolve. The New Testament seems to 
 favor the hypothesis of conditional future life, 
 an immortality to be sought after (Rom. 2 : 7). 
 A sect of Christians of considerable numbers 
 hold this view, and maintain it with great plau¬ 
 sibility. It is said of God that he “ only hath 
 immortality,” by which is understood inherent 
 or essential immortality (1 Tim. 6 : 16). 
 
 The object of our first essay and of the imme¬ 
 diately preceding one was to show that there is 
 nothing irrational or unscientific in the doctrine 
 pf a future life—that very many things conspire 
 to justify the hope, the expectation, and even 
 belief, in it. But we do not stop here. There 
 is proof positive of the truthfulness of the doc¬ 
 trine, and to this we now give attention. 
 
 Materialists and agnostics so confidently assert 
 that no palpable evidence has ever been given 
 of the survival of man after death that many 
 persons accept the declaration without exam¬ 
 ination. And yet the literature of the world 
 shows that men in all ages and countries have 
 not only believed this doctrine, but that their 
 faith arose from what they regarded as proof 
 palpable of the actual existence of man after 
 death. They did not believe that men appeared 
 after death because they believed in a future 
 life, but, on the contrary, their faith in the future 
 life has always been based upon the conviction 
 
i57 
 
 Proof Palpable . 
 
 that they have had satisfactory proof of the 
 reappearance of some men who had been re¬ 
 moved by death. 
 
 With intelligent persons we hazard nothing in 
 affirming that human apparitions after death, and 
 the intercourse and communion of disembodied 
 spirits with their friends who survive them, have 
 been generally accepted as true by all peoples 
 in all times. Whole volumes might be filled 
 with proofs of this allegation from ancient 
 Buddhistic, Egyptian, Grecian, Roman and 
 other writings of antiquity. But as the He¬ 
 brew and Christian Scriptures are naturally 
 held in high repute throughout Christendom, 
 we begin with them. One will first readily 
 think of Samuel and the woman of Endor, 
 commonly called a “ witch,” but not so called 
 in the record (i Sam. 28). It is not necessary 
 to give details. A dead man appeared after 
 death, and “ Saul perceived it was Samuel.” 
 This has long been regarded by theologians 
 as proof of man’s real existence after death. 
 The learned Methodist commentator Dr. Adam 
 Clarke makes the following points on this case: 
 
 “ I believe there is a supernatural and spiritual world 
 in which human spirits, both good and bad, live in a 
 state of consciousness. ... I believe that any of these 
 spirits may . . . have intercourse with this world and be¬ 
 come visible to mortals.” 
 
158 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 Richard Watson, the standard theological au¬ 
 thority with Methodists the world over, referring 
 to this same case, says: 
 
 “It answers all the objections which were ever raised, 
 or can be raised from the philosophy of the case, against 
 the possibility of the appearance of departed spirits.” 
 
 In the New Testament the one great case is 
 the Transfiguration scene recorded in Matt. 17 : 
 1-4. Moses had been dead about fifteen hun¬ 
 dred years and Elias more than nine hundred 
 years, yet they are both said to have appeared 
 and talked with Jesus, Peter, James and John. 
 The alleged appearances of Jesus after his 
 death are also to be considered, and also the 
 apparition of a departed human being to John 
 on the isle of Patmos (Rev. 22 : 9). 
 
 These cases are introduced to show that the 
 Christian Church has been perfectly consistent 
 in holding the doctrine of the occasional return 
 to this world of human beings after death, and 
 of intercourse between this world and the in¬ 
 visible world, and the guardian care and minis¬ 
 trations of glorified human beings over and 
 toward those who are' still in the flesh. In 
 the Apostles’ Creed (so called), recited in thou¬ 
 sands of churches every Sunday, it is declared, 
 I believe “ in the communion of saints that is, 
 in the doctrine of intercourse between saints in 
 
1 59 
 
 Proof Palpable. 
 
 heaven and saints on earth. This ancient creed 
 was so understood and expounded in the eccle¬ 
 siastical homilies of early times, whatever may 
 now be thought of it. No wonder that Me- 
 lanchthon, the scholar of the Reformation, 
 says: “ I have myself seen spirits, and I 
 know many trustworthy persons who affirm 
 that they have not only seen them, but carried 
 on conversations with them.” Luther’s works 
 are full of such things, and even Calvin and 
 Knox believed in them. The celebrated Ober- 
 lin became a reluctant but sound convert to the 
 doctrine, and in his Memoirs it is declared that 
 “ for nine years he had constant interviews with 
 his deceased wife.” John Wesley, the founder 
 of the Methodist Church, gave great prominence 
 in his writings and preaching to his belief in the 
 occasional return of departed human spirits. 
 He gives a great many examples from the tes¬ 
 timony of others in whom he had confidence, 
 and professes to have seen three departed spirits 
 himself. In each instance the apparition was 
 followed by the news of the death of the per¬ 
 son at the precise time of the appearance to 
 him. Commenting on one whose death oc¬ 
 curred in Jamaica, Mr. Wesley remarks: “ So 
 a spirit finds no difficulty in travelling three or 
 four thousand miles in a moment.” The pecu¬ 
 liar and well-attested supersensuous experiences 
 
160 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 in the Wesley family are too well known to need 
 special mention, as they have been fully set forth 
 by the poet Southey and other writers of literary 
 renown. It would be easy to multiply these 
 examples indefinitely from the writings of the 
 most distinguished Christian writers of all de¬ 
 nominations from the days of St. Augustine to 
 the present time, to show that it has always 
 been the faith of the Christian Church, not only 
 that men live after death, but that they some¬ 
 times return to this earth and in divers ways 
 make themselves sensibly known to their sur¬ 
 viving friends. 
 
 It may be said that theologians and religion¬ 
 ists are generally credulous, inclined to be su¬ 
 perstitious and to take things for granted, and 
 we are reminded that some of these men be¬ 
 lieved in witchcraft, and that even Blackstone 
 and Sir Matthew Hale of England and the civil 
 authorities of Massachusetts had acknowledged 
 their, faith in that delusion. We shall not here 
 be drawn aside into the discussion of witchcraft, 
 but shall dismiss that subject with the single 
 remark that the phenomena called witchcraft 
 undoubtedly occurred, and that the only ration¬ 
 al explanation that has ever been given of them 
 is based upon the philosophy of the continuity 
 of human life and the occasional interference of 
 disembodied spirits with the affairs of this mun- 
 
Proof Palpable. 161 
 
 dane sphere. This explanation has been ably 
 set forth by Mr. Allen Putnam, a well-known 
 Boston lawyer, in his book on Salem Witch - 
 .i craft . 
 
 Fortunately, the investigation of the question 
 whether men ever return after death has not 
 been confined to theologians and pietists. For 
 the last third of a century this subject has ex¬ 
 cited almost universal attention and discussion, 
 and there is no subject upon which literature is 
 more voluminous. Gentlemen of leisure and 
 varied accomplishments, as well as many of the 
 most profound scientists, have devoted them¬ 
 selves untiringly to an examination of the ques¬ 
 tion whether evidence which can be cognized by 
 our ordinary senses exists to prove beyond a 
 doubt that the human Ego survives the change 
 called death. The experience of one investi¬ 
 gator, whose name is seldom heard, is so 
 wonderful that we shall here introduce it. In 
 1873, Baron Louis Guldenstubbe died in Paris 
 in his fifty-third year. He was of an ancient 
 Swedish family, a man of independent fortune 
 and of varied learning, an excellent Hebrew 
 scholar and a diligent student of occult science. 
 He was personally known to the Rev. William 
 Mountford of Boston and to more than one of 
 our American representatives at foreign courts. 
 He was a devout man, and made it the great 
 11 
 
162 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 object of his life to get an incontrovertible dem¬ 
 onstration of the immortality of the soul. In 
 1857 he published a book in Paris giving the 
 results of his investigations. In August, 1856, 
 after earnest prayer and only known to himself, 
 he placed pencil and paper in a locked box. 
 He waited twelve days in vain. Then he 
 noticed mysterious words upon the paper, 
 which occurred ten times on that memorable 
 day, August 13, 1856. He soon discovered 
 that his pencil was not used in the writing, and 
 so removed it, and merely placed a blank sheet 
 of paper upon his table, on the pedestal of an 
 old statue or in an urn in some old cathedral. 
 After getting many intelligent written communi¬ 
 cations from an invisible source, he confided the 
 secret to his friend Count d’Ourches, who soon 
 witnessed the phenomenon of independent writ¬ 
 ing by an unseen hand, and became convinced 
 of its reality. In October the count himself 
 thus received, when the baron was not present, 
 what purported to be a message from his mother, 
 who had been dead twenty years. On the fourth 
 of that month (1856) the Scripture verse, “O 
 death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is 
 thy victory ?” was written in Greek by an in¬ 
 visible power in the presence of the baron, the 
 count and Dr. Georgii. Fac-similes, sixty-seven 
 in number (including this one), are reproduced 
 
Proof Palpable . 163 
 
 in the baron’s book, and the names of many 
 gentlemen of noble rank and high scientific at¬ 
 tainments are given who at different times wit¬ 
 nessed these strange phenomena. The baron 
 says : 
 
 “ To-day, in moral concerns as well as in the exact sci¬ 
 ences, our age demands facts, and here we give them in 
 abundance. More than five hundred experiences have 
 been had since the memorable 13th of August, 1856, by 
 the author and his two friends, Count d’Ourches and 
 Gen. Baron de Brewern. More than fifty persons, sup¬ 
 plying their own paper, have been enabled to verify the 
 astonishing phenomenon of direct writing by invisible in¬ 
 telligences.” 
 
 At one time the baron was in a gallery at Ver¬ 
 sailles, and the bishop of Orleans passed through 
 on his way to say mass. Shaking hands with 
 the baron, the bishop reproached him with en¬ 
 couraging a delusion antagonistic to the Church, 
 and said that Luther was suffering in purgatory. 
 The baron told the bishop that if he would place 
 a piece of paper over the portrait of Luther he 
 would get evidence that Luther is not in hell. 
 The bishop tore a slip from his note-book and 
 placed it as requested, and, soon taking it down, 
 he found written upon it these words: 
 
 ‘‘In vita pestis eram papas, 
 
 In morte mors ero. —Luther.” 
 
 A free translation reads thus: “ Living, I was 
 
164 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 a pest to the pope; dead, I will be his death.” 
 The bishop frequently after this visited the baron 
 in Paris. 
 
 We have introduced this particular case be¬ 
 cause of the high character and social position 
 of the baron and his immediate friends who 
 bear testimony to the truth of his statements, 
 and because no suspicious circumstances exist. 
 There was no professional intermediary in the 
 case; no sensitive or psychic, unless the baron 
 was such himself; no money to be made, no 
 honor to be gained from the fashionable world, 
 but, on the other hand, doubt and suspicion 
 were sure to come. Were Baron Guldenstubbe 
 and his numerous honorable and scientific 
 friends, who verify his statements, dishonest, 
 or were they all deluded and deceived? Did 
 writing appear from invisible intelligences 
 professing to be human beings whose bodies 
 were known to be dead ? Is human testimony 
 of any value ? 
 
 Were these the only examples there might be 
 some reason for scepticism and disbelief, but a 
 large number of the most thoroughly scientific 
 men upon the continent of Europe have given 
 similar testimonies. We will take the published 
 account of the well-known Boston lecturer, Rev. 
 Joseph Cook, of certain matters in Germany. 
 He says: 
 
Proof Palpable. 165 
 
 “A professor of Leipsic University buys a book-slate 
 himself, and ties it up, or locks it, or screws it together, 
 first having cleansed it and carefully removed any chem¬ 
 ical preparation upon it. He does not let it go out of his 
 hands during the experiment. It is watched by men of 
 trained habits of observation, while writing appears upon 
 its interior surface. An elaborate scientific work ( Tran¬ 
 scendental Physics , by Professor Zollner) from the fore¬ 
 most university of the world contains plates illustrating 
 writing produced in this manner. . . . Very often the 
 subject-matter of the writing found on the slates is be¬ 
 yond the knowledge of the psychic. Greek has been 
 found written upon slates, and found to be accurate, 
 when the psychic knew nothing of the language. It is 
 thought by Zollner and his associates to be demonstrably 
 impossible to produce these results by fraud. . . . Zollner 
 undertakes to face all Germany with experiments like 
 these. He affirms that Weber, Fechner and Scheibner 
 agree with him, and Leipsic University keeps him in his 
 place. . . . Here is the court conjurer who says he can 
 do nothing of the kind.” 
 
 Fichte, the renowned son of the renowned as¬ 
 sociate of Kant, confirms Zollner, and proclaims 
 ‘‘the ratification of the belief in the immortality of 
 the soul by means of the evidence of psychical 
 experience.” He says he could, if authorized, 
 give the names of many learned men in Ger¬ 
 many who have been convinced by these phe¬ 
 nomena. 
 
 It would be easy to fill pages with the names 
 and titles of distinguished men of learning who 
 have been convinced by psychic and psychical 
 phenomena of the existence of an intelligence 
 
166 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 independent of the human organism, and which 
 there is good reason to believe survives bodily 
 dissolution. 
 
 In sober, conservative England not a few of 
 the nobility, as well as men of science, have 
 been convinced of the immortal nature of man 
 by well-known phenomena. Alfred R. Wallace, 
 F. R. S., the coadjutor, and in some respects the 
 superior, of Charles Darwin, gives detailed ac¬ 
 counts of many experiments made by him under 
 the most exhaustive tests, and from evidence 
 thus obtained he is a most earnest believer in 
 the future life of man. The same is true of 
 Dr. William Crookes, F. R. S., who has made 
 many valuable discoveries in science, and is 
 well known to men of learning throughout the 
 world as a most exact and thorough scholar. 
 Then there is Cromwell F. Varley, also F. R. S., 
 the electrician of the Atlantic cable, immortal¬ 
 ized for his skill and success as an electrical 
 engineer, after applying mechanical and scien¬ 
 tific tests to what professed to be the apparition 
 of a deceased human being was fully convinced 
 that there was no deception possible. He was 
 for many years frank and fearless in professing 
 his faith in the continuance of life after death 
 from phenomena witnessed by himself, though 
 he had commenced his experiments, as did the 
 late learned Professor Hare of this city, for the 
 
167 
 
 Proof Palpable . 
 
 express purpose of proving the contraiy. Var- 
 ley recently departed in full faith of a futuie life, 
 based upon his convictions that he had evidence 
 of its reality by objective phenomena. 
 
 In these United States there are scores and 
 hundreds of well-known men—judges upon the 
 bench accustomed to weigh evidence, lawyers 
 of the keenest penetration, physicians of the 
 most accurate scientific knowledge, professors 
 in our colleges, bishops in their sacred vest¬ 
 ments, and other men of standing trusted in all 
 the relations of social life and business pursuits 
 —who have been convinced, by what they have 
 seen and heard, that men survive the change 
 called death, and that they sometimes give 
 proof of their continued conscious existence 
 by communicating with friends who mourn 
 their departure. Those who desiie details 
 should consult Transcendental Physics , by I ro- 
 fessor Zollner; Psycography , by Rev. W. Stain- 
 ton-Moses, M. A., of the University College, 
 London ; The Scientific Basis , by Epes Sargent, 
 Esq., of Boston; Startling Facts , by Dr. N. B. 
 Wolfe of Cincinnati; and other well-known 
 publications. 
 
 It is estimated that there are at least twenty 
 millions of people to-day in Christendom who 
 believe, not merely in a speculative way, but on 
 phenomena which they have seen or which are 
 
168 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 well corroborated by trustworthy witnesses, that 
 death is a mere transition, and that those who 
 have passed away do sometimes return and 
 make themselves known in divers ways to 
 surviving- friends. It is a most singular fact 
 that Christian people, whose canonical sacred 
 Scriptures and patristic writings are full of this 
 doctrine, are the most sceptical as to its phe¬ 
 nomenal confirmation in these later times. They 
 are ready to believe on hearsay evidence, per¬ 
 petuated by anonymous writers who wrote cen¬ 
 turies ago in distant lands, while they steadfastly 
 reject, and even ridicule, the most direct evi¬ 
 dence by living eye-witnesses of the present 
 day. There is no doubt that much of the mar¬ 
 vellous is fraudulent, but it does not follow that 
 there are no genuine phenomena bearing upon 
 this subject. Spencer has somewhere substan¬ 
 tially said that the persistency of a faith is gene¬ 
 rally in proportion to its truthfulness. Every¬ 
 where, among all classes of people, in every 
 country upon the globe, the conviction that the 
 dead sometimes return prevails; and this belief, 
 which has prevailed in all ages, is based upon 
 phenomena that cannot be accounted for upon 
 any principles known to modern science. Some 
 things apparently supersensuous can be traced 
 to trickery and sleight-of-hand, and there is 
 such a thing as “ unconscious cerebration 
 
Proof Palpable. 169 
 
 there are optical illusions, and there are psy¬ 
 chological powers of which little is known, 
 such as “ mind- reading;” but these will not 
 account for any considerable number of well- 
 known phenomena, as, for instance, where the 
 alleged apparitions are seen by a number of 
 persons at the same moment, where the alleged 
 facts communicated are unknown to all persons 
 present and can only be verified after months 
 of waiting and patient investigation, and where 
 messages are received in foreign and dead lan¬ 
 guages which only expert linguists can translate; 
 of which there are many cases. 
 
 It generally requires more credulity to accept 
 the explanations of these phenomena which are 
 sometimes offered than to believe that they are 
 indeed just what they claim to be; and until 
 science shall give some rational solution that 
 shall cover all the phenomena, it is reasonable to 
 conclude that at least some of them may be 
 genuine. 
 
 It does not help the matter if we assume that 
 these strange things are sometimes produced by 
 the will or psychological power of the psychic, 
 were such a hypothesis even justified by the 
 facts. If man hampered by flesh and bones 
 can produce such wonderful results independ¬ 
 ent of material environments, how much more 
 reasonable is it to conclude that he can more 
 
170 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 freely exercise those powers when released from 
 the grossly material body! If man can in life 
 exercise powers outside of and independent of 
 his physical form, why may not the real man be 
 somewhere else while his body is in the coffin 
 or in the grave? Man is a spirit, and it is not 
 proper to argue that he has a spirit. He is now 
 in a spirit-world; Indeed, there is none other. 
 There are ten thousand incontrovertible facts 
 which conclusively prove that man’s conscious, 
 intelligent existence by no means depends upon 
 his present gross bodily organization. 
 
 The mechanical, materialistic theory of Hux¬ 
 ley and Haeckel has been for ever exploded by 
 the demonstrations of Crookes and Zollner. 
 
 No man is worthy of the name of “ scientist” 
 who does not form his conclusions upon demon¬ 
 strated facts rather than upon a-priori assump¬ 
 tions. If human experience and testimony are 
 not utterly worthless, then phenomena observed 
 in thousands of instances and under the most 
 varied circumstances demonstrate the continuity 
 of human life after death, and this nineteenth 
 century will be distinguished in the long annals 
 of time as the special period when the old faith 
 in a future life was fully established on a strictly 
 phenomenal basis. One fact is worth more than 
 a thousand miraculous revelations, and facts 
 bearing upon this subject are as numerous and 
 
Proof Palpable. 171 
 
 as palpable as any other facts within the com¬ 
 pass of human knowledge. 
 
 It is only about forty years ago (Feb. 21, 1843) 
 that when a bill was before our American Con¬ 
 gress appropriating thirty thousand dollars for 
 experimental tests of Morse’s electro-magnetic 
 telegraph, Mr. Cave Johnson, a member of Con¬ 
 gress from Tennessee, a renowned lawyer and 
 judge, and afterward a member of the Cabinet 
 of President Polk, ridiculed the proposed ex¬ 
 periments of the devoted Morse by offering an 
 amendment that one-half of the appropriation 
 should be given to a showman then exhibiting 
 mesmeric experiments in Washington. The 
 amendment was decided by Speaker White to 
 be in order, and twenty-two honorable members 
 voted for it; those opposed were not counted. 
 The Hon. Sam Houston, general, governor and 
 ex-president of Texas, and afterward United 
 States Senator, proposed that Millensm should 
 also have a share in the appropriation ! These 
 wise men of that period have passed away. The 
 name of Morse is immortal. The telegraph en¬ 
 circles our globe and traverses the depths of 
 the oceans, and the current transactions of the 
 world are brought to our breakfast-tables each 
 morning as reliably and quickly as the local 
 news of our own city. A notable thing has 
 also since happened. At least one of the most 
 
172 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 distinguished and best-beloved Presidents of 
 these United States became, from phenomenal 
 evidence, a firm and practical believer in the fact 
 of communication between human beings in the 
 invisible world and the denizens of this earth ; 
 in which faith, and on the same ground, he was 
 corroborated by Senators from Ohio, Michigan, 
 Massachusetts and other States, and by other 
 members of Congress not a few. It would be safe 
 to predict that in forty years from this time, if 
 not sooner, no man of intelligence will doubt 
 this glorious truth, unless he is so thoroughly 
 materialistic and deficient in spirituality as to 
 be constitutionally incapable of appreciating 
 truths so ethereal and sublime—just as there 
 are men who, because of color-blindness, can 
 see no difference between red and green, and 
 others who, because of their deficiency in the 
 faculty of tune, cannot distinguish the “Marseil¬ 
 laise Hymn” from “Hail, Columbia!” There 
 is a spiritual idiocy as well as moral and mental 
 idiocy. 
 
 Death is not the end of man, and multitudes 
 are just as well convinced of the fact from phe¬ 
 nomenal evidence as that we have constant 
 communication with those on the other side 
 of the globe by the electric telegraph. Facts 
 are stubborn, and the gods themselves cannot 
 destroy them. There is a future life for man 
 
Proof Palpable. 173 
 
 after death, and those who will honestly seek for 
 the proof are sure to find it. 
 
 “There is no death! The stars go down 
 To rise upon some fairer shore, 
 
 And, bright in Heaven’s jewelled crown, 
 
 They shine for evermore. 
 
 ****** 
 
 “There is no death ! An angel form 
 
 Walks o’er the earth with silent tread; 
 
 He bears our dear loved ones away, 
 
 And then we call them dead . 
 
 ****** 
 
 “But ever near us, though unseen, 
 
 The dear immortal spirits tread. 
 
 For all the boundless universe 
 Is life —there are no dead!" 
 
VII. 
 
 AFTER DEATH—WHAT? THE ANSWERS OF 
 THEOLOGY AND REASON. 
 
 I F the continuity of human life is not broken 
 by the incident of death, the question of 
 what follows the funeral becomes one of most 
 absorbing interest. We see the body cold and 
 inanimate, and because of its tendency to speedy 
 decomposition we are forced to hurry it to the 
 noisome sepulchre. The chair at the table is 
 vacant. The well-known footstep is no longer 
 heard, but, though we may remove from com¬ 
 mon sight the vestments that would be constant 
 reminders of our bereavement, the eye still sees 
 the long-loved form and the ear still hears the 
 sweet voice of the lamented one. Then what 
 anxious thoughts perturb the aching heart that 
 because of grief almost ceases to beat! Where 
 is he ? Does she love me still ? Is he happy or 
 miserable? Is he better off? How does she 
 fare ? What will become of me at death ? 
 
 The answers that have been given to these 
 questionings of loving hearts are very numer- 
 
 174 
 
i?5 
 
 After Death — What ? 
 
 ous, and might be studied with interest and 
 profit; but at present we must confine our 
 thoughts to the teachings of the two great 
 religious parties of Christendom—the Roman 
 Catholics and orthodox Protestants. In many 
 things there is a perfect agreement between 
 these theological teachers. They agree in the 
 belief that at death all souls enter at once upon 
 a condition of happiness or misery, and that after 
 a general resurrection and a final judgment-day 
 soul and body, united, will enter upon an eter¬ 
 nal state of bliss ineffable or of suffering inde¬ 
 scribable. 
 
 It would require volumes to give in detail the 
 various conceptions that have been formed of 
 the localities of heaven and hell. But it is a 
 fact that the views entertained by both Catholics 
 and Protestants have generally been extremely 
 literal and materialistic. Heaven has been con¬ 
 sidered as a place, a local habitation, a city. Its 
 attractions have generally been described accord¬ 
 ing to the surroundings and prevailing hopes of 
 the aspirants, and consequently their conceptions 
 have been as diversified as the conditions of hu¬ 
 manity on earth. Heaven has generally been 
 located above , and hell belozv , but since science 
 has shown us that, properly speaking, there is 
 no above or below, and that these localities 
 change places, so that what is above to-day is 
 
176 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 below to-night, and that what is above in China 
 is below in America, these attempts to locate the 
 future habitation of man are rather confusing. 
 The fact is, that nothing is positively known of 
 any such localities as heaven and hell. 
 
 The dominant theology teaches that all men 
 at death pass immediately to a place either of 
 happiness or of misery. Even the sweet singer 
 of Methodism, Charles Wesley, could take his 
 harp and thus portray the immanent fate of man: 
 
 “ Lo ! on a narrow neck of land, 
 
 ’Twixt two unbounded seas, I stand 
 Secure, insensible; 
 
 A point of time, a moment’s space, 
 
 Removes me to that heavenly place, 
 
 Or shuts me up in hell.” 
 
 All church-goers are familiar with the poetic 
 descriptions that are given in pulpit and hymn- 
 book of the blessedness of glorified saints in 
 heaven and of the various sources from which 
 they derive their happiness. There is, however, 
 one aspect of this subject of which little is said 
 in these modern humanitarian times; and that 
 is the monstrous conception that the happiness 
 of the saved will be greatly enhanced by their 
 knowledge of the misery of the lost, though 
 their dearest friends and kindred may be amone 
 the number of the latter. This fiendish doctrine 
 was not only exultingly taught by Tertullian 
 
i?7 
 
 After Death — What? 
 
 and other early Christian Fathers, but by many 
 distinguished divines since the Lutheran Ref¬ 
 ormation. Jeremy Taylor, D. D., an Episcopal 
 English theologian of the seventeenth century, 
 wrote: 
 
 “We are amazed at the inhumanity of Phalaris, who 
 roasted men in his brazen bull; this was joy in respect 
 of that fire of hell which penetrates the very entrails 
 without consuming them.” . . . “ Husbands shall see 
 their wives, parents shall see their children, tormented 
 before their eyes;” . . . “ the bodies of the damned 
 shall be crowded together in hell like grapes in a wine¬ 
 press, which press one another until they burst.” . . . 
 “ Every distinct sense and organ shall be assailed with 
 its own appropriate and most exquisite sufferings.” 
 
 Theological writings of the last and the early 
 part of this nineteenth century are full of such 
 diabolical utterances. Take the following from 
 the pen of the elder Jonathan Edwards, D. D., 
 who died in Princeton, New Jersey, where he 
 had just been called as the college president: 
 
 “ The view of the misery of the damned will double 
 the ardor of the love and gratitude of the saints in 
 heaven. The sight of hell-torments will exalt the hap¬ 
 piness of the saints for ever. It will not only make them 
 more sensible of the greatness and freeness of the grace 
 of God in their happiness, but it will really make their 
 happiness the greater, as it will make them more sensible 
 of their own happiness; it will give them a more lively 
 relish of it; it will make them prize it the more. When 
 they see others, who were of the same nature and born 
 under the same circumstances, plunged in such misery, 
 
 12 
 
178 Alan—Whence and Whither? 
 
 and they so distinguished, oh, it will make them sensible 
 how happy they are ! A sense of the opposite misery in 
 all cases greatly increases the relish of any joy or pleas- 
 iire /” [The italics are not his.] . . . “ Every time they 
 look upon the damned it will excite in them a lively and 
 admiring sense of the grace of God in making them so 
 to differ.” 
 
 Nathaniel Emmons, D. D., an eminent ortho¬ 
 dox Congregational minister of New England, 
 who died in 1840, and who had been the pre¬ 
 ceptor of nearly one hundred young preachers, 
 in one of his published sermons says: 
 
 “The happiness of the elect in heaven will in part con¬ 
 sist in witnessing the torments of the damned in hell; 
 and among these, it may be, their own children, parents, 
 husbands, wives, and friends on earth. One part of the 
 business of the blessed is to celebrate the doctrine of rep¬ 
 robation. While the decree of reprobation is eternally 
 executing on the vessels of wrath, the smoke of their 
 torment will be eternally ascending in view of the ves¬ 
 sels of mercy, who, instead of taking the part of these 
 miserable objects, will say, 'Arnett ! Hallelujah! Praise 
 the Lord!’ ” 
 
 It would be easy to furnish many pages of 
 such demoniacal sentiments from Christian the¬ 
 ologians, but one more must suffice. The Rev. 
 Thomas Boston, in his Fouifold State, says : 
 
 “The godly wife shall applaud the justice of the Judge 
 in the condemnation of her ungodly husband. The godly 
 husband shall say ‘Amen !’ to the damnation of her who 
 lay in his bosom. The godly parent shall say * Hallelu¬ 
 jah !’ at the passing of the sentence of his ungodly child ; 
 
179 
 
 After Death — What? 
 
 and the godly child shall from his heart approve the dam¬ 
 nation of his wicked parent who begot him and the mother 
 who bore him.” 
 
 No wonder that an old Scandinavian king, 
 when about to receive Christian baptism, as he 
 put one foot into the water turned to the officiat¬ 
 ing priest and asked him whether he would meet 
 his ancestors in heaven. When informed that 
 they were all suffering the torments of hell, he 
 drew his foot back and refused to receive the 
 rite, choosing the company of his noble ances¬ 
 tors in perdition rather than the company of 
 such priests in heaven. 
 
 In order to appreciate these horrible dogmas, 
 it is necessary to bear in mind just what is meant 
 by the “ torments of hell.” The prevailing the¬ 
 ology of Christendom in early times taught the 
 doctrine of a literal hell of material fire. Ter- 
 tullian said, “The damned burn eternally with¬ 
 out consuming, as the volcanoes, which are 
 vents from the stored subterranean fire of hell, 
 burn for ever without wasting.” Augustine, the 
 early propagator of Calvinism, argues with all 
 his ingenuity to show how the bodies of the 
 damned may withstand the undying flames of 
 fire without being consumed. For centuries 
 past this doctrine was taught in most literal 
 and revolting terms. Dr. Jonathan Edwards, 
 before quoted, says: 
 
i8o Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 “ The world will probably be converted into a great lake 
 or liquid globe of fire—a vast ocean of fire, in which the 
 wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always be in 
 tempest in which they shall be tossed to and fro, having 
 no rest day or night, vast waves or billows of fire con¬ 
 tinually rolling over their heads, of which they shall ever 
 be full of a quick sense within and without; their heads, 
 their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins, 
 and their vitals shall for ever be full of a glowing, melting 
 fire fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements.” 
 
 Some theologians have said that in hell “ the 
 bodies of the damned shall be ’nealed, as we 
 speak of glass, so as to endure the fire without 
 being annihilated thereby,” and that, “ made of 
 the nature of salamanders, they shall be immor¬ 
 tal, kept to feel immortal fire.” John Wesley 
 taught this doctrine of literal hell-fire, and sug¬ 
 gested that God might make the human body 
 incombustible like asbestos , that it might not 
 ever be consumed. 
 
 The following quotation is from the most pop¬ 
 ular living preacher of the world, the Baptist 
 Rev. Charles Spurgeon of London, taken from 
 his famous sermon on the Resurrection of the 
 Dead: 
 
 ‘‘When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone; 
 that will be a hell for it; but at the day of judgment thy 
 body will join thy soul, and then thou shalt have twin hells, 
 thy soul sweating drops of blood and thy body suffused 
 with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on 
 earth [the italics are not his] thy body will lie, asbestos- 
 
After Death —- What ? 181 
 
 like, for ever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet 
 of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the 
 devil shall for ever play his diabolical tune of Hell's Un¬ 
 til ter a ble Lament. 
 
 This “ elegant extract ” from a living theolo¬ 
 gian of repute is a sufficient answer to the fre¬ 
 quent assertion that these horrible doctrines 
 have been abandoned in our day. But who can 
 name the creed or confession of faith that has 
 been changed on this subject? Who can point 
 out a “ Publication Board ” or a “ Book Concern ” 
 of any of the so-called evangelical churches 
 which has excluded from its shelves the num¬ 
 erous publications in which these monstrous 
 dogmas are taught? The average church-goer 
 and the average Sunday-school child are left at 
 least to infer that unconverted persons are ex¬ 
 posed to eternal, material fiery tortures in a lake 
 of brimstone. Religious books, and even books 
 for children, are full of these sickening barbari¬ 
 ties, which the common people always take in 
 the most literal sense. 
 
 Take the following from a Roman Catholic 
 “book for children,” written by the Rev. J. Fur- 
 niss. Describing the punishment of children in 
 hell, he says: 
 
 “The fourth dungeon is the boiling kettle. Listen! 
 There is a sound like that of a kettle boiling. Is it really 
 a kettle which is boiling ? No. Then what is it ? Hear 
 what it is: the blood is boiling in the scalded veins of 
 
18 2 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 that boy; the brain is boiling and bubbling in his head ; 
 the marrow is boiling in his bones. The fifth dungeon is 
 the ‘red-hot-oven,’ in which is a little child. Hear how 
 it screams to come out! See how it turns and twists itself 
 about in the fire and beats its head against the roof of the 
 oven! It stamps its little feet upon the floor of the oven. 
 To this child God was very good. Very likely God saw 
 that this child would get more and more wicked and 
 would never repent, and so it would have to be punished 
 much more in hell; so God in his mercy called it out of 
 this world in its early childhood.” 
 
 Be not too much incensed at this Catholic 
 teaching- when you know that Protestants have 
 taught things equally horrible and disgusting. 
 Take the following from Edwards: 
 
 “Reprobate infants are vipers of vengeance , which Je¬ 
 hovah will hold over hell in the tongs of his wrath untii 
 they turn and spit venom in his face." . . . “God holds 
 sinners,” he says, “in his hands over the mouth of hell 
 as so many spiders over the fire, and he is dreadfully pro¬ 
 voked ; and he not only hates them, but holds them in ut¬ 
 most contempt, and will trample them beneath his feet 
 with inexpressible fierceness; he will crush their blood 
 out, and will make it fly so that it will sprinkle his gar¬ 
 ments and stain all his raiment.” 
 
 It can easily be shown that the consignment 
 of innumerable millions of infant children to 
 such hell-torments is a necessary conclusion 
 from the theological dogmas of the Westminster 
 Confession and of the confessions held by all the 
 Calvinistic and so-called “Reformed” churches, 
 and is so admitted by many of the ablest divines 
 
After Death — What? 183 
 
 of the times. Theologians, Romish and Protest¬ 
 ant, have given loose rein to the imagination, 
 and have exhausted tropes and figures to the ex¬ 
 treme power of language to suggest. No won¬ 
 der that in many instances whole congregations 
 have become frantic with fear, and have given 
 vent to their agonized feelings in screams and 
 shrieks of dispair. Of the immoral effects of 
 such doctrines there can be no doubt. 
 
 This subject becomes more startling as we 
 realize the fact that, according to the teachings 
 of theologians—not of the Dark Ages, but in 
 the present age of light and love—a hell of eter¬ 
 nal torments is the certain doom of a majority 
 of our human family. The Doom of the Majority 
 is the title of a little book recently prepared by 
 the Rev. Samuel J. Barrows, in which it is proved 
 by actual quotations from utterances of many 
 leading ministers of the chief orthodox denom¬ 
 inations that in their opinion a majority of our 
 race are surely doomed to eternal damnation. 
 
 An orthodox theologian in a sermon on for¬ 
 eign missions recently submitted the estimate 
 that twenty million of heathens annually, for 
 the eighteen centuries of Christianity, have been 
 pouring into hell. “As the masses of water have 
 for many thousands of years been pouring over 
 the walls of Niagara into the deep gulf, so have 
 men, women, and children been rushing over the 
 
184 Man—Whence arid Whither? 
 
 border of this life to be received by the awful 
 gulf.” These are his precise words, and, accord¬ 
 ing to his figures, not less than thirty-seven bil¬ 
 lion six hundred and sixty million of immortal 
 souls have been plunged into the lake of fire and 
 brimstone within the last eighteen hundred and 
 eighty-three years, and in this year of grace 
 1884 not less than twenty million more will be 
 added as incombustible fuel to the endless flame. 
 And this from the heathen world alone! 
 
 It is only fair to state that there are among 
 ministers, especially in the Congregational 
 churches of New England, a few who are dis¬ 
 posed to dissent from the long-dominant dogmas 
 upon this subject, and who take a more rational 
 view of future punishment, and who do not con¬ 
 ceal their hopes that the mercy of the heavenly 
 Father toward erring mortals is not limited to 
 the present brief life. The same is true of the 
 modern drift of thought in the Church of Eng¬ 
 land. 
 
 This savors somewhat of the Romish purga¬ 
 torial idea, but is a very different thing from the 
 cunning dogma formulated by Pope Gregory in 
 the sixth century. The Romish purgatory, as 
 described by Bede (called the Venerable) in the 
 eighth century, is literal, gross, and horrible, 
 and the designing hierarchy saw in it an engine 
 of power easily utilized. The place is awful, 
 
After Death— What ? 185 
 
 said they. Your deceased friends are suffeiing 
 there now, but the Church—that is, the piusts 
 can help them out. The redemptive price paid 
 by Christ was far in excess of the debt of sin. 
 There is a surplus of merit in his vicarious suf¬ 
 ferings, and this balance is at the disposal of the 
 priesthood. Besides this, many saints have per¬ 
 formed works of supererogation, and their sur¬ 
 plus of credit belongs to the Church. Then the 
 sacrifice of the mass, continually offered by 
 priests, creates a still further reserved balance 
 upon which the Church can draw at pleasuie 
 and pass to the credit of the unfortunate suf¬ 
 ferer in purgatory whom she may choose to thus 
 favor. This gave the priesthood a power almost 
 omnipotent—the keys of heaven and hell. To 
 this day this shameless fraud is practised upon 
 multitudes of ignorant dupes, many of whom 
 deny themselves every comfort and beggar their 
 families to raise money for masses to get their 
 departed friends out of an imaginary purgatory. 
 
 And here the secret might just as well be let 
 out, that all the doctrines of suffering torment in 
 hell and purgatory after death are of priestly ori- 
 o-in. Priests of all grades will defend themselves 
 by pointing to the teachings of the Church and 
 to the authority of Holy Scripture, ignoring the 
 demonstrable fact that these monstrous doctrines 
 are older than Christianity, older than the New 
 
186 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 Testament, and older than the Hebrew people; 
 and if they are to be accredited as supernatural 
 and divine revelations, they were certainly not first 
 revealed to Jews and Christians. It is no part 
 of our present plan to set forth what the Bible 
 of to-day teaches regarding future punishment, 
 or to settle theological disputes between Partial- 
 ists and Universalists. To the common reader 
 there appear to be many passages which sup- 
 poit opposite theories. The point to be empha¬ 
 sized is the fact that the common dogma of hetl- 
 toi merits is of pagan origin. Some fearful pic¬ 
 tures, as drawn by Christian theologians, have 
 already been given of the horrors of hell, and 
 these might be increased indefinitely, but no¬ 
 thing can exceed in frightfulness and nauseating 
 disgust those given in Hindu and Persian sacred 
 
 books. The Rev. W. R. Alger thus speaks of 
 them : 
 
 “Some are hung up by their tongues or by their eyes, 
 and slowly devoured by fiery vermin; some scourged 
 with whips of serpents, whose poisonous fangs lacerate 
 their flesh at every blow; some are forced to swallow 
 bowls of gore, hair, and corruption, freshly filled as fast 
 as drained; some packed immovably in red-hot iron 
 chests and laid in raging furnaces for unutterable millions 
 of ages. One who is familiar with the Buddhist hells will 
 think that the pencils of Dante and Pollok, Jeremy Tay- 
 loi and Jonathan Edwards, were dipped in water when 
 writing upon this subject. There is just as much ground 
 for believing the accounts of the former to be true as there 
 
 
i8 7 
 
 After Death — What ? 
 
 is for crediting those of the latter; the two are fundament¬ 
 ally the same, and the pagan had earlier possession of 
 the field.” 
 
 The same author well says : 
 
 ‘‘The popular hells have ever been built on hierarchic 
 selfishness, dogmatic pride, and personal cruelty, and 
 have been walled around with arbitrary and traditional 
 rituals. The Parsee priest describes a woman in hell 
 beaten with stone clubs by two demons twelve miles in 
 size, and compelled to continue eating a basin of putrid¬ 
 ity, because once some of her hair, as she combed it, fell 
 into the sacred fire.” . . . ‘‘The Brahmanic priest tells of 
 a man who, for neglecting to meditate upon the mystic 
 syllable Om before praying, was thrown down into hell on 
 an iron floor and cleaved with an axe, then stirred in a 
 caldron of molten lead till covered all over with the 
 sweated foam of torture like a grain of rice in an oven, 
 then fastened, with head downward, to a chariot of fire 
 and urged onward with a red-hot goad.” 
 
 Quotations from ancient Hindu and other Ori¬ 
 ental writings might be made to fill volumes, all 
 going to show the origin of the theological hell 
 in the fertile imaginations of pagan priests. It is 
 sufficient answer to some dogmas to simply state 
 them. Such are the dogmas of theology regard¬ 
 ing hell-torments. They cannot be reconciled 
 with any proper conceptions of the Divine cha¬ 
 racter. No wonder that the late beloved Rev. 
 Albert Barnes of this city was so distressed in 
 thinking upon them. 
 
 “ In the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I con¬ 
 fess,” says Mr. Barnes, “ I see no light whatever. I see 
 
188 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 not one ray of light to disclose to me why sin came into 
 the world, and why the earth is strewn with the dead and 
 dying, and why men must suffer to all eternity. When 
 I feel that God only can save them, and yet tie does not 
 do it , I am struck dumb ; all is darkness to my soul, and 
 I cannot disguise it.” 
 
 A celebrated French preacher (Saurin) had 
 similar feelings. He said : 
 
 ‘‘I sink under the weight of this subject, and I find in 
 the thought a mortal poison which diffuseth itself into 
 every period of my life, rendering society tiresome, nour¬ 
 ishment insipid, pleasure disgustful, and life itself a cruel 
 bitter.” 
 
 The Rev. Dr. D. D. Whedon, a well-known 
 Methodist writer, in his article on “Arminian- 
 ism in Johnson's Cyclopaedia, forcibly indicates 
 his abhorrence of such unholy conceptions of 
 the Divine character by saying, “ If a man is to 
 be damned for fulfilling God’s decrees, ought not 
 that imaginary God to be, a fortiori , damned for 
 making such a decree ?” This startling remark 
 is just as applicable to the doctrine of eternal 
 torments for the majority of our race as to the 
 dogma of predestination. The quaint Scotch¬ 
 man who wrote for his own tombstone the 
 following epitaph seems to have had the idea 
 that God would not treat him worse than he 
 would treat God if their places were changed: 
 
 “ Here lie I, Martin Elginbrod. 
 
 Have mercy on me, as I on thee 
 
 If I were God and ye were Martin Elginbrod !” 
 
189 
 
 After Death — What ? 
 
 God cannot have less justice and kindness 
 than man, cannot be a tyrant and a monster, 
 cannot do that toward unnumbered multitudes 
 which if done toward one subject by an earthly 
 monarch, even to a limited degree, would cause 
 him to be universally execrated and the whole 
 civilized world to demand the release of the 
 unhappy victim. Fortunately, men cannot be¬ 
 lieve such monstrous dogmas, and plainly show 
 that they do not. Who would not be eternally 
 frantic with agony at the thought that a brother- 
 man, and especially that some dear friend, is 
 now writhing and agonizing, and must for ever 
 writhe and agonize, in torments which, if not 
 literal and material, can only be adequately 
 described by the burning of brimstone? Who 
 could under such circumstances enjoy the com¬ 
 forts of home and the pleasant social surround¬ 
 ings of life, or who could become parents and 
 expose their offspring to the horrible, and even 
 probable, sufferings of hell-torments, preparing 
 fuel for the fires of an eternal furnace? 
 
 While it is irrational and impossible to accept 
 these horrible dogmas of priestcraft as to the 
 eternal torments of the wicked, it is equally 
 unreasonable and impracticable to believe that 
 at death all men enter upon a state of perfect 
 happiness, without regard to their past lives or 
 their moral characters. 
 
190 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 The doctrine of rewards and punishments 
 after death is clearly suggested by the princi¬ 
 ples of natural religion which have been recog¬ 
 nized by all men, pagan and Christian. That 
 virtue brings its own reward and vice its own 
 punishment is a fact in the experience of men 
 in this life. It must be so in the life to come, as 
 the order of the universe cannot be changed by 
 time or place. No valid objection can be made 
 to the principle of future punishment. But its 
 nature and object must be taken into the ac¬ 
 count. True punishment is never arbitrary nor 
 vindictive. It is remedial, reformatory, disci¬ 
 plinary, and has respect to the constitution of 
 moral government and the best interests and 
 welfare of its subjects. Suffering is a consequence 
 of sin, not a judicial penalty, and happiness is 
 not a favor conferred by grace, but a legitimate 
 product of right being rather than of right doing. 
 Men are rewarded or punished, both in this life 
 and the life to come, not so much for what they 
 have done or not done as for what they are. 
 Suffering is intended to put an end to that 
 which causes suffering, and is for the good of 
 the sufferer. In this world and in all possible 
 worlds sin must be a source of suffering, and 
 goodness a fountain of happiness. The degree 
 of happiness or misery of man after death must 
 be in proportion to the degree of his perfection 
 
After Death — What ? 191 
 
 or imperfection, and suffering must last so long 
 as sin lasts, even if it be eternal; but it must 
 cease when sin ceases, though the evil fruits 
 may not immediately cease. 
 
 Heaven is wherever there are pure and conse¬ 
 quently happy souls, and hell, wherever there are 
 sinful and therefore suffering spirits. The degree 
 of happiness or misery in this and all other pos¬ 
 sible spheres must always be proportionate to the 
 moral status and progress of the individual. It 
 is reasonable to suppose that man is morally after 
 death just what he is at death—that the mere 
 change of the form and circumstances of his ex¬ 
 istence can make no change in moral character. 
 It is equally rational to conclude that whenever 
 and wherever the wicked turn from their wicked¬ 
 ness and do that which is right, it shall be well 
 with them. 
 
 Some persons think that it will be easier for 
 wicked men to reform after death than before, 
 but the opinion of Swedenborg was just the op¬ 
 posite, and his reasons are weighty and worthy 
 of consideration. It is best and safest to be right 
 and to do right now , and then we need have no 
 anxiety for the future. It is character , not creed , 
 that makes heaven and hell—not what we believe , 
 but what we are. It is not the particular emotion 
 or exercise of mind or heart that we may experi¬ 
 ence at some particular time, but it is the charac - 
 
192 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 ter we have evolved and established, that will 
 constitute “ meetness for the inheritance of the 
 saints in light.” 
 
 The same penal code must prevail in the next 
 life that prevails here, and it may be thus sum¬ 
 marized : (1) Suffering is a consequence of imper¬ 
 fection and wrong-doing. (2) Imperfection and 
 wrong-doing will meet their appropriate punish¬ 
 ment in the future life as in this world. (3) The 
 effect will only continue so long as the cause 
 exists. (4) Men will for ever make their own 
 heaven or hell, and there is good reason for be¬ 
 lieving that the sufferings of many persons after 
 death will be, beyond all conception, awful in the 
 extreme. (5) But the “ immortal hope ” justifies 
 the conclusion that all men will, sooner or later, 
 be established in holiness and happiness. 
 
 In response to the question, After death — 
 zvhat? the proper answer is interrogative: In life 
 — zvhat? Death is transition, not transmutation. 
 It is emigration, not Pythagorean transmigration. 
 Change of place does not make change of cha¬ 
 racter. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that 
 a man after death is just what he was before 
 death. Every man will gravitate to his own 
 place. The law of elective affinity, that now 
 causes “ birds of a feather to flock together,” 
 must be as effectual in another world as in this. 
 There will be as many grades of moral charac- 
 
193 
 
 After Death—What ? 
 
 ter after death as before death, and therefore as 
 many heavens and hells. Swedenborg was right, 
 no doubt, in describing the spirit-world as a 
 counterpart of this. There may be “ Five Points ” 
 and “ Baxter ” streets and “ St. Mary’s ” streets 
 and “ degraded districts ” over the dark river as 
 really as they exist here. Misers and drunkards 
 and libertines will still be misers, drunkards, and 
 libertines, and will naturally gravitate to con¬ 
 genial associations. Those who love the beauti¬ 
 ful, the pure, the true, the right, the unselfish, 
 the humane, the philanthropic, will have the 
 same tastes and desires after death as before 
 death, and will not only naturally float to kin¬ 
 dred spirits, but these heavenly principles must 
 find exercise and expression in cheerful efforts 
 to uplift and make pure and holy and happy 
 those who are so unfortunate as to have failed 
 to become so before death. 
 
 And this leads us to the rational, ideal heaven. 
 It is not a place of thrones and harps and psalm- 
 singers reposing in that eternal idleness which 
 John Hay aptly described as “loafing around 
 the throne,’’ but a state of undying activities, of 
 ceaseless efforts to know more, to be more, and 
 to do more for humanity. 
 
 After mature reflection the conclusion must be 
 reached that the greatest happiness of which man 
 is capable arises from three sources: (i) The per- 
 13 
 
194 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 ception of new truth; (2) Its impartation to others; 
 (3) Doing good to others. A more rational con¬ 
 ception of future blessedness than this is impos¬ 
 sible. 
 
 In th e higher life we shall doubtless continue 
 the search for knowledge and eternally progress 
 in wisdom, truth, and holiness. While there are 
 beings in the universe who know less, and are 
 less, and have less than themselves, men shall 
 find their greatest happiness in unwearied efforts 
 to elevate and bless them. Dr. Griffen in a mis¬ 
 sionary sermon once said: “ If all the human 
 beings on earth were converted to Christianity 
 except one man, and he dwelt in some far-off 
 island of the sea, it would be worth while to 
 form the whole converted race into a missionary 
 society to convert that last man.” This is the 
 true spirit of consecrated humanity, the heaven¬ 
 ly employment of the higher spheres; for while 
 eternity lasts there will be work to do for this 
 world, and perchance for other worlds. No arch¬ 
 angel in the most exalted heavens can sink into 
 peaceful repose while there is suffering to be as¬ 
 suaged in any portion of God’s universe. No 
 saint in heaven can enjoy unalloyed bliss while 
 there is one human soul in earth or hell to be 
 uplifted and made holy and happy. If “ enthusi¬ 
 asm for humanity” is not the essence of religion 
 on earth, there is no religion worth having; and 
 
195 
 
 After Death — What ? 
 
 if religion after death and in all possible worlds 
 is not the same, then is truth a mockery and life 
 itself a delusive dream. 
 
 If these views are correct, it is the highest 
 wisdom to cherish and cultivate on earth and 
 during life the tastes, the desires, the affections, 
 the principles which in themselves constitute the 
 highest bliss of saints and angels in all possible 
 worlds. And as to hell after death, we have no¬ 
 thing to fear but the hell we may carry with us 
 —the hell of unholy lust, the hell of unsanctified 
 passion, the hell of selfishness, the hell of wrong 
 living and wrong doing. 
 
 And this is what makes death so serious. It 
 is the transition from one form of life to another 
 in which we shall take with us all that we really 
 are and have. The river of death has no cleans¬ 
 ing or life-giving quality, and our moral status at 
 the close of earth-life will settle the condition 
 upon which we commence the continued life 
 after death—not that what we may think or say 
 or believe on the death-bed or in the last mo¬ 
 ments will or can determine our future happi¬ 
 ness or misery, as some vainly suppose, but that 
 the character formed before death will make the 
 heaven or hell with which we commence spirit- 
 life after bodily dissolution. 
 
 It would be easy to indulge in fanciful figures 
 of the future life of man, both in the heavens and 
 
196 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 the hells. Swedenborg and many of his dis¬ 
 ciples have written freely upon these subjects, 
 and a recent French publication, written by a 
 noted man under the norn-de-pluine of Allan 
 Kardec, entitled Heaven and Hell, might be 
 studied to advantage. There are many pub¬ 
 lished descriptions of the spirit-world, profess¬ 
 edly given by those who have been permitted 
 to return and hold communion with surviving 
 friends, of the genuineness of which all must 
 judge for themselves. It is safest to be gov¬ 
 erned by general principles, of which no doubt 
 can be entertained, in forming opinions of the 
 life to come, such as we have briefly summar¬ 
 ized. “Now we see through a glass darkly;” 
 there the veil of gross flesh will be removed, 
 and we shall no doubt see and be seen in the 
 true light. It is the part of wisdom to make 
 our lives here what we would have them to be 
 hereafter, and calmly wait the issue. We found 
 loving arms ready to receive us when we entered 
 this world, and the bountiful Father will not 
 neglect to provide for us in the new stage upon 
 which we shall soon enter. 
 
 The order of the universe is eternal, and our 
 only anxiety should be to find ourselves in har¬ 
 mony with its relentless principles of law. 
 
VIII. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC EVOLUTION AND THEOLOGIC 
 REVOLUTION. 
 
 I T is with singular propriety that the present 
 is described as the vidtcvicilistic age. The 
 tendency of modern scientific thought, so called, 
 is to attempt to account for everything in the 
 universe on natural principles, while theology 
 claims supernatural infallibility. 
 
 And right here it is proper to define what we 
 mean by science. The primary meaning is know¬ 
 ledge —the comprehension and understanding of 
 truth, facts established beyond controversy, dem¬ 
 onstrated propositions. If we use the word in 
 this sense, it will be found that much which has 
 been called science should be known by a very 
 different name. The fact is, that many so-called 
 scientists are the most credulous, illogical, and 
 irrational of men. They deal largely in postula¬ 
 tions and assumptions. They write ponderous 
 folios in support of hypotheses depending upon 
 assumed premises. They often reach conclu¬ 
 sions which do not logically follow admitted 
 principles. 
 
 197 
 
198 Man—Whence arid Whither? 
 
 The number of things really knozvn is astound- 
 ingly small. Even La Place is reported to have 
 said, in his last hours, “What we do not know 
 is enormous.” 
 
 Flights of imagination are not peculiar to poets, 
 nor false conclusions and unverified statements 
 characteristic of theologians only. As many 
 falsehoods have been published in the name of 
 science as in the name of theology. Our own 
 great inventor Edison thus discourses on the 
 unreliability of professional scientists: 
 
 “ Their text-books are mostly misleading. I get mad 
 with myself when I think I have believed what was so 
 learnedly set out in them. There are more frauds in 
 science than anywhere else.” . . . “ Take a whole pile 
 of them that I can name, and you will find uncertainty, 
 if not imposition , in half of what they state as scientific 
 truth. They have time and again set down experiments 
 as done by them . . . that they never did , and upon 
 which they have founded so-called scientific truths. I 
 have been thrown off my track often by them, and for 
 months at a time.” 
 
 Moreover, scientists do not agree among them¬ 
 selves, and have as many conflicting creeds as 
 the churches, and call each other by names 
 equally contemptuous. Professor Tyndall has 
 pronounced Dr. Bastian an ignoramus, and some 
 think that he proved it; and President McCosh 
 has, by implication at least, called Tyndall a 
 “ tyro in philosophy ” for his mistake in placing 
 
Science and Creeds . 
 
 199 
 
 Empedocles after Democritus instead of before 
 him. Prof. Tyndall has admitted that “ the de¬ 
 sire to establish or avoid a certain result can so 
 warp the mind as to destroy its power of esti¬ 
 mating facts.” The difficulty of overcoming 
 preconceived ideas is a matter of common expe¬ 
 rience. It is almost impossible to reason men 
 out of what is not founded in reason. 
 
 It is well known to historians that there has 
 always been a conflict between science and sci¬ 
 ence so called, and that the science of one period 
 has in many things been proved to be no science 
 in a succeeding period. This should teach its 
 votaries a lesson of diffidence, to say the least. 
 But there is a true science, because there are 
 facts; and a fact can be shown to be in harmo¬ 
 nious relation with every other fact in the uni¬ 
 verse, but an assumption will always need many 
 other assumptions to keep it company. 
 
 A great deal of controversy arises from the 
 improper use of terms. Professor Draper’s great 
 book, History of the Conflict between Religion and 
 Science , has a misnomer in its very title. There 
 is no conflict between religion and science, and 
 the learned author himself shows that the real 
 “ conflict ” has ever been between the dogmatism 
 of ecclesiastics and the truths of science. 
 
 The word religion } too, has been so abused 
 that one is tempted to drop it altogether. It 
 
200 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 has been made the synonym of everything de¬ 
 testable. And yet religion is a fact, and a sci¬ 
 entific fact too. 
 
 Even Professor Tyndall says : 
 
 “ The facts of religious feeling are to me as certain as 
 the facts of physics.” . . . “ The world will have religion 
 of some kind.” . . . “You who have escaped from these 
 religions into the high and dry light of intellect may de¬ 
 ride them, but in doing so you deride accidents of form 
 merely, and fail to touch the immovable basis of the re¬ 
 ligious sentiment in the nature of man. To yield this 
 sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of prob¬ 
 lems at this hour.” 
 
 Renan also, who is often vilified as an infidel, 
 writes thus : 
 
 “ All the symbols which serve to give shape to the re¬ 
 ligious sentiment are imperfect, and their fate is to be one 
 after another rejected. But nothing is more remote from 
 the truth than the dream of those who seek to imagine a 
 perfected humanity without religion.” . . . “ Devotion is 
 as natural as egoism to a true-born man. The organiza¬ 
 tion of devotion is religion. Let no one hope, therefore, 
 to dispense with religion or religious associations. Each 
 progression of modern society will render this want more 
 imperious.” 
 
 John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and other 
 leaders of scientific thought are equally explicit 
 on this subject, and are no more deserving of 
 beiiisf called infidels than the dean of Westmin- 
 
 o 
 
 ster or the archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 The word religion often, but very improperly, 
 conveys the idea of bondage , because some have 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 201 
 
 derived the word from religare, to bind back or 
 behind,” “ to bind fast,” forgetting that it some¬ 
 times means, according to high classical author¬ 
 ity, “ to unbind ” One of the most accomplished 
 classical scholars of the day, Francis Ellingwood 
 Abbot, has conclusively shown in his tract, A 
 Study of Religion, that the word “ religion ” is real¬ 
 ly derived from relegere or religere , signifying 46 to 
 go through or over again in reading, in speech, 
 or in thought ”—that is, to review carefully and 
 faithfully, to ponder or reflect with conscientious 
 fidelity. That this is the real, root origin of the 
 word is proved by Quotations from Cicero and 
 others who thus used the word centuries befoie 
 it was used in a different sense by the Chiistian 
 Fathers. Religion in its true meaning is the 
 great fact of duty, of moral sense, of conscience , 
 of right , and of obligation to seek conformity to 
 the highest ideal formed from the most careful, 
 honest, and devout contemplation. In principle 
 it is inseparable from the idea of r worshipfulness , 
 and in its outward manifestations it is a life of 
 pure morality and practical good-will toward 
 mankind. 44 Pure religion and undefiled before 
 God and the Father is this : To visit the father¬ 
 less and widows in their affliction, and to keep 
 himself unspotted from the world” (James I : 27). 
 All true religion consists in an effort , serious , con¬ 
 scientious , and devout , to realize ideal excellence , 
 
202 Man—Whence arid Whither? 
 
 and to transform it into actual character and prac¬ 
 tical life. 
 
 Between real science and true religion there is 
 no conflict. But if religion is the special prop¬ 
 erty of an ecclesiastical corporation consisting of 
 a professional hierarchy, whose prerogative it is 
 to formulate dogmas and to define a routine of 
 ordinances which must be believed and observed 
 without question on pain of eternal damnation, 
 and if to be truly religious it is necessary to ac¬ 
 cept as true the fundamental dogmas of the dom¬ 
 inant theology, Catholic or Protestant, then there 
 is a scientific antagonism which can never cease, 
 an irrepressible conflict which must become 
 stronger and more determined and pronounced 
 as knowledge increases and civilization rises to a 
 higher state. If religion is creed instead of cha¬ 
 racter, , believing or professing to believe instead 
 of right doing and noble living—if it is to pro¬ 
 nounce the shibboleth of the sects and to go 
 through the routine of Sunday rituals—if the 
 Church is a sort of patent-right association hav¬ 
 ing a mystic secret for saving souls by supernat¬ 
 ural processes,—then a most determined war will 
 be waged, not only on the part of scientific men, 
 but by the great masses of thinking people. 
 
 There is no use in attempting to conceal the 
 fact that the Church as represented by the Rom¬ 
 ish hierarchy and the dominant Protestant sects 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 203 
 
 is a failure. Not that it has not much in it that 
 is good. Not that it has not done great good, 
 or that it does not now do much good, but that, 
 after making many concessions and giving much 
 credit, it is still a comparative failure. It has 
 failed to formulate a system of doctrines that in¬ 
 telligent men can rationally accept. It has failed 
 to bring the masses of the people into its sacied 
 edifices. It has failed to establish a public mo¬ 
 rality superior to the ancient eclecticism. Those 
 who are members of the Church cannot be dis¬ 
 tinguished from those who are not by their 
 greater fidelity in public trusts, higher integrity 
 in commercial pursuits, or greater honor and 
 purity in the various relations of life. Indeed, it 
 is becoming a serious question in many minds 
 whether the fundamental doctrines taught by 
 both Catholics and Protestants (for they are sub¬ 
 stantially the same) are not, in some aspects, nat¬ 
 urally and philosophically demoralizing, and 
 legitimately tend to produce the sorrowful state 
 of"things so much to be deplored throughout 
 Christendom. ' 
 
 Matthew Arnold has tersely said that “we 
 cannot get along without a religion, and it is 
 equally certain that we cannot get along with the 
 religion we have.” There is something rotten in 
 the^ecclesiastical state of Denmark. The oint¬ 
 ment that should be pure sends forth a flavor 
 
204 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 that indicates the presence of many a dead fly, 
 while the secret closets of ecclesiasticism are 
 justly suspected of containing many damning 
 skeletons. To expose the corruption and apply 
 the appropriate remedy is a more herculean task 
 than the purification of the famous Augean sta¬ 
 bles, which, according to the fable, contained 
 three thousand oxen and had not been cleansed 
 in thirty years. 
 
 The foundation principle in dogmatic theology, 
 Romish and Protestant, is the total depravity of 
 man through legitimate inheritance by natural 
 generation and regular descent from a certain 
 human pair named Adam and Eve, who, though 
 created pure and perfect, by a single act of dis¬ 
 obedience, trifling in itself, fell from their prim¬ 
 aeval holiness and entailed sin and misery upon all 
 their unfortunate progeny, so that in a certain 
 sense all men “ sinned in Adam, and fell with 
 him in the first transgression.” This basic dog¬ 
 ma of theology is claimed to be a matter of spe¬ 
 cial divine revelation written down in a sacred 
 book. 
 
 Those who have carefully considered the sec¬ 
 ond chapter of this series know how much im¬ 
 portance to attach to this fanciful story. It is 
 not original or peculiar to the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 as has been shown, but was manifestly borrowed 
 from some one or more of the older and more 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 205 
 
 civilized peoples of antiquity, who knew it to be 
 a myth , and from whom we learn its origin in 
 connection with their sublime system of sun- 
 worship. The whole narrative of the garden of 
 Eden, the talking serpent, and the apple-eating 
 woman was well understood by the ancient poets 
 and priests to be fabulous, a mere fancy sketch 
 suggested by the revolutions of the heavenly 
 bodies and the consequent changes of the sea¬ 
 sons. Leading Jewish and Christian writers for 
 centuries admitted the allegorical character of 
 the old fable of the fall of man in the paradisaical 
 Eden, and no attempt was ever made to palm it 
 off as historical truth until the demands of dog¬ 
 matic theology made it necessary. It is safe to 
 allege that no man of learning now attempts to 
 defend it except in the interests of an effete sa¬ 
 cerdotalism, and those who do so are justly 
 chargeable with ignorance of history, compara¬ 
 tive religions, and the infallible testimony of 
 science, or with a degree of disingenuousness 
 that might without uncharitableness be called 
 by a stronger name. 
 
 Science has demonstrated the fact that prim¬ 
 aeval man was a being of exceeding low estate, 
 nearly allied to the lower animals, and that for 
 unnumbered centuries he has been rising, until 
 he has attained his present proud position. True, 
 the stream of human progress has not been un- 
 
206 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 interrupted. Man has had his ups and downs, 
 but the steady general ascent is unmistakably 
 shown by the discoveries of science and the tes¬ 
 timony of history. There is nothing in history 
 or science to justify the Miltonian conception of 
 the deterioration and degradation of man from 
 an angelic perfection previously enjoyed, but 
 there are very many facts that can never be 
 reconciled with such an assumption. 
 
 It is easy to see the logical consequences of 
 the position we are obliged to take. If the so- 
 called fait of man is a myth , the foundation of 
 the entire system of dogmatic theology is de¬ 
 stroyed, and the whole superstructure falls into 
 a mass of rubbish. Professional theologians un¬ 
 derstand this, and fully realize that if the first 
 link of the chain is broken the remaining links 
 must fall into confusion. No wonder that they so 
 earnestly contend for the story of “ Eden and the 
 Fall!' If we reject the fable of the fall of Adam 
 and the total depravity of all men through natural 
 descent and inheritance from him, it follows as a 
 logical sequence that there is no solid foundation 
 for what is called in theological parlance the 
 “ redemptive scheme!' The word scheme is nearly 
 synonymous with the words “ plan,” “ project,” 
 and “ contrivance.” Theology implies that even 
 the fall of our alleged first parents was in pur¬ 
 suance of an eternal plan of God, he having vir- 
 
Science and Creeds . 
 
 207 
 
 tually allowed it by a “permissive decree ,” having 
 “ eternally purposed ” to redeem a portion of de¬ 
 generate humanity by a divine contrivance. 
 Ponderous volumes have been written to vindi¬ 
 cate the divine wisdom and goodness in the 
 creation and fall of man, involving the awful 
 doom of unborn millions, but nothing has ever 
 been written to satisfy the heart or the reason 
 of man. The alleged facts stand in awful and 
 impenetrable mystery, absolutely irreconcilable 
 with our necessary conceptions of infinite wisdom 
 and love. It cannot be that the Infinite Father 
 could have placed his own offspring at such a 
 disadvantage involving such tremendous conse¬ 
 quences. 
 
 But it is argued that in the very day of the 
 fall of man God intimated his purpose to redeem 
 him through the bloody sacrifice of his only- 
 begotten Son, in the promise that “ the seed of 
 the woman should bruise the serpent’s head 
 that in accordance with this scheme he estab¬ 
 lished a system of bloody sacrifices typical of 
 the infinite Sacrifice to be offered on Calvary 
 after the lapse of centuries ; and that he commit¬ 
 ted the knowledge of this divine contrivance to 
 the Hebrew people as his chosen ones. This, 
 of course, made it necessary to establish a pnest- 
 hood , for how could there be altars and sacrifices 
 without priests ? 
 
208 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 But here we are confronted by the astounding 
 fact that the whole system of vicarious atone¬ 
 ment through bloody sacrifices is the most 
 prominent characteristic of the most ancient 
 pagan religions. Moreover, all nations, from the 
 most remote Hindoo to the modern Christian, 
 have had essentially the same ideas, modified 
 by circumstances, regarding a divine incarnation 
 through a human mother, generally a virgin— 
 the divine man, always a moral teacher and re¬ 
 former, closing his wonderful life, in the last act 
 of the moral drama, by a violent death, generally 
 crucifixion. Petty preachers mislead their hear¬ 
 ers by ignorantly asserting that these ancient peo¬ 
 ples obtained their ideas from the divine revela¬ 
 tion made to Jews and Christians, but the most 
 eminent Sanskrit scholar of the world, Max 
 Muller, professor in the orthodox University of 
 Oxford, says: “ The opinion that the pagan re¬ 
 ligions were mere corruptions of the religion of 
 the Old Testament, once supported by men of 
 high authority and learning, is now as complete¬ 
 ly surrendered as the attempt at explaining Greek 
 and Latin as corruptions of Hebrew.” 
 
 It is certain that if the redemptive scheme of 
 modern theology through a divine incarnation 
 and vicarious sacrifice is a supernatural revela¬ 
 tion, it was not first given to Jews and Christians. 
 It is impossible to give details here and now, but 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 209 
 
 it is safe to risk one’s reputation for intelligence 
 and honesty upon the allegation that the redemp¬ 
 tive contrivance of dogmatic theology is as 
 heathenish and mythical as the fanciful fable of 
 the fall of Adam and Eve; and the one is de¬ 
 pendent upon the other. If all men are not 
 descendants of Adam, and if he did not fall as 
 the legend alleges, and men are not depraved in 
 consequence of such fall, but from other causes, 
 then the whole system of salvation through the 
 vicarious blood of an innocent person must go 
 down for want of foundation. It can be shown 
 just how the dogma of vicarious atonement 
 originated, and how it came to be incorporated 
 into modern theological systems. 
 
 There are several other links in the mystical 
 theologic chain that must also drop out in con¬ 
 sequence of the failure of the first link. Priests 
 of all classes, as a sacred order , an elect holy caste , 
 must, as a consequence, be regarded as impos¬ 
 tors, though many of them may be regarded as 
 useful moral teachers. The idea of a holy order 
 of men having special sanctity and peculiar medi¬ 
 atorial functions between God and man is a relic 
 of heathen superstition, and must soon be so re¬ 
 garded except by the sacerdotal class itself and 
 their confiding dupes. 
 
 The dogma that death would have been un¬ 
 known but for Adam’s fall is so flatly contra- 
 
 14 
 
2 io' Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 dieted by the facts of geology that one should 
 blush to suggest it, even at funerals, when every 
 intelligent man knows that millions of animals 
 died before man appeared upon this globe. 
 
 It could easily be shown how the dogmas of 
 the material resurrection of the human body and 
 literal hell-torments and other irrational and un¬ 
 scientific assumptions must go down with the 
 false foundation upon which they are based. 
 
 But the most serious aspect of this subject is 
 yet to be presented. The dogma of the fall and 
 total depravity of man is demoralizing , and fur¬ 
 nishes an excuse for wrong-doing. It not only 
 impeaches the divine wisdom and love, but it 
 makes man responsible for what he could not 
 help. He is told that he could not do right if 
 he would, but that if he should do right it would 
 count for nothing. He cannot help himself, and 
 he inwardly curses God and Eve and all his 
 faithless ancestry. He naturally does what he 
 is told he cannot help doing, just as children are 
 almost sure to act like the depraved little dem¬ 
 ons that some parents call them and teach them 
 to believe themselves to be. And yet all men 
 feel at times that they are not totally depraved, 
 that they have more good impulses than bad 
 ones, and that, upon the whole, they perform 
 more good acts than evil ones. 
 
 Equally demoralizing is the dogma of pardon 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 211 
 
 and deliverance from the consequences of wrong¬ 
 doing through a divine contrivance of the vica¬ 
 rious sufferings of an innocent person, and that 
 human disobedience is made all right as to con¬ 
 sequences by the obedience of a divine man. 
 The answer of theologians to this charge is 
 familiar to all, but is not practically accepted 
 by common minds. When the child enters the 
 Sunday-school room and his eyes rest upon the 
 conspicuous placard, “Jesus Paid it All!” the 
 inference is that there is nothing more to pay. 
 And this conclusion is confirmed by the lesson 
 that the sole condition of pardon is faith in and 
 acceptance of the free gift. Thousands of igno¬ 
 rant persons, Catholic and Protestant, no doubt 
 secretly rely upon this easy and convenient de¬ 
 vice to cover ud their numerous shortcomings 
 
 i. o 
 
 and misdoings. Such dogmas are welcome in 
 the murderer’s cell and upon the platform of the 
 gallows. In thousands of ignorant minds the 
 thought is no doubt deeply concealed that about 
 the surest way to get to heaven is to commit a 
 murder and have the “ benefit of clergy,” and in 
 due time be “jerked to Jesus” (as described by 
 a Western journal) by the hangman’s rope. Such 
 a system of theology must be demoralizing. 
 Suppose that our State authorities should pro¬ 
 claim in advance free pardon and a princely pal¬ 
 ace to all law-breakers on the simple condition 
 
212 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 of trusting in the kindly interposition and substi- 
 tion of another, already made and accepted , what 
 would be the effect upon public morals ? All 
 public officers know the evil effects of the “ par¬ 
 don ” system, and how even the faintest hope of 
 pardon encourages crime, and how certainly a 
 free pardon is followed by a life of even increased 
 criminality. There is nothing in the analogy of 
 nature, nothing in the jurisprudence of civilized 
 nations, nothing in reason or philosophy or sci¬ 
 ence, to justify the theologic method of dealing 
 with offenders. It violates every principle of 
 justice. It has not one single quality of right- 
 fulness in it. It is a fiction pure and simple in 
 fact and in form. Macaulay well said of this 
 redemptive contrivance, “ It resembles nothing 
 so much as a forged bond with a forged release 
 endorsed upon its back.” Greg pungently de¬ 
 scribed it thus : “ It looks very much like an 
 impossible debt paid in an inconceivable coin, 
 or like a legal fiction, purely gratuitous, got rid 
 of by what looks very like a legal chicanery, 
 purely fanciful.” It was hardly known to Ter- 
 tullian in the third century of our era, and was 
 finally formulated by Anselm in the eleventh 
 Christian century on certain principles of Ro¬ 
 man law. It was not taught by Jesus, and, 
 though known to the Gnostics in the second 
 century (a. d.), it was not originated by them. 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 213 
 
 Ancient pagan hierophants taught the dogma of 
 vicarious atonement, and had the option to sac¬ 
 rifice their own sinless persons or that of an an¬ 
 imal to propitiate the gods. They also had the 
 dogma of the mystic “ new birth ” through the 
 baptism of blood , and that long before the Essenes, 
 who preceded the Christians and also held the 
 dogma, came into existence. The so-called 
 mystery of the Eucharist is older than the 
 “paschal lamb” of Judaism or the “Lord’s 
 Supper ” of the New Testament. There is 
 something truly significant in the ancient pagan 
 rite of water- baptism, symbolic of purification, 
 but the dogma of purification by blood is devoid 
 of such symbolic significance, and if contemplated 
 without superstitious preconceptions is decidedly 
 revolting. It implies false conceptions of God’s 
 character as one delighting in blood, and is sug¬ 
 gestive of the sacrifice of human beings, and 
 even of cannibalism. It is a relic of the ancient 
 barbaric fetichism, and, except when used meta¬ 
 phorically to denote suffering for others, has no 
 place in a rational system of religion. The true 
 at-one-ment of Jesus was to reconcile men to 
 God, not a contrivance to appease an angry God 
 by paying a price for the redemption of man, to 
 satisfy an imaginary claim of divine justice, and 
 to overcome an obstacle to the salvation of men 
 by which the Infinite found himself confronted. 
 
214 Man — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 That the dominant theology of the past and 
 present needs revision , as there are certain under¬ 
 lying principles in almost every dogma (as Dr. 
 James Freeman Clarke, in Orthodoxy , its Truths 
 and Errors , has ably shown), is a fact fully real¬ 
 ized by all clear and independent thinkers. The 
 author of Ecce Homo (understood to be Professor 
 Seeley of the University College of London) in 
 his recent work, Natural Religion , has clearly 
 shown that the opposition of scepticism is not 
 antagonism to religion , but to certain dogmas of 
 theology , and that about all that scientific sceptics 
 object to can be given up without affecting the 
 essential principles of true religion, but greatly 
 to its advantage. 
 
 Let us now attempt to foreshadow the faith of 
 the future as it will probably be held by inde¬ 
 pendent thinkers. 
 
 They will not accept the anthropomorphic, 
 man-like conceptions of God as found in the 
 popular theology and as presented in portions 
 of the Plebrew Scriptures. They will define God 
 as spirit , and will improve on the translation in 
 John 4 : 24 by rendering it thus : “ Spirit is God." 
 They will hold the idea of the divine immanence, 
 as being in all things, not outside of anything. 
 
 They will regard the divine government, nat¬ 
 ural and moral (though they will probably make 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 215 
 
 no such distinction), as pre-eminently one of 
 law , and will find the highest wisdom in seeking 
 to be in harmony with the order of the universe. 
 They will have little or no faith in miracles as 
 defined by theologians, and will probably drop 
 the word supernatural from their vocabulary. 
 
 They will regard man as of divine origin , not 
 by miraculous and sudden creation, but by or¬ 
 derly evolution. They will not look upon man 
 as degraded in consequence of an act of some 
 ancestor ages and ages ago, but as degraded, if 
 degraded, by his own acts or the acts of his 
 immediate ancestors. 
 
 They will recognize the law of heredity, and 
 seek to profit by it. If they speak of a child as 
 “ conceived and born in sin,” they will mean the 
 sin of his own parents and their immediate an¬ 
 cestors—the sin of unrestrained animal lust, the 
 sin of alcoholic stimulation, of narcotic poison, 
 and other violations of natural law. When the 
 fathers eat sour grapes, the children’s teeth will 
 always be set on edge. 
 
 The doctrine of “original sin” will be held as 
 already explained, and some things now called 
 sins will be called infirmities. Man’s defective 
 moral status will be esteemed a want of develop¬ 
 ment , imperfection , incompleteness , rather than 
 essential depravity or innate viciousness. 
 
 In the near future men will realize that salva- 
 
2 i6 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 tion has other than a theologic meaning—that if 
 man would be saved from sin and suffering he 
 must save himself by the use of appropriate rem¬ 
 edies. Evil can only be overcome by “ ceasing 
 to do evil and learning to do well.” The same 
 principles must be applied to religion that are 
 applied to worldly subjects. Yet the word savior 
 will not become obsolete. There have been many 
 saviors, and men to-day may profit by them all, 
 and by none more than by the life and spirit of 
 the sweet humane Prophet of Nazareth. Confu¬ 
 cius, Gautama, Socrates, Plato, and many others 
 were saviors of men, and so were Savonarola, 
 Washington, and Lincoln. Jesus will always 
 have the pre-eminence, but not in the theologic 
 sense, which he never claimed for himself. 
 
 The pagan doctrine of the resurrection of the 
 material human body at some future day will 
 be rejected as unscientific and absurd. Sir John 
 Herschel states that in a hundred generations one 
 pair of human beings would produce such a mul¬ 
 titude that if spread out over the surface of the 
 whole earth, and standing in rows of persons each 
 four feet high, the height of the column in three 
 thousand years would reach to three thousand six 
 hundred and seventy-four times the distance be¬ 
 tween the sun and the earth ! The number of 
 human strata thus piled one on the other would 
 amount to 460,790,000,000,000. These and sim- 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 217 
 
 ilar arithmetical and physical facts may properly 
 be considered in connection with the ideas of the 
 material resurrection and general judgment, as the 
 earth does not contain matter enough and space 
 enough to justify such wild dogmas. Even now 
 thousands of thoughtful persons reject the doc¬ 
 trine of a physical resurrection on scriptural 
 grounds. Paul certainly taught the resurrection 
 of a spiritual body (1 Cor. ch. 15). Scholars know 
 that the Greek word “ anastasis" commonly trans¬ 
 lated “ resurrection ’’ in the New Testament, means 
 “rising up," not rising again, or resuscitation. 
 The rational doctrine of the resurrection will 
 be found to be the rising tip ot the spiritual body 
 out of the defunct physical body, and that this 
 resurrection takes place at the time of death. 
 
 The idea that sin deserves eternal punishment 
 because it is an offence against an infinite God 
 will be found to have no foundation. A finite 
 man cannot commit an infinite crime. Wrong¬ 
 doing will always be followed by suffering, and 
 the true idea of punishment is that it is a product 
 or consequence, and not a mere judicial penalty, 
 and that it is always remedial, not vindictive. 
 
 When religion becomes more a matter of rea¬ 
 son than of dogma men will entertain very differ¬ 
 ent views of prayer. They will not ask and ex¬ 
 pect God to work miracles, to suspend the order 
 of the universe, to accommodate them. An im- 
 
218 Alan — Whence and Whither ? 
 
 portant lesson was learned when millions and 
 millions of men and women were upon their 
 knees praying for the life of President Garfield. 
 The physical injury done by Guiteau’s bullet 
 could not be repaired by unnumbered prayers. 
 And yet prayer is a true religious instinct, and 
 is countenanced by Nature and philosophy. The 
 true elements of prayer are meditation and aspi¬ 
 ration rather than supplication for special favors. 
 It is more a matter of the heart than the voice. 
 It is rather silence than gorgeous ritualism from 
 richly-bound prayer-books. 
 
 Assemblies for public worship will probably 
 never be done away. There are many things 
 that are grand and inspiring in the great con¬ 
 gregation, and many advantages that could be 
 enumerated. Proper persons to lead and direct 
 public religious exercises will perhaps always 
 be a necessity, but the priestly idea is bound to 
 destruction. This idea has already found prac¬ 
 tical expression in The Index , in an article by 
 Robert C. Adams, as follows: 
 
 • • • “ The question then arises, How can we do with¬ 
 out ministers ? The chief offices of the ministry are in 
 connection with marriages, funerals, visitations, sacra¬ 
 ments, and church services. What substitutes can be 
 employed ? The civil magistrate can secure the marriage- 
 bond. The professional utterance at the side of the dead 
 will either not be missed by the mourners, with whom 
 each word at such times stirs up the fountains of grief, or 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 219 
 
 it may be acceptably replaced by the simple tribute of a 
 friend and comrade who knew the departed as few min¬ 
 isters ever come to know their parishioners. Visitation, 
 of the sick can be more agreeably carried on by neigh¬ 
 bors and friends, who now often deprive the invalid and 
 themselves of the mutually beneficial expression of sym¬ 
 pathy and acts of kindness because that is consideied the 
 pastor’s sphere. Sacraments, if continued, can be admin¬ 
 istered by laymen. Church attendance has too many 
 social attractions to be given up, and where a minister is 
 lacking the services might be conducted after this man¬ 
 ner : A committee should be formed to control them, one 
 of whom should in turn preside. The music could be in¬ 
 definitely improved, and its sphere and character, as to 
 words, tunes, and instruments, enlarged. Readings of 
 scriptures from ancient and modern authors should be 
 given by young people of both sexes who possess orator¬ 
 ical talent. If prayer is not outgrown, there will be always 
 good brethren ‘ gifted ’ in that respect, some of whom may 
 even exercise the somnolent influence attending ‘ the long 
 prayer.’ But how can the sermon be replaced ? By read¬ 
 ing a printed discourse ? By no means. Every congre¬ 
 gation possesses thinking and cultured men with good 
 utterance. Let these read original papers upon the themes 
 they are most familiar with, the subject first being ap¬ 
 proved by the committee. Let there be one paper of 
 half an hour’s length at each service, and let a discussion 
 follow for another half hour in five-minute speeches. At 
 the close let, the people linger for friendly greetings. 
 Many advantages will be gained by this method. Each 
 person’s mind runs in certain directions and emphasizes 
 particular truths, and one man s instructions must lack 
 variety.” 
 
 The doctrine of holy orders of men, who are 
 supposed to be endowed with sacred func¬ 
 tions and special mediatorial influence with 
 
220 Man—Whence and Whither ? 
 
 God, is a delusion and a false pretence, a relic 
 of Brahmanical caste and pagan sacerdotalism. 
 The ultimate influence of priestcraft has always 
 been evil, whether among barbarians or civilized 
 peoples, and many intelligent persons incline to 
 the opinion that the priestly class in modern 
 times are the greatest hindrance to the progress 
 of virtue and true religion, and the chief pro¬ 
 moters of Atheism and Agnosticism. Of course, 
 there are exceptions to this sweeping suspicion, 
 but the feeling is becoming general that the peo¬ 
 ple of these United States are not receiving proper 
 returns from the labors of the seventy-five thou¬ 
 sand ministers whom they support and for the 
 millions of dollars they have invested in churches. 
 Simple moral teachers of both sexes could well 
 take the place of pompous priests. This ques¬ 
 tion of a professional priestly class, to be sup¬ 
 ported as such, is one into which many sensible 
 persons are inquiring, and in regard to which 
 they will reach no doubtful conclusion. 
 
 The question as to the light in which the Bible 
 will be regarded as science advances is not diffi¬ 
 cult to answer. Men are already beginning to 
 realize that bibles are products of religion, rather 
 than that religions are products of the bibles. 
 We say bibles , because all religionists have their 
 sacred scriptures, each claiming special inspira¬ 
 tion and infallibility. Even what in our day and 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 221 
 
 country is called the Bible consists of sixty-six 
 little books or tracts bound up in one volume. 
 These little pamphlets are mostly anonymous, 
 and are of uncertain date and locality. They 
 contain the very best thoughts of the writers at 
 the time of their writing, and contain many 
 things that will never become obsolete. The 
 bibles of different nations should be studied as 
 we study history and geology, as showing the 
 development and progress of the religious senti¬ 
 ment, as geology shows the order and progress 
 of creation The greatest enemies of the Hebrew 
 and Christian Bible are those who claim for it 
 what it is not. The greatest mistake of the 
 Christian centuries was the attempt of the so- 
 called Reformers to offset the claim of an infal¬ 
 lible pope with an infallible Bible. Infallibility 
 belongs to neither; both are imperfect. Book- 
 infallibility is an absurdity. If a religion is 
 founded upon a book, it must share in the im¬ 
 perfections and mistakes which are inseparable 
 from books. Knowledge is comparative and 
 progressive, while books are stationary. The 
 attempt to settle all questions of morals and 
 religion by what was written down in the dark 
 ages of barbarism and superstition is simply ab¬ 
 surd. The future of religion should not be made 
 dependent upon any dogma or alleged historical 
 facts the truth of which progress in knowledge 
 
222 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 may afterward compel men to reject. It is un¬ 
 wise in the extreme to put religion in a close, 
 perilous alliance with what is at least question¬ 
 able, if not false, and to subject it to the hazard 
 involved in the acceptance of fanciful cosmogonies, 
 discredited chronologies, and miraculous stories, 
 which science and modern discoveries have al¬ 
 ready assigned to the region of myth and the 
 fabled legends. The fragmentary scraps com¬ 
 posing our Bible may be studied with profit. 
 As helps to religion they are more or less useful ; 
 as an infallible authority they are without merit. 
 Men know that they are not infallible, and that 
 all parts are not of equal excellence. The great 
 promoters of scepticism to-day are the purblind 
 pulpit declaimers and their dupes, who lustily 
 vociferate, “ If everything in the Bible is not 
 true, nothing in it is true“ If you reject any 
 part, you must reject all ” ! The fact is, that 
 many things in the Bible are true and many 
 things are false. Intelligent men of the future 
 will judge the Bible by its merits, just as they 
 judge other books. The day will no doubt 
 come when the world shall have a nezv canon 
 of sacred scriptures compiled from the best spe¬ 
 cimens found in the bibles of all ages, and from 
 which will be excluded everything that is puerile, 
 obscene, manifestly false, or unfit to be read in 
 any presence. Such a book, not as an infallible 
 
Science and Creeds. 
 
 223 
 
 authority, but as a help in religion and morality, 
 would be invaluable. 
 
 It is not intended in these hasty sketches to 
 even suggest a formulated creed. Men will 
 never be of one mind on all subjects. But the 
 nearer they get to Nature, the nearer they will 
 get to one another. The methods of science are 
 sure to be applied in the domain of religion. 
 A religion that is not natural is not worthy of 
 the name. Theology says, “ Let science be si¬ 
 lent when God speaks.” Reason answers, that 
 when true science speaks it is the voice of the 
 Infinite. All happiness here and hereafter de¬ 
 pends upon our knowledge of the order of the 
 universe, and the adaptation of our lives to it. It 
 is impossible t'o divorce true religion and real 
 science. The more we have of the latter, the 
 more we shall have of the former. 
 
 Realizing how imperfectly these great ques¬ 
 tions have been presented, comfort is found in 
 the following inspiring words from the pen of 
 Theodore Tilton : 
 
 “ Others shall sing the song, 
 
 Others shall right the wrong— 
 
 Finish what I begin, 
 
 And all I fail of win. 
 
 “ What matter, I or they, 
 
 Mine or another’s day, 
 
24+23 Man—Whence and Whither? 
 
 So the right word be said 
 And life the sweeter made ? 
 
 “ Hail to the coming singers! 
 
 Hail to the brave light-bringers ! 
 Forward I reach, and share 
 All that they sing and dare. 
 
 “ The airs of heaven blow o’er me ! 
 A glory shines before me 
 Of what mankind shall be— 
 
 Pure,., generous, brave, and free— 
 
 “A dream of man and woman 
 Diviner, but still human, 
 
 Solving the riddle old, 
 
 Shaping the Age of Gold! 
 
 “ The love of God and neighbor; 
 An equal-handed labor; 
 
 The richer life, where beauty 
 Walks hand in hand with duty. 
 
 “ Ring, bells in unreared steeples, 
 The joy of unborn peoples ! 
 Sound, trumpets far off blown; 
 Your triumph is my .own ! 
 
 “ Parcel and part of all, 
 
 I keep the festival, 
 
 Fore-reach the good to be. 
 
 And share the victory. 
 
 “ I feel the earth more sunward, 
 
 I join the great march onward, 
 And take by faith, while living, 
 My freehold of thanksgiving.” 
 
A dvertisement. 
 
 225 
 
 THE BIBLE-WHENCE AND WHAT? 
 
 BY RICHARD B. WESTBROOK, D. D., LL.B. 
 
 One Volume. Clotli. Price, $1.00. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
 
 Nos. 715 and 717 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I.—Foundation of the “ Authorized ” Version of the New Testa¬ 
 ment. 
 
 II.—The New Version Basis (1881). 
 
 III. —Canonicity of the Scriptures. 
 
 IV. —Custody of the Scriptures. 
 
 V.—Miracle, Prophecy, Martyrdom, and Church Infallibility. 
 
 VI.—Internal Evidence. 
 
 VII.—Probable Origin of the Old Testament. 
 
 VIII.—Probable Origin of the New-Testament Books. 
 
 IX.—Probable Origin of Certain Boginas found in all Religions. 
 
 X.—Is the Bible strictly Historical, or mainly Allegorical? 
 
 XI.—Were the Jewish and Christian Scriptures written Before 
 or After the Pagan Bibles? 
 
 XII.—The Summing-up. 
 
 XIII.—Interlocutory. 
 
 Extracts from Notices of the Press. 
 
 “ This is the latest of critical works on the much-discussed topic of the 
 Bible; and, coming from the pen of one whose titles indicate both the 
 scholastic training of theology and of law, and bearing the imprint of the 
 old and popular publishing-house of Lippincott & Co., one naturally ex¬ 
 pects to find in the little volume something to warrant the continuation of 
 this discussion at this late day. Nor have we been disappointed in read¬ 
 ing the book, for we find it replete with learning from hundreds of sources, 
 entertaining in style, strong in logic, and a remarkable specimen of the 
 condensation into a little of an amount of research that implies years of 
 conscientious labor.”— Daily Register, Newburgh, N. Y. 
 
 “ The reader who judges by the orthodox titles of the writer of this book 
 that a defence of the Bible on old grounds is undertaken, will be very much 
 surprised to find in this volume a searching and broad inquiry into the 
 authenticity of the authorized version itself. The method of the writer in 
 discussing ceremonials is that of the late Dean Stanley, who traced ‘ the 
 elements and roots of religion as far back as we can trace the history of 
 man.’ The historical method is employed with no irreverent spirit by Dr. 
 Westbrook, and the result is an extremely interesting book.”— Public 
 Ledger, Philadelphia. 
 
226 
 
 A dvertisemen t. 
 
 “ A frank acknowledgment that the age of mysticism and scholastic sub- 
 tilties is past, and that broad common-sense must be umpire. The author 
 declares his purpose to be to enlarge and strengthen the foundations of true 
 religion. He believes that infidelity can be checked only by presenting 
 more rational views of the Bible and its interpretation. His conclusions 
 regarding the Bible are against its plenary, supernatural inspiration and 
 literal infallibility."— Home Journal, New York. 
 
 “ This book will without doubt call forth much adverse criticism, yet it 
 must be condemned only by those who fear to let the light of truth in upon 
 the dark places of their understandings. . . . The book is clearly, forcibly, 
 and ably written. The style is lively and calculated to interest all who 
 have any taste for the subjects therein discussed. It is scarcely necessary 
 to say that it is logical. This work aims only to expose the fallacy of the 
 idea that the Bible must be accepted as of absolute authority, simply be¬ 
 cause men have said that it must be so received ; it is an authority because 
 and in so far as it is true, not true because it has been declared to be an 
 authority.”— The Journal {Friends’), Philadelphia. 
 
 “ All interested in theological research will find this volume both valuable 
 and interesting. It is fearless, sensible, and outspoken. In it the Bible 
 and all the facts connected with it are examined in a rational manner, and 
 the result cannot fail to meet the approval of all scholars and deep think¬ 
 ers."— Chronicle-Herald, Philadelphia. 
 
 “ And now comes a Doctor of Divinity, with his reason, logic, and 
 learning, and tells us what the Bible is and whence it came. . . . The 
 great mass of reading people are inclined to know the truth if it can be 
 reached, and this author, hiding nothing that is known to the learned, and 
 still clinging to the Christian religious belief, takes the anxious reader by 
 the hand and leads him up to the facts so far as they have been ascer¬ 
 tained. . . . This volume casts a flood of light upon things not generally 
 known, but which linguistic and biblical scholars admit, and the author 
 thinks that the people have a right to know all that can be known. . . — 
 
 The Republican , St. Louis. 
 
 “ It would be well if not only the laity, but also clergymen, should 
 read and carefully study this book. Mucb of bigotry that now obtains 
 would then be dissipated, and a broader, truer view of Christianity would 
 be the result. "— National Republican, Washington, D. C. 
 
 “ Dr. Westbrook has brought together in his book a great many facts 
 and a great deal of valuable information in regard to the Bible, its author¬ 
 ship and authority. . . . Besides the historical information there are intel¬ 
 ligent and scholarly arguments on the basis of acknowledged facts regard¬ 
 ing the authenticity of the books and the dogmas of the Bible, and very 
 interesting comparisons of the texts of the Christian religion with those of 
 other religions. . . . The work is a valuable contribution to the history of 
 the Bible.”— Boston Post. 
 
 “ It is a condensed presentation of views with regard to the origin of the 
 Bible, its teachings, and its claims to a supernatural character, presented 
 from a rationalistic standpoint. Its style is particularly direct and forci¬ 
 ble, and its general arrangement is excellent. There is the fruit of much 
 reading, study, and thought in its pages; it is thoroughly independent in 
 its tone, and as an epitome of the views which its author holds is much to 
 be commended for its compact and clear method."— Boston Saturday Even¬ 
 ing Gazette. 
 
V