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Curtis, Lucius Q.
The immortal life
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PRESEP^TED S
The Ecumenical Comr
THE CHAPLAIIMCY :c> .
TO PRJSOHERS C
.AH
LIBRARY OF PRINCETON
JAN 14 2004
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
t>\, $^.. di© Oi'SPTiijj'sii
GENEVA ^wLiiztrauitiO)
THE IMMORTAL LIFE
BELIEF IN IT WARRANTED ON
RATIONAL GROUNDS
BY
REV. LUCIUS Q. CURTIS, A.M.
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
KaAov TO a.B\ov koX 17 cXtti? fjuiyak-q.
Ph/edo
PRIVATELY PRINTED
LIBRARY OF PRINCETON
JAN U 2004
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
Ube Unfcfterbocfiet press, 'ftew Borft
Copyright, igoi
BY
EMILY CHAUNCEY CURTIS
TO MY WIFE
WHOSE UNSELFISH AND DEVOTED LOVE HAS BRIGHTENED SO MANY
YEARS OF MY LIFE
AND TO
William C. Gulliver and Edward C. Bogert
WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AND GENEROUS AID HAVE BEEN AN INSPIRATION
IN PREPARING THIS WORK
THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONA TEL Y
DEDICA TED
THE IMMORTAL LIFE
The evening hour has come, the fainter light
Of closing day doth call me to my rest.
The landscape darkens to my fading sight
And golden tints are dying in the west.
Yet night uplifts the curtain day had drawn,
To show the stars and bring the brighter dawn.
" Ethereal hopes are part and parcel of us."
Wordsworth.
"Those mighty hopes that make us men."
Tennyson.
PREFACE
SEVERAL works have recently been given
to the public on the subject of Man's Im-
mortality,— works of far greater learning and
ability than the author of this can think of
claiming. He attempts a humbler task, — that
of stating, and, so far as seems necessary, of
establishing, certain facts which, taken in their
proper connection, may not only warrant belief
in immortality, but may make the denial of it
irrational. The subject is here treated induc-
tively and on purely rational grounds. The
facts wMch are the basis of the argument are
those which prove the greatness and worth of
man, — as seen in his interpretation of nature,
in the marvellous character of his environment,
and his kinship and ethical relation to God as
the moral Governor of the world. Sometimes
a clear and consecutive statement in a court of
justice of facts bearing on the case in trial, is
sufficient to determine the verdict, without
eloquence or special pleading by the counsel,
the facts carrying with them their own logic.
X Preface
Of course, on such a subject demonstration,
as the term is commonly used, is out of the
question. We start with tlie single assumption,
now accepted universally as the basis of all ]
(science, that the world is rationally ordered.
But this involves important co^rrelative truths,
which must be received with it, among which
are the following : First, a world rationally
ordered is ordered by a rational Intelligence.
Second, such an Intelligence as rational is also
ethical, holding as supreme and in inseparable
union righteousness and truth, as essential to
aJrulyj;ationanife. Third, m^aTrconstructTve
work such intelligence has an end in view, as
the formative principle giving unity and mean-
ing to the construction. Fourth, a world so
vast and complex, yet possessing unity and
being the work of one holding truth and right
supreme, must not only be consistent with
itself, but in harmony with the purpose of a
wise and righteous Creator.
It follows that the course of nature cannot
be cruel and unjust, as Mr. J. S. Mill asserts,
nor the enemy of righteousness in man, as Prof.
Huxley assumes. It is more probable that
these distinguished men erred in their inter-
pretation of some adverse appearances than
that the fact, universally acknowledged and the
Preface xi
basis of all science, namely, that the world is
rationally ordered, must prove false. This
presumption is confirmed by two facts manifest
in the system itself. First, its highest out-
come, in which all the cosmic forces are seen
to have been co-operative, is man, whose
crowning endowments, reason and conscience,
are plainlvj;i^n2^hjrn_Jo^ attaining, trutk_aad
righteousness. Second, man's environment, the
world itself, has a rational and moral order so
correlated to those endowments that to seek and
realize truth and righteousness should be man's
proper life. Hence a kingdom of righteousness
is the logical outcome of such a system.
Such is the basis of our argument, to be
sustained in the following discussion. The
real greatness of man, his ethical relationship
to God and his correlation to a vast environ-
ment which is a medium of divine self-revelation
to him, show that he is made for fellowship
with God and that his true life, being a par-
ticipation in the life divine, is itself divine, and
therefore immortal. For it is irrational to be-
lieve that a life that is one with the life of God
will perish.
A thorough discussion of the points taken
would require far more space than we can here
give. But it is hoped that even this imperfect
xii Preface
presentation of the subject in the following
discussion may confirm in some doubting and
troubled mind the conviction that the immor-
tal life may not only be hoped for, but con-
fidently accepted as a reality taught in the
order of creation, as well as in the written
word and in harmony with all truth.
The writer is under obligation to many
authors, but among them he cannot fail to
specify the following : President Mark Hop-
kins, my revered and beloved instructor in
Williams College ; Dr. Herman Lotze, the
eminent German scholar and philosopher, and
Dr. James Martineau, whose recent departure
from this life has ended on earth the fruitful
labors, but not the fame, of one of the most
gifted minds of the Nineteenth Century.
Nothing in this volume has been previously
given to the public except portions of the
chapter on " Man above Nature," which was
published in the Andover Reviezv, August, 1 892,
and an essay on the " Relation of Evolution
to Christianity," published in the New Eng-
lander, September, 1880, and soon after re-
published in an English theological quarterly.
But so far as the contents of either appear in
this volume, they are so modified as scarcely
to be recognized as old acquaintances.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Introductory : The Form of the Argument .... 3
CHAPTER II
Man above the Animal, in a Superior Kingdom . . . 2i
CHAPTER III
Man above Nature ......... 39
CHAPTER IV
Man a Personality Belonging to the Spiritual Kingdom . . 61
CHAPTER V
Human Capacities Correlated to an Infinite Environment . 79
CHAPTER VI
The Proper Human Life, One with the Life of God . . 99
CHAPTER VII
As a Religious and Ethical Being, Man Sustains a Relationship
to God which means Permanence . . . . .117
xiv Contents
CHAPTER VIII
PAGE
If Death Ends Man's Existence, the Great Law of his Life is
Nullified and the End of his Existence is a Failure . .133
CHAPTER IX
The Expectation of a Future Life Essential to Normal Develop-
ment and to Well-Being in the Present . . . .153
CHAPTER X
The Resources of Modern Life no Substitute for Personal Re-
lationship to God and the Future Life . . . .171
CHAPTER XI
Cosmic Forces as Related to Man in Harmony with the End
of his Creation, as Made for Righteousness . . . 197
CHAPTER XII
Suffering in Men and Animals as Related to Divine Beneficence, 219
CHAPTER XIII
No Proof that the Dissolution of the Body is the Extinction of
the Rational Spirit 241
CHAPTER XIV
Summary and Conclusion ....... 261
THE IMMORTAL LIFE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
FORM OF THE ARGUMENT
ALL the forms of life known to us are of
brief duration. Plant, animal, and man
alike pass through certain stages of growth
and development, but sooner or later the
forces of dissolution prevail over those of life,
till functional action ceases, and death ensues.
Accordingly, for the myriads of living creatures
to which the earth gives birth, it furnishes
only a grave. Genera and species continue
for longer periods, but the individual soon
perishes. Germinal life, indeed, passes over
from parent to offspring, but it does not carry
forward the individual life. In the succession
this disappears and is lost. Such is the estab-
lished order of Nature. In other words, death
stands over against all individual life, by a law
which is inevitable and universal.
This universality of death awakens serious
3
4 The Immortal Life
foreboding in many thoughtful minds concern-
ing their own destiny. Not a few feel com-
pelled to anticipate complete extinction at the
touch of death. With all their love of life,
and their longing for immortality, they have
come to look upon death as the termination
of their conscious being. They see no excep-
tion to the law, and no possible escape from
its dominion. If they put the question of
their immortality to science, they get no as-
suring response. They dare not trust the
affirmations of their spiritual nature, where all
evidence of life disappears with the dissolution
of the body. Willing or unwilling, they look
upon death as the sundering of all ties of
affection, the blotting out of all memories, and
the extinction of their conscious being.
Now, aside from the testimony of a special
revelation, must this conclusion be accepted
as final ? If science is silent, if Nature,(m stead
of giving promise of a future life^ holds every
living creature subject to the laws of death,
must not the extinction of man, as of all
other creatures, be received as the teaching of
Him who has ordered the course of Nature,
and who speaks through her laws ? At least,
is^ it not so far conclusive as to make incredi-
ble any supposed revelation to the contrary.
The Immortal Life 5
since we are to look for harmony, and not
for contradiction, in the totality of the divine
revelations ?~^Tn~other wor3s^ is the question
of man's immortality, as determined by the
universality of death, to be accepted as the
final word on this subject ?
We do not so believe, and we here raise the
question whether the course of Nature, as thus
interpreted by the senses, is in fact the ulti-
mate teaching of Nature herself. She certain-
ly holds truths in her keeping which jhedo^s
jiot address to the senses, but to the rational
under^gjldiDg',/ and what she communicates
through this medium often reverses their
testimony. \ Every scientist knows that the
senses are not the best interpreters of reality.
To them a straight line as seen in the water
is crooked ; the sun rises and sets, moving
around the earth as its centre ; wood consumed
by fire leaves nothing but ashes ; and forms of
energy once expended, go out of existence as
a candle when its fuel is exhausted. In all
ythese cases, and in a thousand others, the truth
is exactly the reverse of the testimony of the^
^enses. We find, in fact, that the most im-
portant truths, those which are the guide of
our rational life, come into our possession only
through the exercise of our rational intelligence.
6 The Immortal Life
Hence, in our quest of reality, we have oc-
casion every day to revise and often to reverse
the testimony of the senses by the superior
authority of the rational mind. The most im-
portant secrets of Nature do not lie on the sur-
face. Our interpretation of phenomena would
be shallow and often false if not corrected by
careful investigation and by the deeper insight
of the rational and reflective mind. Moreover,
it is the special function of the rational intelli-
gence to apprehend principles and realities
that are in their nature invisible. Nor can the
scientist who is true to his calling refuse what
the understanding thus supplies, since princi-
ples never recognized by the senses must enter
into all his constructive dealing with phenom-
ena. They, in fact, underly and condition the
whole fabric of science. Besides, Nature_ is
eve£soliciting this_dg£^er interpretatijpn of her
appearances, giving hints of things unseen
[and disclosing them to the rational mind
only after patient and searching inquiry.
This is true even in the department of
physical sciences, and it is emphatically true
of the phenomena and laws of the human
spirit.
Whatever our theory of the origin of the
rational mind, whether by evolution from a
The Immortal Life 7
lower order of intelligence or directly by crea-
tive act, it is certain that we are qualified in
some way to deal with supersensjble_realities.
Such, in fact, is our_main vocation, or we fail
to realize the true rational life. The physical
organism does not constitute the man, nor
does the material world constitute the uni-
verse. The orderly and harmonious relations
that bind the world together in unity, — the
truth, beauty, law, and moral order we see em-
bodied in it, revealing the Supreme Intelli-
gence that orders all, — these are the great
realities with which we deal, as rational beings.
They constitute in fact our true environment
in correspondence with which we may realize
a life immeasurably superior to that of sense
and appetite. The human body is a structure
of marvellous grace, illustrating the most per-
fect development reached in the organic world,
and yet it is but the instrument of the mind,
which is the crowning work of creation. This
it is that gives man his dignity and worth. It
is a true saying, — " On earth there is nothing
great but rtian ; in man there^is nothing great
but mind."/(7yi><^.., '^cL(uj^,Ch^juti'^ i^o^jftJ^i'c^ j
Taking mto view man's rational endow-
ments, his vast and magnificent environment,
and his ethical relation to God, we can but see
8 The Immortal Life
his greatness and his evident possibiHties of a
Hfe truly divine, and therefore immortal. We
show that man is, in fact, akin to God in his
spiritual nature, and is capable of participation
in His manifold life, as shown in the fact that
he interprets the divinejanguage expressed in
the rational order of the universe, and it is un-
reasonable to believe that a mind sustaining
such sublime relations to God and this uni-
verse is destined to come to nothing.
The facts on which we base our argument
are generally accepted, but we hope to make
them evident to all, and thus to reach our con-
clusion on purely rational grounds. But the
^Mntj^^^t^^^ / form of our argument, strictly speaking, proves"\
^ I the immortality only of those who answer the/
/^^ /^ \ endof theix. being — that is, who enter into their
/ ^proper element in sharing the divine life
4^/^-^. c^^ through divine fellowship. The immortality
p^'C'^/uifyC^ of all may doubtless be maintained on other
' grounds. We barely note here the opinions
thaTliave been current on this point. Some
afifirm the annihilation of those who refuse
their high privilege and their plain obligations.
Others believe they will have continuous exis-
tehceT^being subjects of moral government,
and that they will be treated according to their
deserts. Others still cherish the hope that all
The Immortal Life 9
will ultimately be reclaimed to righteousness
tn a future gracious economy.
^ That our benevolent Creator sincerely de-
sires the holiness and happiness of all, we can-
not doubt. But the ethical life requires as a
condition that moral freedom, or a delegated
sovereignty, be entrusted to the subjects of
nioraP^government. Now, how^ far any will
exercise that sovereignty in resisting all gra-
cious influence, no man can determine. It does
not, therefore, become us to dogmatize on a
question of this nature. But we may feel
assured that the Most High, who has seen fit
in His wisdom and love to create moral beings,
that He may realize as the result a^_vast king-
dom established in righteousness — of _indi-
viduals whose sovereignty He will not invade,
will not tailTh His great purpose. '
We assume that His great object is to estab-
lish such a kingdom, because, as explained in
the Preface, He has ordered the world after the
niethods of a Rational_Intelligence. Such in-
tellig^ence. inTITs very nature loving truth, must
aj^o lov_e righteousness, for righteousness is
the highest form of truth. The truly rational
being is therefore an ethical being, holding in
supreme regard and in inseparable union both
truth and righteousness. We do, indeed, ac-
lo The Immortal Life
count men rational, though some may disre-
gard both truth and right ; still, so far as they
thus pervert and debase their nature, they
practically disown it and become irrational in
conduct and character. But this cannot be
true of God. He who has everywhere em-
bodied truth and moral order in His creation,
shows on the broadest possible scale a char-
acter in which the love of truth and ricfht is
supreme. Accordingly, as Ruler of the world,
He rules in the interest of righteousness ; and
in creating men rational He endowed them
with precisely the powers that qualify them
for attaining a righteousness like His own. As
benevolent. He could bestow upon rational
creatures no higher good. He may have
peopled other worlds with beings more largely
endowed, and therefore capable of a deeper
Ijfe^ but not of_one higher in_kind. For the
supreme love of truth and right, which is
possible to man, is the glory of God, and a
kingdom of rational beings in whom this love
is supreme is an end worthy of the All-wise
Creator. It is an end the highest possible to
conceive. Such love in man renders him god-
like in character. That such is in fact the end of
man's creation, we shall assume from facts to
be established in future discussion. It will be
The Immortal Life n
safe to conclude that a life that is one with the
life of God is immortal.
Our argument must, therefore, be jndnrtive
and teleological ; inductive, as founded on facts
to be^established, and teleological, as showing
that the facts, if established, involve this
conclusion.
Induction is the method of science now
universally accepted as valid for reaching
those generalizations of phenomena that are
another name for law. But teleology only a
few years ago,^^ as a method of interpreting
nature, was thought by some evolutionists to
be out of date. It was affirmed, that, at least
in the organic world, natural selection, which
was assumed to be in large measure fortuitous
in its operation, so determined the course of
organic development as to exclude all evidence
of purpose or design within its range. This
method had, indeed, often been unwisely ap-
plied, but this was not a sufficient reason for
banishing it as an outlaw. Opinions have
changed. Instead of being sent into exile it
~ha^ now cgmejnto^special favor, to be applied
freely on a broad scale. The most eminent
advocates of evolution, holding as firmly as
ever to natural selection, now use it without
questioning its validity in the interpretation
12 The Immortal Life
y^^^ of natural phenomena. Among these are Dr.
Q „ John Fiske, Alfred_Russell Wallace, and Pro-
y^^^i-s**^^ /><^ ^essor^Joseph j^e Conte. Indeed, to affirm, as
/ . &very scientist must, that the world is ration-
Y ally ordered, and yet ordered for nojend, and
I by no method for attaining an end, is to affirm
\a most irrational procedure. The fact now-
established, that the creation has been histori-
cally progressive and systematic, its cosmic
forces so co-ordinated that the whole move-
ment has been toward higfher and higher
results, for which previous conditions were the
evident preparation, is an object lesson on a
large scale, illustrating clearly the method of
teleology, as applied practically in the creative
work. Dr. Weinman says : " Beyond the co-
operative'Torces~ of nature, which aim at a
purpose, we must admit of a cause, of which
we can only say, it is teleological." — Theory
of Descent, ii.. Sec. 708, Nor is it presump-
tion to think of ascertaining the end for which
so vast and complex a system and so full of
mystery was created. We need not know all
the facts and processes of a system to deter-
mine its purpose. Few persons understand all
the machinery of a cotton or a woollen factory.
But they know its end when they see the
finished products of its combined movements.
The Immortal Life 13
Many do not understand the parts and work-
ing of a steam-engine, but when they see it
flying on its iron track, taking freight and
passengers to their destination, they know its
purpose. So we may know the meaning of
the world when we see the highest outcome
of all its co-ordinated movements, "Those
portions of nature," says the Duke of Argyle,
" which are wholly dark to us, do not neces-
sarily cast any shadow upon those other por-
tions which are luminous with inherent light.
The new discoveries which science is ever
making of adjustments and combinations, of
which we had no previous knowledge, impress
us with the irresistible conviction that the
same relations to mind prevail throughout.
It matters not what may be the philosophy or
theology of the inquirer. Every step he takes
he finds himself face to face with facts he can-
not describe intelligently to himself or others,
except by referring them to that function and
power of mind which we know as Purpose and
Design," — Reign of Law, p. 36.
Dr. John Fiske not only assumes an end of
creation, but asserts most definitely and em-
phatically as follows : " Man is the terminal
fact in that stupendous proof of evolution
whereby things have come to be as they are.
14 The Immortal Life
. . . In the deepest sense it is as true as it
was ever said to be, that the world _:w:aa_„iiiade
for man, and that the bringing forth in him of
those qualities which we call highesiL-aadJjoli-
est is the filial cause of creation." — Idea of
Uod, p. 31.
The fact that the lower kingdoms which are
prior in the order of time are conditional, each
of the next succeeding, and that all are made
tributary to man, who represents the last and
highest, fully warrants the conclusion of Dr.
Fiske that the cosmic progression toward man
as the outcome, through the systematic co-
ordination of its forces, meant man from the
beginning as "the final cause of creation."
It is found, also, that those kingdoms have
passed over to the human organism their most
advanced products for loyal service, under the
command of man as a rational being. Fur-
thermore, his supreme functions, as rational,
are fulfilled through reason and conscience in
apprehending and appropriating the True, the
Beautiful, and the Good, as his vocation, and
thus, not merely in the interest of science, but
as a spiritual being, to find God in His self-
revelations and to enter into His manifold life.
All the kingdoms of Nature, are therefore,
plainly tributary to man, that he may make
The Immortal Life 15
his Hfe divine. No higher good than this
can man receive or God bestow. This seems
not only a worthy end, but the actual end,
toward which the creation has for ages been
moving.
We do not, of course, claim that the whole
creation is ordered exclusively for man. We
see countless worlds in space, far greater than
our earth, many of which are doubtless to sus-
tain some forms of life. Organized life is
higher in the scale of being than inorganized
matter, and this world teems with many grades
of life — from the microscopic cell to animal and
man. By the spectroscope we learn that the
far-off stellar worlds are constituted of the
same materials as our earth, and they are
governed by the same general laws. It is
natural to conclude that many of them, at least,
and as many as possible, will be inhabited by
creatures possessing similar life.
But since we can conceive no higher order
of life than the rational, the personal, and
spiritual, and since men are capable of this,
the inhabitants of other worlds, though they
may far surpass men in the measure of their
endowments, cannot possess a life higher in
kind. This earth is the nursery of that life
which is spiritual and divine, and we may well
1 6 The Immortal Life
conjecture that from countless worlds may be
gathered a vast spiritual kingdom possessing
the same generic and divine life, but with in-
finite variations, all moving in harmony under
the law of love, as the stellar worlds move
under the law of gravity : But moral beings
may reflect the glory of God with a radiance
far surpassing all material splendors.
Respecting other worlds we can only con-
jecture, but since the Most High has bestowed
upon man Godlike powers for attaining Godlike
excellence, we cannot well suppose that His
infinite love, which embraces all worlds, has
limited His bestowments of good to our race.
Worlds of matter cannot be the objects of His
love, except as the conditions of life having
value. It is not reasonable to suppose that
He was content to create so many worlds, and
systems of worlds, of mere dead matter, totally
unresponsive, with which He could have no
converse, and which He could not love or value,
except as means for a life of intrinsic worth.
Here we find a world that for ages has
been preparing for man as a creature who can
respojid. to the Creator, with some apprecia-
tion__ of His character and work, and in
sympathy^with His manifold life. Such life,
truly divine in man, is a worthy ^nd oT~crea-
The Immortal Life 17
tion,and is the normal outcome of his spiritual
nature as correlated to his spiritual environ-
ment. It must be of more worth in the esti-
mation of God than all the material worlds.
As the true and final end of His creative work,
it is preposterous to suppose that, after mill-
ions of years of such preparation for it. He
will, when at lastiFls~reached, put it out of
existence^ag^fjio value. It would contradict
the rational meaning of the whole cosmic pro-
gression. Accordingly, we find the promise
of immortality in man's high place in nature
as not only above all animal life, but in the
spiritual kingdom above nature, in his capacity
for the infinite set in intelligent relationship to
avast environment of rational and moral order
and to the Infinite Intelligence, who has made
that order a medium at once of His self-revela-
tion to man for his fellowship and for enlar-
ging and educating the human powers for
attaining a corresponding divine life.
It will also be shown that this conscious
ethical relationship to God, and the expecta-
tion of a future life as a reality, are essential to
the normal development and well-being of
man in his present state, and that the multi-
plied resources of modern life can by no means
be a substitute for them.
1 8 The Immortal Life
In the above facts, and others which we
hope to estabHsh, together with the absence
of any proof that the death of the body ends
the Hfe of the spirit, we find ample evidence
on rational grounds of the life immortal.
MAN ABOVE THE ANIMAL IN A
SUPERIOR KINGDOM
" We, like all other living creatures, have part in pain and pleasure
in a natural impulse to seek the one and avoid the other. But the
self-judffinp; conscience and the ineradicable idea of binding duty
which in us accompanies action and feeling, distinguish human crea-
tures as members of a realm of mind from brutes whose vital activity
depends upon feeling."
Dr. Lotze, Microcosmos, ii., p. 714.
" Pronaque quum spectent animalis citera terram,
Os homini sublime dedit coelumque tueri
Jussit et erectas ad sidera tollere vultus."
Ovid,
19
CHAPTER II
MAN ABOVE THE ANIMAL IN A
SUPERIOR KINGDOM.
OOME eminent scientists have denied to
^ man his place in a distinct kingdom above
the animal. Professor Huxley says : " Bone for
bone, muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve, man
corresponds to the highest animal organism,
the anthropoid ape." For this reason he de-
termines his place in the animal kingdom.
All agree that man has the animal nature, but
has he not also a higher nature which dis-
tinguishes him as man and which should de-
termine his classification ? If he is an animal
merely, he has the destiny of the animal, so
that his classification is a matter of importance.
Those who relegate man to the animal king-
dom determine his place as specialists, basing
their classification upon the tests applicable
to their particular science and overlooking
those characteristics that distinguish him from
creatures of a lower rank. As an anatomist.
2 2 The Immortal Life
Professor Huxley may have made a correct
classification, basing it upon structural forma-
tion, "bone for bone, muscle for muscle, and
nerve for nerve" in man corresponding more or
less closely with the structure of the anthropoid
ape. Moreover, he would doubtless claim
that evolution, as working gradual modifica-
tions in organic structures, eliminates the dis-
tinction of species altogether, so that man is
not distinct, even as a species, from the
ape. However this may be, there are con-
clusive reasons for asserting that the evolu-
tionary process does not abolish the distinction
of kingdoms, since they have a permanent
place in nature. In the progression from
plane to plane, we find the sudden incoming of
new forms of energy, and higher principles
of life establishing distinct economies under
superior law. These transitions are not by
slight modifications on the same line of de-
velopment, but they present an entirely new
order of phenomena, ruled by a superior form
of energy. We do not question the continuity
of the evolutionary process, but this continuity
is apparently effected by the new and higher
agency from above and not by potencies pre-
viously existing below. Each plane has its
own ruling energy, which not only determines
The Immortal Life 23
the character of its own phenomena, but subor-
dinates and overrules all processes from below
for the higher ends of its own plane. Accord-
ingly, the ascent of the physical elements to the
plane above is not gradual, but with the sud-
denness of a flash of light, by the agency of the
chemical energy which seizes upon the physical
elements and imposes upon them its own law
of affinity. The transition from the chemical
to the vegetal plane is also effected by a higher
form of energy, which introduces and rules a
new order of phenomena — those of organic life.
In like manner, the ascent from vegetal to
animal, and from animal to rational, life, is
through the incoming of higher principles of
life, each establishing a new order of phe-
nomena and overruling, under a new regime^
the forces and products represented in the
organism from the planes below.
Furthermore, let it be noted, that as these
forces and products from below are taken up
as factors in the higher planes, they retain their
peculiar functions and their relative rank.
When incorporated into the higher organic
unity they are not merged or lost. In fact, it
is their ascent through all the planes, keeping
to their own functions and rank, that illustrates
the continuity of the upbuilding process. Of
24 The Immortal Life
course, there could be no continuity of the
higher principles and energies unless, poten-
tially at least, they existed from the first.
In any case, the continuity of the upbuild-
ing process does not exclude sudden transi-
tions and the establishment of entirely new
regimes as new and higher forms of energy
put in appearance.
This brings us to speak of the origin, num-
ber, and rank of the several kingdoms which
belong to the permanent order of nature.
What is this principle, or law, and how does
it originate and determine the number and
rank of the several kingdoms ?
Dr. Mark Hopkins defines it as "The law
of the conditioning and the conditioned." It
may be interpreted as follows : When one
form of energy is conditioned by others and
at the same time overrules and subordinates
them in establishing a new order of phenom-
ena under a higher law, it proves the superior
in rank and the founder of a new kingdom.
Thus vegetal life is seen to be conditioned by
the forces and products of the physical and
chemical planes, and also that it appropriates
and overrules both under a higher law in the
upbuilding of living organisms. Animal life
also shows its superiority to vegetal life, and
The Immortal Life 25
rational, in like manner, to animal life, by sub-
ordinating and overruling all the forces and
principles below represented in the organism
under a higher economy. Accordingly, we find
in organic life regular gradations of rank, that
the elements and principles of the lower planes
are taken up into the higher to be subordi-
nated and overruled for their higher ends
under the law of a higher economy. The last
and highest form of energy, with its superior
principle of life, that has appeared is the^ ra-
tionaly as seen \nman. It is the kingly energy,
and in the divine economy it has, by organic
law, the prerogative to subordinate and over-
rule the forces and principles of all the planes
below incorporated in the human organism for
the ends of rational life. Thus, " the law of
the conditioning and the conditioned," or, as
we prefer to express it, the priiiciple of subor-
dmation, runs up through all the planes, giv-
ing to each form of energy in the advance the
command of all below, and placing man at the
head of all, with prescriptive right to command
all for rational ends. It is the same principle
that organizes an army — with its companies,
regiments, and higher divisions — and puts the
general-in-chief in command of all. It is at
once the principle of division and of unity. It
26 The Immortal Life
creates the distinctions of rank and at the
same time unites all into one body under one
head. The unity of the human organism is the
most complete of any that we know, and yet it is
the most complex, the forces and products of all
the kingdoms being marvellously incorporated
in it. The physical, the chemical, the vegetal,
and the animal are all represented in man, and
the gradations from lowest to highest are
strictly conserved and belong to the perma-
nent order of nature. The chemist and the
physiologist recognize all and each in its place.
Of course, in a unity so compact and complex,
the dividingHnes^are not Jo be recognized by
the senses. Vegetal life in certain forms is
scarcely distinguishable from the lowest forms
of animal life, as animal life in its highest de-
velopment seems almost identical with the
lowest specimens of rational life. For this
reason some have assumed that the higher
kingdoms are but modifications of the lower,
by a process of development. However this
may be, it is certain that each kingdom in the
advance reveals an_entirelv different^. form of
enfiigy and the inauguration of a new and dis-
tinct economy of a superior order, subordinat-
ing all below to its higher end. This is the
proper test of a distinct kingdom in nature.
The Immortal Life 27
It applies to each kingdom in the advance —
the chemical, vegetal, animj.1, and rational —
and no modifications, by development or other-
wise, abolish these fundamental distinctions.
As the divisions of an army remain distinct,
each under its own head, when brought to-
gether into corporate unity under the common
head, so the elements and forces of the lower
planes retain their rank and functions when
incorporated into the unity of the human or-
ganism. There is no breaking of ranks, no
conglomerate mixture of elements and princi-
ples, whether the unity be brought about by
continuous development from below or by the
accession of new principles and forms of en-
ergy from above. Atoms seem to have their
inherent affinities and to take the first step
upward into molecules and chemical combina-
tions by virtue of such affinities. But beyond
this, science cannot at present afifirm. Dead
matter is not yet proved to become living by
any inherent potency of its own. It must first
be touched by the life-principle already exist-
ing. Who can tell whether, in the original
progression of world-building, the higher
forms of energy and of life were derived from
the lower by transmutation and development,
or whether the ascent from plane to plane was
28 The Immortal Life
effected by the sudden incoming and agency,
in fitting conditions, of new principles and laws
from above ?
But it is certain that, by some agency, the
progression has been carried forward to higher
stages only as new and higher forms of energy
have put in appearance, and, furthermore, in
the advance to the higher forms of life and
unity, the gradations of rank have been uni-
formly conserved by the principle of subordi-
nation that runs through the whole economy
of organic life.
It is, therefore, by organic law that the dis-
tinction of kingdoms exists, and also their
unity in man ; while, as possessing the high-
est form of energy and giving law to a new
order of phenomena — that of rational life —
he has also the prerogative to subordinate and
overrule all the forces of his organism for the
higher ends of rational life. Hence, he sup-
plies all the tests which determine his place in
a distinct and superior kingdom. No lower
grade of energy or of life can lawfully break
in upon the established order. If the animal
in man assumes command, it is by usurpation.
All are important factors in the human life and
have their rights, but only as they keep their
place and fulfil their subordinate functions.
The Immortal Life 29
Professor Joseph_Le__Conte, a distinguished
evolutionist and scientist, makes the same
classification of the grades of energy, reckon-
ing five distinct kingdoms ; and he also recog-
nizes the sudden transidons or "lea^s/' as he
terms them, from lower to higher planes as
higher forms of energy appear and inaugurate
a superior kingdom.
We repeat here the decisive tests of a new
and superior kingdom — namely, a higher form
of energy ruling a new order of phenomena
and subordinating all inferior forces and prin-
ciples to the end of a higher economy. Now,
the transition or the departure at the inaugu-
ration of the kingdom of rational life is im-
measurably greater than that of any kingdom
below. On this point Dr. Joh-Q_Jiske, an
evolutionist, says : " Through those co-opera-
tive processes the differences between man
and all other creatures has come to be a dif-
f ere nee injdad^ transcending all other differ-
ences."— Idea of God, p. 162.
Professor Huxley, in relegating man to the
animal kingdom, on the basis of anatomical
structure merely, overlooks these fundamental
differe7tces and takes no account of what char-
acterizes man as man in the totality of his
being. In such a classification he may have
30 The Immortal Life
been true to his knowledge of anatomy, but
he was false to any proper estimate of man as
man. It is Nature's method of continuity to
take the physical elements and the lower forms
of energy above their own level, to co-operate
with their superiors, on all the higher planes.
But in this co-operation they do not break
rank, and are kept faithful to their appropriate
functions. They do not give to man his distinc-
tive character, and it is contrary to both science
and common sense for them to be the basis
of classification. For example, the vegetal
principle which is incorporated into the human
■organism does not make rnan^ vegetable, nor
does the animal nature which he inherits con-
stituteTTTm an animal. The highest principle
belonging to an organism^nojt the lowest;> de-
termines its character as a unity, and it should
determine its proper classification. The chem-
isT^douBHessliriHs^iirthe^riy-fish, on analysis,
the same elements that he finds in the human
body — carbon for carbon, oxygen for oxygen,
nitrogen for nitrogen, but would Professor
Huxleyas^a chemist^prov\o\inc& man a jelly-fish ?
Why should he not, when, as an anatomist, he
puts man in the category of animals because he
finds him "bone for bone, muscle for muscle,
nerve for nerve," corresponding to the an-
The Immortal Life 31
thropoid ape ? The distinctive character of
man as a totaHty is determined by his rational
and not by his animal nature. He should,
therefore, be ranked as man and not as an
animal.
Each kingdom has its distinctive character,
though all are brought into a compact and
marvellous unity in man. The transition from
one to the other through the whole ascent is
still a mystery. Eminent scientists have at-
tempted in vain to bridge the chasm between
non-living and living matter by natural law.
The same mystery meets us at every succeed-
ing plane. Who has explained the origin of the
sentient principle ^^jipf the animal or of the ra-
tionaljntelligence ? Each of these marks the
beginning of a distinct kingdom and gives it
its peculiar character. Was each originally
derived from a lower principle by develop-
ment ? If so, why the sudden transition and
" leap " upward, as Professor Le Conte terms it,
and a departure on a new line of development
under a higher law at the very start ? Does
the development theory, as defined, account for
this sudden change to a new economy ? Does
it account for the incoming of a new principle
by any natural law yet discovered ?
Dr. Caird, in speaking of continuous iden-
32 The Immortal Life
tity in the course of development, says : " The
identity of a being that lives and develops is
shown, above all, in the fact that, though it is
continually changing its whole nature, yet
nothing absolutely new is introduced into it."
— Evolution of Religion, ii., p. 149.
Professor Tiele says: "The object under-
going development is a unity. The oak already
exists in the acorn." — Elements of the Science
of Religion, p. 30. Professor Le Conte thus
defines it : " It is a continuous, progressive
change according to certain laws and by
means of resident forces." — Relation of Evolu-
tion to Religion (last chapter). Herbert
Spencer regards evolution or some form of
development as the method of all change and
constructive movement in the cosmic system,
beginning with the diffused nebulous atoms or
the chaotic "fire-mist."
We offer no criticism on the use of the term
evolution, as vaguely used to cover all cosmic
changes. But as evolution implies a previous
involution, so development implies the_unfpld-
ihg of sometlnn^_already_potentially_^>ds^^
And since, according to the accepted meaning
of these terms, nothing absolutely new is added
in the unfolding or evolutionary process, we
are to infer that the existingr Universe, as we
The Immortal Life 33
find it, organic and inorganic, sentient or in-
telligent, existed potentially in the diffused
chaotic fire-mist. But whence the fire-mist ?
Was it also derived from some ethereal element,
and this from something else, more elementary
still, or are we to regard it as the ashes of ex-
tinct worlds, that had had their day and their
history and bequeathed to us the fire-mist as
their last will and testament, as material for
another cosmic reconstruction ? These are
but fanciful conjectures, and scientists are
assuming that evolution, or development, be-
gan with atoms in their diffused chaotic state.
But ajtorn^ have their likes and disljkes, their ^Z^2^y^_.
repulsions and affinities, which play an impor-
tant part, not only in laying the world's foun-
dations, but in its superstructure, in its style of
architecture, and in all the structures of organic
life. In fact, they are so exactly suited to
these purposes that Herschel, Clerk Maxwell,
and the authors of the Unseen Universe see in
them all the marks of " manufactured articles."
sporadic in their origin^y creative act.
Now, whether they are a legacy from extinct (jJiyn,^
worlds or came into being directly by creative
,act, in either case their perfect fitness for cos-
mjc upbuildin.g_stamps_them as the product of
^creative irvteliigeftce. If these creative acts
34 The Immortal Life
were put forth at the beginning, can we assume
that the Most High then laid aside His creative
power to engage in merely constructive and
evolutionary processes, carried forward accord-
ing to the strict regime of natural law ? This
can be assumed safely when all the processes
of upbuilding can thus be accounted for. But
it is now understood that, instead of acting on
the world from without, God is immanent injt
as its operative energy. May He not be im-
manent in it as a creative as well as a con-
structive power, especially at those stages of
advance where new forms of energy appear,
and sudden transitions and departures to higher
economies mark the inauguration of new and
higher kingdoms ?
These inquiries are suggested by the fact
that atoms and molecules are not known to
possess the potency, by any combination or
transmutation, to originate even the lowest
forma of life. What shall we think, then, of
iEhelr^sumed potency to originate reason and
conscience and the spiritual and divine life in
the human soul? Has nothing absolutely
newLjmd^dififirentJnJ^ind come into being
since the fire-mist^jDegan its spiral movement ?
Why may not the immanent divine energy be
creative as well as constructive, in the origina-
The Immortal Life 35
tion of the great kingdoms of Hfe, as well as
in the production of atoms and molecules ?
We do not presume to answer these questions.
The point on which we here insist is that,
whatever the agency, or the method, of the
cosmic upbuilding, there is, as a permanent
order in nature, a succession of kingdoms of
ascending grades ; the lower conditioning the
higher, and the higher subordinating and over-
ruling the lower. Each has its own ruling
energy, and its distinctive character. The
same tests that determine the number and
rank of the several kingdoms assign to man
his place in a kingdom of his own, and give
him the prerogative, as rational, to command
them all, as incorporated in his organism. He
possesses an anjmaL nature, but he proves his
superior rank by the divine commission given
him to_sub]£ct and overrule the animal in
him, in tTie interest of the jnai^. If he allows
the animal to get the upper hand he is false
to his prerogative and disowns his proper
nature.
MAN ABOVE NATURE
" Man rises out of Nature and has to assert his infinite superiority
Qi£^ it."
Professor Seth, Studies of Ethical Principles, p. 190.
",Know man hath all which nature hath, and more,
And in that more lie all his hopes of good :
Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends.
Nature and man can never be fast friends,
Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest, her slave."
Matthew Arnold.
37
CHAPTER III
MAN ABOVE NATURE
O Y the term Nature, we mean the established
*— ' order of things instituted by the Creator
and carried forward by his immanent energy.
This energy is revealed in different orders of
phenomena that take the form of uniform law.
Those who recognize only matter and force as
factors in the world's evolution, setting aside
the creative energy, still have common ground
with us in the uniformities of Nature for de-
termining whether given phenomena do, or
do not, come under natural law. It is ad-
mitted that the reign of law is universal, but
not the reign of natural law, since there may
be a kingdom in which neither the divine
energy nor impersonal forces are the sole
factors. The lower kingdoms, of course, be-
long to the domain of Nature and man is
grounded in and conditioned by it. In fact,
the elements and forces of those kingdoms are
incorporated into his organism, carrying with
39
40 The Immortal Life
them their own rdgime. It is not strange,
therefore, that some scientists, in their fond-
ness for broad generaUzations, have assumed
the universaHty of Nature and excluded the
supernatural, not only from man, but from the
universe. But while the natural economy is
represented in the human organism we hope
to show that within a given sphere of his ac-
tivities, man is qualified to put forth action
under a higher than the natural law, and, in
the proper sense, S2i^ernatzi7^al.
Our proof shall not rest altogether upon
consciousness, as its validity, without other
support, may be questioned. We accordingly
approach consciousness, from below, or from
the natural order, to the point where man puts
in appearance and is evidently commissioned
to take up and carry forward that order by
the exercise of functions not before existing,
which involve responsibility under ethical law,
and therefore freedom from bondaofe to Nature.
The entrance of man upon the world's stage
was evidently after the physical, chemical,
vegetal, and animal kingdoms had prepared
the way for his appearance. There had been
an orderly system of upbuilding, for there was
brought into being not merely a suspicion of
kingdoms, but of kingdoms rising in rank, the
The Immortal Life 41
one above the other, the lower conditioning
the higher, and the higher subordinating and
overruHng the lower under a superior law.
Thus the principle of subordination runs
through all the kingdoms, giving them unity
like that of a well-organized army, all the
lower in regular graduation coming under the
command of the highest. Finally^_man ap-
pears, conditioned by all below and subordinat-
ing all to his superior command.
The creation of the world, as we find it, was
not instantaneous, as was once supposed, but
progressive, through long periods of time. It
is plain, too, that in the ascent from kingdom
to kingdom, higher and higher grades and
functions of matter and energy came into
operation as factors in the upbuilding process,
carrying the progression up to higher and
higher planes. Each plane in the succession
is inaugurated and ruled by a new and higher
form of energy, which subordinates and over-
rules all below. Consequently, there has been
a growing complexity of forces and products,
and the attainment of a higher order of unity
at each stage of advance. These complex and
progressive movements, of course, hold in their
keeping mysteries not yet solved. But there
are certain facts and principles of order open
42 The Immortal Life
to our inspection that give a clue to man's
place in the system, and show the grounds of
his superiority to all the kingdoms below, and
even to Nature, as the term is understood.
Now, the principle of subordination, which
subjects the lower to the higher, and all to the
highest, places man at the head of all the king-
doms ; and as he possesses the highest form of
energy, which is the ratio?ial, he has by organic
law the prerogative to subordinate and com-
mand all the forces represented in his organism.
No higher form of energy has appeared, and
the combined forces of Nature, as represented
and incorporated in his organism are com-
mitted to him for direction and command
under the supreme law of rational life.
There is every reason to believe that man is
the goal of Nature. Dr. Fiske, as already
quoFed, says : " The world was made for man."
Professor Le Conte, in the last chapter of
HTs work on evolution, expresses the convic-
tion that the evolution of organic forms has
reached its consummation in man, and that
future progress is to be in the development of
the higher psychical life upon which he has
already entered. This being true, a turning-
point of great importance has been reached in
the transition from animal to rational life, the
The Immortal Life 43
life that does not centre in the physical organ-
ism, but in the interests of a higher realm.
We are now to examine the law of this
higher kingdom, to show that it differs
materially from natural law, and that the
functions by which it is administered involve
an agency above that of Nature.
It will be admitted by all that the supreme
law of rational life is that which is regulative
and sovereign over all the principles of human
action. As conscience is this regulative prin-
ciple, the law of conscience is the supreme law
of human life. By conscience, we do not here
mean a mere sensibility or sentiment, but the
sensibility that is associated with the intuition
of reason and the power of moral judgment.
Its function is to command right action in
those conditions in which wrong action is at
the same time possible ; in other words, to
give authoritative judgment for the claims of
the highest principle of action when a lower, at
the same time, is in competition with it. This
judgment carries with it the principle of _du£y,
or the conscigusiibligatiQiLto determine action
accordingly. The law is therefore ethical in
its character, demanding righteousness in pur-
pose and conduct. When the issue is not
directly between competing principles of
44 The Immortal Life
action, but between possible courses of conduct,
which may prove wise or unwise as affected by-
variable and uncertain conditions, the law re-
quires candid judgment and intentional XoydXty
to the highest interests at stake.
Now, this obligation of loyalty to the highest
interests shows that the same principle of sub-
ordination that rules in Nature is to be the
governing principle in human life. It is the
principle of unity in any organic system, and if
applied by man, he is in harmony with the
principle that governs the order of Nature and
he realizes unity and harmony in his own life.
But while the principle of order is the same in
Nature and in human life, the energy and the
functions by which it is carried into effect are
totally different. This difference should be
especially noted at this point. In the move-
ments of Nature the energy is divinj^ and the
functions are those we attribute to natural law,
under the operation of impersonal forces.
These make it uniformly effective by no intel-
ligence or choice of their own, but as instru-
ments of the divine agency. BuJL-in— the
rational life of man the effe£jt^e_^agency is
Jiumam, and the functions by which man carries
the law into effect are those of rational action
put forth voluntarily as a responsible agent.
The Immortal Life 45
Here we begin to see the radical difference
between Nature and man, and between natural
and ethical law. Natural law has indeed a wide
range in the human organism, since the
physical and chemic forces, together with the
principles of vegetal and animal life, are in full
operation within it for the sure and uniform
fulfilment of their natural functions. The
various processes of circulation, secretion, as-
similation, and others go on independent of
human exertion and below the range of con-
scious volition. But ethical law is addressed
directly to the ratigjQal intelligence and the
conscj^ence, and it is not operative, except as
man vo/un^arzly^ccepts and enforces it over
himsdf! If he fails to put forth this action the
law fails to be operative. Hence the law
breaks down because of a neglect of duty.
Now there is no such failure in the domain of
Nature. Every natural law is sure and uni-
form^in its operation, because the Creator, in
[ordering its forces, is always true to Hfs own
\economy. Accordingly, the principle of sub-
^dination, the lower to the higher, uniformly
prevails in all the kingdoms below man. For
example, the physical and the chemical are
subordinated to the vegetal and the animal, in
loyal service for the growth and development
46 The Immortal Life
of living organisms. Moreover, as soon as
principles of action become factors in the pro-
cesses of animal life, the same principle is made
effective, the lower instincts and appetites
being subordinated to parental love and the
continuance of the species. But in the transi-
tion from animal to man we see a change of
a singular and even revolutionary character.
Here lower principles are often dominant over
higher, appetite over natural affection, avarice
over justice, passion over reason, and all man-
ner of selfish desires over benevolence and
righteousness. It is certainly_remarkable that
the great principle of unity and harmony in
Nature should break"~d^wn and faitTo"be op-
erative in human life. This is not only a
departure from the cosmic order, but a plain
violatfon of its governing pj-ixiciples, when
loyaltyToTtis quite as important as in the
lower realms. For such failure on the part of
man results in his debasement, in the petver-
sion of his rational powers, and in detriment to
all human interests. Such a change in the
order of things may well excite wonder, when
we reflect upon the fact that man is the latest,
and presumably the highest, outcome of the
cosmic progression. The wonder is that man
alone should fail to conform to that principle
The Immortal Life 47
of order which prevails universally in Nature,
and which is so essential to all the interests of
humanity. Yet man is called "the heir of all
the ages," the "paragon of the world." But
as, under natural law, he is a failure, since
natural forces do not make the principle of
cosmic order effective in human life, conse-
quently man is out of harmony with that order
and with himself.
Is there any possible explanation of this
break in the world's order and of the conse-
quent degradation of human life ?
At this point we come to the testimony of
consciousness from the nature or cosmic side,
and we find it supported by the whole previous
order and by the natural endowment and the
conditions that demand of man precisely those
functions which would fill the break and bring
him into harmony with the world's order and
with the law of rational life. Note, here, the
following facts of experience :
ist. In allowinor lower to dominate hiorher
principles of action, man violates the funda-
mental principle of the cosmic order.
2d. For this violation he is conscious of
debaseinejit and guilt.
3d. The same experience brings the sense of
responsibility for not summoning a power to
48 The Immortal Life
overrule and set aside the claim of the lower
principle in the interests of the higher ; and
whenever this is done there is the satisfaction
of fulfilling a duty.
In these conditions, men are brought face to
face with themselves as responsible powers,
under obligation to order their lives by the
same principle that God makes effective in
Nature. Hence, this principle, which is thus
passed over into the keeping of man, becomes
an ethical principle, as every conscience testi-
fies. It belongs, in fact, to the dignity of man,
since it is the dictate of reason, as well as the
demand of duty, to subordinate the lower to
the higher principle whenever they come into
competition. There can be no reason given
for sacrificing what is of superior quality and
worth to that which is inferior. Accordingly,
the cosmic principle of order is a righteous
principle, and the Creator manifests His right-
eous character in incorporating it into the very
structure and movements of the world. Nature,
of course, is non-ethical, but He who orders
the forces with uniform preference of the
highest and best end must be righteous in
character.
Now, if, as some affirm, man is wholly a
child of Nature, acting only under the domi-
The Immortal Life 49
nance of her laws, why does he so often vio-
late the fundamental principle of her economy ?
As a child of Nature, man should conform to
her laws. The unity which the scientists find
everywhere in the natural world forbids the
supposition that Nature is divided against her-
self. It would be a strange happening if her
ruling principle should be found to break
down in her highest product, unless there is
some provision for carrying it into effect by
some other agency. Now, it is significant that
where the cosmic forces make this divine
principle of order effective in all their domain,
even in the lower nature of man, they do not
enforce it in the sphere of man's rational life.
Here they withhold their customary agency, as
in deference to a sovereignty and prerogative
they are bidden not to invade. The whole
aspect of things, therefore, seems to mean that
at that point where natural forces no longer
make this principle effective in human life, it
is transferred to the keeping of man, to be
carried into effect by his voluntary agency, on
his own responsibility. This is precisely what
we might expect from the nature of the en-
dowments given him. For, as possessing rea-
son and conscience, he is qualified to assume
responsibility in directing his activities for the
50 The Immortal Life
higher of competing ends. In fact, it belongs
to the normal functions of one possessing rea-
son and conscience to give the order of reason
to his thoughts and the order of ricrhteousness
to his actions. For the one he has the law of
truth, and for the other the law of righteous-
ness, in his own keeping. The lower king-
doms were evidently preparative for a kingdom
of rational intelligence for beings who could
receive more richly of the divine goodness, and
whom the Most High could exalt into con-
verse with himself. Matter could give no re-
sponse. The animal creation could not even
know their benefactor. Until man appeared
there was no being on the earth who could ap-
preciate the beauty and sublimity of creation
or the glory of its Author. All were uncon-
sciously working out ends prescribed for them,
with no freedom and no aspiration for any-
thing above the level of Nature. Man alone
could interpret the world and come into intelli-
gent communication with the Most High, with
capacities for seeking the highest possible ex-
cellence and of realizing the supreme good,
with freedom to refuse it under ethical law.
Here was a manifest departure from the
order of Nature to that of the moral life. Moral
power takes the place of physical and organic
The Immortal Life 51
forces in determining the ends of Hfe, and in
accepting or refusing to carry the principle of
subordination as the principle of righteousness
into the sphere of rational life. Natural
forces now decline to fulfil their high function
for man. He must himself fulfil it or it fails,
and he fails to fulfil a plain duty. Such is
the testimony of consciousness : remorse and
a sense of guilt inevitably following such
failure.
Now, such consciousness strikes deeper than
any other. It cannot be trifled with. Nor
has it any meaning if man is but a creature of
natural law. Everything tends to confirm
the fact that responsibility is laid upon man
by his Maker for not accepting the principle
of the cosmic order, to give it effect in the
sphere of his rational life : his endowments
qualify him for it ; he condemns himself for
failing to do it ; the occasion plainly de-
mands it, and the fact that God suspends the
action of the natural forces just at the point
where man knows he is under obligation to
assume the function they lay at his feet, and
fulfil it voluntarily for himself, — all these con-
siderations give validity to the testimony of
the human consciousness that man is a moral
and responsible being, and, in respect to the
52 The Immortal Life
duty of subjecting lower to higher principles,
he is under ethical and not under natural law.
In other words, man has been qualified and
commissioned to overrule the forces of his
organism and to carry out the divine principle
of order in his own life, according to the same
law of truth and right that God enforces in
the natural domain. To be righteous in the
way of self-government, as God is righteous, is
the true vocation of every man.
To do this requires just that sovereignty
and prerogative over the principles of action
that belong to his nature, that are given him
through his endowments and by the organic
law of the cosmic system. For by that law
the highest form of energy is, by prescriptive
right, the dominant factor in any given organ-
ism. In man, of course, the rational is the
kingly energy, and should overrule all inferior
forces of his organism, under ethical law as the
supreme law of human life. This requires
earnest and decisive individual effort, in the
way of moral judgments as to the merit of
conflicting claims and in the determining
choice. There seem to be wise reasons why
it is not easy and natural to originate and
maintain a righteous life. Doubtless the
Creator might have so constituted man that
The Immortal Life 53
the principle of righteousness might be made
effective through natural forces, as it is in Na-
ture. In this case conformity to it would be
sure and uniform under natural law, as the
falling of a stone under the law of gravity.
But such righteousness would possess no moral
quality. There is no scope for ethical law
where natural law has full sway. Man so con-
stituted would have been innocent, as the birds
are innocent. But a constitution thus per-
fectly adjusted to the divine order would be
divinely ordered, like the movements of the
planets, not ^^^-ordered by human agency.
There would be no temptation to prefer a
lower to a higher good, and therefore no call
for self-denial, nor even for moral judgments
and choices when natural proclivities are the
determining forces. Constitutional tendencies
do not fulfil ethical functions. Under their
dominance one cannot originate a character of
his own, distinct from that given by the Crea-
tor, and human history would be simply a
chapter in natural history, a record of the un-
folding or evolution of organic life. No one
in these conditions would be brought face to
face with himself as a moral and responsible
agent. Whatever other excellences one might
possess, the highest and the crowning one of
54 The Immortal Life
all, moral excellence, would be wanting. But
this very excellence, above all others, the Most
High desired for His rational creatures, since
He qualified them for its attainment and fur-
nished the conditions suited to this end. Only
in its possession could they realize the highest
possible good in blessedness and worthiness of
character.
In the preceding chapter we referred to the
union in man of a lower and a higher nature,
and of the consequent presence in conscious-
ness of their conflicting claims urged at the
same time. Such a constitution, which some
have thought an unfortunate arrangement,
furnishes, nevertheless, the occasion for those
peculiar experiences which are the fit introduc-
tion to what may be termed the distinctively
moral, in place of the natural, life. For the
opposing claims, higher and lower as pre-
sented in consciousness, reveal moral distinc-
tions, and such revelation is the condition for
exercising moral judgments of their relative
claims as the basis for those choices which
determine character. It will be seen, there-
fore, that the union of the two natures, with
their competing claims, gives occasion and de-
mand for precisely those functions which are
ethical, and which distinguish the rational ac-
The Immortal Life 55
tions of man from those of creatures which are
under natural law. Now, to recoofnize moral
distinctions as presented in a concrete case, to
adjudge the merits of the competing claims,
as right or wrong in the given conditions, and
to give preference to the claim which is just
and right under ethical law — these are rational
functions above the range of natural law. One
may, indeed, yield passively to a prevailing im-
pulse or to natural inclination, and let natural
forces determine his action. But this is irra-
tional and wrong, when the true and the false,
the right and the wrong, enter into the case.
The call is for the exercise of a reserve and
superior power to intervene and govern natural
inclination, according to the demands of duty.
It belongs to the rational manhood to over-
rule the claim of the lower principles and give
effect to that of the higher. It is not for the
natural principles themselves, lower or higher,
to determine one's action independently of his
rational judgment and choice. This would be
like determining action by the heavier weight
in the scales. There is a power in man su-
perior to his principles of action, and it is his
prerogative and his duty to exercise that
power in overruling them. It is the power of
moral sovereignty over all the forces of his
5^ The Immortal Life
organism, and he becomes master of himself
only by its exercise, as under ethical and not
under natural law. This sovereignty is a trust
committed to him, with liberty to exercise it as
he will, but as under the obligations of duty to
use it for ends that are high and worthy in
preference to those that are low and sinful.
Liberty of choice between such alternatives is
an essential condition of the ethical life, since
without it, as under natural law, men's actions
are determined/^r them, not by them. Hence,
a twofold nature presenting in consciousness
such alternatives, through competing principles
of action, which are to be adjusted to the de-
mands of ethical law by the determining choice
of the individual agent on his own responsi-
bility, is a condition divinely provided for
originating moral character and achieving the
highest possible excellence. Such an arrange-
ment does not indicate an oversight of the
Almighty, but rather a purpose to make possi-
ble for His rational creation the highest possible
good. For, as connected with this arrange-
ment He confers on man a sovereign and
causal power, distinct from the natural forces
of his organism, and superior to them, by which
he can overrule all his forces for the highest
and best end, and thus by a Godlike power
The Immortal Life 57
can achieve a GodHke character. The Lord
of the world does not want the services of
slaves, but of those who can freely command
their own loyalty. Nature He rules by His
own efficient energy, for an end above and
beyond itself. That end is a vast kingdom
of righteous souls whose acts shall not be
sequences in a chain of natural causes, but
the agency of free and loyal subjects, estab-
lished in integrity through their own intelligent
choice. To be made capable of this supreme
good is the highest privilege and dignity. But
the sovereignty required for it may be used for
unworthy and base ends. There is a moral
system from the nature of the case ; truth and
falsehood, the highest excellence and blessed-
ness, and debasement and ruin stand over
against each other. Of course, the choice be-
tween these alternatives determines character.
The mystery is that a rational being should
ever make the base and ruinous choice. Cer-
tainly no one can be master of himself and
give rational unity to his life except by assert-
ing the prerogative given him to overrule all
the forces of his organism according to the
law of Truth and Right. In this way can he
assume his legitimate rank as above Nature.
For it is by asserting this prerogative over the
58 The Immortal Life
natural and impulsive principles of his organ-
ism that he shows his superiority to them.
But, beyond the control of his organic forces,
man is more and more learning to command
the great forces of Nature to attain his ends.
It is not by matching his strength against
them, but by learning and conforming to the
laws of their movement that he makes them
the pliant instruments of his will. In this way
he not only proves his dignity, but multiplies
his power a thousand-fold. He can bid the
waterfalls turn the wheels of his factories, the
winds and steam to carry his ships at sea, elec-
tricity to propel his cars, to light and heat his
dwellings and to run on his errands around the
world. The mines of coal and the precious
metals, the riches of the forest, of the soil and
the sea, are all his for use and comfort in his
daily life, with the high privilege and duty of
subordinating all to the supreme interest, the
life of righteousness. He may be said to have
dominion over all things, that he may make
them tributary to the highest possible good.
MAN A PERSONALITY BELONGING
TO THE SPIRITUAL KINGDOM
" There is a spirituality in man, a self power or Will at the root
of all his being."
Coleridge,
" The moral activity is an end in itself. What is being accom-
plished in the moral life is therefore always an invisible and spiritual
result,"
Seth, Studies of Ethical Principles, p. 450.
" There is in man a spiritual element in which the brute has no
share. His power of indefinite progress, his thoughts and desires
that look onward even beyond time, his perception of a spiritual
existence, and of a Divinity above, all evince a nature that partakes
of the infinite and divine."
Dana's Geology, p. 574.
59
CHAPTER IV
MAN A PERSONALITY BELONGING TO
THE SPIRITUAL KINGDOM
TN the preceding chapter we endeavored to
* show that man is a responsible being under
ethical law, and that as such he is above
Nature, and can overrule her forces for his
personal ends. As conscious of responsibility,
he is face to face with himself as a moral per-
son, invested with causal, self-determining
power. Hence his actions cannot be mere
sequences in the chain of natural causes, nor
can his consciousness be identified with the
molecular processes, in brain substance, nor
with automatic responses to external stimulus,
reported to nerve centres of the cerebral
organ. Rational life does not come under the
laws of mechanics, which allow no scope for
responsibility under ethical law. The con-
sciousness of responsibility is direct testimony
to its reality, and is the basis of a connection
too clear and persistent to be set aside by any
speculative theory. We have shown also that
6l
62 The Immortal Life
this testimony is confirmed from the cosmic
side, inasmuch as the great principle of cosmic
order is not carried into effect in the rational
life of man by impersonal forces, and that it
utterly fails, unless man voluntarily accepts
and enforces over himself as an ethical princi-
ple, which, as every man knows, lays upon
him the obligation of obedience to its de-
mands, as the supreme law of his rational life.
Besides, this law is not made operative by
natural forces, and as it is as indispensable to
the normal order and well-being of rational
life as it is to the unity and harmony of
Nature, it is evidently passed over from Nature
to man as a trust committed to his keeping.
The fact that he cannot depend upon impulse,
or any natural force, to carry it into effect,
with the certainty and uniformity of natural
law, but that its operation depends wholly
upon his voluntary acceptance, and enforce-
ment by moral judgments and choice, is proof
that it is not a natural law, but a law of duty
for the rational and moral life. It brings to
him obligation but not compulsion, for liberty
is always associated with responsibility. It
is a necessary condition of that moral excel-
lence which is the end of creation and which
is beyond the reach of Nature.
The Immortal Life 63
We do not claim for man the freedom of a
perfect or absolute personality. This, as Dr.
Lotze affirms, belongs only to God. Man has
the limitations of a finite nature. He is sub-
ject to laws and conditions beyond his control.
But these limitations do not encroach upon
his moral freedom, which pertains especially
to his choice of ultimate ends. In walking he
must conform to mechanical laws, in thinking
to the laws of thought. But the end for which
he walks and thinks he determines for him-
self, and it is this choice of ultimate ends that
determines his course of life, and his charac-
ter. We are not called upon to explain how
man, grounded in nature, can rise above it in
asserting his moral prerogative. But two
things are plain. ist. As possessing the
highest form of energy, the rational, he has,
as we have seen, the prescriptive right to over-
rule all the forces of his organism, according
to the supreme law of rational life. 2d. This
law in its nature is ethical, which, in imposing
moral obligation to fulfil it, involves responsi-
bility, and the liberty which always goes with
it. Herbert Spencer has given to the world
an able work on the Data of Ethics, but at the
same time advocates a philosophy which, in
denying human personality, allows no scope
64 The Immortal Life
for ethical functions. In his definition of life,
also, "The adjustment of internal relations to
external relations, or the correspondence of
the organism to its environment," there is no
recognition of the essential characteristic of
rational life. It applies to vegetal and animal
life only. Rational life is of a higher order,
and requires the adjustment of voluntary ac-
tivities to the demands of ethical law within.
In the struggle for physical life, man, like the
animal, must adjust his organism to its environ-
ment. But his struggle for moral and spiritual
life demands the adjustment of purpose and
choice to the requirements of an inner spiritual
law in the way of self-government. This is the
very struggle that characterizes manhood. If
man has no self-conscious, self-directing Ego
to order his life by the inward law of right-
eousness as well as in correspondence with en-
vironment, there are no " data of ethics in the
man," and a work assuming such data, but
denying the power to fulfil ethical functions
in the way of self-government, is like giving
us the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out.
Man has rational powers, a delegated sover-
eignty, as we have shown, for the very purpose
of riofhteous self-sfovernment. Had the Creator
given a constitution that would of itself carry
The Immortal Life 65
out the principle of subordination, leaving no
liberty of moral choice, the progress of crea-
tion would have ended in Nature, and amoral
kingdom, the crown of all, would not have
come into being. So long as one cannot deny
his obligation to choose the true and the
right, rather than the false and the wrong, he
must know himself subject to ethical law and
condemn himself for its violation. To deny
his liberty of moral choice, is to disown his
manhood and to drop from the realm of per-
sons to that of things. Rational endowments
carry with them the obligations of rational
action, and they therefore bring him face to
face with himself as a personal living being,
bound to exercise righteous sovereignty over
himself, in obedience to ethical law. Such is
the nature of self-government, and it implies
not only the exercise o{ personal functions, but
also those of a spiritual being. This determines
his place in the spiritual kingdom.
This will be manifest when we consider the
ends he is to seek, the law he is to administer,
the functions exercised in administering it, and
the general character of the rational life.
First, the ends he is to seek are spiritual.
Life has many subordinate ends, not in
themselves spiritual, but chosen as means for
66 The Immortal Life
attaining those that are uUimate and spiritual.
It is the choice of ultimate ends which is
properly ethical and determines character. In
both the lower and higher nature are princi-
ples of action correlated to special objects or
ends. The lower nature has its cravings,
which are of course unspiritual, but innocent
when their claims do not conflict with those of
superior rank and value. But we crave
objects that are not material, and which have
nothing to do with the body. They are
objects that address our spiritual nature and
meet our higher wants. For example, we seek
for spiritual realities, or for the deeper mean-
ing of phenomena, which does not address the
senses but the rational understanding. We
seek for invisible principles for causes, laws, and
ends that open to us the rational order of the
world, and that unity which is one with truth.
Truth is a spiritual reality, meeting the deep
wants of our spiritual nature. It is divine, as
representing divine thought and purpose. It
is the very sustenance and guide of the
rational and moral life, and as such is an im-
portant endoi the spiritual life. Beauty also ad-
dresses our spiritual and aesthetic nature and
is a spiritual reality. Spiritually discerned,
color, form, and sound have no beauty until
The Immortal Life 67
they are made to express those harmonious
relations that touch our finer sensibilities. The
profusion of beauty, in all its varieties, that
gives to Nature its inexpressible charm, and
the great masterpieces of Art, that are the
admiration of the world, would be as a blank,
unheeded, without that power of spiritual dis-
cernment which belongs to oursesthetic nature.
Furthermore, the moral qualities that give
elevation and worthiness to the ethical life are
all spiritual in their nature. Justice, purity,
humility, patience, faith, love, righteousness,
are some of the qualities to which we refer.
They do not centre in, or belong to, the physi-
cal organism, but they are correlated to the
higher psychical and spiritual life which uses
the body only as its instrument for the up-
building of character and the perfection of the
moral life. This is the supreme end to which
truth, beauty, and the whole education of life
should lead.
Again, ethical law, requiring the subordina-
tion of lower to higher ends when in compe-
tition, is a spiritual law, and it is the great law
of the spiritual life. It is not only invisible,
but it addresses man's power of spiritual dis-
cernment and of moral judgment as inherent
in his reason and conscience.
68 The Immortal Life
It addresses the will, not as a form of physi-
cal energy but as a moral power, competent to
subordinate physical and organic forces from
a higher plane, for the ends of the spiritual
life.
Again, the functions by which the law is
made effective are spiritual. Those which
were referred to in the previous chapter are
essentially as follows : the acceptance of
ethical law as supreme and imperative, the ap-
plication of this law to conflicting principles
of action through moral judgments, the actual
preference of the higher principle, and, finally,
the giving effect to that preference by voli-
tional action.
Not one of these functions comes under
cosmic or natural law. They are all functions
of the inner, psychical life, for the ends of
righteousness. The term "spiritual," is not
easily defined, but it applies to those functions
that are purely psychical, correlated to invis-
ible realities, and to ends that are subjective
and spiritually apprehended. The above
functions answer to these tests.
Finally, to live rationally is to live and move
in a spiritual world ; dealing habitually with
spiritual realities. Such a world is within and
around us. The fact that the world is ration-
The Immortal Life 69
ally ordered means that through its phe-
nomena we see the invisible and the spiritual
Power that ordered it, even the thoughts, pur-
poses, and attributes of the Creator. Through
phenomena we see invisible law as the method
of the divine agency ; through the combined
operation of laws and forces in Nature, we see
the divine thoughts embodied in systems, and
in the combination of systems we see the
Living Unity to which all truth leads, and
which the totality of truth must represent
All these phenomena, laws, systems of truth,
represent the great, living, spiritual Reality to
which our spiritual nature is correlated.
The marvel is that any rational person
should lack this spiritual insight, and look
upon the world as a fortuitous aggregation of
things without spiritual meaning, when the
very idea of rational order, of beauty and
truth, means an unseen rational Intelligence
as the original cause, and the very soul and
significance of the world in which they live
and move. If some persons, in looking at the
heavens, do not discover this spiritual Reality,
it is because only their physical eye is open
and the spiritual eye is closed. Not only do
the orderly movements of the heavenly bodies
declare the higher glory that shines through
yo The Immortal Life
them, but not less do the affinities and com-
binations of the infinitesimal and atomic world,
and the orderly ways in which they lend their
service to the higher forms of energy in the
complex processes of organic life. These all
declare the presence and working of the same
spiritual and omnipresent Intelligence.
Professor Jevons, with whose scientific attain-
ments the world is familiar, expresses the be-
lief that even a molecule of iron has in its
little sphere of operations an order of rotary
movements that surpasses the complexity and
harmony of the movements of the planetary
system. In all molecular movements on the
lowest plane, what obedience to law ; in crys-
tallization, what conformity to geometric ideals;
in the ascent of elements and principles of life
from lower to higher planes, what uniform
subordination of the former to the latter, in
loyal and co-operative service, of the highest
spiritual ends ! The fact that thoughtful and
discerning minds in all ages have recognized
these spiritual manifestations as the most real
and impressive of all things, shows that there
is a spiritual element in man answering to that
in Nature. And certainly the correspondence
between them is the source and condition not
only of science, but also of the deepest spiritual
The Immortal Life 71
life. In fact, how superficial and narrow
would human life be without this access to
and correspondence with what is highest and
best in the Universe !
It was this consciousness in Tennyson that
led him to say, with emphasis : " You may
tell me my hands and my feet are only imagi-
nary symbols of my existence, and I can be-
lieve you. But you can never, never convince
me that the /is not an eternal reality, and that
the spiritual is not the true and real part of
me." — Life of Tennyson, ii., p. 90.
If men did not exercise their spiritual func-
tions— intellectual, aesthetic, and moral — in cor-
respondence with their spiritual environment,
their highest culture would be comparatively
coarse and vulgar. A materialistic age is of
necessity one of blunted sensibility and low
ideals. It sees nothing to adore, scarcely any-
thing to awaken wonder. One to whom the
world is but a soulless mechanism, has little
use for his higher endowments. He sees in
creation not even the solemn grandeur of the
silent sphinx. It holds no secrets. It keeps
silence because it has nothing to say. The
ages come and go, bearing no message, bring-
ing to view phenomena, and only phenomena.
A false theory hides the great realities, a
72 The Immortal Life
glimpse of which would bring flashes of in-
sight, awakening awe and worship. There is
a broad and shining firmament, though the
blind see it not. And as beyond the reach of
the telescope there are worlds and systems of
worlds, revealed on the sensitive plate of the
astronomical photographer, so to the sensitive
spiritual mind are revealed the realities of the
Infinite, shining from unfathomed depths.
They touch affinities, and stir emotions that
seem to break through present limitations into
clearer and broader vision of the Infinite.
It is significant, notwithstanding the blind-
ness of some, that the human spirit has such
affinities for the spiritual in a world unseen
by the senses, that even the most trivial inci-
dents suggest it, and instrumentalities that in
themselves are simply mechanical become the
medium of its revelation. To how many do
the mechanical vibrations of the atmosphere
become spiritual harmonies in the soul, or
visions of realities that belong to a higher
world ! That mechanical vibrations to the ear
should thus touch spiritual chords within, and
be the medium of revelations that eye hath
not seen nor ear heard, and that uplift the
soul to a realm purely spiritual, is a startling
revelation of hidden capacities and powers
The Immortal Life Va
awaiting development into larger and higher
life. We respond to the words of Tennyson,
when he speaks of
" The tides of music's golden sea setting toward eternity."
We are sure, too, that such tides lift one out
of self into the experience of a purer, higher
life of love.
" Love took up the harp of life and smote on all the
chords with might,
Smote the chord of self that, trembling, passed in music
out of sight."
Even Horace felt "things worthy of a sacred
silence " that " must sound across the under-
world."
When under the power of spiritual realities
we seem to be taken up above the world of
time and sense, where we do not reckon time
by the pendulum of the clock, but by the depth
and fulness of the inward life. Ages are thus
compressed into an hour, and certainly an
hour of such life is better than an age of dul-
ness. Though it may be well that such
experiences are rare and of short duration,
lest they shatter the frail bodily organism,
they give plain indication of capacities that
transcend the limitations of the present state
74 The Immortal Life
and reveal a oreatness of which we are ordi-
narily unconscious.
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Thro' love, thro' hope and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.
Wordsworth, River Duddon.
Is it not strange that those combinations in
form, color, and tone, through which we begin
to realize the beautiful and sublime, should so
touch our inward nature with overpowering
emotion and spiritual vision as to be a revela-
tion of affinities within that are ordinarily
latent, but which are awaiting the removal of
present limitations for the full realization of
that of which we have occasional glimpses ?
An ideal of beauty, partially expressed, sug-
gests the perfect. It is this partial embodi-
ment of spiritual ideals in various forms of
excellence — intellectual, aesthetic, and moral —
that gives to Nature its meaning, and to man
his power of uplifting communion with the
great Reality it both veils and reveals. With-
out the apprehension of the spiritual in the
world, human life would be low and trivial, if
not entirely sensual. Poetry, art, philosophy,
would be but body without spirit. Men be-
come men only as the spiritual in them
The Immortal Life 75
responds to the spiritual in the creation of
God. That so many have this precious in-
sight, and find in it the development of a
purer and nobler humanity, is proof that man
belongs to a spiritual kingdom.
HUMAN CAPACITIES CORRELATED
TO AN INFINITE ENVIRONMENT
" Man is made for the Infinite."
Pascal.
"Devout feeling embracing its object and losing itself therein,
develops an infinite fulness of life which it is totally unable to
measure or express."
Professor Caird, Evolution of Religion, ii., p. 292.
77
CHAPTER V
HUMAN CAPACITIES CORRELATED TO
AN INFINITE ENVIRONMENT
IN estimating the range of human capacities
^ we are not to base our judgment upon the
lowest of the species nor upon the average
man, but upon those who have attained the
highest development. Aristotle, in his Ethics,
gives the true standard in the following defini-
tion : "The nature of a being is that which it
has become, when its process of development
is over."
Our race being progressive, not only do the
lowest specimens fail to represent its capabili-
ties, but the most advanced are seen to have
possibilities not yet realized. We are, there-
fore, likely to make too low, rather than too
high, an estimate of what man may become.
The animal soon reaches full development, and
each individual may be said to represent its
species. This is by no means true of man.
As Emerson expresses it: "Every lion is a
type of all lionhood, but no man is a type of
79
8o The Immortal Life
all manhood." Miss Frances Power Cobb ex-
presses a similar thought : "The best and the
greatest men have been imperfect types, of a
single phase of manhood — of the saint, the
hero, the sage, the poet, the philanthropist, the
friend ; never of the full-orbed man who should
be all these together." See her Life, ii., p.
381.
But in rare cases many excellences and even
opposite qualities may be found in the same
individual; e.g., the speculative and the prac-
tical man, the scientist and the philosopher,
the poet and the mathematician, all in one.
That such apparently opposite qualities may
be united in one person enlarges our concep-
tion of the possibilities to be realized. In fact,
no one can now foretell what the race may
become in the distant future. The human
body reaches full development in a few years,
say, at forty-five, and after that gradually de-
clines. But a Gladstone and Martineau at
ninety are in full possession of their mental
powers. It is significant that when the physi-
cal organism had reached its highest stage of
development, there was a departure in the
line of progress from physical to psychical and
rational life. To the latter we can assign no
limit ; for its environment, as related to every
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department of that Hfe, — whether intellectual,
aesthetic, ethical, or religious, — opens toward
infinity. Dr. Lotze well says: " The capacity
of being conscious of the Infinite, is the dis-
tinguishing characteristic of the human mind."
— Murocosmos, ii., p. 714.
Certainly the environment of his rational
nature is boundless, and if life is the corre-
spondence of man with his environment, he is
"capable of indefinite progression." Science,
beginning with phenomena and ascertaining
the laws of their coexistence and succession,
proceeds to discover the interrelations of
forces, and kingdoms, and advances toward a
higher and broader unity, embracing the whole
circle of the sciences. But philosophy looks
beyond phenomena and law to causes, princi-
ples, and ends, till it reaches the highest possi-
ble unity, in the creative thought and purpose
which orders atoms, kingdoms, and worlds as
parts of one cosmic system, the Universe.
But the departments of science are many,
and each is found to be too broad to be com-
pressed by man into his three-score-and-ten
years. In fact, the thorough scientist has to
forego the study of any science in its broader
relations and confine his studies to narrower
boundaries. It is said of a German professor,
82 The Immortal Life
a noted philologist, that on his death-bed he
confessed sorrowfully to his son the great
mistake of his life : " I ought to have con-
fined myself to the Dative case." Whether
true or not, it illustrates the fact that one who
would perfect himself in any department of
study must restrict his inquiries to very nar-
row quarters. In fact, the more searching the
inquiry the more need is seen of further and
further specializations. New fields are con-
stantly opening. While the telescope is
opening to view countless worlds in the depth
of space, the microscope is making revelations
in the infinitesimal world, if possible, still more
wonderful. And beyond the range even of
microscopic inspection Science now postulates
an ethereal element, filling space, whose marvel-
lous vibrations give us light, heat, and color,
and so paradoxical in apparently extreme
tenuity and in its admantine compactness as
to challenge as yet all scientific explanation.
Thus our material environment is not only
boundless in its extent, but so various and
mysterious in many of its manifestations that
the most skilful and advanced scientists can,
in the present life, only begin the study which
ages cannot complete. Agassiz, Gray, and
Tyndall each in a different department, had a
The Immortal Life 83
like experience of limited attainment and of
boundless unexplored fields opening before
them.
Beethoven entranced the world with his
symphonies and sonatas, but he felt that he
had only entered the world of musical combi-
nations and harmonies. " Music," said he,
" ushers me into the portals of an intellectual
world, always ready to encompass me, but
which I can never compass. I feel that there
is an eternal and an infinite to be attained."
A like sentiment was expressed by Sidney
Lanier, who possessed in rare measure the sen-
sibility and the genius of both the musician
and the poet. Dying in early manhood, while
his powers were yet unfolding, he left a manu-
script, published in the Boston TransciHpt
July 27, 1895, from which we make the follow-
ing extract : " There is a constant effort in
man to relate himself to the infinite, not only
in the cognitive but also in the emotive way,
and just as persistently. We wish not only to
think it, but to love it. It may be that our
love can reach nearer to its object. As a
philosophic truth, music does carry our emo-
tion toward the infinite. It must be that
there exists some sort of relation between
pure tones and the spiritual man, by reason
84 The Immortal Life
of which the latter is stimulated and forced
onward toward the great end of all love and
admiration. Thus, music becomes a moral
agency."
Such is the testimony not only of men of
keen sensibility but of profound philosophical
insight. " The consciousness of finiteness,"
says Lotze, " has always oppressed mankind."
It is a saying of Carlyle : " Man's unhappi-
ness comes of his greatness. It is because
there is an infinite in him, which, with all his
cunning, he cannot quite bring under the
finite." — Sartor Resartus, p. 121.
The Duke of Argyle treats of the same
subject from the philosophical standpoint, as
follows :
" The limiting bars against which we beat
could not be felt unless there were something
which seeks a wider scope. It is as if these
bars were a limit of opportunity rather than a
boundary of powers. The animals and the
lower nature of man, seek nothing beyond
and beside the objects they desire. They are
satisfied with their attainment. But with the
appetites of the mind it is different. We feel
our ignorance and helplessness, not because we
have reached the limits of our intellectual
power, but because we cannot reach them, and
The Immortal Life 85
because the desires which correspond to them
are not satisfied. This is true of all the higher
powers of the human mind, viewed in relation
to the objects of their desire. They are never
fully attained, nor is the desire for them fully
satisfied. In physics, the existence of any
pressure is the indication of a potential
energy, which, though doing no work, is
capable of doing it. So, in the intellectual
world, the sense of pressure and confinement
is the index of powers which under other con-
ditions are capable of doing what they cannot
at present. Not only are the bars such as can
be removed, but they offer in certain directions
no impediment to a boundless range of vision.
It is said the finite cannot comprehend the in-
finite. But we apprehend a reality which we
cannot comprehend, as when we negative all
limits. It is one of the most familiar appre-
hensions of space and time." — U7iity of
Nature, p. 127.
Men love to deal with the vast in space and
time, matching their powers with the world's
immensities. The geologist traces the earth's
changes backward through millions of years,
to chaos, the assumed starting-point of the
present order. Even beyond this, he makes
the interrogation : " Is the chaotic fire-mist
86 The Immortal Life
the absolute beginning, or is it the ashes of
previous worlds whose story had ended, and
at the same time a baptism into fresh life for
a new career of evolving worlds ? " This re-
gression into the remote past only stimulates
Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, to fore-
cast, if possible, the future of the present sys-
tem. Finding the data for determining when
the cosmic forces will have exhausted their
working power, and the system, like a worn-
out chronometer, will have stopped movement,
he endeavors to ascertain the period of its life.
If, indeed, the Creator has furnished data for
such computations, it would seem to be an in-
vitation to use them, that we may in so doing
follow His footsteps far back into the past
and on into the future, till in both directions
we come face to face with His eternity. It is
doubtless His purpose that, by the study of His
works, we grow in mental and moral stature
and enlarge our conceptions of Him till we
realize that our short lives here, and the great
epochs of human history, are but moments in
the life of the Everlasting. Indeed, it belongs
to the rational mind, so far as possible, to
search out the great things of God and not
give our lives to mere conventionalities and
things of trifling moment. " Give me a great
The Immortal Life 87
thought," said the poet Pindar, "that I may
Hve upon it." The author or the orator who
takes men out of themselves and lifts them
above the commonplace of a humdrum life
into larger sympathies and broad ranges of
thought, is a benefactor. Nor does the con-
templation of things majestic and sublime be-
little man's estimate of his own nature. The
mountain summit that commands the widest
expanse may at first seem to dwarf him into
insignificance. But, on surveying the scene,
its very sublimities at length give a sense of
power and of larger life. In fact, it is the ma-
jestic that touches the deeper emotions, and
brings into consciousness the greatness of
man, giving elevation and repose even to a
depressed and troubled spirit.
The experience of F. W. Robertson, when
in a fearful thunderstorm in the Alps, well
illustrates this fact. We can here give only a
brief extract from his own eloquent description
of it.
He was in a deep valley, entirely alone, when
the storm suddenly came upon him: "The
vultures at once took alarm and came plun-
ging down from the heights, and flocks of
chamois startled the solitude with their cries
of fear. The mountain suddenly grew dark,
88 The Immortal Life
and took apparent motion from the flying
clouds that were wreathing the summits. Then
came the blinding flashes of the blue lightning,
that streamed down the mountain sides, with
crashing peals of thunder, as if the mountain
must give way. It was a scene of awful
grandeur." But, instead of being prostrated
with abject fear, a strange sympathy, with
mingled emotions, took possession of him.
" Awe and triumph, defiance of danger and
contempt of pain — pride, rapture, and intense
repose."
He had been passing through a period of
depression and conflict bordering on despair.
The warring elements brought relief and re-
stored him to himself. In the very stress and
rage of the storm he cried out: "There!
there ! all this was in my heart but it was
never said out till now." The very violence
of the scene seemed to give expression to the
storm that had raged within, bringing thereby
strength and repose. — Lectures and Addresses,
p. 124.
The varying moods of the human mind have
their counterpart in Nature, which not infre-
quently gives expression to states that have
not risen unto distinct consciousness, and
thereby reveals man to himself. Thus the
The Immortal Life 89
multitudinous aspects of Nature are suited to
different temperaments. A thunderstorm in
the Alps would not have given expression and
relief to Wordsworth, especially after his im-
pulsive and adventurous youth had passed into
the calm and contemplative habit of mature
years. It was in the vale of Grasmere, with
its lake unruffled by the winds, reflecting as
in a mirror the green meadows, the lofty
Helvellyn, and the blue sky, that he was at
home and at rest. And whatever the out-
ward aspect, it was to him a medium through
which the higher realities, unseen, infinite, and
spiritual were revealed, giving
" A sense sublime of something far more deeply in-
terfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns
And the round ocean and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man."
The supreme function of Nature is its spir-
itually suggestive and revealing character, and
sometimes the revealing object, however sub-
lime in itself, quite vanishes from sight by rea-
son of the greater sublimity of the object it
reveals.
This was the experience of Coleridge when
gazing upon Mount Blanc from the vale of
go The Immortal Life
Chamouni : " Ah, dread and silent mount ! I
gazed upon thee till thou, still present to the
bodily sense, didst vanish from my sight. En-
tranced in prayer, I worshipped the Invisible
alone." Even Tyndall and Voltaire confessed
that, under the solemn heights of Matterhorn,
they felt an almost irresistible impulse to wor-
ship. They saw in those majestic heights the
symbo of the Infinite, and they bowed in wor-
ship. The deep emotions awakened by the
sublimities of Nature seem to give clearness
and force even to intellectual convictions be-
yond the power of logic, and even without its
aid. The heart, in its fulness of power, can
and often will dispense with dialectics, as the
electric light can dismiss the candle. Without
conscious reasoning the spirit may go straight
to its object. At any rate, if sensibility with-
out interpreting thought is often vague,
thought without sensibility is empty of con-
tent. We can feel an infinite we cannot
measure. Many a man who had not learned
to worship the God of the Bible has in his
heart erected an altar " to the Unknown God."
The imagination, as well as feeling and in-
tellect, is correlated to the Infinite. Lord
Bishop Westcott says of the poet : " He is
one who sees the Infinite in things. Life and
The Immortal Life 91
Nature have an infinite and eternal meaning,
and the poet makes us see it. The office of
art is to present the truth of things under the
aspect of beauty ; to bring before us the world
as God made it, when all was beauty."
But the imagination also creates ideals of its
own, rising nearer and nearer to the perfection
which is not reached in this mortal life. As
Beethoven was wont to revel in " a world of
harmonies that always encompassed him, but
which he could never compass," so Michael
Angelo, at eighty-nine, was creating ideals he
could not embody in concrete form. Nothing
he had completed was the measure of his
capacity, for there were in his brain, statues,
frescoes, and cathedral domes he could not
yet realize in fact. This constant progression
of the ideal life, this broader and broader out-
look into the realm of possibilities — what is it
but the prophecy of a career begun but not
completed ? This that turns present failures
into courage and hope, —
"What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me."
" On the earth the broken arch,
In the heavens the perfect round."
It is well known that men in oreneral have
a sort of subconscious sense of truth and
92 The Immortal Life
realities, which they do not distinctly recognize
until men of deeper insight have given them
utterance. A Shakespeare, a Wordsworth,
and a Tennyson give clear expression to
truths to which multitudes give ready re-
sponse. " Yes, that was in my mind, but I
could never give it shape in words. " The poet
and the seer are often the unconscious inter-
preters of what belongs to humanity, but which
lies hidden, awaiting disclosure by some mas-
ter-mind. But who can tell how much is
latent in the mind of the poet and the seer,
that, by some incident or flash of intuition, is
to come into clear consciousness ? Further-
more, all deep penetrations into the hidden
mysteries of the Universe are also further dis-
closures of the capabilities of the human mind,
— the Infinite without calling to the Infinite
within.
We have spoken of the boundless range
open to our intellectual and aesthetic life and
to the creative imagination. But who can
assign the limits to human affection? It is a
common experience that the death of a friend,
instead of extinguishing, intensifies the love of
survivors.
Jean Paul Richter went from the grave of
his son to his chamber, and wrote his Kasse-
The Immortal Life 93
perrer Thai. Death had deepened his assur-
ance that the separation was not final, and his
work was an expression of deepened affection
and of hope he wished others to share.
The eminent theologian and philosopher,
Schleiermacher, was, for a time at least, so far
under the influence of pantheistic ideas as to
lose his faith in a continuous personal life after
death. It was to be lost as an individual life,
and merged in the divine and impersonal life of
the world. This disqualified him to give con-
solation to those deeply afflicted. This he
felt to his sorrow in the case of a very near
friend, Henriette von Machenfels, who had
lost her husband three years after her marriage.
She had revered Schleiermacher for his great-
ness and had trusted implicitly in his counsel.
Dr. Marti neau, in Studies hi Religion, gives ex-
tracts from the correspondence between him
and his friend, who had besought him to give
her some assurance of a future life and of a
possible reunion in another world. We can
only indicate, by brief extracts, the character
of this correspondence. She writes : " Give
me if you can the assurance of finding and
knowing him again : it is for this that I live.
It is the only outlook that sheds light on my
dark life. When I think his soul is quite
94 The Immortal Life
resolved into the ' Great All,' that the old is
quite gone by and will never come to recogni-
tion again, — Oh ! Schleier, this I cannot bear.
— That dear personal life which is all I know,
he is Ehrenfried no more ! Gone to his God
not to be kept safe, but to be forever lost in
him ! " Schleiermacher's attempts at consola-
tion seemed but mockery of her intense love.
She asked for bread. He gave her a stone.
Two souls had become one in an intense and
common life, and to extinguish one was to
blight the other, leaving the tenderest affection
without an object. See Martineau's Shcdzes
in Religion, ii., p. 336-9.
Will it be said such affection is excessive,
and that time soon heals the wounds of the
heart? But a loveless demonstration may be
as deep and persistent. As these lines are
being written, a friend near by is looking with
moistened eyes at a little piece of needle-work
wrought by a sister fifty years ago. The
needle remains just where it was left by the
hand that then ended its work with her life.
It was unfinished and valueless in itself, but it
is kept as a sacred treasure. The half-cen-
tury has wrought great changes in individuals
and in empires, but this little memento wit-
nesses to an unchanging love that takes no
The Immortal Life 95
account of time or space. Coleridge said of
Dorothy, the sister of Wordsworth, — " Her
spirit was a mansion for all lovely forms, a
dwelling place for all sweet sounds and harmo-
nies." She gave the treasures of her mind and
the wealth of her love to her brother, making
any sacrifice for him a delight. This affection
was fully reciprocated by him. In a letter to
her he writes : " The happiness I experience
in communion with you makes the moments
worth ages." What measure is there for such
love ? It is infinite. Nor is such affection
abnormal or excessive. On the contrary, as
men grow into larger and nobler manhood we
are to expect that their affections, which are
the crowning glory of men, will grow in depth
and tenderness. Thus every part of man's
rational nature — intellectual, aesthetic, and
social — seems made for the infinite.
This is emphatically true of man as a re-
ligious being, made in the image of God to
share His infinite life. This will be the subject
of the next chapter.
THE PROPER HUMAN LIFE, ONE
WITH THE LIFE OF GOD
" Religion is the life of God in the soul of man."
Maine.
" The soul of man in the liighest sense is a vast capacity of God."'
Professor Henry Drummond.
" The human blossoms into the divine, and thereby perfects
humanity."
Wood.
97
CHAPTER VI
THE PROPER HUMAN LIFE, ONE WITH
THE LIFE OF GOD
IN the Bible account of the creation (^Gen.
I : 27) we read : "So God created man
in His own image."
This is a remarkable record, made in very
early time. It attributes to man a dignity and
worth above all other creatures. Man the
image of God ! At first view, this seems pre-
posterous, especially as the same record exalts
God as the Creator of the world, the Eternal, the
Almighty, and as possessing all moral perfec-
tions. It seems strange, therefore, that man —
who is of yesterday and may die to-morrow,
who is not only frail but sinful, and who often
debases himself below the animal — should be
given in the same record so wonderful a dis-
tinction. Can there be any possible evidence,
outside the Bible, that confirms this testimony ?
There is a still older record, not only contain-
ing such evidence, but furnishing positive proof
99
loo The Immortal Life
of its truth. This record is creation itself, — a
volume direct from the hand of the Creator.
This proof rests on a twofold basis, the
soundness of which few persons will now
question.
First, the order of the creation reveals a
Rational Intelligence as its author. Second, the
fact that men interpret this order in terms of
human thought, shows that their intelligence,
as rational, is similar in kind. The first posi-
tion, that the order of creation is a rational
order, revealing a Rational Intelligence as its
author, needs here no proof. All science takes
it for granted in claiming to interpret it. For
unless this order is the expression of an intel-
ligence that is rational, in the common use of
the term, science could have no standing what-
ever. All sound philosophy affirms that a ra-
tional product shows a rational intelligence as
its cause.
Our purpose now is to establish the proof
of the second position. Of course it is the
mind, not the body, of man that bears the
divine image, and our claim is that the soul of
man, as rational, can enter into and share the
divine life and so far can be one with it.
It will be conceded that when one mind ex-
presses itself in some form of language which
The Immortal Life loi
another mind interprets in terms of its own
consciousness, there must be the relationship
of Hkeness between them. For example, we
in some manner interpret the mind of animals,
as expressed by them, in various forms of
natural language, and the}^ in like manner
interpret us, because we have a like animal
nature. But they cannot enter with us into
the realm of truth, which is the realm of
spiritual realities, because they possess no
spiritual nature. For the same reason, if the
Most High has a realm of thought and life
that is absolute and unconditioned, we cannot
enter with Him into that realm, since it is out
of all relation to our finite intellieence. But
the world's order reveals an intelligence an-
swering to our own, since we can interpret it
in terms of human thought. Here, then, the
human and the divine intelligences correspond,
and are in communication as truly as when
two persons, through some form of language,
communicate with and understand each other.
Now, if the world is God's creation, it answers
to His creative thought and is therefore truth
to Him ; and, so far as we interpret it rightly in
terms of human thought, it is truth to us. It
follows that in the order of the world and in
the structure of our mind as correlated to it,
I02 The Immortal Life
there is such correspondence as to imply com-
mon principles of intelHgence, and within the
cosmic order a common standard of truth.
There is, then, so far, a likeness between the
human and divine intelligences. Furthermore,
we see distinctly in both Nature and the human
mind, the same essential characteristics of ra-
tionality. It belongs to the rational mind to seek
higher and higher forms of unity. For example,
we, as rational, interpret and combine our sensa-
tions, as given by external objects, into broader
conceptions, comprising the various qualities
of an object. Accordingly, we combine the
form, the color, the flavor, etc., of the orange
into a single conception, representing the
orange as a concrete unity. A still higher
unity of thought associates the orange with its
surroundings, — with the seed and soil from
which it springs, with the climate where it
grows, and the conditions of its development
and its practical uses. It is in this way we
enlarge our rational knowledge, including
many particulars in one conception and many
conceptions in judgments more and more
comprehensive, until we reach the broadest
possible generalizations. By these processes
we attain higher and higher unities of thought,
corresponding to unities of fact in the world
The Immortal Life 103
without. Were our mind, through larger de-
velopment and wider knowledge, capacious
enough to unify all the facts and relations of
the world, we could comprehend all in a single
thought, the thought representing in conscious-
ness the one cosmic system.
We cannot suppose the Most High attains
omniscience by these laborious processes.
They are our slow steps of progress, as finite
creatures. Still, in this world of space and
time we see a like progression, to higher and
higher unities. Matter, it is believed, was at
first diffused and chaotic, and by evolutionary
process was brought in course of time, con-
structively, to various forms of unity. We see
this in the lower kingdoms, in chemical union,
in crystallization, in the simple vegetal organ-
isms. But there was also advance in com-
plexity and unity, till all the kingdoms with
their manifold relations were brought into the
marvellous unity we call the Universe. This
progression we now see has been from the
first toward a spiritual kingdom, and toward
one supreme end in that kingdom which is of
ethical and absolute value, and all these king-
doms subserve it, so that the mind, which is
large enough to construct such a unity, must
comprehend all in a single thought. We see,
104 The Immortal Life
therefore, in the progressive upbuilding of the
cosmic system on a vast scale, the same deci-
sive stamp of rationality , which is the charac-
teristic of the human mind in its constructive
processes of thought and work.
Now, it is the especial function of the human
mind to interpret the divine order of Nature
into these unities of thought and fact. Such
is the work of science itself. Accordingly, as
men shall realize these divine unities embodied
in the world, the human and the divine intelli-
gences will come into closer contact, and into
more complete communication and realized
correspondence. So man is fitted by the very
structure of his mind to share what we may term
the intellectual life of God, as manifest in the
ordered relations of the world.
But there is a higher form of the divine life
than the intellectual which men are made to
share. This is revealed in the finer propor-
tions and harmonies of the world — in those
forms, colors, motions, and tones that address
our aesthetic nature, and awaken the sense of
beauty. Such harmonies give a keener de-
light than those relations that address only the
intellect. Though they reach us through the
senses, and in some measure also through
the intellect, they strike deeper and stir spirit-
The Immortal Life 105
ual emotions. They are in fact spiritually dis-
cerned. Animals with keener senses than ours
have no sense of beauty because they lack the
sensibilities of a spiritual nature. The dog
feels the sensational thrill at the strikingf of a
bell. The thrush utters sweet musical notes
and the peacock spreads his tail of gorgeous
colors. But having no spiritual sensibility and
no ideal of beauty they have no appreciation of
the beautiful in what they see, hear, or display.
Man finds himself in an environment of
beauty, and in its appreciation he realizes a
nobler life than that of the sensuous or the
intellectual. We wonder at the affluence of
beauty that is lavished upon this once form-
less and chaotic world. We find it every-
where, and not as a mere fringe or decorative
bordering of the useful, or a surface adorn-
ment for the superficial observer. It enters
into the structure of the world, into its secret
processes, and into its general economy. The
lowest kingdom has its manifold forms of
crystallization after geometric ideals. The
snow-flake and the frost-work on the window-
pane, show the same tendency, as if it were a
passion in Nature to embody ideals of beauty.
The law of gravity is a law of harmony : alike
for atoms and for worlds. The mightiest
io6 The Immortal Life
forces in their interplay and the vast magni-
tudes in their movements in space, take lines of
grace and beauty. If one on a summer even-
ing stand under the open sky and contem-
plate the whole aspect of things, he is
impressed by the order, the silence, and the
repose in which the great Universe with its
resistless energ-ies moves on.
The ethereal element that from remote dis-
tances touches our eyes with light and color, in
its infinitesimal vibrations of different lengths
but of accordant movements, seems a vast
musical instrument attuned to the finest har-
monies and touched by the finger of God. In
thus bringing to us the splendors of light and
color, by appliances so vast, so minute and
exact in their movement, does He not manifest
His own love of harmony and is He not in
sympathy with the delight He gives to His
rational creation? But what a wealth of
beauty He appreciates that is beyond our
reach ! We think of primeval forests, lifting
their verdure and bloom far from the abodes
of men, often spanned by rainbows and
flushed by sunsets that no human eye be-
holds ; of rare flowers in wilderness places ; of
myriads of insect voices that on a summer's
night break its stillness with rythmic and
The Immortal Life 107
happy responses, when the rest of the world is
asleep. How manifest that He, who thus fills
space and time with beauty and song and ex-
uberant life of which He alone can be the
appreciative witness, must Himself delight in
them. The flowers hidden from us He tints
as sweetly as those we see by the way side.
Many a wild bird of the wood is more beauti-
ful than those that sing in our cages ; and the
leaves of the forest are woven as deftly after
their pattern as those that throw their shade
upon our lawns. Beyond the utmost range of
our senses, away in the measureless spaces, He
works out His ideals of beauty as perfectly as
before our eyes. In fact, this infinity of beauty
which we cannot see, but which we know He
has brought into being, and which He enjoys,
gives us a sense of the fulness of its aesthetic
life that has no measure but infinity. We are
sure that He loves beauty for its own sake, as
well as for the pleasure it gives to us, and that
His satisfaction in it must be infinitely greater
than ours. But He has qualified us to appre-
hend in imao^ination what our senses cannot
reach, and by this inner vision to know of a
vast wealth of beauty which God directly sees,
and so, in thought, we share in the fulness of
His aesthetic life.
io8 The Immortal Life
Nor can we be too grateful for this high
privilege. If our environment were crude and
repellant, meeting only the wants of our ani-
mal nature but devoid of beauty, this would
be to us an unlovely, desolate world, out of
harmony with our nobler nature. We could
never be at home in such a world. But now
we feel on every hand the touch of a kindly
Spirit in sympathy with us, seeking to refine
and ennoble us by gentle and delicate minis-
trations in the smallest things, and to uplift us
by the grandeur of His mountains and His
firmament. But He does not minister to us as
mere passive observers of His beautiful crea-
tion ; he qualifies and inspires us to create a
world of our own, and to put into our ideals
the same principles of beauty and harmony
that He applies in His great cosmic upbuilding.
We can never, indeed, equal the Divine
Artist, but our conscious failures intensify our
love of the excellence we do not reach, and we
set our faces toward the perfect beauty which
dwells only in the mind of God. This spiritual
vision takes us above our own ideals, above all
concrete forms of beauty, into the spiritual
realm, to enter into that divine aesthetic life
that can have no finite expression.
But there is still another form of the divine
The Immortal Life 109
life, far transcending the intellectual and aes-
thetic. In this, too, we are made to share
with the Most High. It is His ethical life,
comprising those moi^al qualities — justice,
righteousness, mercy, love — which belong only
to personal beings. When all these qualities
of character are united in perfect harmony,
they may be called the " Beauty of Holiness."
But while a symmetrical character is beautiful,
we are not to identify the ro fxa\6v of the
Greeks with holiness. Beauty, of the highest
order, has its place in the moral realm. No
character has right proportions unless right-
eousness is the dominant element. But
righteousness is conformity to ethical, not to
aesthetic, law, and while God delights in beauty,
yet righteousness and love are supreme in His
character and His administration. Now, right-
eousness and love, as ethical qualities, properly
belong to all rational beings, of whatever rank
or in whatever world they may dwell. They
are essentially of the same nature, whether in
men, angels, or God. Accordingly, so far as
men are righteotLs, they are like God in char-
acter and possess a kindred life. There is
evidence of God's righteousness in the moral
order of the world. Matthew Arnold thus
expressed the common conviction of mankind :
no The Immortal Life
" There is a Power, the Eternal, not ourselves,
that makes for righteousness." This conclu-
sion he seems to have reached by observing
the Providential order in human history. But
the very structure of the world illustrates the
same fact, inasmuch as its kingdoms are so
ordered as to embody the true ethical prin-
ciple, the lower being subordinated to the
higher and all to the highest. Thus, though
Nature itself is non-moral, the Power that
orders it has conformed strictly to the princi-
ciple of righteousness, for the lowest kingdom,
the mineral, is made subordinate to the vege-
tal, the vegetal to the animal, and all to man.
Now, since the supreme end of man is to be-
come righteous like his Maker, it is of great
interest to see that the whole structure and
movement of the world is ordered in the in-
terest of righteousness. Thus the formative
and governing principle of creation illustrates
the righteousness of the Creator, so that this
important truth rests not merely on the gen-
eral course of human history, but also on the
world's structure and foundations. Indeed,
men of insight, whether theists like Carlyle, or
atheists like Strauss, have on some ground
recognized the same fact. Such revelations
are distinctly made, whether through the
The Immortal Life m
moral nature of man or the divine order of
the world. Still, the most effective revelations
may be supernatural. God, while immanent
in Nature, transcends its limitations. Man
also, as a moral being, as we have shown, is
above Nature. It would be unreasonable,
therefore, to assume the impossibility of divine
revelations on this higher spiritual plane, as if
the revealing agency of Nature exhausted the
divine resources for communicating with man.
Certainly the natural order does not limit the
aspirations of men for divine fellowship.
What devout mind, in interpreting Nature,
does not recognize a spiritual presence dis-
tinct from and above Nature, and come into
fellowship with it ? Is not the experience and
the fellowship thus attained, in fact, the most
intimate and transforming-, enterino- most
deeply into the life of God ? Knowing that
He understands our inmost thought and feel-
ing, we can give forth to Him our thought,
feeling, and affection, not expressed in lan-
guage, not to be uttered in words, but which
the Omniscient One knows and accepts as the
offspring of the heart. The natural order may
have led up to this communion of spirit with
spirit, but, having served its end, the natural
drops out of sight and mind, giving place to
112 The Immortal Life
the purely spiritual. What if, in this fellow-
ship of the finite with the Infinite, man re-
ceives a fulness and power of life that clears
away all obstructions, overflowing all the
natural channels of communication ? It is not
the less real because divine forces and illumi-
nations have wrought a deeper consciousness,
and lifted the spirit above instrumentalities
that have before served it. Nay, is not the
best life of man purely spiritual ? When
Beethoven apprehended and longed to ex-
press the infinity of musical combinations and
harmonies, which he said always encompassed
him, but which he could not compass or shape
into definite thought, had he not an inner con-
scious life that was real, and deeper than any
to which he could give expression ?
Why may not the saint, who has tried to in-
terpret to others his thoughts of God, have
felt a sense of the fulness of the divine life
that encompassed him, but which he could not
compass or shape into a definite thought ?
From the depths of his consciousness he could
give response, as "deep calleth unto deep."
Still, the highest moral perfections of God
must take a higher form of revelation to man-
kind than Nature. It must be distinctly Z^/'-
sona I a.nd Jmman. And since the Most High
The Immortal Life 113
evidently desired to come into close and inti-
mate communication with mankind, we might
expect him to supply such a medium for his
self-revelation. Everything points to Jesus
Christ as the supplementary revelation thus
needed. Even Mr. Mill saw in Christ a divine
manifestation superior to that of the natural
order. The personal life of God could be best
expressed in the pure, holy life of Christ as a
perfect ina7i. He was not only a superior man,
but he spake and lived as one in close fellow-
ship with God, so that the term ^' Immanuel,
God with us,'' seemed to express His nature
and character. At least, in our present state
we can expect no clearer manifestation of the
divine moral perfections. And since He was
man in direct fellowship with the divine life it
shows that man as man can attain to a life
that is one with that of God. We do not
mean that men may experience a life the same
in measztre, but the same in kind.
Now, if man may realize in himself a life that
is one with that of God, he is a being of worth
and dignity beyond our highest conceptions.
This supreme life, for which the world was made,
cannot be orig^inated to be forever extingfuished.
The divine life in man, the highest in kind and
most precious to God, He will not destroy.
AS A RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL
BEING, MAN SUSTAINS A DIRECT
AND FUNDAMENTAL RELATION
TO GOD, WHICH MEANS PERMA-
NENCE
" In every country, with all people, in all races we find the belief
in beings superior to man, and influencing his destiny, for good or
evil. Everywhere we find belief in another life succeeding the
actual life. These two notions lie at the foundation of all religion.
We can say then of man that he is certainly religious."
QuATREFAGES, Natural History of Man ^ p. 135.
" Fellowship with the Eternal cannot but be eternal, and such
fellowship is of the very essence of the moral life."
Seth's Ethical Principles, p. 460.
115
CHAPTER VII
AS A RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL BEING,
MAN SUSTAINS A DIRECT AND FUN-
DAMENTAL RELATION TO GOD, WHICH
MEANS PERMANENCE
IN the preceding chapter we showed that, in
interpreting the rational order of the
world, man comes into intelligent contact with
the divine life, as revealed therein, and thus
proves his kinship with God. But his religious
and ethical nature involves a more direct and
fundamental relationship to God, not merely
as qualified to interpret His life in Nature, but,
as a child of God, to know Him more in-
timately, and to respond to His personal au-
thority and paternal love. That God is a
personal being we know from His ethical char-
acter, as seen in the moral order of the world,
and in the religious and ethical nature He has
given to man. But, as intimated in the close
of the preceding chapter, there is above
Nature a direct relation of spirit with spirit,
as the source of man's deepest and purest life.
117
ii8 The Immortal Life
To this relationship, the religious and ethical
nature of man bears witness, for he has ever
been seeking after God for more perfect
knowledge and direct intercourse.
We are now to consider what is involved in
this religious and ethical relationship to God
as 2L persona/ being.
That man has a religio2is as well as an ethical
nature, is now almost universally conceded.
If Quatrefages could affirm, a half-century ago,
that man is by nature a religious being, cer-
tainly the more thorough explorations since
made, in every corner of the world, confirm his
conclusion. Professor Tiele, in giving a broad
definition of religion, says : " By religion, I
mean those manifestations of the human mind,
in words, deeds, customs, and institutions,
which testify to man's belief in the super-
human and serve to bring him into relations
with it." He then adds : " Religion is cer-
tainly rooted in man's nature ; that is, it
springs from his inmost soul." " Though con-
scious of the superiority of our religion, let us
hail this religious disposition as a proof of
man's higher origin, as a proof that the finite
being partakes of the Infinite and the eternal."
— Gifford Lectures, pp. 4, 9, 264.
Professor Caird on the same point says : " To
The Immortal Life 119
sum up the whole matter in one word, every
rational being, as such, is a religious being." —
Evolution of Religion, p. 68.
Instead of accounting for the origin of re-
ligion, as Mr. Spencer does, in dreams, ghosts,
and the like, it is now affirmed to be the out-
come of man's rational nature, as correlated to
the world's rational order. Whether man be-
came rational, and therefore religious, by the
slow process of evolution or by direct creative
act, we need not determine. In either case it
was by divine agency, since the cosmic process
is as truly divine as the creative act. Still
there are those who would put religion in the
background, substituting ethics in its place, or
at least subordinating the former to the latter.
But if either has precedence in time, it is not
ethics but religion, since what are called
nature-religions appeared before those that
were ethical. Both are essential as united.
Morality may, indeed, be separated from re-
ligion, as based on conscience, but such morality
lacks two essential elements : vital, persistent
forces, and integrity, or complete righteous-
ness. Man's sufficiency to rule himself rightly
may well be questioned. A merely self-sus-
tained will is unequal to the task. Religion,
with its divine sanctions, is the surest and
I20 The Immortal Life
strongest support of morality, reinforcing the
moral endeavors as nothing else can. Besides,
morality itself, rightly viewed, has a religious
basis. "All moral precepts," says Professor
Wundt, " originally possess the character of
religious command. Morality, law, and religi-
ous worship are in the first instance inseparably
commingled." — Ethics, p. 121. In very terse
but expressive language. Canon Aubrey Moore
says : " Human nature craves to be both
religious and rational, and the life that is not
both is neither." — Lux Mtmdi, p. 109.
The categorical imperative of Kant presup-
poses divine authority as its basis. Man did
not ordain, and cannot repeal, the law of con-
science. If the cosmic forces enthroned it,
they did not consult his wishes, and its solemn
sanctions are independent of his will. His
sovereignty is a delegated sovereignty, a trust
committed to his keeping, accompanied with a
grave responsibility which he cannot alienate.
Much as reliofion has been misunderstood and
perverted, it is the strongest support of the
ethical life. Such life, to be either dominant
or complete in righteousness, must be sus-
tained and more completely vitalized by the
life-blood of filial reverence and love inspired
by the holy character and boundless benefi-
The Immortal Life 121
cence of God. Such affections move exactly
in the Hne of a righteous will. They are the
secret of its strength. Religion rightly under-
stood furnishes not only the most effective
motives, but the highest ideal for the true
ethical life ; and the expectation of a future
life, instead of marring its simplicity by selfish
or prudential motives, intensifies the longing
for the purity that shall fit one for seeing God
in the heavenly state.
The truth is, religion and morality belong
together. They are mutually supporting, and
cannot be separated without serious detriment
to both ; for a religion that is not ethical is a
superstition, and a morality without religion
lacks both vital efficiency and integrity. The
weakness of humanity in presence of the
world's temptations must be taken account of
by those who are in earnest for the righteous
life. If the Stoics, with their reverence for
virtue as the chief good, and their assumed
self-sufficiency for its practice, not unfrequently
confessed defeat and despair by suicide ; if
every man of high ideals is conscious of morti-
fying failures, certainly the aid of religious
motives should be a welcome support. Moral-
ists in ancient Egypt and Babylonia appealed
to the Supreme Authority to give sanction and
122 The Immortal Life
force to moral precepts. The following words
of Professor Tiele give instructive warning to
schools of ethical culture that would decline
the aid of religion altogether, or would subor-
dinate it to morality. He says : " A particu-
lar civilization that disrep-ards the religious
element, and is content with the progress
made in other departments, bears no lasting
fruit, and soon stagnates and declines ; or,
briefly, the development of religion is the
necessary consummation of all human develop-
ment, and is at once demanded and promoted
by it." — Gifford Lectures, 1897, pp. 102,
233-
Through the affinity of human nature for
religion, it has been from time immemorial
the dominant factor in the world's history.
The family, the tribe, the city, and the state,
have had their sacred altars and their worship.
Its solemnities have been invoked at the mar-
riage festival, at births, and at funerals. Kings
have been invested with its sacred functions,
when assuming their regal authority, and even
in the republics of Greece and Rome, the
Archon in the former and the Patrician in the
latter, on state occasions presided over its
rites, with titles of royalty. The ethical ele-
ment, while indispensable in all true religion,
The Immortal Life 123
cannot be its substitute. The progress and
well-being of humanity require their insepara-
ble union. In fact their separation involves
not only the neglect of a most important class
of duties, which men owe to God, but a vir-
tual mutilation of human nature. For it de-
prives the crowning principle in the human
constitution of its correlative object, which is
the source of its life ; and such is the inter-
dependence of functional action in the living
organism that, if one member suffer, all the
members suffer with it. Who, then, can esti-
mate one's loss, both in fulness and quality of
life, in living without God in the world? In-
deed, the whole cosmic order is correlated to
man, as a religious being. We have shown
that the intellectual, aesthetic, and moral
order is a medium of divine manifestation to
the mind and heart of man, and is the school
for his mental, moral, and religious education.
Thus the Most High comes into contact and
communication with man's whole being, and
is his true environment and the source and sub-
stance of his proper life. For his true life
is not realized in observing and classifying
phenomena, or in studying the world as a vast
mechanism, but rather in recognizing, in all
truth and beauty and moral order, the sublime
124 The Immortal Life
manifestations of God, that in beholding His
glory he may become like Him.
Linnaeus might have been an excellent
botanist, sensitive to the beauty of flowers,
before seeing their deeper significance. It
was when he saw the glory of the Invisible in
them, and knelt in holy worship, his soul suf-
fused with grateful and reverent emotion, that
he realized his deeper life. It is one thing to
recognize the moral order, "the stream of ten-
dency that makes for righteousness " and
another thing to appropriate the principle of
that order in the government of one's daily life.
Accordingly, the inseparable union and dom-
inance of these two elements in the life of
man is indispensable to that intimate relation-
ship to the Most High which conditions the
true knowledge of Him and participation in the
fulness of His life.
True, the life of God is infinite, and cannot
be fully manifested to finite intelligence. But
" the soul of man," as Professor Drummond has
well said, " is a vast capacity for God," and
men can know Him and become like Him,
through His progressive and ever -varying
manifestations of His perfections. Hence,
the goal of man is no fixed point of attain-
ment, but a continuous approach toward the
The Immortal Life 125
infinity he cannot reach. Indeed, the religious
and ethical life of our race has been pro-
gressive hitherto, though with many sad re-
gressions. Whether we accept the evolution
theory or not, human history shows, on the
whole, great advance in men's conceptions of
God, and the application of ethical principles
to human conduct. Not to speak of other
peoples, this is emphatically true of Israel, the
people most favored with divine relevations.
When the Hebrews began as a nation at Mt.
Sinai, hating as they did the religion of their op-
pressors, they seem to have had none to take
its place until, at the holy Mount, they were
led by Moses to choose Yahveh, the deity of
the Kenites of Midian, to be their God. But
at that time, and for hundreds of years after-
ward, their conceptions of the true God and
their standard of morality were very low. He
was in their view a local deity, the " God of
the sacred mountain," and the " God of bat-
tles." Still, in the judgment of Professor Karl
Budde of Strasburg, their religion was in some
measure ethical, "because it rested on 2Lvoiun-
tary decision which established an ethical rela-
tion between the people and its God for all
time." — See Religio7i of Israel to the Exile, p.
38.
126 The Immortal Life
But their ethical standard was low compared
with that of the prophets of righteousness, and
that of the prophets was far below that of the
great Founder of Christianity. This brings us
to the new era of spiritual progress. The
revelations of Jesus Christ concerning God's
being and character are the most exalted
ever given to mankind, and the ethical stand-
ard taught by Him and illustrated in His
own life furnishes the highest ideal of
righteousness.
Now, it is a fact of experience that near
contact with pure and great souls, while it
humbles the beholder and convicts of sin by
the evident contrast, at the same time touches
the noblest springs of action and inspires
reverence, and often the passion, for like excel-
lence. If man can thus inspire the love of
goodness when imperfectly manifested, what
may not the near vision of God, in His
sublime and holy attractions, do for receptive
minds ? Many *' seekers after God " have
doubtless found Him, and, in a measure, en-
tered into His life under the teaching of
Nature and their own conscience. But im-
personal Nature cannot reveal the highest
moral perfections. Even Socrates and Plato,
with all their spiritual insight, earnestly de-
The Immortal Life 127
sired and looked for further divine communi-
cations. Indeed, those who see in the order
of the world the evident attempt of its Author
to put Himself in communication with men,
may well look for supplementary revelations
of His character and His relations to men,
that His intercourse with them may be inti-
mate and transforminof. The methods of
Nature do not, as we have seen, exhaust the
resources of God for His self-revelation ; and
since man is above Nature, as a spiritual and
moral being, we cannot assume that this divine
intercourse must be restricted to the natural
order. Certainly God, as a personal being, can
be best represented by a person who is His
image, especially by one who is pure and holy
and on such terms of intimacy as to qualify
him to know His purposes of good towards
men. The Most High, having revealed Him-
self in the majestic order of Nature and in the
varied forms of life below man, could give a
more direct expression of His highest perfec-
tions and purposes in a perfect humanity.
Jesus Christ, whatever we may think of His
origin, is without doubt the most worthy rep-
resentative of the divine perfections, and by
His intimate relation with God, and His pro-
found insight into spiritual realities, He was
128 The Immortal Life
best qualified to be the medium of the needed
revelations which supplement those of Nature.
He had not like other men debased His nature
by sin. In Him, the Sinless One, the Divine
Spirit of truth and love and grace was so mani-
fest that His proper name was ''Immanuel,
God with us." Even John Stuart Mill saw in
Him a more worthy expression of the divine
perfections than in the course of Nature, and
the highest ideal of a complete humanity.
The wisdom of His teaching, His profound
insight into spiritual realities. His sublime idea
of a universal kingdom of God brought nigh
to men. His fidelity to their highest interest,
His fearless utterance of truth, and His gentle
spirit, His readiness to make any sacrifice to
save men from their sins. His near sympathy
both with God and men in the whole spirit of
His life, illustrated in His case not only the
close union of the divine in the human, but
His power to create this union in all who
would receive His spirit. The proffer of this
divine union and communion, on the part of
God, through such a messenger as Christ, may
well inspire faith and grateful response on the
part of man. Indeed, in the actual experience
of great multitudes, it is found that the cordial
acceptance of that proffer brings man and God
The Immortal Life 129
together in an ennobhng and transforming
fellowship. It is that union of the divine with
the human which is the besfinningf of the
highest possible life, and it must lead on to
the perfection of humanity as its proper goal.
This is no speculative theory. The Christ
character is the perfection of humanity, and
those who truly receive and follow Him par-
take of that divine life which He is able to
impart. He added new spiritual forces supple-
mentary to those of Nature, and created a new
era which has proved a turning-point in human
history. The leaven He put into our race is
slowly but surely spreading far and wide, and
shows its divine nature and power not only in
individual characters, but in a purer and nobler
civilization, and a growing ideal of social,
moral, and religious life.
Thus we see that the revelations and the
spiritual forces supplied by Christ, together
with those of Nature and the human conscience,
bring men into direct and intimate relations
with God and create a life at once human and
divine, and since men are called to share the
life which is divine, they are called to share a
life which is eternal.
IF DEATH ENDS MAN'S EXISTENCE
THE GREAT LAW OF HIS LIFE IS
NULLIFIED AND THE END OF
HIS CREATION IS A
FAILURE.
"We desire immortality," said Jean Paul Richter, "not as the
reward of virtue, but as its continuance."
" The doctrine of immortality is of infinite value, alike as afford-
ing an absolute sanction for the efforts and sacrifices of virtue, and
as yielding strength to human nature in its anxieties and solace in its
bitter bereavements." — WEhBO^'s //ope of Immortality, pp. 149, 222.
131
CHAPTER VIII
IF DEATH ENDS MAN'S EXISTENCE THE
GREAT LAW OF HIS LIFE IS NULL-
IFIED AND THE END OF HIS
EXISTENCE IS A FAILURE
SINCE creation has a rational ground and
order it has, as we have seen, an end for
which it exists. This end, so far as man is con-
cerned, is plain ; for since man is made in the
imageof God, tolivein His fellowship, he should
become like Him in character, possessing the
dignity and excellence which belong to that fel-
lowship. Now the prime characteristic of cre-
ation is its unity. This unity is the postulate
of all science ; and its meaning is that the
world is consistent with itself, working together
as one harmonious system. We think it can
be shown that if death ends all, the fundamen-
tal law of the divine economy is practically
nullified and the purpose of man's creation
fails.
We have shown that the chief end of crea-
tion, as indicated by its rational and moral
133
134 The Immortal Life
order and the nobler endowments of man, is
the establishment of a kingdom of righteous-
ness. Accordingly, the fundamental law of the
system and of human life is ethical as ordained
to demand and promote righteousness in the
moral creation.
Let us suppose, what may often have oc-
curred, that two persons, one righteous, loyal
to truth and to God, the other a malignant
and cruel murderer of the other, have died
together and dropped at once into non-exis-
tence. Death has on this supposition can-
celled every claim. Both have the same
destiny, eternal extinction. The most guilty
murderer might, indeed, have cancelled every
claim against him at any moment by taking
his own life. But under a moral government,
are there not two parties, one the subject of
the law, the other the authority that ordained
it? Now, if the relationship between the two
is real and of any importance, is the case
closed at death ? Moral law is as indispen-
sable in the moral world as that of gravity is
in the material. Both are essential as laws of
harmony and well-being. In the material
world no change of condition puts even an
atom beyond the grasp of its law. This law
is permanent and universal or chaos would re-
The Immortal Life 135
turn. Can we suppose a moral person can at
any moment put himself beyond all jurisdic-
tion by taking his life ? His high endowments
presuppose corresponding obligations. A
rational personality, the highest outcome of
creation, belongs to the spiritual kingdom for
which all other kingdoms were preparative,
and its law is the supreme law of the world.
Can this law be maintained and administered
in the interest of righteousness, if its claims
can be first repudiated and then blotted out
forever at the will of the guilty subject ? A
law whose claims can be annulled any hour by
the subject, cannot be respected as the su-
preme law of a righteous administration. Ac-
cordingly, thoughtful men, irrespective of any
special revelation and on purely rational
grounds, have had the firm conviction that
the present life is probationary and that man's
account with his Maker is not closed at death.
Dr. Lotze well says : " The function of earthly
life in this coherent infinity of existence seems
to be of the nature of 2. probation, of an edu-
cative probation, not aimless and empty of
significance as a vanishing present unconnected
with any future." — Murocosmos, ii., p. 116.
Dr. Martineau expresses emphatically the
same conviction : " Liberty to go right, liberty
136 The Immortal Life
to go wrong; can it be a mere haphazard
gift, an unmeaning institution of contingency,
as if from some curiosity to see what will turn
up ? And when the experiment is over are
the actors dismissed, the curtain dropped and
the theatre closed? Such an issue would con-
tradict the very essence of moral freedom,
which surely loses all significance if no differ-
ence is to be made between those who use it
well and those who misuse it. When the two
possible ways are thrown open to human
choice it is already anticipated that not all
will take the same, and provision must be
made for treating those who do as they like,
otherwise than those who do as they ought.
We are not upon our trial unless there is a
future that depends upon ourselves. The
alternatives of a trust have their sequel in the
alternative of a reckoning, so that wherever
conscience is, there we stand in the foreground
of existence ; and a moral world cannot be
final unless it be everlasting." — Shidy of Re-
ligion, ii., pp. 360, 361.
But if the dropping of the guilty into non-
existence at death, virtually nullifies the
administration of the moral law, the annihila-
tion of the righteous after a life of loyal and
trusting obedience seems, if possible, still
The Immortal Life 137
more at variance with a righteous administra-
tion. Conscience, as the divine voice in the
soul, utters this inspiration : " Choose the
true and the right, rather than the false and
the wrong. Hold fast to Righteousness above
all thinors."
There are exigencies when loyalty to this
command involves the sacrifice of life. If such
loyalty to the supreme authority may involve
the extinction not only of body, but of spirit,
it is also the extinction of the very loyalty that
is demanded. Such a sacrifice is very strange
as made in the interest of riorhteousness. Think
of an economy that demands the exercise of
loyalty in an act of obedience, which at once
extinguishes the loyal spirit and makes the
highest possible expression of fidelity and love
to God the sundering of every relation to Him.
It may be said that such loyalty is not in
vain because its influence in promoting like
fidelity in others may be wide and lasting. To
say nothing of the contingency or uncertainty
of such influence, it is certain that the virtue
sacrificed is of intrinsic and absolute worth. A
world of matter is but dust in comparison with
it. It was precious to him who achieved it as
his own best possession. It was precious to
the Most Hi^h who had longf soug-ht to realize
138 The Immortal Life
it in His creation. Will He allow the one who
sacrificed everything for it to be deprived of it,
perhaps by some miscreant, and dropped out
of beinor as of no further use ?
But the relation of this loyal person to God
is not merely to the Lawgiver, but to his
Father. The Father has trained His child to
esteem virtue above all price, and loyalty to
Him to be the highest virtue. He has drawn
His child to Himself till in mutual afTection
they have become one in the bonds of a com-
mon life. The child, in the spirit of loyalty, is
prompted to a course of action that sunders
their union by death, and drops him forever
out of existence.
Now in demanding such loyalty, is there not
an Implied pledge of protection and of even
closer union in mutual love ? Socrates, when
about to die for his loyalty to truth and right-
eousness, said with firm conviction : " He can-
not be deserted of God, who has earnestly
striven to be just. No harm can come to the
good man." This has in all ages been the
conviction and the support of those who have
accepted torture and death for righteousness
sake. It raised them above the fear of man,
and inspired in them that sublime heroism
which is the crowning glory of humanity.
The Immortal Life 139
Under apparent defeat they appealed from the
injustice of man to the tribunal of God for the
ultimate vindication of His own cause. It has
been said, " It is the glory of England that her
entire army and navy are used for the protec-
tion of the humblest of her subjects." Is it
not the especial function of the divine moral
government to foster and protect the interests
of righteousness by discouraging the trans-
gressor, and inspiring loyalty and confidence in
the hearts of the faithful ? Is this function
fulfilled if the righteous man is put to death
by wicked men, and thrust forever beyond the
divine jurisdiction because of his very loyalty
to truth and to God ? What then must be the
natural inference concerning the supremacy of
law, the sacredness of moral obligations, and
even the existence of a righteous or paternal
administration ; for in the very exigency when
the faithful, trusting soul needs assured sup-
port, its very loyalty puts it beyond any pos-
sible recognition. Assume that, under the
divine economy, the most saintly man and the
miscreant that tortured him to death are alike
dropped out of all jurisdiction into non-exist-
ence and you unsettle moral convictions, and
undermine all confidence in a divine adminis-
tration. History abundantly testifies that the
140 The Immortal Life
human will rises to its maximum for self-sacri-
ficing and manly achievement for truth and
righteousness when in assumed alliance with
God. The Creator seems to have put into
the reason and conscience of a good man, as in
the case of Socrates, the assurance that in
loyalty to truth he has the divine favor and
support. If such alliance fails when most
needed to inspire the loyal endeavor, is it not a
delusion to depend upon it, and utter folly to
try to enter into it? The Most High cannot
inspire confidence in His justice or faithfulness
if He prove false to faithful and trusting souls
in their extremity. He cannot be less true
than sinful men are to one another. But if
death thus ends all as pertaining to the indi-
vidual, what ground have we to expect that in
the conflict between truth and error, right and
wrong, in the moral world, righteousness will
be finally established ? The assumption that
death ends all virtually nullifies the law of the
moral world, on the part of God, by nullifying
its administration, and, on the part of man, by
taking away the motives that inspire loyalty to
Him. We have seen that the Most High has
given ample proof of His love of righteousness,
and of His purpose to give it supremacy, in
the world. He has wrought the principle of
The Immortal Life 141
righteousness into its very structure, and has
established a moral order as seen in the history
of the race, giving to transgressors the con-
sciousness of ill desert and often defeating their
counsels, while giving fortitude and satisfac-
tion to the virtuous even when suffering for
righteousness' sake. The whole cosmic pro-
gression was toward man, as a moral being,
and so toward a spiritual kingdom whose glory
should be moral excellence through divine
fellowship. The manifest end of the system
and the unity that characterize it forbid an
assumption which, if true, would destroy that
unity and defeat the end of creation.
Some persons, indeed, profess satisfaction
with a brief term of life, and to find ample
motives to virtue and to altruistic affection
while assuming that death ends all. They
have no concern about a future administration,
thinking that life's account is squared day by
day. But if man has no future life, he has no
permanent worth or intent and he perishes like
the animal. In fact, as a personal being he
becomes of less account than the dust he treads
upon, for that is indestructible, while person-
ality the highest product of creative power
goes out of being and with it all that has value
in life and character.
142 The Immortal Life
Furthermore, this subjection of spirit and
character to the conditions and laws of a lower
plane is contrary to the general economy
which subordinates the lower to the higher,
using means for ends and all below for that
which is supreme.
Still the extinction of spiritual life, it is said,
should not abate our altruistic love for man, or
our regard for virtue, however brief their exis-
tence, since kind ministrations and a virtuous
life promote valuable interests, not only while
we live, but after we are gone. Yes, and the
whole sentient creation has claims for sympa-
thetic and kind treatment. Cowper might well
give wide range to his sensibility, saying — " I
would not enter on my list of friends (tho'
grand with polished manners and fine sense, yet
wanting sensibility) the man that needlessly
sets foot on a worm."
But it should be remembered, that altruism
must diminish both in force and quality as its
object is low and insignificant in the scale of
being. You cannot feel the same interest in
a worm that you do in a horse, nor in a horse
that you do in a child capable of large develop-
ment. For a like reason, you cannot feel the
same regard for man if assured that he turns
to dust to-morrow, that you can knowing that
The Immortal Life 143
he is the image of God and destined to a life
of unending progress. The fact that he has
capacities for such a Hfe, and that you can
minister to its permanent well-being, gives not
only zest but a higher quality to your altruism.
Now, if every individual is to perish forever,
and this earth, instead of being a training
school for a broader and higher life, is to be
only the cemetery of an extinct race with no
residuum but dust and ashes, our estimate of
the worth of the race is greatly lessened, and
our motives for benevolent and heroic sacrifice
for it in like measure lose their force.
But the assumption that death ends all is
unreasonable. It is contrary to all our ideas
of proportion and consistency, that through
countless ages there should have been stages
of evolutionary progress, each successive stage
revealing additional values, or higher and
higher forms of life, to end at last in nothing !
On this point Professor LeConte says : " With-
out immortality this beautiful cosmos which has
been developing into increasing beauty for so
many millions of years, when it has run its
course and all is over, would be precisely as
if it had never been, an idle dream, an idle
tale, signifying nothing. I repeat, without
immortality the cosmos has no meaning." —
144 The Immortal Life
Evolution in Relation to Religiotts Thought, p.
329-
In such a progressive movement we natu-
rally look for its culmination in something of
absolute and permanent worth. The dispro-
portion between a scale of progress so vast
and an outcome that is worthless cannot be-
long to a rationally ordered system. There
is a like disproportion between man's large
capacities and his boundless environment,
natural and spiritual on the one hand, and a
short, scantily developed life on the other.
His outlook on all sides is toward infinity. As
rational he is made to seek and love truth, but
truth is infinite and everlasting. As a moral
being his goal is complete, Godlike righteous-
ness, but on all lines of duty and progress how
far he is from his goal. If he is to perish
to-morrow why attempt such tasks ? Why,
like Pindar and Goethe, should he crave "great
thoughts that he may live upon them " ?
What messaofe have the mountains or the
firmament for him ? Why seek any high
ideal, or concern himself about the deep
problems of creation which have always at-
tracted the interest of thinking minds ? The
Egyptian, even in the earlier dynasties, con-
ceived the visible universe to be but the
The Immortal Life 145
shadow of a superior world, whose light is
the splendor of truth, and whose laws are the
laws of a spiritual and eternal life. Why
dream of such great realities, or anticipate a
high spiritual destiny, if all that belongs to us
is a perishing body which has nothing to do
with the laws of a spiritual life ? Now, if the
dissolution of the body is the termination of
human existence, it is plain that man has little
use for his higher rational powers, since he
has no practical concern for those things that
properly engage them, and therefore no scope
for their exercise. The consequence is that
a man of high and large endowments in such
conditions must experience a powerful revul-
sion, a fatal collapse that turns the unexpended
energies inward into morbid self-torment or
cynical complaining. This fact has a striking
illustration in the case of David Strauss, as in
many others that might be mentioned.
Strauss confessed that when he had lost
his faith in God and immortality he lost his
interest in human life and in the world he in-
habited. The meaning of both had dropped
away and he saw nothing to live for. He had
parted company with all values. Why attempt
to solve problems of the world and of human
life with which he had wrestled in vain, finding
146 The Immortal Life
them but riddles, with no clue to their mean-
ing ? He had made large attainments in
knowledge and culture, but they could answer
no worthy end. Art, music, speculative in-
quiry, dramas, even friends could not fill the
place of faith in God and immortality which
he had lost. He was trying to live in a vacuum.
Of course a healthy ethical life was impossible.
His education and refined tastes were safe-
guards against low vices, but there was little
motive to reach after a high ideal of moral ex-
cellence, when all excellence would soon come
to nothing. The universe afforded no object
that could inspire those affections that lift
one above himself and ennoble his earthly life.
He had but two abiding convictions, — that
he was miserable in the present, and that in
the near future he would go out of existence.
Hope, the last friend to forsake the living, had
departed.
The case of George J. Romanes is very sim-
ilar, and is well known, as his death but re-
cently occurred. He early parted with his
religious faith, and soon after leaving the uni-
versity published a volume thoroughly atheis-
tic under the pseudonym " Physicus." Before
he recovered his faith he made this striking
declaration : " I am not ashamed to confess
The Immortal Life 147
that with this vital negation of God the uni-
verse to me had lost its soul of loveliness.
When at times I think, as think I must, the
appalling contrast between the hallowed glory
of the creed that once was mine and the lonely
mystery of existence as now I find it, it is im-
possible to avoid the sharpest pangs which my
nature is capable of. The precept ' know thy-
self ' has become transformed into the terrific
oracle of Qidipus, ' Mayst thou never know
the truth of what thou art.'" — Thoughts on
Religion, pp. 28, 148, 149.
Thus the sundering of all relationship to
God and the future life means levelling man
to the dust on which he treads. There are
few who can face eternal nothingness with
composure. Gifted and noble minds cannot
endure it. The shrinking of values that some-
times occurs in the marts of trade under the
influence of widespread disaster is nothing
compared with that which follows the loss of
faith in God and the future life ; the painful re-
vulsion which great and thoughtful souls have
felt as they felt compelled to face the eternal
darkness is the protest of a rational nature
against the loss of its birthright. What a her-
itage has man, as the image of God, made for
His fellowship, and with so vast and wonderful
148 The Immortal Life
a universe as his environment ! What possi-
bilities of deep and even progressive life are
open to him ! Truth, beauty, harmony, the
sublimities on which his eye has already opened,
the society of kindred spirits, the vision of the
Divine Glory and Majesty — Mrhat is there not
to inspire gratitude for such a heritage ! But
to turn one's face toward eternal extinction that
may come to-morrow — what a blight it casts
on what remains of a brief and hopeless life.
What motive to high achievement in knowl-
edge or virtue or any form of excellence ? All
high ideals are smitten and disappear as illu-
sions. What becomes of the dignity and
worth of man and of his high place in creation ?
Instead of lifting his head above Nature he is
dwarfed into insignificance by her magnitudes :
" Mountains and ocean waves
Around me lie,
Tower the mountain chains
Forever to the sky :
Fixed is the ocean immutably —
Man is a thing of naught,
Born but to die."
" A life of nothing, nothing worth.
From that first nothing ere our birth
To that last nothing under earth."
Specimens of Oriental pessimism.
The Immortal Life 149
Children build houses of sand to scatter
them. They blow bubbles to see them break
in the sun. It is the sport of children. Does
the Eternal build worlds for no resultant
good ? Does He sow His broad harvest fields
to gather dust ?
THE EXPECTATION OF A FUTURE
LIFE ESSENTIAL TO NORMAL
DEVELOPMENT AND TO
WELL-BEING IN THE
PRESENT
"It is indispensable both for man's happiness and for his persistent
moral endeavor that a faith in Immortality shall be accessible to the
human mind and heart."
Upton's Hibbcrt Lectures , 1893, p. 243.
" No great art could ever live if it ceased to regard beauty as one
with truth and goodness. No poet ever touched the deepest spring
of human emotion who regarded himself as the idle singer of an
empty tale."
Professor Caird, Evolution of Religion^ vol. i., p. 243.
151
CHAPTER IX
THE EXPECTATION OF A FUTURE LIFE
ESSENTIAL TO NORMAL DEVELOP-
MENT AND TO WELL-BEING IN
THE PRESENT
GOD, Duty, and Immortality are closely
linked together in the human mind.
Moral relationship to God carries with it the
idea of both duty and immortality. As Dr.
Dorner pithily expresses it, " Destined for
religion, man is destined for immortality."
These three ideas once fastened in the human
mind must Qrive direction to human life and
become the mainspring of human action.
Professor Huxley has well said, "No man and
no body of human beings ever did, or ever can,
come to much without the love of an ethical
ideal." But if the ethical ideal is to be not
an empty vision, but an inspiring and effective
force, it must be patterned after a high con-
ception of the divine character and be associated
with religious sanctions. Dr. Martineau says
153
154 The Immortal Life
of moral ideals : " Nothing is so sickly, so
paralytic, so desolate, as moral ideals that are
nothing else. Their whole power is in abey-
ance till they present themselves in a living,
personal being who secures the righteousness
of the Universe and the sanctification of each
heart. The whole difference on which I have
dwelt between morality and religion, hangs
upon this conviction of an eternal Holiness in
correspondence with the individual conscience.''
Study of Religion, ii., p. 34.
But our especial object in this chapter is to
show that the same conviction of God, Duty,
and Immortality which is essential to a sound
morality is also essential to all the great in-
terests of humanity in the present life.
An eminent author, whose name cannot here
be recalled, after a wide and careful survey of
human history, says: "Where the belief in
immortality has for a time disappeared or
fallen away from the foreground of human
consciousness, there has been a simultaneous
decline in the noblest elements of civilization,
in Poetry, Art, Philosophy, and even in Science.
Especially have the affections of human nature
suffered, their delicacy and tenderness blasted.
If they have only mundane ties, snapped at
death, even their temporary significance is
The Immortal Life 155
lessened. Duty becomes an affair of custom
and fashion. Motives for self-control and self-
discipline are changed. That we do, and
shall, always live under an Infinite Intelligence
and Personality acts powerfully on the per-
sonal life, uplifting it for all excellence. This
conviction removed, friendship degenerates to
a casual acquaintance, moral life, with its sub-
lime struggles toward a destined goal, shrinks
into commonplace, within the limits of the
secular. What use to toil and struggle to
reach a higher life if we are soon to sleep in
darkness and cease to be ? ' Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die.' "
That such results naturally follow the dis-
belief in immortality might be inferred on phil-
osphical grounds, since the great diminution of
the values and significance of human life which
it implies must lessen the motives to all high
achievement. History abundantly shows that
what has inspired the highest productions of
the race in art, literature, and philosophy, and
has led to the highest development of human
powers, is religion with its correlative doctrine
of immortality. In proof of this we refer
briefly to well-known facts in the history of
national and individual life.
Egypt's high place in ancient history is uni-
156 The Immortal Life
versally acknowledged, and her earliest faith,
which was monotheistic and closely associated
with belief in a future life, was a dominant
factor in her life through many dynasties and
in her best days. In fact, the polytheism that
subsequently appeared did not displace in the
minds of her wise men faith in one supreme
power. Through all periods of her history
the doctrine of a future life was prominent in
her faith. It took form in her Book of the
Dead, and was expressed in her national cus-
toms, in funeral rites, and not less in those
massive temples and imperishable monuments
that symbolize an eternal life. Her moral pre-
cepts and the general ordering of daily life
had direct reference to the future, for which
the present was a probation. The Supreme
Ruler was a being of infinite majesty dwelling
in the splendors of the " Eternal Day," and
only the righteous could be admitted to share
its transcendent glory. Their sublime concep-
tions of God and of the life to come gave char-
acter to her civilization. Her temples and
monuments seem built for eternity. Even the
scarabee beetle emerging with its wings sym-
bolized the future life. Astronomical science,
the minute observation of the stars, gave posi-
tion to her earthly structures, and the deep
The Immortal Life 157
problems of creation and of her religious faith,
which engaged her profoundest thinkers, de-
veloped a " wisdom " which the philosophers of
Greece and of other nationalities came to learn
as if it contained sacred oracles from the gods.
Her wisdom, her art, and her highest prosper-
ity date back thousands of years before our era,
when her faith was most vital.
The pantheistic Aryans of ancient India
were not so definite in their religious concep-
tions nor in their notions of the future life.
But while vague and dream-like in their pro-
foundest moods, they sought earnestly to pene-
trate the mysteries of being, and by self-
abnegation to qualify themselves for ultimate
union with the mysterious life-principle of the
world. With these spiritual tendencies was
developed a subtlety of speculative thought,
tinged with poetic feeling, which raised them
far above the levels of a sensual life. In their
sacred hymns, which are of very ancient date,
in their Vedic literature, and in their philoso-
phy, not a few scholars of to-day find, as they
believe, rare treasures of thought. Though
long hidden from the world, their resurrection
to new life shows a marvellous vitality. In-
deed, with some change of form these ancient
speculative dreams from an ideal world seem
158 The Immortal Life
to have entered largely into the philosophic
idealism of the nineteenth century.
Their Nirvana, whatever it might mean, was
something in the far future which was to be
hoped for and at last attained by the persistent
denial of self and the extinction of human de-
sires and passions. A regimen so extreme and
unnatural led, of course, to a perilous reaction,
but, with all its imperfections, the influence of
their faith upon literature, philosophy, and
daily life was immeasurably superior to the
materialism which sees and hopes for no future
but extinction at the death of the body.
The teaching of the Persian Zoroaster,
though not so profound, was not Pantheistic,
and in other respects was superior to the
Indian philosophy spoken of above. Though
holdino- to two antaoronistic Powers or Princi-
pies, Ormuzd and Ahriman, as explaining the
existence of good and evil, he taught the final
triumph of Ormuzd in the triumph and vindi-
cation of righteousness. Holding also to
human responsibility and to the future life
with its just awards, his faith promoted per-
sonal virtue and national prosperity. His
followers became a mighty power among the
nations of the East, and though for a time
subjected to Parthian rule they regained their
The Immortal Life 159
former position under the Magi and became a
strong dynasty, holding their own even against
the forces of the Roman Empire. After a
brilliant career, in which their faith and morals
seem to have approached nearer than those of
any other people to Christianity, they were at
last crushed by Mahomet. Still a remnant of
this people, it is said, is now found in India
loyal to their primitive faith, and far superior
in intelligence and in morals to those among
whom their lot is cast. Their faith in the
future life and in the final triumph of light over
darkness, of truth and justice over error and
wrong, was an element of strength in indi-
vidual and national character. It inspired
courage for moral endeavor and for persistent
opposition to injustice and oppression in time
of national extremity.
The tendency of the Grecian mind to iden-
tify the morally good with the beautiful, if
not to put the latter in the foreground,
weakened their moral sense and was incom-
patible with the highest ethical ideals. But
the Greeks were by no means without religious
and ethical teaching of a high order. Hesiod
was not the only one who, very early in Grecian
history, gave the impress of his strong and
healthful religious convictions to the Grecian
i6o The Immortal Life
mind. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, together
with the great dramatists yEschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides, did much to inculcate religious
truth. In fact, the Grecian stage as repre-
sented by the above-named dramatists was
not, as to-day, mainly for entertainment and
diversion but a school of virtue and religious
education. In front of the stage stood the
sacred altar on consecrated ground. Their
dramas were pervaded by the religious spirit,
unfolding the divine purpose and bringing
sure and merited retribution for the sins and
follies of men. This was expressed in the
following well-known translation :
" ' Tis true, the working of the gods is slow,
But it is sure and strong."
Euripides anticipated Wordsworth in recog-
nizing the divine immanence in Nature, giving
fit expression to his sublime conception :
"The Self-Existent, who in heaven's expanse
Holds in His large embrace all things that are ;
Round whom the light, round whom the dusky shade,
The checkered night, and the unnumbered host
Of stars, move gladly in unceasing dance."
yEschylus especially seems to have been a
prophet of the Most High. Lord Bishop
Wescott, to whom we are indebted for the
The Immortal Life i6i
above translation pronounces these great
dramatists " not far behind the great pro-
phets of Israel. " {Religious Thoughts in the
West.)
With the subsequent decay of the ethical
and religious spirit came degeneracy. Poets,
philosophers, statesmen, and citizens lost rev-
erence for things sacred, and society dropped
to a lower level. In place of the noble aims
and lofty themes of the great dramatists came
the low comedy, with its cynical and frivolous
conceits and its ridicule of sacred things, till at
length there remained little power even to ap-
preciate the glory that had passed away.
The Romans in the early stages of their his-
tory had strong religious convictions, and the
expectation, though vague, of a future life.
Though inferior to the Grecians in philosophi-
cal acumen and artistic sensibility they had a
stronger sense of justice, which took expres-
sion in their codes of law and in their judicial
proceedings, and even their conquests, by ex-
tending their sway over warring tribes, gave
order and unity to society in place of the pre-
ceding chaos. But the display of wealth and
luxury, side by side with a slave population
and squalid poverty, were dangerous and dis-
turbing elements. Furthermore, the decay of
1 62 The Immortal Life
religious faith and the growing scepticism, es-
pecially among the educated classes, respect-
ing the future life, tended to loosen the bonds
that held society together. This scepticism
was made especially manifest in the Roman
Senate when that body was determining what
punishment should be inflicted upon Cataline
and his fellow-conspirators. Caesar, the official
minister of religion, but an epicurean in phil-
osophy, advocated imprisonment and torture,
because in his view " death dissolves all the
ills of life, and beyond it is no place for either
pain or pleasure. Wherefore, keep these crimi-
nals alive to suffer fitting punishment; after
death there is no more punishment of sin,
neither is there any reward for virtue." Cato,
the rigid Stoic, next gave his opinion, and was
followed by Cicero, but neither of these ex-
pressed dissent from Csesar, in his denial of
the future life, though Cicero took opposite
ground in his philosophical discussions. Thus
the Roman Senate on this grave occasion, in-
volving the safety of the Republic, in deciding
a practical matter, showed that they had in
great measure lost their faith in a future life.
Sallust gives the substance of the speeches
on this memorable occasion, and Plutarch,
though more brief in his account of them,
The Immortal Life 163
does not question the essential truth of Sallust's
representations.
We cannot wonder at the scepticism of
educated minds, in view of a mythology inter-
woven with so much poetic fiction and ab-
surdity, and the opinions entertained by such
men would of course soon become prevalent
among all classes. Augustus on taking the
supreme power saw the necessity of religious
reform, as Domitian did a century later. But
such reforms for prudential reasons, and con-
sisting mainly in stricter ceremonials, but lack-
ing sincere and vital faith, had no regenerative
or restoring power. When the primary and
fundamental relationship of the citizen is to
the state, and not to God, a strong and vital
religious faith is impossible. It was nearly four
hundred years after Caesar, as High Pontiff and
official interpreter of religion to the people,
had affirmed in the Roman Senate that death
puts an end to human existence, that the
Christian faith was enthroned in the Empire.
It gained the ascendency, after bloody perse-
cutions, mainly through the pure and devout
spirit of its adherents, and those strong con-
victions which raised them above the fear of
man in unswerving loyalty to Christ. Constan-
tine, indeed, took up arms for the new faith,
164 The Immortal Life
and was victor on the battlefield. But the
conquering power was the new spirit of faith
and life imparted by Christ, which gave moral
power and made even death for His sake but
the entrance into a higher life. Such a spirit
coming in contact with the corruptions of a
decaying empire, from which faith had de-
parted, was a regenerative power. Revealing
in the Christ the loving and merciful Father,
willing and ready to grant free pardon and
eternal life to all repentant souls, it inspired
fresh hope for humanity. There was power
to conquer both sin and death, and it was pre-
cisely the power needed by lost and hopeless
man. Professor Cook says of Christianity :
" Regard now the Christian religion merely as
an external fact, as an existing spiritual, intel-
lectual, and moral force independent of all
supernatural sanction and superhuman obliga-
tions, and all must admit that it is the greatest
power in the world. However originated or
however appointed there is no power over
men's minds and hearts to be compared with
it." — The Credentials of Science the Wari'ant
of Faith, p. 291.
The above reference to historical facts is
brief and very imperfect, but it may suffice to
show that faith in God with the expectation of a
The Immortal Life 165
future life has not only been the most important
factor in the elevation and progressive devel-
opment of mankind, but that the loss of it
has resulted in loss of moral and intellectual
power and of inspiration for those high
achievements which show the real greatness
of man.
If, as Dr. Lotze, says, " History is the edu-
cation of humanity," the history of humanity is
the history of its religious life. In giving
greater significance to the present life it has
not only furnished loftier ideals, but worthier
motives for their attainment, and lent an
importance to human actions that has given
to human life its divine sanctities. It has
raised art from the plane of sensuous beauty
or servile imitation to that of spiritual and cre-
ative power. Without it philosophy would
have spent its force on idle and speculative
themes, with no clue to the meaning of crea-
tion or of human life, and literature instead of
unfolding and expressing the deeper life of
man would have little to deal with but triviali-
ties and frivolous conceits or the ingenious
collocation of words. Take from ancient
Egypt her sublime conceptions of God and
the future life, and her massive temples and
monuments would never have risen from the
1 66 The Immortal Life
earth and she would have attained no wisdom
to attract from all lands the seekers after
truth.
Take from ancient India her sacred hymns
and her Vedic literature and her profound
idealism, all inspired by religion, and little
would be left to interest modern scholarship or
to benefit the race.
Take even from ancient Greece the works
of her great religious thinkers, from Anaxa-
goras and Pythagoras to Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle, and of her great dramatists, ^schy-
lus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and of her artists
that built her temples and created the majestic
statues of her gods and you take away the
great products of her genius and the chief
glory of her splendid history.
Furthermore, take from the world the Jew-
ish and Christian faith, as recorded in the Old
and New Testaments, and the results of what
have followed its reception, as seen in individ-
ual piety, in the higher forms of civilization, and
in the progressive development of humanity,
where its influence has been felt, and you set
the world's dial back to the time when the old
empires had spent their force, and humanity,
disorganized and desolate, was groping in
darkness —
The Immortal Life 167
" Crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry."
" Rise, happy morn ! rise holy morn !
Draw forth the cheerful day for night :
O Father ! touch the east and light
The light that shone when hope was born."
Even sceptics bear testimony to the marvel-
lous power of Christianity to give meaning and
value to human life by inspiring larger senti-
ments and hopes that give strength for sacri-
fice in the service of humanity.
The following is from John Stuart Mill :
" The beneficial influence of such a hope is far
from trifling. It makes life and human nature
a far greater thing to the feelings and gives
greater strength as well as greater solemnity
to all the sentiments that are awakened in us
by our fellow-creatures and by mankind at
large. It allays the sense of that irony of na-
ture which is so painfully felt when we see the
exertions and sacrifices of a life culminating in
the formation of a wise and noble mind only
to disappear from the world when the time has
just arrived at which it seems about to begin
reaping the benefit of it. . . . But the
benefit consists less in the presence of any
specific hope than in the enlargement of the
general scale of the feelings, the loftier aspira-
1 68 The Immortal Life
tions being no longer kept down by a sense of
the insignificance of human life by the disas-
trous feeling of 'not worth while.'" — Three
Essays, p. 249.
We close this chapter with a few words from
Professor James Orr : "Can we believe that
God will spend a lifetime in perfecting a char-
acter, developing and purifying it — as great
souls always are developed — by sharp trial and
discipline, till the very best has been evoked,
only in the end to dash it again into nothing-
ness."— Kerr Lectures, p. 158.
THE RESOURCES OF MODERN LIFE
NO SUBSTITUTE FOR PERSONAL
RELATIONSHIP TO GOD AND THE
FUTURE LIFE
"Through all time it has been true that a nation's strength is
found in the sanctuaries, the temples and institutions and organiza-
tions, by whatever name called, that enshrine the truth, protecting
great principles of righteousness from pollution and corruption.
When these have fallen the nation has fallen." — President Raymond,
Union College, Independent, July 13, iSgg.
" The ultimate root of Art strikes downward till it feels and drinks
the life-giving air of the Infinite and Divine ; and, once severed from
this it shrivels into husk and semblance, a subjective pleasure of our
senses, not a report of the soul of things." — Martineau, Studies of
Religion, ii., p. 354.
169
CHAPTER X
THE RESOURCES OF MODERN LIFE NO
SUBSTITUTE FOR PERSONAL RELA-
TIONSHIP TO GOD AND THE FUTURE
LIFE
SOME have imagined that religion, though
suited to the children of our race, is
out of place in an age of scientific progress,
when intelligence and culture have improved
the conditions of life, and raised society to a
higher plane. It is a well-known theory of
Comte, that our race passes through three suc-
cessive phases or stages, — the religious, the
metaphysical and the scientific, and that the
latter, which is the final goal, is to supplant
the others.
Accordingly, the only religion of the future
will be the religion of Humanity, in the ab-
stract, or rather the worship of heroic men ;
that is, a religion without a God. Science,
art, literature, and improved conditions will so
occupy and enrich human life, that problems
171
172 The Immortal Life
concerning the future, the unseen and the in-
finite, even if it were possible to solve them,
will have little place in human thought. It is
certain that this experiment has been tried by
individuals, and to some extent by nations, but
in neither case has the result been such as to
encourage its repetition. Professor Romanes,
to whom we have already referred, says of his
own experiment. " The nature of man with-
out God is thoroughly miserable. ... I
have known from experience the intellectual
distractions of scientific research, philosophical
speculation, and artistic pleasure, but am also
well aware that even when all are taken
together, and well sweetened to taste, the
whole concoction is but as high confectionery
to a starving man." — Congregationalist, May
6, 1894.
When Constantinople was taken by the
Turks in 1453, Greek scholars were driven
from that city and dispersed through Europe.
But they carried with them the love of Grecian
art and literature, and choice specimens of
each were scattered here and there through
the continent. But it was the Italian genius
that first and gladly welcomed Grecian culture,
and inaugurated the splendid Renaissance,
which has since borne the Italian name.
The Immortal Life 173
Though the Latin language had been read
and spoken by scholars in the Middle Ages,
there had been little knowledge of Greek, as
it was the language of heresies that had been
condemned by the Church. It is said there
was not then a single Greek professor in the
University of Paris. The ascetic and ex-
clusive spirit of the dark ages, with various
forms of repression, had begotten a sameness
and fixed uniformity of temper and manners
that had in great measure stifled the spon-
taneity of individual and personal life. This
order of things was at once changed by the
Renaissance. The reaction was even violent,
and the determination "to live out one's own
nature in one's own way," free from all
shackles — ecclesiastical, religious, and moral —
became suddenly a passion. The reaction was
natural. Art, Freedom, and Nature, were the
watchwords. All that was needed was litera-
ture and artistic culture, with freedom to con-
form to Nature, as each might interpret it for
himself. This was to be the new religion.
The future life, and all things sacred, were lost
to view, eclipsed by the splendors of the
Renaissance. But the passion for culture to
the exclusion of religion was soon found to
lead to all sorts of license, and to neglect even
174 The Immortal Life
of the decencies of life. Free conformity to
one's own nature often proved to be con-
formity to one's lower nature, under the dis-
guise of sensuous beauty, without conformity
to reason and ethical law.
Mr. Symonds in his admirable work on the
Italian Renaissance, to which we are much in-
debted, speaks of art and literature as " sensi-
tive to the state of morals and religion."
When the Renaissance had culminated in the
great masters and the national spirit had blos-
somed into the fulness of artistic splendor and
was revelling in beauty, as the very substance
of its life, it was at the same time sinking into
base sensuality. The hierarchy was corrupt.
The inferior dignitaries of the Church were
full of intriorues and low ambitions. The
masses, while trained to love pictures, statues,
frescos, enamelled furniture, and bodily adorn-
ments, had no distaste for the coarsest vices,
and gave loose reign to brutal passions " As
illustrating the spirit of the time he mentions
Benvenuto Cellini, an artist of much repute,
who in his autobiography boasts of his own
vices and murderous assaults, giving at the
same time a picture of society, high and low,
in the chief Italian cities. This revolting pic-
ture Mr. Symonds regards, on the whole, as
The Immortal Life 175
" a veritable picture of the time drawn by one
whose familiarity with the different phases of
Italian life qualified him for such a task." (See
his Italian Renaissance, i., p. 453.) " With the
exception of Michael Angelo," he continues
(pp. 384, 453), "there was no great master
light who still pursued an intellectual ideal.
The Romans and Venetians simply sought and
painted what was splendid and luxurious in the
world around them. The capacity for perceiv-
ing and reproducing what was nobly beautiful
was lost, and vulgarity and coarseness stamped
themselves upon the finest work of men like
Giulio and Romano. . . . Michael An-
gelo was encompassed with deep philosophic
thoughts, with ideas of death, judgment, and
the stern struggles of the soul, so that with
him beauty was serviceable to religion. Cellini
was the creature of the moment, the glass and
mirror of corrupt and enslaved, yet resplendent,
Italy. Michael Angelo was the vehicle of
lofty soul-thoughts. Cellini brought the fervor
of an inexhaustibly active nature to the service
of sensuality, and taught his art to be the
handmaid of a soulless paganism. In these
two men therefore we study the aspects of the
_ >»
age.
We quote thus largely from this learned and
176 The Immortal Life
gifted author to show that the passion for art
and classic culture, however it may adorn life,
cannot save it from debasement and corruption,
and that the great works of art are not the
products of genius alone, but of genius inspired
by those religious and ethical convictions
which lay hold of essential truth and which are
at once the basis of character and the soul of
art. Michael Angelo was the " Prophet of
Power" because of his clear and reverent
vision of spiritual realities and his companion-
ship with the Almighty. He wrought his
great works in silence, as under the shadow of
the solemn mysteries that encompassed him.
It is significant that those productions which
have perpetual life and power over the human
heart are those which are inspired by the high-
est themes and appeal to what is deepest in
the human spirit. The Phidian Jupiter, the
temples of the ancient, and the cathedrals of
modern times, the epics of Homer, Dante,
and Milton, and the soul-stirring harmonies of
the great masters in music were not merely the
products of genius, but of genius under the
power of great spiritual realities. Titian and
Raphael in their Madonnas, Leonardi, "the
Painter of Adoration," and Millet in his An-
gelus, all put into their canvas the spirit of a
The Immortal Life 177
devout life, which has made their works im-
mortal.
" There is no beauty," says Symonds, " with-
out truth, and goodness is the highest sort of
truth." Yes, truth, beauty, and goodness are
elements of the divine life, and he whose soul
is possessed by them is not far from the vision
of God.
Modern life subsequent to the Italian Re-
naissance might furnish abundant illustrations
of the consequences of separating art, literature,
and general culture from the religious spirit,
and the accompanying thought of the future
life. We can only refer to the reign of Louis
XIV., which was at its zenith a. d. 1678,
about two hundred years after the beginning
of the Renaissance in Italy. In the meantime,
France had made progress, and early in the
reign of Louis there were in his kingdom
many men of wide renown, — philosophers,
theologians, poets, and artists, — a constellation
of unusual brilliancy. Among these were Des-
cartes, Pascal, Bourdaloue, Bossuet, Fenelon,
Racine, and Boileau. In the administration of
affairs were Richelieu and his two ablest minis-
ters, Colbert and Louvais. These, with many
others, shed a brilliant lustre upon the reign of
Louis XIV., and he, though inferior in his
178 The Immortal Life
education, was able by his talents, as well as his
position, to make himself the central figure
among these illustrious contemporaries. He
was also the liberal patron of art and litera-
ture, making lavish expenditures for their
promotion. Having absolute power and ac-
knowledged popularity, perhaps no sovereign
ever had a better opportunity to build up a
strong and prosperous kingdom on lasting
foundations. But his absolute authority and
love of power were strangely associated with a
fatal weakness, a susceptibility to be dominated
in the most important matters by unworthy
counsellors, by men and women to whom a
man of sound judgment and chaste or humane
sentiment could not have listened. His most
influential adviser in a very important crisis
was Madam de Maintenon, and the most dis-
astrous and cruel measure of his reign was the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in accord-
ance with her persuasive counsel. Perhaps
history does not record any measure of state
more horrible and inhuman. In the butchery
and banishment of hundreds of thousands of
noble men and women it depopulated the king-
dom of its best blood. In the enforced exile
of the Huguenots it impoverished France of
its most thriving industries ; but it enriched
The Immortal Life 179
the nations that gave them refuge. It was also
the banishment of the purest morality and the
sincerest piety. In 1678 Louis XIV. had the
most brilliant Court and the most formidable
kingdom in Europe. Nor in this age, when
Pascal, Bossuet, and Descartes lived, was the
religion of the state wanting in men and women
of religious conviction and devoted piety. But
in general, while the forms of religion were
observed, its spirit lacked depth and sincerity.
The tone of morals was low, and literature re-
flected the prevailing license in the moral life.
Art was losing sight of high ideals and minis-
tering to sensuality. The men of genius and
renown who had given lustre to this " Augus-
tan Age " of France, were passing away, and
the soil had become too sterile for the growth
of men that could fill their place. The atmo-
sphere was tainted and the shameless im-
moralities of King and Court, the waging of
unnecessary and exhaustive wars, and the god-
less persecution of the most worthy and right-
eous subjects rapidly hastened the decadence
of both kingdom and people. The inevitable
consequence was, that the reign which had
been the most brilliant and illustrious in
Europe ended in pitiable weakness and decay.
The griefs that towards the close of his life
i8o The Immortal Life
weighed upon the King could not recall his
fatal mistakes ; and the frank confession of his
follies and sins could only emphasize the warn-
ing he gave to his grandson as his successor,
not to follow his example. And what is still
more sad, his late repentance and acceptance
of the rites of religion for the dying could not
atone for the neglect of its precepts in the day
of his power, nor could it cut off the sad heri-
tage of evil which he transmitted, and from
which France, after more than two centuries,
has not recovered.
History abundantly confirms the truth so
admirably expressed by Mr. Symonds, that
" literature and art are sensitive to a low state
of morals and religion," and the same may be
said of all that pertains to individual and
national well-being. For it is certain that, as
the ethical and religious spirit goes into de-
cline, all serious and earnest work for the
present life is over, because this main stimulus
to hia-h achievement has failed. In fact, the
significance of life and the worth and dignity
of man depend upon his conscious, vital rela-
tionship to God and the life to come.
Dr. Henry Van Dyke in his volume on
Tennyson well says : " Only of those men
who can bring a meaning into life, touch it with
The Immortal Life i8i
glory, and link it with immortality, will the
world say : * These are my great poets.' "
Tennyson's high place in literature is not
owing so much to his matchless art as to his
profound and serious dealing with man's rela-
tion to God and the future life. His native
bias and his early experiences in life made
these high themes the chosen subjects of his
contemplation. He had wrestled with doubt.
His nearest companion and friend, Arthur
Hallam, a youth of the purest character and of
great promise, was suddenly taken from him by
death. That such a life should have been thus
cut short was one of those mysterious events
that awakened serious questionings respecting
Providence, and the meaning and issues of the
present life. Is there a divine oversight and
purpose in human affairs ? Are friendships and
affections blotted out by death, or with deeper
warmth and tenderness do they persist in that
immortal life? His "In Memoriam " reflects
the grief of a bereaved heart ; and his strug-
gles with doubt reveal an undertone of sadness,
with alternate hopes and fears. But at length
he emerges into light and peace, with a faith
that was quickened and guided by the yearn-
ing and logic of the heart. To this experience
he gives the following beautiful expression :
1 82 The Immortal Life
" If e'er when Faith had fallen asleep
I heard a voice, ' Believe no more,'
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled on a godless deep,
" A warmth within the heart would melt
The freezing Reason's colder part,
And, like a man in wrath, the heart
Stood up and answered : ' I have felt ! ' "
Nor can we deny the right of the heart to
anticipate the conclusion of its slower partner,
reason, and with the assurance of a sharper
vision, to affirm the true solution of such a
problem. We are persuaded, too, that Tenny-
son's whole rational nature, as an accordant
unity, gave utterance to these emphatic words :
" Life and love are not worth living and lov-
ing unless they are continuous ; and only in
continuance is the problem of life's troubles
solved." If love has no permanent object and
life's troubles have no meaning in the disci-
pline and growth of character, what, indeed,
does this short term of life and love amount to ?
Browning with like assurance gives a similar
interpretation of the true meaning of life when
he declares :
" Life is probation, and this earth no goal.
But starting-point of man,
To try man's foot if he will creep or climb.
And make the stumbling-block a stepping-stone."
The Immortal Life 183
Wordsworth in his youthful enthusiasm had
anticipated great things for humanity in the
issues of the French Revolution. Ending as
it did in scenes of anarchy and blood, instead
of fulfilled hopes, he realized only a staggering
revulsion and utter despair. What must have
been the effect upon his future course if this
state of mind had been permanent ? Allowing
that his youthful dreams had savored of ro-
mance and that his schemes of life in the new
western world were altogether fanciful we can
at least admire his love of liberty and his hope
for man under better conditions. There is
something pathetic in the sudden collapse of
all hope of humanity, all faith in Providence,
and all that interest in nature which in his
school days in Hawkshead had awakened the
wonder and aspirations of a poetic soul. Thus
shut up in himself, and feeling that the universe
was bereft of all value, his soul would have
been as empty as he imagined the universe to
be. Had not a discerning sister, seeing him
smitten into silent and cold scepticism by a
great disappointment, touched the fountain of
his sympathies and affections by tender and
wise ministrations and re-established his faith
in Providence and humanity, English literature
and the world's thought to-day would have been
1 84 The Immortal Life
much the poorer. The scepticism which for a
time took possession of him would have de-
spoiled the universe of its values, and no wealth
of genius could have originated those sublime
conceptions that took form in the " Preludes
in Tintern Abbey," in the "Ode on Immortal-
ity," and in certain of Wordsworth's poems
and sonnets which the world will not soon tire
of reading. Whoever by scepticism empties
the world of its rich spiritual meaning must
empty himself of inspiration and of all thought
worthy of utterance. It was his insight into the
divine immanence in nature and in man that
gave to the one its glory and to the other its
immortal worth. In his view it gave a charm
to the humblest cottage and a meaning to the
most common aspects of nature. Without it he
would have seen "the primrose by the river
brim," but it might have been said
" A yellow primrose was to him
A primrose and it was nothing more."
By his spiritual insight into nature, Words-
worth did much to inspire the deeper interest
since felt in natural scenery. He contributed
not a little to give to English poetry a deeper
spiritual tone. Even the sublimest scenery of
the Alps had awakened no special interest for
The Immortal Life 185
English travellers. Thomas Gray may have
been an exception, but even Walpole, after
making the Pass of Mont Cenis, said " he
hoped never again to see such uncouth rocks
and unseemly inhabitants." How different the
feelings of Wordsworth even as he looked from
mountain summit in western England —
" In such high hour of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not, — in enjoyment it expired ;
Rapt in still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
That mind was a thank-offering to the Power
That made him : it was blessedness and peace."
His " Ode on Immortality " has been said to
indicate the high-water mark of English litera-
ture in the nineteenth century. In the very
rhythm and movement of some of its lines one
seems to hear the music of the far-off murmurs
of the immortal sea :
** Tho' inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which bro't us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sporting on the shore
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."
Professor Shairp says of the highest poetry :
" It is the continual reference of those great
poets, tacit or expressed, to a higher, unseen
1 86 The Immortal Life
order of things, which gives to all their
thoughts about man, depth, tenderness, and
solemnity. Two thoughts, admitted, change
the whole view of this life, — the belief that this
world is but the vestibule of an endless state
of being, and that Him in whom man lives
shall live hereafter. These assumptions of
natural religion are hardly less the ground
tones which underlie all the strains of the
world's highest poetry. Some would have us
believe that, for artistic purposes at least, hu-
man life, with its hopes and fears, its loves
and enthusiasms, is a thing complete in itself ;
that it can maintain its dignity, even if con-
fined within visible horizons, concentrated en-
tirely on this earthly existence. Duty to
humanity, piety without God, is to supply to
sensitive hearts all they need for high en-
deavors, pure morality, ardent devotedness and
consolation. But no poet has ever made or
can make much of life, even poetically, who
has not regarded it as standing on the thresh-
old of an invisible world, as supported on
divine foundations ... If the ideal light
which poetry sheds on things has nothing an-
swering to it in any world, men who are
serious minded would not waste time on it.
But imagination is an organ of the true. This
The Immortal Life 187
faculty, cut off from the truth it represents,
pines and dies. He is the wise poet who, ac-
cepting the limitations of time, yet feeling that
they are only for a time, bears witness to the
eternal perfection, and by the beauty of his
songs wakens others to the sense of it." —
Princeton Review, March, i860.
What is true of poetry is emphatically true
of music, which appeals most directly to man's
spiritual nature. The ancients appreciated
melody and the power of accordant voices
and instruments. Pastoral songs had their
sweet attraction and martial strains kindled
courage in the warrior. But the harmonies of
the Christian anthem and oratorio were be-
yond their reach. It is from Christianity that
the great masters have drawn their inspiration.
Haydn said : " When I think of God, the notes
fly off as from a spindle." In a concert given
by him in Vienna, when that sublime passage
in his "Creation," "And there was light,"
was rendered, the enthusiastic applause of the
audience drew from him the secret of his
highest power. Pointing his finger heaven-
ward, his eyes filling with tears, he ex-
claimed, " It came from there.''
All profound experiences seek some form of
expression, and the deepest and purest that
1 88 The Immortal Life
have stirred men's souls, those of the Chris-
tian faith, may be said to have created a lan-
guage for their expression. Christian music
in its highest development is that language.
The humble, broken spirit, rising from the
depths of penitential sorrow into trust and
peace, and grateful love, voices itself in the
widest range of musical composition. The
richest of all music is the outcome of the
Christian revelations, not merely of the Divine
majesty, but of redeeming love and grace, in
delivering from sin and in giving the life eter-
nal. Without this faith, what possible human
experiences can take expression in uplifting
song ? What congregation can be lifted in
transport into the very vestibule of the heav-
enly temple, with the glory from within re-
flected from their faces, when without hope
and without God they are face to face with
eternal darkness ? Whoever fancies himself
in a godless world, to be dropped back into
senseless dust to-morrow, can seek no expres-
sion in musical harmonies. No one questions
the genuineness and depth of Horace Bush-
nell's experiences when, fresh from the obser-
vation and study of Niagara, he wrote thus to
a friend : " One ocean plunging in solemn re-
pose of continuity into another ; the breadth,
The Immortal Life 189
the height, the volume, the absence of all
fluster as when the floods lift up their voices,
still bending itself downward to the plunge, as
a power that is the same yesterday, to-day and
forever. Verily my soul reveled within me
to-day, as never since I was a conscious being,
in contemplation of this tremendous type of
God's eternity and majesty. I could hardly
stand, such was the sense it gave me of the
greatness of God." In another letter he writes :
" How little do we know as yet, my dearest
earthly friend, of what is contained in the word
God! We put on great magnifiers in the
form of adjectives, and they are true ; but the
measures they ascribe, certified by the judg-
ment, are not realized, or only dimly realized
by our experience. I see this proved to me
now and then by the capacity I have to think
and feel greater things concerning God. It is
as if my soul were shut in within a vast orb
made up of concentric shells of brass or iron.
I could hear even when I was a child the faint
ring of a stroke on the one that is outermost
and largest of them all ; but I began to break
through one shell after another, bursting every
time into a kind of new and wondrous and
vastly enlarged heaven, hearing no more the
dull close ring of the nearest casement, but
190 The Immortal Life
the ring, as it were, of concave firmaments, and
third heavens set with stars ; till now so glori-
ously has my experience of God opened His
greatness to me, I seem to have gotten quite
beyond all physical images and measures, even
those of astronomy, and simply to think God
is to find and bring into my feeling more even
than the imagination can reach. I bless God
that it is so. I am cheered by it, encouraged,
sent onward, and in what He gives me begin
to have some very faint impression of the
glory yet to be revealed." — Hunger's Life of
Bushnell, pp. 176-177.
Dr. Bushnell had what Professor Drum-
mond aptly termed " A vast capacity for God."
How evident that by contemplation his capa-
cities were enlarged toward the vastness of the
Universe that environed him till wholly spirit-
ualized he no longer needed a sense-medium,
but entered into immediate communion, spirit
with spirit, suffused beyond measure with the
divine life. That one in the presence of the
sublimities of Nature can, like Bushnell at
Niagara, and Coleridge in Chamouni, lose
sight and thought for the time being of the
visible in the sublimer vision of God, shows
that man has a spiritual nature correlated to
the Divine and that the natural world, having
The Immortal Life 191
fulfilled its highest function as a medium of
communication, drops out of mind, leaving the
spirit virtually detached from all that is mate-
rial in the direct vision and worship of God.
Is not this the gfoal and consummation of the
present rational life and the foretaste of the
life hereafter ?
With this reception of the divine there comes
a new and superior power to all human faculties,
giving even to the voice a divine spell and sway
over the souls of men. Jenny Lind had indeed
by nature a sweet and powerful voice. But
Lord Bishop Holland, after frequent interviews
and familiar acquaintance with her, expressed
the conviction that her supreme excellence and
power came from her sincere endeavor to honor
God with the voice he had given her. Had
her ambition been for admiration in mere self
display, her voice could not have attained that
supreme quality which was divine in its source,
and which touched what was deepest and best
in her audiences. There is higher inspiration
in the thought of God than in the thought of
self.
Norman MacLeod was at one time charged
with heresy and was threatened with deposition
from the ministry by the General Assembly of
Scotland. Being permitted to state his own
192 The Immortal Life
case before that body he manifested in his ad-
dress such candor, such honesty of conviction
and such supreme regard for God and truth,
that he disarmed their critical and narrow spirit
and so inspired their confidence and admiration
that instead of deposing him they chose him
Moderator of the next General Assembly. In
that address he was lifted to the plane where
true eloquence begins and ends, where self
disappears and only truth and God are
seen.
But our point must be evident without
further illustration. In the absence of faith in
God and in the life immortal it is plain that
what is deepest and best in man, whether in
the intellectual, the aesthetic or the moral life,
cannot be realized. Not only is the soul in
large measure sterilized, but the Universe itself
is impoverished and made empty. The high-
est development must go with the highest
inspiration. This is found in the religion that
brings Life and Immortality to light.
Prof. Clifford after losing his religious faith
said : " We have seen the sun shine out of an
empty heaven, to light up a soulless earth ; we
have felt with utter loneliness that the Great
Companion is dead." Sully on Pessimism
says : " To abandon hope of a future life is a
The Immortal Life 193
vast loss not to be made good, so far as I can
see, by any new idea of service to humanity."
The following sentiment has been expressed
by both Maurice and Tennyson : " The real
hell is in the absence of God from the human
soul."
COSMIC FORCES AS RELATED TO
MAN IN HARMONY WITH THE
END OF HIS CREATION AS MADE
FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS
" The entire Universe, the totality of the conditioned and depen-
dent existence, animate and inanimate, material and spiritual, is one
system, integrated by one thought, unfolded by one purpose, and
tending through all stages of development to one end, the perfection
of humanity, the conformity of rational and free beings to the image
of God."
Professor Cooke, Michigan University,
Princeton Review, January, 1879.
195
CHAPTER XI
COSMIC FORCES AS RELATED TO MAN
IN HARMONY WITH THE END OF HIS
CREATION AS MADE FOR RIGHTEOUS-
NESS
EVERY rational system, as rational, has an
end in view which determines its general
economy. Accordingly, Creation, as such a
system, is ordered in consistency with an end,
the best possible, and worthy of the perfec-
tions of its Author, viz. : a kingdom of rational
intelligence ennobled by His Fellowship and
partaking of His life.
We have seen, thus far, that the general
ordering is apparently for this end, since man
has been created in the Image of God, and
is organized into an environment which is
a medium of divine self-revelation fitted to ex-
alt men into fellowship with God and there-
fore into His likeness. We have seen that the
religious and ethical nature of man involves his
direct relationship to God, a relationship which
carries with it the obligation of obedience
197
198 The Immortal Life
to His authority and also the high privilege
of intimate fellowship with His perfect life.
But notwithstanding the evident purpose
of the Creator to promote righteousness
as the supreme end of His system, two very
grave objections have been urged against this
view. One of these by Professor Huxley,
asserts that the cosmic forces operate in man
as the enemy of righteousness, the other by Mr.
J. S. Mill is a virtual impeachment of the Au-
thor of creation as Himself unjust and cruel,
as shown in such ordering of the course of
Nature as involves a vast amount of suffering
in men and animals.
Now there are certain aspects of Nature
which at first view give plausibility to those
objections. If they are valid, our main con-
tention in this entire discussion cannot be
maintained, for if the cosmic forces operating
in the lower nature of man make righteous-
ness impossible ; or if the Author of the
course of Nature in its relation to men and
animals proves Him to be unjust and cruel, a
kingdom of righteousness cannot be assumed
as the end of His creation. Such is the im-
portant bearing of these objections upon our
main position that we need fully to state and
fairly to meet them. In his Romanes Lecture
The Immortal Life 199
Professor Huxley says : "The persistent opti-
mism of our philosophers hid from them the
actual state of the case. It prevented them
from seeing that cosmic nature is no school of
virtue, but the headquarters of the enemy
of the ethical nature. The logic of fact was
necessary to convince them that the Cosmos
works through the lower nature of man not
for righteousness but against it. And it
finally drove them to confess that the ideal
of ' wise men ' was incompatible with the na-
ture of things ; that even a possible approxi-
mation to that ideal was to be attained not
only at the cost of the renunciation of the
world and the mortification of the flesh, but of
all humane feeling." ^
Now the " ideal " of which Professor Huxley
here speaks is plainly that of a mediaeval ascetic
now repudiated by sensible men. It ought to
be impossible to man. But he further affirms
that the " Cosmos working in the lower na-
ture of man is the enemy of righteousness and
that the ethical nature may count upon having
to reckon with a tenacious and powerful enemy,
so long as the world lasts."
But doctors disagree. Mr. Herbert Spencer
predicts that in the course of evolution the
' Evolution of Ethics, pp. 75, 76,
200 The Immortal Life
cosmic forces within and without will be in
such accord that the ethical life will require
no self-denial, and that virtue will become an
automatic movement like breathing or the
beating of the heart.
Now if the cosmic forces make the ethical
ideal which requires the extinction of all
human feeling an impossible task, so much the
better for the cosmic forces. But in affirming
that they are so hostile to the ethical life as
to make righteousness impossible, he virtually
affirms incompatibility and contradiction in
the divine economy. For, through human
reason and conscience, the divine command is
for righteousness, but through the ordering
of the cosmic forces it is made impossible.
These forces, working through the appetites,
and lower propensities overmaster the nobler
nature and defeat all endeavor to fulfil right-
eousness. There can be no such contradiction
in a rationally ordered system.
It is remarkable that Professor Huxley
and Mr. Spencer, with essentially the same
psychology and the same general philosophy,
should assume ethical premises in direct op-
position. One assumes that righteousness is
impossible because of the perpetual hostility
of the Cosmos ; the other, that the Cosmos,
The Immortal Life 201
by progressive evolution, will bring righteous-
ness to pass, without individual effort or care,
as an automatic movement. But an auto-
matic virtue under natural law has no ethical
value. Both, therefore, from opposite pre-
mises seem effectually to banish virtue at
length from this planet. For in the one case
the opposition of the cosmic forces will make
it impossible, in the other the same forces will
become so friendly as to take from man the
fulfilment of ethical functions, thus relieving
him from all moral efforts and responsibility
and making virtue a necessity and a certainty
under natural law.
We do not doubt that race progress and
heredity may in some measure tame human
passion and remove some outward obstruc-
tions to virtue now existing in the social en-
vironment. But as the animal nature' will
always be associated with the rational, its com-
peting claims will bring temptations to evil,
so that neither ethical law nor ethical func-
tions will become obsolete. In fact, in the
early stages of the moral life, temptations tend
to the development of moral character as giving
occasion for those judgments and choices
which determine the issue of opposing claims.
"Temptations," says Schubert, a German
202 The Immortal Life
author, "are the gymnasium of the con-
science." It is in deahng with them that we
learn the very alphabet of morals, for only
when conflicting claims, lower and higher,
bring to view different values in kind, do we
have the data for perceiving moral distinctions
and recognizing the obligation to determine
the issue according to ethical law by judicial
and volitional action. They furnish the op-
portunity for that personal and moral action
by which ethical character is originated and
strengthened till, by discipline and habit, it be-
comes firmly established. We have no warrant,
therefore, to assume either that the Cosmos will
always prevent the achievement of righteous-
ness, or so supersede ethical functions as to
make it automatic. In other words, the cos-
mic forces are not so ordered as to defeat the
end of man's creation, either by effective op-
position to righteousness or by making ethical
functions and law obsolete, thus connecting
the future story of human life with a mere
chapter in natural history. Man, as the bond-
slave of Nature, has no ethical character and
no proper history of his own. Great moral
issues are indispensable to both ; and those
that call for heroic self-sacrifice, if responded
to, give occasion for the loftiest virtues which
The Immortal Life 203
make a history that is the glory of humanity.
Without them human affairs might flow on with-
out revolutionary changes, and the only strug-
gle for existence would be on the physical
plane, the ethical life being swallowed up in
the cosmic order. Holding, as Professor Hux-
ley did, to the fatal hostility of the Cosmos, we
cannot wonder that he coveted transformation
into a machine that would turn out truth and
righteousness as sure products, as the mill
grinds out flour. But we wonder that one so
self-poised in judgment, so pure in morals, and
so successful in the attainment of truth in his
scientific inquiries should wish to exchange so
splendid a mind for a soulless mechanism, to
be operated by springs or turned by a crank.
It would seem a far less sacrifice to be liable
to occasional mistakes of judgment and choice
than to be dropped in the scale of beings be-
low the oyster and the cabbage, with no capa-
city to either know truth or to practice virtue.
The idea of machine-righteousness and knowl-
edge is so absurd that we credit the concep-
tion to that jocose pleasantry in which he
could well indulge to give zest to his " Lay
Sermons." But he could deal seriously with
the rational and ethical life, as in his nota-
ble Romanes Lecture, in which he pleads
204 The Immortal Life
eloquently for the pursuit of an ethical ideal as
essential to real manhood. Still an ethical
ideal can be of little service if the cosmic
forces operating in the lower nature are sure
to overmaster the ethical endeavor, thus handi-
capping and defeating every one at the start.
But there is a different interpretation of the
operation of the cosmic forces even in the
lower nature of man which is possible and is
not so depressing. For in fact these forces
instead of being hostile to virtue, making it
impossible, serve indirectly in normal condi-
tions, as we have before shown, to promote
the highest order of moral excellence. We
might as truly say that Nature is the enemy of
man, because she imposes the necessity of care
and labor in contending with weeds and in
subduing the soil to obtain the needed har-
vests. If these could be simply gathered as a
spontaneous growth without toil or foresight
it would not favor the well-being of mankind.
Those living in tropical climates, not compelled
to labor for a livelihood, are by no means the
best specimens of humanity. It is a wise
economy that the great values of life are to be
obtained and appreciated only at some cost,
and that the idea of " something for nothing"
does not enter into the order of the world.
The Immortal Life 205
The noblest races and the strongest men are
those that, in the struggle for existence, have
contended with great obstacles. Why should
we demand that a strong, pure character, the
most precious of all things, should cost us
nothing but should be the free gift of Nature ?
Virtue reaches its highest excellence and finds
best appreciation through self-sacrifice. Moral,
as well as intellectual manhood, grows to large
proportions, not by indolent ease, but by ener-
getic action. Doubtless there may be moral
as well as intellectual imbeciles ; those who
by heredity or some malformation are over-
weighted by low tendencies. Those are
exceptional cases of arrested development
through disease or other causes unknown to
us. But in general, virtue is not only possible,
but it is man's proper vocation to achieve it as
essential to all rational life. Cosmic forces
do not work against it but for it. As Matthew
Arnold well says : " There is a Power, the
eternal, not ourselves, that makes for right-
eousness." Often the very forces in the lower
nature, that seem to work against it, con-
tribute to its highest excellence. For exam-
ple, one having an impulsive nature with
downward tendencies may seem to be the
victim of inherited and hostile forces, while
2o6 The Immortal Life
another having an inoffensive, amiable tem-
perament, requiring little effort at self-mastery,
may seem to be far more highly favored. But
the former, by watchfulness and resolute deter-
mination, overcomes his tendencies to evil and
builds up a character richer, nobler, and more
firmly established in righteousness than the
latter. The apparently hostile forces call
into action the higher powers of manhood,
and by conflict with them, not only is victory
achieved but a stronger and purer character is
the result. Moral power and a worthiness of
manhood is gained by these struggles for self-
mastery that can be realized in no other way.
Indeed, Professor Huxley's own experience in
his pursuit of truth and in the virtues of his
daily life is a refutation of his position.
But Mr. J. S. Mill urges another objection
to our main contention. In his Three Studies
of Religion he affirms that the sufferings and
miseries infiicted by the course of Nature upon
innocent animals and upon men, involve cruelty
and injustice on the part of the Creator.
If his assertion is true, our argument in this
entire discussion is a failure, for the Most
High cannot consistently require of men to be
just and kind, nor can He be said to rule the
world, in the interest of righteousness, if He
The Immortal Life 207
Himself is cruel and unjust in its ordering.
Even the suspicion that He is unrighteous must
strike dismay into the minds of thoughtful
men and weaken the ties that bind them in
loyalty to Him and to duty.
Unquestionably the course of Nature by
some necessity brings pain and suffering upon
men and to animals. We cannot pretend to
solve all the deep problems in the divine
economy touching this subject. Omniscience
alone can see them clearly. But our purpose
is to state some considerations that in good
measure meet the main objections urged, and
tend to reassure our confidence in the divine
wisdom and benevolence.
First, the general laws of the cosmic system
do not indicate cruelty in the Creator but
beneficence in their uniform operation. For
example, that of gravity was not intended to
dash men and animals to destruction but to
enable them to walk safely on firm foundations.
It gives, in fact, stability and harmony to the
Universe. That men and animals sometimes
come under its destructive operation does not
disprove its beneficent character, since the
suffering thus occasioned is incidental, while
its general operation is for the well-being of
creation. Certainly its abrogation would be
2o8 The Immortal Life
infinitely more destructive than its continu-
ance. Men and animals are made more alert
and are stimulated to healthful exertion and
development by the very necessity of careful
adjustment to this, as to other laws. We
know of no law of Nature which in its general
operation is not in harmony with a benevolent
purpose.
It should be remembered too that any crea-
tion in time and space must have its limitations.
Indeed, it may be impossible for Omnipotence,
in ordering so complex a system for general
good, to secure individuals against incidental
evils without a kind of intervention that would
be detrimental to the general interest.
In other words, incidental evils occurring
under necessary and beneficent laws cannot
disprove the wisdom and beneficence manifest
in the ordaining of these laws.
Again, the endowment of sensibility which
conditions all suffering, is in fact the condition
of all enjoyment, and it was plainly bestowed
not to cause suffering but enjoyment. In the
nature of the case the sensibility to pleasure is
a liability to pain. Accordingly, the sufferings
which are experienced cannot disprove wisdom
and beneficence in the endowment of sensibility
unless it can be shown that in some cases it
The Immortal Life 209
was intended to give pain rather than pleasure.
In other words, an endowment which is indis-
pensable to enjoyment and which in normal
conditions either produces it, or makes pain a
wholesome and timely warning against fatal
exposure or unlawful indulgence, is a plain in-
dication of benevolence and not of cruelty. It
shows that the general economy provides for
enjoyment rather than pain, and no one can
suggest any other general ordering with proof
that it would be superior to the present.
But there is a worse evil than pain which has
come into the world by divine permission. We
refer to the violation of ethical laws, which
means sin. While its commission is the act of
the creature and not of the Creator it is true
that the sinning race of man came into exist-
ence by the creative act of God.
One objection brought by Mr. J. S. Mill
against the wisdom and goodness of the Crea-
tor is that he gave existence to "this race of
sinful and miserable creatures when other pos-
sibilities were before Him." The other possi-
bilities conceivable are, that He might not have
given them existence at all, or He might have
given them a higher nature or better condi-
tions. Professor Huxley also assumes that God
might have imparted to men the knowledge of
210 The Immortal Life
Himself directly, and thus prevented sin and
secured holiness. But He saw fit, for reasons
we cannot wisely question, to create different
orders of beings, and to treat each according
to its nature. Even Omnipotence cannot rule
the planets by the moral law, nor men as moral
beings, as He does the planets, by force. The
former He holds in their places by His own
efficient energy, but men He commissions to
rule themselves by the law of truth and right
implanted within. If it was wise to create both
planets and men it is wise that they come under
the law of their proper nature. To impart to
men knowledge and righteousness directly by
creative act, as Professor Huxley suggests,
would be in harmony with the professor's idea
of mechanical knowledge and virtue, but not
with a moral administration nor with man's
rational and ethical life. Men indeed know cer-
tain first principles by intuition, but the practical
knowledge of truth, justice and righteousness,
as we have before shown, is not a direct gift
from God, but the achievement of the personal
agency of each through his own judgment and
choice, according to the laws of constructive
thought and of the moral life. The qualities
that belong to character and that constitute the
highest form of excellence are moral, not
The Immortal Life 211
mechanical, and in the nature of the case they
cannot be a gift from without but an achieve-
ment within. The exercise of Omnipotence in
originating them in man would be as much out
of place as in giving moral law to a comet.
Such is the established order of the world, and
who can prove it unjust or unwise ?
But Mr. Mill charges the sin and misery of
mankind upon the Creator, because, as he says,
"He brought into being such a sinful and
miserable race."
Now a sinner is one who becomes such by
his own responsible choice and act, never by
the act of another. In the nature of the case,
beings made capable of choosing the right
must be capable of choosing the wrong. In
either case the act is personal and the respon-
sibility attaches to the agent. Whether the
original endowments and conditions of the
race for the beginning of the moral life are the
best possible who but the Omniscient One is
qualified to judge. Professor Huxley and Mr.
Mill thought it unwise to incorporate the lower
with the higher nature of man, thereby making
certain and necessary that competition and con-
flict between them which brings the liabilities
and the perils of the sinful choice. But
through this union of the two natures man is
2 12 The Immortal Life
put into organic and sympathetic relations
with the entire Universe as his environment
and made capable of the widest range of knowl-
edge. The same union, as we have seen,
conditions his practical knowledge of moral
distinctions, and furnishes the occasion for
strictly personal action in the exercise of those
moral functions in judgment, and determining
choices which originate character and constitute
men moral agents. If this arrangement in-
volves the liability to sin and misery it also
carries the possibilities of the highest excellence
and blessedness.
Furthermore, those who, like Professor Hux-
ley, claim that man is developed from the ani-
mal nature, cannot condemn this union without
condemning the whole order of creation as
evolutionary and progressive. For the cur-
rent theory of evolution assumes the connection
of the present and future with all previous
stages in a unity which is organic and all-com-
prehensive. Besides, does not one who con-
demns his affinity with the lower nature
as debasing, not only pronounce against the
general order but show ingratitude which is
unfilial toward an ancestry to which so much is
due ? A deeper knowledge of the broad econ-
omy which embraces the Universe and makes
The Immortal Life 213
it one consistent system, would doubtless lead
to a retraction of such conclusion against the
wisdom of the Almighty as hasty and un-
warranted.
The world was not created mature and per-
fect at the start, as Professor Huxley thought
the wiser way. It is a progressive creation
from darkness to light, from chaos to cosmos.
All agree that the progression has been through
a succession of kingdoms ; each in the ad-
vance superior to the preceding in both rank
and value, until at last the kingdom of rational
and spiritual life to which man belongs has
been reached as the culmination and crown of
all.
We have shown that man was made in the
image of God for participation and fellowship
with His divine and perfect life, and that the
very conflict between his lower and higher na-
ture in normal conditions are fitted to pro-
mote the highest order of excellence which
is truly divine. The divine economy, therefore,
instead of working against righteousness, is
plainly ordered for its sake, as of supreme ac-
count and the final end of all arrangements.
The evidence for this, the broader view, is too
strong to be set aside by critical conjectures
based on surface appearances and on a very
214 The Immortal Life
imperfect knowledge, even of appearances, and
especially of the place and bearing of the
whole as a broad consistent system. Men are
to progress in moral strength and excellence
as in physical and intellectual development by
contending with obstacles. Strong endeavor
to subordinate lower to higher principles of
action is as necessary to the development of
the moral life as physical and intellectual exer-
tion is to a robust and healthy body and a
disciplined mind. This method of growth and
attainment is in harmony with all the laws of
life. Unity, the converging of all forces and
arrangements to one supreme end, is the prime
characteristic of God's Universe. In other
words, He constituted it a rational system,
and therefore ethical, as its supreme law and
outcome. Hence there can be no warrant for
assuming that forces in the lower nature of
man, or elsewhere, are so ordered as to defeat
the end for which creation exists. On the
contrary when men are faithful to their trust
these very forces are found to promote the
highest order of moral excellence. Of course
in a system so vast and complex there are
appearances which seem to show a movement
contrary to the general course of things, as
a broad, deep river has its eddies that run
The Immortal Life 215
against the current, when, all together, eddies
and current are moving on toward the same
destination. The counsels of God are broader
than our narrow vision, and are not to be pro-
nounced contradictory or unwise by any one
who does not take in the whole sweep and
compass of the divine economy. When such
an one appears he will not judge the Almighty
by mere surface appearances, but by the pro-
gressive and combined movement of the whole
scheme toward one and the same end. Who
is now warranted to say that both the end and
the movement of the whole is not in harmony
with the divine perfection ?
But it is true that the course of Nature as
ordered by Providence involves pain and suf-
fering on the part of both men and animals.
This subject will be considered in the next
chapter.
SUFFERING IN MEN AND ANIMALS
AS RELATED TO DIVINE
BENEFICENCE
" 'T is sorrow builds the shining ladder up
Whose golden rounds are our calamities,
Whereon our firm feet planting nearer God
The Spirit climbs and hath its eyes unsealed."
Lowell.
" It is the lot of all superior natures to suffer as a part of their
training and as the price of their gifts ; but this suffering has often
no thorn of outward loss thrust into its sensitive heart. The anguish
of the Cross has always been the prelude to the psalm of deliverance
and the world has made no new conquest of truth and life except
through those who have trodden the via dolorosa."
Hamilton W. Mabie,
My Study Fire, p. 36.
217
CHAPTER XII
SUFFERING IN MEN AND ANIMALS AS
RELATED TO DIVINE BENEFICENCE
THE problem of suffering has always been
one of deep interest to thoughtful minds.
The wide prevalence of so many forms of pain
and suffering, together with the frequent occur-
rence of great calamities through the opera-
tion of natural forces, has given a tragic
element to human history, awakening in some
persons bitter complaints, in others painful
doubts and misgivings, and in reflecting minds
the desire to solve the mysteries which such
an economy presents. From the times of Job
and the Grecian dramatists down to Shake-
speare, Tennyson, and Browning this tragic
element has given its deep coloring to dra-
matic literature. But the mystery of the divine
ordering is as great to-day as ever ; and who
will attempt its complete solution when the
profoundest minds in all the ages have been
unequal to the task ? After all, the mystery
219
2 20 The Immortal Life
pertains not so much to the general purpose
of the divine administration as to the con-
sistency with it of particular events in their
bearing upon it. Our vision is short and dim,
and only Omniscience can comprehend the
bearing of all events upon the purpose and
end of so complex a system. But as it is
plainly rational and ethical we are sure it is not
self-contradictory, and that unity is its prime
characteristic. In the preceding chapter we
have endeavored to show that the cosmic
forces operating in the lower nature of man,
while they seem hostile to virtue in their im-
mediate action, do in fact condition virtue of
the highest excellence. We are now to con-
sider the suffering of men and animals in its
various forms, as related to their well-being
and to the divine wisdom and beneficence.
We speak first of sufferings in their proper
influence upon men under their divine allot-
ments.
Euripides, the Grecian dramatist, like Brown-
ing in modern time, felt that nothing is of
such deep interest as " the education of the
human soul," and they affirmed that "the
painful discipline of life gives a truer and
larger sense of men's powers and duties."
Hinton, in a small volume. The Mystery of
The Immortal Life 221
Pain, has given some of the best thoughts
on this subject. We quote the following :
" When we know pain is willingly borne for
another's sake, it not only passes into the
category of good, but it becomes emphatically
the good. The pain of martyrs and the losses
of self-sacrificing devotion are never classed
among the evil things of the world. They
are the bright places rather, the culminating
points at which humanity has displayed its
true glory and reached its perfect level. . . .
Without endurance life ceases to be enjoya-
ble ; without pains accepted, pleasures will not
be permanent. A life from which pain is
banished becomes a life not worth living, or
worse, of intolerable tedium and disgust.
Man's true and proper life is of such gran-
deur, of such intensity and scope, that it would
absorb and turn into the service of joy all that
we now find intolerable pain, all agony and
loss It is such life, so large, so rich in love
that in these sacrifices it can find its perfect
satisfaction. It is a life so truly lived in
others, so participant with them, that utter
and unbounded sacrifice is possible. It is the
life of Heaven." (Pp. 11, 46, 47.)
Mr. J. S. Mill regarded the character of
Jesus Christ the most pure and exalted that
222 The Immortal Life
has appeared in this world, furnishing the
highest ethical ideal for humanity, and at the
same time being the most worthy manifesta-
tion of divine perfections. But we read in the
New Testament account of Jesus Christ that
He " was made perfect through suffering."
As illustrated in the best men, suffering has
been called " the fuel of love." It certainly
tends to change the hardness of our nature
into a warm tenderness and sympathy as
nothing else can.
" Pain in man
Is the high mission of the frail and few."
This truth finds its expression not only in
the best poetry but in the ripest Christian
experience and in the deepest philosophy.
Professor James, of Harvard University, in
an admirable volume says : " It is a remark-
able fact that sufferings and hardships do not
as a rule abate the love of life ; they serve on
the contrary to give it a keener zest. The
sovereign source of melancholy is repletion.
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire
us, and our hour of triumph is what brings
the void. Not the Jews of captivity, but
those of Solomon's glory were those from
whom the pessimistic utterance of our Bible
The Immortal Life 223
came. . . . Will not every man declare that
a world fitted for fair-weather human beings,
susceptible to every passing enjoyment, but
without independence, courage, or fortitude,
to be, from a moral point of view, immeasur-
ably inferior to a world formed to elicit from
them every form of triumphant endurance and
conquering energy." — The Will to Believe, pp.
47, lOI.
It is certain that this was not intended to be
a stagnant world. Even the plant creeps
toward the light. The instinct of animals
leads to the strenuous activity of self-support,
and the higher the order of beings the greater
the demand and the wider the range for their
activity. It is true the frequent repetition of
certain forms of action, till they become ha-
bitual, gives release from any volitional effort
and becomes almost unconscious. But the
object of this provision is not to relieve from
exertion but to give opportunity to rise above
mere manipulation to higher forms and broader
ranges of mental activity.
Professor Bruce makes the inquiry, " What
is the happiness God meant for us ? Should
it be that from which the painful is banished,
or that in which pain is swallowed up in joy ?
Through sacrifice is given the opportunity to
2 24 The Immortal Life
self-directing love, that transforms pain, lends
dignity to the most ignominious lot, and decks
the rudest crop with flowers." — Gifford Lect-
ures, 1897, pp. 118, 324.
In a progressive creation we are not to judge
a particular stage of progress by itself, but as
related to the whole of which it is a part. It
is the final outcome that explains all. To an
observer the primeval fire-mist would have
been meaningless. The earlier kingdoms take
their significance and supreme value as tribu-
tary to those that follow. The germ is ex-
plained by the ripened fruit. And the hard
conditions of our race, that in themselves seem
wholly evil, make known their value in the
strong manhood and ripened character which is
their proper outcome. Life and life more
abundant and of the best possible quality is
the goal of creation. The whole cosmic move-
ment has been toward that goal. Multitudes
have testified to priceless blessings hidden in
the most painful experiences. They were led
in ways they knew not but through darkness
and conflict they emerged at length with shin-
ing faces standing upon lofty heights. Their
characters were patterned after ideals they did
not create, and their lives were made immortal
by experiences they could not have chosen.
The Immortal Life 225
Thus ^schylus, Dante, and the bHnd Mikon
were quaUfied in the school of sorrow " to en-
rich the life-blood of the world with their
song." Some of the sweetest hymns, whose
melodies seem the very pulses of Christian joy
and triumph, came from hearts made sweet and
pure by the baptism of sorrow. We read of
Plato the "sad " and of Michael Angelo "the
silent man." The one wrestled with deep and
solemn problems that overmatched his thought,
the other reached after lofty ideals beyond his
power to realize, but they became greater by
their struggles and the world of thought and
art is richer through their achievements. Few
can imagine the humihations of Dante and his
anguish of spirit from hopes deferred and from
persecution and banishment ; but there came
to his bruised and sensitive spirit at length
that sweet and restful union with God, not
gained by his own striving or by his soaring
imagination, but through flashes of divine love,
as he has beautifully told us in his immortal
" No wings were mine to compass such a flight
Till in a lightning flash from God on me
The consummation of my longing came,
How all my powers of soaring phantasy
Fainted within me ; only this I knew:
2 26 The Immortal Life
That like a wheel that neither hastes nor rests
My will revolved under the sway of Love —
The Love that moves the sun and every star."
See Dr. Caird's Evolution of Religioti^
Vol. ii., p. 272.
Prof. J. P. Cooke of Harvard University
gives expression to similar ideas : " As then in
the struggle for existence, perfection is reached
through suffering, so in the spiritual world men
rise to higher things through sorrow ; and
though as they rise their power of suffering is
increased, yet in the beauty of holiness their
sorrow is at last turned into joy." — TJie Cre-
dentials of Science, the Warrant of Faith, p. 318.
Many of the so-called evils of life would turn
to blessings if met with fortitude and trust in
the divine order. Temptations instead of de-
basing humanity and enslaving it to sin would
bring the higher powers into action, thus con-
tributing to strength and freedom. They would
be stepping-stones to a higher life instead of
stumbling-blocks to an ignominious fall. Ac-
cordingly we find that a great part of the suf-
ferings and miseries of mankind and the worst
of all, men bring upon themselves by their vices,
their greed, their selfish ambitions, and cruel
oppressions. The darkest of all mysteries is
that of sin and there is no remedy for the
The Immortal Life 227
worst evils but that which takes away sin. On
this point we need not dwell, since it is evident
this world would be a happy world if this cause
of wretchedness were removed.
But the highest qualities of character and
the richest blessings cannot be thrust upon
men without their consent and co-operation.
Truth, wisdom, virtue are not the gift of
cosmic forces, but the outcome of earnest per-
sonal endeavor under the guidance and obliga-
tions of ethical law. Action, as well as thought,
is the law of the divine economy. Action
solves more hard problems than speculative
thought. It clears away the mists that dim
the spiritual vision and gives practical insight
into reality. It brings strength to wrestle
with obstacles and healthful zest and enthu-
siasm for life's great work. We have shown
from facts of wide experience that the ten-
dency of pain and various forms of suffering,
if wisely accepted, is to purify, enrich, and
ennoble character. This is the highest good
and as this, not pleasure, is the end of ex-
istence, since pain contributes to it, it has,
at least,, a partial explanation. But the sub-
ject is broader and leads us into wider re-
lations which this view does not compass, and
which possibly no finite mind can at present
2 28 The Immortal Life
comprehend. There are evils which men do
not bring on themselves, which are neither
strictly retribution for sin, nor in the proper
sense educative and disciplinary for character.
Tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions,
and tidal waves come irrespective of human
agency, sudden and resistless, often sweeping
thousands, the evil and the good together, to
instant destruction.
We might speak also of what the innocent
often suffer from heredity, in the way of mal-
formation, disease, and in constitutional pro-
clivities to hurtful indulgence, which fatally
overmaster the will. Furthermore we think
of the exposure of individuals and families to
various forms of evil in their relation to human
society. Many are born into conditions of
civil and social life subject to unjust legisla-
tion and oppression, or to men of violence and
blood. For such a state of things they have
no responsibility and yet they suffer all man-
ner of injustice. Such conditions greatly try
our faith in any overruling power. Such dis-
order in the course of things has at least its
mysteries which we cannot fully explain.
But there are certain considerations which
may well deter us from hasty judgments.
Since science assumes that the Universe has a
The Immortal Life 229
rational order, it must also assume its unity
and solidarity as a consistent system. But
since every part and movement is related to
every other part and to the supreme end, the
fact of the rational order of the whole be-
ing assumed, it follows that what seems at first
view to be out of place and contradictory is
after all in harmony with the general purpose
and economy of the system. As the ascent
of light bodies through the atmosphere seems
in contradiction to the law of gravity, but is
by wider knowledge easily explained as in
harmony with that law, so the evils spoken of
above may find their reconciliation with the
divine purpose and the beneficent end of cre-
ation. Hence we speak of the solidarity of
the system and of the human race. If there
was to be a Universe at all it must have inter-
relations that bind all together under general
laws and in such complexity might of neces-
sity work unavoidable evils to individuals while
promoting the general good. Such was the
judgment of the wisest of ancient philoso-
phers, Plato and Aristotle, and also of Leib-
nitz, Martineau, and others in modern time.
We quote a few lines from Dr. Martineau, who
has treated this subject with his usual profound
insight and clearness :
230 The Immortal Life
"To every finite method (and to create is
to enter the sphere of the finite) this partial
disability, this unequal approximation to the
ideally perfect, inevitably clings : . . . It is
vain, therefore, to appeal to the almightiness
of God unless you mean to throw away the
relations of any established universe, and pass
into His unconditioned infinitude ; in the cos-
mos He has abrogated it, and there is a limit
for what you may demand from it as within its
scope." — Study of Religion, pp. 80, 81.
We must take into view the limitations
which belong to any finite system projected
into time and space and brought into unity for
a given end. Of course it must possess soli-
darity, by which each part or individual is re-
lated to the whole under the operation of
general laws. For example, there are laws of
heredity which render the individual liable,
through no fault of his own, to inherit dis-
ease, malformation, or constitutional tenden-
cies too strong to be resisted. But while the
working of the law is often hard on the indi-
vidual, still, on the whole, it is for the benefit
of the race, since it carries forward all previous
progress attained, passing over from ancestor
to descendant what required ages of effort to
gain. To annul the law would destroy the
The Immortal Life 231
solidarity of the race, and even its suspension
for the relief of individuals would require an
interference in the established order which
might be a serious detriment to the race.
There is no question that the evolution of the
race through the ages has been progressive,
physically, intellectually, and morally, and the
transmission of its gains through the law of
heredit}^ while conserving its solidarity, has
set the race forward. At the same time the
operation of the law in given conditions may
be injurious to individuals through limitations
inherent in a system of fixed and definite
relations.
Again, this race solidarity is liable to occa-
sion suffering and loss to individuals through
their exposure to imperfect and hurtful condi-
tions in human society. By no fault of their
own, they may come under oppressive laws,
or into a community of low aims and corrupt-
ing influences, to be the prey of sharpers or
of revolutionary violence, and yet contact
with human society is a necessity of human
nature. Only in its social, civil, and moral
relations does it find scope for development,
for the upbuilding of character and for breadth
and fulness of rational life. Isolation from
society is far worse than exposure to its evils.
232 The Immortal Life
Besides the advantages it brings in ordinary
conditions counterbalance its evils a thousand
fold. Every generation accumulates and trans-
mits great values in knowledge, in experience,
in institution of law and government, in maxims
of wisdom, in philosophy, and art.
These attainments, together with progressive
discoveries and inventions, which pass on from
generation to generation, are cumulative values
that give breadth and momentum to the ad-
vancement of society and greatly enrich the
life of humanity. Many things which are now
among the necessaries of the poor would have
been luxuries for the rich in a past age. Be-
sides the common interests of mankind furnish
motives to each individual to improve the
condition and character of the race.
But again the solidarity of the broad sys-
tem, which connects men organically with ex-
ternal forces, exposes them to earthquakes,
tornadoes, and conflagrations which often
prove the destruction of multitudes, with no
power of resistance or escape. Such disasters
do not appear to be retributive or disciplinary,
like the evils which men bring on themselves.
They come alike upon the evil and the good.
We may assume, with Dorner, that this
world was adapted to beings morally imper-
The Immortal Life 233
feet, with natural conditions in harmony with
their foreseen moral state. Or, with Dr. Mar-
tineau, we may regard such disasters as in-
evitable in a system of definite relations under
general laws which, notwithstanding inciden-
tal evils, work out the general good. What-
ever explanation we attempt, we find men
exposed to great evils as related to the great
world-forces. Shall we, therefore, give up our
faith in the divine beneficence ?
In this connection let us remember certain
evident facts. First, such disasters are inci-
dental, exceptional, and very rare. Second, the
great world forces are often all so ordered that
the movement of our planet through space is
quiet, rhythmical, and safe, as if it were cradling
children of parental love. Third, the elements
in which we live, mighty as they are, ordi-
narily are gentle, easily controlled, and really
doing us ready service in a thousand ways.
They spread our sails, they turn our wheels,
they carry us from place to place, they run on
our errands with lightning speed, they bring
to our doors the products of all lands, they
put us in communication with all nations and
peoples, giving swift wings to thought, broad-
ening our sympathies, and faithfully serving
us in our far-reaching beneficence for the
234 The Immortal Life
welfare of our race, and in the reflex benefits
that ennoble our character and enrich our life.
And future discoveries will doubtless reveal
still other forces awaiting our command.
The energies that move the world must, of
course, be powerful, and in a sense resistless.
The wonder is not that we should occasionally
experience harm from their complex move-
ments, but that in their combined operation
they should be so harmoniously adjusted, so
pliant and tractable, as if tamed and harnessed
like faithful and trusty steeds for our com-
mand. Instead of complaining at our hard-
ships we have occasion to be grateful that
such mighty forces are for our convenience
and comfort, entrusted to our habitual use.
It is a mistake to see only the evils incident
to our lot, which after all may be unavoidable
in the best system, while the system itself in
its combined operation is so largely beneficent.
The solidarity essential to the system, which
makes us liable to evils from the law of hered-
ity and exposes us in occasional conflict with
natural forces, secures to us advantages that a
thousand fold outweigh the evils coming with
it. The pessimistic spirit is emphatically nar-
row, one-sided, and superficial. The more com-
prehensive our view the more evident on the
The Immortal Life 235
broad scale is the bountiful and loving care of
our Maker.
We have left but small space, though pos-
sibly all that is needed, to speak of suffering
in the animal creation. Mr. Mill gave em-
phasis to this, seeing clearly that the sinfulness
of men often brought upon them merited retri-
bution ; but the infliction of pain on innocent
animals he pronounced ''cruel and unjust.''
In this judgment he differed widely from men
whose opportunities qualified them for a wiser
judgment. A. R. Wallace on this point says :
" On the whole we conclude that the popular \
idea of the struggle for existence entailing \
misery and pain upon the animal world, is the \
very reverse of the truth. What it really )
brings about is the maximum enjoyment of
life with the minimum of suffering and pain.
Given the necessity of death and reproduction
(and without these there would have been no
progressive development of the organic world),
it is difficult to imagine a system by which a
greater balance of happiness could have been
assured." He quotes from Darwin as follows :
"The poet's picture of Nature as 'red in
tooth and claw with ravine ' is a picture of
the evil read into it by our exaggerations, the
reality being made up of full and happy lives,
2^6 The Immortal Life
usually terminating by the quickest and least
painful of deaths." See Wallace's Darwinisju,
pp. 39, 40.
Life is superior to non-living matter, and we
find numberless grades of it, from the lowest
of the vegetal to the highest of the sentient
creation. It abounds everywhere in the waters
and in the atmosphere. In fact matter is use-
less except as ministering to life. The lower
grades condition the higher, and while the low-
est have their measure of good, and while all
below are subservient to man, all, with as little
suffering as possible, share the bounty of the
Creator. We quote briefly from Dr. Marti-
neau. " The real question is simply this,
whether the laws of which complaint is made
work such harm that they ought never to have
been created, or whether in spite of occasional
disasters in their path, this sentient existence
of which they are the condition has in its his-
tory a vast excess of blessing." — Study of Re-
ligion, ii, p. 78-79.
This question admits of but one answer.
That the animal creation do in normal con-
ditions enjoy life, is manifest in their affection
for offspring, in the playful sports of the young,
in the song of birds and in the many ways in
which they express their love of life. Nothing
The Immortal Life 237
is created for the sake of pain. It is wholly
incidental and all the ranks of sentient exist-
ence according to their measure find life a
blessing.
Finally while the divine beneficence is mani-
fest in all the lower forms of life these at the
same time are made tributary to the nobler
life of man. For all the lower kingdoms are
represented in the animal, and man by possess-
ing the animal nature, is linked organically to
all the kingdoms and is thereby qualified to
appreciate and sympathize with animal life and
to make all the forces of Nature subservient to
his rational and ethical life and therefore to
serve the interests of righteousness.
NO PROOF THAT THE DISSOLU-
TION OF THE BODY IS THE EX-
TINCTION OF THE RATIONAL
SPIRIT
" The only scientific plea on which the possibility of immortality
can be denied to us, is based on the fact that mind in this life is so
intimately bound up with physiological conditions. Once grant, how-
ever, that the thinking principle in man is distinct from the body
which it uses as its instrument, and no reason can be shown, as Bishop
Butler demonstrated long ago, why it should not survive the shock of
the dissolution we call death. Death need not even be the suspen-
sion of its powers."
Professor James Orr, D.D., Kerr Lectures, 1890-91, p. 152.
239
CHAPTER XIII
NO PROOF THAT THE DISSOLUTION OF
THE BODY IS THE EXTINCTION OF THE
RATIONAL SPIRIT
OUR main purpose in this discussion is to
show that the world as a rational system
is ordered in the interest of righteousness.
We have shown that the expectation of the
future life, tends to promote it and that the
denial of that life, by taking away the most
effective motives to virtue must greatly hinder
its practice. The same denial by taking from
man his chief dignity and value and emptying
the world of its meaning, tends to paralyze all
high endeavor and drop human life to a lower
level.
But it may be asked, what have we to do
with consequences, since the question at issue is
one oi fact and the fact to all appearances is,
that nothing survives the death of the body.
Before showing that there is no ground for
assuming this as fact we hope to show that the
i6 241
242 The Immortal Life
consequences of such assumption have an im-
portant bearing upon the truth we are seeking,
especially if they would tend to defeat the very
end of man's creation.
It is true that at death what we term spirit
life disappears from the range of the senses.
But the senses can give only negative testi-
mony, and those principles which are the basis
of all reality are beyond their reach and can
be grasped only by the rational understand-
ing. Men are moral beings, and as such they
are under ethical law which is the supreme
law of rational life and which involves their
ethical and spiritual relationship to Him who
ordained and administers it. Now if death
ends all, it not only severs this relationship
of man to ethical law and to Him who ordained
it, but it drops man from the spiritual realm to
which he belongs and makes him altogether
subject to physical law as the supreme law of
the world. This would reverse the whole cos-
mic order which subordinates the lower to the
higher in rank and worth, and would anni-
hilate those ethical and spiritual interests
which are of supreme value. Now to drop
man to the physical plane and to take from
him by his extinction all permanent interests
and obligations not only puts an end to all the
The Immortal Life 243
sanctities of life, but to the proper worth and
significance of the noblest of the creative
work.
By thus depriving man of all permanent
worth and interest you diminish the motives
to virtue and righteousness becomes compa-
ratively of little account. Body and spirit
alike, with all human interests soon turn to
dust and come to nothing. This materialis-
tic theory is totally at variance with that
which we term rational and ethical, for their
postulates are directly contradictory. The
one denies the moral order of the world and
the possibility of the ethical life. The other
affirms the reality of both with the implication
of a continuous life beyond the grave. Mat-
thew Arnold expressed the general conviction
in affirming, " There is a Power not ourselves
that makes for righteousness." Every thought-
ful man knows his solemn oblisfations as under
moral law. Human society recognizes the
same law as underlying all human legislation
and that there is no real stability or prosperity
on any other basis. So the moral order of the
world and the necessities of the spiritual nature
of man are in harmony and this harmony is the
highest test of truth. We quote the following
from Professor Seth of Edinburgh University :
244 The Immortal Life
" To understand the world is not merely to
unravel the sequences of its intricate facts, so
long as we cannot bring the order of things
into harmony with the moral sense of mankind
we cannot be said to have made existence in-
telligible ; the world still remains as in Hume's
words a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mys-
tery."— Mans Place in the Cosmos, p. 28.
Now a theory which contradicts the moral
sense of man, by denying his ethical relation
to God and his worth as in His image, subject-
ing his spiritual nature to mere physical condi-
tions, thus enthroning the material over the
spiritual, and the temporal over the eternal,
not only reverses the divine order but defeats
the end of man's existence. It cannot there-
fore be in consistency with a rationally or-
dered world. What so belittles man, depriving
him of any permanent interest in anything,
must tend to paralyze every high endeavor to
which his nobler nature would prompt him,
must be false as contrary to the system to
which he belongs. We affirm therefore that
consequences must be taken account of in our
determination of fact and truth.
Professor Le Conte affirms : " Whatever in
the lone run and in the final outcome tends to
the bad,\n human conduct ought to be received.
The Immortal Life 245
even by the honest lover of truth with distrust
as containing essential error." — Evolution and
Religious Thought, p. 277.
The artist in painting a portrait seeks to ex-
press what is highest and best, as true to his
subject. Why should we assume the lowest
and meanest interpretation of man and the
majestic Universe of God, expresses the true
outcome of His creative wisdom ?
We have shown that man is in fact the im-
age of God, and that the Most High has made
this vast Universe a medium of His self-revela-
tion for intelligent and ennobling intercourse
with man, to exalt him into His fellowship and
likeness. This cannot mean that a creature
made to be one with God is to be one with
the dust of the earth. The fact also that the
world has ever been progressing toward higher
and higher ends, should teach us that man as
the chief outcome is to have a nobler destiny.
This view is well expressed by Dr. John
Fiske : " The glorious consummation toward
which organic evolution is tending is the pro-
duction of the highest and most perfect psy-
chical life. When from the dawn of life we
see all things working together toward the
evolution of the highest spiritual attributes of
man, we know, however, the words may stumble
246 The Immortal Life
in which we try to say it, that God is in
the highest sense a inoral being. The evolu-
tionary course of phenomena is none other
than the Infinite Power that makes for right-
eousness."— Idea of God, pp. 261, 262.
Our purpose in this chapter thus far has
been to show that the ethical view of the world
has a firm basis m fact, and this as it excludes
the materialistic and mechanical view gives it
no standing whatever.
But notwithstanding man's moral relation-
ship to God, and the evident divine purpose to
make this relationship one of fellowship with
the life eternal, it is asserted by some that
man has no life or spiritual nature distinct
from the body, and that they perish together.
We come then to our special point, — Is there
any ground, scientific or otherwise, for assum-
ing that the dissolution of the bodily organism
is, by any known necessity or in fact, the ex-
tinction of the rational personality ?
All admit that what we call the rational
mind is in rank and dignity immeasurably supe-
rior to the bodily tissues. Furthermore these,
comprising the senses, nerves, muscles, and
the whole framework, are plainly instrumental
for the psychical life as the crowning endow-
ment of humanity. True the body and spirit
The Immortal Life 247
are closely united. But their functions, their
laws of action, and their environment are to-
tally different. No one can identify thought,
feeling, will, and character which belong to
the one, with mechanical motion or chemi-
cal action, or the tissues which belong to the
other. They have nothing in common. The
body lives on material food ; it moves from
place to place by physical laws ; it has to do
only with the physical, the material. The
mind, on the contrary, lives on truth, on beauty
and harmony, and has to do with ethical and
spiritual laws. These are all spiritual reali-
ties. The body has its limitations in time and
space ; its action is confined to present time
and to particular localities. The mind has its
broad range in the past and the future and in
excursions to the stars. It grasps the princi-
ples, the causes, and relations of its vast
environment, the Universe. Having thus en-
tirely different functions, dealing with different
orders of realities, acting under different laws,
and seeking different ends, they belong to dif-
ferent realms. Thus differing in their nature,
ends, and laws of action, what warrant is there
so to identify them as to assume for them the
same destiny? "It is a mistake," says Dr.
Lotze, "to imagine that the mere organic
248 The Immortal Life
history covers the whole field of the problem,
and by its termination demonstrates conscious-
ness to be extinct. There is no such known
conjunction between the bodily organism and
the mental life as to bind the two factors in
indissoluble unity."
Physiological psychology has been made the
basis of various assumptions concerning the
nature and functions of the psychic life. One
is that mental processes, thought, feeling, and
willing are identical with molecular changes in
brain substances.
Another is that all forms of consciousness
are but the inner aspects of brain-changes, and
that these inner aspects or shadowy attendants
have no function or agency as factors in the
psychical life. Now these are simply conjec-
tures, or speculations that have no scientific
basis. They do not explain a single phenome-
non of the mental life. Professor Tyndall,
after attempting to give a physical explanation
of consciousness, says frankly : " The passage
from the physics of the brain to the corre-
sponding facts of consciousness is zmthinkable.
Granted that a definite thought and a definite
molecular action in the brain occur simul-
taneously, we do not possess the intellectual
organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the or-
The Immortal Life 249
gan, which would enable us to pass by a process
of reasoning from one to the other. They ap-
pear together but we know not why. Were
our minds and senses so expanded, strength-
ened and illuminated as would enable us to
see and feel the very molecules of the brain ;
were we capable of following all the motions,
all the groupings, all the electric discharges
if such there be, and we were intimately ac-
quainted with the corresponding states of feel-
ings, we should be as far from the solution of
the problem, how the physical processes are
connected with the facts of consciousness : the
chasm between the two classes would still
remain intellectually impassable." — Fragments
of Scie7ice, p. 420.
If then, as all agree, there is a chasm be-
tween the physical and the psychical life which
no man can bridge, who can affirm that they
are so inseparably linked together that they
may not part company, the spirit unharmed
seeking its kind, the body resolved into its
native dust ?
There are substantial reasons for adopting
this conclusion.
In the first place the physical organism, as
we have said, is the instrument for the service of
the rational mind. Its senses present outward
250 The Immortal Life
phenomena for the mind to interpret into
truth as a permanent possession after the phe-
nomena have passed away. We find indeed
that the loss of one sense quickens the mind
to a sharper use of those that remain. Fur-
thermore, such loss is the occasion of summon-
ing into more vigorous action the powers
of memory, imagination, and constructive
thought. Why may not the spirit, after part-
ing with all the bodily senses, yet retaining in
the form of interpreted fact and truth what
they had been the means of supplying, be
summoned to still higher and more vigorous
activities with a wider grasp of truth ? This
would but continue a form of life already
experienced in earthly conditions. In the
second place, the union of the spiritual mind
with the physical organism brings it into
those relations, social, civil, and religious,
which make for its development. In these re-
lations to human society, and to Nature, it is
placed in a school of intellectual and moral
education and of practical training and dis-
cipline for the formation and upbuilding of
character, the product of absolute value. Fur-
thermore, since all the lower kino-doms are
represented in the physical organism, it is
brought into sympathetic contact with univer-
The Immortal Life 251
sal nature as a divine manifestation. The
field thus opened is broad. The education
which should be preparative for something
permanent and progressive is only begun.
The goal, whether it be knowledge or charac-
ter, is far off and is not reached in present
conditions.
" We must believe for still we hope
That in a world of larger scope
What here is faithfully begun
Will be completed, not undone."
A. H. Clough.
In the third place, when the bodily organ-
ism has attained its full development and has
ended its instrumental service, the rational
spirit seems only to have begun its career.
The scientist, the poet, the artist, the philoso-
pher and the philanthropist, the saint, when the
death of the body approaches, are all reaching
forward to higher attainment. Not one of
them has realized his ideals. From every
direction come solicitations for further and
better achievements. The Perfect is still in
the future, and even present failures intensify
the longing to reach it.
Professor Hitchcock, the eminent geologist,
when near his end, is reported to have said :
" I hope the Lord will give opportunity to
252 The Immortal Life
study with the hammer the rocks of Mars and
of other worlds."
Agassiz, as death approached, was full of
enthusiasm in his study of types of animal
structure, for amid infinite variations he saw in
the persistent type the thought of the Creator,
and he thus linked scientific with divine know-
ledge as one and the same. This passion,
whether for knowledge or goodness, does not
reach its goal in this life, and the sudden
ending of all pursuit of knowledge or character
at death would be out of harmony with the
progressive order of the world. This assump-
tion, there being no scientific ground for it, is
irrational. "By no possibility," says Dr.
Fiske, "can thought and feeling be in any
sense the product of matter. Nothing could
be more unscientific than the famous remark
of Cabanis that ' the brain secretes thought as
the liver secretes bile.' It cannot even be
correct to say that thought goes on in the
brain. What goes on in the brain is an ex-
ceedingly complex series of molecular move-
ments, with which thought and feeling are in
some unknown way correlated, not as effects
or causes, but as concomitants. The material-
istic conception that the life of the spirit ac-
cordingly ends with the life of the body, is
The Immortal Life 253
perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless
assumption that is known in the history of
philosophy." — Destiny of Man, pp. 100, 109.
The distinction between body and mind is
fundamental. As was said above, the phenom-
ena, the laws of action and the ends, are totally
different in the two cases, and they belong to
different kingdoms. Molecular motions and
changes of brain substance doubtless accom-
pany all mental action. But in all rational pro-
cesses, the mind, the intelligent agent, takes the
initiative, using the brain, as it does the senses,
as its instrument. In reasoning, for example,
logical relation or the connection of one fact
or truth with another requires an intelligent
thinker, who orders his thought and draws his
conclusion, not according to physical or chemi-
cal laws operating in brain movements, but ac-
cording to the perceived relations of fact to fact
and truth to truth. Who is warranted to assume
that molecules care for logic, or that the laws
of chemical or electric action in the brain are
one with the processes of logical thought, or
with delight in beauty, or with adoring rever-
ence in holy worship ? . . . Do not physical
and chemical laws belong to a lower plane ?
Have material molecules, in their changes
under physical and chemical laws, a spiritual
2 54 The Immortal Life
and ethical character, or are they the pliant ser-
vants of an intelligent and personal power, who
determines his own ends of action under a
higher law ? The servant does not do business
on his own account, nor should he assume the
prerogative of his superior. It would be a
strange solution of an ethical problem to
charge our guilt upon forces that operate on
the lowest planes of natural law. Even science
and philosophy, as well as ethical life, depend
upon a personal agent, who puts forth action
from his own centre of consciousness and puts
a rational interpretation upon his past experi-
ences by recalling them as his own and recog-
nizing in them his persistent identity. Who
can interpret and shape into the unity of
rational thought his past experiences, except as
possessing the unifying power of one and the
same thinking and acting personality ? To at-
tribute the profoundest rational insight, the
loftiest sentiment, and the holiest purpose to
brain changes under mechanical and chemical
laws is to drop man from the plane of rational
and ethical life and resolve manhood itself into
the play and pull of irresponsible atoms ! We
quote in this connection from an eminent Ger-
man scientist, Du Bois Reymond :
" It is absolutely and forever inconceivable
The Immortal Life 255
that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen,
and oxygen atoms should be otherwise than
indifferent to their own motions and positions
at present and in future. It is utterly incon-
ceivable how consciousness should result from
a form of motion. It has lost every char-
acteristic of its original nature, and its former
acquaintance will not own it as of their kith
and kin."
Having shown that there is a broad dis-
tinction between body and spirit, that they
have totally different functions, that they act
under different laws and for different ends,
and so belong to different kingdoms, we seem
warranted to anticipate for them different
destinies. For the spirit, when its earthly
body drops away, we may expect a higher
form of life and an orgfanism suited to its new
conditions. What if we know not its new
conditions or the precise nature of the body
that is to be the instrument of its higher life ?
The embryo life never knows the world it
is soon to enter ; nor does the caterpillar
know the body that is to lift it from the earth
into freer movement in the sunlight. The
Most High has not exhausted His resources
in providing for worms and insects. The
vital principle itself has organific functions, and
256 The Immortal Life
the living spirit may, for aught we know, be
qualified to put forth such functions and take
to itself a fitting organism. Scientists tell us
of an ethereal element, of inconceivably fine
texture and of amazing elasticity, that now
in some ways ministers to our spiritual life.
With marvellous swiftness and delicacy it now
touches our sensitive organism with revela-
tions of light and color, bringing messages
from the stars. It seems allied to spiritual
natures, and the service it now renders may
be but the beginning of what is in reserve.
It may put us in communication with in-
telligences now invisible, and with distant
worlds. He who transforms the worm into
a winged creature, resplendent with colors,
to move freely in an atmosphere of light, and
to live on the nectar of flowers, can exchange
these earthly bodies for organic structures so
finely textured and elastic that they may play
in the ethereal element as the insect's wing
plays in the enfolding atmosphere.
Of course, in the absence of positive knowl-
edge of matters of this nature, we can only
conjecture. But, knowing that the spirit is
distinct from the body, and that, as made in
the image of God, it is to partake of His life,
every rational consideration favors its con-
The Immortal Life 257
tinuance, in some organic form and with new
and higher functions. Aheady we possess
some power of intuitive insight into invisible
realities ; for example, into first principles
and into spiritual relations never revealed by
the senses. Still higher forms of intuition
may introduce us to other and higher realities
of the spiritual world and to mysteries now
hidden from us. The present organism, as
made to serve the spirit as its end in the way
of disciplinary education, falls away. But the
spirit has in itself the end of its own existence.
It is not instrumental for a higher end, but
it has affinities for a higher form of existence
and a worth transcending all material values.
The assumption that rational consciousness
is the mere appendage of brain-changes, or
the ghostly shadows of molecular movements,
without agency or reality of its own, has no
scientific basis and is contrary to all rational
probabilities. This attempt to change man-
hood, personality, spirit, the most substan-
tial of all realities, into the mere motion of
molecules in the brain, carries on its face an
absurdity which is a refutation of the theory.
All material nature is instrumental for spirit.
It was millions of years before the progression
of Nature reached its goal in man. That
258 The Immortal Life
goal having been reached, the affinities, the
evident capabilities and the intrinsic value of
man, made in God's image, mean a larger
career. Spirit life, the highest outcome of
creation, was evidently not made to end its
history with that of the body that for a time
rendered it service. An ethical nature which
belongs to the spiritual kingdom is not the
equivalent of heat or mechanical motion, to
be resolved back into the common reservoir
of physical forces. Its interests are those for
which creation exists. Its alliance is with
God. Its true life is divine and therefore
immortal, in its destiny.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
" We need to be convinced of some intellectual connection in
which we trace the destiny of human life and the eternal significance
of all moral effort. There is a view of self-sacrificing effort for a
better condition of things in which we shall not participate ; but
what gives unity and meaning to the process is, that the benefits
gained in time are not lost for those who helped to win but did not
enjoy them." — Lotze, Alicrocosinus^ ii., p. 484.
" I do not know that there is anything in Nature (unless it be the
reputed blotting out of suns in the stellar heavens) which can be
compared in wastefulness 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 for future
power, unavailable for the race and perfect for the future growth of
the individual ; if that growth is not to be, the most brilliant genius
bursts and vanishes as a firework in the night." — Martineau,
Study of Religion^ ii., p. 356.
259
CHAPTER XIV
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
THE object of this discussion is to show
that the inherent greatness of man's ca-
pacities, correlated as they are to infinite envi-
ronment and especially his kinship and moral
relationship to God, involving the possibility of
likeness to his character and of participation
in his eternal life, implies that man is made to
attain a life of absolute worth, one with that
of God, and therefore immortal.
We have assumed what all now admit, that
the world is rationally ordered, that is, ordered
by a rational intelligence like that of man,
since man as rational interprets its order.
But a rational system presupposes an end in
view as its constructive principle, and a rational
mind has a supreme regard for the right as
well as for the true, so that, in the nature of
the case, the presumption is that the world
has a moral order, in which all things are
made subservient to the establishment of truth
261
262 The Immortal Life
and righteousness as the supreme interest and
end.
This presumption, based on the principle
which is fundamental in a rational system,
namely, that it is ethical if rational, should
greatly weaken, if not entirely nullify the force
of objections as urged by Professor Huxley
and Mr. Mill, which are based on imperfect
knowledge of surface appearances. Besides,
the object of the system is properly judged by
the end which its chief outcome was made to
answer. Now, if rational beings, or men as
rational, are the chief outcome their supreme
endowments, reason and conscience, are given
for the attainment of truth and righteousness.
Their environment also, as rationally or-
dered, must be fitted to educate and discipline
them for the same end. This is made evident
when it is seen that man's essential environ-
ment is that immanent and divine Intelligence,
which is self-revealing in the entire cosmic
order, and precisely fitted to educate men in
divine knowledge and to exalt them into fel-
lowship with the divine life. It seems plain,
therefore, that man, as capable of interpreting
the divine order of the world, thus showing
his kinship with the divine intelligence and his
capability for attaining the divine likeness, has
The Immortal Life 263
an incipient greatness and the conditions
which would lead him on in the way of indefi-
nite progress. We show also that man is a
personal being entrusted for his self-govern-
ment, with the same law of truth and right by
which the Most High rules Himself and the
world He has made. Thus exalted above Na-
ture to a sovereignty over Himself, He is placed
in a position of high privilege and of grave re-
sponsibility and peril, for the liberty to choose
the true and the right, in the way of self-gov-
ernment, implies freedom to choose the false
and the wrong. Actions to be virtuous at all
must be personal and free, for such are the es-
sential conditions of the moral life, and only
to such life is the highest of all excellence pos-
sible. The law of that life, which is strictly
ethical, differs, therefore, from natural law, both
in its nature and operation, since it is not, like
the latter, sure and necessary in its operation,
but is committed to the rational person as a
trust, to be freely accepted and enforced over
himself on his own responsibility in the way of
self-government.
Accordingly, through his own free accept-
ance or rejection of it he may become godlike
in dignity and character and realize the highest
possible good, or he may debase himself by
264 The Immortal Life
irrational and sinful choice and incur the
greatest possible evil, sin. In the one case he
puts himself in harmony with God, and with
the moral order of the world, in the other, he
finds himself in opposition to both, conscious
of shameful discord, within and without.
We are not, therefore, to charge moral dis-
order and the sin of men upon the cosmic
forces as operating in their lower nature in
fatal opposition to righteousness, but to their
own failure to subordinate their lower to their
higher nature, by asserting their prerogative,
as rational beings. In attributing men's un-
righteousness to the working of the cosmic
forces in their lower nature so as to make
righteousness impossible. Professor Huxley
takes all responsibility from man and charges
it upon the Creator. He also, in the same
position, denies the rational, as well as the
moral order of the world, since it cannot pos-
sess rational unity, or the consistency of truth
when working fatally against the end for which
it exists. A just and benevolent Creator is
not true to Himself, if, while commanding
righteousness. He so orders His economy as to
make it impossible. The world itself would
be a jargon, instead of an embodiment of truth
and love. " The fact," says Dr. Lotze, " that
The Immortal Life 265
truth exists at all depends upon the principle
of Good, which is Living Love. The eternal
sacredness and supreme worth of living love
is the basis and principle of the world's order
and essential to give it the significance of
truth." — Microcosmus, ii., pp. 721 et seq.
Every scientist assumes that the world is
the embodiment of truth. If otherwise, his
search for it must be in vain. We may also
assume that men as possessing the rational
endowments, reason, conscience, and the higher
sensibilities, are so correlated to truth, beauty,
and the moral order as environing realities,
that they may progressively realize a life in
harmony with these realities. But these reali-
ties are manifestations of the life of the
Creator, so that by fellowship with that life
men may progressively be transformed into
His moral likeness. This we assume is the
intended and the normal result of man's true
nature in correspondence with his environment
as a manifestation of the life of God.
This is the crucial point in our discussion.
In a previous chapter we have shown that man
is the image of God and that he may, accord-
ing to the measure of his capacity, attain a
life which is one with the divine.
Now, it is altogether irrational to assume
266 The Immortal Life
that God will destroy a life that is one with
His own. Besides, it is evident that He so
ordered the world as to make it a revelation of
Himself to men, that they may enter into and
share His life and so be exalted into His fel-
lowship. This is the highest good possible
for Him to bestow.
Man therefore has a high place in creation.
Allowing that in other worlds there may be
creatures of larger endowments, there can be
none capable of a higher life in kind. Hence
the realization of the divine life by rational
creatures is the end of creation. All the lower
kingdoms have worked together for it, con-
tributing their most highly evolved products
to the human organism so incorporated in it
as to be subject to man's noblest functions and
his highest prerogative for ruling all in the
interest of righteousness. Thus placed above
Nature and constituted a rational person, that
is, a self-ruling being, he is to determine his
own ends with a godlike sovereignty. Accord-
ingly, he is shown to be a spiritual being, the
supreme law of his life, the functions by which
he administers it, and the environment in
which he properly lives and moves, being
spiritual in their nature. His true place, there-
fore, is in the spiritual kingdom, for which all
The Immortal Life 267
other kingdoms exist. In keeping with his
spiritual nature and his vast environment, he
has capacities for the infinite, whether in
knowledge, art, or moral excellence. Thus
correlated to the Universe and to God mani-
fest in it, as its soul and life, he is a religious
being to find, in his relationship to God, the
possibilities of unlimited progress in all ex-
cellence and the culmination of his manifold
life. Now, how far does the outlook of such
a being transcend the domain of the physical ?
The material world, with all its magnitudes
and immensities, is but the gateway to the
higher invisible realm in which, as his true
element, he is to realize his real life. Immeas-
urably, therefore, does the scale of his being
transcend the limitations of his physical life.
Indeed, when his body has attained full de-
velopment, and goes into. decay, his spirit has
only begun its career. The scientist, the phi-
losopher, the artist, the philanthropist, and the
saint, when the body fails, find their work not
only incomplete, but indefinitely enlarging.
The goal they seek is far away, in the future.
Does such incompleteness belong to human
life that its worthiest ends must prove failures ?
Every creature below man may be said to
attain its end when its conditions answer to its
268 The Immortal Life
physical wants. If man is but a physical being,
why is he not satisfied with proper physical
conditions ? What has he to do with a spirit-
ual environment, with the invisible laws and
interests of the spiritual life ? If all values to
him perish with his body, why has he instincts
and affinities for the spiritual, the perfect, the
permanent, the infinite? He cannot find his
satisfaction or his true life in ends that centre
in his body. How many, for the sake of real-
izing their nobler life, have sacrificed their
bodies in their devotion to truth and justice !
It is the glory of humanity to hold the body,
and all temporal good, subservient to spiritual
interests, forgetting self in the love of God
and the permanent well-being of humanity.
Why do men revere and honor the life of self-
sacrifice and build monuments to those who in
great crises, when all is at stake, throw them-
selves into the breach in unselfish devotion to
the righteous cause, and count them the heroes
of the race? You cannot root out from men's
hearts the conviction that such devotion be-
longs to real manhood. But it is wholly at
variance with man's actual condition and des-
tiny if death ends all. It is strange that God
should have so constituted man that he truly
lives only in seeking the spiritual, the per-
The Immortal Life 269
manent, the perfect, if there is nothing in his
environment and destiny corresponding to
such a nature. Such an anomaly cannot be-
long to a system of rational order. Given
these two facts, a vast Universe, rational in its
order and therefore spiritual in its character,
and an all-wise Creator immanent in and tran-
scending it, as man's real environment and
suited to his capacities, and how exalted and
sublime should be his corresponding life ! How
distinct from and superior to a physical life,
that to-morrow ends in dust ! That the spirit
of man should for a time be united to a phys-
ical body for education and discipline in the
higher life and in preparation for a future sym-
pathetic interest in its broad relationship with
universal being, we can understand. But that
a spiritual nature whose scope is the infinite,
and whose end is to share the life of the Eter-
nal, should end its existence with that of the
perishing body, is contrary to rational thought
and to the whole cosmic economy, which uni-
formly subordinates the lower to the higher,
and progresses toward that which is highest
and of imperishable worth. This principle of
subordination which runs up through all the
kingdoms as the principle of unity, becomes
in the moral kingdom the ethical principle.
270 The Immortal Life
requiring the subjection of lower to higher prin-
ciples of action whenever they are in com-
petition. Now, if the lower nature should not
dominate the higher, certainly it should not
control its destiny by putting it out of exist-
ence. This would subject personality, the
highest outcome of creation, to forces that
operate on the lowest plane in Nature. Does
the Most High commit the highest interest,
even His own life as implanted in the souls of
men, to the keeping of blind, impersonal forces
whose proper function is to serve it ? Or does
He not regard it worthy of preservation when
for millions of years it has been the end of His
creative work ? It cannot be that the work of
the Almighty and the Eternal is a failure.
Let us consider for a moment the possibili-
ties inherent in human nature placed in the
existing environment, remembering that these
possibilities, great as they are, have in multi-
tudes of cases been realized as fact. First,
take into account that the human personality
is the most compact and persistent unity that
we know of in Creation. Notwithstanding its
marvellous complexity and the constant changes
of its outward conditions, and in the body it-
self in the course of its development, from
childhood to the stage of decay we see it hold-
The Immortal Life 271
ing fast to its own identity. Think of its
diverse and manifold experiences in its three-
score and ten years, under all the allotments
of life, gathered up into the unity of the one
conscious life ; thoughts, words, and deeds
stored in the memory, all to be identified as
his own and answered for at the bar of con-
science ! Everything else is in constant flux.
The elements work changes everywhere, re-
moving old landmarks, changing the course of
rivers, levelling the hills, and changing the
boundaries of continents. The one thing that
persists in retaining its unity and identity is the
personality of man. He can lose hands and
feet ; his muscles may shrivel and his senses
grow dim or fail, but the years as they pass
leave untouched the unity of his conscious,
personal life. He changes his garments, he
can alienate his property, he can disown his
children, but he cannot alienate or disown
himself. All his bodily tissues have gone to
waste time and again and have been replaced.
The elementary forces of his organism have
interchanged constantly into equivalent forms.
But his rational personality is not interchange-
able. It has no equivalent. It is the same self-
conscious, self-directing unity, the constant
witness to its own identity and responsibility.
272 The Immortal Life
Through all changes it is under one and the
same law of duty. Though encompassed by
the great forces of Nature not one of them
can interfere with his moral sovereignty. He
is above Nature and acts down upon it, com-
pelling the swiftest of its forces to run on his
errands, and the mightiest to yield him its
strength in humble service. Furthermore, he
is a creator ; in art he originates his own ideals,
and in the moral sphere, when conflicting mo-
tives urge their claims, he determines his action
from his own centre of power by an inherent
sovereignty. Into the texture of his character
he interweaves principles more stable than the
hills, and lasting as the throne of God. In
imagination he constructs a world of his own,
shaping his ideals into fact, whether in the in-
tellectual, artistic, or moral sphere, after the
same principles of order, beauty, and rectitude
that the Almighty has put into the structure
of His Universe. True, man must work ten-
tatively and on a small scale, but with all his
limitations he can enter into the divine order
and direct his efforts to divine ends.
Think, too, of the intrinsic worth and of the
moral power of the man who habitually mani-
fests the spirit of love and truth and rectitude,
— does he not, according to his capacity, reflect
The Immortal Life 273
the glory and incorporate in himself the very-
life of God ? Such an one cannot move among-
men without revealing the highest order of
power. In his meek and quiet spirit men see
the repose and dignity of inward strength with
a serenity and peace that are divine. In his
loyalty to truth and right we see the inflexible
purpose united to the docility of a child. In
his integrity is the harmonious blending of all
the virtues, as the sun's ray blends the colors
of the rainbow. Nothing diverts or hinders
his progress toward the highest goal of hu-
man attainment. From trials he comes out
the purer, and through difficulties he gains
strength. Times of darkness do not obscure
his faith ; enmities and opposition do not em-
bitter his spirit. The vicissitudes of a chang-
ing world find him self-poised and constant in
his fidelity to God, as the earth in its path
around the sun. He may be smitten, im-
prisoned, crucified, but in his persistent loyalty
to truth and God he is the one power that is
unconquerable. His very death gives impetus
to the cause for which he dies, and ensures its
triumph. While he seems to perish, he is the
most effective power in human history. The
great epochs that mark the world's progress
are created by such men. Socrates, Paul,
2 74 The Immortal Life
Wickliffe, Luther, Savonarola, are permanent
forces in the world, strengthening and multi-
plying like spirits to achieve larger conquests
for the triumph of truth and right. There is
no ultimate defeat to such champions of right-
eousness. The court that condemned Socrates
is itself condemned by the verdict of mankind.
What he put into Grecian thought has entered
into the ethics and thought of the race. His
heroic spirit, that preferred death rather than
deny the truth he saw, will shine like a star in
the constellation of noble spirits. What he
and all such men sought, but failed then to
realize, is becoming more and more the her-
itage of mankind. All the nations of power
and progress are accepting it as their birth-
right. Its attainment is ever attended with
the stir and shocks of great conflict.
" For all the past of time reveals
The bridal dawn of thunder-peals
Whenever thought hath wedded fact."
It is certain that the endeavors put forth by
such men are in line with the great world-
forces which are ordered by the Almighty.
They must ultimately prevail, and those who
set themselves in opposition will be ground
to powder. Truth and right are eternal veri-
ties. They are attributes of God and they will
The Immortal Life 275
prevail. Napoleon said to Josephine : " I
will not be bound by moral obligations. I
will act out my own infinite will." But the
armies of Europe that conquered him were
made strong by good and great men who, be-
fore the mustering of those battalions, had
won victories for justice and liberty in the
moral field. The champions of right, though
they may have done their work almost alone,
and passed from human sight, have long after-
ward spoken their word of power through the
cannon's mouth.
And though they have passed from the
scene of their labors, are they to have no per-
sonal share in the results of the moral vic-
tories in which they ennobled their character
and matured their strength ? Are the per-
sonalities in which such virtues were enthroned
to perish ? Is nothing left of them but their
posthumous influence, animating those who
have succeeded them ? Does God conserve
only their influence and leave them and their
virtue to perish forever ?
Righteousness is not an abstraction : apart
from the living personality it has no existence.
Annihilate him, and his righteousness is ex-
tinct. Does the Creator care neither for him
nor his virtue, and suffer them to go out of
276 The Immortal Life
existence together? The great values of this
or any other world are perso7is, persons living,
not extinct. Material suns and systems, in
intrinsic worth, bear no comparison with them.
Does God preserve every atom of matter, and
annihilate every soul as of no value ?
Besides, it is certain that this is an ethical
world, ordered by an ethical Creator, and that
ethical law, which is supreme in human reason
and conscience, is the supreme law of the
world. Does not this mean a moral adminis-
tration, as sure and universal in the moral and
spiritual world as that of natural law is in the
material and organic ?
But if the holiest saint and his brutal mur-
derer are alike dropped into non-existence,
their obligations cancelled, and their account
squared by removing them beyond all possible
jurisdiction, the administration of law in the
moral world is a failure. In the winding up
of earthly affairs, no difference is made in the
treatment of the most loyal and the most re-
bellious. Character is not taken into account.
The same destiny is allotted to all, irrespective
of justice, equity or mercy. While in the nat-
ural world the reign of law is universal, in the
moral world, the highest department of cre-
ation, the supreme law of the world is nullified.
The Immortal Life 277
Righteousness counts for nothing, the forebod-
ings of conscience have no meaning, those
slain for their very loyalty to truth have no
vindication, and the sanctities of life vanish
like a dream in the nip-ht.
We have spoken of the world as ordered by
a Rational Intelligence. This is the assump-
tion of every scientist. But a rational mind
holds Right as sacred as Truth. Both are
essential elements of rationality. We must
therefore deny to the world a rational order
unless there be also a moral order in the divine
administration. Or shall we affirm a rational
order in the physical world, and chaos in the
spiritual realm ? Then there could be no
unity in creation as a whole, and the apparent
attempt to construct a consistent Universe is
a failure.
But such a conclusion brings confusion into
the rational mind and despair of ever realizing
truth or righteousness in the Creator of such
a world, since His work as a whole violates the
principles of both rational and moral order.
This conclusion is contrary to the evidence,
and to our strong^est conviction. Our hig-her
nature is certainly correlated to truth and
righteousness. It would be a strange anomaly
if we, of all creatures, have not an environment
278 The Immortal Life
suited to our nature, ministering to our true
and proper life. Besides, creation itself, in its
progress from kingdom to kingdom, has ever
been tending to prepare for the highest
order of spiritual life as its goal ; and the very
essence of that life is the realization of truth,
righteousness, and love. And such, in a vast
number of cases, has been the actual outcome,
the highest possible in kind in this or any
world. So far, therefore, the Most High has
stamped His rational and ethical character on
His work. He shows His love of the highest
order of goodness, and His purpose to make
it the final glory of His creation. He is more
and more imparting His own divine life. It
is for this end that He created beings capable
of receiving it, and came out from absolute
Being, putting Himself in the relations of time
and space, that through marvellous revelations
of His manifold life, in ways suited to us, He
might educate and exalt us into His fellowship.
True, great multitudes do not appreciate His
condescension and His benevolent purpose.
They use the sovereignty given them contrary
to His will and to their own well-being. But
God's years of preparation were long, and His
patience is enduring. But His purpose moves
on, and the race, still in its infancy, will at
The Immortal Life 279
length respond to His love. Love, which
moves all the world's forces, will finally have
its way. It now is effective over matter ; it
will overrule rational mind by the omnipotence
of truth and love. Numbers without number
will enter into the life of God, His kingdom
of rightousness will be firmly established, and
the end of His creation will be attained.
Think you the divine life in the souls of
men gathered in that kingdom will perish ?
It is that which is most precious of all things
in the sight of God. It is of infinite worth.
The whole cosmic movement for ages has been
toward it. Has the Almighty expended His
energies for millions of years, and made all
things to work together for it, to put it out of
being as of no value when at length He has
realized it ? Does He not care for those who
bear His image, or for those who have given
up their life, and all in loyalty to Him ? Does
the Eternal and the Almighty, from all the
harvest-fields of the world, gather nothing of
permanent value ? Will the highest outcome
of all be turned to dust ? This cannot be in a
rationally ordered world. It must reach an
end worthy of so vast a preparation, and
worthy of its all-wise Author. And what is
so worthy as the communication of His own
28o The Immortal Life
excellence and blessedness to creatures made
in His image ?
We close in the words of Dr. Lotze :
" That will last forever which by reason of
its excellence and its spirit must be an abiding
part of the Universe ; that which lacks this
preserving worth will perish. If anything has
preserving worth, is it not that for which cre-
ation itself exists?"
THE END
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