n,iss FVT^E 
 
 Book___J 
 
 Copghl N° 
 
 COHYHIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
Elje Ingcrsoll Hectare, 1906 
 
 THE 
 HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 OUR REASONS FOR IT 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES FLETCHER DOLE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE COMING PEOPLE," "THEOLOGY 
 
 OF CIVILIZATION," "THE RELIGION OF 
 
 A GENTLEMAN," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
[library of congress" 
 
 Two Copies Rectived 
 
 SEP 21 1906 
 
 r* Copyright Entry 
 
 COPY B. *> [ 
 
 Copyright, 1906, 
 By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 Published, October, 1906. 
 
THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP 
 
 Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, 
 
 who died in Keene, County of Cheshire, New 
 
 Hampshire, Jan. 26, f8<pj. 
 
 First In carrying out the wishes of my late 
 beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as 
 declared by him in his last will and testament, I 
 give and bequeath to Harvard University in 
 Cambridge, Mass., where my late father was 
 graduated, and which he always held in love and 
 honor, the sum of Five thousand dollars ($5000) 
 as a fund for the establishment of a Lectureship 
 on a plan somewhat similar to that of the Dud- 
 leian lecture, that is — one lecture to be deliv- 
 ered each year, on any convenient day between 
 the last day of May and the first day of Decem- 
 ber, on this subject, "the Immortality of Man," 
 said lecture not to form a part of the usual col- 
 lege course, nor to be delivered by any Professor 
 or Tutor as part of his usual routine of instruc- 
 tion, though any such Professor or Tutor may be 
 appointed to such service. The choice of said 
 lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious 
 denomination, nor to any one profession, but 
 may be that of either clergyman or layman, the 
 appointment to take place at least six months 
 before the delivery of said lecture. The above 
 sum to be safely invested and three-fourths of 
 the annual interest thereof to be paid to the 
 lecturer for his services and the remaining fourth 
 to be expended in the publishment and gratui- 
 tous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which 
 is always to be furnished by the lecturer for such 
 purpose. The same lecture to be named and 
 known as " the Ingersoll lecture on the Immor- 
 tality of Man." 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I have undertaken in the following 
 pages to state as simply as possible the 
 reasons that urge me to a belief in the 
 reality of the immortal life. It may be 
 of interest to readers if I say a few 
 words at the beginning about the "per- 
 sonal equation " in my own case. It has 
 always been extremely easy for me to see 
 the difficulties that arise in the way of a 
 belief in immortality. I have taken pains 
 never to escape the sight of these diffi- 
 culties, but rather to seek them out and 
 measure them at their full value. I am 
 unhappy if I have an intimation that 
 there lies somewhere any formidable con- 
 sideration, with which I am not familiar, 
 touching an important subject. I hold 
 that no man knows one side or aspect 
 of a question, unless he knows its other 
 
 sides also. 
 
 iii 
 
iv Preface 
 
 Moreover, perhaps by some fault of 
 temperament, I do not happen to have 
 the intense yearning that many profess 
 for an endless existence. I feel about a 
 future life as one might feel in regard 
 to setting forth upon an untried voyage; 
 for example, to some distant star. So far 
 as I have confidence that I am a citizen 
 of a rational universe, I can conceive that 
 the unknown voyage will be worth all the 
 trouble it may cost. The venture stirs 
 my interest. But otherwise, I have little 
 sense of clinging to life, merely in order 
 to live. Thus, though I heartily enjoy 
 life, " taking it all in all," yet I have no 
 eager desire to live however comfortably 
 to great age, and I should distinctly dep- 
 recate for myself or for others the fulfil- 
 ment of a certain noted Russian biologist's 
 prophecy that mankind may learn to ex- 
 tend the average lifetime to a hundred 
 and fifty years! 
 
 So far, then, as I feel desire for life, 
 the desire is that my life may count for 
 
Preface v 
 
 something, and have use or value. Why- 
 should any one care to have existence at 
 all, unless his life contributes in some way 
 to the sum of the worth of the universe ? 
 Life, now and here, interests me, because 
 it is social; that is, we are each able to 
 serve, help, and enrich one another, and to 
 increase the total wealth and welfare of 
 humanity. It is only on some such terms 
 as these that life seems worth living any- 
 where. 
 
 I have asked myself whether I would 
 not be content if I might in some way 
 pass over into that " immortality of in- 
 fluence" of which we sometimes hear. 
 I think that I could be content, provided 
 this were the best use to which I could 
 be put, and provided this influence itself 
 were more than a breath destined to pass 
 away forever as soon as our tiny planet 
 cools away. In other words, we can bear 
 death, for ourselves, if we are not wanted 
 anywhere. But we do wish to be able to 
 respect the world we live in, and we could 
 
vi Preface 
 
 hardly respect a universe that created a 
 Socrates, a Michael Angelo, or an Epicte- 
 tus only to destroy him, as the early gods 
 are reputed to have devoured their own 
 offspring. 
 
 This brings me frankly to confess to a 
 certain bias. I own that the more I know 
 about life, the more I desire to discover 
 rationality in it. I had rather be a citizen 
 
 1 for even a brief period in a significant and 
 intelligent world than to live forever in a 
 
 ^meaningless world. I had rather be able 
 to look out for one day on the possibilities 
 of an infinite universe than to possess mil- 
 lenniums circumscribed within bounds of 
 time and place. I cannot help this kind 
 of bias. It seems to be involved in the 
 nature of mind. Other men gladly make 
 the same confession. Here is one of the 
 facts of human nature that thought has to 
 reckon with. 
 
 It is as if there were something in 
 us, like Prometheus in the ancient myth, 
 that says in the face of all merely brute 
 
Preface vii 
 
 powers : Break us down if you choose ; 
 annihilate us ; yet we are more and greater 
 than you; we defy you to hurt us. For 
 we are the offspring of reason, and our 
 supreme desire is toward the good and the 
 beautiful. What a marvellous thing, on 
 any ground, that such a conception has 
 entered into Man's mind ! 
 
 I have owned to a certain bias. Does 
 the fact of such a bias constitute a 
 disqualification against the student, the 
 investigator, or the thinker who frankly 
 acknowledges it and makes allowance 
 accordingly ? I think not. A man con- 
 sults a physician upon the question of his 
 health. He has a bias in favor of being 
 found constitutionally sound. All the 
 more careful is he to choose an expert 
 physician, who will make no mistake even 
 in favor of pronouncing him well. He 
 will insist that his physician shall tell him 
 the whole truth. 
 
 In fact, the very word " philosophy " 
 implies a bias. One of its roots means 
 
viii Preface 
 
 love. The true philosopher loves order, 
 rationality, beauty, unity, goodness. He 
 has a faith, that is, a bias toward belief 
 that truth will be found one with the good. 
 He is all the more bound, because of this 
 bias, to insist on the whole truth and noth- 
 ing but the truth. Like the man who ties 
 his boat to its mooring, he is bound to test 
 the holding power of his rope. If he can 
 break it, he has no use for it. So the man 
 who loves truth is never afraid to put it to 
 rigorous tests. If he can break it down, 
 he has no longer use for it. 
 
 I am aware that all this involves a ma- 
 jestic assumption. We suppose that there 
 is such a reality as truth ; we suppose that 
 we live in a reasonable or logical world, 
 and that our thinking follows certain in- 
 tellectual laws. We suppose that our 
 philosophical bias in favor of order and 
 unity, like our instinct toward food, is a 
 part of the reality of the world. We sup- 
 pose that the sense of duty to follow truth, 
 which honest men everywhere recognize, 
 
Preface ix 
 
 is also real. If this is " reasoning in a 
 circle/' it is the only possible mode of 
 reasoning. 
 
 We are able, however, to throw our 
 minds "out of gear," and to suppose in- 
 valid our splendid assumption of a realm 
 of order and reality. We can become 
 thoroughgoing agnostics. What happens 
 now? It follows that we have ceased 
 for the time to be thinkers. We have 
 got out of the world of logic into a 
 dream world where no logic binds things 
 together. Talk about " truth " as we may, 
 we cease to feel any obligations to follow 
 truth or speak truth. Terms and words 
 that had meaning and value before, such 
 as right and duty, now fade out of sight. 
 All that remains to us is to be observers 
 of sensations. To become thinkers again 
 means to take up the old assumption, and 
 to go on again as if we belonged to the 
 ideal realm of logic, order, beauty, truth, 
 duty, and unity. 
 
 Surely no one claims that the attitude of 
 
x Preface 
 
 intellectual agnosticism, except as a tem- 
 porary experiment, is wholesome or fruit- 
 ful. It is like holding one's breath, — a 
 desirable power to use on occasion. But 
 the moral and ideal life is always surging 
 in us and compelling us to breathe. The 
 more deeply we breathe, the more fully we 
 
 live. 
 
 U 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY: 
 OUR REASONS FOR IT 
 
 There are doubtless more people to-day 
 than ever before in the history of the world 
 who are in doubt whether they have any 
 right to hope for immortality. Sometimes, 
 they want so much to believe as to be re- 
 luctant to open the question at all or to 
 face any facts which may seem to militate 
 against their faith. Nevertheless, they are 
 not comfortable in this irrational unwilling- 
 ness to think about or discuss the greatest 
 of subjects. Others have a vague idea that 
 the hope of immortality is a matter of sen- 
 timent or blind faith, but not quite respec- 
 table in the realm of intelligence. Even 
 high-minded men seem to feel that a duty 
 to truth may compel them to smother a 
 natural longing in their hearts to believe 
 in immortality. They do not fairly credit 
 
2 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 the possibility that reason, truth, and reality 
 may lie on the side of this hope and not 
 against it. 
 
 Still further, men are very shy of the 
 supposed teachings of science. They are 
 shocked to hear that certain scientific men 
 doubt or disbelieve in immortality. Thus, 
 it was remarked after a certain Ingersoll 
 Lecture upon Immortality at Harvard Uni- 
 versity that the faces of the listeners, as 
 they went out of the hall, bore a look of 
 sadness, as if they had heard the death 
 sentence pronounced. Did these people 
 really expect that a man of science could 
 bring chemical or physical facts to throw 
 any light on the problem of immortality ? 
 
 The fact is, that we are all on one level 
 as regards the great questions that concern 
 our common humanity. The study of an- 
 cient documents, acquaintance with Greek 
 or Hebrew, familiarity with the terms of 
 philosophy, expert knowledge of soils or 
 material elements, no more than high office 
 in church or state, gives a man special 
 
The Hope of Immortality 3 
 
 standing above his fellows to tell them 
 what they ought to do, or what they must 
 believe, or what limit they must set to 
 their ideals or their hopes. The ordinary 
 observer thousands of years ago knew 
 practically as much as the most learned 
 physician knows to-day about the fact of 
 death. To all visible appearances it ended 
 life then as now. Nevertheless, in the face 
 of all appearances to the contrary, hosts of 
 people, both the unlettered and the thought- 
 ful, have believed, and still believe, that 
 death is not the end of man. It is pos- 
 sible to trace the development and the his- 
 tory of the phases of this extraordinary 
 belief. But before the main question, 
 whether or not this vast trend of belief 
 points to a reality, the expert man of 
 science only can say as he does say, that 
 if his science gives him no reason to urge 
 in the affirmative, it likewise gives him no 
 knowledge more than the rest of us have 
 to the contrary. The supreme condition 
 for wise and sane thinking here — the 
 
4 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 same as on every subject touching human 
 welfare — is the fullest possible under- 
 standing of the facts that constitute and 
 characterize human life, both as it com- 
 monly is and at its highest and best. We 
 want also the largest intellectual hospi- 
 tality and fearlessness. 
 
 There are certain concessions which must 
 occur to every one who begins to think 
 about immortality. Let us range them up 
 in clear sight and discover frankly how 
 weighty they are. Doubtless if we knew 
 nothing else but these things, we should 
 not dream of immortality. 
 
 In the first place, modern science has 
 in no respect changed, for better or worse, 
 the ordinary doctrine of plain common 
 sense touching the fact of physical death. 
 To the unaided senses death is death, the 
 cessation of all consciousness. No one cer- 
 tainly is able to see how life can continue. 
 
 Moreover, so far as any apparent evi- 
 dence goes for the continued existence of 
 myriads of " souls " or "spirits," who have 
 
The Hope of Immortality 5 
 
 passed through the gate of death, this evi- 
 dence is of the most meagre character. 
 No one can show that such a mode of con- 
 tinued life is impossible. But most of 
 us, not being trained as detectives, are 
 obliged to wait for the discovery of modes 
 of communication that will bridge the gulf 
 that now surely seems to divide "the 
 quick " from " the dead." Meanwhile 
 the general style of the alleged messages 
 from the spirit-world is not such as to 
 make continued existence there seem pre- 
 cious or desirable by comparison with the 
 best actual values of life in this world. It 
 is pathetic to suppose the wisest and best 
 among "the. mighty dead "are so help- 
 lessly balked in their desires to reach their 
 earthly friends as at the most only to con- 
 vey to them dreary platitudes and triviali- 
 ties, — the mere echoes of what we have 
 already heard. 
 
 It might be said that one tremendous 
 event in human history — the resurrection 
 of Jesus — ought to set aside all question. 
 
6 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 It is a striking fact that during the ages 
 when few perhaps doubted the story of 
 the resurrection, the fear of death weighed 
 on men's minds as at no other period. 
 Few out of millions seem really to have 
 taken pleasure in the hope of immortality. 
 The time has now come when a man, 
 even though he be a member of a Chris- 
 tian church, wants more than the tradition 
 of an event far away in time and space, 
 which itself needs to be demonstrated. 
 Men feel as an old minister in Boston 
 once remarked to a friend, " I wish as 
 long as I live to cling to the belief in the 
 resurrection of Jesus, but I do not see how 
 the next generation can do this. " And they 
 probably add, as this minister did, " I am 
 very thankful that my hope in immortality 
 does not depend upon the resurrection. " 
 It is at least highly significant that when 
 a notable leader in a great evangelical 
 church, Dr. George A. Gordon, presents 
 his best thought in his book, " The Wit- 
 ness to Immortality, " he takes pains to 
 
The Hope of Immortality J 
 
 establish the theistic faith by philosophy, 
 before he adduces his reasons for believ- 
 ing in the resurrection of Jesus. Neither 
 is it common for the professors in theolog- 
 ical schools to make immortality stand 
 or fall upon the testimony of the men 
 and women who are reputed in the Gos- 
 pels to have seen Jesus after his death. 
 For throughout history too many marvel- 
 lous stories of like events have been told 
 to permit us to rest any precious convic- 
 tion upon such testimony. At any rate, 
 whether we like it or not, we must con- 
 cede that this is the habitual attitude of 
 the modern mind. To state it in positive 
 terms, we are convinced that the only sure 
 ground for the hope of immortality must 
 be in the fact that we are in some true 
 sense immortal by nature. For unless we 
 thus possess immortality, no miracle could 
 demonstrate this fact. 
 
 Again, we admit that no one can see 
 how the transition can be made into any 
 other life than this which we here know — 
 
8 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 a life involved at every breath and thought 
 with the senses and physical conditions. 
 This element of utter mystery is already 
 contained in the present life. Who knows 
 at all how it is enabled to proceed ? Who 
 knows even what the senses are of which 
 we lightly speak ? Who in this era of 
 astounding transition regarding all physi- 
 cal theory can draw a line between matter 
 and mind, or even say that the most solid 
 material is not in reality as subtle, elusive, 
 and invisible as thought is, or will, or 
 spirit ? Who shall say that spirit is not 
 the more comprehensive word, rather 
 than matter or physics ? Everything goes 
 to show this as likely. The question of 
 the " how, " pushed far enough, would 
 seem no more to threaten the splendid pos- 
 sibilities of an immortal life than it threat- 
 ens to destroy the actuality of our present 
 existence. 
 
 We must add that we frankly call im- 
 mortality a hope. This is what it has 
 usually been, and what it is quite possible 
 
The Hope of Immortality 9 
 
 that it always must remain. From its 
 nature it must be a hope. So far as it 
 lies in the future it is beyond our sight. 
 If it means little, — the playing of harps 
 and pianos and endless gossip, — we might 
 be told by one of its messengers what it 
 is like. But the more it means, the less 
 could any one — even God himself — tell 
 us in advance what or how it may be. 
 In this respect it would only follow the 
 analogy of the profoundest experiences of 
 the present life. Who could have made 
 known to us beforehand the mysteries, 
 and yet the indisputable facts, of friend- 
 ship, of fatherhood or motherhood, of the 
 high joys of art and poetry ? 
 
 It follows, doubtless, that our minds 
 may sway on this subject, as on other sub- 
 jects of human interest, all the way from 
 more or less wonder and uncertainty to 
 various degrees of conviction and confi- 
 dence. Some may even sway back and 
 forth from a positive to a negative atti- 
 tude. Few minds, perhaps, rest solidly 
 
10 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 either on the side of the denial of immor- 
 tality, or again on the side of such abso- 
 lute belief, as, for example, Theodore 
 Parker and Tennyson were wont to ex- 
 press. Even Whittier seems to have 
 wavered in his belief. The fact of such 
 wavering on the part of many minds may 
 as well be frankly admitted. It seems to 
 be a law governing our changing moods, 
 that when we suffer depression, our con- 
 cern, whether with or without adequate 
 ground, touches the subject that we care 
 most for. Even the millionnaire may thus 
 apprehend that he is coming to want. 
 
 Once more, it must be confessed to be 
 a burden upon our thought of immortality 
 that there are so many of us. No one 
 now knows how long the world has been 
 the habitation of man, but the increasing 
 succession of the generations of human 
 beings of all ages and degrees of intelli- 
 gence, from the level of animals upward, 
 quite baffles our imagination. And yet tre- 
 mendous as is the burden of our thought, 
 
The Hope of Immortality n 
 
 the fundamental weight of the mystery 
 consists in the fact which we all admit; 
 namely, this vast procession of toiling, suf- 
 fering, aspiring human lives. We have 
 not only the question, What will be- 
 come of them ? but the question, Why are 
 they here on this vast march of life at all ? 
 
 Let me pass on to present as rapidly as 
 possible the great sweep of the reasons 
 that forever, and always more and more 
 powerfully, impel the mind to the hope of 
 immortality. 
 
 First, I am impressed with the fact that 
 man's life not only belongs to the realm of 
 the senses and what we call material things, 
 but it belongs essentially, in respect to all 
 that most concerns us as human, to the in- 
 visible realm of thought or spirit. What- 
 ever we name this realm of being, even 
 if we shy at such a makeshift word as 
 " spirit " to describe it, the fact faces us 
 that we are men, not merely by virtue of 
 the circulation of blood in our veins, but 
 
12 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 by virtue of feelings, ideas, aspirations, 
 convictions, states of consciousness, which 
 cannot be weighed or measured, but which 
 are at least as real as anything that we 
 can see or touch. We play with numbers, 
 we poetize, we behold visions of beauty, 
 we love and we forgive, we dream of hu- 
 man welfare to be worked out centuries 
 beyond our time ; we philosophize over 
 vast schemes of optimism or pessimism. 
 This is simply to say that we inhabit an 
 ideal or spiritual realm. 
 
 We need not now enter into the ques- 
 tion of what this realm of spirit is. We 
 need not insist that there is any division 
 between it and the realm where visible 
 " things " appear and animals breathe and 
 move. Grant, if you choose, that some 
 profound underlying substance makes the 
 realm of spirit one with the realm of 
 matter. We only say that the realm 
 of thought and spirit exists. You can- 
 not live a human life and ignore it. 
 Its facts are at least as real as any facts 
 
The Hope of Immortality 13 
 
 are. That they cannot be measured by the 
 instruments of the laboratory does not 
 touch their validity. We know that we 
 love our children, when we cannot even 
 see their faces, much less see the motion 
 of our love. The idea or hope of immor- 
 tality obviously belongs in this realm of 
 man's life. Whatever you think of it, it 
 is on this range and not on the range of 
 food values that we have to discuss it. 
 
 Next, it occurs to us that the presence 
 and prevalence of the idea of immortality 
 in such a world as this is a wonderful 
 thing. It is wonderful if the spiritual in- 
 terpretation of the universe is true. But 
 it is also wonderful, if this is only a ma- 
 terial world and the idea of immortality 
 has not a shred of reality behind it. I am 
 aware of the nature of the hints and sugges- 
 tions through which students of the child- 
 hood of the race tell us that this idea may 
 have grown up. Grant all that they say. 
 The idea in itself is none the less magnifi- 
 
14 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 cent and wonderful. Suppose it to have 
 been born on the side of man's senses and 
 out of material environment. The wonder 
 is that it found a sort of soil in man's 
 mind to grow in and to become what it 
 is now at its highest, — a majestic and 
 daring hope, free of selfishness, noble and 
 ennobling, setting aside all bounds of 
 space and time. This is a most extraordi- 
 nary product to come out of the mere play 
 of animal tissue ! You can no more ex- 
 plain it in this blundering way than you 
 can explain your conviction of a proposi- 
 tion in geometry or any other profound 
 fact of consciousness by the motion of 
 particles in your brain. The movement 
 of the particles, whatever it may be, is 
 subordinate to the spiritual reality which 
 they only serve to image or register. Why 
 do atoms of matter so move together as to 
 register and impress thoughts and ideas ? 
 
 Again, it is worth while to pass over on 
 occasion to the side of absolute scepticism, 
 
The Hope of Immortality 15 
 
 and to look over the precipice which, in 
 the denial of the hope of immortality, now 
 awaits the mind. The mind is not between 
 a difficult belief and an easy doubt. The 
 doubt is itself gigantic. Can we believe 
 that the march of all the generations of 
 mankind has been the way of death only ? 
 Can we believe that the noblest and holi- 
 est, the grand men of genius, the leaders 
 and helpers of mankind, have perished like 
 so many cattle ? Then we must translate all 
 life into the terms of final death. "The 
 Choir Invisible," and everything else, dis- 
 appears and " leaves not a wrack behind." 
 The more we contemplate this negative in- 
 terpretation of the universe, the more tre- 
 mendous is the strain on our intelligence. 
 Scepticism becomes at least as difficult as 
 faith seemed to be. 
 
 The fact is, this is a world of values 
 with all sorts of gradations upward. 
 The more we investigate and ponder, the 
 more clearly these values emerge and 
 
1 6 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 indeed become necessary to thought. It is 
 a workable theory of the world that its 
 chief use, and happiness, and aim, so far 
 as man is concerned, consists in learning 
 values and knowing how to direct them. 
 The child or the savage plays with count- 
 ers and beads. Presently he learns the 
 uses of all sorts of tools and building ma- 
 terials. Why does he build and learn to 
 toil ? His eyes are now toward the mean- 
 ing of home and citizenship, of friendship 
 and love, of justice, mercy, and humanity. 
 The happiness of a Franklin, for instance, 
 rises from indulgence in sensual things to 
 a quite new value of happiness ; namely, 
 the desire to do good, that sets all sensual 
 things under his feet. There is a limit to 
 the lower kind of values. You can buy 
 them off with other values of their own 
 kind, or you can exhaust them. There is 
 really no limit to the values that appear in 
 the realm of the spirit. You cannot buy 
 a mother's love or a patriot's devotion. 
 You cannot exhaust the justice in a com- 
 
The Hope of Immortality iy 
 
 munity by overdrafts. There is doubtless 
 what must be called, for want of any bet- 
 ter term, an " infinite" element in the higher 
 ranges of values, as if gold and jewels 
 were but figures and images to set these 
 nobler values forth. It is the mark of 
 manhood or intelligence, not to doubt this, 
 but rather to recognize it. 
 
 The idea of immortality is an assertion 
 of the indestructible worth of the values 
 that characterize humanity at its best. 
 The lower values, even force and motion 
 and the atoms of matter, appear to persist, 
 even while they change their forms. At 
 any rate, they effect something in exact 
 proportion to their bigness. They all make 
 the way and lead up to the fruitage of the 
 universe in its high values of truth, wis- 
 dom, justice, and good will. To affirm " im- 
 mortality" is simply to say that in a world 
 where other and lower values all accom- 
 plish something, and pass on and up in the 
 trend of their action, where even a grain 
 of sand on the seashore has its place and 
 
1 8 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 does not exist for naught, where the spring 
 flower has its chance to die in order to live 
 again in the form of fruit at the harvest, 
 the greatest of all values, to which the 
 others are mere counters, must likewise 
 go on in their proper sphere and not come 
 to naught. My mind, as it takes the path 
 of least resistance, is forced to take this 
 track in its thought. What hopeless con- 
 fusion of all that we know about values it 
 would be, if we had to think that after a 
 few aeons, while the frozen earth still kept 
 every atom intact and registered in its ma- 
 terial every impact of force, all the high 
 values that had made it once worth while 
 to study its elements and its forces — the 
 humane and spiritual values that men had 
 been working out with their toil, their tears, 
 their blood, had utterly vanished ! This is 
 to say that all virtue and goodness have 
 the worth of the pigment of a rose leaf, or 
 the tint of a summer cloud. Our intelli- 
 gence reacts from such a doctrine. Our 
 intelligence then reacts toward the idea 
 of immortality. 
 
The Hope of Immortality 19 
 
 There is no such thing as justice, or 
 truth, or love, in the abstract. All these 
 are the terms by which we describe per- 
 sons. Where no persons are, there is no 
 conceivable thought, or righteousness, or 
 will, either good or bad. Expel if you 
 can the idea of personality from the uni- 
 verse, and it is doubtful whether anything 
 would be left, for everything appears to 
 exist in some relation or other to conscious 
 and intelligent, that is personal, life. What 
 is force that represents no directing will ? 
 What is matter, except the crude stuff with 
 which intelligence shapes thought and 
 expresses itself ? There is no intelligible 
 attribute or quality in things, in weight 
 or color or taste, except as some person 
 either uses or perceives the attribute. Its 
 existence has no significance without an 
 intelligence; that is, a person into whose 
 consciousness it can enter. This is to say, 
 that the visible world somehow fits into the 
 spiritual fact of personality, and the universe 
 breaks up with personality taken out of it. 
 
20 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 Be this as it may, it is evident that im- 
 mortality is and must be personal immor- 
 tality. There is often haziness of thought 
 on this point, as if personal qualities might 
 be immortal and persons cease to be. What, 
 for example, would become of " immortal " 
 righteousness in a world where no persons 
 existed ? How does any one suppose an 
 abstract immortal " influence " would leap 
 out of a dead planet to effect action in 
 some star in the system of Sirius ? 
 
 When we speak of personality, however, 
 we tread in the realm of mystery. There 
 is nothing so real and precious. We are 
 as sure of our personality as we are of any 
 fact, but it cannot be weighed or measured, 
 and it can hardly be described. It is as 
 mysterious in man as it is in the thought 
 of God, no more and no less. It does not 
 consist in bodily form, but it shines through 
 the form and uses it, as God may be con- 
 ceived to shine through and to use the 
 structure of the universe. The most that 
 we know about it in man is that it is not 
 
The Hope of Immortality 21 
 
 complete, but is something in the process 
 of making. It is hardly observable at 
 birth ; it is normally most evident at the 
 end of man's career. It distinguishes man 
 from all other animals ; for while they and 
 he begin alike and have much in common, 
 and while no one can dogmatize as to the 
 limits of their possibilities, man alone rises 
 to the possession of actual, though still 
 imperfect, personality. Every little child 
 and the lowest savage possess at least 
 potentialities in this direction. 
 
 We know true personality best in the 
 well-developed and highest types of men, 
 as we know fruit best when it is really 
 ripe. There have been men and women 
 throughout human history who have been 
 true, generous, faithful unto death, fear- 
 less, and kind. These qualities alone 
 would not perhaps have constituted them 
 persons. What makes their personality is 
 a certain unity in their lives, whereby all 
 their experiences and their acts tend to 
 become harmonized, as it were, and to 
 
22 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 move in one direction. If the atom may- 
 be considered as a tiny centre or vortex 
 of force, we can by a parable say that the 
 life of a person is some such centre of 
 spiritual force. Let us call this spiritual 
 force love or good will. The noblest life 
 is doubtless that in which all its powers 
 and gifts — the more of them, the better — 
 move in unison with the ruling good will. 
 Here is a kind of life on which you can 
 depend ; it will not disappoint you ; it will 
 grow more noble and consistent ; it will 
 increase in its momentum ; it is a thing of 
 beauty ; all men love and admire it. 
 
 Grant for a moment that there had been 
 only one such life of a refined and all- 
 round person ; it would be the most won- 
 derful and significant human fact that men 
 could study. No investigation of physical 
 things could begin to be so interesting and 
 important as the evolution of a single com- 
 plete, normal, and ripened life. Here is 
 one who has the secret of happiness ; 
 here is promise of finding out to what 
 
The Hope of Immortality 23 
 
 man may attain. Is it possible to develop 
 other mature and normal lives, such as this 
 was ? The fact is, that we have not only 
 a single life worthy to be called a true 
 person ; we have an increasing number 
 of such lives. We are accumulating the 
 biographies of a legion of noble person- 
 alities. There were never so many pro- 
 duced as in the past century. We begin 
 to see the human conditions upon which 
 their development depends. They are 
 largely spiritual conditions. No man can 
 be accounted a student of science who 
 would neglect the consideration of these 
 facts of personality. Do we not believe 
 in personality ? If not, what do we believe 
 in, or what value is there in studying the 
 processes of life and not coming to the 
 secret of life itself ? 
 
 Let us consider a moment the extraor- 
 dinary impression that the righteous or 
 noble personality always makes on our 
 minds, and this in its fulness, the more 
 mature we are ourselves. Take the 
 
24 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 instance of Jesus. It is not necessary to 
 believe that his risen body passed through 
 closed doors and appeared to his disciples. 
 The deeper fact is that his person seemed 
 to those who knew him to be above the 
 range of death. That which constituted 
 him a person was not that which died. 
 We are not speaking in this instance of 
 some evanescent quality, like the perfume 
 of a flower, but of that which was the 
 heart and essence of the man's being, his 
 very self. Such is the nature of the per- 
 son at its best. There is no word to call 
 it by that seems more accurately to de- 
 scribe it than the term "immortal." This 
 word alone carries the impression which 
 such a life makes on beholders. We 
 are not saying that this impression must 
 therefore be true, but we are inclined 
 to think that, if all lives were so complete 
 as some whom we have heard of and 
 known, no one would doubt that man is 
 "immortal." 
 
The Hope of Immortality 25 
 
 We tend to believe that this is a world 
 of purpose. This is only to think that the 
 universe must have significance. A pur- 
 poseless universe seems to us contemp- 
 tible. It may be said that our own minds 
 impress this idea upon us, and the desire 
 to find purpose creates our belief. But 
 our minds are themselves the outgrowth 
 or the children of the universe. The na- 
 ture of intelligence is to seek order, signifi- 
 cance, purpose. It cannot be irrational 
 to trust this character of our minds. It 
 would look as if the highest faculty in us 
 answered to the highest fact of the uni- 
 verse. The contrary supposition certainly 
 reduces all thought to mockery. 
 
 Now, the idea of immortality is almost 
 the only means of expressing our thought 
 of a purposeful universe. To say that the 
 highest values do not die, to say that noble 
 persons go on in their personality, to think 
 that the universe exists to manifest and to 
 develop this order of life, is to affirm a 
 purpose worthy of the universe. Is there 
 
26 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 any other conceivable purpose ? If so, 
 what is it? For a universe of mere ever- 
 lasting succession of shifting phenomena 
 
 is not a rational universe. 
 
 c 
 
 To believe in a purposeful universe is to 
 
 believe in the integrity of the universe; 
 namely, that it is one, that it is orderly, 
 and that it can be depended upon. All 
 ^science really proceeds upon this faith. It 
 is " faith," for though it grows out of our 
 own experience and observation, we can- 
 not absolutely demonstrate it. All philoso- 
 phy is the attempt to think the facts of 
 the world and of life into some harmony 
 and unity. The very word "universe/* 
 that we use so glibly, is the expression of 
 a conviction or faith in the integrity of the 
 world. It would be strange and unreason- 
 able to use this word to sum up the result 
 of our impressions of visible or material 
 things, and then, just where the interpre- 
 tations of visible things touch the life of 
 man, to stop saying "the universe," and 
 to reduce the realm of human or spiritual 
 
The Hope of Immortality 27 
 
 facts to chaos. We are possessed by the 
 intellectual necessity, if we think of a uni- 
 verse at all, to think of it so throughout. 
 The profound facts of human personality 
 must belong to the integrity of the uni- 
 verse and must be safeguarded and not 
 brought to confusion by its laws. This is 
 just what we mean when we utter our hope 
 of immortality. There is that in the uni- 
 verse which does not merely play with 
 man's life, which does not create its off- 
 spring, — Isaiah, Jesus, Dante, Lincoln, — 
 and then blindly dash them to pieces, like 
 foam on the beach. Such is our instinc- 
 tive idea of the integrity of the world, with- 
 out the faith in which both science and 
 philosophy lose their way. 
 
 To affirm our belief in the integrity of 
 the world is also to conceive that we are 
 ourselves a part of that integrity and that 
 we partake of its nature; I mean, of 
 course, at our best, and as we become 
 more completely persons. We differ herein 
 
28 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 by a great height from the merely ani- 
 mal life. We share with the animals in 
 the elements which compose our bodies, 
 but we are lifted above the animal world 
 in the sense of the order, the beauty, the 
 intelligence, the movement and evolution 
 of life, the conception of purpose — all 
 that constitutes ideal, intellectual, or spir- 
 itual integrity. We are as much children 
 of the universe on this most rational side 
 of it, as we are its children on the side of 
 our physical environment. 
 
 Men sometimes ask whether, if man is 
 immortal, he must not always have existed? 
 We may well afford to let this mystery 
 pass. The main fact is, that in all that 
 makes man most human he seems to par- 
 take, now and here, of that spiritual sub- 
 stance which conceives, ordains, and creates 
 the world. He enters into the vastness, the 
 complexity, and the unity of its scheme as 
 if it were a drama unrolled for his under- 
 standing and his delight. He and the 
 great Dramatist must be akin. For it is 
 
The Hope of Immortality 29 
 
 not credible that man made the drama out 
 of his dreams. Whence then the dreams ? 
 
 It is a world of startling possibilities. 
 The last hundred years have witnessed an 
 astonishing series of developments on the 
 physical side. The most extraordinary 
 predictions have come true. The most 
 unexpected powers have been developed, 
 as if men had only to turn them on and 
 use them. The most hidden secrets have 
 opened up to light. The range of mystery 
 surrounding man's sight has been transfig- 
 ured from a realm of darkness into blue 
 sky, full of stars and light. The wonder 
 is not that man is so little, but that he is 
 so mighty. He inhabits a world of infinite 
 possibility. There appears a profound law_j 
 of prayer underlying all things. In less 
 mystical terms, there tends to be some 
 provision to meet every genuine need or 
 desire. It is as if it were written: "What- 
 ever is best, that shall come to pass. Ask 
 and ye shall receive." 
 
30 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 Shall we trust this law of our nature 
 in all outward things and stop trusting 
 it in the one sphere where life becomes 
 significant and most human ? The pos- 
 sibilities stretch in every direction. The 
 unexpected happens. Geniuses, intellec- 
 tual and spiritual, come to birth. New 
 ranges of character and happiness disclose 
 themselves. New necessities are laid upon 
 us. 
 
 It is here that the old parable of the 
 chrysalis and the butterfly has its signifi- 
 cance. It is only a parable, but it happens 
 beautifully to illustrate the marvellous law 
 of surprises with which nature forever 
 meets us. It is no objection to the action 
 of nature to urge that we cannot see how 
 a thing can be done. Again and again 
 the thing is done that we would not have 
 dared to believe possible. It is as if we 
 were traversing a winding road among 
 forests and hills and streams. We come 
 to places where the way seems blocked 
 by towering cliffs, and we march to what 
 
The Hope of Immortality 31 
 
 seems the edge of a chasm. As we go, 
 the way turns and opens and shows great 
 stretches of view that we never had imag- 
 ined. This is the nature of the world we 
 live in. It is no monotonous or machine- 
 made universe. Its waters break out of 
 solid ice ; at a little change of their parti- 
 cles they leap out of our sight and be- 
 come invisible and expanding power. 
 "We know not what we shall be." 
 
 There is no article of more common 
 faith than that this is somehow a moral 
 world. This is the faith of the best 
 thinkers. It shows no sign of abatement 
 because men study science. On the con- 
 trary, Franklin and Darwin and Huxley 
 and Haeckel are always teaching us to 
 tell the truth and be honest. Why ? Be- 
 cause the world of facts and the world of 
 men and the history of mankind urge tre- 
 mendous lessons upon us, and all in one 
 direction. "Be righteous," they say. "Be 
 modest, be truthful, be humane ; show your 
 
32 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 good will; do good and not evil." Here 
 is the way of life. These are the very- 
 values which we saw enter into the consti- 
 tution of personality, as the iron and lime 
 enter into our bones. They are in us 
 because they are in the structure of the 
 universe. How else? We made them 
 ourselves no more than we made the 
 iron, or created electricity, or invented 
 gravitation. We are what we are because 
 we participate in the moral structure 
 which belongs to the universe and which 
 therefore impresses itself upon us. 
 
 An appeal to justice is often made in 
 favor of immortality. Men have suffered 
 innocently here, and they ought, it is said, 
 to have compensating satisfaction some- 
 where else. But this appeal to justice is 
 in itself an expression of a faith in an ideal 
 or just universe. It implies a standard 
 of right. So far, then, this expectation of 
 justice, sure sometime to be made manifest, 
 is an instinctive tribute of human nature to 
 
The Hope of Immortality 33 
 
 the conception of an ideal universe. The 
 hope of immortality is wrapped up in the 
 thought of a just world. 
 
 We have referred to the idea of an " im- 
 mortality of influence," which many good 
 agnostics and high-minded men of science 
 are pleased to recommend for the substance 
 of hope. Of course this is not immortality 
 at all. But the fine thought behind it is 
 another tribute to a fundamental idealism 
 that characterizes noble natures. Where 
 is this mystery of influence that we all 
 acknowledge and believe in ? It is not in 
 physics or chemistry or climatic conditions. 
 It is in the invisible realm of thought and 
 emotion. It makes men humane and sets 
 up new currents of action and will in them. 
 Whoever talks of influence expresses his 
 faith in a spiritual universe. Immortality 
 is only another of the terms used by the 
 citizens of that universe. 
 
 I have said hardly a word about God. 
 We care for facts and not for names. But 
 
34 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 the play of a blind power, the motion of 
 atoms, or even of an infinite multitude of 
 mystic centres of life, would not constitute 
 a universe. Unity itself is essentially an 
 intellectual or spiritual conception. Even 
 to talk of force comes near to saying will. 
 What we discover in the universe and 
 in ourselves as a part of the universe, — 
 power, intelligence, order, purpose, integ- 
 rity, unity, and especially that which we 
 find in the most mature and perfect men, 
 namely, righteousness and good will, — all 
 this goes to describe a person. We mean 
 a person in no narrow and material sense, 
 but in the only sense in which personality 
 can exist, that is, in the realm of thought 
 and spirit. We have facts or qualities 
 which cannot possibly be detached from 
 one another, or supposed to exist each by 
 itself. They are facts which cohere and 
 tend to make a harmony. They imply a 
 kernel of reality. They are facts which 
 man only discovers, but does not create. 
 It is under the impress of these facts, 
 
The Hope of Immortality 35 
 
 peculiar to personality, that in all times 
 men have tended to some thought of God. 
 They cannot lightly shake off this thought. 
 It stands for the only rational answer to 
 what would otherwise be the blind enigma 
 of existence. It is mysterious enough, but 
 so also is our own existence as persons. 
 It is no harder to demonstrate than is the 
 fact of the personality or selfhood of our 
 friends. All incongruous appearances to 
 the contrary, the men around us on the 
 whole impress us as persons and not as 
 bodies only. Their faces, often impassive 
 or expressionless or even forbidding to us, 
 at times flash out messages, thoughts, and 
 the conviction of a guiding purpose, and 
 we believe in them, and love them accord- 
 ingly in a manner that transcends the 
 physical senses. So we seem to receive 
 flashes of intelligence, purpose, good will, 
 out of the heart of the universe, and we 
 believe in it as the seat of an infinite per- 
 sonal life. The mind rests in this thought, 
 as it rests in no other thought. The 
 
36 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 phenomena of the world fall into order under 
 this thought as they will not otherwise. 
 Especially as we live in fidelity to this 
 thought, and try the experiments which it 
 requires of us, we find life at its fullest 
 degree of satisfaction. This thought of 
 God seems to match with other things and 
 to bind them together and to complete 
 the integrity. Out of this thought of God 
 grows all religion. And man seems to be 
 constituted to need some kind of religion. 
 It is interesting to observe that in all 
 ancient pantheons, there were plenty of 
 gods, but no real persons. The gods 
 were like so many quarrelling and arro- 
 gant men — only persons in the making. 
 The modern idea of the immanent God 
 at last brings us the conception of full per- 
 sonality. Here is the unity of power, 
 thought, beauty, and goodness. Here is 
 perfect good will, manifesting itself in a 
 divine purpose of bringing its creation, its 
 children, to the fulfilment of personality 
 like its own. Take this at first as a work- 
 
The Hope of Immortality 37 
 
 ing theory, as one takes the idea of gravi- 
 tation in the physical realm, and see how 
 all problems, intellectual and practical, fall 
 into lines of order. 
 
 Pause here a moment and see what 
 it means that man should ever have dared 
 to dream of such a thought of God. Con- 
 fuse all his thinking, shatter his faith, 
 smother his aspirations, reduce him to 
 the ashes of the barest and most narrow 
 form of materialism, yet you can never 
 again think meanly of the creature, risen 
 out of the dust, in whose thought has been 
 created the beautiful temple of such a 
 faith. If he is not a child of God, then, 
 as has been wittily remarked, a God ought 
 to be created to account for the glorious 
 audacity of this mere creature of a day. 
 Again, as ever before, we find ourselves 
 not between a difficult belief and an easy 
 denial, but face to face with an incredible 
 kind of denial, which baffles thought 
 and makes science and philosophy alike 
 barren. 
 
38 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 The hope of immortality is no doubt an 
 outgrowth or consequence of the thought 
 of God. Men can never prove it by itself 
 as an isolated dogma. It is a part of the 
 integrity of religion itself. It is here that 
 we distrust any alleged material proof of 
 immortality. If our existence is not in- 
 volved in the warp and woof of the spiritual 
 structure of the world, if our nature is not 
 of the immortal order, then while you 
 might prove that the spirits of the dead 
 continue to exist in some strange whisper- 
 ing gallery beyond our usual reach, this 
 would not be immortal life. 
 
 See now what it means when we venture 
 in any real sense to say that "we believe 
 in God," in other words, that purposive 
 goodness is in the heart and essence of 
 the universe. We are bound to believe at 
 a leap that the best possible will come to 
 pass. The intelligence and the power of 
 the universe are pledged to work out a 
 destiny worthy of the scale of the infinite 
 thought. This is involved in the integrity 
 
The Hope of Immortality 39 
 
 of the universe, and in its rationality. The 
 preposterous will not be suffered to happen. 
 We could not respect a God, much less 
 worship or love any being, who brought 
 ranks of creatures into existence, shared 
 the mightiest thoughts with them, inspired 
 infinite hopes in them, lifted the noblest 
 of them into rapturous communion with 
 Himself, continually unfolded their minds 
 and hearts and disclosed the unexhausted 
 capacities of their being, only to drop 
 them into nothingness, as children blow 
 their soap-bubbles and drop them out of 
 the window to burst and vanish. Is this all 
 that God can do ? We do not find this 
 credible. The fact is, the thought of im- 
 mortality grows right out of the heart of 
 our faith in theism. You cannot separate 
 them from each other. 
 
 A word may naturally be expected here 
 touching the common expectation of the 
 world about future rewards and punish- 
 ments. Justice demands, it is thought, 
 
40 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 that the unequal conditions of human life 
 shall sometime be equalized. Without 
 venturing to claim so much as this, with- 
 out daring to assail the moral order as 
 unjust even in this life, insisting that ex- 
 cept in a moral world it is meaningless 
 to talk of justice or injustice, we are bound 
 to say that human existence at least 
 points toward and seems to call for some 
 adequate fulfilment. We see in each life 
 the beginnings of the making of a person ; 
 we interpret even failures and crimes into 
 the terms of moral discipline ; we look for 
 an outcome worthy of the cost and pain. 
 No outcome except the final winning of 
 
 personality satisfies our minds. We ask 
 r 
 for no childish system of rewards ; we do 
 
 want, by a deep law of our being, to be 
 of some use in the universe. The only 
 way to be of use is through the growth 
 vof our personality. But the life of this 
 world is not enough to fulfil our personal- 
 ity — a name to describe a sort of infinite 
 growth. 
 
The Hope of Immortality 41 
 
 The hope of immortality is not a mere 
 subject of thought ; it has to do with 
 a man's power and essential well-being. 
 We ask what the factors are that consti- 
 tute a normal or healthy life, or, in other 
 words, what makes a life most efficient 
 and happy ? One of these factors clearly 
 is a righteous purpose ; another is good 
 will ; the element of hope is another. 
 A man may live without hope, but he can 
 never be at his best so. Take away all 
 hope and you have diminished his life^ 
 power. 
 
 May not the man, however, have hope 
 in his heart and yet not in any sense think 
 of immortality ? Doubtless, indeed, many 
 persons find hope in the notion of a post- 
 humous influence, or in a dream of coming 
 fame, as children in a beleaguered and 
 doomed city might think of to-morrow's 
 play. My point is that hope, while it 
 may live in a vague way without any 
 definite object, tends to die at the rootsj 
 with the denial of immortality. This kind 
 
42 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 of denial, if outright, becomes, the more 
 one considers it, a fatal limitation. The 
 larger a man's nature, the more you have 
 hurt him the moment you have cut off all 
 sky view, as it were, from his sight and 
 shut his soul within finite walls. Suffer 
 him a bare window-pane through which 
 a star may shine, and his soul will live. 
 Deny him all rays of the infinite possibili- 
 ties, and the man will never be the same 
 in moral or spiritual health. We know 
 this by experience, having made experi- 
 ments with ourselves and having swayed 
 at times from the mood of hope to the 
 mood of utter doubt. It was as if the 
 spiritual temperature had gone down to- 
 ward the line of death. 
 
 The fact that the hope of immortality 
 quickens the flow of all our interests and 
 makes life seem worth while, the fact that 
 the man with this hope in his heart is more 
 alive and effective, and that the denial of 
 the great hope lowers the moral temper- 
 
The Hope of Immortality 43 
 
 ature, does not demonstrate immortality. 
 But the fact is very significant. So far 
 as we believe in a universe, here is one 
 of the harmonies that go to constitute it. 
 So far as we believe in the intellectual 
 integrity of the world, here is another 
 point out of many, where it is really 
 easier to believe that nature is true in 
 stirring hopes in us and making them 
 essential to our best life, than that she is 
 playing false with us. Do not the biolo- 
 gists tell us to trust in whatever makes 
 life richer or more effective ? 
 
 This factor of hope is specially bound 
 up with our social and moral activity. 
 Granted the hope of immortality, we have 
 a different kind of world from that world 
 from which hope is closed. It is as different 
 as a voyage to a port on a splendid ship 
 is different from floating on a loose raft 
 in mid ocean. This is not to deny that 
 heroism might be shown on the raft, for 
 example, by dropping off the raft to give 
 
44 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 more room and food for the survivors. 
 But no one would exert himself very 
 much to propel the hopeless raft, unless 
 a ship appeared on the horizon. So while 
 we might and would maintain the kind 
 of negative morality which consists in 
 doing no injury to our neighbors, unless 
 in an atmosphere of hope we should lack 
 the virile and positive moral earnestness 
 which urges men to arduous and costly 
 efforts for liberty, for democracy, for new 
 standards of humanity. We do not need 
 to say " Let us eat and drink for to-mor- 
 row we die." If we are noble, we can 
 never say this. But the very word " no- 
 ble " appeals to the thought of the sacred- 
 ness and significance of human life, to the 
 idea of spiritual values, to the hope of 
 human progress. To deny immortality 
 is to deny the very values to the sense of 
 which all heroism appeals. Who could 
 feel the slightest enthusiasm in efforts to 
 crowd the land with millions of people, all 
 furnished with model houses and a living 
 
The Hope of Immortality 45 
 
 wage, but believing nothing and hoping 
 nothing beyond their brief span of years, 
 more than the comfortable cattle on which 
 they fed? Better, we say, to have been 
 thrown to the lions in the Coliseum, better 
 to have marched to death with Joan of Arc, 
 better to have been mobbed with Garrison 
 or Lovejoy, than to live in a world where 
 the eternal visions had perished. But 
 when we say this, we go over to that side 
 where hope springs immortal again and 
 will not die. 
 
 This is to say that all the magnificent 
 words which make literature, and ring 
 through literature and poetry like battle- 
 cries to rally men to their highest modes 
 of action, — justice, truth, virtue, heroism, 
 the good, the best, — such words, be- 
 speaking man's spiritual nature, group 
 themselves with the words " hope " and 
 " immortality.' ' They stand or fall to- 
 gether. Raise your estimate of one of 
 these words, and you unconsciously raise 
 
46 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 your estimate of all. Depreciate any one 
 of them, and you depreciate all alike. 
 Set a price or a limit upon the worth of 
 virtue and you have limited your vision 
 of all things hoped for. Set a finite limit 
 upon hope, and you have set the same 
 finite limit upon virtue or truth. You 
 have even depreciated also the value of 
 logic and reason. 
 
 We may think of three departments 
 that make the unity of life, — thought, 
 feeling, and conduct or practice. There 
 is no subject which does not fall under 
 these three dimensions. There is no 
 subject which we really understand un- 
 less we know it in each of these three 
 aspects. Even with the study of mathe- 
 matics, goes the natural sense of admira- 
 tion at its beautiful exactness and its 
 infinite ranges, as well as an impulse to 
 experiment in the handling of concrete 
 numbers and forms. The hope of immor- 
 tality, likewise, is not a mere mode of 
 
The Hope of Immortality 47 
 
 feeling any more than it is a startling 
 subject of intellectual curiosity; it also 
 touches the practical life. Each man has 
 his choice, either to live as if the hope 
 of immortality were a delusion, or as if 
 it were valid. Here are two different 
 modes of conduct. The same man with 
 this hope veritably added to his posses- 
 sions is a different man in temper and 
 behavior from the man he would be with 
 this hope subtracted from his being. See 
 how much this means. Let us state our 
 argument in the following form : — 
 
 It is generally agreed that no physicist 
 has demonstrated or can possibly de- 
 monstrate the denial of immortality. He 
 can no more deny than he can demon- 
 strate. On the other hand, every one 
 must admit that on the side of man's 
 essential humanity, there are a whole 
 series of striking considerations which 
 have always suggested some profound 
 fact underlying the thought of immor- 
 tality. There is therefore plenty of room 
 
48 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 to hope. To say the least, it is as intelligent 
 to hope as to deny. We may then legiti- 
 mately make experiments with ourselves 
 and watch their outcome. We can take 
 the idea of immortality as a working 
 theory, as we may and often do take 
 theism. We may live a day, or a month, 
 or a year, on the basis of this theory, and 
 act accordingly. We act thus as the chil- 
 dren of eternity. We treat and respect 
 ourselves, we treat and respect other 
 men as beings of an immortal nature. 
 All meanness, injustice, selfishness, is 
 straightway ruled out of our lives. Anx- 
 ieties and fears cease for the man who 
 conceives of himself as upon an im- 
 mortal course. We have immediately 
 lighted upon a great secret of the happy 
 ^ life. No man ever truly made the sort of 
 practical experiment in conduct that befits 
 the hope of immortality without a distinct 
 lift in the range of his being. Neither 
 does he in this kind of experiment shut 
 his eyes to, much less deny, a single 
 
The Hope of Immortality 49 
 
 known fact. He simply puts his em- 
 phasis upon the facts that make him a 
 man, rather than upon the facts that 
 constitute his body. 
 
 We are here probably using the same 
 kind of reasoning which Professor Will- 
 iam James applies under the somewhat 
 obscure name of "pragmatism." Dr. 
 Washington Gladden calls it " The Prac- 
 tice of Immortality." We discover that 
 a man cannot possibly behave too nobly. 
 The nearer his conduct becomes to that 
 of an immortal being, the better it is for 
 him in heart, mind, body, and all. He is 
 thus most closely a complete man and at 
 the height of his personality. 
 
 Now, we have no other test of truth 
 than that it is whatever fits or makes 
 harmony, or, more plainly, works well. 
 We tend to believe in a thing if, without 
 fatal drawbacks, it is good for use. We 
 believe in most human propositions on this 
 basis. We believe, for example, in the 
 monogamous family, in popular education, 
 
50 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 or in the democratic theory of govern- 
 ment. We follow a good clew as far as 
 it will carry us. So in practical conduct, 
 we follow the hope of immortality. It not 
 only makes the harmony or unity which 
 we need in our thinking, but, better yet, 
 it fits into practice at once and goes to 
 make life effective and whole. 
 
 Professor James has written on " The 
 Will to Believe/ ' We suspect that these 
 words and the form of his argument must 
 carry a prejudice to many minds. We 
 scorn to believe merely by force of will. 
 We will not consent to believe or to hope, 
 unless for good reason. We will not be- 
 lieve a thing merely because it is pleasant. 
 But we purpose none the less to be good 
 investigators. We are quite willing there- 
 fore to take the attitude of hope — as 
 legitimate an attitude as that of doubt; 
 we take it, not by sheer force of will, but 
 so far as grand spiritual considerations 
 and humane sympathies naturally urge us 
 toward it. We will watch what happens 
 
The Hope of Immortality 51 
 
 to us; we will be on our guard against 
 false conclusions. We will not shut our- 
 selves away from the climate of hope on 
 the ground that it is a healthy climate to 
 live in. Other things being equal, this is 
 precisely the reason why we should live in it. 
 
 What if it should prove that the hope 
 of immortality grows naturally out of the 
 practice of a certain worthy kind of life, 
 and cannot be easily had except upon the 
 terms of such a life ? This is to say that 
 immortality belongs to persons. This is to 
 say that its quality begins here and now in 
 so far as men become persons. The lower 
 and the less unified the personality, the 
 less reason has any one to be persuaded 
 of immortality. The more we care for" 
 personality, the higher we conceive it, the 
 more we grow toward it, the more instinc- 
 tively we are possessed with the thought 
 that it cannot die. 
 
 This accounts for our swaying moods 
 from hope to doubt and back again. This 
 
52 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 accounts for the differences of attitude 
 between various men. Do we drop to a 
 vulgar mood and think in terms of bricks 
 or money ? In our lowest moods no argu- 
 ment for immortality avails much with us. 
 Do we catch sight of some great personal- 
 ity, — an Emerson, a Channing, Marcus 
 Aurelius ? Do we see for the moment 
 what such a personality is worth beyond 
 all visible treasures? Then in this our 
 highest mood whole ranges of vision move 
 us to hope. Show us persons enough, stir 
 us often enough to aspire to be persons, 
 and we should habitually expect immortal- 
 ity. In other words, the hope of immor- 
 tality tends to be a sort of measure of our 
 spiritual health and growth. 
 
 Is not this, again, what we should ex- 
 pect in a moral universe ? The hope of 
 immortality is not a cheap thing; it is 
 costly. It is not an idea that can be had 
 merely for the reading of books ; it cannot 
 be demonstrated in an evening at a lecture 
 hall by " materializations " ; it cannot even 
 
The Hope of Immortality 53 
 
 be had on the strength of the bodily re- 
 appearance of the best man who ever 
 lived. It depends upon character and 
 grows out of character. It goes with the 
 daily practice of immortality. Otherwise, 
 it is only at best a matter of temperament, 
 tradition, and hearsay. 
 
 A very important consideration follows. 
 All that the reason can do with any prob- 
 lem touching conduct is to give advice. 
 The reason can pronounce that a certain 
 course seems on the whole worth while to 
 entertain and pursue. Its advice is like a 
 permissive bill enacted by a legislature. 
 Whether one takes such advice or not, 
 depends upon a distinct motion of the will. 
 So now with the thought of immortality, 
 the reason gives its permission to move in 
 the direction of a magnificent hope. " Go 
 over, if you will," says the reason, "to the 
 side of the hope, and let the hope sway 
 you. Do not fear any longer to let your- 
 selves go." Many persons need to take 
 
54 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 this counsel to heart. The reason has 
 done all that it can. It unties their chains 
 and sets them free. The way of the open 
 sky lies before them. Let them set forth, 
 and take the good of their hope, and 
 see what comes of it. Hope, like every 
 other normal function, grows by exercise. 
 Right as we were to pause and refuse to 
 move, while the directing mind asked time 
 to consider, as soon as the mind gives us 
 even as much as the freedom of a mighty 
 " Perhaps " or " Suppose," we now become 
 wise in taking all the freedom that belongs 
 to us. For we are not creatures of reason 
 alone, but of heart and will and life 
 also. 
 
 We may now fairly ask whether there is 
 not a certain reality in the old-fashioned 
 idea of authority, namely, that certain per- 
 sons have been endowed with the right to 
 teach their fellows the doctrine of immor- 
 tality ? We answer, Yes, there are au- 
 thorities, albeit not infallible, touching every 
 
The Hope of Immortality 55 
 
 subject of human interest. Thus we listen 
 to the testimony of every good man who 
 speaks out of his experience of the facts 
 of the good life. We pass judgment on 
 the comparative sanity and soundness of 
 men who speak on this subject, as on every 
 other subject. On certain points we find 
 a growing tendency to a consensus of ex- 
 perience and opinion. Such a consensus 
 of the noble and high-minded does rightly 
 move our minds, not to follow in blindness, 
 but to listen with respect. 
 
 Here is the authority of such a Master 
 in the good life as Jesus was. Did he feel 
 within himself the stirrings of an immortal 
 nature ? Did he have visions of person- 
 ality for which this earthly life seemed a 
 mere beginning ? We are impressed that 
 he was a real man and spoke out of genu- 
 ine experience. What if he and others saw 
 more than the average man has yet seen ? 
 At our best, we tend to see and to say very 
 similar things. Whatever any human be- 
 ing has tried and discovered for himself to 
 
56 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 be real, becomes authoritative to persuade 
 us to make trial of the same. In this sense 
 there was never so much authority for the 
 
 b idea of immortality as there is to-day. The 
 world never had access to so many of the 
 lives of the wise, the noble, and the true- 
 hearted, the men of veritable religion, as 
 it has to-day. With all degrees of caution 
 and assurance the cheering voices come to 
 us of those who sing as they go with their 
 faces to the light. Those who give this 
 testimony are not the selfish, they are not 
 the light-minded, they wish no mere gift 
 of years ; they desire no idle heaven ; they 
 
 i pray rather to be useful ; they have lived 
 the life of good will, and they trust that 
 good will is the most enduring force in the 
 universe. They go out into the mystery 
 as those ready to do the deeds of good 
 will forever. They approve themselves to 
 us as worthy to be called citizens of the 
 universe, for there is no conceivable place 
 where they would not be at home. They 
 seem to us of the nature of the infinite life 
 
The Hope of Immortality 57 
 
 at the heart of the world. We do not 
 think that we shall be misled in following 
 their lead. 
 
 I have no idea of making a chain of 
 so many links to compel assent. On the 
 contrary, I have simply tried to set forth 
 the mass of considerations that always and 
 increasingly urge my own mind, even in 
 its most sceptical moods, to face toward 
 the way of hope. I have dealt with facts 
 at every step, not indeed facts that can be 
 studied with the help of the microscope, 
 but nevertheless the solid facts in which 
 human life consists. What impresses me 
 in that these facts all go together and 
 point one way. They are cumulative. 
 They belong to a certain unity which you 
 cannot break without doing violence to 
 every essential part of the whole. The 
 hope of immortality arises out of this 
 unity of thought, feeling, and conduct. 
 My conviction is that it is here, because it 
 is true. 
 
58 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 This is really the same kind of reason- 
 ing that leads us to believe in the wonder 
 and mystery of a physical universe. We 
 do not believe in this wonderful unity 
 because we can wholly demonstrate it by 
 physical evidence. It is not even an ap- 
 parent unity to a child or a savage. It is 
 a unity which nature doubtless suggests, 
 but we have to admit that it hardly could 
 be at all except for the demand of our 
 minds to discover unity. Our faith in a 
 universe is not merely the outgrowth of 
 the observation of outward phenomena; 
 it is also a sort of intellectual or spiritual 
 necessity, without which the mind is baf- 
 fled and stupefied. So, too, we find that 
 the hope of immortality belongs to that 
 deeper unity of thought and conception, of 
 which our interpretation of the outward 
 nature is merely an image. 
 
 Finally, the tremendous question recurs, 
 How can these things be ? This is the 
 underlying mystery in all life. In this 
 
The Hope of Immortality 59 
 
 world of wonderful and dramatic possibili- 
 ties, where the facts are daily more start- 
 ling than any miracle, we not only do not 
 need to know precisely how immortality 
 may be, but we suspect that we are better 
 off with the hope than we could be with a 
 kind of knowledge, for which we are not 
 yet ready or sufficiently developed. As it 
 is well for the child that he cannot be told 
 the experiences of manhood and parent- 
 hood, so it is well for men generally to be 
 obliged to see the future as we see dis- 
 tant mountains in a haze of cloud-land. 
 "Clouds and darkness are round about" 
 them. It is enough that rifts of sunlight 
 are in the clouds and the broad bases of 
 the hills are there, whether we see their 
 summits or not. 
 
 Meantime golden hours of vision come 
 to us in this present life, when we are at 
 our best, and our faculties work together in 
 harmony. There are times when intelli- 
 gence is full and quick, our feelings are 
 healthy, matching great thoughts, and good 
 
60 The Hope of Immortality 
 
 will possesses us. In these best hours the 
 mere limits of space and time seem small ; 
 we appear to belong to a divine universe, 
 we are admitted to share in the universal 
 thought, we feel the unity of all things, we 
 are at one through sympathy with all who 
 live, toil, suffer, and aspire. We follow 
 one purpose of beneficence. This is the 
 sanest as well as the highest of human 
 experiences. It purifies us, it both rests 
 and inspires us for better work, more con- 
 scientious, wiser, more accurate, more dis- 
 interested, more effectual. We are in 
 such hours most truly ourselves as indi- 
 viduals, or persons, while we seem to 
 belong to the Universal Life — the one 
 Person that constitutes the world. Is it 
 not this of which Wordsworth writes ? — 
 
 " that blessed mood, 
 In which the burthen of the mystery, 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world, 
 Is lightened, — that serene and blessed mood, 
 In which the affections gently lead us on, — 
 
The Hope of Immortality 61 
 
 Until the breath of this corporeal frame 
 And even the motion of our human blood 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 In body, and become a living soul ; 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things." 
 
 Does any one imagine the food which we 
 eat to be real, and these great experiences 
 of life to be less real ? 
 
 Here, then, is a sort of earnest or fore- 
 taste of the immortal life. We surmise 
 that immortality is like this. At our high- 
 est and best we have discovered the qual- 
 ity of immortality. We are content; in 
 view of certain supreme experiences which 
 life offers here and now we say, "All is 
 well." We cannot doubt that whatever 
 comes will also be well. This is the faith 
 of religion, growing out of the most impres- 
 sive facts. This faith grows equally out of 
 the highest reaches of our intelligence. 
 
SEP 21 1906 
 

 
 
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