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FIRST THOUGHTS l II. THE FUTURE LIFE FORESHADOWED BY THE LAW OF EVOLUTION ... 12 ,, III. A SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE 27 n IV. MAN'S DESTINY IN A FUTURE LIFE : (1) Man's destiny in a Future Life con- sidered in the light of the perfections of God 59 (2) The Appeal to Jesus 75 (3) The witness borne by Nature and Human Nature IOO (4) The teachings of the Bible concern- ing man's destiny in a Future Life. 117 (5) A rational view of man's destiny in a Future Life 145 THE FUTURE LIFE. o CHAPTER I. FIRST THOUGHTS. THE subject of this little work is one that will never grow old. As soon as man came to be really conscious of his life here, he began to have dim forebodings, vague hopes, and haunting fears concerning a life hereafter. It seems a part of what we may call the very make of man, that he shall ask what is beyond the boundaries of the seen. " If a man die, shall he live again?" is one of the oldest questions he has asked. Nor is it likely that the question will ever cease to be asked or cease to interest ; unless, indeed, the whole of our present conditions of being and limitations of knowledge should be completely altered, and faith and hope be changed for sight. A thousand incidents in life, a thousand 2 THE FUTURE LIFE. thoughts, hopes, instincts, longings, forebodings, impel us to think of the mysterious unseen ; to turn towards that " undiscovered country " our wistful gaze ; to question reason, conscience, science, faith, and hope, if perchance light may shine for us along the path that so many well- loved feet have gone. Some there are who put aside the subject as a subject for continuous in- vestigation or consideration, because they do not cherish any hope that the problem is capable of any solution; but they cannot dismiss it from their hearts ; unless, indeed, by a long sustained or vigorous effort they have contrived to cut themselves adrift from what they regard as the superstitions of mankind : but these are exceptional cases ; and it remains true that the vast majority of human beings are tenderly sensitive in regard to this great question, and must fervently long for light that may increase or lead to hope or faith. Life itself is confessedly a mystery, not only the future but the present life. An acute French writer lately said that "an expanse of darkness, empty or peopled, envelopes the nar- row circle wherein flickers our little lamp." All we can see is that around us .there are objects of interest innumerable. Sometimes we venture, or force our way, a little beyond the narrow FIRST THOUGHTS. 3 circle lit by the tiny lamp we carry ; and then vre find how little we know, but never know liow much we have to explore. What lies beyond we do not know : nay, we do not know where we are, or whence the lamp has come, or who the little creature is that carries it. We do not understand ourselves. No one knows what life is ; no one knows how the brain thinks, or how matter in motion or in certain chemical conditions can result in thought. But our ignorance is our hope. Is it possible to believe that the forms and manifestations of life known to us are the only or the highest forms and manifestations of life ? Is it not, on the contrary, an irresistible inference from every fresh glimpse of the wonder-world through which we are groping our way, that forms of manifes- tations of life inconceivably subtile and potent may come to light in time ; to say nothing of the sphere of life and energy that has too long been regarded as the sphere of the " supernatural " ? It was not a dreamer but a man of science of the highest eminence, and a demonstrator of the correlation of physical forces, who said that " myriads of organised beings may exist imperceptible to our vision, even if we were among them." Coleridge, in his translation of Schiller's words, only expressed 4 THE FUTURE LIFE. a feeling that is as new as it is old, and as old as it is new, when he asked : " Where are now the fabled beings that peopled space ? The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat'ry depths ; all these have vanished, They live no longer in the faith of reason ! But s!ill the heart doth need a language ; still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names. Oh ! never rudely will I blame his faith In the might of stars and angels ! This visible nature, and this common world, Is all too narrow." Yes, that is the one great and glorious cer- tainty: "This common world is all too narrow." We cannot see beyond it, but we are com- pelled to draw inferences that carry us beyond it : and the scientific imagination which a Tyndall justifies and praises, as well as the religious instinct which a Martineau postulates and employs, helps us or compels us to draw these inferences. It may be argued that this line of thought will only lead to the confession of ignorance which may be deemed equivalent to a kind of agnosticism. Nothing would be more useful in our own day than the thorough facing of such a suggestion. We have nothing to fear from the confession of ignorance ; and many things to hope from an earnest-minded FIRST THOUGHTS. 5 and right-hearted agnosticism. The confession of ignorance at all events shuts out denial : that is something. It may even lead to a fresh ground of hope. To know that we do not know, only because there is so much to know, is a totally different thing from deciding that we do not know simply because we are only staring into vacancy. There is an agnos- ticism that is simply conceited, masterful, and insolent ; but there is an agnosticism that may lead a man to a "hope that maketh not ashamed : " for it is just when we begin to realise the vastness of the universe and the limitations of our faculties that we may begin to cherish the truest and the tenderest kind of hope, a hope, not based indeed on know- ledge, but actually on want of knowledge, in the sense that the very magnitude of the unrealised constrains to awe, to a sense of littleness and a sense of dependence, and justifies the religious instincts and affections in passing on beyond the sphere of the known, where 'faith and hope and love" may find what the eye has not seen, what the ear has not heard, and what has not entered into the heart of man to conceive. This consideration underlies more or less all that follows in these pages. The future 6 THE FUTURE LIFE. life must, to a very great extent, be always a matter of inference; at present, it must be almost entirely a matter of inference : but the inference may come to have a strong cumula- tive value as the subject is contemplated from many points of view; so that, at last, hope may possibly ripen into " the full assurance of faith." At the same time, there is another con- sideration of very great importance which will increasingly be regarded by thoughtful persons as of value. It is this, that the introduction of the idea of a future life throws a perfectly wonderful light upon the present life, and makes it an immeasurably nobler thing in every way. A late atheistic writer actually assured us that atheism would give us "a nobler esti- mate of man." It is amazing ! Will it be a nobler estimate of man to say that instead of being a creature in process of development, destined to an eternity of progress, his educa- tion, his hope, and his life, are limited to the present confused and narrow scene ? Will it be a nobler estimate of man to reduce him to the level cf " the beasts that perish," who is more knowing only that he may be more miserable, and who is more capable only that he may be more baffled and broken? Will it FIRST THOUGHTS. 7 be a nobler estimate of man to tell him that he can love, only to lose ; that he can labour, only to be disappointed; that he can hope, only to be blotted out ; and that, however much he may lift himself above the tyranny cf material things, however much he may develop and educate his higher powers, he is only decking himself for a funeral, and growing a glorious manhood for the grave ? Right or wrong, the believer in a future life, has, at all events, the noblest, nay, the only noble esti- mate of man ; and, if he is wrong, then mankind is simply unspeakably poorer than he believes him to be. Right or wrong, he has the only estimate of man that offers to do him perfect justice, and that gives him hope of adequate education and advancement. John Stuart Mill, without being a believer, saw this plainly enough. Hence, in his last message to a world to which he had rendered such signal service, he said : " The beneficial effect of the indulgence of hope with regard to the govern- ment of the universe and the destiny of man after death, 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 which are awakened in us by our fellow-creatures and 8 THE FUTURE LIFE. by mankind at large. It allays the sense of that irony of Nature 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 the world seems about to begin reaping the benefit of it. The truth that life is short and art is long is from of old one of the most discouraging parts of our condition ; this hope admits the possibility that the art employed in improving and beautifying the soul itself may avail for good in some other life, even when seemingly useless for this. 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 aspirations being no longer in the same degree checked and kept down by a sense of the insignificance of human life by the disastrous feeling of 'not worth while.' The gain obtained in the increased inducement to cultivate the improve- ment of character up to the end of life is obvious, without being specified." These weighty words will not lose but gain in force as time goes by. The development of mankind, the advances of civilisation, the creation, in fact, of a higher type of human being, with FIRST THOUGHTS. 9 interests and hopes that must keep pace with his own advancement, will add immensely to the value of the argument derived from a consideration of life here as a scene of enter- prise and education, as a preparation for results and advancements beyond the incident we call death. A heightened sense of the value of human life and the sanctity of human love can only lead to the conclusion that death will not end all; that death is really only promotion to a higher life; that "the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." One other consideration will certainly deepen and intensify this conclusion, the more it is pondered : that, in whatever sense we believe in God at all, in that sense we must also believe He must love the good and desire their continued existence. It is difficult to think of the gracious and the good as really dead; it is difficult to believe in the possibility of that pathetic waste. Francis \V. Newman, in his thoughtful and beautiful work, Hebrew Theism, puts this well : " Those who feel how far the Moral is better than the Material, Find it hard to believe that true virtue can ever perish, IO THE FUTURE LIFE. That which has God's nature seems to them im- mortal as God ; A noble sentiment, having nothing superstitious, Nothing of mere fantasy and superficial credulity, But springing up assuredly out of spiritual depths. And as love is the noblest and best of the affections, So eminent in glory, that we pronounce it Divine, The poet is praised, who denies that Love can die. But when those who stand over the grave of a .) virtuous friend Lose faith in immortality, they grieve and lament, Not merely that their friend loses happiness, or they their friend, (For in every case they lose him, ) but, that Virtue should perish, That the Estimable and Lovely should exist no more. This is no fond selfishness or foolish grief, If that is lost to existence, which is of all things most valuable. Rather, we could not be virtuous, if we did not grieve ; And if death is to be eternal, why not also grief ? But if Virtue grieves thus for lost Virtue justly, How then must God, the fountain of virtue, feel ? If our highest feelings, and the feelings of all the holy, Guide rightly to the Divine heart, then it would grieve likewise And grieve eternally, if goodness perish eternally. * * * If then we must not doubt that the highest has deep love for the holy, FIRST THOUGHTS. II Such love as man has for man, in pure and sacred friendship, We seem justly to infer, that those whom God loves are deathless : Else would the Divine blessedness be imperfect and impaired. " Nor is this argument less impressive if we drop from it the personal element, and think of God only as a Power working through the countless ages for this very thing, the de- velopment of man, and of man in his highest condition, as wise, and just, and noble, and good. That Power which works through such inconceivable periods of time, and, with infinite patience, through such incalculable and minute stages, must, in a sense, be counted to be thwarted and despoiled if her children perish; and must be thought of as eternally heartless or sorrowful, pitiless or miserable, if her sub- limest and loveliest creations are evolved only to be hidden in a grave. We know but little, but we have surely every reason to hope and believe that nature is not betraying us in lead- ing us on to the expectation that we shall not die but live, and carry on to diviner issues the never completed work of earth and time. CHAPTER II. THE FUTURE LIFE FORESHADOWED BY THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. THE great scientific word of our day is " Evolution." It is a word which marks one of the most fruitful discoveries or generalisa- tions of our time. It points out the profound law of life by which all things come into being, not by chance, not by miracle, not by so-called "supernatural" agencies or volitions, but by orderly processes, through the "survival of the fittest" and the development of possi- bilities hidden in manifold forms of life and their environments. By its lielp we have traced the origin of man to very lowly sources, and have marked his career, in an ascending scale, to his present place in a world he is going on to possess. Paul, in one of his many remarkable anticipations of modern thought, had this truth in mind when he said "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain to- gether until now : and not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the spirit." " The whole creation," conscious or THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 13 unconscious, seems to moan with its birth- pains, the sorrowful but prophetic intimations of future unfoldings : and man, who has at- tained "the first-fruits of the spirit," is not exempt ; for he is not yet perfect ; and the winning of the spirit only strikes out from him a new sighing and moaning for the unrealised, the unattained. What will come of all these human aspira- tions, discontents, longings, struggles, hopes, and fears ? Paul tells us. He is full of hope. He sees in this very conflict something that inspires him with confidence. He hears in this aspiring cry a coming psalm of praise. We are not at rest, because we have a destiny to fulfil : we are not content, because we have something to seek : we are not happy, because the true end of life is not yet attained. The sighing of nature only echoes the sighing of man. No wonder that a refined, tender, sympathetic thinker like Paul took all this into his heart, and heard there the plaintive cry of a world in pain. But he has an abounding consolation. He believes in the heavenly har- mony, as the solution of all earthly discords and incompletenesses. He hears everywhere the undertone of sadness ; bat everywhere it pro- phecies of better things to come. 14 THE FUTURE LIFE. The history of the world, as we know it, abundantly confirms the insight of the seer. The more we know of its history in the past, and of the laws that control the life of the present and prepare the life of the future, the more clearly we see that Progress rules every- where. In truth, what Shakspeare says of man we may also say of the world on which-' he dwells, that "there's a divinity doth shape" its " ends," however " rough hewn " they may be. There was a time when the earth was not habitable ; and again there was a time when it was only habitable for creatures whose hideous or monstrous remains, preserved in the great stone book, help to unfold the wonderful revelations of " creation." There was a time when " the whole creation " literally " groaned aid travailed in pain." Fire, water, and ice, were the three mighty artists and artisans that shaped our valleys, flung up or carved our mountains, cut out our river courses, spread our seas, constructed our islands, and levelled our continents. But this groaning and travailing in pain was the sign, not of death but of life: and now, where tempests and torrents had their hideous way, rich valleys smile, and broad mountains treasure up the sweet airs of heaven, and glorious seas and rivers carry the THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 15 traffic of the world. These mighty changes came, for the most part, not as sudden convul- sions, but as orderly developments : and at last man came in, to find that nature, with many labours, had prepared for him a home. The story of man's development has been a repetition of the history of the globe on which he dwells. Through what struggles has he passed ! Tempests have tried him ; fire has searched him ; his " rough hewn " nature has been " shaped '' by the mighty forces that build and break the social, political, and religious refuges of the world. Races have been devel- oped, and nations have been created and educated, only with groaning and pain : and, without suffering, they have entered into no heritage of good. How restless men have been ! how hungry in their curiosity ; how eager in their research ; how courageous in their dis- coveries ; how defiant in their demands ; how weary, and way-worn, and broken-hearted all through ! But what has been the end of it, nay ! the end is not yet, what is coming of it all? The great doctrine of our time, as yet only half elaborated and half understood, turning as it does upon the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest, seems at first the revela- tion of a harsh law in nature. We see the 1 6 THE FUTURE LIFE. weak dying out before the strong, the unadapted giving place to the fit, the incapable perishing before the capable; and the sight is apt to leave on the mind the impression that nature cares only for the type, not for the man. But we must remember that it is, at any rate, the survival of " the fittest " that is aimed at. Nature, then, is steadily working for the fit, the beautiful, the harmonious: it is, in that sense, the " Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness." Hence, Nature is neither blind nor cruel. As we listen and watch, we hear a gentle voice beyond the sighing of her children ; we see the gleaming in of the light of a glorious face; we feel that a loving heart is beating where we thought there was only an iron hand. When, then, we come to man who has at- tained to "The first fruits of the spirit" the problem deepens. He is conscious of new wants, new affections, new hopes ; he " moves about in worlds not realised." Paul says that we are sighing, waiting for our " redemption," " the redemption of the body." Does he mean redemption from the body ? Here, at all events, is a new meaning in the ever recurring sigh of nature. Here is a new development fore- shadowed, a new departure in this marvellous process of evolution. It is as though the beautiful THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 17 moth could be heard moaning and sighing through the shell of the chrysalis ; as though the eager spirit could be heard beating against the bars of its fleshly cage, and sighing for freedom : and the suggestion is that when death unbars the doors, it will soar away like a delivered bird singing and soaring into the summer morning sky. Thus considered, there is no such thing as death : but what we have been calling death is a great promotion, the emancipation of the bondsman, the liberation of the explorer, the coming into completer and purer possession of ourselves, ay ! and of one another, the emerging of severed souls, in an all-revealing and all-uniting world, " Nature shuts the door after everything that passes, and pushes life onward in more per- fected forms," said a thoughtful Hebrew. Is not that true ? and is it likely that what has been true of every stage of man's career, that what has been true of every portion of his life, should not be true of the whole of his earth-life in relation to the great unseen? Is it possible to believe that the far-reaching process should come to an end just when it seems to be working out a result ; and that the mental accumulations of a life and the spiritual products of so many toils should go with the 1 8 THE FUTURE LIFE poor body into the grave? Said one of our modern prophets : " It is when I behold the Himalayah heights of humanity the Socrateses, the Spinozas, the Emersons, the rare peaks of spiritual greatness that seem evermore bathed in the pure sunlight of the ideal, it is then that the hope blazes forth, and refuses to be quenched. And the great ground of this hope is the IMMEASURABLE VALUE OF THE HUMAN SOUL. Just in proportion as I realise that, and comprehend that a splendid soul is the chef-d'-ceuvre of nature, the artistic masterpiece of creativeness, the glorious efflorescence of a lapsed eternity, do I also become permeated and saturated with the hope that Nature who creates shall be wise enough to preserve. . To me the cosmos is a vast system of hieroglyphics, with a meaning behind the symbolism of form and colour and law, to which I find no lexicon but mind. This makes me hope noble things at last. But I am content not to know, since knowledge is to-day beyond my reach, content to see in human life now and here enough to lend it moral dignity surpassing all else before my eyes. That is a deathless root of glorious hope. A demonstration? No. An argument? No. A ground of fixed conviction? No. Yet, THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 19 for all that, a ground of hope to one at least of the myriad tossed and tired minds that have put out to sea on the vast ocean of modern thought worthless to others, I doubt not, yet not withheld when one wistful voyager calls to another across the waves, ' Brother, whither are we bound ? ' " Evolution is God's method of creating, and none the less the working out of purpose be- cause it is the expression or outcome of law or potential energy. If some intelligent being could have stood by, as onlooker, at the time when the globe was a chaotic mass of gaseous and metallic matter, rolling on lifeless and form- less under its awful canopy of cloudy fire mist, would it have been easy to believe that it could ever be evolved into the world of beauty we know to-day? Equally difficult would it have been to anticipate the advent of man when only creatures that crawled possessed the earth, or, later on, to have heard in the hideous gibberings of uncouth beasts the rudi- ments of human speech and song. Not less difficult would it have been to see at work, in the first rude forms of aggregated life in savage communities, the urgent personal rights, needs, longings, and instincts that have led on to our complex modern civilisation. In 20 THE FUTURE LIFE like manner "it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; " but, (if we can once overcome the delusion that what we know as matter is- necessary to life) it is not more difficult to follow man into the unseen, to win there de- velopments of life as much advanced beyond his present stage of evolution as this is superior to the earlier stages of his career when the brute element dominated his entire nature, and his few wants had only taught him to utter a hideous cry. In those early stages mutual helpfulness was almost, if not entirely, unknown. There, the law of selection through the survival of the fittest worked itself out unchecked by any, or by but very few, of the gracious ethical, emotional, and spiritual adjustments and recti- fications that come with the higher stages. The maimed, or old, or useless member of a group was pitilessly destroyed, perhaps eaten. "Every one for himself" was the law of life in those low social latitudes. But, as humanity develops and civilisation advances, all kinds of subtile checks come in to modify or com- plicate those first rough outworkings of the law of the survival of the fittest. The deeper fountains of the spirit are reached, and the sighing of the nature touched by "the THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 21 firstfruits of the spirit" is heard. It is found that muscle is not everything ; that to be an -able fighter or hunter is not everything; that there is something in poetry, and the laughter of children, and the pathos of age, and the struggles of the weak, and the sorrows of the unfortunate. It is found that weakness, and deformity, and old age, and ignorance, are not things to smite out of our path as hindrances, but things to take account of, to spend thought upon, to pity, even to love : and so this law of the survival of the fittest comes to have a deeper, richer, diviner, significance, in the survival, not only of the fittest to fight and hunt, but the fittest to think, and forecast, and plan, and pity, and love, or even the fittest to be planned for, pitied, and loved : and thus a new kind of man is evolved, whose face seems to shine with the light, and whose heart seems to beat to the music of a higher world. We have but to carry this glorious process onward into the unseen, in order to obtain one of the most rational and delightful con- ceptions of a future life. That life, properly understood, is only another step in the won- derful development of man's being : it is evolution still, but evolution into and in the 22 THE FUTURE LIFE sphere of mind. The earth - process results in the creation of a man : the process, continued in the spirit - world, may result in the creation of a being as unlike the man of to - day as the man of to - day is unlike the brute from which he sprang. This is a thought which cannot help raising to an indefinite degree our conception as to what man really is, what he is living for, and what he may become. Given that man is a creature whose personal life and interests are bounded by the cradle and the grave, he is one kind of creature; but given that he is a being in course of de- velopment, and that this present life, in the sphere of matter, is only one of his stages of existence, he is then an altogether different kind of being, and the world is to him an altogether different kind of world. The whole out-look is changed. The whole calculation is altered. On this subject, although special considera- tion will be given to the scientific basis of belief in a future life, distinct reference may here be profitably made to a very remarkable book by Ernest Haeckel, of Jena, a well- known writer of the militant materialistic school. This book, in Dr. Aveling's translation, is en- titled "The Pedigree of Man," and it is THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 23 in that we find the most significant sug- gestion of our day concerning man's evolution into the spirit-sphere. The book is published in the interest of materialism in science and atheism in religion ; but it is a very signifi- cant specimen of a decidedly modern kind of book, which may yet bless where it was ex- pected to curse. We are taken by it, and in a most charming manner, into the wonder- world opened to us by the late Charles Darwin ; and, in a way that has not been surpassed, we are shown the mighty, the exquisite, the far-reaching processes at work. It is all so lovely, so orderly, so wise, that it will be the most wonderful thing of all if here and there a sceptical reader does not look up and say, ' But who is doing and determining it all ? ' One chapter will be supremely likely to do this. It is entitled "Cell-souls and Soul-cells," and contains a revelation of surprising beauty and suggestiveness. Of course, the word " soul " is used by Haeckel in a sense of his own, and, so used, is equivalent to some such phrase as sense-organ or life centre. But " the soul" with him is, nevertheless, a very real thing, having its own " developmental history." All living creatures have cell-souls, according to Haeckel : every cell has its own soul, that 24 THE FUTURE LIFE * which endows it with sensation. "Countless as the stars in heaven are the endless myriads of cells which compose the frame " of any animal ; but every cell is alive and, in a sense, inde- pendent, having its own separate work to do, its separate sensations to receive and deal with. But " the higher the development of the animal," the more is centralisation secured, by means of "the mighty central director, the nerve-centre, the brain," " the more complete is the centralisation of the cell- monarchy." These " nerve-cells " of the brain or " soul- cells " (different from cell-souls in being thought- movers and uniters, if not thought-creators) " form the central directing organ of the whole of the multicellular body." They " rise high above all other kinds of cell." They " effect that most important and enigmatical work that we denote by the word Ideation. They in the higher animals, as in man, effect that most exalted of all functions of the soul, that of thinking and of perception, reason and con- sciousness." This looks vastly like evolution carried into the region of what we ordinarily call soul or " spirit " ; and Haeckel still further enables us to say that. He says, " The study of the souls of animals reveals to us a long series of evolution." "The complex molecular THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. motions in the protoplasm of the soul-cells, whose highest consequence is imagination and thinking, reason and consciousness, have been gradually acquired, in the course of many mil- lions of years, by Selection." The "special soul-cells are only met with in the higher animals in a central nervous system." " The primal elements of soul-life are in all living matter, in all protoplasm. But the grades of the upbuilding and composition of this soul vary in different living beings, and lead us gradually upward from the quiescent cell-soul through a long series of ascending steps to the conscious and rational soul of man," a unity, strictly a person, of whom surely we may say that he has been evolved through all these " many millions of years " with reference to some other consequence than being only a superior kind of beast of burden. Is it ir- rational or unscientific to say that this evolved man, now arrived at the highest stage, that of conscious, harmonious soul-life, the monarchy of the whole self-hood, may have acquired suf- ficient subtilty and unity of being to enable him, the thinking, self-conscious man, to hold together, to persist, to march out and on, when the cells disintegrate and the earth-work falls a'way ? 26 THE FUTURE LIFE. "From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began : From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in Man." CHAPTER III. A SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE.* We have arrived at a grave crisis in relation to that which is the very life and soul of all religious faith and hope belief in a Future Life or as I prefer to state it, belief in life unbroken by the incident we call "death." To a painful extent, to an extent that is far from appearing on the surface, unbelief or doubt has crept into the minds of even naturally religious men ; and the dear old confidences of other days are rapidly becoming the dim hopes or vanished beliefs of these. The cause of this lies right before us : there is no mystery in it. One might say, that, for the first time in Christendom the human mind is coming to the possession of itself. Hitherto, except in conspicuous instances of exceptional originality and daring, the human mind has been in bondage to authorities, to masterful mental tyrants or stifling spiritual fears. Heresy * This chapter is a summary of a separate work on the subject, by Mr. Hopps, 28 THE FUTURE LIFE. has always been deemed a sin against God, and, as a rule, a crime against the State. Free- thought was once equivalent to atheism, while science and scientific training, except to a few, were unknown. Now, on every hand, the process of emanci- pation goes rapidly on. Everywhere we are for freedom, for individuality, for reality, for science. In commerce we push free trade ; in politics we demand perfect liberty ; in the dissemina- tion of opinions we glory in the absence of restraint ; in religion we have adopted, as the very watchword of our Protestantism, "the right of private judgment," while the marvellous spread of scientific knowledge has led to a totally new demand for evidence and demonstration as the antecedent of all belief. All these tendencies of our modern life have led one way. There has come an inevitable loosening of the hold of the mere asseverator, with his creeds, his traditions, or his texts. Once it sufficed that the priest declared, that the creed affirmed, that the Bible taught; but now, slowly and surely, all that is coming to an end with vast numbers, and these not the least thoughtful, earnest, and intelligent; and, with the strengthening of reliance upon know- ledge, faith grows dim. A SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF BELtEF. 29 What then is needed? Clearly a basis for faith on something more solid than the piling up of verbal assurances. We want rational argument, direct evidence, or scientific expla nation; and these we must have, or belief will die. It is a large demand ; many will think it a hopeless one; but I have such faith in God and Nature, such faith in the glorious hidden possibilities of man and the realm of mystery that hems him in, that I believe all we need will come, and come just when we need. " I have many things to say unto you," said the wise brother Jesus, " but ye cannot bear them now." And so it is with our heavenly Father in His natural revela- tions to His children. The eye to see and the power to use are marvellously adjusted ; and, through all the ages, run the two great streams of human power and divine disclosure; not because God is arbitrary or changeable, but because, by a beautiful law of harmonious adjustment, the consciousness of need leads to the discovery of the supply. Hence it is no matter of doubt with me, it is a certainty, that just in proportion as we really need evidence and fact these will rise upon us like the stately orb of day, when dreams are over, and the work of life begins. 30 THE FUTURE LIFE. Having said thus much, I now desire to deprecate the inference that I am going to try to supply what is wanted. I am too con- scious of the gravity of the need, and the immensity of the evidence required, to profess any such thing. I shall be content if I can indicate a road, and give one or two hints about what may be found in it. My one object will be to show that the very science which seems to be destroying is destined to be the glorious up-builder of our faith. I shall try to at least throw a ray of light upon this great fact that science is carrying us in every direction into an unseen universe, and that this unseen universe is everywhere felt to be the sphere of causes, and the source and centre of all the essential elements and acti- vities of creation. And here it is important to remark that the inquiry into a Future Life or an unseen universe is a strictly scientific one ; and is, as one has said, " a proper branch of the physiology of the species." It is only the accident of its connection with the question of rewards and punishments, and with considerations relating to the being and providence of God, that has made it a re- ligious question. Rightly regarded, then, the subject of a future existence . is a purely A SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF BELIEF. 31 scientific one, and might be or ought to be investigated as a part of the great inquiry into the physiological or psychological development of man. If we are to live again after what we call death ; or, better still, if we are to live on through and beyond it, the cause of the persistence or continuity of being must be perfectly natural, and must be at this very moment in ourselves ; and this is entirely an object of experiment and research. To science then we turn, believing that science can only destroy our hope by giving us knowledge, and that it will only make an end of our faith by giving us evidence. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that our faculties are limited, and that science is relative to these capacities. But beyond this natural and inevitable limita- tion to scientific knowledge, another limitation is imposed upon us by the fact that hitherto science has been pursued almost entirely in the realm of matter in its grosser forms; and that we are altogether new to the witness borne by it to the unseen universe. For this and many other reasons, I shall content myself with being elementary and sug- gestive, expecting to demonstrate nothing, but hoping to indicate much, knowing that, in 32 THE FUTURE LIFE addition to the difficulty created by our as yet very limited acquaintance with what we call science, but what is really only the outer rind and surface of science, we have also to contend against the fact that the large majority even of religious persons are only in the elementary stages of knowledge as to the philosophy of spirit : as witness their infantile belief in the " resurrection at the last day * as the only way of restoring the dead to life, and the only way by which God will or can judge mankind. What can at present be said to people whose conception of a Future Life is the " rising again " of the exterminated body? or who, without reflection, and as by a coarse animal instinct, laugh to scorn the assertion that "a spirit" is a greater reality than a body? or who tell us they must give up belief in immortality altogether if the texts of Scripture they rely upon are in a book that is not infallible ? It does not matter how good, or devout, or otherwise cultivated these people are ; their ideas concerning spirit and spirit-life shew that in relation to this tremendous subject they are only children. '" Now I want to help to alter that. I want to get myself and others accustomed to the thought that if people exist in another world they exist A SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF BELIEF. 33 there as "people," not as fantastic, stately, solemn or dreamy angels ; that if a man exists be- yond the change called death, he is still a man, unchanged except that he has put off his body, and glided behind the veil. For a Future Life can only mean one thing, if it is to be a reality, and not a mere sentiment and solemn self-delusion, it can only mean the actual going-on of the human being in spite of the incident called " death" If it is not that, it is nothing: if it is not that, we are only indulging in vain fancies : if it is not that, we may be pleasant poets singing of a " choir invisible " that has no real existence, but we are not actual pilgrims going to "a better country, that is a heavenly." In our study of the unseen universe from the standpoint of science, and in appealing to science for evidence, it must ever be borne in mind that the difference between matter and spirit, whatever that difference may be, is not the difference between the known and the unknown, the conceivable and the inconceivable. To the unscientific mind, indeed, the difference between matter and spirit is that, but the really scientific mind knows perfectly well that it is absolutely ignorant as to the real nature and basis of matter. The science of the 34 THE FUTURE LIFE. present day has abundantly demonstrated its own ignorance, and confessed it, as to what even an atom really is. Besides, even in re- lation to the world of sense, it is confessedly true that the ideal world, or world of con- sciousness, is immeasurably more vital than what is usually called the world of matter. At this very moment, it is the mind that controls the body : the gross is even now moved by the ethereal. Apart from the mys- terious unit of vital power and volition, the whole body is a mere mass of inert matter. Spirit, or whatever we call that "unit of vital power and volition," vivifies and employs it* Atd, even when certain schools of science refuse to include spirit aa