B 
 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
GIFT or . 
 
THE 
 HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 OUR REASONS FOR IT 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES FLETCHER DOLE 
 
 AUTHOR OF U THB COMING PEOPLE," " THEOLOGY 
 
 OP CIVILIZATION," "THE RELIGION OP 
 
 A GENTLEMAN," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CEOWELL & CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
3>L 
 
 cv 
 
 
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 Copyright, 1906, 1908 
 By THOMAS Y. CEOWELL & CO. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I have undertaken in the following pages to state as 
 simply as possible the reasons that urge me to a belief 
 in the reality of the immortal life. It may be of in- 
 terest to readers if I say a few words at the beginning 
 about the " personal equation " in my own case. It has 
 always been extremely easy for me to see the difficul- 
 ties that arise in the way of a belief in immortality. 
 I have taken pains never to escape the sight of these 
 difficulties, but rather to seek them out and measure 
 them at their full value. I am unhappy if I have an 
 intimation that there lies somewhere any formidable 
 consideration, with which I am not familiar, touching 
 an important subject. I hold that no man knows one 
 side or aspect of a question, unless he knows its other 
 sides also. 
 
 Moreover, perhaps by some fault of temperament, I do 
 not happen to have the intense yearning that many pro- 
 fess for an endless existence. I feel about a future life 
 as one might feel in regard to setting forth upon an un- 
 tried voyage ; for example, to some distant star. So far 
 as I have confidence that I am a citizen of a rational uni- 
 verse, I can conceive that the unknown voyage will be 
 worth all the trouble it may cost. The venture stirs my 
 interest. But otherwise, I have little sense of clinging 
 to life, merely in order to live. Thus, though I heartily 
 enjoy life, " taking it all in all/' yet I have no eager de- 
 sire to live however comfortably to great age, and I 
 should distinctly deprecate for myself or for others 
 the fulfilment of a certain noted Kussian biologist's 
 
 fif\/kA O/l 
 
IV PREFACE 
 
 prophecy that mankind may learn to extend the average 
 lifetime to a hundred and fifty years ! 
 
 So far, then, as I feel desire for life, the desire is that 
 my life may count for something, and have use or value. 
 Why should any one care to have existence at all, unless 
 his life contributes in some way to the sum of the worth 
 of the universe ? Life, now and here, interests me, be- 
 cause it is social ; that is, we are each able to serve, help, 
 and enrich one another, and to increase the total wealth 
 and welfare of humanity. It is only on some such terms 
 as these that life seems worth living anywhere. 
 
 I have asked myself whether I would not be content 
 if I might in some way pass over into that " immortality 
 of influence " of which we sometimes hear. I think that 
 I could be content, provided this were the best use to 
 which I could be put, and provided this influence itself 
 were more than a breath destined to pass away forever 
 as soon as our tiny planet cools away. In other words, 
 we can bear death, for ourselves, if we are not wanted 
 anywhere. But we do wish to be able to respect the 
 world we live in, and we could hardly respect a universe 
 that created a Socrates, a Michael Angelo, or an Epicte- 
 tus only to destroy him, as the early gods are reputed to 
 have devoured their own offspring. 
 
 This brings me frankly to confess to a certain bias. I 
 own that the more I know about life, the more I desire 
 to discover rationality in it. I had rather be a citizen 
 for even a brief period in a significant and intelligent 
 world than to live forever in a meaningless world. I 
 had rather be able to look out for one day on the possi- 
 bilities of an infinite universe than to possess millenniums 
 circumscribed within bounds of time and place. I can- 
 not help this kind of bias. It seems to be involved in 
 
PREFACE V 
 
 the nature of mind. Other men gladly make the same 
 confession. Here is one of the facts of human nature 
 that thought has to reckon with. 
 
 It is as if there were something in us, like Prometheus 
 in the ancient myth, that says in the face of all merely 
 brute powers : Break us down if you choose ; annihilate 
 us ; yet we are more and greater than you ; we defy you 
 to hurt us. For we are the offspring of reason, and our 
 supreme desire is toward the good and the beautiful. 
 What a marvellous thing, on any ground, that such a 
 conception has entered into Man's mind! 
 
 I have owned to a certain bias. Does the fact of such 
 a bias constitute a disqualification against the student, 
 the investigator, or the thinker who frankly acknowl- 
 edges it and makes allowance accordingly ? I think not. 
 A man consults a physician upon the question of his 
 health. He has a bias in favor of being found consti- 
 tutionally sound. All the more careful is he to choose 
 an expert physician, who will make no mistake even in 
 favor of pronouncing him well. He will insist that his 
 physician shall tell him the whole truth. 
 
 In fact, the very word " philosophy " implies a bias. 
 One of its roots means love. The true philosopher loves 
 order, rationality, beauty, unity, goodness. He has a 
 faith, that is, a bias toward belief that truth will be 
 found one with the good. He is all the more bound, 
 because of this bias, to insist on the whole truth and 
 nothing but the truth. Like the man who ties his boat 
 to its mooring, he is bound to test the holding power of 
 his rope. If he can break it, he has no use for it. So 
 the man who loves truth is never afraid to put it to rig- 
 orous tests. If he can break it down, he has no longer 
 use for it. 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 I am aware that all this involves a majestic assump- 
 tion. We suppose that there is such a reality as truth; 
 we suppose that we live in a reasonable or logical world, 
 and that our thinking follows certain intellectual laws. 
 We suppose that our philosophical bias in favor of order 
 and unity, like our instinct toward food, is a part of 
 the reality of the world. We suppose that the sense 
 of duty to follow truth, which honest men everywhere 
 recognize, is also real. If this is " reasoning in a circle," 
 it is the only possible mode of reasoning. 
 
 We are able, however, to throw our minds "out of 
 gear," and to suppose invalid our splendid assump- 
 tion of a realm of order and reality. We can become 
 thorough-going agnostics. What happens now ? It fol- 
 lows that we have ceased for the time to be thinkers. 
 We have got out of the world of logic into a dream 
 world where no logic binds things together. Talk about 
 " truth " as we may, we cease to feel any obligations to 
 follow truth or speak truth. Terms and words that had 
 meaning and value before, such as right and duty, now 
 fade out of sight. All that remains to us is to be ob- 
 servers of sensations. To become thinkers again means 
 to take up the old assumption, and to go on again as if 
 we belonged to the ideal realm of logic, order, beauty, 
 truth, duty, and unity. 
 
 Surely no one claims that the attitude of intellectual 
 agnosticism, except as a temporary experiment, is whole- 
 some or fruitful. It is like holding one's breath, — a 
 desirable power to use on occasion. But the moral and 
 ideal life is always surging in us and compelling us to 
 breathe. The more deeply we breathe, the more fully we 
 live. 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 OUR REASONS FOR, IT 
 
 There are doubtless more people to-day than ever 
 before in the history of the world who are in doubt 
 whether they have any right to hope for immortality. 
 Sometimes, they want so much to believe as to be 
 reluctant to open the question at all or to face any 
 facts which may seem to militate against their faith. 
 Nevertheless, they are not comfortable in this irrational 
 unwillingness to think about or discuss the greatest of 
 subjects. Others have a vague idea that the hope of 
 immortality is a matter of sentiment or blind faith, but 
 not quite respectable in the realm of intelligence. Even 
 high-minded men seem to feel that a duty to truth may 
 compel them to smother a natural longing in their hearts 
 to believe in immortality. They do not fairly credit the 
 possibility that reason, truth, and reality may lie on the 
 side of this hope and not against it. 
 
 Still further, men are very shy of the supposed teach- 
 ings of science. They are shocked to hear that certain 
 scientific men doubt or disbelieve in immortality. Thus, 
 it was remarked after a certain Ingersoll Lecture upon 
 Immortality at Harvard University that the faces of the 
 listeners, as they went out of the hall, bore a look of 
 sadness, as if they had heard the death sentence pro- 
 
 1 
 
2 .' : . < \"&&$r/&0EE.\0ti 'IMMORTALITY 
 
 • '• -.••» *•*.• 
 
 nounced. Did these people really expect that a man of 
 science could bring chemical or physical facts to throw 
 any light on the problem of immortality ? 
 
 The fact is, that we are all on one level as regards the 
 great questions that concern our common humanity. 
 The study of ancient documents, acquaintance with 
 Greek or Hebrew, familiarity with the terms of philoso- 
 phy, expert knowledge of soils or material elements, 
 no more than high office in church or state, gives a man 
 special standing above his fellows to tell them what they 
 ought to do, or what they must believe, or what limit 
 they must set to their ideals or their hopes. The ordi- 
 nary observer thousands of years ago knew practically 
 as much as the most learned physician knows to-day 
 about the fact of death. To all visible appearances it 
 ended life then as now. Nevertheless, in the face of 
 all appearances to the contrary, hosts of people, both the 
 unlettered and the thoughtful, have believed, and still 
 believe, that death is not the end of man. It is possible 
 to trace the development and the history of the phases 
 of this extraordinary belief. But before the main ques- 
 tion, whether or not this vast trend of belief points to a 
 reality, the expert man of science only can say as he does 
 say, that if his science gives him no reason to urge in the 
 affirmative, it likewise gives him no knowledge more than 
 the rest of us have to the contrary. The supreme con- 
 dition for wise and sane thinking here — the same 
 as on every subject touching human welfare — is the 
 fullest possible understanding of the facts that consti- 
 tute and characterize human life, both as it commonly 
 is and at its highest and best. We want also the largest 
 intellectual hospitality and fearlessness. 
 
 There are certain concessions which must occur to 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 3 
 
 every one who begins to think abont immortality. Let 
 us range them up in clear sight and discover frankly how 
 weighty they are. Doubtless if we knew nothing else 
 but these things, we should not dream of immortality. 
 
 In the first place, modern science has in no respect 
 changed, for better or worse, the ordinary doctrine of 
 plain common sense touching the fact of physical death. 
 To the unaided senses death is death, the cessation of all 
 consciousness. No one certainly is able to see how life 
 can continue. 
 
 Moreover, so far as any apparent evidence goes for the 
 continued existence of myriads of " souls " or " spirits," 
 who have passed through the gate of death, this evidence 
 is of the most meagre character. No one can show that 
 such a mode of continued life is impossible. But most 
 of us, not being trained as detectives, are obliged to wait 
 for the discovery of modes of communication that will 
 bridge the gulf that now surely seems to divide "the 
 quick" from "the dead." Meanwhile the general style 
 of the alleged messages from the spirit-world is not such 
 as to make continued existence there seem precious or 
 desirable by comparison with the best actual values of 
 life in this world. It is pathetic to suppose the wisest 
 and best among "the mighty dead" are so helplessly balked 
 in their desires to reach their earthly friends as at the most 
 only to convey to them dreary platitudes and trivialities, 
 — the mere echoes of what we have already heard. 
 
 It might be said that one tremendous event in human 
 history — the resurrection of Jesus — ought to set aside 
 all question. It is a striking fact that during the ages 
 when few perhaps doubted the story of the resurrection, 
 the fear of death weighed on men's minds as at no other 
 period. Few out of millions seem really to have taken 
 
4 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 pleasure in the hope of immortality. The time has now 
 come when a man, even though he be a member of a 
 Christian church, wants more than the tradition of an 
 event far away in time and space, which itself needs to 
 be demonstrated. Men feel as an old minister in Boston 
 once remarked to a friend, "I wish as long as I live to 
 cling to the belief in the resurrection of Jesus, but I do 
 not see how the next generation can do this." And they 
 probably add, as this minister did, "I am very thankful 
 that my hope in immortality does not depend upon the 
 resurrection." It is at least highly significant that when 
 a notable leader in a great evangelical church, Dr. George 
 A. Gordon, presents his best thought in his book, "The 
 Witness to Immortality," he takes pains to establish the 
 theistic faith by philosophy, before he adduces his reasons 
 for believing in the resurrection of Jesus. Neither is it 
 common for the professors in theological schools to make 
 immortality stand or fall upon the testimony of the men 
 and women who are reputed in the Gospels to have seen 
 Jesus after his death. For throughout history too many 
 marvellous stories of like events have been told to per- 
 mit us to rest any precious conviction upon such testi- 
 mony. At any rate, whether we like it or not, we must 
 concede that this is the habitual attitude of the modern 
 mind. To state it in positive terms, we are convinced 
 that the only sure ground for the hope of immortality 
 must be in the fact that we are in some true sense im- 
 mortal by nature. For unless we thus possess immortal- 
 ity, no miracle could demonstrate this fact. 
 
 Again, we admit that no one can see how the transition 
 can be made into any other life than this which we here 
 know — a life involved at every breath and thought with 
 the senses and physical conditions. This element of 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 5 
 
 utter mystery is already contained in the present life. 
 Who knows at all how it is enabled to proceed? Who 
 knows even what the senses are of which we lightly speak ? 
 Who in this era of astounding transition regarding all 
 physical theory can draw a line between matter and mind, 
 or even say that the most solid material is not in reality 
 as subtle, elusive, and invisible as thought is, or will, or 
 spirit ? Who shall say that spirit is not the more com- 
 prehensive word, rather than matter or physics ? Every- 
 thing goes to show this as likely. The question of the 
 "how," pushed far enough, would seem no more to 
 threaten the splendid possibilities of an immortal life 
 than it threatens to destroy the actuality of our present 
 existence. 
 
 We must add that we frankly call immortality a hope. 
 This is what it has usually been, and what it is quite 
 possible that it always must remain. From its nature 
 it must be a hope. So far as it lies in the future it is 
 beyond our sight. If it means little, — the playing of 
 harps and pianos and endless gossip, — we might be told 
 by one of its messengers what it is like. But the more 
 it means, the less could any one — even God himself — 
 tell us in advance what or how it may be. In this re- 
 spect it would only follow the analogy of the profoundest 
 experiences of the present life. Who could have made 
 known to us beforehand the mysteries, and yet the indis- 
 putable facts, of friendship, of fatherhood or motherhood, 
 of the high joys of art and poetry ? 
 
 It follows, doubtless, that our minds may sway on this 
 subject, as on other subjects of human interest, all the 
 way from more or less wonder and uncertainty to various 
 degrees of conviction and confidence. Some may even 
 sway back and forth from a positive to a negative atti- 
 
6 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 tude. Few minds, perhaps, rest solidly either on the side 
 of the denial of immortality, or again on the side of such 
 absolute belief, as, for example, Theodore Parker and 
 Tennyson were wont to express. Even Whittier seems 
 to have wavered in his belief. The fact of such wavering 
 on the part of many minds may as well be frankly ad- 
 mitted. It seems to be a law governing our changing 
 moods, that when we suffer depression, our concern, 
 whether with or without adequate ground, touches the 
 subject that we care most for. Even the millionnaire 
 may thus apprehend that he is coming to want. 
 
 Once more, it must be confessed to be a burden upon 
 our thought of immortality that there are so many of us. 
 No one now knows how long the world has been the 
 habitation of man, but the increasing succession of the 
 generations of human beings of all ages and degrees of 
 intelligence, from the level of animals upward, quite 
 baffles our imagination. And yet tremendous as is the 
 burden of our thought, the fundamental weight of the 
 mystery consists in the fact which we all admit ; namely, 
 this vast procession of toiling, suffering, aspiring human 
 lives. We have not only the question, What will become 
 of them? but the question, Why are they here on this 
 vast march of life at all? 
 
 Let me pass on to present as rapidly as possible the 
 great sweep of the reasons that forever, and always more 
 and more powerfully, impel the mind to the hope of 
 immortality. 
 
 Eirst, I am impressed with the fact that man's life not 
 only belongs to the realm of the senses and what we call 
 material things, but it belongs essentially, in respect to 
 all that most concerns us as human, to the invisible realm 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 7 
 
 of thought or spirit. Whatever we name this realm of 
 being, even if we shy at such a makeshift word as " spirit" 
 to describe it, the fact faces us that we are men, not 
 merely by virtue of the circulation of blood in our veins, 
 but by virtue of feelings, ideas, aspirations, convictions, 
 states of consciousness, which cannot be weighed or meas- 
 ured, but which are at least as real as anything that we 
 can see or touch. We play with numbers, we poetize, 
 we behold visions of beauty, we love and we forgive, we 
 dream of human welfare to be worked out centuries be- 
 yond our time; we philosophize over vast schemes of 
 optimism or pessimism. This is simply to say that we 
 inhabit an ideal or spiritual realm. 
 
 We need not now enter into the question of what 
 this realm of spirit is. We need not insist that there is 
 any division between it and the realm where visible 
 " things " appear and animals breathe and move. Grant, 
 if you choose, that some profound underlying substance 
 makes the realm of spirit one with the realm of matter. 
 We only say that the realm of thought and spirit exists. 
 You cannot live a human life and ignore it. Its facts 
 are at least as real as any facts are. That they cannot 
 be measured by the instruments of the laboratory does 
 not touch their validity. We know that we love our 
 children, when we cannot even see their faces, much 
 less see the motion of our love. The idea or hope of 
 immortality obviously belongs in this realm of man's 
 life. Whatever you think of it, it is on this range and 
 not on the range of food values that we have to discuss it. 
 
 Next, it occurs to us that the presence and prevalence 
 of the idea of immortality in such a world as this is a 
 wonderful thing. It is wonderful if the spiritual inter- 
 
8 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 pretation of the universe is true. But it is also wonder- 
 ful, if this is only a material world and the idea of im- 
 mortality has not a shred of reality behind it. I am 
 aware of the nature of the hints and suggestions through 
 which students of the childhood of the race tell us that 
 this idea may have grown up. Grant all that they say. 
 The idea in itself is none the less magnificent and won- 
 derful. Suppose it to have been born on the side of 
 man's senses and out of material environment. The 
 wonder is that it found a sort of soil in man's mind to 
 grow in and to become what it is now at its highest, — a 
 majestic and daring hope, free of selfishness, noble and 
 ennobling, setting aside all bounds of space and time. This 
 is a most extraordinary product to come out of the mere 
 play of animal tissue! You can no more explain it in 
 this blundering way than you can explain your convic- 
 tion of a proposition in geometry or any other profound 
 fact of consciousness by the motion of particles in your 
 brain. The movement of the particles, whatever it may 
 be, is subordinate to the spiritual reality which they only 
 serve to image or register. Why do atoms of matter so 
 move together as to register and impress thoughts and 
 ideas ? 
 
 Again, it is worth while to pass over on occasion to the 
 side of absolute scepticism, and to look over the precipice 
 which, in the denial of the hope of immortality, now awaits 
 the mind. The mind is not between a difficult belief 
 and an easy doubt. The doubt is itself gigantic. Can 
 we believe that the march of all the generations of man- 
 kind has been the way of death only ? Can we believe 
 that the noblest and holiest, the grand men of genius, 
 the leaders and helpers of mankind, have perished like 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 9 
 
 so many cattle? Then we must translate all life into 
 the terms of final death. " The Choir Invisible, " and 
 everything else, disappears and " leaves not a wrack be- 
 hind." The more we contemplate this negative interpre- 
 tation of the universe, the more tremendous is the strain 
 on our intelligence. Scepticism becomes at least as diffi- 
 cult as faith seemed to be. 
 
 The fact is, this is a world of values with all sorts of 
 gradations upward. The more we investigate and pon- 
 der, the more clearly these values emerge and indeed be- 
 come necessary to thought. It is a workable theory of 
 the world that its chief use, and happiness, and aim, so far 
 as man is concerned, consists in learning values and know- 
 ing how to direct them. The child or the savage plays 
 with counters and beads. Presently he learns the uses 
 of all sorts of tools and building materials. Why does he 
 build and learn to toil ? His eyes are now toward the 
 meaning of home and citizenship, of friendship and love, 
 of justice, mercy, and humanity. The happiness of a 
 Franklin, for instance, rises from indulgence in sensual 
 things to a quite new value of happiness; namely, the de- 
 sire to do good, that sets all sensual things under his 
 feet. There is a limit to the lower kind of values. You 
 can buy them off with other values of their own kind, or 
 you can exhaust them. There is really no limit to the 
 values that appear in the realm of the spirit. You can- 
 not buy a mother's love or a patriot's devotion. You can- 
 not exhaust the justice in a community by overdrafts. 
 There is doubtless what must be called, for want of any 
 better term, an " infinite " element in the higher ranges 
 of values, as if gold and jewels were but figures and im- 
 ages to set these nobler values forth. It is the mark of 
 
10 THE HOPE OF 1MMOBTAL1TY 
 
 manhood or intelligence, not to doubt this, but rather to 
 recognize it. 
 
 The idea of immortality is an assertion of the inde- 
 structible worth of the values that characterize humanity 
 at its best. The lower values, even force and motion and 
 the atoms of matter, appear to persist, even while they 
 change their forms. At any rate, they effect something 
 in exact proportion to their bigness. They all make the 
 way and lead up to the fruitage of the universe in its 
 high values of truth, wisdom, justice, and good will. To 
 affirm " immortality " is simply to say that in a world 
 where other and lower values all accomplish something, 
 and pass on and up in the trend of their action, where 
 even a grain of sand on the seashore has its place and 
 does not exist for naught, where the spring flower has its 
 chance to die in order to live again in the form of fruit 
 at the harvest, the greatest of all values, to which the 
 others are mere counters, must likewise go on in their 
 proper sphere and not come to naught. My mind, as it 
 takes the path of least resistance, is forced to take this 
 track in its thought. What hopeless confusion of all 
 that we know about values it would be, if we had to think 
 that after a few aeons, while the frozen earth still kept 
 every atom intact and registered in its material every 
 impact of force, all the high values that had made it 
 once worth while to study its elements and its forces — the 
 humane and spiritual values that men had been working out 
 with their toil, their tears, their blood, had utterly vanished ! 
 This is to say that all virtue and goodness have the 
 worth of the pigment of a rose leaf, or the tint of a sum- 
 mer cloud. Our intelligence reacts from such a doctrine. 
 Our intelligence then reacts toward the idea of immor- 
 tality. 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 11 
 
 There is no such thing as justice, or truth, or love, in 
 the abstract. All these are the terms by which we de- 
 scribe persons. Where no persons are, there is no con- 
 ceivable thought, or righteousness, or will, either good or 
 bad. Expel if you can the idea of personality from the 
 universe, and it is doubtful whether anything would be 
 left, for everything appears to exist in some relation or 
 other to conscious and intelligent, that is personal, life. 
 What is force that represents no directing will ? What 
 is matter, except the crude stuff with which intelligence 
 shapes thought and expresses itself ? There is no intel- 
 ligible attribute or quality in things, in weight or color 
 or taste, except as some person either uses or perceives 
 the attribute. Its existence has no significance without 
 an intelligence ; that is, a person into whose consciousness 
 it can enter. This is to say, that the visible world some- 
 how fits into the spiritual fact of personality, and the 
 universe breaks up with personality taken out of it. 
 
 Be this as it may, it is evident that immortality is 
 and must be personal immortality. There is often hazi- 
 ness of thought on this point, as if personal qualities 
 might be immortal and persons cease to be. What, for 
 example, would become of " immortal " righteousness in 
 a world where no persons existed ? How does any one 
 suppose an abstract immortal "influence" would leap 
 out of a dead planet to effect action in some star in the 
 system of Sirius ? 
 
 When we speak of personality, however, we tread in 
 the realm of mystery. There is nothing so real and 
 precious. We are as sure of our personality as we are of 
 any fact, but it cannot be weighed or measured, and it 
 can hardly be described. It is as mysterious in man as 
 it is in the thought of God, no more and no less. It does 
 
12 THE BOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 not consist in bodily form, but it shines through the form 
 and uses it, as God may be conceived to shine through and 
 to use the structure of the universe. The most that we 
 know about it in man is that it is not complete, but is 
 something in the process of making. It is hardly observ- 
 able at birth; it is normally most evident at the end of 
 man's career. It distinguishes man from all other ani- 
 mals ; for while they and he begin alike and have much 
 in common, and while no one can dogmatize as to the 
 limits of their possibilities, man alone rises to the pos- 
 session of actual, though still imperfect, personality. 
 Every little child and the lowest savage possess at least 
 potentialities in this direction. 
 
 We know true personality best in the well-developed 
 and highest types of men, as we know fruit best when 
 it is really ripe. There have been men and women 
 throughout human history who have been true, gener- 
 ous, faithful unto death, fearless, and kind. These quali- 
 ties alone would not perhaps have constituted them 
 persons. What makes their personality is a certain 
 unity in their lives, whereby all their experiences and 
 their acts tend to become harmonized, as it were, and 
 to move in one direction. If the atom may be con- 
 sidered as a tiny centre or vortex of force, we can by 
 a parable say that the life of a person is some such 
 centre of spiritual force. Let us call this spiritual force 
 love or good will. The noblest life is doubtless that 
 in which all its powers and gifts — the more of them, 
 the better — move in unison with the ruling good will. 
 Here is a kind of life on which you can depend ; it will 
 not disappoint you; it will grow more noble and con- 
 sistent; it will increase in its momentum; it is a thing 
 of beauty ; all men love and admire it. 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 13 
 
 Grant for a moment that there had been only one 
 such life of a refined and all-round person ; it would be 
 the most wonderful and significant human fact that 
 men could study. No investigation of physical things 
 could begin to be so interesting and important as the 
 evolution of a single complete, normal, and ripened life. 
 Here is one who has the secret of happiness ; here is 
 promise of finding out to what man may attain. Is 
 it possible to develop other mature and normal lives, 
 such as this was ? The fact is, that we have not only 
 a single life worthy to be called a true person ; we have 
 an increasing number of such lives. We are accumu- 
 lating the biographies of a legion of noble personalities. 
 There were never so many produced as in the past 
 century. We begin to see the human conditions upon 
 which their development depends. They are largely 
 spiritual conditions. No man can be accounted a stu- 
 dent of science who would neglect the consideration 
 of these facts of personality. Do we not believe in per- 
 sonality ? If not, what do we believe in, or what value 
 is there in studying the processes of life and not coming 
 to the secret of life itself ? 
 
 Let us consider a moment the extraordinary im- 
 pression that the righteous or noble personality always 
 makes on our minds, and this in its fulness, the more 
 mature we are ourselves. Take the instance of Jesus. 
 It is not necessary to believe that his risen body passed 
 through closed doors and appeared to his disciples. The 
 deeper fact is that his person seemed to those who knew 
 him to be above the range of death. That which con- 
 stituted him a person was not that which died. We 
 are not speaking in this instance of some evanescent 
 quality, like the perfume of a flower, but of that which 
 
14 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 was the heart and essence of the man's being, his very 
 self. Such is the nature of the person at its best. 
 There is no word to call it by that seems more accu- 
 rately to describe it than the term " immortal." This 
 word alone carries the impression which such a life 
 makes on beholders. We are not saying that this 
 impression must therefore be true, but we are inclined 
 to think that, if all lives were so complete as some 
 whom we have heard of and known, no one would doubt 
 that man is "immortal." 
 
 We tend to believe that this is a world of purpose. 
 This is only to think that the universe must have 
 significance. A purposeless universe seems to us con- 
 temptible. It may be said that our own minds impress 
 this idea upon us, and the desire to find purpose cre- 
 ates our belief. But our minds are themselves the out- 
 growth or the children of the universe. The nature 
 of intelligence is to seek order, significance, purpose. 
 It cannot be irrational to trust this character of our 
 minds. It would look as if the highest faculty in us 
 answered to the highest fact of the universe. The 
 contrary supposition certainly reduces all thought to 
 mockery. 
 
 Now, the idea of immortality is almost the only means 
 of expressing our thought of a purposeful universe. To 
 say that the highest values do not die, to say that noble 
 persons go on in their personality, to think that the uni- 
 verse exists to manifest and to develop this order of life, 
 is to affirm a purpose worthy of the universe. Is there 
 any other conceivable purpose ? If so, what is it ? For 
 a universe of mere everlasting succession of shifting 
 phenomena is not a rational universe. 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 15 
 
 To believe in a purposeful universe is to believe in the 
 integrity of the universe ; namely, that it is one, that it is 
 orderly, and that it can be depended upon. All science 
 really proceeds upon this faith. It is " faith," for though 
 it grows out of our own experience and observation, we 
 cannot absolutely demonstrate it. All philosophy is the 
 attempt to think the facts of the world and of life into 
 some harmony and unity. The very word "universe," 
 that we use so glibly, is the expression of a conviction or 
 faith in the integrity of the world. It would be strange 
 and unreasonable to use this word to sum up the result of 
 our impressions of visible or material things, and then, 
 just where the interpretations of visible things touch the 
 life of man, to stop saying " the universe," and to reduce 
 the realm of human or spiritual facts to chaos. We are 
 possessed by the intellectual necessity, if we think of a 
 universe at all, to think of it so throughout. The pro- 
 found facts of human personality must belong to the 
 integrity of the universe and must be safeguarded and 
 not brought to confusion by its laws. This is just what 
 we mean when we utter our hope of immortality. There 
 is that in the universe which does not merely play with 
 man's life, which does not create its offspring, — Isaiah, 
 Jesus, Dante, Lincoln, — and then blindly dash them to 
 pieces, like foam on the beach. Such is our instinctive 
 idea of the integrity of the world, without the faith in 
 which both science and philosophy lose their way. 
 
 To affirm our belief in the integrity of the world is 
 also to conceive that we are ourselves a part of that 
 integrity and that we partake of its nature ; I mean, of 
 course, at bur best, and as we become more completely 
 persons. We differ herein by a great height from the 
 
16 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 merely animal life. We share with the animals in the 
 elements which compose our bodies, but we are lifted 
 above the animal world in the sense of the order, the 
 beauty, the intelligence, the movement and evolution of 
 life, the conception of purpose — all that constitutes ideal, 
 intellectual, or spiritual integrity. We are as much chil- 
 dren of the universe on this most rational side of it, as we 
 are its children on the side of our physical environment. 
 Men sometimes ask whether, if man is immortal, he 
 must not always have existed ? We may well afford to 
 let this mystery pass. The main fact is, that in all that 
 makes man most human he seems to partake, now and 
 here, of that spiritual substance which conceives, ordains, 
 and creates the world. He enters into the vastness, the 
 complexity, and the unity of its scheme as if it were a 
 drama unrolled for his understanding and his delight. 
 He and the great Dramatist must be akin. For it is 
 not credible that man made the drama out of his dreams. 
 Whence then the dreams ? 
 
 It is a world of startling possibilities. The last 
 hundred years have witnessed an astonishing series 
 of developments on the physical side. The most ex- 
 traordinary predictions have come true. The most un- 
 expected powers have been developed, as if men had 
 only to turn them on and use them. The most hidden 
 secrets have opened up to light. The range of mystery 
 surrounding man's sight has been transfigured from a 
 realm of darkness into blue sky, full of stars and light. 
 The wonder is not that man is so little, but that he is 
 so mighty. He inhabits a world of infinite possibility. 
 There appears a profound law of prayer underlying all 
 things. In less mystical terms, there tends to be some 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 17 
 
 provision to meet every genuine need or desire. It is as 
 if it were written : " Whatever is best, that shall come 
 to pass. Ask and ye shall receive." 
 
 Shall we trust this law of our nature in all outward 
 things and stop trusting it in the one sphere where life 
 becomes significant and most human ? The possibilities 
 stretch in every direction. The unexpected happens. 
 Geniuses, intellectual and spiritual, come to birth. New 
 ranges of character and happiness disclose themselves. 
 New necessities are laid upon us. 
 
 It is here that the old parable of the chrysalis and the 
 butterfly has its significance. It is only a parable, but 
 it happens beautifully to illustrate the marvellous law 
 of surprises with which nature forever meets us. It is 
 no objection to the action of nature to urge that we can- 
 not see how a thing can be done. Again and again the 
 thing is done that we would not have dared to believe 
 possible. It is as if we were traversing a winding road 
 among forests and hills and streams. We come to places 
 where the way seems blocked by towering cliffs, and we 
 march to what seems the edge of a chasm. As we go, 
 the way turns and opens and shows great stretches of 
 view that we never had imagined. This is the nature of 
 the world we live in. It is no monotonous or machine- 
 made universe. Its waters break out of solid ice; at a 
 little change of their particles they leap out of our sight 
 and become invisible and expanding power. " We know 
 not what we shall be." 
 
 There is no article of more common faith than that this 
 is somehow a moral world. This is the faith of the best 
 thinkers. It shows no sign of abatement because men 
 study science, On the contrary, Franklin and Darwin 
 
18 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 and Huxley and Haeckel are always teaching us to tell 
 the truth and be honest. Why? Because the world of 
 facts and the world of men and the history of mankind 
 urge tremendous lessons upon us, and all in one direction. 
 "Be righteous," they say. "Be modest, be truthful, be 
 humane; show your good will; do good and not evil." 
 Here is the way of life. These are the very values which 
 we saw enter into the constitution of personality, as the 
 iron and lime enter into our bones. They are in us be- 
 cause they are in the structure of the universe. How 
 else ? We made them ourselves no more than we made 
 the iron, or created electricity, or invented gravitation. 
 We are what we are because we participate in the moral 
 structure which belongs to the universe and which there- 
 fore impresses itself upon us. 
 
 An appeal to justice is often made in favor of immor- 
 tality. Men have suffered innocently here, and they 
 ought, it is said, to have compensating satisfaction some- 
 where else. But this appeal to justice is in itself an 
 expression of a faith in an ideal or just universe. It im- 
 plies a standard of right. So far, then, this expectation of 
 justice, sure sometime to be made manifest, is an instinc- 
 tive tribute of human nature to the conception of an 
 ideal universe. The hope of immortality is wrapped up 
 in the thought of a just world. 
 
 We have referred to the idea of an "immortality of 
 influence," which many good agnostics and high-minded 
 men of science are pleased to recommend for the sub- 
 stance of hope. Of course this is not immortality at all. 
 But the fine thought behind it is another tribute to a 
 fundamental idealism that characterizes noble natures. 
 Where is this mystery of influence that we all acknowl- 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 19 
 
 edge and believe in? It is not in physics or chemistry or 
 climatic conditions. It is in the invisible realm of thought 
 and emotion. It makes men humane and sets up new 
 currents of action and will in them. Whoever talks of 
 influence expresses his faith in a spiritual universe. Im- 
 mortality is only another of the terms used by the citi- 
 zens of that universe. 
 
 I have said hardly a word about God. We care for 
 facts and not for names. But the play of a blind power, 
 the motion of atoms, or even of an infinite multitude of 
 mystic centres of life, would not constitute a universe. 
 Unity itself is essentially an intellectual or spiritual 
 conception. Even to talk of force comes near to saying 
 will. What we discover in the universe and in ourselves 
 as a part of the universe, — power, intelligence, order, 
 purpose, integrity, unity, and especially that which we 
 find in the most mature and perfect men, namely, right- 
 eousness and good will, — all this goes to describe a 
 person. We mean a person in no narrow and material 
 sense, but in the only sense in which personality can 
 exist, that is, in the realm of thought and spirit. We 
 have facts or qualities which cannot possibly be detached 
 from one another, or supposed to exist each by itself. 
 They are facts which cohere and tend to make a har- 
 mony. They imply a kernel of reality. They are facts 
 which man only discovers, but does not create. It is 
 under the impress of these facts, peculiar to personality, 
 that in all times men have tended to some thought of 
 God. They cannot lightly shake off this thought. It 
 stands for the only rational answer to what would other- 
 wise be the blind enigma of existence. It is mysterious 
 enough, but so also is our own existence as persons. It 
 
20 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 is no harder to demonstrate than is the fact of the person- 
 ality or selfhood of our friends. All incongruous appear- 
 ances to the contrary, the men around us on the whole 
 impress us as persons and not as bodies only. Their 
 faces, often impassive or expressionless or even forbidding 
 to us, at times flash out messages, thoughts, and the con- 
 viction of a guiding purpose, and we believe in them, and 
 love them accordingly in a manner that transcends the 
 physical senses. So we seem to receive flashes of intelli- 
 gence, purpose, good will, out of the heart of the universe, 
 and we believe in it as the seat of an infinite personal life. 
 The mind rests in this thought, as it rests in no other 
 thought. The phenomena of the world fall into order 
 under this thought as they will not otherwise. Especially 
 as we live in fidelity to this thought, and try the experi- 
 ments which it requires of us, we find life at its fullest 
 degree of satisfaction. This thought of God seems to 
 match with other things and to bind them together and 
 to complete the integrity. Out of this thought of God 
 grows all religion. And man seems to be constituted to 
 need some kind of religion. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that in all ancient pantheons, 
 there were plenty of gods, but no real persons. The gods 
 were like so many quarrelling and arrogant men — only 
 persons in the making. The modern idea of the immanent 
 God at last brings us the conception of full personality. 
 Here is the unity of power, thought, beauty, and good- 
 ness. Here is perfect good will, manifesting itself in a 
 divine purpose of bringing its creation, its children, to 
 the fulfilment of personality like its own. Take this at 
 first as a working theory, as one takes the idea of gravi- 
 tation in the physical realm, and see how all problems, 
 intellectual and practical, fall into lines of order. 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 21 
 
 Pause here a moment and see what it means that man 
 should ever have dared to dream of such a thought of 
 God. Confuse all his thinking, shatter his faith, smother 
 his aspirations, reduce him to the ashes of the barest and 
 most narrow form of materialism, yet you can never again 
 think meanly of the creature, risen out of the dust, in 
 whose thought has been created the beautiful temple of 
 such a faith. If he is not a child of God, then, as has 
 been wittily remarked, a God ought to be created to ac- 
 count for the glorious audacity of this mere creature of a 
 day. Again, as ever before, we find ourselves not be- 
 tween a difficult belief and an easy denial, but face to face 
 with an incredible kind of denial, which baffies thought 
 and makes science and philosophy alike barren. 
 
 The hope of immortality is no doubt an outgrowth or 
 consequence of the thought of God. Men can never 
 prove it by itself as an isolated dogma. It is a part of 
 the integrity of religion itself. It is here that we dis- 
 trust any alleged material proof of immortality. If our 
 existence is not involved in the warp and woof of the 
 spiritual structure of the world, if our nature is not of 
 the immortal order, then while you might prove that the 
 spirits of the dead continue to exist in some strange 
 whispering gallery beyond our usual reach, this would 
 not be immortal life. 
 
 See now what it means when we venture in any real 
 sense to say that " we believe in God, " in other words, 
 that purposive goodness is in the heart and essence of 
 the universe. We are bound to believe at a leap that the 
 best possible will come to pass. The intelligence and the 
 power of the universe are pledged to work out a destiny 
 worthy of the scale of the infinite thought. This is in- 
 
22 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 volved in the integrity of the universe, and in its rationality. 
 The preposterous will not be suffered to happen. We could 
 not respect a God, much less worship or love any being, 
 who brought ranks of creatures into existence, shared the 
 mightiest thoughts with them, inspired infinite hopes in 
 them, lifted the noblest of them into rapturous communion 
 with Himself, continually unfolded their minds and hearts 
 and disclosed the unexhausted capacities of their being, 
 only to drop them into nothingness, as children blow 
 their soap-bubbles and drop them out of the. window to 
 burst and vanish. Is this all that God can do ? We do 
 not find this credible. The fact is, the thought of im- 
 mortality grows right out of the heart of our faith in 
 theism. You cannot separate them from each other. 
 
 A word may naturally be expected here touching the 
 common expectation of the world about future rewards 
 and punishments. Justice demands, it is thought, that 
 the unequal conditions of human life shall sometime be 
 equalized. Without venturing to claim so much as this, 
 without daring to assail the moral order as unjust even 
 in this life, insisting that except in a moral world it is 
 meaningless to talk of justice or injustice, we are bound 
 to say that human existence at least points toward and 
 seems to call for some adequate fulfilment. We see in 
 each life the beginnings of the making of a person ; we 
 interpret even failures and crimes into the terms of moral 
 discipline ; we look for an outcome worthy of the cost 
 and pain. No outcome except the final winning of per- 
 sonality satisfies our minds. We ask for no childish 
 system of rewards ; we do want, by a deep law of our be- 
 ing, to be of some use in the universe. The only way to 
 be of use is through the growth of our personality. But 
 
THE HOPE OF 1MM0UTAL1TY 23 
 
 the life of this world is not enough to fulfil our personal- 
 ity — a name to describe a sort of infinite growth. 
 
 The hope of immortality is not a mere subject of 
 thought ; it has to do with a man's power and essential 
 well-being. We ask what the factors are that constitute 
 a normal or healthy life, or, in other words, what makes a 
 life most efficient and happy ? One of these factors clearly 
 is a righteous purpose ; another is good will ; the element 
 of hope is another. A man may live without hope, but he 
 can never be at his best so. Take away all hope and 
 you have diminished his life power. 
 
 May not the man, however, have hope in his heart and 
 yet not in any sense think of immortality? Doubtless, 
 indeed, many persons find hope in the notion of a post- 
 humous influence, or in a dream of coming fame, as chil- 
 dren in a beleaguered and doomed city might think of 
 to-morrow's play. My point is that hope, while it may 
 live in a vague way without any definite object, tends to 
 die at the roots with the denial of immortality. This 
 kind of denial, if outright, becomes, the more one considers 
 it, a fatal limitation. The larger a man's nature, the 
 more you have hurt him the moment you have cut off 
 all sky view, as it were, from his sight and shut his soul 
 within finite walls. Suffer him a bare window-pane 
 through which a star may shine, and his soul will live. 
 Deny him all rays of the infinite possibilities, and the 
 man will never be the same in moral or spiritual health. 
 We know this by experience, having made experiments 
 with ourselves and having swayed at times from the 
 mood of hope to the mood of utter doubt. It was as if 
 the spiritual temperature had gone down toward the line 
 of death. 
 
24 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 The fact that the hope of immortality quickens the flow 
 of all our interests and makes life seem worth while, the 
 fact that the man with this hope in his heart is more 
 alive and effective, and that the denial of the great hope 
 lowers the moral temperature, does not demonstrate im- 
 mortality. But the fact is very significant. So far as 
 we believe in a universe, here is one of the harmonies 
 that go to constitute it. So far as we believe in the 
 intellectual integrity of the world, here is another point 
 out of many, where it is really easier to believe that 
 nature is true in stirring hopes in us and making them 
 essential to our best life, than that she is playing false 
 with us. Do not the biologists tell us to trust in what- 
 ever makes life richer or more effective? 
 
 This factor of hope is specially bound up with our social 
 and moral activity. Granted the hope of immortality, we 
 have a different kind of world from that world from which 
 hope is closed. It is as different as a voyage to a port on 
 a splendid ship is different from floating on a loose raft 
 in mid ocean. This is not to deny that heroism might be 
 shown on the raft, for example, by dropping off the raft 
 to give more room and food for the survivors. But no 
 one would exert himself very much to propel the hopeless 
 raft, unless a ship appeared on the horizon. So while 
 we might and would maintain the kind of negative moral- 
 ity which consists in doing no injury to our neighbors, 
 unless in an atmosphere of hope we should lack the virile 
 and positive moral earnestness which urges men to ardu- 
 ous and costly efforts for liberty, for democracy, for new 
 standards of humanity. We do not need to say " Let us 
 eat and drink for to-morrow we die." If we are noble, we 
 can never say this. But the very word " noble w appeals 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 25 
 
 to the thought of the sacredness and significance of human 
 life, to the idea of spiritual values, to the hope of human 
 progress. To deny immortality is to deny the very values 
 to the sense of which all heroism appeals. Who could 
 feel the slightest enthusiasm in efforts to crowd the land 
 with millions of people, all furnished with model houses 
 and a living wage, but believing nothing and hoping 
 nothing beyond their brief span of years, more than the 
 comfortable cattle on which they fed ? Better, we say, 
 to have been thrown to the lions in the Coliseum, better 
 to have marched to death with Joan of Arc, better to 
 have been mobbed with Garrison or Lovejoy, than to live 
 in a world where the eternal visions had perished. But 
 when we say this, we go over to that side where hope 
 springs immortal again and will not die. 
 
 This is to say that all the magnificent words which 
 make literature, and ring through literature and poetry 
 like battle-cries to rally men to their highest modes of 
 action, — justice, truth, virtue, heroism, the good, the best, 
 — such words, bespeaking man's spiritual nature, group 
 themselves with the words "hope" and "immortality." 
 They stand or fall together. Eaise your estimate of one 
 of these words, and you unconsciously raise your estimate 
 of all. Depreciate any one of them, and you depreciate 
 all alike. Set a price or a limit upon the worth of virtue 
 and you have limited your vision of all things hoped for. 
 Set a finite limit upon hope, and you have set the same 
 finite limit upon virtue or truth. You have even depreci- 
 ated also the value of logic and reason. 
 
 We may think of three departments that make the 
 unity of life, — thought, feeling, and conduct or practice. 
 
26 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 There is no subject which does not fall under these three 
 dimensions. There is no subject which we really under- 
 stand unless we know it in each of these three aspects. 
 Even with the study of mathematics, goes the natural 
 sense of admiration at its beautiful exactness and its 
 infinite ranges, as well as an impulse to experiment in 
 the handling of concrete numbers and forms. The hope 
 of immortality, likewise, is not a mere mode of feeling any 
 more than it is a startling subject of intellectual curios- 
 ity ; it also touches the practical life. Each man has his 
 choice, either to live as if the hope of immortality were 
 a delusion, or as if it were valid. Here are two different 
 modes of conduct. The same man with this hope veri- 
 tably added to his possessions is a different man in temper 
 and behavior from the man he would be with this hope 
 subtracted from his being. See how much this means. 
 Let us state our argument in the following form : — 
 
 It is generally agreed that no physicist has demon- 
 strated or can possibly demonstrate the denial of immor- 
 tality. He can no more deny than he can demonstrate. 
 On the other hand, every one must admit that on the 
 side of man's essential humanity, there are a whole 
 series of striking considerations which have always 
 suggested some profound fact underlying the thought 
 of immortality. There is therefore plenty of room 
 to hope. To say the least, it is as intelligent to 
 hope as to deny. We may then legitimately make ex- 
 periments with ourselves and watch their outcome. We 
 can take the idea of immortality as a working theory, as 
 we may and often do take theism. We may live a day, 
 or a month, or a year, on the basis of this theory, and act 
 accordingly. We act thus as the children of eternity. 
 We treat and respect ourselves, we treat and respect 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 27 
 
 other men as beings of an immortal nature. All mean- 
 ness, injustice, selfishness, is straightway ruled out of our 
 lives. Anxieties and fears cease for the man who con- 
 ceives of himself as upon an immortal course. We have 
 immediately lighted upon a great secret of the happy 
 life. No man ever truly made the sort of practical ex- 
 periment in conduct that befits the hope of immortality 
 without a distinct lift in the range of his being. Nei- 
 ther does he in this kind of experiment shut his eyes to, 
 much less deny, a single known fact. He simply puts 
 his emphasis upon the facts that make him a man, rather 
 than upon the facts that constitute his body. 
 
 We are here probably using the same kind of reason- 
 ing which Professor William James applies under the 
 somewhat obscure name of " pragmatism." Dr. Washing- 
 ton Gladden calls it " The Practice of Immortality." We 
 discover that a man cannot possibly behave too nobly. 
 The nearer his conduct becomes to that of an immortal 
 being, the better it is for him in heart, mind, body, and 
 all. He is thus most closely a complete man and at the 
 height of his personality. 
 
 Now, we have no other test of truth than that it is 
 whatever fits or makes harmony, or, more plainly, works 
 well. We tend to believe in a thing if, without fatal 
 drawbacks, it is good for use. We believe in most human 
 propositions on this basis. We believe, for example, in 
 the monogamous family, in popular education, or in the 
 democratic theory of government. We follow a good clew 
 as far as it will carry us. So in practical conduct, we 
 follow the hope of immortality. It not only makes the 
 harmony or unity which we need in our thinking, but, 
 better yet, it fits into practice at once and goes to make 
 life effective and whole. 
 
28 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 Professor James has written on " The Will to Believe." 
 We suspect that these words and the form of his argument 
 must carry a prejudice to many minds. We scorn to be- 
 lieve merely by force of will. We will not consent to 
 believe or to hope, unless for good reason. We will not 
 believe a thing merely because it is pleasant. But we 
 purpose none the less to be good investigators. We are 
 quite willing therefore to take the attitude of hope — as 
 legitimate an attitude as that of doubt ; we take it, not by 
 sheer force of will, but so far as grand spiritual considera- 
 tions and humane sympathies naturally urge us toward 
 it. We will watch what happens to us ; we will be on our 
 guard against false conclusions. We will not shut our- 
 selves away from the climate of hope on the ground that 
 it is a healthy climate to live in. Other things being 
 equal, this is precisely the reason why we should live in it. 
 
 What if it should prove that the hope of immortality 
 grows naturally out of the practice of a certain worthy 
 kind of life, and cannot be easily had except upon the 
 terms of such a life? This is to say that immortality 
 belongs to persons. This is to say that its quality begins 
 here and now in so far as men become persons. The lower 
 and the less unified the personality, the less reason has 
 any one to be persuaded of immortality. The more we 
 care for personality, the higher we conceive it, the more 
 we grow toward it, the more instinctively we are pos- 
 sessed with the thought that it cannot die. 
 
 This accounts for our swaying moods from hope to 
 doubt and back again. This accounts for the differences 
 of attitude between various men. Do we drop to a vul- 
 gar mood and think in terms of bricks or money? In 
 our lowest moods no argument for immortality avails 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 29 
 
 much with us. Do we catch sight of some great person- 
 ality, — an Emerson, a Channing, Marcus Aurelius ? Do 
 we see for the moment what such a personality is worth 
 beyond all visible treasures? Then in this our highest 
 mood whole ranges of vision move us to hope. Show us 
 persons enough, stir us often enough to aspire to be 
 persons, and we should habitually expect immortality. 
 In other words, the hope of immortality tends to be a 
 sort of measure of our spiritual health and growth. 
 
 Is not this, again, what we should expect in a moral 
 universe ? The hope of immortality is not a cheap thing; 
 it is costly. It is not an idea that can be had merely for 
 the reading of books ; it cannot be demonstrated in an 
 evening at a lecture hall by " materializations " ; it cannot 
 even be had on the strength of the bodily reappearance 
 of the best man who ever lived. It depends upon char- 
 acter and grows out of character. It goes with the daily 
 practice of immortality. Otherwise, it is only at best a 
 matter of temperament, tradition, and hearsay. 
 
 A very important consideration follows. All that the 
 reason can do with any problem touching conduct is to 
 give advice. The reason can pronounce that a certain 
 course seems on the whole worth while to entertain and 
 pursue. Its advice is like a permissive bill enacted by a 
 legislature. Whether one takes such advice or not, de- 
 pends upon a distinct motion of the will. So now with 
 the thought of immortality, the reason gives its permis- 
 sion to move in the direction of a magnificent hope. " Go 
 over, if you will, " says the reason, " to the side of the hope, 
 and let the hope sway you. Do not fear any longer to 
 let yourselves go." Many persons need to take this coun- 
 sel to heart. The reason has done all that it can. It 
 
30 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 unties their chains and sets them free. The way of the 
 open sky lies before them. Let them set forth, and take 
 the good of their hope, and see what comes of it. Hope, 
 like every other normal function, grows by exercise. Right 
 as we were to pause and refuse to move, while the direct- 
 ing mind asked time to consider, as soon as the mind gives 
 us even as much as the freedom of a mighty " Perhaps " 
 or " Suppose, " we now become wise in taking all the 
 freedom that belongs to us. For we are not creatures of 
 reason alone, but of heart and will and life also. 
 
 We may now fairly ask whether there is not a certain 
 reality in the old-fashioned idea of authority, namely, that 
 certain persons have been endowed with the right to teach 
 their fellows the doctrine of immortality ? We answer, Yes, 
 there are authorities, albeit not infallible, touching every 
 subject of human interest. Thus we listen to the testimony 
 of every good man who speaks out of his experience of the 
 facts of the good life. We pass judgment on the com- 
 parative sanity and soundness of men who speak on this 
 subject, as on every other subject. On certain points we 
 find a growing tendency to a consensus of experience and 
 opinion. Such a consensus of the noble and high-minded 
 does rightly move our minds, not to follow in blindness, 
 but to listen with respect. 
 
 Here is the authority of such a Master in the good life 
 as Jesus was. Did he feel within himself the stirrings 
 of an immortal nature ? Did he have visions of per- 
 sonality for which this earthly life seemed a mere be- 
 ginning? We are impressed that he was a real man 
 and spoke out of genuine experience. What if he and 
 others saw more than the average man has yet seen ? 
 At our best, we tend to see and to say very similar 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 31 
 
 things. Whatever any human being has tried and dis- 
 covered for himself to be real, becomes authoritative to 
 persuade us to make trial of the same. In this sense 
 there was never so much authority for the idea of im- 
 mortality as there is to-day. The world never had ac- 
 cess to so many of the lives of the wise, the noble, and 
 the true-hearted, the men of veritable religion, as it has 
 to-day. With all degrees of caution and assurance the 
 cheering voices come to us of those who sing as they go 
 with their faces to the light. Those who give this tes- 
 timony are not the selfish, they are not the light-minded, 
 they wish no mere gift of years ; they desire no idle 
 heaven ; they pray rather to be useful ; they have lived 
 the life of good will, and they trust that good will is the 
 most enduring force in the universe. They go out into 
 the mystery as those ready to do the deeds of good will 
 forever. They approve themselves to us as worthy to be 
 called citizens of the universe, for there is no conceivable 
 place where they would not be at home. They seem to 
 us of the nature of the infinite life at the heart of the 
 world. We do not think that we shall be misled in fol- 
 lowing their lead. 
 
 I have no idea of making a chain of so many links to 
 compel assent. On the contrary, I have simply tried to 
 set forth the mass of considerations that always and in- 
 creasingly urge my own mind, even in its most sceptical 
 moods, to face toward the way of hope. I have dealt 
 with facts at every step, not indeed facts that can be 
 studied with the help of the microscope, but neverthe- 
 less the solid facts in which human life consists. What 
 impresses me is that these facts all go together and point 
 one way. They are cumulative. They belong to a cer- 
 
32 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 tain unity which yon cannot break without doing vio- 
 lence to every essential part of the whole. The hope 
 of immortality arises out of this unity of thought, feeling, 
 and conduct. My conviction is that it is here, because 
 it is true. 
 
 This is really the same kind of reasoning that leads us 
 to believe in the wonder and mystery of a physical uni- 
 verse. We do not believe in this wonderful unity be- 
 cause we can wholly demonstrate it by physical evidence. 
 It is not even an apparent unity to a child or a savage. 
 It is a unity which nature doubtless suggests, but we 
 have to admit that it hardly could be at all except for 
 the demand of our minds to discover unity. Our faith 
 in a universe is not merely the outgrowth of the observa- 
 tion of outward phenomena; it is also a sort of intel- 
 lectual or spiritual necessity, without which the mind is 
 baffled and stupefied. So, too, we find that the hope of 
 immortality belongs to that deeper unity of thought and 
 conception, of which our interpretation of the outward 
 nature is merely an image. 
 
 Finally, the^tremendous question recurs, How can these 
 things be? This is the underlying mystery in all life. 
 In this world of wonderful and dramatic possibilities, 
 where the facts are daily more startling than any mira- 
 cle, we not only do not need to know precisely how im- 
 mortality may be, but we suspect that we are better off 
 with the hope than we could be with a kind of knowledge, 
 for which we are not yet ready or sufficiently developed. 
 As it is well for the child that he cannot be told the 
 experiences of manhood and parenthood, so it is well for 
 men generally to be obliged to see the future as we see 
 distant mountains in a haze of cloud-land. " Clouds 
 
THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 33 
 
 and darkness are round about " them. It is enough that 
 rifts of sunlight are in the clouds and the broad bases 
 of the hills are there, whether we see their summits or not. 
 Meantime golden hours of vision come to us in this 
 present life, when we are at our best, and our faculties 
 work together in harmony. There are times when 
 intelligence is full and quick, our feelings are healthy, 
 matching great thoughts, and good will possesses us. In 
 these best hours the mere limits of space and time seem 
 small; we appear to belong to a divine universe, we are 
 admitted to share in the universal thought, we feel the 
 unity of all things, we are at one through sympathy with 
 all who live, toil, suffer, and aspire. We follow one pur- 
 pose of beneficence. This is the sanest as well as the 
 highest of human experiences. It purifies us, it both 
 rests and inspires us for better work, more conscientious, 
 wiser, more accurate, more disinterested, more effectual. 
 We are in such hours most truly ourselves as individuals, 
 or persons, while we seem to belong to the Universal Life 
 — the one Person that constitutes the world. Is it not 
 this of which Wordsworth writes ? — 
 
 "that blessed mood, 
 In which the burthen of the mystery, 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world, 
 Is lightened, — that serene and blessed mood, 
 In which the affections gently lead us on, — 
 Until the breath of this corporeal frame 
 And even the motion of our human blood 
 Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
 In body, and become a living soul ; 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things." 
 
34 THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 Does any one imagine the food which we eat to be real, 
 and these great experiences of life to be less real? 
 
 Here, then, is a sort of earnest or foretaste of the im- 
 mortal life. We surmise that immortality is like this. 
 At our highest and best we have discovered the quality 
 of immortality. We are content; in view of certain 
 supreme experiences which life offers here and now we 
 say, "All is well." We cannot doubt that whatever 
 comes will also be well. This is the faith of religion, grow- 
 ing out of the most impressive facts. This faith grows 
 equally out of the highest reaches of our intelligence. 
 

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