CHAPTER XXV.

THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY.

The Great Question - Facts of Our Being - Immortality Not a Question of Science-A Question of Faith - The Future Inscrutable to Knowledge - The Skepticism of the World - The New Testament Does Not Promise Knowledge, but Challenges Faith-The Alternative of Skepticism Badly ChosenAll That We Can Reasonably Ask-Life Can Not be Tested-Where is the Solid Foundation of Faith and Hope? - What is the Soul? Is the Life Principle Dependent on Organization? The Spiritual Real- We Live in Bodies Because We Have Souls - The Worldly Way of Thinking on this Subject How Science Ministers to this Error of the World - Chemistry, Botany, and Geology-The Most Fruitful Cause of Skepticism-The Unseen Elements the Most Real-What is Life?-Latent Forces Unseen-Life First, Organization Last-A Fair Basis for the Answer to the Great Question.

SOME three thousand years ago, the Patriarch, in deep trouble and affliction, in view of death, and in apparent doubt of the issue, raised with thrilling interest the question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" Nor is it at all probable that this was the first time the question had been asked and agitated. Indeed, under the circumstances in which man is placed, it seems to grow inevitably out of his constitution as a reasonable being. It touches and affects whatever is dear and precious in life, and whatever is dark and dreary in the thought of utter non-existence. And so it may be presumed, that the sun never yet shone upon a man in whom there existed so

much as the mere instinct of the love of life, coupled with the lowest endowments of reason, who did not reflect upon, and agitate, this great question; for really, "To be or not to be," that is the question.

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The facts of our being are these. Death is in the world, and thus far it has passed upon all men. The generations of the past have lived their little day of alternate sunshine and storm, of labor and rest, and the great Reaper" has gathered them as sheaves in his harvest. Upon every one of them this problem of death has been forced, and they have done their best for its solution. And we, who now live, look upon that valley of dry. bones that molder amid the ruins of the past, and upon the graves that are green around us, and, reading there the irreversible fiat of omnipotence that soon we shall be with them, there comes over the most giddy worldling of us all the thought of death's great mystery, and the question whether or not there is a life beyond the dark vale, forces itself upon us with a power that can not be resisted. It is apparent also, that much of spiritual strength and power of endurance, much of patience in adversity, much of comfort in sorrow and affliction, and all of hope for the future, depend upon the answer that we give to this question. It is a hard thing for a man to bare his unsheltered head to the peltings of life's pitiless storm, and feel that in this world only he has hope. Harder still it is for the mother to pluck the dear idol from her heart, and lay her darling down into the grave, with no hope that it shall ever live again. And so it is that affection yearns in unutterable tenderness, the deepest wants of our nature demand, and the great heart of humanity with all its loves, and aspirations, and hopes, plead for an affirmative answer to this question, and refuse to be satisfied or comforted without it. And the real point

we have to decide is, whether reason is the antagonist of nature, so that the intellect must needs crucify our affections, our aspirations, and hopes, and stamp with the seal of truth only our doubts and fears? In approaching a question of this magnitude, one that has been to the ages of the past the question of all questions it becomes us to be humble, to listen reverently to the voice of God that speaks in the intuitions of our own souls, and take care that we do not in the pride of our intellectual strength exalt ourselves above the Creator, and thus fall upon that rock, upon which whoso falleth, shall be dashed in pieces.

First of all it is needful for us to understand the question, and the foundation on which the answer must necessarily rest. Let it be distinctly understood then, in the outset, that the problem of life beyond the grave is not at question of human science, whose answer rests upon demonstration; but it is a matter of belief, and the answer must be of faith. We waive the old question of the validity of human knowledge in any thing, so long mooted by the philosophers, and simply say that, so far as the subject in hand is concerned, it is positively without the domain of human knowledge. We may indeed refer to the past, and to the multitudes that have lived and died, and claim that whether they are now living, or not, is a mere question of fact. And so indeed it is; but the fact happens to be precisely of that character which is not, and can not, be cognizable by the eye of knowledge. Why? Simply because the irreversible law of our being is, that the inferior can not grasp the superior. It may be a fact that angels and innumerable spiritual beings are around us every day; but those higher natures commune not with our organs of sense. Those "forms unseen" meet not these material eyes. Our senses were

given us to place us in appreciable contact with the material universe, not with spiritual natures. Our eyes see matter, not spirit. Hence, if it were a fact, as one of the ancients said it was, that "the air is not more full of flies in summer, than it is of the spirits of the dead,” no powers of the human intellect could by any possibility absolutely know that fact. If those spirits would manifest themselves at all, they must needs appeal to our faith; for vision of them by these material eyes is impossible, and in all that relates to them we must walk by faith.

But, if we turn to the future, we shall find it still more plain that the question, whether or not we shall live after death, must be answered on the basis of faith, and can never be settled as a matter of absolute knowledge. We remember the past, we know the present, but the whole boundless future is positively inscrutable to the eye of knowledge, and accessible only by faith. This is no more true as regards our condition after, than before, death. We no more know absolutely that we shall live after the sleep of this night, than after the sleep of death. We no more know that we shall see the light of to-morrow's sun, than that we shall see the light of an eternal day. Both are alike beyond the domain of knowledge, and in relation to each of them the laws of our being compel us "to walk by faith," or walk not at all. And now what should be noted in particular is the fact, that much of the skepticism of the world proceeds from the vain thought that knowledge in the premises is accessible, and a consequent unwillingness to accept as satisfactory an answer to the question in hand which rests upon the basis of faith. Most men are tolerably content to reason from causes and effects, and balance probabilities, and lean upon faith for all the future of this life; but when they come to the question of a future life, they absurdly enough demand

knowledge. If one asks a man whether he knows that he shall be alive next year, or next week, he is compelled to answer in the negative. If it be demanded of him how he dispenses with knowledge in this case, he is obliged to confess that he walks by faith. But when it comes to the question, whether, dying, he shall live again, he ignores the legitimacy of faith, and claims the right to reject and deny the affirmative, because he does not know how it is. Such persons sometimes give themselves airs, as if they had by their superior wisdom made a grand discovery. They took up this question of future life, and after examining it on all sides, and in all possible lights and shades, came to the sage conclusion that it is all a matter of faith; that nobody can know any thing about it. Indeed, that is the precise spot where they ought to have begun. If they had taken up the New Testament, they would have seen in the outset that it never promises knowledge, but always challenges faith. To one man only, even the Man of Nazareth, has it been given to fathom the mystery, and solve for himself the problem of death or life, and come back and testify of the future life; and as for the rest of us, we must walk by faith, or we must be "all our life-time subject to bondage." The alternative of skepticism is badly chosen. The man who rejects the idea that he shall live after death, because it is all a matter of faith and he can not know any thing about it, ought for the same reason to reject the idea that he shall be alive to-morrow; for the latter is as much unknown and as positively a matter of faith as the former. The truth is, we no more know what will be the next hour than we know what will be a thousand years hence. Both rest equally upon faith. For want of this simple truth it often happens that "a little learning is a dangerous thing." The flippant tyro in philosophy is apt to