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This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. i A UTHOR: CHESTER, WILLIAM TITLE: IMMORTALITY A RATIONAL FAITH; THE PLACE: CHICAGO DATE: [1 903] COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRA PHIC MTCROFORM TARHKT Master Negative Restrictions on Use: Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record w Chester, William. Immortality a rational faith ; the predictions of science, philosophy and religion on a future life, by William Ches- ter .. . Chicago, New York fetcj F. H. Revell company £i903j f / 207 p. 20". >476U 1 J o» >o Library of Oongrees, no. u Copyright. r: in f-. I ■ r'li ; *•■ i I' , n. ti TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE: 35i±^ IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA/uk^lB HB DATE FILMED: (^/a^rf<^ REDUCTION RATIO: / f y{ INITIALS 6AP HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRTDCK PT .1^' a^ ^ V^^^^-b^ f^ V ^ % r AMociaUon for Information and Imago Management 1 1 00 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1 1 00 Silver Spring. Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 it. A /, Centimeter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 mi|iii|iiii|ii|iJiijiIn|iIm|iIm|iIji|,Iji|,Li||i,J 12 3 4 Inches I.U Hi I.I 1.25 4.5 11 2£ 5.6 mil 3.2 143 ■■■ 136 ^B M^^ y£ lA U u ■UUlfc 1.4 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.6 13 14 15 mm MfiNUFRCTURED TO fillM STflNDORDS BY APPLIED IMRGE. INC. # # 2 31.2. C4-2 tn the ®ita <»f |;ten» Uork ^brains / I IMMORTALITY A RATIONAL FAITH Immortality a Rational Faith The Predictions of Science ^ Philosophy and Religion on a Future Life By WILLIAM CHESTER i • • . Former Co-pastor of PhiUips {Madison Avenue) Presbyterian Ckurck, New York City, ana Former Pastor of Immanuel PreS' byterian Churchy Milwaukee^ Wisconsin. Chicago New York Toronto Fleming H. Re veil Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1903, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY {Ocioder) New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 63 Washington Street Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W London: ai Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 30 St. Mary Street t i I ^ i ft. *' ~ J tn affectionate appreciation of her constant inspiration. Srt ^ dydiTfj ix too Seoo iffrc, kai 6 ayaitSiVf ik TOO 0eou YeyivvTjTat, kai ytvioffket rdv 0eov, ill 355602 Copyright. 1903, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY {October) New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 63 Washington Street Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W London: ai Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 30 St Mary Street ■ I c "D . f fff affictionati appreciation of her constant inspiration. Sri -fj dyaTcrj iic rod 0eoo itrvt, ka\ 6 ayaitBv^ ik. TOO Seoo YeyivvTjTatf fcal ytvtbffket rdv 6eov. 355602 ! Contents I. Itroductory : Method : the Com- prehensive Cumulative Pre- diction 9 II. The Predictions of Science . 25 III. The Predictions of Philosophy . 87 IV. The Predictions of Religion . . 133 V. Conditions of Life after Death . 169 ' ' i Introductory: Method: the Com- prehensive Cumulative Prediction ii INTRODUCTORY : METHOD : THE COMPRE- HENSIVE CUMULATIVE PREDICTION The only absolute certainty in this life is that each individual must die, and that at any moment. The one question, there- fore, of first and transcendent importance is,— "If a man die, shall he live again?" All other questions seem secondary to, or dependent upon this one. ITeglect or evade this problem as men will, yet the deaths of beloved ones and one's own steadily approaching crisis force home the question sooner or later to every heart. Fortunately, the majority are bom with the tendency of taking immortality for granted. The readiness with which the child accepts instantly the teaching that the dead are only translated, is one of the many proofs that this truth is a soul instinct, God's self-impression on the human spirit. Some, happily, go through life with this un- disturbed childlike faith, and marvel that II Immortality a Rational Faith five thousand volumes have been written in earnest debate over what seems to them a certainty. Yet comparatively few, how- ever, reach the period of earnest reflection, and especially come in touch with modem scientific and rationalistic thought, without being rudely shocked out of this childhood's faith, and awakened to the profound diflfi- culties and depths of the problem. To intelligently conceive how spirit can sur- vive the separation from the body, how a brainless mind can think, how a senseless soul can retain its identity, seems an im- possibility. To notice that the slightest brain injury here instantly clouds the reason and changes the character, and then to be told that total brain dissolution will leave mind and character whole and free, seems preposterous. To behold all that we can see of an individual perish before our eyes, turning back to dust, and then to be told that there is something that we do not see that lives on, seems too great an as- sumption, especially when no one can fully satisfy us as to how, where and what that something is. Add to this the absolute un- broken silence, apart from revelation, of all the myriads of the dead, through all the past 13 ill Introductory ages ; the impossibility, in the very nature of the case, of any scientific proof or demonstration, and the positive assertions of eminent materialists that the brain both produces and ends all consciousness, — and one awakens to the stupendous difficulties in the way of any intelligent conception of the possibility of future existence. It is folly either to deny or minimize these difficulties, for since we must experience the inevitable, we should test the bridge before crossing, and know just what the situation is and just where confidence must rest. "We are surprised, however, to be met on the very threshold with some startling denials. The quite evident indifference every day of humanity in general to this whole subject shows, we are told, that men really care but little about it, and moreover that the majority of the race would prob- ably prefer annihilation to continued exist- ence were they given the choice. But when this indifference to immortality is analyzed, it is discovered that men are apparently indifferent, not because they are not profoundly interested in the most sol- emn and portentous event of all existence, but because they secretly feel that it is 13 ll Immortality a Rational Faith impossible to find out anything definite and positive about it. The indifference is often a mere form of intellectual despair. Im- mortality, obviously, cannot be proved. Not even seeing a man die and live again would be an irrefutable demonstration; for the fact of another's surviving death does not necessarily imply one's own survival. Personal experience alone can give absolute proof. Saddened by the self-delusion or fraud of all systems claiming to communi- cate with the dead, men recoil into this state of apparent apathy, saying to them- selves,— It is impossible to know anything definite. The only true method is for each to wait his turn and thus find out. As to the other objection of humanity's not desiring immortality, even were this true the vital importance of the problem would be undiminished; for the question is not what men wish, but what is true, not one's inclination but the facts of the case. Yet while it is true that a small minority under weariness, guilt and uncertainty might wel- come annihilation, yet so long as love of life is a primary instinct, so long as love for God and humanity exists in the human breast and so long as affection remains the 14 ( 1 Introductory supreme quality in the entire universe, so long will men shudder at blank extinction and crave life's fulfillment hereafter. But there are still others who tell us that this desire for immortality is ignoble, being but disguised selfishness, and that it is far nobler to enter into the higher, perfect altruism of George Eliot, seeking to survive only in " the choir invisible " of an earthly immortality of a beneficent influence that will linger on to help the race, rather than to seek our own continued existence here- after. The beautiful lines, also, placed on Huxley's tomb, at his own request, are held up as the highest expression of human resignation, far more disinterested than the longing for one's own survival : " And if there be no meeting past the grave, If all is darkness, silence, yet 'tis rest. Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep, For God still giveth His beloved sleep. And if an endless sleep, He wills, so best." Yet let us examine this intense longing for immortality. Do we desire it only for self, or is it not principally for self in rela- tion to others? Who woidd care to be the sole survivor in the universe ? Would not 15 Immortality a Rational Faith that prove a curse instead of a blessing? Is not the longing mingled with the feeling that our lives can be worth something even to God, and certainly to those that have loved us, and that we can claim their continued affection hereafter; and, above all, that we can continue to be of some use in the vast universe? Is there then any- thing selfish in desiring to live to do good ? Is it not rather selfish to wish to pass out of all possibilities of service hereafter ? This desire, then, being legitimate and transcendent in importance, let us clearly understand what are the conditions of the discussion. No amount of argument will ever prove immortality. To awake alive after having died is the only absolute demon- stration. Nor will any amount of argument convince an unwilling skeptic. Sympathy for or against will, underneath all arguments, decide one's real conviction. The realiza- tion of immortality is not reached as the result of logical reasoning, but rather as a consciousness, a spiritual apprehension, and, above aU, from living one's way into the spiritual realities, so that one knows that he is in touch with the Eternal and cannot die. Yet no thoughtful man is either a believer l6 Introductory or a rationalist all the time. On occasions he is one or the other, or even both. " Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief." In hours of terrible bereavement, unfathomable mystery, of the sudden challenging of faith's reasons, of the appreciation of the modern outburst of knowledge with its new interpre- tations of both nature and religion, man turns with a trembling eagerness to test the foundations of all truth, and to strengthen himself in a reasonable trust. Here is the precise realm that is open on this vast sub- ject, — to seek the grounds of an intelligent trust. If immortality, in the final analysis, must be a matter of faith, it can be a con- firmed faith, with all credulity and falsity eliminated, established and reestablished as being bound up with all that is highest in the soul, the human race, history and God. For let it be understood that while immortality cannot be demonstrated, it can be predicted. And so many predictions can be brought from all realms as to result in a moral cer- tainty. When these different predictions are all assembled in a great cumulative argu- ment, the belief becomes inevitable. We can start with Emerson with the preliminary conviction that if it be best that conscious 17 Immortality a Rational Faith ! life shall continue, it will continue. With this conviction we can look through all the different grand departments of thought and ask, — Is it best ? And careful inquiry will reveal such an overwhelming conviction that it is best that we will be forced to feel abso- lutely confident that life will continue. To this end, however, one must view the question comprehensively from the three great departments of human thought, — science, philosophy and religion, — collecting facts in all these realms, and then by induc- tion establishing the inference. It is a mis- take to stake the whole question on any one of these departments exclusively, as all three are but coordinated parts of truth, and one's nature craves different confirmations in dif- ferent moods, at times seeking to satisfy the intellect, at other times the heart, and still at other times the conscience. The need of this comprehensive cumulative argument is seen when we look at the mistakes many enthusiasts have made in limiting the whole discussion to one line of prediction. Many, for instance, take the ground that the ques- tion is exclusively one of revelation, that it is therefore confined to the supernatural iisclosure of the Holy Scriptures, that it I Introductory stands or falls with the criticism of that one Book, that all other arguments are inade- quate without it, and superfluous with it. But what about the millions on this globe that reject the Bible? Shall there be no predictions for them outside of revelation ? And if criticism raises any doubt as to the authenticity, canonicity and inspiration of these certain Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Greek manuscripts, shall men feel that the only ground of belief is gone? Whether the Scriptures are divinely inspired or not does not exclusively affect the fact of man's im- mortality, as that depends on the character of the soul and the will of the Creator. And any fact revealed by inspiration becomes only doubly sure when corroborated by God's greater revelation in man, nature, history, and the trend of the universe. Others make the mistake of staking the whole question upon the corporeal resurrec- tion of Christ, declaring the human race survives or perishes solely according as to whether Christ did or did not rise from the dead. When, then, one hears modern ration- alistic thought rejecting that resurrection on the ground of insufficiency and unreliability of testimony for such a stupendous event, he 19 Immortality a Rational Faith feels all hope of his personal immortality trembles with this one discussion of the his- toric accuracy of an occurrence said to have transpired nineteen centuries ago. Whereas all Christ's resurrection does is to bring im- mortality to light, not to create it. " Man is not immortal because Christ rose, but Christ rose because man is immortal." If He did not rise, man is immortal just the same pro- viding it is the soul's nature, as immortality depends on the nature of God's creation and will. Nor will the old argument from the analo- gies of nature carry conviction when used alone in its usual form. For to-day we see that it is false inference to argue from phys- ical analogies to a spiritual state. The res- urrection of seed into flower, chrysalis into butterfly, winter into spring are physical changes throughout, and do not apply to the entire dissolution of the body and the survival of the spirit in a disembodied state. Moreover, the lavish waste of nature in allowing ten thousand seeds and germs to perish for every one that she brings to frui- tion, discourages any such analogy as to her necessarily saving every one of the myriads of human Uves. Introductory Nor will the old mystical metaphysical arguments, such as Plato advanced, of the soul's being "immaterial," "simple," "in- dissoluble," carry much conviction in this day where the very existence of the soul is strenuously denied by materialists. Other moralists make an equal mistake in placing the whole question upon the moral consequences resulting. Mankind, they argue, should cherish the belief in immor- tality because it is the safeguard of the race, because without it humanity would degen- erate. History and experience prove that when once men come to believe that this life is all, they quickly break through the dam of all moral restraint, crying, — Let us eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die, and widespread moral ruin is the dis- astrous result. Profound statesmen have therefore declared that human institutions would crumble in a few generations were immortality conclusively disproved. But when one stops to seriously reflect upon this argument and hears the far nobler response to it, namely, that truth should never ask, what are the consequences, but only, what are the facts, that a fallacy is never justifiable no matter what the consequences 21 I ^f ' Rl Immortality a Rational Faith may be, that one must never do evil that good may come, that virtue is to be sought for her own intrinsic quality, and not out of a selfish policy to secure reward, — one's con- science responds at once to this higher code of ethics, and this argument of moral con- sequences is shattered. If immortality is true, it is gratifying to know that its truth helps elevate the race, as it undoubtedly does, but if immortality is false, then no elevation of the race can justify accepting or promulgating a lie and humanity will have to be taught virtue and self-sacrifice for the sake of their own beauty, nobility and reward. Still other philosophers have staked the whole question upon the evident moral ne- cessity of satisfying the claims of justice, and of fulfilling the postulates of instinct, feeling and affection. But suppose it were part of the scheme of the universe that justice should be violated and the presenti- ments of the human heart, however strong, disappointed ? Other thinkers feel they have reached the final rock of stability when they make the foundation of the whole question of immor- tality rest upon the fact of the goodness of Introductory God, and that goodness being pledged to allowing man's survival hereafter. Yet there are thousands of blinded sufferers in the midst of life's mysterious tortures, who in their agony, do not really feel that God is good, and who would despair, in the face of the existence of evil, if immortality rested solely on God's goodness. Thus we see it is a mistake to place so vast a problem exclusively on any one single phase of universal truth. No one of these arguments alone carries conviction to all minds at all times ; but, when one takes the grand cumulative argument, commencing and grounding itself in the hard cold domain of science, rising up through the vast realm of philosophy, to the moral and theological climax, faith then finds she has a solid pyra- mid of confirmed truth on which to rest. Moreover, as Coleridge says, — " Faith is it- self a higher reason, and corrects the errors of reason, as reason corrects the errors of sense." 23 The Predictions of Science n * f THE PREDICTIONS OP SCIENCE In a certain sense, science first blocks the road to the discussion of this theme, for science dealing with the facts demonstrable to the senses and to the laws arising there- from, can say whether such a future exist- ence is an absolute impossibility, or whether the way is at least open to it. It is of little avail to argue life after death from the nature of God, man and the universe, if the- materialist declares that there is even no such thing as a soul whatsoever, nor any spirit apart from matter. We must first understand where he errs and know thaf future existence is at least possible, before philosophy and religion can produce convic- tion. What then is the strictly scientific atti- tude of to-day towards the problem of a future life ? In general, it is undoubtedly that of agnosticism. Some scientists, like Faraday, combine a beautiful strong faith 2^ t Immortality a Rational Faith with their physical investigations. Many others refuse to discuss the question, declar- ing it irrelevant and relegating it to the domains of philosophy and theology. But the vast majority stand with Darwin, Hux- ley, Spencer and Tyndall in declaring that nothing can be either proved or disproved on the subject, that no one can either affirm or deny future existence as he does not pos- sess the necessary facts for forming judg- ment. They acknowledge frankly, how- ever, that there is a mysterious quality called " Life," which since no one can un- derstand, no one can be sure of its future non-existence. But this is all. One is not forbidden to hope, but one is forbidden to affirm. Yet when we look at this most popular position of the present day, we see it is the answer not of all science, but only of physical science. Of course the question of immortality is out of the realm of physical •science. So are all the supreme realities of life, — God, the soul, the moral sense, the af- fections, the beautiful, the true and the good. Yet these are the highest part of man's constitution. One might as well try to weigh an emotion, obtain the specific 2S The Predictions of Science gravity of an affection, or the chemical an- alysis of a soul as to try to test scientifically the indestructible life of the spirit, which belongs not to the domain of sense, but to that of spirit. But physical science is but one branch of science. Science itself is ; comprehensive. It means all systematized knowledge. There is a science of meta-^ physics just as truly as a science of physics,^ what we think and feel is as genuinely real as what we see or touch, the facts of experience are as truly facts as those of scientific demonstration. Physical science alone may not be able to prove or disprove immortality, but bring all science from all its branches and the indications are over- whelming. When then we obtain a com- prehensive view from the whole field, we will see that, taken cumulatively, there are abundantly sufficient grounds for forming a judgment, and that this agnostic position in view of the sum total of predictions is inconsistent. All we need from strictly physical science is the assurance that if immortality is not proved, it is not, at^ least, disproved, and that the way, there- fore, is open for investigation on broader lines. 29 Immortality a Rational Faith But this, although the most popular view, is not the only attitude of science to-day. There is an extreme position of the material- ist, who is not even willing to leave the prob- lem doubtful, but positively denies all future existence, declaring that matter is the only substance, that all psychical phenomena are * but the products of matter, that life there- fore begins with the body and ends with the body, consciousness being evolved from brain matter and therefore ceasing with its dissolution. "Physiology," says Vogt, " decides definitely and categorically against individual immortality, as against any sepa- rate existence of the soul." " Thought is a motion of matter," says Moleschott, "no thought without phosphorus." " With the decay and dissolution of its material sub- stratum," says Bttchner, "through which alone it has acquired a conscious existence and become a person, and upon which it was dependent, the spirit must cease to ex- ist." "The octogenesis of consciousness," says Haeckel, " makes it perfectly clear that it is not an * immaterial entity,' but a phys- iological function of the brain." " The de- struction of any piece of the apparatus," says Duhring, " involves the loss of some one or 30 »' The Predictions of Science other of the vital operations, and the conse- quence is that, as far as life extends, we have before us only an organic function, not a Ding-a/n-sich^ or an expression of the imaginary entity the soul. This fundamen- tal proposition carries with it the denial of the immortality of the soul, since, where no soul exists, its mortality or immortality can- , not be raised as a question." In the face then of these astounding posi- tive declarations, we must first answer the ; materialist in general, and, after that, turn tp understand that special phase of materialism that claims the brain produces and ends mind. In general, then, how is it possible for any sane man to positively declare the soul does not exist after death? How can he pos- sibly know ? All his physical facts relate to mind in body, but do not cover the field of mind separated from body. The fact that body and mind are never separated here does not, by any manner of means, prove that they are therefore inseparable. To 'prove the soul is mortal, one would have to follow a death throughout the whole uni- verse, and show positively the non-existenc^ of any surviving spirit in any spot in all space, which clearly science never has and 31 I y I'i lunortality a RatuKial Faith never can do. And even could it do this with one or a million corpses, that would not necessarily imply that the same would be true with succeeding millions. When there- fore sober scientists like those quoted, so eminent in their own domains, make false inferences outside of their provinces, declar- ing categorically against the soul's immor- tality, they are violating all rules of their own science, and are exhibiting more dog- matism, credulity, presumption and false in- duction than the most exalted believer ever thinks of displaying. All that science can claim is that consciousness never exists without brain here, but it can say absolutely nothing as to whether it will or will not exist without brain hereafter. And right here must be placed Butler's famous argument, that whatever exists now has in its favor a presumption, at least, of continued existence unless it can be shown there is something that must necessarily stop it. Unless it can be proved that death destroys the soul, the fact that the soul now lives makes it probable that it will continue to live. Just as the fact of the uniformity of nature, the regularity of its sunrises and sunsets, its seed-times and harvests, its moons 32 The Predictions of Science and tides, makes it probable that these will continue, so the fact of the existence of the soul justifies expecting its continuance un* less death can be proved to be its destruc- tion. Now death can only be proved to be the soul's destruction either from the reason of the thing or from analogy. But not^ knowing what death is, we cannot infer it destroys the soul from the reason of the thing; and not being»able to follow even c animals beyond death, we cannot argue an-~ » nihilation from analogy. Therefore the pre- sumption remains, from the fact that the" soul now lives and that nothing can be proved to stop it, that it will therefore con- tinue to live. Even if one says there is no * God and therefore men are mortal, he is ' illogical from this standpoint, for if we have - lived once without a God, the presump- tion, at least, is in favor that we cati' live without Him again. So that the most extreme view that even an atheistical ma- terialist can logically take is, after all, to become an agnostic, declaring that nothing can be proved either way, yet acknowledg- ing that present existence leaves a presump- tion in favor of continued existence, and acknowledging also, as even the agnostic 33 I Immortality a Rational Faith acknowledges, that the way is left open for hope. But again, the materialist in claiming that matter is the only substance, that all psy- chical phenomena are simply the result of complicated motions of matter, is not him- self strictly scientific. For true analysis quickly resolves matter into spirit, the seen into the unseen. Analyze matter and you find that its essence consists in force. Mod- em science has found that the universe is composed of two distinct factors, — matter and power. Power is something entirely distinct from matter, having none of its properties, possessing neither form nor weight, and being absolutely indestructible, being changed but never being annihilated. Power uses matter, but is not identical with the material in the matter, any more than the magnetic current is identical with the steel ft uses to make it a magnet. The steel does not produce the force but the force uses the steel. All matter therefore runs back for the basis of its action to this power that underlies it. All the qualities of matter are due, also, to cohesive, repul- sive, gravitative, chemical, electrical forces, or to motions such as heat, sound and light. l« I! The Predictions of Science All matter is the metamorphosis of some previous kind of motion. In the final an- alysis it is motion. To the scientist the entire visible universe from a grain of sand to the worlds in space, is simply different degrees of quivering, pulsating, vibrating motion. Matter is thus the external ex- pression of force. Now then, trace back force. Force is an effort. Effort is the re- sult of will. Will is the result of intelli- gence. So we are thus brought back to a spiritual Being as the final operating cause of the universe. Back of this universe of motion we reach an infinite Intelligence and Life that is expressing thought by this mo- tion. Matter, thus quickly resolving itself into force, and force into spirit, is seen to be but a form of spirit. Therefore the cor- rect scientificLview is that the invisible, the spiritual is the enduring reality that sub- stands all phenomena, and matter is only its expression, its vehicle. Instead, therefore, of materializing spirit, the profoundest science to-day spiritualizes matter. Sir William Crookes, the famous English scien- tist, in an address before the international chemical congress at Berlin, has just taken this precise position from purely scientifio 35 Immortality a Rational Faith reasoning, declaring that all matter is a kind of force, all elements probably resolva- ble into one form of energy, atoms probably resolving themselves into a multitude of rl volving electrodes. " All these observations (Roentgen rays, Bequerel rays)," says he, "find internal connection in the discovery of radium, which probably is the basis of the coarser chemical elements here. Probably masses of molecules dissolve themselves into the ether waves of the universe or into electrical energy. Thus we stand on the border line where matter and force pass into each other. In this borderland lie the greatest scientific problems of the future. Here He the final realities, wide reaching and marvellous. The nineteenth century saw the birth of new views regarding the nature of atoms, electricity and ether. While our views about the composition of matter are generally satisfactory to-day, will that be the case at the end of the twentieth century? Do we not again see that our investigations have only a tempo- rary value ? Will we be content to see mat- ter dissolving into a multitude of revolving electrodes ? Such a mysterious dissolution of atoms appears to be universal It is 36 The Predictions of Science present in sunshine, in a raindrop, in light- ning, in a flame, in a waterfall, and in the roaring sea. Although the range of human experience is too short to form a parallax whereby we can foretell the disappearance of matter, nevertheless it is possible that formless nebulaB again will prevail when the hour glass of eternity has run out." There-' fore the latest, highest answer of science it- self is that matter is but a kind of force, and force an expression of effort, will, in- telligence, the spiritual therefore being the enduring reality underneath the material. Matter, therefore, cannot originate psychi- cal phenomena, but can only cooperate with it, clothe it, and be used by it. And the highest scientists themselves corroborate this view. " Psychic life," says Professor Wundt, " is not the product of the bodily organism, but the bodily organism is rather a psychic creation." "Cells," says Huxley, "are no more the products of vital phenomena than the shells scattered in orderly lines along the seabeach are instruments by which the gravitation force of the moon acts upon the ocean. Like these, the cells mark only where the vital tides have been, and how they have acted." Conversely, then, vital 37 Immortality a Rational Faith phenomena are no more the product of cells than gravitation is the prodact of the shells on the seashore. "Life," says Jacobi, "is not a form of body : but body is one form of life." Tyndall acknowledges that there is a certain force in the organism that science cannot reach nor explain, that " re- fuses the yoke of ordinary physical laws." And Haeckel after summarizing all his monistic philosophy as denying God, immor- tality and freedom, yet says in his conclu- sion, " We grant at once that the innermost character of nature is just as little under- stood by us as it was by Anaximander and Empedocles twenty-four hundred years ago, by Spinoza and Newton two hundred years ago, and by Kant and Goethe one hundred years ago. We must even grant that this essence of substance becomes more mvste- nous and enigmatic the deeper we penetrate into the knowledge of its attributes, matter and energy, and the more thoroughly we study its countless phenomenal forms and their evolution. We do not know the * thing in itself that lies behind these knowable phenomena." Is it not then more logical, reasonable and even scientific to call this " * thing in itself ' that lies behind these 38 The Predictions of Science knowable phenomena," Mind, rather than inexplicable substance, and declare in para- phrase, — In the beginning was Mind, and Mind was with God and Mind was God. The same was in the beginning with God. And all things were made by Mind, and without Mind was not anything made that was made. This discovery of power, force, spirit, being the basis of matter in the universe is as true in the case of each individual. All life is likewise traced back to a spirit basis. Take the microscope and trace back the be- ginning of our organism and its growth. We find the body originates in a germ, a seed. Trace back the seed and we come to the single cell. Inspect the cell, and we find within it a nucleus, its protoplasm. Inspect the nucleus and we find two star "center zones" appearing, and sixteen chro- matic threads. Watch these threads and we see them forming themselves, eight to the right center zone, eight to the left cen-. ter zone. Then, slowly, we see the skeinin between beginning to shrink, the rest of tne protoplasmic cell beginning to divide, and the single mother cell becoming two daugh- ter cells. These two then repeat the process, 39 L Immortality a Rational Faith and so on, ad infinitum, these multiplying cells differing from one another, each taking its place according to a marvellous architec- tural plan, and forming amazing complex combinations with one another. This then is the sublime mystery of all life in the ani- mal and vegetable kingdoms, the cell divid- ing and subdividing, when this is not accom- plished by accretion or addition since the process starts with a single cell. Now in all this mystery of life it is evident that the whole character of the first atom of proto- plasm consists not in its matter, but in the Vital force, the dynamic power in that mat- ter. And this force brings us back to an originating first force or power, which must be the underlying basis of all life. This then is the first great fundamental scientific truth to get clearly in mind in considering the subject of immortality, namely that the substratum of all life and the universe is not matter, but power, ♦energy, force, spirit. For in this way we . see that the soul is not something generated from matter, but is a force placed in matter, which needs not necessarily be impaired when this matter falls away. Science is utterly unable to tell what force in itself is. 40 The Predictions of Science If we are ignorant of the nature of this substratum of life, we cannot limit its con- tinuance. Mind, some say, may have been developed out of force; but if so, it must have been all along inherent in force, and why then may it not continue with force, being developed out of intelligence here to another form of life after leaving thi§ body? Berkeley therefore was scientific, at least in the way he looked out upon life. To him the external world was but the infinite power addressing the mind through the senses. The world was nothing more than sensations perpetually renewed by God speaking to the percipient spirit of man. The soul is the active principle* joined to the passive principle the body. Death simply separates the active non-mortal from the passive perishable. Thus much, in general, as to the material- ist's assertion that matter is the only sub- stance and all psychic phenomena the prod- uct only of complicated motions of matter. But this is not all. There is a special phase of materialism that goes into quite elaborate proof that consciousness is the product solely of brain matter. During the last half cen- tury physiological psychology has made as- 41 Immortality a Rational Faith and so on, ad infinitum, these multiplying cells differing from one another, each taking its place according to a marvellous architec- tural plan, and forming amazing complex combinations with one another. This then is the sublime mystery of all life in the ani- mal and vegetable kingdoms, the cell divid- ing and subdividing, when this is not accom- plished by accretion or addition since the process starts with a single cell. Now in all this mystery of life it is evident that the whole character of the first atom of proto- plasm consists not in its matter, but in the Vital force, the dynamic power in that mat- ter. And this force brings us back to an originating first force or power, which must be the underlying basis of all life. \ This then is the first great fundamental scientific truth to get clearly in mind in considering the subject of immortality, namely that the substratum of all life and the universe is not matter, but power, •energy, force, spirit. For in this way we . see that the soul is not something generated from matter, but is a force placed in matter, which needs not necessarily be impaired when this matter falls away. Science is utterly unable to tell what force in itself is. The Predictions of Science If we are ignorant of the nature of this substratum of life, we cannot limit its con- tinuance. Mind, some say, may have been developed out of force; but if so, it must have been all along inherent in force, and why then may it not continue with force, being developed out of intelligence here to another form of life after leaving thi§ body? Berkeley therefore was scientific, at least in the way he looked out upon life. To him the external world was but the infinite power addressing the mind through the senses. The world was nothing more than sensations perpetually renewed by God speaking to the percipient spirit of man. The soul is the active principle joined' to the passive principle the body. Death simply separates the active non-mortal from the passive perishable. Thus much, in general, as to the material- ist's assertion that matter is the only sub- stance and all psychic phenomena the prod- uct only of complicated motions of matter. But this is not all. There is a special phase of materialism that goes into quite elaborate proof that consciousness is the product solely of brain matter. During the last half cen- tury physiological psychology has made as- 41 I Immortality a Rational Faith tounding discoveries in regard to the vital closeness of the union between consciousness and brain, mind and body. The remarkable progress of empirical science and of micro- scopic anatomy has revealed such an inti- mate dependence of mind on matter, con- sciousness on brain as to lead many to con- clude that the one is the sole product of the other and cannot exist without the other. Until recently brain structure and mechan- ism remained a veiled n^ystery because of the apparent impossibility of making its nerves, cells and fibres sufficiently hard and colored to admit of microscopic examination ; but to-day, by means of staining the brain by soaking it in salts of silver, by hardening and slicing it, the whole intricate structure of nerve, cell and fibre stands revealed in all its marvellous complexity. The appearance is like that of a thick leafless forest, the nerves and fibrils resembling large trees with myriads of branches, that apparently intertwine with the branches of the other trees, but that, in reality, do not quite touch one another. The chemical composition of the mass is about three pounds, avoirdupois, of complex phosphorized matter, and the average total number of its cells has been 43 The Predictions of Science computed as about sixteen hundred millions, each cell often possessing hundreds of fibrils, so that its capacity seems almost illimitable. Evolution has also brought to light the history of brain development. In the low- est forms of life we first detect a small thread of a nervous system. As we ascend through the series we see this thread increas- ing in size and complexity until a bunch of nerves at one end forms a ganglion, which, in time, becomes the head. This ganglion steadily increases in size and especially in convolutions (for it is not the size of brain but its superficial *trea obtained by creasings that gives mental power), up through the series of fish, bird, beast, cave dweller, Negroid, Indian, Mongolian to the highest Caucasian attainment. It was the gradual enlargement of the brain pushing the eyes of the animal forward and downward, that compelled him in order to see ahead of him, first to raise his head, and afterwards his body, until gradually the semi-erect and at last the fully erect posture (as in the case of the Gibbon) were obtained. All the different functions of mind and body are also now localized in different "sense-centres," and "thought-centres," so 43 1! ii Immortality a Rational Faith that we know the exact localities where impressions are received and coordinated into consciousness and where consciousness in turn produces the effects of mind and body. Thus, the corticle gray matter on either side of what is called " the fissure of Kolando" is the great motor area, where all the physical movements of the body are controlled as from a central telegraph head- quarters. The four great "sense-centres" are each localized in the gray matter, — touch in the vertical lobe, smell in the frontal, sight in the occipital, and hearing in the temporal. Between these four " sense-centres," lie the four great " thought- centres," distinguished by elaborate nerve- structure, that the materialist claims are the sole organs of mental life, the producing instrument of all thought and consciousness. In front we have the frontal centre of association, on top the parietal centre of association, underneath the principal brain "the great occipito-temporal centre of as- sociation," and lower down internally, the insular centre of association. The process of receiving and responding to the different kinds of words is also localized. When we read the written word A A The Predictions of Science we use the occipital lobe; when we hear and understand the spoken word we use the temporal lobe ; when we speak the oral word, we use the frontal convolutions; when we form the written word, we use the middle third convolution; when we reason or exert will power we use the superior and middle frontal convolutions. All this is confirmed by the pathological study of brain diseases. When any one of these localities is injured, the corresponding faculty is deranged, resulting in the various forms of aphasia. Often the patient can hear, speak, write and see, but suddenly cannot recognize printed matter. In such cases the physician knows that it is the occipital lobe of the brain that is affected, and the post-mortem always confirms it. When he can understand but cannot talk, it is because of the disease of the third frontal convolution. When he can hear yet cannot understand words, the first temporal convolution is affected. Many cases are on record of paralytics who could not speak, read, write nor see, yet who were declared to be legally able to execute wills previously prepared, because they were able to notice and remonstrate whenever experts misread 4S Immortality a Rational Faith their figures, showing that their faculty of numbers was thus unimpaired, that although most of the chords of their organism were broken, sufficient were left on that one faculty to make good their figures. But not only are these main divisions of faculties thus located, but even the more abstract processes of thought are analyzed as resulting from processes of association of different centres of coordination of im- pressions in the brain. We cannot limit each faculty to a particular lobe, except in general, for it is also connected through association with numerous centres of im- pressions all over the brain. Thus destroy- ing speech does not destroy language as a whole. Therefore while localizing the principal faculties, science also regards the whole brain as consisting of numerous centres of impressions, and the higher processes of intellection are produced by the working together of these various centres. But the gaps between the motor and sensory centres are located as being the places where the processes of association and of abstract thought primarily take place, insanity having its starting point here; disease of the frontal part of these 46 The Predictions of Science association-centres deranging the conscious- ness of self, disease of the posterior part of these association-centres deranging the perception of objective relations. But science has done even more than this. It has not only localized where results are produced, but has sought to discover the producing cause and the process of its ac- tion. Even the physiological process of thinking has been revealed. The whole nervous system is like numerous telegraph wires running from all parts of the body up the spinal cord to the base of the brain, the central ganglia, where there is a bunch or network of nerves which constitute a sort of a "receiving and clearing house" or lower office of the brain, and where all automatic actions are superintended and disposed of without calling down the co- operation of the brain for every detail. From this central ganglia this mass of wires, or nerves, passes on upward and enters the brain with its myriads of cells and fibrils. When an impression is received, the nerve wave throbs the message to the central ganglia, which instantly responds with reflex action, and then this nerve wave passes on up to these brain nerves, cells and 47 rl Immortality a Rational Faith fibres, the current either leaping from fibril to fibril, or making these fibrils extend and connect with one another until the impres- sion is transmitted when they retract and disconnect again. It is the leaping of this nerve wave from fibril to fibril, or causing their connection and disconnection, and the results of this action received on the watery jelly substance around the nerves that pro- duces, physiologically, our consciousness. This explains many mysteries of the mind. The reason we withdraw an injured mem- ber from the object that is hurting it before we have had time to realize what has hap. pened, is because the central ganglia has received the pain wave and answered it by instant reflex response, before the wave has travelled on and up to the brain cells, where we afterwards receive it, realize what has happened and reason upon the occurrence. It is as if the managers in a large firm re- ceived news in their office on the second floor of an opportunity or emergency down- stairs, and instantly directed what was to be first done, and then telephoned to the private office of the two proprietors (the two lobes of the brain) up-stairs for further instructions. Many of the tricks of habit, 48 The Predictions of Science use, custom, and that mysterious ability of doing two distinct and difficult things at the same time, such as playing a difficult piece of music and carrying on a logical con- versation, or picking one's way automatic- ally in a crowded thoroughfare, avoiding danger, saluting friends, and yet all the while engrossed in some abstruse problem of thought so that one has almost been un- conscious of what has been going on, — ^these are seen to be the results of the cerebrum's commissioning automatic action to be done by the central ganglia, or the central gan- glia having acquired the ability by practice to transact these directions, so that the brain is left free to pursue other trends of thought, giving only quiescent sympathetic cooperation, but roused to active coopera- tion in emergencies. We also now understand the mystery of how we can shut off other knowledge we possess from some particular line of thought we are engaged in ; how, for instance, when we study mathematics we can exclude art, literature, history and the natural sciences : also, how we can follow association of ideas and connected trains of thought. It is be- cause each of these nerve cells of the brain 49 I ij Immortality a Rational Faith with its hundreds of fibrils is, as Dr. H. S. Williams suggests, like a central telephone office, the fibrils like radiating telephone wires, disconnected from all the other cells and fibrils, but that connect with these other exchanges when stimulated, and thus transmit their communication. When these fibrils are lacking there is no consciousness, as in the lowest forms of life ; when they are well furnished and disciplined, there is the highest intelligence. When, then, we follow trains of thought and association of ideas, we are, physically, making these con- nections between cells of the brain. When we cannot recall something we desire to, it is because we are unable, for the time, to connect these filaments with the proper cor- responding set. When after long effort we fail to recall the word or idea sought and are about to abandon further effort, and the idea suddenly flashes before our conscious- ness, it is because these filaments under stimulation have at last succeeded in mak- ing their connections. When we have con- fusion of ideas, it is because the « wires are crossed." When we have facility, clearness, logical trend of reasoning, it is because we have acquired the power of making the The Predictions of Science proper connections. When, after infinite painstaking, we are at length able to play sonatas, converse in seven languages, or solve intricate problems in higher calculus with ease and rapidity, doing automatically what at each step of progress caused such patient severe exertion, it is because by the constant use of certain brain cells in practice the nerve current comes to establish a path which it follows exclusively, not encounter- ing the same resistance a. over the less used area, and the ceUs acquire greater faciUty to make the right connections of fibrils more quickly, and to carry on the series of proper connections one after the other. All this marvellous mechanism of the brain is thus understood ; but there is still a deeper question. What makes all this mechanism work ? What produces the nerve wave or current that produces con- sciousness and results in thought? Until recently science always answered, — the mys- tery of life. But to^ay it goes further and seeks to find of what this wave current that is received and transmitted through the nerves is composed. And after a series of remarkable experiments with nerves and muscles in salt solutions, this stimulus, this 51 I. Immortality a Rational Faith nerve wave, is found to be indisputably electrical in character ; for the solution that is able to make an excised heart beat for hours, and nerves and muscles twitch and jerk as in life, is found to be capable of gen- erating a current of electricity, proving that the nerve current is thus electrical in nature. So that the last highest answer of material science to-day is that consciousness, thought, is produced by nerve stimulation from a current electrical in character, which throbs through the myriads of brain cells and fibrils connecting and disconnecting them, and, as already stated, the shock of this connection and disconnection on the surrounding watery jelly substance is what produces conscious thought. Some scientists even go a step farther and claim not only that conscious- ness is a brain product but character as well, that misconduct, physiologically speaking, is due to the liberation of the right brain's activities that are usually held in check by jfche dominant left brain; and Professor FlQchsig of Leipsig declares that character and disposition are largely decided by the smallness or largeness of what is called the KorperfuKUphd/rey moral insensibility of certain criminals being due to the diminn- 52 The Predictions of Science tion of internal pain feeling caused by the degeneration of this extensive anterior region, and a normal well-poised character being the result of its healthy development. Now then, when science has proved such an astounding vital connection between consciousness and brain matter, showing how each phenomenon corresponds element . for element to special parts and functions of the gray matter, must we then concludo with so many scientists that mind is con- terminous with brain-function, that when the producing organ perishes consciousness' must cease? By no means. This whole fallacy results from not discerning one truth, namely, that the brain simply mani^ fests consciousness, not produces it. All that science can show after all, in all these marvellous inter-relations, is concurrence of activity, not production of activity. Grant- ing all these facts of the intimate depend- ence of mind on brain, yet deeper study reveals the fact that consciousness being immaterial is not produced by brain matter but preexists, and is simply limited by the brain. It uses the brain, is closely depends ent on it while in the body, but is itself the master not the product, the musician not S3 |v;| Immortality a Rational Faith fbe mnsic, the scientist not the instrument. Destroying the harp may destroy the music but it does not destroy the living musician who used the harp, who produced the music, and who still retains his musical talent. Even Spencer himself distinctly declares that the conscious soul is no product of ma- terial particles but a divine effluence, a man- ifestation of that same divine energy which is manifested throughout the universe. As John Stuart Mill truly says, these thinkers ''should remember that the uniform coex- istence of one fact with another does not make the one fact a part of the other or the same with it. The relation of thought to the brain is no metaphysical necessity, but simply a constant coexistence within the limits of observation." Way back in Plato's day, this same dis- tinction was clearly discerned. Socrates' disciples asked if the soul is the harmony and the body the lyre, how there can be any harmony when the lyre is broken. But Plato, through Socrates, answers that the soul is not the harmony, for harmony is the result whereas the soul is a cause. It is rather the living musician who uses the body to produce the harmony. More or 54 The Predictions of Science less applies to harmony, but not to soul. One can have part of a harmony and part of a discord, but one cannot have part of a soul and part not of a soul. If you an- swer part of a discord is not harmony and the soul must be like pure harmony, you likewise run into a predicament, — ^for then, there could be no such thing as vice, sin, in- justice or pain, which is absurd. The soul, moreover, proves its mastery by the way it commands, fights, disciplines and beats the body under, demonstrating thereby that it is anterior, causal and dominant. Therefore the soul is master, the lyre servant. This same distinction, as old as Plato, has . recently received a remarkable confirmation. Three of the greatest living scientists/ have all started as materialists and changed in later life to dualists. They have vehemently maintained in youth that matter produced and ended consciousness ; but in later years of wider experience and more mature judg- ment they have all three taken the diamet- rically opposite view and declared that the soul is a distinct principle from the body. The ablest living psychologist, Wilhelm Wundt of Leipsig, in 1863, declared in his "Lectures on human and animal psychol- SS I 'I ir i Immortality a Rational Faith ogy," that psychology was a sub-section of physics and the soul the product of physio- logical functions. In 1892 he declared ex- actly the opposite, that psychology is a spiritual not a physical science, the soul and body two distinct principles, confessing in the preface to his modified edition that he had emancipated himself from the funda- mental errors of the first, and that he had "learned many years ago to consider the work as a sin of his youth," which " weighed on him as a kind of crime from which he longed to free himself as soon as possible." ' Budolph Vircho w, the eminent biologist, the founder of cellular pathology, likewise, in 1849 declared the inseparable connection of spirit and body, and that the soul was a purely mechanical natural phenomenon, as- serting, " I am convinced that I shall never find myself compelled to deny the thesis of the wfiity of human nature;" yet twenty- eight years later, in his address on " The liberty of science in Modern States," he takes exactly the opposite position, declaring . that the soul is a distinct principle from the body. Emil du Bois-Keymond, the distin- guished Biologist and Secretary of the Ber- lin Academy of Science, also, at first de- 56 jji: I The Predictions of Science fended materialism, refuted vitalism and the transcendental view of life, yet com- pletely changed, and in 1872 in his famous ^^ Ignordbimua-Speechy^ declared conscious- ness to be an insoluble transcendental prob- lem, opposing consciousness to the other functions of the brain as a supernatural phenomenon, declaring it impossible for philosophy to explain the " world-enigma " of the " connection of matter and force," or the problem of consciousness, — how "sub- stance comes, under certain conditions, to feel, to desire, and to think." Is not this a remarkable illustration that the enthusiasm of first investigation tends to make one trust first appearances and to think that matter produces mind, but more profound research makes one look through appear- ances and discern a principle that cannot be produced by matter, but that stands as an insoluble problem of a transcendental char- acter. But what then are the proofs of this all- important distinction that the brain mani- fests, not produces, consciousness? First, that man, in the final analysis is not mere ' matter but spirit. He is, in essence, not a body, but a mind, a free will, a power, a S7 . ' Immortality a Rational Faith spiritual personality, an immaterial princi- ple, a force. It is not so much the body that has a mind as it is the mind that has a body, which is proved by the overwhelming dominance of mind over matter. Physi- cally man is a degenerate from the power- ful animals that preceded him except in mind development which places him at the apex of the series. Each one's instinctive consciousness convinces him of the irrefu- . table truth that his real personality is a spiritual entity, not a material product. No matter how confused by abstruse argu- ments, you know that you yourself are not the house, but only the tenant that looks out of the window. You are not flesh and blood, but spirit using flesh and blood. Tour beloved ones are no more their bodies than the clothes they wear. The spirit within witnesses that we are spirits in an earthly tabernacle. And even if science does push back its inquiry into life until it declares that consciousness is the result of an electric nerve wave stimulating brain cells and fibrils, yet what generates this electric nerve current ? Science cannot say that the body produces this, for what causes it to start or stop? Nor can it say that 58 The Predictions of Science life is electricity, for then by its use we would raise the dead and never die. It can say life is electrical in character, and thus far can it go but no farther ; for back of all this electrical nerve wave stands life itself. So that all that material science can provB thus far is how life acts, not what produces life. Our spiritual consciousness therefore, being our real personality, is seen to be a - force, not matter, and is linked with thej underlying spirit force of the universe. We now know that all the forces of the universe, heat, light, electricity, electrical and chemical radiation are modes of molecular motion, equivalent and trans- formable one into the other, changed but never lost. Our spiritual consciousness and personality is rather linked with this trans- mutation and persistence of force than with the material atoms. But, even granting that consciousness is an immaterial, spiritual force, yet if it is produced by molecular motion, why does it not stop when the motion stops? It , certainly would, were this the case. But higher science now reveals that conscious- ness itself is not produced by molecular- motion, but only accompanies it, existing 59 Immortality a Rational Faith itself as something apart. The action of molecular motion from body to brain and brain to body, expires in vibrations affect- ing consciousness but not producing it. The conscious state itself does not come into the physical circuit, which is complete in itself. It remains apart and is only the subjective equivalent of the vibration within the brain, being neither the cause nor the effect of the motion, but simply the con- comitant. Just as the current rings the telephone bell; you answer, communicate ^ and the transaction ends. You have been in contact with the circle; you have re- ceived and transmitted impressions and you retain the results; but you are not produced by the current, nor do you perish when the whole system is destroyed. " la otI?er words," says John Fiske, " the natural history of the mass of activities that are perpetually being concentrated within our bodies, to be presently once more dis- integrated and diffused, shows us a closed circle which is entirely physical, and in which one segment belongs to the nervous system. As for our conscious life, that forms no part of the closed circle but stands entirely outside of it, concentric with the 60 I The Predictions of Science segment which belongs to the nervous system." Therefore if consciousness simply accompanies molecular motion, the ceasing of that motion does not imply its end, while the correlation of forces implies its conserva- tion. But there are still many other proofs that the brain is not our real self, but sunply the organ of self, that it is the instrument that is used, not the person using it, that it is the microscope or telescope through which we see, but which itself does not do the see- ing. In other words, as the highest science expresses it to-day, it is not the eye that sees, nor the ear that hears, nor the tongue that speaks. It is consciousness that sees through the eye, that hears through the ear, that speaks by the tongue. A striking sci- entific corroboration of this is that when consciousness is deprived of part of its in- strument, it makes the remaining part do the whole of the work, thus proving that while it cooperates with the brain, it is yet something that is to a degree apart from the brain, and master of it. If the brain alone generated thought, then destroying half the brain would destroy half the capacity of thought. But what do we find? That 61 ill I Immortality a Rational Faith when half the hrain has been thus destroyed by disease or accident, in a vast number of cases the whole normal thought and intelli- gence of the patient is retained. With the exception of the paralysis of a few muscles, the complete intelligence remains. Dr. Bichat was one of the foremost anatomists of his day, yet upon his death, one lobe of his brain was found to be so dwindled as to be practically useless, and it was thus dis- covered that his consciousness all along had been compelling half of his brain to do the whole of this complete high mental work. Dr. Cruveillier reports the case of an emi- nently intelligent citizen, the left lobe of whose brain was found to be entirely des- troyed and replaced by a watery substance, the right lobe having assumed life's com- plete normal work. The skull of Phineas P. Gage is now in the Harvard museum showing where a crowbar of thirteen and a quarter pounds had been driven by a blast- ing accident through the frontal region of the brain, he, however, retaining all his fac- ulties and living twelve and a-half years after the accident. Innumerable similar medical statistics confirm this power of con- sciousness to compel part of its instrument 62 The Predictions of Science to do vicarious work. Now when the D and E strings of a violin snap and half the music stops intermittently, you know that it is some automatic device ; but when these same strings break, and you hear a per- former continue the music uninterruptedly, taking a higher wrist position at times and compelling the two remaining strings to supply the notes of the missing ones, you know that he is an independent personality that masters his instrument. Another scientific proof of the domination of consciousness is that it has been clearly proved that the brain does not operate its functions of itself, but that the mind teaches it its various functions. None of the func- tions of the brain are natural. They are all acquired. For instance, the brain does not teach us to speak, but it is the mind that teaches the brain to speak. The ape has the same convolutions that we have yet he does not speak. It is our mind that compels us to acquire these accomplishments. By prac- tice, the mind teaches the occipital lobe to recognize the written word; the temporal lobe, the spoken word; the frontal convo- lutions to form the spoken word; the middle third convolution to compose the 63 Immortality a Rational Faith written word ; and the frontal third convo- lution to remember. Thus reading and writing do not come in infancy. They are acquired only after years of the domination of the mind over the brain matter, when our will has carried out the mind's deter- mination to make the different parts of the. brain acquire these accomplishments, at first painfully and slowly, afterwards by practice readily. This shows that the brain does not generate consciousness, but that conscious- ness uses the brain as its instrument to ful- fill its wish. The partially independent existence of con- sciousness during sleep confirms this same mastery over the brain matter. For one- third of our existence, we know, the mind has to leave the body. It has to leave only those places in the body that consciousness has been using. Nothing else needs sleep. Muscles and nerve-centres in themselves do not get tired. The muscles of the heart and diaphragm, the processes of food assim- ilation and tissue building operate by invol- untary action without the mind's command- ing them. Only those muscles and nerves become exhausted that have been used by the mind, and consciousness is compelled to The Predictions of Science go away and leave these completely in order that they may rest and the waste be replen- ished. Sleep is not perfect sleep unless it is entirely unconscious. What then has be- come of consciousness ? Has it come to an end ? If so, then we must be recreated each time that we awake, which is absurd. If not, it has proved its existence apart from the body during this period, being capable of returning and ruling the body at will. Likewise with anaesthetics the surgeon can drive away our consciousness altogether from our body, so that he can cut or burn us, and yet consciousness is not there to suf- fer, but returns after the operation showing it has survived. So far as consciousness alone is concerned, the chloroformed patient or corpse seems the same during the interval, in the one case consciousness having gone for a time, in the other for good, l^ow when the rider dismounts from his jaded steed, placing the wearied brute in the sta- ; ble, only to remount, master and spur him* on the next morning, no one would think that the horse produced the rider, or that the rider could not exist without the horse. Even when consciousness partly returns in dreams, the vivid reality of dreams while 6s Immortality a Rational Faith tlie body is asleep adds its weight towards the brain manifesting not producing con- sciousness. For to be able to see often as realistically as when awake yet without the eye, to hear without the ear, to feel with- out the touch, to talk without the tongue shows the sentient principle is, at least, somewhat independent of the sleeping stu- pefied body. Also the fact that consciousness retains its identity and the continuity of its impres- sions, although all the matter of the body is constantly changing, places this same em- phasis on the side of its domination over matter; for we know that the man of eighty recalls the details of his youth al- though in the meantime he has had over eleven bodies and even a larger number of totally renewed brains. The matter of brain and body is, scientifically, like the flowing river, continually rolling away and being replaced by new material, but con- sciousness seems to be like the separate per- sonality of a fisherman who stretches his net, retains the products of the river while the flood itself flows on and is lost. Like- wise, the preternatural activity of the mind in extreme danger, as in drowning or falling 66 The Predictions of Science from a height, and the luminous state fre- quently preceding death in which the body lies exhausted, almost dead, yet the mind remains clearer and stronger than ever, — add their emphasis to the dominance of mind over body. All these different glimpses show us that it is consciousness that is the master, not the brain matter. There used to be a strong phase of philosophy and science that re- versed this, that claimed that all knowledge is the result of sensation ; that all the stu- pendous achievements of the human intellect are the result only of eye, ear, nose, tongue and hand ; that there is nothing in the in- tellect that was not first in the senses. But^ Liebnitz answered, — True there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself. But how account for that? Then Kant continued^^ the demonstration showing that the min(| has an equipment of powers, laws and con- ditions antecedent to sensation, that the mind is only awakened by the stimulus of outward things, and then puts forth its latent powers, using, educating the senses, and thus producing knowledge, the senses alone being helpless without the latent 67 Immortality a Rational Faith power of consciousness that underlies all acquirement of knowledge. Yet still the question arises in every thoughtful heart, how can a brainless soul think? On what basis will consciousness be able to act when separated from brain matter ? The only way we know it here is through its using brain, nerve and muscle. What will be its medium, its instrument when separated from the human organism ? Or, as the early scientists used to ask St. Paul, — "With what body do they come?" To St. Paul such a question seemed foolish because it is absurd to think there can be any limit to God's power, or that it is not easy enough for Him to give to the soul a body as it shall please Him, just as He has already given different organizations to life in the seemingly contradictory localities of water, land and air, and different forms to matter is space. And just as the death of the wheat reappearing in the grain shows life through death, identity through total change, so the dynamic force of conscious- ness will survive only retaining its type in a glorified form. But still, inquiring reason does not doubt , jso much the Creator's power, as it seeks to 68 The Predictions of Science obtain some faint idea of how this power works out this apparently unimaginable problem of disembodied consciousness. We must, however, fully realize that it is obviously impossible for us to understand the properties of a spiritual sphere into which we have not entered and which is totally dissimilar to any of which we have had any experience ; yet there are neverthe- less possibilities that can, at least, be sur- mised. Consciousness, during its sojourn in the body, may possess undisclosed powers and endowments whereby it is prepared to exist independently hereafter without the use of the senses. Or again, consciousness may be reclothed with a spiritual body, of which as St. Paul says, the present one furnishes only the dynamic force, and thus be able to express itself through this spirit- ual body. Every organism, as Joseph Cook urges, is built by a life principle which is made to exist before it, and therefore may be made to exist after it, reproducing an organism for itself, just as the decaying fruit holds within itself the kernel that con- tains the organism of the future tree. That the dynamic force of our spiritual life will thus survive and reproduce its appropriate 69 Immortality a Rational Faith organism becomes most probable when we see it developed into moral character and linked with the great moral Being of the universe. "When then we return to our fundamental distinction and see that con- sciousness is not brain product but brain master, we obtain inklings, at least, of how it may possess latent powers to exist inde- pendently, or how it may carry on its ethereal transcendental vitality to some spiritual reclothing which will serve as its appropriate instrument. Mysterious ? Yes ; but not more so than many accepted scientific facts of to-day, such as the theories of gravitation, atoms, energy, vibration and cells. If an atom of sodium can survive the destruction of salt, water, bread, digestion, assimilation, circu- lation, and yet retain every one of its prop- erties intact, why not the vital dynamic force of consciousness ? If a grain of musk can give out from itself particles enough to fill a large room for months, and yet be not itself diminished in the most infinitesimal degree, why may not the subtle soul survive its apparent waste ? Is the change at death much greater than the decomposition of water from a beautiful, refreshing, spark- 70 The Predictions of Science ling liquid into an inflammable, noxious, in- visible gas and into a solid body combined with iron ? Yet none of these elements are lost. Every day scientists accept sub- stances as existing that seem to the senses to be entirely annihilated. If a chemist can take a silver cup, drop it in nitric acid and make it entirely disappear, and yet by introducing copper, precipitate the silver to the bottom, extract, melt, mold it, and hand you back your original cup unaltered, is it incredible to maintain that the great Chemist of the universe can do as much? If you enter a darkened room where a ray of light falls on black you see nothing. Would you say therefore the light in that room does not exist? If so, place an orange in its track, and the room is at once suffused with a yellow glow, revealing the constant presence of what the senses would say was non-existent. Likewise the photo- graphic plate reveals stars the eye can never see ; the microphone, sounds the ear can never hear ; the bolometer, sensitive- ness the skin can never detect. Every- where science teaches that the amount of knowledge we can apprehend through our little limited senses is as nothing compared 71 Immortality a Rational Faith to the vast realm that transcends them, and that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Nothing is more preposterous than to disbelieve the survival of disembodied con- sciousness because one cannot fully com- prehend it, when we are believing in and accepting mysteries of the universe all around us of which we know absolutely nothing. One might as well say that he will not believe in electricity because he can know nothing whatever of its real nature. Or explain if you can how waves of ether called light and heat, penetrate, co- operate with and color solids, fluids and gases, or pass through solid ponderous sub- stances as though they existed not, or throb an ethereal message around the globe ? It is absolutely inconceivable that every violet ray is composed of six hundred and ninety- nine thousand billions of oscillations per second, and that each ray of light crosses and recrosses all other rays of light its entire length and yet arrives unobstructed in a direct line. Science does more; it often accepts apparent contradictions that are inexplicable. Acids, alkali and water are known to possess intense chemical I The Predictions of Science affinity, strong reciprocal attraction, rush- ing together to combine when united. Yet by galvanic electricity and asbestos, scien- tists can make a cup of acid and a cup of alkali, exchange places, passing each other en route, traversing a cup of water placed between, all three substances in con- stant contact yet without combining. The mode of this contradiction, this suspension of chemical affinity, is an absolute enigma. Or explain, if you can, the mystery of that most recently discovered element, Radium, which gives off heat and penetrative light without combustion, waste, or chemical change. The very foundation stone of modern science is the law of the conserva- tion of energy, that no work can be done without the expenditure of an equal amount of energy ; yet here is a substance in hand, that continues to generate heat and light, continually emitting a stream of material particles or corpuscles, without the apparent aid of any external source of energy what- ever. Yet physicists are accepting, experi- menting with and utilizing this direct con- tradiction of their laws, totally unable to explain its mystery. Again, colorless fluids, by the addition of acids can be changed 73 i M Immortality a Rational Faith to black, then rechanged to transparent, but how this elective affinity in acids, metal and alkali, causes alternately this absorp- tion and transmission of light, we have no conception whatever. Or who can explain how each piece of a large magnet that has been broken into a thousand pieces, becomes itself a little magnet, possessing both poles, lifting many times its own weight, attracting iron no matter what sub- stances intervene, communicating itself by contact without losing its own energy, and when suspended pointing in the same direc- tion that all the other fragments indicate ? Who can explain the mysteries of gravi- tation, the processes of nourishment and growth of animal and vegetable kingdoms, the organs of sensation, the method of perception, or the origin of life? All the advancement of science as to the inde- structibility of atoms, the equivalence and correlation of forces seems to make the sur- vival of consciousness in keeping with na- ture's subtle mysteries. Science has long ago learned that reason must look through appearances. The earth appears to be flat ; the sun, to revolve around the earth ; and for ages humanity followed 74 The Predictions of Science these first impressions. But reason soon learned it must triumph over sense, and look through semblances to the reality^. Death appears to end all, but reason through a thousand indications learns to look through death and to see life beyond. If then, we accept mysteries equally surprising in nature all around us, why should we hesitate to accept the survival of consciousness from a myriad of predictions, simply because we cannot comprehend the method? "There is," says Victor Hugo, " we are aware, a philosophy that denies the Infinite. There is also a philosophy, classed pathologically, which denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness. To set up our lack of sense as a source of truth is a fine piece of blind man's assurance." The second great scientific argument for the survival of consciousness after brain dissolution arises from the stupendous reve- lation of thelaw of evolution. At first this vast process of the universe was thought to argue against immortality. When human- ity learned that the universe instead of be- ing created at one time substantially as it now exists, was slowly evolved through 75 11 Immortality a Rational Faith countless ages, planets from nebulous mat- ter, all living organisms including man from a few primitive forms of life, or from one, with modification or variation, through the struggle for existence, natural selection, survival of the fittest, — it asked in alarm, where then is there place for the soul? Man is simply an evolved animal by natural process! But deeper science has revealed the place for the soul. One party of evolu- tionists claims that man's body came by evolution, but at a certain stage, his soul was placed in his body by a separate inde- pendent act of God. This view is not at all contrary to the true meaning of evolution ; for, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as atheistical evolution. For evolution is simply a process. A process is something necessarily finite with a beginning and an end. Even if you declare that all the po- tentiality of the universe and its subsequent development were contained in a primitive prothyle substance, yet the mere existence of this prothyle implies a prior agent, its creative cause. And intelligence is revealed in both this primordial force and also in the process ; for otherwise how explain the de- velopment by orderly types instead of by 76 The Predictions of Science haphazard, one germ producing a fish, an- other, undistinguishable from it, producing a man, or how explain the logical order of this creative energy that takes nature for- ward in progressively higher manifestations of itself, rising consistently through all king- doms to man, and through man to spirit. Evolution thus necessitates intelligence ; in- telligence. Deity ; and the whole process is seen to be but the working out of the method and purpose of Deity. Therefore it is perfectly consistent with the scheme to claim that the Creator, who is back of this vast process, could have breathed into man the immortal soul at the right point of physical development. But the other group of evolutionists ob- jects to this view, declaring man's whole being must come from evolution, that it is not logical to think of the Creator as break- ing into the vast process for soul creation. If this be true, we have only to realize that God prearranged such a result. And many devout scientists hold with Le Conte that man's soul as well as his body is given through the process of evolution ; that from the chemical and physical forces of nature the lower forms of life were developed; 77 ' ; Immortality a Rational Faith from these, the conscious spirit of animals ; from this, the spirit of man ; and this spirit of man at a certain stage acquired the quality of immortality, obtaining sufficient energy and concentration to survive phys- ical dissolution. Nor is this at all improba- ble on the basis of what evolution has already accomplished. The distance be- tween an ascidian and a Shakespeare seems almost as great as that between limited and unlimited existence. If that animal inter- mediate between vertebrate and inverte- brate can evolve mind, then mind may, somewhere along the process, acquire the quality of continuance. If sublime moral feeling can be evolved from a sea-squirt, the quality of continuance can surely be evolved from ethereal spirit. "In the course of evolution," says Fiske, " there is no more philosophical difficulty in man's acquiring immortal life than in his acquir- ing the erect posture and articulate speech." So whichever view is held,— that the souPs creation is an independent act, or a develop- ment from the process, — there is room for immortality in either hypothesis. But furthermore, the old view of evolu- tion used to declare that man came by evo- 78 The Predictions of Science lution; to-day, it is found to be better science to say that evolution came by man. That is to say, the object, purpose, goal of the whole vast scheme from the beginning was the perfection of humanity ; and just as one says the base of a monument is erected for its statue, so one says evolution was made for man as its crown and con- summation. Studying its process thus far, we see that its system has been that of pro- gressive development towards higher and higher forms of life, conserving all past excellence and gradually acquiring more, rising through inorganic and organic up to life and consciousness until man is reached. Then this same process continues in man, making towards that which is the highest in him, that which differentiates him from all the rest of creation, his rational and moral nature ; the evolution of mind emerg- ing gradually in conscious identity, reason, intelligence, the conviction of freedom, self- government, self-improvement, moral re- sponsibility, until it reaches its highest plane of sympathy, love, self-sacrifice. What then is the clear final purpose of this process ? Merely race development ? Each generation rising to a higher plane of intelli- 79 Immortality a Rational Faith gence and morality ? This is undoubtedly part of the object, but not all ; for, science declares that in time to come the earth and all its civilization will become extinct, and if only race development were sought, there being no race surviving, this process which reveals such logical order and reason all along its course would suddenly end in nothingness. Therefore we see that the clear object of this process is the develop- ment of the highest possibilities of man, namely his perfection. His evolution thus far from selfish brutality to sympathetic self-sacrifice shows that this world stands as only the first stage towards this absolute perfection. And right here is where science and religion are seen to harmonize. Science all along indicates that the ultimate goal is man's spiritual perfection ; yet, struggle as she will, she cannot fulfill this ideal. At this point, religion then comes, brings man in touch with spiritual realities, which in- spire, guide and help him towards that ideal. Science brings man to the base of the Him- alayas, shows him the path and the snow- capped sunmiits of eternal purity above the clouds, but can take him only a short dis- tance up the steep, where he falls down 80 The Predictions of Science helpless. Then comes religion to take his hand, lift him up, strengthen and guide him so that he may continue his climb up- ward even through the clouds of death to the final attainment of all that science fore- saw but could not realize. It is one process of evolution with science and religion co- operating towards a common consummation. Looking back then over this vast reasona- ble process, can it be conceived of as possible that all this logical consummation will be blasted, annihilated, and end in an infinite insane chaos ? Can reason think it probable for an instant, that this whole universe has labored painfully forward with such vast tremendous processes through these long weary ages upon ages towards man and his perfection simply to let him gasp his four- score years and ten, never completely real- izing his ideals or possibilities, and then be swept into a hole in the ground forever? If it is incredible to think of Palissy strug- gling desperately through terrible disheart- ening years of poverty and defeat to perfect a piece of enamelled earthenware only for the purpose, when finally achieved, at such tremendous toil, patience, perseverance and sacrifice, of deliberately dashing it to pieces, 81 Immortality a Rational Faith how much more incredible to think of a Creator laboring up through millions of years to produce His masterpiece of man only to crush him quickly into annihilation ! " Will you," asks Emerson, « with vast pains and care educate your children to produce a masterpiece, and then shoot them down ? " Thus the vastness of the past effort of the whole system becomes a pledge of man's continuance. We have also seen that the clearly re- vealed law of evolution is the conservation of excellence. But the highest, choicest product of the whole creation is man's moral nature. How then can this law fail to gar- ner its most precious product ? Will crea- tion conserve excellence jealously all down the ages only to throw away wantonly this final highest product? Yet, some reply, it may garner virtue by handing it down through successive generations, thus .giving it an earthly immortality without any need of a spiritual one. But one comprehensive glance of the universe reveals the falsity of this view. For, as already shown, science declares that in time all the inhabitants of the universe wiU be dead, the universe itself only a mass of whirling cinders. What then 83 The Predictions of Science would be the real harvest? I^othing but ashes. Is it credible that this titanic ter- rific labor has been put forth all these ages simply to reap dead cinders instead of har- vesting all along its process myriads of perfected spirits ? There is still another method of turning the argument. The object of evolution is, as we have seen, man's perfection, — the per- fection of the individual and society. But the limitations of our physical organisms and environment, make that absolute full perfection unattainable here. It can be continually more nearly approximated unto, but never completely realized. Therefore the completion of this process points to this perfecting of the individual and society hereafter. Otherwise we would have the same apparently rational system all through the ages, absolutely defeated at its culmi- nating point. For either man is inunortal or the universe a failure. Man's body is nearly perfect, but his mental and moral possibilities only in process. Were evolu- tion to end here, we would have a perfect scaffolding with only a half-built temple. If man perishes in death he is the consum- mate failure of creation. The entire process 83 \ Immortality a Rational Faith is but a vast century-plant that yields no flower. " Without spirit immortality," says Le Conte, " this beautiful cosmos which has been developing into increasing beauty for so many millions of years, when its evolu- tion has run its course and all is over, would be precisely as if it had never been, — an idle dream, an idiot tale signifying nothing." There is therefore no middle ground be- tween these alternatives. Evolution must either stop, or fail, or we must live here- after. The countless ages past, the astound- ing achievements thus far accomplished, are pledges that it will neither stop nor fail. Therefore we must go on to the complete spiritual perfection. We must either choose an unthinkable universe of confusion with- out method or meaning, or the evolution- ist's harmonious progressive development moving on to its fruition in immortality. All the sciences are constructed upon the conviction that the universe is an order, an expression of intelligence. They would be instantly thrown into confusion were it sup- posed that creation is a wild chaos. If then creation has been proved to be a logical in- telligent order all through its course it cannot prove to be chaotic insanity at its \ The Predictions of Science climax. The intelligent order of the whole universe thus implies man's immortality. "The summum honum then practically," says Kant, " is only possible on the suppo- sition of the immortality of the soul." Looking back then over the whole field of science as to its predictions upon the problem of immortality, we see that the materialistic declaration that future exist- ence is an impossibility, is an absolutely worthless assumption; that the agnostic answer that there is no evidence either way, is true only of strictly physical science, and even in that domain the way is left open, and hope not forbidden; that the answer of brain investigation shows that conscious- ness is not a brain product but a brain con- comitant, that it masters the brain matter and predicts its survival after brain dissolu- tion; and that the answer from all the different phases of evolution is that the whole logic of the reasonableness of the universe imperatively demands man's sur- vival hereafter. 85 'ff < in 1 THE PREDICTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY We have seen, thus, that faith strength- ens herself even in the domain of hard, cold science by realizing that there are no proofs against immortality, that the way is cleared for it by consciousness being only a brain concomitant with many revelations of mas- tery, while evolution throws its tremendous argument from all the reasonableness of the universe into a positive prediction of man's living hereafter. Faith then moves forward into the next great department of human thought, — Philosophy. To many this de- partment is the most decisive of the three, as they exclude immortality from science as being irrelevant to its domain, and refuse to accept any supernatural revelation, and therefore wish to argue the possible pre- dictions on wholly philosophical grounds. In one sense philosophy covers all three departments of human thought, for a "love of wisdom " means in general the organized 89 Immortality a Rational Faith sum of all highest truth, the complete sci- ence of things human, a comprehensive synthesis of man in relation to the universe. Yet there are certain branches of meta- physics, psychology, logic and speculative knowledge that constitute a separated prov- ince. What then are some of the predic- tions of immortality from this vast realm ? What are the conclusions of " The faith that looks through death In years that bring the philosophic mind." Foremost stands the reason founded on the universality of this belief. All men, with few exceptions, in all places, at all times have believed in a future existence. This conviction is as old and as broad as the human race, is spontaneous, independent, and strong even when underived from reve- lation, tradition or authority. It belongs, as Cicero says, to those great truths that are born with us. It is not, as some say, a development from primitive man's elabora- tion of dreams and ghosts, but these were rather the result of this irrepressible self- assertion of consciousness that could not feel itself non-existent. Moreover, the QO The Predictions of Philosophy widely differing ideals of the future world ranging from Happy Hunting Ground to Paradise, from Walhalla to Nirvana show that this conviction was not borrowed from race to race, but sprang up independently and indigenously in each race all over the globe. The conceptions differ as to the condition, but agree as to the fact, show- ing that this belief is a profound instinctive conviction that reveals itself as having been implanted by the Creator in every individ- ual's heart. Also the fact that the race commenced to challenge and question this belief only in later periods when self-con- sciousness had developed, instead of dis- proving, simply shows that the race had not done so before and therefore that it was an original instinct. Cicero mentions in surprise that " there were some in his day who had begun to doubt of immortality," as though it was strange that such a uni- versal conviction should be doubted. Now thoughtful scholars have sometimes rejected this argument from universality of belief, because they have not stopped to discriminate its distinguishing features. Universality, in itself, it is true, is no proof; for we well know that all men 91 Immortality a Rational Faith have at times believed in fallacies, such as the world's being flat, the sun revolv- ing around the earth, and the universe being instantaneously created. Nor is an- tiquity a proof, for superstitions are old ; yet when superstitions have survived for ages, this survival has been secured not by their fallacy, but by the core of truth they contained. Yet the difference in this argu- ment consists in that wherever universal belief is based on a fallacy, it is in time re- futed or altered, whereas this belief in im- mortality has never changed since the dawn of history, but only progressed, developed, strengthened and been continually elevated and refined with all the advancement of man, attaining its maximum among the highest races of mankind, being strongest in the best, wisest and most spiritual of the race. [N^ot only so, but it has been this con- viction that has contributed powerfully to man's advancement, being one of the most potent factors of his development, underly- ing the conception of the worth of the in- dividual, the sacredness of life and the moral significance of existence with eternity as its culmination. Is it likely then that such an irresistible instinctive consciousness 92 The Predictions of Philosophy existing independently and indigenously in the whole human family from its genesis, with continual accumulative deepening and strengthening of power, expressing, as it does, all humanity's aspirations, is not founded on a reality ? Is the entire human race likely to be deceived from its beginning to the present, in one of its most original instincts, when it has made such astounding progress in all other lines? This univer- sality from the very genesis of history, strengthened and elevated by progress, rep- resenting a universal instinct, and being bound up with all race progress, carries, immense weight to the thoughtful mind as being the expression of an inward posses- sion of immortality. Next, consider the much debated argu- ment from analogy. It is here also per- fectly true that analogy can ^ever be a logical conclusion until the spiritual realm is shown to correspond with the laws of the physical. To argue from one to the other, one must know that they harmonize. But if there is one Creator of the universe is it not more probable and natural to suppose that He would make two halves into one harmonious whole, rather than leave them 93 Immortality a Rational Faith conflicting and contradictory? Is it not more reasonable to think that He would create a continuity between spiritual and natural worlds with great circles running through both hemispheres, rather than two sets of confusing conflicting laws? It is true, likewise, that one cannot argue from a physical phenomenon to a physical-spiritual change, as for instance, from the caterpillar into the butterfly to the disembodied spirit after death, the one being a physical change throughout, the other being a change from the physical to the spiritual. Yet as illus- trations, hints, suggestions, prophecies, the striking analogies of nature's life after ap- parent death will always appeal to men's minds and hearts, and be one of those addi- tional facts that is well worth gathering to add its weight to the mass of other predic- tions. In one sense the whole course of na- ture seems to teach survival under a new form in a new sphere. Everywhere we see transformations of the same life existing under widely contrasted conditions. When the ancient Egyptian saw the beetle break- ing from its filthy sepulchre, he at once saw in that process a hint of future existence 94 The Predictions of Philosophy and therefore placed the scarabaeus in tem- ple and on charm as emblem of man's breaking from the tomb. The same thoughts arise in us when we watch the apparently dead snake slowly shedding its old slough and gliding forth with renewed life, or when we see the bird bursting from its shell and contrast the eagle in egg with the eagle soaring towards the sun, or the dying seed springing up in a new harvest, or spring awakening from winter's death, or the tadpole breathing through gills in water yet gradually preparing to live in another sphere and breathe through lungs on land, or when we watch the silk worm slowly weaving its death-shroud of a cocoon only to emerge therefrom as a radiantly colored winged insect with new faculties to ■ sail free and joyous in a boundless sphere. How can one see all these continual trans- formations, and recognize everywhere the great law of life from apparent death, with- out feeling that the Author of nature has thus predicted that we shall survive our change of death in accordance with the same great law ? Will He carry out this transformation for seed, fish, reptile, insect, bird, and yet not permit the paragon of all 95 Immortality a Rational Faith nature, man, to renew his life after this pitiful little existence? Even a toad en- crusted in the forming rock is said to live for centuries and a grain of wheat in a mummy-case for millenniums; will God's child then be cut oflf with four score years and ten ? This same law of the transformation of life from apparent death that we have seen in the lower order of life, applies to man as far as we can follow him. The contrast between the unborn babe and the mature educated man, between Caesar, Newton, Goethe, in the womb and afterwards as world-conquer- ors, — shows the continuance of life under widely differing circumstances. Moreover, the whole realm of embryology reveals the vast law that death means simply outgrow- ing limitations and passing into a higher sphere. Death in embryology is simply the culmination of one stage of existence and the birth into a larger, more complex state of development. Thus when the grafian follicle outgrows its limitations it dies, its nucleous becoming the ovum ; the ovum vi- talized, develops to maturity and dies, its nucleus becoming the placenta with germ centre ; the germ centre dies, its nucleus be- 96 The Predictions of Philosophy coming developed into the embryo ; the pla- centa dies, its nucleus, the embryo being bom into this world. Logically then, con- tinuing the process, we infer, the body here outgrowing its limitations dies, its nucleus, the spiritual nature, being born into a higher sphere. Either this process continues, or we have a sudden illogical break in the contin- uity of the Creator's process. "In death's unrobing room we strip from round us The garments of mortality and earth ; And, breaking from the embryo state that bound us. Our day of dying is our day of birth." Likewise if man is continually losing a part of his body, renewing his entire frame every seven years, yet retaining his identity, and all this according to nature's established law, when he comes to lose the whole o^ his body by another great law of nature death, why may he not continue to retain his iden- tity by the same analogous law ? Even the Arabs express their conviction of this anal- ogy beautifully in their philosophy. As the material of man's body, say they, is gathered 97 I if Immortality a Rational Faith from the vast store of matter in nature, and is afterwards restored to its source, the body being returned to nature, so man's spirit coming from the universal Divinity, is at last returned to that Divinity. What is this but uninspired philosophy looking out on nature and saying, — " Then shall the dust return to the earth, as it was : and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." This persistence of life, therefore, under new forms and conditions over all the realm of nature, makes us feel it is but natural to tzpect this same persistence of life after the change of death. But nature has more than beautiful illus- tration. She suggests principles and laws whereby eternal existence might be secured could the conditions be fulfilled. The more complex the organism, says Drummond, and the more perfect its adjustment with its en- vironment, the longer its life. So evident is this in nature that Herbert Spencer lays down the law that could we find a perfect correspondence that would endure with an environment that would continue, we would have eternal life : " Perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the The Predictions of Philosophy organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal existence and eternal knowledge." Now carrying on and up this analogy, man has simply to create this correspondence with the Eternal, and we find him fulfilling these conditions that nature suggests. For when he links himself in communion with the spiritual force of the universe, he has se- cured the perfect correspondence with an eternal quality and environment, thus realiz- ing nature's conditions of eternal existence. This was Schleiermacher's thought when he said, — " In the midst of the finite to be one with the infinite, and in each passing moment to have eternal existence, that is the immor- tality of religion." And Schenkel also echoed this truth when he wrote, — " Only he who is in God has part in eternity in time." Nor will this necessarily restrict im- mortality only to the few spirtual ones of the race, if we accept evolution's theory that the whole animal spirit of man at the proper stage of development was brought into con- tact with the eternal life spirit of the uni- verse, and thus the race became immortal. Again, nature also teaches us the law that 99 Immortality a Rational Faith nothing is ever really destroyed. Apparent annihilation simply means change of form. All changes are exchanges. No one can des- troy an atom. It is immortal. Hammer, burn, rarify as you will, you simply change solids to liquids, liquids to gases, but the ul- timate atoms are never impaired in the slightest. Through all the myriads of changes the sum total of atoms remains the same to-day as at the beginning. Now is it rational to think that mere atoms would be made to persist, and precious thought, gen- ius, spirit be allowed to perish? If the Creator preserves the less valuable, will He not the more valuable ? Is not the life more than raiment ? Can we conceive of a father saving his child's clothing, and deliberately allowing his child to perish in the flames ? Does God preserve the elementary constit- uents through their countless changes and yet snuff out the precious spirit of His own offspring ? Would He give millions of years to the duration of solar systems and annihi- late His own child after this little gasp ? Nature further corroborates this law, by showing there is no such thing as waste in her domain. Apparent waste fertilizes future growth. Every scrap and fragment 100 The Predictions of Philosophy is jealously gathered up and used again in some new form. Shall then the choicest, most precious product of the universe — intelligence, spirit, character — ^be absolutely recklessly thrown away ? "That will last forever," says Lotze, " which on account of its excellence and spirit must be an abiding part of the universe." It was this thought that gave Tennyson absolute heart cer- tainty in the crushing bereavement of the talented Hallam. " And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes. Who roU'd the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, " Who trusted God was love indeed And love creative, final law — Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed — " Who lov'd, who suffer'd countless ills. Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust. Or seaPd within the iron hills ? " Likewise Goethe standing by the corpse lOI I jj Immortality a Rational Faith of the great Wieland exclaimed, "The destraction of such high powers is some- thing which can never, and under no circumstances, even come into question." And Matthew Arnold in spite of all his intellectual doubts and questionings, when his noble father lay dead, was compelled to soliloquize, — " Oh strong soul, by what shore iParriest thou now ? For that force Surely, hast not been left vain I Somewhere, surely, afar In the sounding labor-house vast Of being, is practiced that strength Zealous, beneficent, firm ! " . " I do not know that there is anything in nature," says Martineau, " (unless it be the reported blotting out of suns in the stellar heavens) which can be compared in waste- fulness with the extinction of great minds ; their gathered resources, their matured skill, their luminous insight, their unfailing tact, are not like instincts that can be handed down : they are absolutely personal and inalienable ; grand conditions of future power, unavailable for the race, and perfect I02 The Predictions of Philosophy for an ulterior growth of the individual. If that growth is not to be, the most brilliant genius bursts and vanishes as a firework in the night." " What is excellent," sings Emerson, " As God lives is permanent ; Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain ; Hearts' love will meet thee again." And the heart feels this is as true of char- acter as it is of intellect. When one stands by the casket of some beautiful strong character, cut off in the prime of its useful- ness, at such a tender, deep, true moment, he will find his lips saying, — such a rare sweet spirit of such marvellous self-sacrifice, such divine tenderness, such helpful sym- pathy cannot end. It is in such perfect harmony, in such aflSnity with the heart of the All-Father God Himself. It must be needed. It must survive in some higher influence in the great moral universe. But perhaps the strongest philosophical personal conviction of immortality is found in introspective psychology. If immortality is a present possession, not a future acquire- ment, then there surely should be some 103 I Immortality a Rational Faith hints, inklings, foregleams of that im- mortality in ourselves, no matter how- obscured by the encasement of flesh. In- stead of always looking around for proofs, why not also look within ? Why not see if there are not reflections of the Creator's image in which we were formed? And foremost is the psychological conviction in every sane man that he is something more, and something apart from the body in which he lives. " Cogito ergo gum." There is the instinctive consciousness that the real individuality is not body, but spirit, which being an immaterial principle is not nec- essarily any more affected by the dissolu- tion of the body than the tenant is affected by the removing of his house. As Benjamin Franklin so quaintly expressed it in his epitaph,—" The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, and stript of its lettering and gilding), lies here food for worms ; yet the work itself shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by the author." All philosophers have felt the force of this and other soul convictions that Descartes called "innate 104 The Predictions of Philosophy ideas." Whence come they? Whence come these great soul impressions that one's spirit is but the tenant of the body, being God's eternal offspring, with even suspicions of past remembrances and future unfold- ings ? Plato thought that they came from some experience before birth; Aristotle, from some distinct prior formative intellect ; Kant, from a mind anterior to experience as the creator of experience; and Words- worth voices this mystic feeling in his lofty familiar verse, — ^ Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere it's setting. And Cometh from afar : Not in entire f orgetfulness. And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home." To the soul then that feels these " innate ideas " of the conscious self being more than the organism that holds it, immortality is something that is felt in the most profound depths of the human spirit. 105 Immortality a Rational Faith A curious proof of this innate persistence of the consciousness of immortality is that you cannot conceive yourself as having ceased to exist after death. Tou can theo- retically think of your own annihilation, but you cannot realize it as a fact, for the slightest thought of destruction is always overcome by an instinctive sense of persist- ent being. Whenever, for instance, you try to imagine yourself as dead, you in reality think of yourself as being present at your own funeral, beholding all that is said and done, accompanying the procession to the cemetery, seeing the casket lowered, the grave refilled, and witnessing the grief of the mourners. Not once can you truly im- agine yourself as absolutely annihilated, but you find yourself always present as a living mind looking at your dead body. The great underlying reason why we dread death is because we instinctively think of ourselves not as having ended, but as being still alive somewhere in space. " The dread of something after death. The undiscovered country from whose bourne Mo traveller returns, puzzles the will, io6 The Predictions of Philosophy And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than to fly to others that we know not of." And this same strange psychological law is as true in thinking of others. You think of them as ended on earth, but cannot grasp the thought of their having altogether ceased to exist as thinking minds. No matter how vague, indefinite and ghostly your thoughts of them are, you still con- ceive of them as continuing to exist. Now it is true that thinking a fact does not imply the reality of that fact; yet, the highest philosophy maintains that necessary think- ing of a fact is the image of a reality : for God's order must correspond to what is ab- solutely inevitable in man's reason, other- wise we could not live in this world, as we do, by means of reason and its inferences. That which is absolutely necessary to pure thought must have a reality. It is on this truth that God and the methods of crea- tion are postulated. If then death as the blank cessation of all mind is unthinkable, such annihilation of mind must be unreal ; and if persistence of mind is an absolutely 107 Immortality a Rational Faith necessary conception of sound reason, such persistence must correspond with the reality. Thus Goethe reasoned when he declared, " It is to a thinking mind quite impossible to think himself non-existent, ceasing to think and live ; so far does every one carry in himself the proof of immortality, and quite spontaneously. But as soon as the man will be objective and go out of himself, so soon as he will dogmatically grasp a per- sonal duration to bolster up, in cockney fashion, that inward assurance, he is lost in contradiction." Add to this the further evidence that good men arrive at a certain point in their spirit- ual experience when they have absolute cer- tainty that their union with God is eternal. This certainty is just as real and positive as the fact of their own existence. The truly spiritual character comes to know that " he is in God and God in him." He holds to this conviction it may be through a lifetime of adversity and enters death without a shadow of doubt or trembling. Every day we see this soul certainty of God and im- mortality confirmed on deathbeds; and looking back through the ages we see that vast army of martyrs, reformers, mission- io8 The Predictions of Philosophy aries who have witnessed the unshakable absoluteness of this soul conviction by long lives of apparently hopeless toil and sacri- fice, by enduring tortures and by volun- tarily facing the King of terrors in his most hideous forms, fearlessly, triumphantly, be- cause of the certainty that they lived in God and could never die. It is true that no one can take another's experience for his own proof; yet such testimony, con- firmed by such characters, should certainly add its weight together with other indica- tions, in making us feel there must be some reality underlying such a vivid conscious- ness. Once more, when we study the nature and constitution of the mind itself, we find ourselves carried forward logically into eternity for its sequences. The very grand- eur of man's capability for unlimited thought, contrasts violently with any idea of his extinction in a few short years. Physically, he is but an infinitesimal atom in the immensity of the universe. Yet, as Parker once said, " The biggest star is at the little end of the telescope." Mentally, he is greater than all the matter of the uni- verse combined. Within him lies that mys- 109 Immortality a Rational Faith terious power whereby he can soar through time and space at will, uncovering the universe and its laws, weighing the stars, analyzing the suns, unravelling nature's mysteries, conquering her with mighty civilizations, dwelling in the remote twi- light of the beginning or the end of time, and finding in all the universe nothing that surpasses his own mind, except its greater affinity—the Infinite Mind. This unlimited capacity of the intellect flatly contradicts speedy extinction of being. " All our intel- lectual actions," says Emerson, « bestow a feeling of absolute existence." « To me," says Goethe, " the eternal existence of m'y soul is proved from my idea of activity." Moreover, life itself is imperfect and frag- mentary, intellectually, emotionally and spirituaUy. No matter what attainments are accomplished, no one reaches the limit of his unfolded possibilities. No one is fully satisfied in inteUect, heart, or ideals. The intellect catches glimpses of vistas of mfinite truth, of eternal sequences of ideas, that it can only glance upon, although it is conscious of the ability to pursue did cir- cumstances permit. The heart cries out in Its hunger for some power to fully reveal its no The Predictions of Philosophy own depths and satisfy its infinite yearnings of spirit. The moral sense can never be fully satisfied short of the restored order of the whole moral universe. If life, then, be not a Satanic mockery, we must look be- yond for the completion of our nature. Think of our intellectual limitations. Our faculties constitute only a segment pro- phetic of the completed circle hereafter. There is a limit and completion to the growth of animal and vegetable kingdom. When the plant brings forth many times its leaf, flower and fruit, it fulfills its mission, reaches the object of its creation, and at- tains the limit of its being. The animal body likewise fulfills its maturity and de- cays. But there is no such limit or comple- tion to the mind. The capacity for ideals of both culture and character are boundless. Every one possesses this singular power of continually conceiving higher visions than he can possibly realize. Strive as he will, each attainment only enables him to see greater possibilities. Every result achieved simply enlarges his ability for greater at- tainment, this growing capacity therefore prophesying eternal utility. The more we study the greater the thirst for further III V Immortality a Rational Faith i knowledge, and the greater the capacity for following it. So that death surprises us at the moment when we feel we have only made a fair beginning. Even if spared to old age, we feel as did Tennyson, that we need another entire life for music, another for art, another for science, and another for history ; or with Coleridge we outline studies we wish to pursue, that upon examination are seen to require a hundred years at col- lege. And much even of the little we do learn here would be useless if death ends alL Not only do we make a mere begin- ning, but we make a mere beginning of only a few faculties, such as reason, memory, judgment, while psychologists tell us over forty remain in embryonic potentiality, that are never unfolded in this life. Is not this great bunch of undeveloped powers pro- phetic of development hereafter ? Does not the bud argue a future flower ? Could there be anything more desolate than to raise vast acres of buds that seem to prophesy fields of gorgeous roses, only to blight them all suddenly while in the bud, leaving the promising fields a vast cemetery, smitten by the canker worm of death ? Surely all the other parts of creation witness that God is 113 The Predictions of Philosophy too wise a florist to harvest only dead blos- soms. Thus our undeveloped potentialities pledge their development thereafter. There are also psychologically, many mys- terious delicate shades and tremblings of the human spirit that indicate eternity as truly as the quivering of the sensitive needle re- veals the presence of the mysterious current that is pointing it towards the unknown region. " His heart forebodes a mystery. He names the name, eternity." "Whence comes this universal feeling of perpetual discontent, dissatisfaction, man never being, but always to be blessed. Like the irridescent bubble so much seems price- less in anticipation, worthless in grasp. Coveted possessions acquired, simply change the character of the discontent. Alexander conquers the world and weeps. Sardanap- ulus cries, " The more I drink the more I thirst." Whence comes this infinite hunger of the spirit ? Whence come these ideals, that no genius can half realize, that descend and possess man, rather than man originating them, that man clings to even through fail- "3 j0*mm 1 i Immortality a Rational Faith Wte ? Were this life all, everything would be so adjusted as to satisfy the spirit. We would be as contented as the cow chewing her cud, or the sheep grazing on hillside without a thought or care for past or future. But this 'perpetual discontent and unsatisfied longing, echoed from Solomon's " Yanity of Vanities!" to the corroboration of latest monarch or sage,— what is it but the strug- gling of the imperishable within the perish- able, the immortal spirit refusing to be sat- isfied with husks, aspiring towards the Eternal ? " Thus I know," sings Browning, " This earth is not my sphere. For I cannot so narrow me, But that I still exceed it." Then what is the explanation of those subtle mysterious moods of the spirit that under deep experiences of joy or sorrow, lift us out of this world and waft us towards eternity ? There is, for instance, a mystery, a meaning, a depth, a revelation in intricate profound harmony, in masterful or sad music that seems to wring the soul from the body, and make it realize it is a spiritual quality, an affinity with the subtle harmonies of the 114 l» The Predictions of Philosophy spiritual world. Great soul musicians lost in the trance of lofty melody know for a certainty that they are immortal ; and we share a similar experience in a less degree, when we are caught up in spirit to the third heaven and hear sounds unutterable. Or how explain those terrible wrestlings of the heart with some spiritual Being all through the dark night of sorrow until the day breaks and there descends a strange peace, an unearthly balm, a certainty of spiritual help, like " the Eternal Arms " placed un- derneath the bruised and crushed nature, such an experience as Carlyle tells us came to him in the darkness of his great sorrow, not untinged by remorse, while he was re- peating the words of the Lord's prayer? Or how explain those uncontrollable expe- riences of sudden homesickness, loneliness, discouragement, aspiration that sweep over the heart as abruptly as the unexpected tem- pest tears the music from the trembling chords of the aeolian harp ? Whence come those true deep moments of the divination of some transcendent world, of some Pres- ence above the human, and of a reality of contact of the human spirit with the Divine ? Mariners sailing across the Caribbean seas Immortality a Rational Faith imagine that they hear deep down under- neath the water the music of the sweet ring- ing of bells that rises from the sunken is- lands. So at times there surges upward in the heart the music of mysterious voices from unfathomable spirit depths, "whose very sweetness yieldeth proof that they were born for immortality." At times these emo- tions are like the great swelling, heaving tides that are being drawn by the powerful attraction of some celestial world. At other times they seem not to originate with our- selves but to sweep out from the infinite, breathe upon the human soul, and sweep back into the infinite again. Call these ex- periences mere emotion, if you will, but the discerning heart knows for a certainty that they witness to something within that is more than this world. If we trust a feeling in regard to the reality of the universe and build life upon it, why not trust these deep- est surgings of the human spirit that bear the great flood-tide towards the Infinite? " If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, I heard a voice ' believe no more,' And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the Oodless deep : Ii6 The Predictions of Philosophy " A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answer'd * I have felt.' " The sum total of all these myriad delicate shades of spirit constitutes what might be called soul instincts of immortality. Now nature never deceives the instincts of the animal creation. "When the fish starts in- stinctively to swim, the bird to fly, the bee to hive, the spider to weave, each finds the fulfillment of what its nature predicts. When the restless feeling comes to the birds in the fall, with the intuition of a far distant sunny, balmy clime, and they rise, circle and take their flight, the unerring in- stinct guides them to the realization of a warm and happy land. Will nature thus be true to the instincts of the whole animal creation and yet lie to the highest, finest in- stincts of the spirit ? For, as Cicero says, " There is, I know not how, in the mind^ of men, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence, and this takes the deepest root and is the most discoverable in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls." Shall we not then say confidently with 117 Immortality a Rational Faith Bryant, as he watched the water-fowl fly southward, — •"He who, from zone to zone. Guides through the boundless skj thy certain flight, II the long way that I must tread alone Will lead my steps aright." But the supreme witness to immortaEly by these fine traits of the human spirit lies in the undying and ever increasing power of true affection. "Many waters cannot quench love." He who loves devotedly carries with him an ever increasing as- surance of eternal life, in its continually augmenting capacity and its never fully completed satisfaction. The very ability to truly love, implies immortality, for souls alone are able to love. Bodies cannot. True love is deep soul-affinity, soul living with soul, helping, educating, developing in mutual sacrifice and ministry ; and through all the changes of life, within and without, this soul of love abides, containing always a vast flood-tide of sympathy and sacrifice that is boundless. Such a true sacred love, for Ii8 I ^ The Predictions of Philosophy instance, was that of the poet and poetess Browning, the intensity of whose mutual soul passion has been an inspiration to the world. There is something in the very quality of love that convinces one of its eter- nity, tevealing, as it does, an infinity of un- satisfied yearning, of sublime tenderness, of God-like self-sacrifice. It seems created to endure in heaven, for it makes any earthly spot a heaven, and is the quality we share with God Himself. For true love never ages. As the body grows old, love grows young, becoming only infinitely more ten- der and self-sacrificing, so that we come to life's borders realizing the insufficiency of time to satisfy this eternal quality, and with an increased intensity of yearning that argues its continuance hereafter. Nor is this witness of love to immortality confined to the limits of one's own family. As man grows up out of the animal towards the spiritual, his love widens from that of family to that of community, state and race; selfish love becoming transformed into self-sacrificing devotion to the weak, needy, sinful, ungrateful and even repulsive of the whole human family, — " bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all 119 Iirtitillftsdity a Rational Faith linigs, enduring all things." It thus be- comes a reflection of the Divine, and there- fore prophetic of eternal continuance. Such a refined spiritual purified love craves re- sponse in kind, feels the need of even a higher love in return; and in life's deep moments, love realizes no response of humanity can fully satisfy its depths. Ac- cepting all the preciousness of human affec- tion, it yet reaches out towards some perfect fulfillment ; and thus cries at last with Saint Augustine, — "0 God, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and the heart is disquieted until it rests in Thee!" But even the response of this perfect Divine love is never completely fulfilled in time ; for man craves, at his best, to give and receive the love that is the product of a perfect life ; and there- fore, even from the loftiest heights of Di- vine communion, he still cries, — " I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness!" This infinite capacity then, for giving and receiving perfect love, human and divine, surpasses all boundaries of time, and makes its possessor certain that love will receive its perfect consummation in eternity. To think that God would ruthlessly blow out this highest quality of His highest creation, I20 I I The Predictions of Philosophy that partakes of His own essence, would be to think of Him as Satanically mocking His children, and rioting in a chaotic creation. If the infinite Creator is to be true to the prophecies to His creature. He must grant him not merely continued existence, but the fulfillment of this noblest endowment of his nature. But before leaving this realm of phi- losophy, there are two distressing views that must be considered, which accept all the in- dications of immortality yet turn them into narrow channels that in reality destroy their significance. The first view, espe- cially prevalent at the present day, is that of Conditional Immortality, which maintains that all men are not immortal by nature, but some become so, by virtue of earnest endeavor together with God's help. It is the theory of the continuance of the law of the survival of the fittest in the future life, — those that struggle for fitness with God's help becoming immortal, the wicked eventually passing out of existence. This theory is attractive at first sight, as it seems to make worth the basis of future existence, and seems scientific, philosophical and moral. The universe preserves only 121 1 Immortality a Rational Faith what is useful; therefore, the fit survive, while the wicked, being inutile, perish. Thus also, all difficulties as to future pun- ishment and God's justice seem adjusted. But when this view is thoroughly examined, it is found to be absolutely untenable. It seems kind, but when viewed compre- hensively, is simply appallingly horrible. To begin with it is not scientific. The scientific basis of immortality consists in postulating consciousness as only the con- comitant of the brain, the brain being its instrument, and consciousness giving indica- tions of being capable of existing independ- ently hereafter when separated from brain- matter. If so, were some individuals im- mortal and others mortal, we would expect to find some slight difference at least, be- tween this relation of consciousness and brain in the two classes. We would natu- rally expect scientifically that the conscious- ness of the good would show signs of being able to be separated more readily from brain matter, while that of the bad would reveal symptoms of being identified with it and inseparable. But science finds abso- lutely no difference between the conscious- ness and brain matter of good and bad. 123 , ^ I The Predictions of Philosophy The problem and the mystery of survival is the same for both. It can discover no traces of two distinct species of human beings, one with souls and one without, nor any greater facility for separating mind from body in either class. So far as science looks at the human structure it would seem to be a case of all having souls or none. Nor is this theory true philosophically. It sounds reasonable to declare that the uni- verse, as a rule, preserves only what is use- ful, what has value, what is essential to its existence, and that therefore bad souls pass out of existence ; but it is false inference to think the bad may have no future value. There is a value of potentiality as well as of attainment. The capacity for future good- ness even in bad souls may make them use- ful. There is possible virtue even in the lowest prodigal. He is still a son. The possibility of reformation, improvement, progress make even perverted souls of infinite value. Who dares dogmatically de- clare that God in His vast plans may not ultimately, after justice is fully satisfied, seek the penitence, transformation and per- fection of wayward souls thus giving them a priceless value for all eternity? Then, 123 Immortality a Rational Faith 6dfisider what a low estimate of man is rep- resented by this view. Man after all, is only an animal that naturally perishes, both body and spirit being as mortal as the brutes, yet at the same time, this natural mortal is endowed with the terrific contra- diction of a free will and moral responsi- bility ! What a far more severe draft such a theory makes upon the supernatural, to make us think of God thus continually in the process of immortalizing perishable creatures. It savors also of pride and self- ishness. It seems an attempt to create an exclusive aristocracy of the survival of the deserving few, while the great mass of the human family is left to perish forever. How could any broad affectionate heart that loves the race be happy in the sur- vival of only a remnant? Nor is it a stimulus to effort, as claimed; for the uncertainty of knowing when one has gained sufficient strenuous effort to be able to survive would fill one with doubt to the last, while the great mass would give up in despair. For the better the character the more unworthy does one feel himself to be, the more keenly does he realize his short- comings; so that the truer the saint, the 124 The Predictions of Philosophy less able would he be to claim this virtue worthy of outlasting that of others. Only the Pharisee could feel certain of having won sufficient character, and be able to thank God he is not as other men are. But, further, when we rise to the moral and religious consideration of this theory we find it is absolutely repellent. It is not Biblical; for it is only by going through the Scriptures and making eternal life mean continued existence and eternal death anni- hilation or ultimate non-existence, that any apparent support can be found. Whereas a deeper study of the spirit of the Bible shows that eternal life means existence plus a higher quality of grace added, and eternal death means existence minus this higher quality; but in neither case is existence terminated. Then, what a fearful contra- diction of the whole spirit of the Bible it is to represent God as on the side of the few select strong ones of His creatures, while He allows the vast mass of His weak or way- ward children to pour down in a horrible torrent to eternal extinction! It would also seem difficult even for God to decide the fine line where there was or was not just enough effort, or just enough virtue to 125 Immortality a Rational Faith entitle the life to continue, since humanity is a mixture of good and bad, there being no perfect saints or purely devilish sinners, but each being more or less a mixture of both, there being good in the worst and bad in the best, and all far enough from di- vine perfection to have mutual sympathy, and probably mutual opportunity for con- tinued existence. The advocates of this view think it vindi- cates God's justice, but in reality it creates more difficulties than it relieves. If the wicked perish instantly at death, where is there any satisfaction of justice? For a devilish tyrant or villain to ruin thousands of innocent lives, live himself in prosperity, and then become extinct, would defeat all ends of justice. It is just what the worst characters on earth would be glad to ac- cept. It thus violates the moral thought of the race through all the ages that justice will ultimately be accomplished. l!for is this difficulty obviated, by modifying the theory, so as to say that the wicked are raised for a while after death long enough to be punished, afterwards becoming ex- tinct. For what makes them live at all after death? If they were mortal by na- The Predictions of Philosophy ture on earth, and did not struggle for the right, they would not survive. But, answer the advocates of this theory, God raises them, makes them immortal for a while, in order to punish them. But is not this a horrible representation of God, raising the dead only to punish them? Does it not seem somewhat like the hangman reviving the strangled man in order only to hang him again; or the inquisitor resuscitating the victim who has swooned only to place him again on the rack ? Does this satisfy God's justice ? Then, granting that the bad once live after death, what is it that makes them become extinct? Sin, answers this theory, because sin wears itself out. But, on the contrary, sin in itself never wears itself out. It wears mortal bodies out, but never its own quality. Indulgence in sin never ends sin, but on the contrary pro- motes it. Do pride, hatred, envy consume themselves by use, or grow by the very ex- ercise of themselves? If then, sin in its spiritual quality, never consumes itself, what will make the bad become extinct after once surviving death ? Only the de- liberate act of God. But is not this an un- worthy belittling conception of the infinite 127 1 Immortality a Rational Faith Father of the human race, to think that He was so utterly and finally defeated by sin that the only way He could rid Himself of it was by violently extinguishing the vast majority of His own creatures ! And this brings us to the final decisive reason why this seemingly attractive theory is impossible, — because of the horrible fail- ure it would be to God and to humanity. When one takes a comprehensive view of all the myriads of creatures on the globe during all time and thinks of the vast hordes that have not won in the struggle, that cannot possibly be worthy of survival in their own effort, the horror of such a pitiful battle- field, the repulsiveness of such a Niagara torrent of extinction, the ignoble failure of a Creator who has thus practically lost His cause, — is its own refutation. If God does it deliberately it is even worse, for men could not worship such a Creator. He would be a Moloch, not a God. If even men send out missionaries at great sacrifice to save the lowest, most degraded specimens of the human race that are apparently worthless, will not the all-Father do as much? Is it not also true that while science does teach the survival of the fittest, 128 The Predictions of Philosophy the very glory of Christianity is that it teaches the salvation of the unfit ? Has not the weakest and most sinful child all the more claim on the Father's heart? "Would the God that revealed Himself as the Good Shepherd, leaving the ninety-and- nine to go out and seek the one lost sheep, and as the broken-hearted Father yearning for the prodigal's return, be happy with only the comparatively few strong surviv- ors in His presence? How much nobler and more satisfying the truth that all men are immortal, and the hope that while the power of the resistance of the human will to God is vast and indefinite, yet the power of love is infinitely greater, and in the long run of ages, the Divine Father will in His wise way and tune, subjugate aU things unto Himself. This is not Universalism, for Universalism declares that this is true, while we hope this may be true, saying con- fidently, — " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " " Through all the depths of sin and loss Drops the plummet of thy cross, Never yet abyss was found Deeper than the cross could sound." 129 Immortality a Rational Faith **0 yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will. Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; " That nothing walks with aimless feet : That not one life shall be destroyed. Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete." Another most distressing view of immor- tality, yet one with many millions of ad- herents, is that of the loss of all personality by absorption in the Infinite. In the vast cycle of the ages, we are told, only the in- finite can endure. Man's soul being finite must necessarily, ultimately, be absorbed in the infinite. Man is immortal; but his spirit in time must lose itself in God who gave it, in order that God may be all and in all. But this is literally giving us a stone and serpent, when we ask for bread and fish. It is a pretentious hollow mock- ery that belies all our aspirations for im- mortality. For absorption into the infinite amounts practically to total annihilation. What difference does it make to us whether we are executed on the seashore or absorbed 130 The Predictions of Philosophy by drowning in the ocean's depths ? Our conscious identity perishes alike in either case. Why may not finite and infinite co- exist forever ? The fact that they coexist here is a presumption that they will con- tinue to coexist. Why create the finite at all, if the end returns to the beginning? Where is any reasonableness of God's work ? Is not the thought of the Creator alone in infinite space and time with all spirits ab- sorbed in Himself, a less rich and blessed representation than that of the Creator with all the results of His wisdom, love and toil garnered around Him in an eternal harvest ? The whole sweep of the ages, the vast toil, the " one law, one element, and one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves," protest against such a meaningless anti-climax. Personality is the one most precious product of all creation. It is the culmination of the whole world's process; so that, as Martineau truly says, if the In- finite " swallowed up the personal life at the end of the mortal term, it would be more like the sacrifice of children to Moloch than the taking of Enoch by God. Personality is not the largest, but it is the highest fact in the known cosmos : and if death has 131 Immortality a Rational Faith power over it, there is nothing which death spares : it can undo the utmost which the divine will has wrought." Destruction of personality means extinction of being which means waste, and nature knows no waste. Evolution's culmination, the prophecies from humanity's incompleteness, affections, aspi- rations, moral sense, and Revelation's posi- tive assurances would all be mocking lies were personality lost. For there is no mid- dle ground. Logically, it must be either personal immortality or annihilation. So that if we are to survive at all, we can sing with confidence Tennyson's refrain, — " That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging in the general Soul, - Is faith as vague as all unsweet : Eternal form shall still divide The eternal soul from all beside. And I shall know him when we meet." 132 The Predictions of Religion i TV THE PREDICTIONS OF RELIGION Although faith thus sinks her founda- tion and rears the body of her pyramid of intelligent confidence in the realms of science and philosophy, yet the summit and capstone of the pyramid, that pierce the clouds, she finds only in the moral and the- ological predictions ; for the question of immortality rests, as its climax, on the character of God and on our moral sense. Our great unshakable confidence, after all, is found in an intelligent trust in infinite love and goodness. What then, are the predictions from this highest realm ? First the positive declara- tion of man's immortality by divine revela- tion. We must admit that all the civilized nations of the globe have accepted this dis- tinct revelation as divinely given in the Scriptures. Scholars differ as to the man- ner and fullness of inspiration, and as to the interpretation of different portions ; yet 1 35 1 Immortality a Rational Faith all Christendom agrees that the Bible con- tains the word of God, and distinctly an- nounces the fact of the immortality of the soul. This revelation of the future life be- gins dimly in the Scriptures, but burns more and more brightly until it bursts forth in the effulgence of the promises of Christ, and the elucidations of Saint Paul. Now here is a tangible test for each seeker after truth to submit to himself, — Can I not, at least, trust the sum and substance of that marvel- lous Book ? When I consider its internal and external evidences, its unique history down the ages, its transformation of every civilization in which it has been placed, its acceptance by the highest culture of the civilized world, and above all, the way it " finds me," speaks to the depths of con- science and soul, fits every crevice of the heart as though the same author had created both, — can I not rest on its distinct revela- tion? Then, add to this, next, the witness of the resurrection of Christ. Granting that the whole question of our immortality does not rest upon the historic reality of that one event, yet that resurrection, if true, es- tablishes life hereafter beyond a doubt. If 136 ! ' The Predictions of Religion a dead man did rise once, it is proved, at least, that life can be evolved from death. Whether it will be in all other cases, must be established from other inferences ; yet it is a tremendous gain to know that it can be done because it once has been done. Now on this whole subject, there is and probably always will be two attitudes ; — that of those who declare that the evidence given in the Bible, while suflBicient to establish ordinary historical occurrences, is not suffi- cient to establish such a stupendous event that contradicts all human experience, and that the resurrection would never have been believed, had it not fallen upon the great longing and aspiration of the human heart for immortality : and the other attitude of those that reply that no stupendous event could ever be established should we take such a position, that humanity is accepting every-day facts that flatly contradict all previous experience of the race, that the only fair way is to test the evidence and ac- cept the result. That such a resurrection is possible depends entirely on whether there is a God or not. The universe of matter and life cannot be explained with- out assuming the existence of God. If so, 137 li Immortality a Rational Faith He must be the ina.ster, not the slave of His own creation. He must be able to modify, or work in higher harmony with nature's laws. Therefore the resurrection is possi- ble. As to whether God would perform such an astounding miracle depends on the need of it in His own omniscience, and on the historical fact whether He has actually done so or not. We are thus brought down to the question of fact. But before examining the evidence, re- member that even if the corporeal resurrec- tion of Christ should be ever conclusively disproved, yet the fervent sincere proclama- tion of it and belief in it thus far, still wit- nesses in one way to immortality, in show- ing the tremendous conviction of all Chris- tendom that such a character as that of Jesus Christ's could not die, that such a sublime personality of wisdom, goodness, self-sacri- fice could never end, but must be at least spiritually surviving, confirming thus again that innate conviction that what is inher- ently excellent is imperishable. Then, let us clearly understand also, that even after the evidence is examined on both sides, the acceptance or rejection of Christ's resurrec- tion depends largely on individual sympathy 138 i The Predictions of Religion and prejudice for or against. Neither party will succeed in convincing the other, as un- derlying the ultimate decision is generally a predisposition to believe or disbelieve. But in all fairness we should remember that there is perhaps as much danger from prej- udice against any supernatural occurrence, as there is from the over-eagerness to wel- come such a fulfillment of the longing for a future life. We therefore see it continually demonstrated that those who first come into perfect sympathy with the spiritual charac- ter of Christ, have little difBLculty with the fact of the resurrection, stupendous though it be. The truest way to realize the truth of the resurrection is to commence with Christ Himself, and ask, — How can we ac- count for the marvellous character of Jesus ? He Himself, it seems to us, is the greater miracle; resurrection only the appropriate logical sequence. How can we account for His astounding wisdom, which the ages pre- ceding never discovered, and which the ages succeeding have never exhausted. The sum total of His teaching stands alone in all space and time. Other great sages caught little glimpses; but He alone presented a completed revelation of past, present and 139 Immortality a Rational Faith future. They were but starlight ; He, noon- day. Think of a peasant of Palestine, known as the carpenter, stepping out from the limi- tations of Nazareth and revealing the stu- pendous revelation of the Kingdom of God, and that that Kingdom was paternal, uni- versal, coextensive with the race ; revealing that the infinite Creator was the all-Father vitally interested in each individual; that He was the self-atoning God, working out the salvation of the race ; that man was in- finitely precious, could be regenerated, transformed; and enunciating vast princi- ples that to this day underlie all social and spiritual progress of the race ! Add to this His own perfect life of absolute devotion to God and self-sacrifice to man, a life acknowl- edged by friend and foe alike to be sepa- rated from all the rest of humanity by its spotless purity and absolute self-abnegation. Think of such a character not only never convicted by his enemies of sin, but declar- ing that He Himself was unconscious of the slightest stain, absolutely perfect in His heart's depths. How can we explain such a character ? Will heredity and environment, David's line and Nazareth, produce such a unique life, separated by its perfection from 140 i The Predictions of Religion all the rest of the race ? Will self-delusion account for one whose wisdom still astounds the world ? Would any impostor sacrifice himself to the uttermost? There is but one reasonable explanation, that of His own, that He was God in flesh, the revelation, the manifestation of the infinite Creator in time. When one obtains this inner view of Christ's character, when one follows Him through that transcendent gospel of Saint John's, which breathes His spirit, and leads us into the Holy of Holies of His thoughts, motives and aspirations, Christ Himself becomes the miracle. His resurrection only the logical inference. Thus, Christ Himself is the first and great witness to His own resurrection. But next turn and examine the other wit- nesses. Consider fairly the following facts, — ^the moral character of the witnesses, their number, the many among them with dis- cerning minds and intelligent ability, their personal testimony to facts seen by their own eyes, the agreement of the sum total of their evidence yet with natural dis- crepancies showing it was not prearranged, the many tribunals before which they gave this evidence, the fact that they bore this testimony right on the spot, openly in 141 M I'M Immortality a Rational Faith Jerusalem, that they gave it immediately, — within three days after the death, the re- peated challenging of this evidence, the straightforward simplicity and nmvete of their declaration, the total contradiction it was to their own expectations, the absence of all interested motives, the sudden trans- formation wrought in the disciples from cowards to martyrs, the persistence of their testimony through tortures even unto death, the conquest of that resurrection over other religions and civilizations, the historic wit- ness of Christendom to-day, the fact of the highest nations that represent the climax of culture and civilization accepting it in gen- eral,— and see whether all these facts, to- gether with the marvellous character of Christ Himself, are not sufficient to show that the resurrection was a historic reality. Human immortality, then, on a compre- hensive view is assured in any event. Dis- prove Christ's bodily resurrection, and His spiritual resurrection still suffices to pledge our spiritual immortality. Disprove both physical and spiritual reappearing, and we are still immortal from our own nature as evidenced by the other predictions of science, philosophy and religion. But accept Christ's 142 The Predictions of Religion resurrection, and we are morally certain, and to disprove this one must disprove all this accumulation of evidence that has proved sufficient for the mass of Christen- dom all down the ages. Then, in addition to the witness of rev- elation and resurrection stands the con- firmation that comes from the great moral argument, arising from the evidence of the sublime moral sense found in every human being. One of the most striking character- istics of this sense is the universal possession of that vast overwhelming idea of the exist- ence of God. With few exceptions, that may be due to lack of thorough investigation and that only prove the rule, no individual can be found on the globe who does not feel instinctively that God exists. No matter how separated from all other members of the race, each heart rises alone to feel there is a great moral Being in existence. This has been repeatedly tested. Psychologists have taken the deaf, dumb and blind, and carefully forbidden any reference whatever to the existence of a divine Being, and yet in after years the afflicted one has revealed that he has felt and known God's existence in his heart all the while. In every such 143 Immortality a Rational Faith case the result has been the same as in that familiar test in Boston, where for twelve years they kept a little girl who was deaf, dumb and blind in what they supposed was total ignorance of any higher Being, and then took her to the beloved Phillips Brooks to have God's existence revealed to her, yet, who, when the Bishop explained to her simply and tenderly God's Being and Na- ture, at once exclaimed, — " Oh ! I never knew His name before, but I always knew Him ! " What does this universal possession of this idea of God prove but that it was stamped by God on the human spirit which feels and claims its kinship with its eternal Creator ? But with this idea of God is found also a sense of responsibility towards Him. Of all man's equipment, this terrible, awe-inspiring, majestic sense of moral obligation, the sense of Duty, the Categorical Imperative is the most impressive. " Two things there are," says Kant, "which, the oftener and the more steadfastly we consider them fill the mind with an ever new and ever rising admiration and reverence : the starry heaven above, and the moral law within. ... In the former, the first view of a countless multitude of worlds, annihilates, as it were, The Predictions of Religion my importance as an animal creation. The other, on the contrary, immeasurably ele- vates my worth as an intelligence : and this through my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of the animal kingdom, . . . which is not re- stricted by the conditions and limits of this life, but stretches out to eternity." In thinking of God, immortality and duty, George Eliot exclaimed, — "How incon- ceivable the first, how unbelievable the second, yet how peremptory and absolute the third ! " But how was it that she did not see that the fact of the third being thus peremptory and absolute argues the ex- istence of the other two? For whence comes this sense of moral obligation, this absolutely imperative command to sanction right, reject evil, and to be held personally responsible ? Not from the social instincts of the brute modified under human con- ditions, not from the gradual evolution of sympathy in place of primeval antagonism, for it was this commanding sense all along, to choose the higher impulse, that accom- plished this development, producing itself the modified instincts and continuing to work upon them. For otherwise what HS Iljjjjl^j^j^ ^ Rational Faith induced man to make the ethical choice of good? No more can we say that it was developed out of " the necessities of social welfare " ; for social welfare demands only the survival of the fittest, and yet to-day this sense makes us flatly antagonize this welfare, by prolonging the existences of the hopelessly diseased, deformed imbeciles and the extremely aged out of reverence to the sacredness of human life. This moral sense did not develop from social welfare when it has and does go directly against social wel- fare. Therefore the only explanation of this awe-inspiring idea of moral duty, com- ing not from within nor around us, is that it descended to us from the infinite Moral Being, the " true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Now the very grandeur of such an equipment argues a sphere worthy of its completion. This august supreme court within, this sense of personal freedom, responsibility, this moral law, probation, duty of choice, distinguishing man from animals, is too stu- pendous an endowment for this little animal life. Man, as he stands, is overfitted for such an ephemeral existence; his outfit is in excess of earthly moral requirements, for 146 The Predictions of Religion many decisions are above any relation to the mere effects on social well-being, as when he decides and judges on the purity of personal motives, an ideal sense of honor and self-obligation even if alone on a desert isle. We are equipped like an ocean steamer in a small bay, revealing that we were not intended merely to cross the bay, but to pass out through the nar- rows and traverse the mighty ocean be- yond. The mandates of this moral sense also confirm a hereafter. No matter how per- verted, or beclouded with doubt, there is one conviction deep down in every heart that it is always right to do right for its own sake, wrong to do wrong, and that these truths are eternal verities, not limited by this little life but to be vindicated here- after. This moral sense demands that God be perfect, this world the best possible un- der the conditions and evil only a concealed form of higher good ; but if death ends all, then death is an unmitigated evil, evil re- mains unremedied, and the moral sense stands outraged by right and wrong never being vindicated. Likewise, the per- sonal commands of this moral sense upon 147 Il Immortality a Rational Faith each one of us carries us logically forward to eternity for its completion. We grow in ideals of character. Each advance only raises a higher code, until we perceive that our moral sense demands perfection, and will never be satisfied with anything less. "We acknowledge this demand as authorita- tive, reasonable, and sublime; but perfec- tion is impossible under the conditions and limitations of earthly existence. It is only attainable as a gradual approach towards a distant goal. Since then this God-given sense exacts perfection, which is impossible of realization here, there must be a future existence where it is attained. Or, as Kant expresses it, — absolute virtue and a moral Being imply progress of absolute virtue towards moral Being. This completed process is impossible except on the con- tinued existence of the same being. " Das hochste Gut ist, praktisch, nur unter der Yoraussetzung der Unsterblichkeit der Seele moglich; mithin diese, als unzer- treunlich mit dem moralischen gesetz ver- bunden, ein Postulat der reinem praktischen Vernuft." We have seen that one gathers an increas- The Predictions of Religion ing conviction of immortality when he studies the nature of God's works in the universe ; still more, when he studies the nature of man ; but, most of all will he feel this assurance, when, at last, he ascends to study the nature of God. Here faith reaches the final ground of moral certainty, when, after mounting through nature and man, it rests, at last, in the great throbbing Heart of the universe, — the moral character of God. Even for an atheist, there is prob- ability of immortality from nature and man ; but once grant the existence of God, and the probability becomes a moral certainty. For if there is one supreme God, He must be perfect. If perfect, each one of His attributes proves upon examination to pledge man's survival hereafter. First, God is infinite in wisdom. Can any reasonable conception of wisdom justify the annihila- tion of humanity? Would a wise God create matter to last billions of ages, and allow mind and spirit, resembling His own, to perish after life's brief day ? Would it be wise, even as regards His own glory? Is there any glory in a King ruling over a vast cemetery ? Would any sane monarch execute his subjects preferring to reign over 149 .1 1 1 Immortality a Rational Faith corpses instead of countless myriads of liv- ing subjects, praising him day and night, carrying out his will, conquering evil and finaUy bringing all things under his feet ? Would it be wise for the Creator to evolve these vast processes that we have reviewed to produce and improve man, only to an- nihilate him? Would not this be foolish waste of energy,— self-defeat on account of one's own inability. Would it be wise to create beings endowed for a sphere that they could never reach, with eternal capa- bilities, potentialities of thought, feeling and will, that were only to be wasted by sudden extinction at death ? Yet wisdom might be able to know all this and yet be helpless to act. But when you couple God's attribute of power with His wisdom, we cannot conceive their union not pledging man's future life. Next consider God's attribute of holi- ness, — absolute rightness in Himself and in all His actions,~together with His justice which is a mode of His holiness. His per- fection demands that He be thus holy and just ; whenever we doubt it, it is because we judge Him by His unfinished plan, by the scaffolding instead of the building, by a 150 "I The Predictions of Religion segment instead of a whole, forgetting that He says to us, — " Tu n'as qu'un jour pour ^tre juste. J'ai reternit6 devant Moi." Can a holy and just God end this world the way it is without righting it hereafter ? That there must be ultimate justice some- where in the universe has been the profound imperative conviction of all humanity dur- ing all time. Man can endure countless wrongs and apparent moral contradictions in the firm conviction that the Creator will vindicate the right; but even the sugges- tion of the terrible possibility that justice never will be done, that wrong will always triumph over right, is unthinkable and un- endurable, for it leaves creation a mad chaos. All the great religions of the race, all its progressive codes of law, all its varied literatures, all its representations of ideals in the evolution of the theatre, re- veal this underlying conviction that justice must ultimately be accomplished. Nor wiU any " set of ideas for generations " account for this conviction, for man has not seen justice vindicated here, but his experience 151 Inimortality a Rational Faith has been largely that of injustice, yet he has clung to this conviction in spite of cruel millenniums to the contrary, showing this belief to be a profound intuition of the moral constitution. Now then, is justice accomplished in this world ? No one can take a comprehensive view of life and main- tain it. The theory of "compensation" whereby all lives are equalized in the sum total of heart happiness, is disproved by fact. Nor does one receive his reward and punishment here. Look around at real life. One often suffers for another's sin; while another reaps another's toil. Even penal- ties are unequal for the same offense ; the woman being ostracized, the man condoned for the same offense. A single mistake often ruins a whole life, and worse still, those of loved ones linked with it. Many have no chance in life, being handicapped by heredity and environment, such as the badly born, the degenerates, the incurable, the insane, those reared in reeking tene- ments, and hot-beds of filth and vice. Think of the sum total of human misery in a single day of tortured bodies, minds and affections, betrayed confidences, broken hearts, wronged innocency and helplessness, 152 The Predictions of Religion crime, remorse, suicide, death. Add to this that sad mystery of the horrible ravages and slaughter of the whole brute creation by both their own kind and man. Then look back through the ages and think of all the tortures of soul and body endured from such hideous injustices as those of witch- craft, inquisitions, slavery, tyranny, perse- cutions, martyrdoms. Think of a Huss at the stake and a Borgia wearing the tiara ; a Savonarola on the scaffold, and a Medici in the palace ; a Paul beheaded, and a Nero on the throne; a Christ crucified and an Augustus ruling the world, — ^and tell me whether any intelligent man can maintain the theory of "compensation," or declare that justice is here vindicated. If not, then it must be hereafter. Despite the denial of some modern philosophers, the old alterna- tive stands, — either man is immortal or God unjust. Were this existence all, life would often be a horrible nightmare, suicide a boon, the world a crime, ethical principles obliterated, and villainy often more profita- ble than saintliness. But if there be another life, then we can believe in a just and holy God whose justice requires only time to reveal its vindication, and we face all this 153 I Ihifffbrfillljr a Rational J^ith horror, knowing there is still love at the heart of the universe which is working out a greater good, that God's object here is not happiness but character, not to create a playground but a school, that He is the great Father, Physician, Schoolmaster, knowing that our development demands discipline and trust, and working, above all, for the evolution of character and soul out of all the sufferings of this life. Next consider God's attribute of good- ness. But here again, we are met by the challenge of suffering humanity, — How do you know that God is good ? We challenge such an attribute in the face of such an agonized world. Because, first of all, — we answer, — because of the goodness that already exists in this earth. That noble company of prophets, apostles, saints, mar- tyrs, reformers, missionaries, philanthropists down through the ages who have sacrificed everything for the welfare of humanity, as well as the secret heroisms, the unheralded self-sacrifices in heart and home,— sum up a magnificent total of goodness. Whence comes it ? It could not have sprung up and reached such development alone, or against the Creator's wish. To make man good, 154 The Predictions of Religion and God not, would be to make the crea- ture better than the Creator, which blas- phemy the moral instinct instantly repudi- ates. Therefore we feel that God must be back of all earthly goodness, implanting the germs, developing them, and thereby reveal- ing His own nature. Then the progressive amelioration of the world's woe, the many ways in which evil is overruled for ultimate good even here, — being used for a distinct moral purpose of soul discipline, the results and prophecies of evolution, the aggregate of nature, revela- tion, experience, the individual heart his- tory of each soul with its Maker, and above all the revelation of God's disposi- tion through the character of Jesus Christ, — all these make the heart certain, in the depths of its consciousness, even in the face of mystery that God must be good, and enables the discerning to cry, — " Even though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." But even granting all this, the earnest thinker still stumbles over that horrible darkest problem of the existence of evil, — how God, if good, can allow sin and suffer- ing in His universe. All down the ages 155 Hi'' li I Immortality a Rational Faith humanity has agonized over this same query, the consciousness within convincing one that God must be good, but the dis- torted world contradicting it. Some emi- nent scholars, even to-day, take refuge in what is the old Zoroastrian, Egyptian and Manichean hypothesis of two rival Gods, a great Bad God perpetually marring the work of the beneficent Creator. But this only increases the difficulty. For if God created such an evil equal. He would Him- self be evil. If this evil God is uncreated, issuing himself out of eternity's depths, he would be a self-contradiction ; for, when we necessarily ascribe wisdom and power to the one Creator of a harmonious creation, we necessarily exclude by that very definition, any independent infinite malevolence and injustice. Moreover, an infinite evil being would be one infinitely imperfect. The knowledge of an mfinitely imperfect being would be ignorance, his power, impotence ; therefore he could have neither wisdom nor ability to oppose God. Yet even John Stuart Mill holds a doctrine akin to this when he declares that if God is good, then He is "a mind whose power over the materials was not absolute," limited as to 156 The Predictions of Religion ability and wisdom. Were God's mind limited, would He be able to create a hu- man mind better than His own, able thus to point out where He has failed, superior to its Creator ? If His power were limited, would not evil appear to be forced into nature, working defeat and contradiction, instead of, as we see, having been deliber- ately placed in its mechanism and workings as an integral part of the plan? This solution, therefore, is as illogical as it is comfortless. In facing this problem, we must be careful not to exaggerate the evil in the universe, and speak as though it out- weighed the good, or as though one suffer- ing outbalanced ninety and nine joys that come continually through the senses, in- tellect and heart. We must not forget also that much of the evil has diminished during the evolution of the race by increasing science and philanthropy, and will continue to diminish, its presence having stimulated and called forth much of man's develop- ment. Nor must we here, any more than in the former case of God's justice, judge evil by our little day, but only by its use, purpose, and final outcome. And it is this thought that brings us to the nearest IS7 Immortality a Rational Faith solution that we can reach of this problem. Were suffering absolutely meaningless, un- necessary, blind, then God could not be good. But if it has a moral purpose, then its ex- istence is justified, and God's goodness is vindicated in the outcome. Both history and experience show us that evil is un- doubtedly necessary as a condition for ob- taining a higher good, for moral probation, freedom of choice, discipline, purification, and trust. Development demands trust, and trust is impossible except under mys- tery. If we sanction the surgeon operating to save life, the teacher compelling tasks for mind development, the parent disciplining for future character, shall not we grant the infinite Creator the same higher right? Every day we see it confirmed that pros- perity deteriorates, and adversity brings out soul qualities. Thus the intelligent philosophic mind, looking through evil to its evident purpose, is convinced from all the other assurances of the universe, that evil is being used, dominated, planned with infinite wisdom and love for a higher good, and that therefore that God, in spite of the existence of evil, is Himself good. The Predictions of Religion " All nature is but art unknown to thee, All chance, direction which thou canst not see, All discord, harmony not understood. All partial evil, universal good." If so, then, does not God's goodness guar- antee man's immortality? Can there be any goodness in creating aspiring spirits, allowing them to enter into the joy of exist- ence, disciplining and developing them, en- dowing them with eternal cravings and affections, and then suddenly violating all intimations, blasting all aspirations, and crushing all of them into nothingness? Will a good God annihilate children that lift up imploring arms to Him? Punish, discipline, educate them? Yes. But kill them? Never! That would be a Herod, not a Christ. If the Egyptian Princess de- fied a throne in order to save the helpless babe that smiled up at her from the bul- rushes, if the Arab chieftain broke his law and refused to bury his baby girl alive be- cause she lifted her dimpled hands and patted his cheek, — will the God that has proved Himself otherwise so good bury His living children forever? And, just as in 159 Immortality a Rational Faith the case with God's justice, if God is good, He must in eternity vindicate that goodness completely, as it is evident that His good- ness is not completed here, — many lives here being completely wrecked, polluted and ruined by sin. God's incomplete good- ness here, therefore, pledges its completion in a life hereafter. Then, add to these Divine attributes, God's other quality of truth. Would it be strictly honest for the Creator to have im- planted these firm expectations, aspirations, prophecies, foregleams in humanity, and not contradict them if false ? Would it be truthful to implant instincts that are not real ? Would it be right to allow genera- tion after generation from the beginning of time to lie down in the certain confidence of living hereafter, and to watch this belief continually strengthening down the ages, if God knew it were a delusion ? Is it not true that not to contradict or undeceive a child during his whole lifetime is to sanc- tion his belief ? « If it were not so, I would have told you." But, above all, the highest attribute of God is love. All other attributes are ad- jectives ; this is a noun. Saint John does not i6o The Predictions of Religion say, God is loving, but " God is love." Love does not merely describe God, but is the substance out of which He is made. All other attributes are but phases of this love. Down through the ages men have wor- shipped a distorted God of vengeance or license, but gradually He has broken through the clouds of heaven and the mists of earth, until to-day we see Him revealed through Christ as the Father-God, whose nature and whose name are love. If this be true, we not only need God, but God needs us. His heart's happiness is not complete without His children. We are, then, able reverently to sing not only,—" My Beloved is mine," but also,— "And I am His." Would not, then, such a God be infinitely bereaved should death rob Him of us? Since He has all power will He not gratify His love and bring us to Himself? As a perfect Being, He must be always absolutely con- tented. Could He enjoy such complete blessedness if all His children perish ? If the heart-rending shriek of maternal agony is still resounding down the centuries from the slaughter of the innocents at Bethlehem, will the all-Father God sit complacent and undisturbed while His entire human family i6i \\ Immortality a Rational Faith Is massacred by death continually before His eyes ? A mother may forget her jewels or her ambitions, but is there any danger of her forgetting her sleeping child, allowing it to continue in a trance or to sink down in water or flame if she can save it ? If God has endured already such heart agony to reclaim us, is He going to tranquilly allow us to sink into annihilation? Here is where one reaches an absolute moral cer- tainty although he cannot give demonstra- tive proof. I may not be able to prove that you will not throw into the ocean all the fortune for which you have toiled a life- time, or murder the beloved child for whom you have given your life in ceaseless anxiety and sacrifice, but I am absolutely morally certain that you will not deliberately do these things unless insane. I cannot prove that God does not wantonly throw away our souls at death because I cannot see and handle souls after death, but I am abso- lutely morally certain from the way He has revealed that He values our souls above all price, that He will not insanely destroy them. Professor Newman in his " Theism," elaborates this very truth in lines of great strength and beauty : The Predictions of Religion " But if Virtue grieve thus for lost virtue justly, How then must God, the Fountain of Vir- tue, feel ? If our highest feelings, and the feelings of all the holy, Guide rightly to the Divine heart, then it would grieve likewise. And grieve eternally, if Goodness perish eternally. Nay, and as a man who should live ten thousand years, Sustained miraculously amid perishing generations, "Would sorrow perpetually in the perpet- ual loss of friends. Even so, some might judge the Divine Heart likewise Would stint its affections towards the creatures of a day. . . . Would it not be a yawning gulf of ever- increasing sorrow Losing every loved one, just when virtue was ripening. And foreseeing perpetual loss, friend after friend, forever. So that all training perishes and has to be begun anew, 163 Immortality i Rational Faith Winning new souls to virtue, to be lost as soon as won ? If then we must not doubt that the High- est has deep love for the holy, Such love as man has for man in pure and sacred friendship, We seem justly to infer that those whom God loves are deathless ; Else would the Divine blessedness be im* perfect and impaired. Nor avails it to reply by resting on God's infinitude, Which easily supports sorrows which would weigh us down ; For if to promote Virtue be the highest end with the Creator, Then to lose His own work, not casuaUy and by exception, But necessarily and always, agrees not with His infinitude More than with His Wisdom, nor more than with His Blessedness. In short, close friendship between the Eternal and the Perishing Appears unseemly to the nature of the Eternal, Whom it befits to keep His beloved, or not to love at all. The Predictions of Religion But to say God loveth no man, is to make religion vain : Hence it is judged that ^whatever God loveth, liveth with God.' " Summing up, then, we see that all of God's attributes of Wisdom, Power, Holiq^ss, Jus- tice, Goodness, Truth, and Blessedness are all pledged to man's immortality. As Rous- seau once summarized it, — "I believe in God as fully as I believe in any other truth. If God exists. He is perfect; if He is perfect. He is wise, almighty and just; if He is just and almighty, my soul is immoral." "He who believes in a God," says Rothe, " must believe in^ the continuance of man after death. Without such a faith there is no world that would be thinkable as an end of God." And in that last solemn crisis that is steadily and surely approaching each one of us, this, perhaps, will be our greatest confidence of living hereafter, — the character of God, especially His goodness. As each one feels Death's approach, he can turn to his beloved ones and say, — I feel I can trust God. I can place myself in His hands. Nature, history, revelation, experience, and the past com- 165 I Immortality a llational Faith munion of my own soul, all tell me that He is good. If so, /He will do what is best for me. Should annihilation be best, then it is best ; but I feel sure He wishes me, as well as I wish Him. I know He will not belie the deep instincts of my soul. I can trust His love, and so,—" Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." The world to-day is subjecting every realm to the inductive method. Facts, it cries, are indisputable. Gather facts, clas- sify, make the logical inference, and the re- sult will be truth ; but, be careful to gather sufficient facts, to see that they are perti- nent, and propW interpreted. This k for- cible and true ; but we must also remember that a feeling is as truly a fact, as a stone, a sentiment as much of a reality as a moun- tain. Facts of history are only the object- ive results of ideas of the mind. Looking back then, and gathering together all these facts from all these three great realms of science, phUosophy and religion, can there be any fair interpretation of them all taken cumulatively that does not indicate a future existence ? For many years astronoiaers were^pr- The Predictions of Religion plexed to notice certain perturbations in the far distant planet Uranus which were inex- plicable, until Bouvard in 1821, declared that such disturbances could only be ex- plained on the theory of gravitation of known bodies as intimating the existence of some vast undiscovered planet. For a quarter of a century, scientists continued to observe, calculate, predict, until in 1846, Dr. Galle, of Berlin, discovered, just one degree from the predicted place, the enormous planet Neptune, the outermost known planet of the solar system, totally invisible to the naked eye, yet the third in volume and mass, 2,800,000,000 miles from the sun, with a diameter of 37,000 miles, and a revo- lution of 164: years. And although many of the precise prophecies as to its mass, dis- tance, and shape of orbit had to be rectified, yet the general trend of the predictions were thus proved marvellously exact. Thus the disturbances of this earthly life, the perturbations of the human spirit, the gravi- tation of creation, history, experience, all point to the drawing of some vast spirit world, invisible to the human eye, yet ab- solutely real in its effects. And although we too, may have to alter many conceptions 167 I. I Immortality a Rational Faith in regard to our predictions, yet the vast reality must and will stand sure, for on no other solution can the perturbations of this world be explained. " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." " Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me I And may there be no moaning of the bar, "When I put out to sea, " But such a tide as moving seems asleep. Too full for sound and foam. When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. " Twilight and evening bell. And after that the dark ! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark ; " For though from out our bourne of time and place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar." 1 68 Conditions of Life After Death CONDITIONS OF LIFE AFTER DEATH The last entry that Sir Walter Scott made in his journal was, " We slept reasonably, but on the next morning " Death cut the unfinished sentence short. Only Scott himself knows what came to him on the next morning. But this is the natural and eager inquiry of all humanity, — granting that we awake, what is there on " the next morning " ? No sooner do mind and heart feel certain of immortality than they at once ask. What will the eternal life be like ? It is not enough to know we will continue to exist ; we desire to know how, when and where. We seek some details of the con- ditions of future existence. But here both nature and revelation observe a discreet mystery, giving us only partial surmises of that spiritual existence. And this obviously for two reasons, — in order not to interfere with this life, and to prevent misconceptions of a sphere of which we could not possibly 171 ' ! Immortality a Rational Faith understand the conditions since we have had no similar experience, and which must neces- sarily be different from the physical limita- tions of this present one. The wisdom of this veiling of eternity is shown by the fact that nearly all attempts thus far to give specific descriptions of future existence have been far from attrac- tive, if not actually repellent. And this because it is a psychological law that one cannot imagine what he has not, in some way, seen. Therefore all conceptions of the spiritual state consist in images of this world projected and enhanced in the next, each one bearing the stamp of its peculiar age and conditions. They are for the most part grossly materialistic, anthro- pomorphic and, above all, wearisomely mo- notonous when tested by eternal duration. Eternity is a long word. A billion mil- lenniums is but as one grain of sand to the seashore, one drop to the ocean, one tick of a self-winding clock. Some one has tried to give some faint conception of it by pic- turing the task of a bird compelled to re- move this whole globe one grain at a time, returning only once in every thousand years. But if that bird thus removed the 1/2 ' Conditions of Life After Death whole universe, eternity would be but only begun. If, then, in the few short years here, the child wearies of his toys, the man of his business, the aged of pleasure and fame, if the worst curse men can imagine is to be condemned to live on this earth, like the Wandering Jew or the Flying Dutch- man, for thousands of years, wearied of everything and praying for death, — what then can possibly be the conditions that during infinite duration of time will give "pleasures f orevermore " ? The pagan world affords no hint, as its conceptions are vague, shadowy, unreal, sad or grotesque. None of us would find satisfaction for a decade, much less for an eternity in the gloomy Egyptian halls of Osiris, or in the Grecian Olympia, the Koman Elysium, the Norseman's Yalhalla, the Mohammedan's Harem, or the Brahman's Nirvana. Litera- ture, likewise, although presenting many magnificent conceptions, and sublime flights of genius, fails to offer eternal attractive- ness. We would not wish to live forever in even Dante's Paradiso, with its throne approached through circles of ineffable light, nor in Milton's military heaven with its shock of armies and flight of legions, nor in 173 Immortality a Rational Faith the overwrought soul ecstasies of com- munion portrayed by emotional authors. The conceptions of different individuals, likewise, often dismay rather than attract us. Each frames his idea out of what he lacks here. The weary sigh for rest, the defeated for success, the bereaved for re- union. Saint John on Patmos, despising the sea that exiled him from aJl friends, looked up and exclaimed,—" There shaU be no more sea ; " Kobert Hall in constant pain, could only think of heaven as health; Wilber- force, hindered in his labors of love, as per- fected affection. And even the most spiritual character in the depth of his consciousness confesses that such conceptions as reposing on clouds and singing psalms, or marching in processions, waving palm branches, or wandering through a city even if the streets be of gold and walls of jewels, or rest- ing hy green pastures and still waters, or communing in eternal social reunions, seem intolerable when conceived of as continuing through countless millenniums. When we hear some of these descriptions of supposed felicity, many feel like exclaiming with the dying poet Malherbe, "Cease! Tour wretched conceptions make me out of con- 174 Conditions of Life After Death celt with them ; " or with the Church mem- ber to the Puritan preacher,—" Your heaven is my hell I " or with Strauss when he re- plied to Frederick the Great,— " Pardon, sire, but I have no desire to go to Heaven at all!" Yet while specific detailed descriptions have and will fail, we are not, nevertheless, left in total darkness. We can argue from within, if not from without,— from the spir- itual traits of personality, that we will carry with us, and that being spiritual are akin to the spiritual world. There are certain grand principles which can be thrown forward into the darkness, like luminous streamers from an enormous search-light, which, although not revealing * all, yet illumine great pathways which largely satisfy the soul. The one stupen- dous law, revealed in all creation from whirling nebulous matter to formation of worlds, ascending through mineral, vege- table and animal kingdoms, from the amoeba to man and from man to his high- est intellectual and spiritual achievement, is that of progress, progress, progress. Why then should this vast universal law abruptly cease at death ? Is God exhausted ? Has 175 Immortality a Rational Faith the finite become infinite ? Do not the in- exhaustible resources of God, eternity and infinity make it imperative that this law should continue forever? This has been the fatal mistake of some theologies in seeming to intimate that man becomes instantly finished and complete at death, with no further possibilities ahead of him. This would be the creature instantly equal- ling the Creator, whereas the result of all the sciences even here is to simply give us hints of the boundless infinitude of space, time, method, and of the Creator's being. On the contrary, death instead of stopping progress, is only a necessary condition to allow it to continue. During our lifetime here, we receive from this world about all that it can give us for character. Should we continue to live on for ten thousand years, we might become wiser, but not necessarily better. Nay, we might perhaps even deteriorate from familiarity with earthly conditions and repeated lessons. Even now the hour of death has to be left uncertain so as to prevent our postponing preparation to the last. Death therefore is but the necessary bursting from earthly limitations to larger possibilities, to allow 176 Conditions of Life After Death us to go on not to stagnation, but to enlarged faculties, unfolded potentialities, and to exercise these in an unlimited hori- zon. Death is but the gardener who trans- plants the chrysanthemum at the right stage of its development from the soil where the approaching frost would blight it to the conservatory where under favor- able conditions it can go on and reach its full glorious consummation. This first and great law then of the entire universe will be the one in which, with infinite varia- tions, we will continue forever. And from the spiritual analogies of this world, we can foresee that this progress will continue along three great lines, — Love, Knowledge, Service. No matter what other gifts "vanish away," love " never f aileth," because it is a quality that is inexhaustible, partaking of the essence of God Himself. Just as on earth true affection grows continually in depth, character, intensity, self-sacrifice and infinite yearnings, so will it continue in in- creasing ratio forever, its very capacity growing, developing, rendering us more capable of higher and higher forms of love for God and for the whole family of God. 177 Immortality a Rational Faith As God's love for us will never end, no more will ours for Him, but rather con- tinue to increase, for all eternity will only continue to reveal the depths of the Father's heart and make us more capable of under- standing and returning His affection. As we comprehend more of His mysterious, unchanging, infinite love, and enter into the mysteries of creation, redemption and providence throughout the universe, our adoration will constantly increase. Here is one quality that can stand the test of time and monotony. We never weary of a true mother's devotion, a wife's heart- companionship, a child's embrace, or a friend's congeniality. He who has tired of love and its possibilities, has wearied only of the false, not of the true, for the true re- veals itself by its insatiable hunger, devel- oping its capacity by service. But when one thus claims that Love will find its perfect development and fulfill- ment hereafter, many subtle questionings and fears arise in the human heart, some of which although somewhat childish, yet being most natural, should be met and answered. The greatest fear of many is that the change of death will be so great 178 Conditions of Life After Death that we will not remain our real selves, that our identity will not be realistically preserved, but that we will continue in such changed conditions as to result in our being rather half-natural phantoms than natural individualities. Yet, just as in the case of the argument for the preservation of per- sonality, we see that the course of evolution thus far, instead of blurring or merging identity, has on the contrary striven always towards accentuating and preserving it, pledging thus that all the real character- istics of the individual will be zealously preserved. And, if we think of it, each argument for immortality implies the pres- ervation of the distinct individuality, for otherwise there would be no continuity of self -consciousness to be judged, rewarded, punished, or to receive the fulfillment of its possibilities. Another fear, closely related to this one, is that perhaps the transition of death will be like drinking of the fabled stream of Lethe, whereby the curtain of oblivion falls on all that occurred in this life, leaving us totally ignorant of all the past, to commence the spiritual life as though born anew. In this case, we would lose all friendships as 179 r Immortality a Rational Faifli truly as one loses a friend here, who, by accident or disease is deprived of his mem- ory, and thereupon fails to recognize his most intimate soul companion, staring at his beloved one as though he were a perfect stranger. But this fear, as well, is ground- less, when viewed in the light of the con- tinuity of all nature's development. Such a violent catastrophic shock is out of all harmony with evolution's quiet consistent progress. The chief moral purpose of this life would be defeated, for all the lessons received from life's disciplines, struggles, sufferings would have disappeared with memory's loss. All the highest soul aspi- rations that constitute one of our principal hopes for the life to come, could not be ful- filled, for love would be as truly lost as though it existed not, were there no re- membrance of it. It is true that soul affinities could again find each other by mutual attraction, but this would be a color- less realization in comparison to all the garnered richness of mutual hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, successes and de- feats. Nor would such a loss of memory properly fulfill Heaven's mission. For how could justice be administered hereafter if 180 Conditions of Life After Death the mind is to be a blank as to the past ? Can an earthly judge properly sentence the paralytic who knows absolutely nothing of what has occurred ? It is true that justice hereafter might be partially carried out by having all the effects of our earthly life woven into the tissue of our spiritual being that we carry with us, but this would be far from being as complete as the self-conscious realization of the past and its results. Thus both penitence and joy will be doubled by memory's retention in eternity, as our own guilt will be seen more clearly in retrospect, and our gratitude be redoubled for the Love that forgave and saved. But still demands the anxious heart, how in this vast change from flesh to spirit, shall we be able to know our beloved ones hereafter ? May we not lose others and be lost our- selves in the countless myriads of eternity ? Yet the solution here is most simple. Love can never truly disguise itself from love on earth. Spirit responds to spirit, instinct reveals the presence of true affection, and we know our beloved ones even here almost more by their spirits than by their bodies. "Identical twins" are mistaken for each other only by strangers ; relatives see them 181 Immortality a Rational Faith distinct and different, and wonder at the confusion of others, for they see the differ- ences of spirit. The marvel, then, in eter- nity is not how we can know one another, but how we could fail to know one another. We may therefore rest sure that love will always find its own by instant intuition, aflSnity, sympathy, soul intimacy. But, will those who have gone before us by a few or by many years have progressed beyond our reach ? Will not the progress that those who have been millenniums in eternity have made, separate them from our beginning ? No more so than a mother's culture separates her from her babe's heart here. Does not such culture, on the con- trary, help her all the more in aiding the child's development ? Yet, once more, how will those who have experienced two or more devoted affections, each supreme at its time, reconcile the con- flicting claims in eternity? Perfectly, — simply because there will be no conflict. Such difficulties of thought arise from our projecting earth's imperfect love to heaven. All the narrow prejudices of earthly love will have changed into the perfection of the divine, with no diminution, however, of 182 Conditions of Life After Death either intensity or particularization, but with a breadth and depth that reconciles all. Just as the parent in this life idolizes his only child with. his whole affection, and yet finds an equal affection coming with each succeeding child as it is born, and just as he does not divide his love among his children but gives his whole heart to each and yet to all, so will our natures be so enlarged and ennobled as to hold each with increased intensity, yet in perfect harmony. Nor do Christ's words about " neither marrying nor giving in marriage " in heaven, imply the obliteration of all past human relationships ; for His reference was to the future in eternity, not to the con- tinuation of ties made in the past on earth. The survival of memory with personality necessarily involves the remembrance of those precious former ties of sacred rela- tionship in all their spiritual sweetness, only transfigured in their highest possi- bilities. But, — ^asks once more the frank, sincere inquirer, — how can there be perfect love in heaven if our bitter, deadly enemies, whom we have injured or who have injured us irreparably are to be forgiven and be in the 183 Iiniii&rtefffy a Rafiohal Faith same realm ? To say we will remain for- ever separated will not suffice, as there must be mutual, perfect heart-forgiveness in perfect love. To say that we will be changed will not satisfy fully, for if truth and sincerity are to continue as foremost soul qualities, we want to know how it will be possible to deliberately love those we have reason to hate. Yet, here too, the an- swer is simple when investigated. The worst on earth have some hidden possibility of goodness that is often revealed at un- conscious intervals of intimacy. This is how certain ones can love each other when we cannot understand how; because each has seen in the other possibilities of good- ness, traits of disposition that are closed to our unsympathetic eyes. Now in eternity this rectified spiritual vision will enable us to see this hidden potentiality of goodness, and even in the remembrance of past wrongs, enable us who have so much our- selves to be forgiven by God, to sincerely forgive others and be forgiven by them, and thus truly to love our enemies. The second great line upon which con- mi progress will be made is that df 1% Conditions of Life After Death Knowledge. Even the knowledge that we have obtained on earth must help us as to our starting-point in eternity, at least in giving us increased capacity. The popular idea that all will know all truth alike, in- stantaneously at death, is a violent contra- diction to the methods of the universe, and an absurd underestimate of the extent of all truth. To think that the African pigmy, scarcely distinguishable from the animals, will instantly burst into the same mental grasp and horizon as that of Aristotle, Herschel, Newton, or Shakespeare at death, is contradictory to all the Creator's adjust- ment of truth to relative capacity. Nor can countless ages exhaust the infinite depths of the thought and works of the Creator. Therefore all eternity will be for us a gradual growth and development in knowledge. The joy also of such a mental unfolding is unspeakable. Even here there is an indescribable ecstasy that the scholar alone knows in the acquisition of new phases of truth, in the discovery of new laws, in the uncovering of nature's possibili- ties, and in revealing creation's progressive development. Scientists, philosophers, the- ologians have all understood the soul joy of 185 liltniortality a Rational Faith Kepler, when in the discovery of his " third law " he exclaimed, — " O Almighty God ! I think Thy thoughts after Thee!" Such joy will be eternal, and can never become monotonous, because of the continual variety of the birth and rebirth of the infinite com- binations of God's plans. " Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? " Study- ing God will be like climbing the Andes, Alps and Himalaya ranges, each peak as- cended only reveiding loftier peaks beyond and wider horizon; or like studying the heavens with increasing power of vision, empty spaces proving to be filled with worlds, single stars great constellations, and black abysses of the boundaries of space twinkling with system after system of worlds beckoning one on to greater marvels beyond. Adoration, thus, instead of being dreary worship, will be the con- tinual instinctive outburst of grateful sur- prise as we continue to discern deeper and deeper purposes in God's dealings with His universe ; for, as we progress in knowledge and see more clearly the vast unfolding of God's plans through the ages, the hidden harmonies of His laws and actions, the Conditions of Life After Death marvels of His wisdom and love, the con- summation towards which all is trending, — we cannot but adore in wonder and awe the great Source of it all. Even as Galileo cried out, — "Sun, moon and stars praise Him ! " and Agassiz said in reverence, — "The geologist moves along paths worn deeply by the divine footprints," and New- ton cried,— " Glory to God who has per- mitted me to catch a glimpse of the skirts of His garments! My calculations have encountered the march of the stars ! " The third line of eternal progress will be along that of Service. Surely if God and creation through all past ages have found joy in activity this supreme blessing will not be denied God's creatures hereafter. " An angel's wing would droop if long at rest. And God Himself, inactive, were no longer blest." For there is no keener joy than the accom- plishment of great tasks. Bitterness of labor consists only in physical limitation and in incapacity. These being removed, 187 leimnftality a Raffoiial Faith rest will consist in strength being greater than the work, and we will taste the de- light that lies in successful service. Then, all the faculties of the soul will be gradually, progressively unfolded, continually opening up new possibilities in enlarged spheres. Even here we have all longed at times with Wordsworth for power to penetrate and master realms beyond the limitations of our little senses, — to see the ocean's depths, the interior of worlds, the abysses of space, to hear finer sounds, to have keener vision, more piercing instincts such as even some ani- mals enjoy to a superior degree. We long to look through the phenomenon of nature, of matter, energy, life, to perceive the hid- den marvels of new worlds of form, color, motion, light, melody, beauty. Just as to the blind man, when cured, there opens up the whole world of form and color, to the deaf, the world of melody, to the paralytic, the world of touch, so through all eternity these unfolding and developing faculties will open up new worlds of possibilities of insight and of service. This is why such service can never become monotonous, be- cause of the infinite variety of tasks, and because of the capacity thus continually ex- i88 Conditions of Life After Death panding and developing for new and greater achievement. Some of the character of this service we can infer even here. In general, it must consist in cooperation with God, — • in aiding the accomplishment of His vast plans, in loving ministrations to His crea- tures, in assisting in the mutual unfolding of our own and others' possibilities, conquer- ing all enemies with love, seeking their penitence, reconciliation and transforma- tion, and in assisting perhaps in the crea- tion, history and consummation of world after world, system after system, cycle after cycle, universe after universe. Here then are these three great streamers of light that this first fundamental law of nature, — Eternal Progress, — throws through the darkness ahead, revealing that our path- way through eternity will be in the lines of continual advancement, growth, develop- ment in Love, Knowledge, and Service. This is enough upon which to rest, trusting explicit details, that we could not now un- derstand, to the love of the infinite Father of all. In looking back over the whole field of science, religion and philosophy as witnesses 189 Immortality a Rational Faith to immortality, the thought arises that it would be interesting, at least, to see the comprehensive conviction of some one man, who combined in himself all three of these vast realms, being an eminent scientist, a consummate philosopher, and a profound theologian, all in one, and from this three- fold outlook, elaborating his vision of the soul. In searching history, to our surprise, we find such an intellectual giant, sepa- rated by only a century from the time of some of the Apostles. Origen, who lived from 185 to 254 a. d., one of the greatest prodigies of the human race, who has been called the second Saint Paul, the Herbert Spencer of generalization, the Schleier- macher of Greek philosophy, the Father of the Church's science, stands as one who combined all three vast departments of human thought, the first great scholar to expound the reconciliation of science with faith, reason with revelation, culture with religion, doing more than any other one man after the Apostles, to win the old world to the Christian religion. Educated in a blending of all three branches of thought, in the highest culture of Alex- andria where Greek science and philosophy 190 Conditions of Life After Death and oriental religions met Christianity, ap- propriating all that was true in each realm, this astounding genius outleaped them all, and grasped a sweep of thought which, in spite of many errors and fallacies, neverthe- less, as a whole, for comprehensive logical coherence has seldom been equalled. Con- sider the marvel of a scholar less than two centuries after Christ, being persecuted for rising to cosmological and universal speculations, for outlining a universe con- sisting of world after world, system after system, forming a continual ascent through infinite time towards the final restoration of all things. And even to-day Biblical criticism is but emphasizing Origen's in- sistence that the Scriptures should be spirit- ually and at times allegorically interpreted instead of literally, knowing that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." His reward was that of all great thinkers ahead of their time, — poverty, disgrace and persecution. As a return for his herculean intellectual achievements of six thousand manuscripts, of his travels, sacrifices and toils up to nearly three-score and ten years of age whereby he won the surname of " Adamant," he beheld his father's martyr- 191 Immortality a Rational Faith dom, was later himself condemned as a heretic, driven from his country, stripped of his sacred office, betrayed by friends, ex- communicated from a part of the Church, and in old age under the Decian persecu- tions chained in a dungeon, tortured on a rack, surviving only a few years with dis- located limbs, anathematized even after death, and his salvation officially denied. What, then, was his conception of the complete history of the soul? According to his vision, all souls are kindred in essence to God. They existed with Him before time in the depths of eternity. The high- est endowment of the soul is freedom, which therefore involves the possibility of turning from God. Before the creation of this ma- terial universe a host of spirits turned away from the eternal goodness. They could neither die nor be forever lost, for the soul cannot lose its true nature, nor the final purposes of God be foiled. Therefore it was necessary to redeem them through suf- fering. For this purpose the material uni- verse was created, and these wayward spirits were sent into time and sense, imprisoned in bodies in a world of matter, with all their spiritual qualities aspiring and beating 192 Conditions of Life After Death against their earthly limitations. Each is assigned to the place according to its needs of divine discipline. Time, experience, trials gradually discipline the wayward will. By virtue of its inalienable freedom the soul continues to fight its way upward aided by the means of grace. After leaving this tiny speck of dust, that we call the earth, the soul continues its education amid the whirl- ing millions of worlds in the universe, mount- ing from world to world, in a sublime as- cending staircase of universe after universe, until all alienation is overcome, all obstinacy of will brought into loyalty, the will now becoming fixed by discipline, the communion with God becoming perfect, unchangeable, evil itself in the vast cycle of ages redeemed, and God forever " all and in all." His sys- tem thus unrolls like a majestic sublime drama. We start with the immutability of God, and the indestructible unity of God and all spiritual essences; behold the dis- loyalty of spirits in their inherent necessity of freedom ; then, the creation of the whole material universe as a loving means of dis- cipline and redemption ; the incarnation of souls in flesh, spirits in sense, mind in mat- ter ; then, we follow the era of discipline 193 Immortality a Rational Faith and development ; the appearing of the Lo- gos ; His teaching and death ; the impart- ing of the Spirit ; the evolution of the race ; the plurality of worlds; the continued ascent through infinite time; the ultimate restoration of all things, death and the uni- verse of matter being thus but means of loving discipline to bring back discordant immortal souls into perfect established har- mony with their Creator forever. We may not accept the literal details of such a vast scheme. Origen made many mistakes as to himself and truth. But such a comprehensive outline stands as a superb witness as to how a prodigious intellect looks upon the immortality of the soul, when he views it from the combined realms of science, philosophy and religion; and perhaps, we may find that, in its general conception, the scheme is not so far, after all, from the purpose and heart of the God oi love. } Only recently another eminent savant, who has covered these three departments of human thought, being a great naturalist, a philosopher and a devout Christian, has propounded another comprehensive theory 194 V Conditions of Life After Death of man's place in the universe that has startled the world, and that, in spite of er- rors, has at least placed the emphasis on the spiritual purpose of creation, and the pre- dominance of soul over matter. Dr. Alfred Eussel Wallace, who, with Herbert Spencer, is the last survivor of that little immoral group of scientific workers who discovered and elaborated the theory of evolution, who was, in fact, the forerunner of Darwin, sub- mitting a treatise on development by natu- ral selection that precipitated the publica- tion of Darwin's " Origin of Species," and whose works are authorities on his speciality, has declared that astronomy shows from the central position of the earth and from its having developed humanity, that the whole universe was made for man, that man is the soul centre of creation, his soul being the supreme and sufficient cause for the creation of the entire universe of matter. Worlds at the circumference of this disk- like universe, by collision and otherwise, escape from the restraining attractive power of their neighbors, and wander off into outer space, becoming soon dead and lost. The whole margin, therefore, being unstable and liable to pass out and be dissipated, is 195 linmortility a RaflUnal Faith not fitted for the continuity needed for the long development of life ; whereas the cen- tral position furnishes the needed security and durability. Therefore, concludes Dr. Wallace, " the three startling facts that we are in the centre of a cluster of suns and that that cluster is situated not only precisely in the plane of the Milky Way, but also cen- trally in that plane, can hardly now be looked upon as chance coincidences without any significance in relation to the culminat- ing fact that the planet so situated has de- veloped humanity. Of course, the relation here pointed out may be a true relation of cause and effect, and yet have arisen as the result of one in a thousand million chances occurring during almost infinite time ; but, on the other hand, those thinkers may be right who, holding that the universe is a manifestation of mind and that the orderly development of living souls supplies an ade- quate reason why such a universe should have been called into existence, believe that we ourselves are its sole and sufficient re- sult, and that nowhere else than near the central position in the universe which we oc- cupy could that result have been attained." Unfortunately, as in the instance of 196 Conditions of Life After Death Origin, Dr. Wallace's general conception is true, but his proofs and limitations false. The sun with its earth is not in the centre of a globular star cluster for the distances of the thirty known scattered stars are too enormous to admit of their being classified as a cluster, many of them being not masses, but, like the constellation of Her- cules, composed of many thousands of other stars. Nor are we in the exact centre of the Milky Way, but only in its middle plane, an inhabitant of the nearest star, such as Alpha Centauri or sixty-one Cygni, having an equal right to claim the centre, and we not being able even positively to locate the centre as we cannot limit the cir- cumference of the universe or say we may not with increasing vision find more worlds beyond, while the whole sidereal heavens viewed by billions of years is seen not to be permanent but in motion, stupendous con- stellations vanishing and being replaced. Even if we were temporarily in the centre, we are flying along at the rate of three hundred million miles per year, so that in a few ages hence we will have moved out of the centre and other stars will have taken our place. If our sun by its size controlled 197 Immortality a Rational Faith the encircling universe, its physical impor- tance would seem great ; but we know it is but a third rate sun, and our earth an in- significant ball in comparison to the enor- mous worlds and systems scattered through almost unimaginable space, — Jupiter being over a thousand times larger than our earth, Arcturus, Eegulus, Antares and Gamma Gassiopeiae a thousand times greater than the sun, while Ganopus, Eigel and Alpha Gygni are said to equal in brilliancy from ten thousand up to one hundred thousand of our suns. To say that God has left silent and dead aU these myriads of far greater worlds to people only our little speck, does not enrich our conception of either God or man. Man's value is not diminished by the existence of other peoples any more than one race here is injured by the existence of other races. Just as the turning on of a million electric lights at a great exposition glorifies the whole scene much more than the lighting of a small cluster, so the con- ception of a whole universe alive seems more glorious to God and man than a uni- verse entirely dead except on one small globe. To say that life cannot exist on these countless other spheres is, as Flam- 198 I Conditions of Life After Death marion says, the fish declaring that nothing can live except in water, especially when we find among them every conceivable variety of temperature and constitution. Science cannot affirm that life exists, neither can it deny. It is not probable that man could live on any other globe in space, but if nature crowds every crevice of this earth with teeming life suited to its circum- stances, so that we find swarming millions of living organisms in eternally dark cav- erns, in oceans depths at pressure of tons to the square inch, under tropical furnace and in polar ice, — is it not probable that she would provide life suited to the conditions of these countless celestial worlds, rather than leave them absolutely barren and dead? "Gould we," says Sir Eobert S. Ball, " obtain a closer view of some of the celestial bodies, we should probably find that they, too, teem with life, but with life specially adapted to the environment. . . . Intelligence may also have a home among those spheres no less than on the earth." " This truth within thy mind rehearse. That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse. 199 ImmoTtality a Rational Faith Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres ? " And yet the main idea that Dr. Wallace is seeking to emphasize is true, that spirit is greater than matter, that matter was created for spirit not spirit for matter, that man himself is of more value than all the ma- terial universe. When one first receives the awe-inspiring revelation of the stupendous extent of the universe in time and space, and learns that our little planet is but as a speck in infinite azure among countless myriads of far greater worlds and systems, he staggers at the thought that the Creator could have chosen this tiny sphere for His tremendous scheme of revelation, incar- nation and redemption. The very mag- nitude of the work seems out of all pro- portion for such a microscopic being as man on such a microscopic sphere as this little eight-thousand-mile-diameter earth. It is to meet this that Dr. Wallace has tried to shut out other worlds and make the central po- sition of the earth prove its supreme im- portance. But the true method is first to stop and estimate the true value of man. 200 » Conditions of Life After Death Bigness is not greatness. The size of a house is not the worth of its tenant. A packing box may be worthless, but the statue within priceless. Man's body is in- significant and microscopic when measured against the immensity of the universe, but the mind and soul within that body make man greater than the universe. Just as Shakespeare's genius was greater than all the splendors of Elizabeth's royal palace, so is man greater than all his material sur- roundings even if they be the starry universe. By his mind, man transcends all physical limitations, conquers within and without, places all things under his feet, flies to the uttermost parts of creation, and analyzes the univers^ and its elements. " Man," says Pascal, " is but a reed, and the weakest in all nature. Yet he is a reed that thinks. The whole material universe does not need to arm itself in order to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water is enough to destroy him. But if the whole universe of matter should combine to crush him, man would be more noble than that which destroyed him. For he would be conscious that he was dying, while of the advantage that the material universe had obtained 201 Immortality a Rational Faith 0ver him, that universe would know noth- ing." " I am a nobler substance than the stars, Or are they better since they are bigger ? I have a will and faculties of choice, To do or not to do : and reason why I do or not do this : the stars have none. They know not why they shine, more than this taper, Nor how they work, nor what." Add to man's intellect, his crowning en- dowment of a soul, — 2L spirit that bears within itself its own witness that it is created in God's image, with a certainty of surviving crumbling systems after systems of matter however vast or awe-inspiring. The starry heavens are not as sublime as the moral law within. All the constellations do not equal the worth of one living babe. Man is God's child, and therefore more precious to the Father's heart than all the glittering splendor of the universe, and no matter how small the island on which he dwells, or how weak the body in which he lives, he is still the beloved son unspeakably precious to the Father's heart. The cross forever proves this. Calvary stands as 202 Conditions of Life After Death God's appraisement of man's value. Man is worth the Divine sacrifice in his po- tentiality. Just as we do not judge the ugly black seed by its appearance, but by the gorgeous flower that we know lies enfolded within it, so " it doth not yet appear what we shall be." Therefore the old version of the Bible makes a mistake in both language and fact when it translates,— " Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels," and the revised correctly changes it to, — " Thou hast made him but little lower than God." This is the first true method of steadying one's faith amid the immensity of the uni- verse, to realize that man's mind and spirit are greater than all creation ; and the next step is, not to try to shut out, as Dr. "Wallace does, all other worlds to magnify man's importance, but rather to turn, as Saint Paul does, and suggest that perhaps this world with its redemption and evolu- tion of the human race is but the little stage on which God is revealing Himself to the myriads of other worlds in space that may be looking on in awe, watching the vast drama of sin, redemption and evolu- tion, while the cross of Christ may have in- 203 Immortality a Rational Faith fluence not only here on this little sphere but carry a conservative effect throughout the whole moral universe, reaching to worlds far distant and down the ages to worlds and peoples perhaps as yet un- created. All this is but suggested in that mysterious statement of Saint Paul's that Christ by His cross was " to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven." Such a vast conception of "things in heaven," as well as things on this earth being reconciled by the cross is far more inspiring to God and man than the attempt to limit all God's plans to this little sphere. Instead of Christianity seem- ing too vast for this earth, it would thus be seen to fill the whole universe of God, this earth being but the stage, the torch-holder from which its influence goes forth to the extreme limits of creation and down through all ages of time. Perhaps then these other worlds are peo- pled and have likewise sinned and are in varying stages of development and evolution, and Christ's revelation and atonement are to be imparted to them, the outstretched Arms on Calvary drawing not only hemispheres Conditions of Life After Death together but wandering worlds far distant in space. Or perhaps this world is the only one that has sinned, and the other ninety- and-nine holy ones are left safe in their development, looking down in wonder and awe while the Great Shepherd of the universe comes to seek and save the little one that was lost. Perhaps just as God chose the Jews that through them He might educate the world, so He is choosing this earth that through it He may educate the universe of worlds by the history of man on this planet in the revelation of His own character and vast plans. If so, the mystery of evil is still further enlightened. If we feel it may be wise to permit evil to exist if it works out a higher good only on this little globe, how much more would we feel reconciled to its existence if we sus- pected that its permission here may possibly work out a higher good to the whole uni- verse of God,— instructing, restraining and inspiring thousands of worlds throughout creation. Do not, then, the mere hints of such vast possibilities of God and His universe, to- gether with the cumulative argument, gath- 205 Immortality a Rational Faith ered through the realms of science, philos- ophy and religion, result in producing, through a rational faith, an absolute moral certainty that man must live hereafter? If so, life that is otherwise hopeless, hor- rible, unendurable, becomes instantly trans- formed, irradiated, profoundly significant. All that lies paralyzed under the uncer- tainty of future existence, rises and becomes inspiring under the vista of eternity. For both a suflBcient motive and an interpreta- tion of life are found. It is worth while striving for nobility of character, for char- acter moves on towards destiny and is to be taken with us. It is worth while to live self-sacrificingly instead of selfishly, for we are immortals working among immortals to prepare ourselves and others for eternity. It is worth while cultivating the intellect up to the last,— for artists to paint, poets to sing, authors to write, musicians to com- pose, scholars to search, noble souls to sow what others must reap,— for all attainment is to be conserved, and the developed talent and capacity to open up richer treasures in eternity. It is worth while to love deeply, devotedly, passionately, even with "death shadowing us and ours," for love is stronger 206 Conditions of Life After Death than death, and love will find its complete fulfillment. It is worth while to take up life, with all its sufferings and mys- teries, and to be "steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord," forasmuch as we know that our " labor is not in vain." » 207 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY^ U^BRAWES^^ ThU book to due on the *»*« ^"f ^Se i ..lovt in charge. — - 0025992597 . '''■I'i i^