"Who forged that other influence, By which he doubts against the sense? "He owns the fatal gift of eyes, Not simply as a thing that dies. "Here sits he shaping wings to fly: TENNYSON, The Two Voices. "For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death nor change; their might Exceeds our organs', which endure No light, being themselves obscure." SHELLEY, The Sensitive Plant. "Life loveth life and good: then trust Are blossoms of necessity." DAVID A. WASSON, Seen and Unseen. "I cannot believe and cannot be brought to believe, that the purpose of our creation is fulfilled by our short existence here. To me the existence of another world is a necessary supplement of this to adjust its inequalities and imbue it with moral significance." THURLOW WEED. IMMORTALITY AND NATURE. "If a man die, shall he live again? ” — JOB xiv. 14. IT is a strange fact that the human mind has always held to the immortality of the soul, and yet has always doubted it; always believing but always haunted by doubt. Yet this throws no discredit upon the truth; rather otherwise. A belief that remains persistently rooted in the mind of the race, generation after generation, yet ever beset by an adverse influence, must have a vitality drawn from truth itself; were the belief not true, the doubt would long since have vanquished it, for nothing but truth can endure constant questioning. The fact, though strange at first sight, is not inexplicable. It is a truth that takes up, and sets forth the antagonism found in man's own nature as a moral being put under material conditions, a mind shut up in a body. The consciousness of mind and moral nature is always asserting immortality; the sense of our bodily conditions is always suggesting its impossibility. It is the same thing that has always showed itself in philosophy; idealism denying the existence of matter, and materialism denying the reality of spirit. But the true philosophy of the human mind is both idealistic and material istic; I am, the world is, this is the general verdict; it holds both to mind and matter; but they tend to war against each other, mind consciously preeminent over matter, and matter forever doubting the reality of mind, claiming it to be a part of itself. Hence, when the practical question of immortality is raised, the mind asserts the continuance of itself after death, subject, however, to the doubts raised by our close subjection to matter. It is under such conditions that we hold all high truths spiritual, ethical, mental. We do not reach unquestioned ground till we come to truths of mathematics, the unshared domain of matter. In keeping with this, we find that nearly all doubt or denial of immortality comes from the prevalence of a materialistic philosophy; nearly always from some undue sense or pressure of the external world. The skeptics are those who study the physical world exclusively; or those who are peculiarly sympathetic with the order of the material universe, or those who fall in with a prevailing habit of materialistic thought. Great sinners very seldom question immortality. Sin is an irritant of the moral nature, keeping it quick, and so long as the moral nature has voice, it asserts a future life. Just now the doubt is haunting us with unusual persistence and power of penetration. Certain phases of science stand face to face with immortality in apparent opposition. The doctrine of continuity or evolution in its extreme form, by including everything in the one category of matter, seems to render future existence highly improbable. But more than this, there is an atmosphere, engendered by a common habit of thought, adverse to belief; for in morals, everything goes by atmospheres. There is a power of the air that sways us, without reason or choice. But, as usual, public opinion lags behind its origin. While there are schools of science that hold immortality to be impossible, still if the verdict of the broadest and highest science could be reached it would be found in sympathy with the doctrine of a future personal existence. For science is rapidly changing its spirit and attitude. It is revealing more and more the infinite possibilities of nature. Its own triumphs have made it humble and believing; it does not now say: it is improbable; but rather, nothing is improbable. The trend of tendency is outward, taking in more and more. Its lines of perspective do not converge but spread outward, taking in more of spirit as they take in more of matter. It is also getting over that stultifying principle of positivism that nothing is to be believed that cannot be verified by result, the most shriveling doctrine that ever found place in philosophy. True science admits that some things may be true that it cannot verify by result, or by any test that it can use. The most thought ful believers in the doctrine of evolution understand very well that it does not account for the beginning of life, for the plan of any life, for the potency that works in matter, for the facts of consciousness, for moral freedom and consequent personality. Here are facts and phenomena that it sees must be accounted for; and it also sees that they intimate and perhaps demand a future life. In short, science is broadening into philosophy, and is getting philosophic insight and outlook. In considering immortality, it is quite safe to put science aside with all its theories of the continuity of force, and the evolution of physical life and inwrought potentiality, and the like. There is nothing here to hinder faith in whatever may be asserted of immortality from other sources. It matters not what the evolutionist says of our past, or through what gradations of being he may trace our physical history; it matters not how we came to be what we are. We are what we are, moral beings, with personality, freedom, conscience, moral sense; and because we are what we are, there is reason to hope for immortal life. Whatever may be the origin of our moral nature, it cannot affect its destiny; our past does not determine our future. So much for science; if it cannot say anything for immortality, it cannot say anything against it. In any attempt to prove immortality, aside from the Scriptures, we must rely almost wholly upon reasons that render it probable. Our consciousness of personality and moral freedom declare it possible, but other considerations render it also probable and morally certain. Indeed, our faith in immortality, aside from revelation, rests upon indications that point to it, omens that presage it, inwrought prophecies that demand it for their fulfillment. But let us allow no sense of weakness to invest the word probability. Many of our soundest convictions are based on aggregated probabilities. In |