Books byNEWMAN SMYTH, D.D. 
 
 Published by Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 Modern Belief in Immortality. 12mo, 
 
 net, .75 
 
 Passing Protestantism and Coming Ca- 
 tholicism. 12mo . . net, $1.00 
 
 Personal Creeds ; or, How to Form a Work- 
 ing Theory of Life. 12mo . $1.00 
 
 Through Science to Faith. 12mo, net, $1.25 
 
 The Place of Death in Evolution. 12mo, 
 
 $1.25 
 
 The Orthodox Theology of To=Day. 12mo, 
 
 $1.25 
 
 Christian Facts and Forces. 12mo, $1.50 
 
 The Reality of Faith. 12mo . $1.50 
 
 Christian Ethics. [International Theologi- 
 cal Library.] Cr. 8vo . net, $2.50 
 
MODERN BELIEF IN 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
MODERN BELIEF IN 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 BY 
 
 Newman Smyth 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 1910 
 
& US' 
 
 Copyright, 1910, by Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 Published March, 1910 
 
 K2? 
 
 v 
 
 $ 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 This little book had its origin in a lecture which 
 was given on the Drew foundation at Hackney Col- 
 lege of the University of London. It has since been 
 recast and enlarged in order that in this form it 
 may reach the general public. 
 
 The thought of our age has thrown a shadow of 
 unreality over the belief in personal immortality. 
 There are many who ask how this faith may be in- 
 telligently held in the midst of modern knowledge. 
 To all such readers, who would have a reasonable 
 hope in the life everlasting, these pages are now 
 offered. -^ c 
 
 304099 
 
MODERN BELIEF IN 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 MAN'S belief in immortality is 
 still essentially the same as it 
 was when Socrates trusted himself to 
 it, while he drank the fatal hemlock. 
 It is the irrepressible faith of man in 
 his own survival value. It is the in- 
 exhaustible confidence of our human 
 minds and hearts in our power to 
 think and to love on hereafter because 
 we can think and love now. Socrates' 
 refusal to think of himself as dead was 
 the supreme self-affirmation of his per- 
 sonal life. 
 
 Although belief in the future life re- 
 mains the same, men's conceptions of 
 it change from age to age, and they 
 must be adapted to the general knowl- 
 edge of the times. 
 
 [U 
 
•■ • • MODERN BELIEF 
 
 In our day science has seemed to 
 throw into uncertainty the hope of per- 
 sonal life hereafter. Much unbelief 
 lies darkly around our faith. As, when 
 one stands directly under an electric 
 light in the street, he can see distinctly 
 everything near him, but the dazzling 
 little light just above him renders the 
 sky dark, and blots out the stars; so 
 wdthin the circle of scientific illumina- 
 tion we may lose vision of the heavens. 
 But man cannot go far without some 
 guiding sense of eternal truths ; and the 
 old faiths, though sometimes obscured, 
 are always reappearing. At the present 
 time a widening knowledge of ourselves 
 and the universe is bringing out more 
 clearly some reasons for the human 
 hope of the life to come. 
 
 It is quite true that at first modern 
 science did not seem to be a friendly 
 visitor in the old home of inherited re- 
 [2] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 ligious beliefs. Modern astronomy put 
 the heavens far from us. Modern 
 physics bound all things together in a 
 chain of unbroken sequences. Modern 
 biology traced continuous lines of life 
 back to the earliest and simplest forms 
 of life in the dust of the earth. A mi- 
 croscopic cell is found to contain the 
 potential energy of all birth and be- 
 coming. And, latest of all, modern 
 psychology, turning from merely intro- 
 spective study of self-consciousness, 
 and seeking to become one of the exact 
 sciences, would have us know ourselves 
 in its experimental laboratories. 
 
 So much new knowledge has proved 
 disconcerting and baffling to many who 
 would not willingly be dispossessed of 
 their cherished beliefs. But new knowl- 
 edge always raises new questions; and 
 it also helps us over some old difficul- 
 ties. In the progress of knowledge we 
 [3] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 are very much like engineers who 
 should begin to run a tunnel through 
 an Alp. If they should lay down their 
 tools and stop work part way, they 
 would only have burrowed into the 
 darkness. Give them time and pa- 
 tience, let them continue along the same 
 true lines on which they began; and 
 eventually they will work themselves 
 out again into the light — the same light 
 that is always shining. So is it with 
 our scientific investigations. It is still 
 the little knowledge, as Lord Bacon 
 said, that makes atheists of us. Partial 
 researches often end in the darkness and 
 dampness. But from light through the 
 dark into light; from God through 
 nature unto God; from the Spirit 
 through human history to the Spirit; — 
 such is the way and the toil of the more 
 patient and resourceful thinking. So 
 the new natural science, carried clear 
 [41 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 through, may lead out to a new spirit- 
 uality. Doubt may settle where knowl- 
 edge stops ; but hope burns bright where 
 reason follows truth straight on and on. 
 
 It is not now too much to say that 
 modern science has pressed forward 
 far enough to change its tone of denial, 
 and to give forth a more reassuring note 
 for religious faith and hope. Socrates 
 might gather from recent researches 
 into the structure of matter, and the 
 possible relations of body and mind, 
 fresh material for his argument for im- 
 mortality, if he were here inquiring and 
 conversing with us, as he was wont to 
 do among his friends. Our natural 
 sciences would not dismay Socrates; 
 they might bring much fine oil for him 
 to change into the light of his immortal 
 hope. 
 
 In such confidence then we would 
 search our modern knowledge for any 
 [5] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 light it may throw upon our belief in 
 man's survival after death. For this 
 purpose the first question for us to ask 
 is whether modern inquiries enable us 
 to know ourselves better. How are we 
 to think of the personal life? How 
 may we now best conceive of the su- 
 preme fact of personality ? 
 
 An answer will be forthcoming, if 
 we take from modern science one of 
 its ruling ideas, — the conception of 
 matter in terms of energy. Natural 
 science, that is, no longer regards a 
 material thing merely as an inert cor- 
 puscle, or as composed of so many in- 
 dissoluble atoms. It does not indeed 
 undertake to say what the ultimate 
 nature of anything is; it recognizes 
 different things by what they do; it 
 knows them by their modes of action. 
 They are forms of motion. Thus no 
 one knows what electricity is; but a 
 [6] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 vast science has been formed and util- 
 ized from investigation of its waves and 
 lines of force. The physicist in the 
 class-room will go to the black-board 
 and use complicated mathematical sym- 
 bols and equations to demonstrate the 
 properties of radium, and its various 
 transformations. In short, science has 
 become a study of energetics. Now, 
 then, we would accept this ruling idea 
 of energy, and use it as a light in look- 
 ing into our personal life, in thinking of 
 our minds and wills. 
 
 It would carry us beyond our present 
 purpose to discuss critically this idea in 
 its philosophical bearings, or in relation 
 to different views propounded in recent 
 books of psychology. But we must be- 
 gin with this conception of personal life 
 as self-conscious energy, for we shall 
 have to return to it again and again in 
 our reasoning concerning the possible 
 
 [7] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 continuance of the personal life here- 
 after. Its meaning may become plain- 
 er as we proceed. 
 
 In this way we are to think of our- 
 selves as centres and sources of energy. 
 Our self-conscious life is one continuous 
 flow of energy, ever changing its forms 
 of feeling and thought, yet remaining 
 throughout the same distinctive force of 
 mind and will. We have been ac- 
 customed to think of the soul as though 
 it were a certain fixed substance, some- 
 thing intangible and unimaginable, but 
 a substantial entity. It has been re- 
 garded as a half-materialized ghost, 
 retaining a semblance of the body. 
 It has been imagined to be an ema- 
 nation that departs from the body at 
 death; and apparitions of it haunt 
 men's dreams. In philosophies that 
 have been swept bare of superstitions, 
 the soul is still left in the background 
 
 [8] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 of consciousness as a necessary but 
 undefinable postulate of the unity of 
 personal being. Lying darkly beneath 
 our consciousness of our mental proc- 
 esses, the soul has also been regarded 
 as bound in some way impossible of 
 detection to the body. But the newer 
 psychology has relegated to the lumber- 
 room of outworn ideas all this old- 
 fashioned conception of the soul. As 
 the former idea of a specific vital force 
 is no longer recognized in the bio- 
 logical laboratories, so the living soul 
 seems to have disappeared from recent 
 experimental studies of mind and body. 
 Not only in our busy social religion do 
 we moderns take little anxious thought 
 about the to-morrow of our own souls; 
 as Wilberforce in the thick of the eman- 
 cipation conflict once replied to a bigot 
 that he was so concerned about those 
 poor negroes that he had no time to 
 
 [9] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 think of his soul; more than this, now- 
 adays the confident physiological psy- 
 chologist, in the midst of his investi- 
 gations of bodily and mental actions 
 and reactions, does not seem to know 
 whether he has any soul left worth 
 thinking about. He has been occupied 
 of late in telling us much that the an- 
 cients never knew concerning the time 
 reactions of sensations, the rising and 
 vanishing of ideas, like bubbles, in the 
 stream of consciousness, the subliminal 
 self, and so on; he has displayed great 
 ingenuity in examining the springs and 
 wires of the physiological apparatus of 
 our mental processes and results. And 
 he may rest for a while scientifically con- 
 tent to conceive of himself as the sum- 
 total of the manifold acts and states that 
 he has succeeded in disclosing, although 
 how he can sum himself up at all he 
 cannot tell, and he prefers to put aside 
 
 [10] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 such inquiry as too metaphysical for 
 his exact science of mental phenomena. 
 Nevertheless the ancients raised the 
 first and the last question concerning 
 man's knowledge of himself, when they 
 made that inquiry; and our most ad- 
 vanced mental science is brought to a 
 stand-still, as before a dead wall, when 
 confronted with this question of fact 
 concerning the unity of the personal life. 
 If we begin and end with such investi- 
 gation into ourselves from the physio- 
 logical side only, we shall find ourselves 
 left, as it were, in the middle of the 
 tunnel. But self-introspection does not 
 stop with results that leave us wholly 
 in the dark as to the nature of our own 
 life. The more we learn of the rela- 
 tions between body and mind, the more 
 we find reason to credit our instinctive 
 sense that this personal life which we 
 know, cannot be wholly accounted for 
 [ii] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 by a purely physical theory of it. We 
 need not indeed revert to former no- 
 tions of the soul, or reject any new 
 knowledge of the interdependence of 
 mind and matter in our consciousness; 
 but rather we need to think evolution- 
 ary ideas through, and to learn much 
 more in the newer ways concerning our- 
 selves, if it is possible. The way out 
 for a true faith is always the way for- 
 ward. This is now becoming clearly 
 evident. For just when it seemed as 
 though science were about to reduce 
 the spiritual entirely to the material, 
 matter itself escaped from all previous 
 conceptions of it; and the old atomic 
 theory, that had come to be regarded 
 as the end of all wisdom in that direc- 
 tion, has been broken up, and trans- 
 formed into subtler and more ethereal 
 conceptions of matter. The atom is no 
 longer regarded as indivisible; it can 
 [12] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 disintegrate into something still more 
 elemental. It is matter still, but a 
 different kind of matter than we had 
 supposed. All this new research leaves 
 us as before in a system of natural law; 
 but it appears to be a more open system. 
 Nature is not iron-clad, and inaccessible 
 to waves of influence from a higher 
 realm beyond these visible horizons. 
 Energies that are not of space may enter 
 into space; even as thought in us has 
 no spatial dimensions. There are as- 
 tronomical indications that all the stars 
 are numbered, and the constellations 
 are grouped within the attractions of a 
 finite universe. What, then, is there 
 conceivable around and beyond them 
 all? What is there not of them but 
 within them all? In what infinity of 
 Mind and Will do all things exist? 
 Search the material universe through 
 and through, as far as thought may go, 
 
 [13] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 and nature discovers itself to be an open 
 system; at the confines of all knowl- 
 edge it does not close around us as a 
 prison-house; we stand as before open 
 windows, breathing a vital air, and 
 looking out into vistas of light beyond 
 light. 
 
 So, likewise, a gross materialistic view 
 seemed at first to be confirmed by the 
 demonstration of concurrent changes of 
 the brain in every action of the mind. 
 But we are now understanding that 
 what has been proved is the perfection 
 of the brain as an organ of mind. And 
 even from the point of view of modern 
 surgery, there are not wanting inti- 
 mations that there is much more to be 
 learned concerning the mind's power to 
 control the brain as its organ — its 
 power even, when some parts of the 
 brain have been injured, to avail itself 
 of some unused area of its brain, and 
 
 [14] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 by intelligent training and patience to 
 organize some other brain-cells and 
 their connections for its use. Not to 
 enter, however, into these recondite and 
 as yet not fully determined inquiries, 
 it may fairly be said that modern psy- 
 chology, working farther through its 
 physiological stage, gives promise of 
 coming forth more spiritually minded. 
 
 We are not, then, in our day to lose 
 our own souls at the bidding of a par- 
 tial science. There is no good and 
 sufficient reason to suppose that in our 
 free, pulsing, personal life, we have been 
 put together like so many pieces in a 
 mechanical assembling-room; a more 
 hopeful task awaits us when, in the light 
 of the modern idea of energy, we pro- 
 ceed to inquire, What is this personal 
 kind of energy ? What is this potency 
 of mind, this dynamic of will, of which 
 man is self-conscious? For personal 
 
 [15] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 power is the culminating fact of nature. 
 The human will is the summation of 
 the struggling forces of evolution before 
 it; self-consciousness is the focus of 
 all the light of life. 
 
 This dominant personal energy, it 
 is to be observed, is at once the best 
 known and the least known of all the 
 powers. It is best known because we 
 are immediately perceptive of it in 
 every act; it is the least known because 
 there is nothing known before it into 
 which we can resolve our self-perceptive 
 life. By our inner possession of it we 
 understand other forms of energy in the 
 world without us; but they do not serve 
 to interpret it to ourselves. We could 
 not think of, or call by name, the forces 
 of nature, if we had not first become 
 aware of will within ourselves. But 
 that is to be derived from nothing be- 
 fore our own action. It comes to us, 
 
 [16] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 this rich reality of energizing life, very 
 much as Melchizedec came to Israel of 
 old, without father or mother, and with 
 a blessing from the most High. Yet 
 there is one way in which we may ap- 
 prehend it truly, and grow in our knowl- 
 edge of it. It is the way opened by 
 science, which knows things by ob- 
 serving what they do. Here, likewise, 
 in knowing what our personal being 
 is, we have to watch its behavior. We 
 need to learn all that we may of the 
 nature of mind by observing its conduct 
 in the conditions amid which it now 
 works. You are aware of yourself as 
 you think and will; you know yourself 
 as the same self throughout all your 
 thinking and willing. Whatever the 
 ultimate entity may be, the self is 
 known to itself in action. Personality 
 is manifested to itself immediately, and 
 then to others, through its energizing. 
 
 [17] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 Before pursuing, however, the line of 
 thought just suggested, we pause for a 
 moment to observe the better standing- 
 ground for belief in a possible continu- 
 ance of life beyond death, which is to 
 be gained when we leave one side the 
 common idea of the soul as a substance 
 of some kind, and take the more recent 
 idea of a spiritual energy as our point 
 of departure; when we begin, not with 
 the metaphysical idea of being, or 
 some spiritual entity, but rather with 
 our knowledge of ourselves as so much 
 actual personal energy. In this way 
 of looking at it, an immediate advan- 
 tage is that we are at once relieved from 
 the confusion that comes over us when 
 we try to imagine how this invisible, 
 but substantial soul-entity can exist 
 either in the body or out of it. This 
 idea of a soul, however sublimated, 
 has something still material clinging 
 
 [18] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 to it; and everything physical, so far 
 as we know, is subject to dissolution. 
 The idea of a pure substance, purged 
 of all materiality, is hard to precipi- 
 tate in any mental analysis; philoso- 
 phers have always labored over the 
 notion of substance as the reality be- 
 neath all phenomenal existence; when 
 they seem to catch it in some net 
 of fine words, it flies away into some 
 abstraction that cannot be grasped. 
 This is not to say that the philosophic 
 idea of an absolute or pure substance 
 has not had its use, and may not be 
 of value in metaphysical speculation; 
 but it is directly to our present pur- 
 pose to notice how well we may do 
 without it in the effort to lay hold 
 of our true life and its power to 
 continue in future conditions for its 
 activity. We lay aside some obstinate 
 questionings concerning man's possible 
 
 [19] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 survival elsewhere and otherwise, when 
 we give up the futile attempt to imagine 
 how in a shadowy or half-materialized 
 way a soul may exist; when rather we 
 reflect how inconceivable it is to sup- 
 pose that such living spiritual energies 
 as are incarnate and radiantly active 
 in the intelligent and purposeful life of 
 a true man, can be brought to a sudden 
 stop by any accident from without, or 
 ever cease to be self-contained and 
 masterful, as they have begun to be 
 even in these bodily limitations. The 
 idea is a contradiction of the law of the 
 conservation of personal energy. 
 
 Doubtless this way of regarding it 
 will raise difficulties enough of its own ; 
 but they will arise from inability to 
 conceive how this can be; they will not 
 be impossibilities of reason. In this 
 view of personality as undying energy 
 we shall at least escape from the old 
 
 [20] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 question as to the location of the point 
 in the body where the soul resides ; we 
 shall not be embarrassed by the medi- 
 aeval puzzle, how many spirits may 
 dance upon the point of a needle. 
 Modern science is not about to put the 
 spiritual self out of existence because it 
 has led us to abandon the traditional 
 notion of soul atoms, any more than it 
 puts matter out of existence because it 
 has given up the received theory of ma- 
 terial atoms. Indeed, why is it more 
 necessary for religious belief in our- 
 selves and our God to define what Spirit 
 is, than it is necessary for natural 
 science in its working creed to define 
 what matter is ? In either case we know 
 what is experienced; we know what 
 it is by what it does. As we have just 
 indicated, and should keep in mind, 
 the natural sciences, strictly speaking, 
 are studies of conduct. Physics is a 
 
 [21] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 study of the behavior of the elements; 
 biology a study of the behavior of living 
 cells; in short the whole evolutionary 
 philosophy is a great generalization 
 from the uniform course of conduct of 
 nature. So may theology be a study 
 of the persistent conduct of the spirit. 
 From established modes of behavior we 
 may draw inferences concerning the 
 constitution or character of things natu- 
 ral or spiritual ; but in neither case does 
 partial or only inferential knowledge of 
 the nature of matter or of Spirit prevent 
 us from knowing truly what it does, 
 and has efficient power to do. The 
 physicist, for instance, has succeeded 
 in carrying his demonstration of ele- 
 mental matter so far back that he will 
 speak clearly to himself of the primary 
 materialization of the universal ether 
 as an electron; that is to say, as it is 
 easy to see, a possible whirl of the per- 
 
 [22] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 feet solid, elastic, ethereal liquid, bear- 
 ing a charge of negative electricity im- 
 mersed in a positive; so a theologian 
 might be indulged if he should at- 
 tempt to define his idea of a spirit as 
 an individual form of a spiritual Omni- 
 presence, in which it has its being, 
 while carrying in itself a limited charge 
 of will. In both directions, while defi- 
 nitions may serve a working purpose 
 as symbols, and may be formed from 
 the facts of behavior which are within 
 our experience, they carry us beyond 
 our conceptual powers; we cannot 
 visualize the ultimate nature either of 
 matter or mind. 
 
 From interesting speculations in these 
 directions, we turn now to consider 
 more closely what promise of continued 
 life hereafter may be observed in the 
 actual working now and here of the per- 
 sonal energy of man. 
 [23] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 Several qualities in the conduct of 
 personal life are distinctive and of 
 prophetic significance. Man's mental 
 conduct distinguishes him specifically 
 from all animate existence before him. 
 
 In self-conscious activity we are aware 
 of a unifying energy, which makes 
 and keeps us ourselves. Normally we 
 are known to ourselves not as a mere 
 mathematical series or sum of mental 
 sequences, but as personal wholes. 
 This integrity of being, this wholeness 
 of mental experience, is constitutive of 
 our personal individuality; it is not 
 broken by sleep, it is undestroyed by 
 the effacing touch of time, it endures 
 though memory fails, it persists while 
 death approaches; it remains indissolu- 
 ble so long as any trace of consciousness 
 continues. Now, this individual whole- 
 ness of personality is an outstanding 
 spiritual fact; it is positive and su- 
 
 [24] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 preme. No outward environment, no 
 favoring circumstance, could have be- 
 stowed it upon a being who was not 
 first in himself capable of it. His self- 
 hood has grown from its own root in 
 the unseen and the eternal. The con- 
 tinuous stream of self-conscious life 
 flows from some original fount that is 
 itself underived and eternal. So, at all 
 events, we are compelled to conclude 
 by the failure of every successive at- 
 tempt to explain personal energy of be- 
 ing from any purely material causation. 
 Such material explanations break down 
 sooner or later before some fact of our 
 self-knowledge; and they are swept 
 away by any rising flood of moral life 
 and power. 
 
 There are, however, certain abnor- 
 mal mental conditions in which the 
 identity of personal life seems to be 
 interrupted, and sometimes for con- 
 
 [25] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 siderable intervals entirely lost. There 
 are also instances of dual personality, 
 in which one may be possessed with 
 several seemingly different selves. All 
 such intermittent mental conditions 
 are connected with more or less obvi- 
 ous nervous derangements, or other 
 recondite physiological changes. Do 
 these breaks in conscious personal iden- 
 tity, accompanying as they do physio- 
 logical processes, bring into question 
 the idea of an underlying and perma- 
 nent self? They certainly do indicate 
 an intimate interdependence between 
 mind and body, the very subtlety and 
 complexity of which open more future 
 possibilities of mental possession and 
 mastery of matter than they close. 
 Such remarkable abnormal instances 
 not only show how much remains to be 
 understood before we shall know the 
 farthest reach of our powers; but also 
 
 [26] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 they indicate that, when we shall know 
 ourselves in the full extent of our physi- 
 cal relations, we may discover ourselves 
 to be endowed with aptitudes and facul- 
 ties for spiritual perception and activity 
 as yet unused and undeveloped. How- 
 ever that may be, these abnormal 
 phenomena of personal consciousness 
 tend to confirm more than to disprove 
 a latent and potential self-identifying 
 personality. They are interruptions, 
 not irrevocable losses of identity. Usu- 
 ally, after a time, the person comes to 
 himself. The true self recalls the wan- 
 dering self. The man is himself again. 
 If this resumption of an interrupted and 
 in some instances seemingly utterly 
 lost selfhood, can occur in this body 
 and this side death, a presumption is 
 thereby brought into the evidence for 
 the survival of the same self through 
 death, and in some intelligent subjec- 
 [27] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 tion of the elementary conditions of 
 conscious life beyond the grave. It 
 would carry us too far from our im- 
 mediate purpose to enter into a detailed 
 analysis of these outlying phenomena of 
 intermittent and plural consciousness; 
 it is enough for our reasoning to em- 
 phasize the fact that all such phenom- 
 ena are far from being evidences of 
 our utter materiality; they look toward 
 spiritual freedom rather than toward 
 physical bondage; for they indicate a 
 self-regenerative power in personality. 
 
 This leads us to notice another dis- 
 tinctive quality of the personal life — 
 its self-formative energy. 
 
 In a very real sense every man is 
 self-made. He has no little to do in 
 making his own soul. We are wont to 
 say that one has a soul from his birth. 
 Then we wonder just when the soul 
 enters into the body. This whole way 
 
 [28] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 of thinking about it is too mechanical 
 and confusing; as though the body 
 were a house, and the soul a tenant com- 
 ing into it when it is ready for him to 
 begin house-keeping in it. Evolution- 
 ary thought is truer than this to the 
 divine law of growth. It recognizes 
 the law of co-ordinate growth, the fact 
 that God has made things to grow to- 
 gether for some far-off end. It traces 
 lines of parallel development not only 
 between different parts of organisms, 
 but also between the entire physical and 
 mental sides of life. The beginnings 
 of intelligence lie far back. Some 
 botanists even discern preliminary signs 
 of intelligence in the apex of the root 
 of a plant; and biologists notice in the 
 behavior of the simplest microscopic 
 organisms indications of a capacity to 
 learn by experiment and to direct their 
 motions. The determinants of mind 
 
 [29] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 entered the creation long before man 
 came on the scene. An infant of days 
 has inborn capacity to become a definite 
 spiritual individuality; it is a soul in the 
 making. That is a spiritual germ and 
 birth. At what time, in what first acts 
 of distinct consciousness and will, it 
 becomes a self-centred soul, a closed 
 circle, as it were, of definite personality 
 — this occurs before any memory of it, 
 and is hidden from us behind the veil 
 of our lowly origins. But the full- 
 grown spiritual individuality is the final 
 and positive fact of experience. 
 
 Moreover, we know that in us per- 
 sonal life is a constant process of self- 
 integration. We must be always 
 busy with ourselves in bringing di- 
 verse elements of our experience day 
 by day into working and happy har- 
 mony, preserving amid all changes 
 our whole-heartedness. All natural 
 
 [30] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 growth in some sense does that; evo- 
 lution is integration; but this natural 
 force of life in man's mental and 
 moral self-enlargement and self-preser- 
 vation is raised to its highest pow- 
 er. Do we not have to learn, often 
 through hard discipline and severe self- 
 control, how to keep our poise of spirit, 
 to maintain a cheerful whole-hearted- 
 ness amid baffling changes, and some- 
 times heart-breaking shocks? — in en- 
 during which we may be sorely bruised, 
 cast down but not destroyed; and from 
 which, if we have truly lived, we shall 
 come forth ourselves again, but glori- 
 fied. True life makes us whole. 
 
 Thus the divine gift to man is not a 
 ready-made and finished soul; it is the 
 spiritual power to make one's self 
 through life and death ever more ca- 
 pacious of love and heaven. It is 
 the renewing self-creative power of 
 
 [31] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 the spirit which is in a man. By 
 this spirit and its exercise nature in 
 man is lifted up to the divine from 
 whence it came. Surely such God- 
 likeness is something supernal — a final 
 superlative of personal being made 
 after the power of an endless life; 
 it is not to be scattered and lost, as 
 though it were a mere sublimation 
 of some natural force, such as gravi- 
 tation or chemical affinity. Man can 
 make himself a devil or a saint; he 
 cannot unmake himself into a beast 
 that perishes. 
 
 Another character of personal energy 
 is intimately associated with that just 
 observed. It is power to make its own 
 environment. To a large though not 
 unlimited extent personal life may form 
 and transform its environment. This 
 holds true of the power of mind over 
 its immediate bodily environment. 
 
 [32] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 Thought has much to do with health. 
 Just how much, just where the trans- 
 forming, re-creative power of mind over 
 its present embodiment begins or ends, 
 is not as yet a matter of exact science; 
 but the fact that it certainly has some 
 such power, whatever may be the ex- 
 tent of it, is a fact of daily experience. 
 
 It seems to be a primary and general 
 power of organic matter to repair in- 
 juries and to remake lost parts. Broad- 
 ly speaking, in proportion as animal 
 forms have become more highly organ- 
 ized and differentiated, this regenera- 
 tive virtue has been limited; lower or- 
 ganisms show a far more general and 
 diffused power to heal themselves than 
 our bodies possess. Such loss is part 
 of the cost of our advancement. We, 
 however, have gained a higher power 
 where we have lost the lower. For in 
 a purposeful life, and to a degree un- 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 paralleled in the animal world, a per- 
 sonal being may create his own en- 
 vironment, make his own situations, 
 and change his world into a heaven or 
 hell. What preternatural power is this 
 — what culmination of spiritual energy 
 within the natural — which may thus 
 create the light or the darkness of 
 its own world; which may change 
 a paradise into a desert, or turn a 
 wilderness into a land of springs and 
 blossoming ? 
 
 What is this transcendent energy for 
 good or evil which can lift itself up 
 against heaven and blot out the sun 
 from its sky; or, humbling itself as in 
 the presence of One mightier than it, 
 awaken into a holy dawn of new love 
 and life ? Truly in the exceeding great 
 and precious promise of such life we 
 become partakers of the divine nature; 
 as was said by that Galilean fisherman 
 
 [34] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 who had become an apostle of the 
 Son of God. 
 
 We have thus far been uncovering 
 the foundations which are laid in nat- 
 ure for the establishment of the hu- 
 man faith in the continuance of the 
 personal life. We build our hope of 
 immortality upon firm ground when 
 we rest upon the fundamental fact of 
 personality as the greatest power in the 
 known world. There is nothing in 
 science to contradict or to render un- 
 natural this spiritual expectation of 
 life. We may now proceed, therefore, 
 to consider what possibilities may lie 
 open for the active exercise of our per- 
 sonal energy in relation to other physi- 
 cal or external conditions of existence 
 hereafter. 
 
 At this point we meet at once the 
 old question, With what body shall we 
 [351 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 come? Or, to put it in its modern 
 form, What are the relations, present 
 and prospective, between this ener- 
 gizing selfhood — this personal focus 
 of mental and moral power — and the 
 universe of external forces ? If our 
 immediate connection with these ex- 
 ternal forces is broken by the death of 
 the body, shall this self-centred, unify- 
 ing spiritual energy, of which we are 
 conscious, prove masterful enough to 
 find or to make for itself other living 
 conditions amid these complex and in- 
 finitely subtle forces of the universe? 
 In fine, has personal life attained in 
 any of us survival value, with capacity 
 for further and freer existence in vital 
 touch with an external universe? Put 
 in this way, the conception of some 
 future embodiment seems more natural. 
 The answer to such questioning be- 
 gins with the recognition of the present 
 
 [36] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 value of the body to mind. This is a 
 generally admitted, but too ignored 
 truth, the full significance of which 
 should be apprehended. Instead of 
 puzzling ourselves overmuch by asking 
 how mind and body can exist together 
 hereafter, we may wonder, rather, how 
 mind and some body can ever be ex- 
 pected to live apart. For so far as we 
 can perceive, matter and mind were 
 made to exist together. An embodied 
 spirit is the natural end of the creation. 
 The poet-philosopher Herder caught 
 in a fine phrase a great truth when 
 he said embodiment is the end of all 
 God's ways on earth. Not spirit alone, 
 nor body only, but mind and body, 
 of twain made one — spirit in sensible 
 communion with nature — the outward 
 world attaining its end in the mental 
 appreciation and delight in it, — this, 
 and nothing less desirable and pure 
 
 [37] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 than this, is the evident fulfilment of 
 creation. These two, nature and mind, 
 have a natural affinity for one another; 
 each has been prepared and fitted for 
 the other. One might say this match 
 was made in heaven. It is the sacra- 
 ment of the natural and the spiritual in 
 man; and what God has thus joined 
 together in life, let no vain wisdom of 
 ours put asunder. 
 
 Reflect at what cost these bodies have 
 been prepared for us. Innumerable 
 ages have been spent in lifting the body 
 to its present high estate, in fashioning 
 the elements into human form and 
 comeliness; yet there are many who 
 say of this fair fulfilment of the age-long 
 struggle and perfecting of living matter, 
 "It is naught." Surpassing mediaeval 
 contempt for the flesh, a modern pietism 
 hesitates not to pronounce judgment 
 upon this most highly organized work 
 [38] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 of the Almighty as though it had no ob- 
 jective reality, and were of no value in 
 the eye of the spiritual man. Break- 
 ing idealism off from contact with the 
 material world, as a dream has no 
 touch with actuality, it would have us 
 make believe that external things are 
 only as we think them to be, even a 
 salutary warning of pain but an er- 
 ror of thought not to be heeded, and 
 the body in our sensible communion 
 through it with nature a hinderance 
 rather than a means of spiritual union 
 with God. Shall vanity of words mock 
 the good gift of the Creator? In 
 spiritual exaltation shall we regard the 
 Lord of all as beholding the consum- 
 mate product of the evolution of the 
 divine idea of body in its union with 
 spirit, and saying, "I have labored in 
 vain; I have spent my strength for 
 naught" ? More humbly let a true and 
 
 [39] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 reverent science make a new appraisal 
 of the eternal value of some body to 
 spirit. 
 
 Our present embodiment has the 
 value of a thought of God that has been 
 objectified and rendered visible. An 
 artist can depict his vision on the can- 
 vas; the poet can give form to his 
 imagination; human love can put itself 
 into a word, not to be recalled, for an- 
 other to have and to hold. It is of the 
 very essence and flame of spiritual 
 energy that it must make itself felt and 
 visible to another. Thought and love 
 will and can be objectified to others, 
 living revealed and embodied in word 
 and deed, in form and color, in litera- 
 ture, art, and song. Shall God be less 
 than man? Can God do less with 
 the divine ideas than man may do in 
 the expression of his thoughts ? If the 
 artist can render visible to others the 
 
 [40] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 loveliness in which he delights, surely 
 the Father of spirits, who has given us 
 eyes to see, has made also the landscape 
 which is to be seen, new every morning 
 and fresh every evening; and both the 
 human eye that sees, and the nature 
 which is seen, have value in his sight. 
 God has brought both nature and us 
 into actual though dependent existence 
 before himself; and God's word once 
 spoken is not to be repented of- What 
 God does, he does forever. 
 
 As we reflect upon this, it needs but 
 little scientific consideration to enable 
 one to apprehend the priceless value 
 of some sensitive and perceptive em- 
 bodiment to the inner life. We know, 
 for example, that the human brain has 
 been organized and perfected at incal- 
 culable cost. It is a vast distance, for 
 which we have no measurement, from 
 the beginning of days when the Spirit 
 
 [41] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 brooded over chaos, and when from 
 some far mystery of nebulous light the 
 sun was gathered and the earth took 
 form, on through successive cycles of 
 preparation to the age of man, who 
 finds ready for his perceptive intelli- 
 gence a system of brain-cells and their 
 intricate connections, wherein living 
 matter has attained a microscopic or- 
 der, and a harmony more marvellous 
 than the constellations of the skies. For 
 his possession and use there has been 
 wrought out this intricate brain system, 
 which shall transmit every ray of in- 
 fluence from without, and prove re- 
 sponsive to slightest touch of every 
 passing thought from within. The val- 
 uation of this ultimate adaptation of 
 matter to spirit will be enhanced as 
 biology traces the fine processes of its 
 development and its attuning as the in- 
 strument of mind. This appreciation 
 
 [42] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 of it will be still further increased if we 
 study the natural history of the forma- 
 tion and adaptation of a single faculty 
 or sense, such as the power of speech 
 or vision. 
 
 Human speech was no sudden attain- 
 ment; language no extempore effort of 
 nature. It has been said with wisdom, 
 as well as wit, that the reason why ani- 
 mals do not speak is because they have 
 nothing to say. When mind in man 
 had learned something to be said, it 
 found organs of speech sufficiently de- 
 veloped to say it. The increasing ur- 
 gency of mind, finding the organs of 
 speech growing for its use, created the 
 language of thought. There was here 
 a parallelism of development, so-called; 
 one of those suggestive parallelisms — 
 that is, developments along different 
 lines converging toward a future end 
 — which are indicative of a directive 
 
 [43] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 thought in evolution. The end finally 
 attained justifies the cost of the ages 
 spent in reaching it; language is a gift 
 of inestimable price. 
 
 Another instance is the inestimable 
 worth of the sense of sight. One of the 
 fascinating chapters of natural history- 
 is the story of the growth and perfect- 
 ing of the eye. It is fortunately a con- 
 tinuous story, running through several 
 stages of development; and with in- 
 creasing interest we may read from its 
 beginning the life history of the organ of 
 sight. The scientific story, one might 
 call it the natural romance of the growth 
 of the eye, begins with its lowly origin 
 in the humblest walk of life. At first 
 the sense of sight came without obser- 
 vation into the kingdom of nature. It 
 began as a mere point of the external 
 membrane or skin somewhat more sen- 
 sitive to light than other parts. Some 
 
 [44] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 spot of pigment felt the influence of 
 light, and life began to respond to the 
 presence of the sun. Some long latent 
 power of life was awakened on earth by 
 the dawn in the sky. And then, how 
 it grew ! Organic form succeeded form, 
 species rose above species; and this 
 little pigmented spot deepened, became 
 a receptive cup, and at length developed 
 a marvellous photographic retina, gain- 
 ing a vital power either to retain a dis- 
 tinct image, or in the twinkling of an 
 eye to wipe it all away. And with this 
 wondrous retina, the eye, still develop- 
 ing, made for itself a crystalline lens, 
 and added a mechanism of nerves and 
 muscles for adapting itself instantane- 
 ously to clear definition of things both 
 near and far — a mechanism so simple, 
 yet so fitted to its end, that with all our 
 science we cannot perceive by what 
 vital chemistry it makes so quick re- 
 
 [45] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 sponse. Thus — for this is only a brief 
 summary of the story — through stage 
 after stage of clarifying and perfecting, 
 the eye has been called forth by the 
 light in which it sees ; as the eagle in its 
 lofty circlings gazes at the sun, and 
 man goes forth to his labor. From 
 such chapters of the evolution of matter 
 into organs for intelligent use and the 
 joy of life, there may be gained a grate- 
 ful appreciation of the worth of our 
 bodily inheritance. As we finish read- 
 ing the natural history of the eye, we 
 may rejoice exceedingly because we 
 have come to ourselves not only as living 
 spirits, but as spirits having eyes to see. 
 Another truth, closely following this, 
 will lead us a step further in the natural 
 prophecy of immortality. It is the re- 
 flection that some embodiment is of 
 permanent value to the spirit. This 
 has been implied in what has already 
 
 [46] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 been said, but it should receive distinct 
 attention. If the body is shown to be 
 a gift of real value to our present inner 
 life; if embodiment is to be esteemed as 
 a means of spiritual communion with 
 nature, through which the personal life 
 is greatly enriched, then it is to be re- 
 garded also as a gift not to be recalled; 
 it is to be possessed as power that may 
 be more fully realized in some freedom 
 of activity and perfection of vision be- 
 yond our knowledge. We may reason- 
 ably conclude that if now some body, it 
 may be as yet a rudimentary and im- 
 perfect body, has become of inestima- 
 ble service to mind in its happy com- 
 munication with the outward world, 
 and in the mutual recognition of friends ; 
 then some bodiliness will always be of 
 service to mind; and after this brief 
 earth time the spirit in man may expect 
 to receive the better thing prepared 
 
 [47] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 for it, and to enter into some future em- 
 bodiment more finely organized for its 
 motion and vision in the life beyond. 
 
 This expectation of life in some bet- 
 ter natural relationship may be said to 
 rest upon an assumption; but it is a 
 scientific presumption from which such 
 hope takes wing. For it is an expecta- 
 tion of life which is justified by the main 
 tendency of life so far as we can follow 
 it from the beginning until now. It is 
 simply to presume that life will run on 
 the same true lines hereafter. It is 
 to believe that it may continue beyond 
 our sight, as it has begun within our 
 knowledge. This is a reasonable pre- 
 sumption because with all its windings 
 the way of life has not thus far returned 
 upon itself. Nor does the energy of 
 life show signs of giving out. Evolu- 
 tion stops at no half-way station; it 
 shows no hesitancy in its onward course. 
 
 [48] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 Moreover, evolution has resulted thus 
 far not merely in the gain of more high- 
 ly organized species, but it has selected 
 and preferred more individualized life; 
 it puts a supreme value upon the in- 
 dividual man. It has aimed, if we 
 may so speak, at the development of 
 the highest possible individuality. It 
 has attained a result worth perpetuat- 
 ing in personality. The personal life 
 has gained survival value. By the 
 same sign it may be expected to advance 
 to its perfection. For this much, at 
 least, we know; that nature strives to 
 keep what it has gained of worth. And 
 by the same rule which it has already at- 
 tained, it will also walk. The Son of 
 Man declared a first principle of the di- 
 vine working in his life when he said, 
 "I am not come to destroy, but to ful- 
 fil." Fulfilment is first principle of 
 natural theology, as it is of Christian 
 
 [49] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 divinity. He who could say out of his 
 own luminous consciousness of the 
 divine, "My Father worketh hitherto 
 and I work," declared this to be primal 
 law and essential truth of all God's 
 working, Not to destroy, but to fulfil. 
 We do but make this first truth of the 
 divine in nature and the life of man the 
 assurance of our immortal hope, when 
 we believe that our God has not pre- 
 pared this body, and brought it to its 
 present fitness, merely in the end to 
 throw away the very idea of embodi- 
 ment, as though his own work could not 
 be carried to completion and were noth- 
 ing worth. It is more profoundly nat- 
 ural, as it is Christian, to think that the 
 divine conception of embodied spirit 
 shall be fulfilled in some more celestial 
 dispensation of mind and in larger per- 
 ceptive relations to all the worlds of 
 space. 
 
 [50] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 Furthermore, in such expectation of 
 life more abundant we are accepting, 
 as in accordance with our natural 
 knowledge, the first principle of the 
 great resurrection chapter that the seed 
 in the earth has in itself the potentiality 
 of the flower and the fruit that shall be 
 in the air and sunshine above. What 
 we have need to discern clearly and 
 assuringly is just this truth, that the 
 body that dies is itself part and moment 
 of a divine thought and process of 
 spiritual embodiment; and that this 
 body has now preparatory value in re- 
 lation to the more spiritual body that 
 shall be. 
 
 Although it is impossible to under- 
 stand what a spiritual body may be 
 like, it is a natural and simple faith 
 to hold that we may acquire here, 
 through bodily training and exercises, 
 greater mental facility for the apprecia- 
 
 [51] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 tion hereafter of the whole nature side 
 of our life. Whatever may be laid up 
 in the soul through the education of 
 eye or ear, or skill of hand, in work and 
 pleasure, may belong to those treasures 
 that shall not be lost in the heavenly 
 completion of the whole man hereafter. 
 The artist's quick sense of the play of 
 light and shade, and harmonies of color, 
 the musician's perception of all sweet 
 sounds, the artisan's skill in cunning 
 workmanship, — these are personal ac- 
 quisitions which may well form part of 
 the preparation of this life for the larger 
 opportunities of the world to come. 
 This natural belief puts a future pre- 
 mium upon all honest work. Eternity 
 is not to rob time of any acquired values. 
 It is an inspiration in any study or dis- 
 cipline to cherish faith in its worth as an 
 acquisition of personal power for im- 
 mortality. 
 
 [52] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 Nor is this all of this assurance of 
 life. More than this, it is conceivable 
 that there may be won through present 
 struggle with the material world, and 
 carried naturally through death, a power 
 of personal energy over material forces 
 that shall prepare us for and give us 
 living mastery over other conditions 
 and richer material for spiritual life and 
 joy beyond this present world. We 
 may thus be gaining vital power to se- 
 lect the external conditions, and to win 
 our own souls from the unseen world, 
 in which the disembodied spirit shall 
 find its life. For this again is only to 
 think through, from the known into 
 the unknown, the first principle alike 
 of biology and of divinity that what is 
 determinant and specific in the germ is 
 not lost in the whole subsequent devel- 
 opment; that it all comes to fulfilment 
 in the fruit. And for men the harvest 
 
 [53] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 is the end of the world. We cannot at 
 the same time see these present blossom- 
 ings of God's thought in our nature, 
 and doubt the future ripening of such 
 life. And the end of the promise is not 
 the new heavens only, but the new 
 heavens and the new earth. 
 
 Herein lies the service of the Christian 
 doctrine of the resurrection to the natu- 
 ral argument for immortality. Even 
 in its grossest and impossible forms 
 this doctrine has borne witness to the 
 truth that the present life, if it is to 
 continue after death, must go on here- 
 after as it has been begun, in some 
 actual relations to the outward universe. 
 It shall have some physical aspect and 
 power. The spirit is made for some 
 embodiment, and it is not to be con- 
 ceived as losing an iota of its capacity 
 for the nature side of intelligent exist- 
 ence. On swifter wing, and with open 
 
 [54] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 vision, it is to have the freedom of the 
 skies. 
 
 The Christian doctrine of the resur- 
 rection, it is true, like all other doc- 
 trines of faith, is under vital necessity 
 of changing its forms and adapting its 
 essential truth to the general conditions 
 of thought in successive generations. 
 In one of its earlier and crude forms, as 
 a belief in the literal resurrection of the 
 flesh, it is as impossible for us now to 
 accept it, as it would be for us to receive 
 the old Ptolemaic astronomy. 
 
 Mediaeval pictures of martyrs and 
 saints appearing in earthly apparel from 
 above, as masterpieces of a lost art, 
 have power still to awaken the sense of 
 spiritual beauty — that feeling of some 
 transcendent beauty which art in the 
 highest always calls forth ; but they no 
 longer serve to render religious faith 
 vivid and real. Science has indeed ta- 
 
 [55] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 ken from modern art this same body of 
 the resurrection; but it has not taken 
 from us, and it cannot rob the human 
 heart of the essential truth of the Easter 
 faith in the resurrection of the dead. 
 It is the faith that in some manner, be- 
 yond present experience and hence im- 
 possible for us now to visualize, our 
 human life is to be continued in its 
 wholeness; the Christian hope is in 
 the fulfilment of the personal life 
 as one life of body, soul, and spirit; 
 it is faith in the completion of the 
 person in the integrity of his whole 
 nature. So St. Paul's profound spirit- 
 ual insight discerned the law of res- 
 urrection life, the universal law of 
 development and fulfilment, of which 
 Christ was the first-fruits; and the 
 law of resurrection, as it was dis- 
 covered and affirmed in the profound 
 resurrection chapter of the New Testa- 
 
 [56] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 ment, is anticipatory of and true to the 
 best evolutionary theology of our age. 
 In whatever form it has been held, or 
 may in time be better conceived, the 
 Christian belief in the resurrection of 
 the dead is a perpetual denial of unbe- 
 lief in the value of embodiment to spirit, 
 and an affirmation that what God has 
 so marvellously begun shall be carried 
 on to full fruition. The promise is that 
 all powers shall be put into subjection 
 to the Lord of life. In this compre- 
 hensive promise of the life everlasting, 
 the Christian believer may take delight 
 in the thought that our love of nature 
 is no passing pleasure; that in this joy 
 of heart, as well as in all other capaci- 
 ties of our nature, we shall be satisfied. 
 As we seek to follow the natural argu- 
 ment for immortality, at this point 
 another stepping-stone lies just before 
 us on which we may find footing. The 
 
 [57] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 next fact in order is the present relative 
 imperfection of the body for the spirit. 
 This is implied in the preceding para- 
 graphs; it needs now to be distinctly 
 considered. Although the body is the 
 consummation of the organization of 
 atomic matter for the use of mind, nev- 
 ertheless we are by no means come in 
 the flesh to the end of the conceivable 
 possibilities of the adaptations of the 
 natural to the spiritual life. Mind thus 
 far has made a good beginning, but it 
 may be only a beginning, in its control 
 of material forces. Thus the original 
 vague sense of touch has developed into 
 the finer sense of taste, the discriminat- 
 ing sense of sound, and the localized 
 and clear sense of sight. But no sense 
 as yet goes so far or reaches so high as 
 thought may imagine it to be carried. 
 The mind would receive with imme- 
 diate perception the now ultra-visible 
 
 [58] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 rays; we would apprehend with more 
 demonstrable directness the all-perva- 
 sive ether, which lies still unseen but 
 not unknown around us. Nor need we 
 dwell upon the partialness of our spirit- 
 ual control of the elements that are 
 transiently held in subjection to us in 
 these bodies. These vital elements 
 come and go, ours to utilize for a day's 
 work, in pain escaping from our mas- 
 tery, and in the end breaking loose from 
 our will to live. Death is our final loss 
 of control over this kind of organic mat- 
 ter. It is a contradiction of us. But 
 just at this point where our reasoning 
 is brought to a pause; where mind 
 seems to receive a final contradiction 
 from matter and life is denied by 
 death, hope finds a further prospect 
 opening before it, and faith in immor- 
 tality may take a new departure. For 
 we have this reassuring knowledge that 
 
 [59] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 the body which escapes from our sub- 
 jection at death is by no means the 
 final conceivable perfection of body; 
 other obedience, and a service to the 
 spirit of more ethereal matter than as 
 yet appears, may with good reason be 
 supposed. Hence both from the com- 
 parative perfection of the human brain 
 in relation to the past organization of 
 matter for mind, and also from its im- 
 perfection in relation to a conceivable 
 future, we may gain a true and pro- 
 found insight into the prophetic sig- 
 nificance of the present life. If it were 
 not so, our hopes might fall. If indeed 
 we were scientifically compelled to think 
 that in this existing nervous system and 
 physical organization, through which 
 we now exist in communication with 
 an external world, the last material 
 adaptations for personal life were ex- 
 hausted; if we were forced to assume 
 
 [60] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 that in known physics and chemistry the 
 end of all matter in its fitness for mind 
 has been reached; then a halt would 
 indeed be called to our faith, and we 
 should stand at last, in the full energy 
 of personal life, at the height of nat- 
 ure's achievement, but in the hopeless 
 isolation of our self-consciousness, and, 
 after all, ourselves no better than the 
 beasts that perish. But it is not so. 
 Are we not now discovering the insuffi- 
 ciency of all previous science of atomic 
 matter? The last stroke of physical 
 science has shivered the atom itself. It 
 is displaying radiant energies before 
 undreamed of. That last indivisible 
 point of matter is caught in the act of 
 setting free emanations and rays of 
 different kinds and of amazing periods 
 of duration. It might almost be said 
 that the atom is found among nature's 
 prophets. Physical science is speaking 
 
 [61] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 as with new tongues. What matter 
 ultimately is, what latent energies are 
 yet to be revealed in the depths and 
 silences of space, who can tell ? What 
 finite intelligence far back in the be- 
 ginning of days could have imagined the 
 forms and combinations into which the 
 ether in the course of time has been 
 transformed ? Though a finite intelli- 
 gence, before ever the worlds were 
 created, had seen the Sower going forth 
 to sow in the fields of infinite space, 
 could such finite intelligence have con- 
 ceived of the clusters of the stars, and 
 the beauty of the earth, and the joy 
 of life which it is ours to know ? And 
 the full harvest is not yet reaped. Who 
 of us has a measuring rod for the way 
 of further evolution ? We who are just 
 beginning to learn how much farther 
 the Creator has gone with radiant mat- 
 ter than we had dreamed, cannot pre- 
 
 [62] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 sume to say that he can go no farther 
 either with it or us. Now before our 
 eyes invisible and unsuspected rays of 
 radium are revealed as sparkles of light 
 by their impacts upon a prepared 
 screen. Can we exclude from possible 
 human experience celestial influences 
 that may be as present and pervasive 
 though as yet undetected ? And if the 
 dissolving of an atom is the letting loose 
 of emanations hitherto all unknown, we 
 may well hesitate to believe that the 
 breaking up of this mortality can set 
 free no finer radiances with which, as 
 in a garment of light, the spirit may be 
 clothed upon with immortality. 
 
 We have been thinking thus far of the 
 unfinished personality of man on the 
 bodily side; we find it reasonable to 
 suppose that the natural may germinate 
 into some more spiritualized embodi- 
 ment. But besides this, in mind as 
 
 [63] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 well as body, man is an unfinished be- 
 ing. He has been begun, but not ended. 
 He has by no means exhausted as yet 
 his personal dynamics. A man may 
 have much to do in enlarging his own 
 soul. And this insignificant earth, on 
 which he has just come to himself, as 
 a little child once said, is not big enough 
 for him. Already in thought he tran- 
 scends it. In purpose he outlives it. 
 He has not time in this earthly life to 
 attain his full maturity. His intellect 
 is capable of indefinite growth ; and he 
 can love for eternity. Furthermore, 
 even in the weakness of his mortality 
 man is possessed of the will to live. 
 That is a supernal virtue of personality. 
 The personal will to live is a force with 
 which the universe has to reckon. 
 There is no energy so mighty as that; 
 none save only the will of God. It 
 defies the very powers that rise to over- 
 
 [64] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 come it. Pascal's memorable word that, 
 though man is as a reed, he is a thinking 
 reed, and he is superior to the world 
 that kills him because he knows that he 
 dies, is profoundly true, likewise, of 
 man's will to live even while he dies. 
 So far forth as we can follow the will 
 to live, in a true man it never ceases to 
 be; even in dying it is active. For it 
 has been observed with deep significance 
 that man is not merely passive but 
 active in dying. An animal will fly with 
 instinctive fear from the peril that pur- 
 sues it; man goes forth to meet his 
 death. In purpose and in will he acts 
 while he is dying as to the body. He 
 goes down into the valley; often with 
 conscious determination we may see 
 him enter the dark waters. We may 
 not follow him with our eyes as he goes 
 through the mists up the heights be- 
 yond; but sometimes we may see him 
 
 [65] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 taking with conscious self-control the 
 last step — and he is gone ; his communi- 
 cation with us is broken ; but up to his 
 latest breath, and even as his heart beats 
 its last pulsation, the man is the same 
 man we have always known, thinking, 
 purposing, willing, loving, as he had 
 always done. Death comes to him as 
 another experience of life — another 
 event to be met by his unbroken will to 
 live. That personal will to live has 
 been and is a renewing and constructive 
 force. It has made the man what he is; 
 and to some extent it has sustained and 
 fashioned his mortal body. The will 
 to live is a formative energy in relation 
 to this present environment; why not 
 then in relation to other environment? 
 Herein is discovered a superior energy 
 working in relation to a lower element; 
 a spiritual power is disclosed, active and 
 formative, in the midst of existing con- 
 [06] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 ditions for its exercise. What can put 
 a stop to its activity ? Nothing that we 
 know of. What may prevent its exer- 
 cise in different conditions, in relation to 
 material even more subservient perhaps 
 to its fashioning than we may now ap- 
 prehend ? 
 
 One may fall back at this point into 
 the old difficulty in which a desire to be- 
 lieve in immortality has often been 
 swamped. Admit, it may be said, that 
 all this is possible and seemingly quite 
 natural; but after all no one knows. 
 We have no experience of life except 
 as bound to this body of death. This is 
 true, but not the whole of the truth. 
 We know ourselves not merely as bound 
 to this mortality; we know ourselves 
 now and here as mind bringing the body 
 into subjection to itself; we have ex- 
 perience of ourselves in the body, but 
 not altogether of it. We recognize this 
 
 [67] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 body as of value to us; we do not recog- 
 nize ourselves as belonging to it. We 
 have been maintaining that in and 
 through these bodies we live in a rich 
 relationship with nature, all things be- 
 ing ours. But it does not follow that 
 we are therefore to be disinherited when 
 this body fails us. Even now while in 
 the body we may be forming other con- 
 nections, there may be growing finer 
 faculties, for freer fellowship with nat- 
 ure, — the greater nature reaching be- 
 yond the stars. At all events present 
 experience contains more than the fact 
 of death; it comprehends the higher 
 law and spiritual energy of life. We 
 know something of the lordship of life, 
 even though we die. 
 
 We are further reassured in this natu- 
 ral expectation of life by a significant 
 fact which recent biology has added to 
 our knowledge. Hitherto we have been 
 
 [68] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 wont to assume that death came as a 
 foe of life; now we are learning that 
 death itself first entered into nature as 
 the servant of life, and by it in the 
 course of evolution the way was opened 
 to more life and better. Death itself 
 has proved to be a great means of de- 
 veloping more organized, sensitive, and 
 responsive life in nature. Indeed the 
 ascent of life would have been impos- 
 sible, had it not been for the interven- 
 tion of death. The natural history of 
 death shows it to have been a minister 
 of life. Throughout the whole process 
 of evolution death has been the servant, 
 and life the lord. Why should this law 
 and service be revoked with the com- 
 ing of man ? The end of the evolution 
 of species is the perfect individual. 
 Why then, as death has served hitherto 
 the upgrowth of species, should it not 
 complete its ministry by setting free the 
 
 [69] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 individual person, in whom all the past 
 succession of species is fulfilled ? 
 
 Whittier's familiar lines are thus 
 seen to contain a double truth: "Life is 
 ever lord of death"; and "Love can 
 never lose its own." Both in body and 
 in mind, in fellowship with nature, and 
 in his own heart, man is made after the 
 power of an endless life. 
 
 In the reasoning thus far pursued we 
 have sought to follow real analogies be- 
 tween things natural and spiritual. Such 
 analogies are to be distinguished from 
 fanciful resemblances or merely illus- 
 trative representations. A fancy is an 
 artificial composite of resemblances, 
 put together, it may be, with pleasing 
 skill; it is a mental association of simi- 
 larities between things that may have 
 no real affinities; it is like the acciden- 
 tal patterns that are to be seen with 
 the turning of a kaleidoscope. But 
 
 [70] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 the scientific use of the imagination is 
 wholly different; an illuminative imagi- 
 nation is an extension of vision into the 
 further truth, and along the real rela- 
 tions of things. It unifies in the mental 
 conception what is really one in nature 
 and life. Ruskin has rightly defined 
 imagination as the power of seeing 
 things as they are. It is a mental vis- 
 ualization of some harmonizing truth, 
 some common principle, or vitalizing 
 energy that runs through things that 
 differ, and binds the worlds into a cos- 
 mic whole. In such use of the imagi- 
 nation, whether it be scientific or 
 spiritual, we are but doing what that 
 early modern astronomer did when he 
 said he was thinking God's thoughts 
 after him. So likewise a mediaeval 
 theologian, who had much of the in- 
 tense modern passion for some vision 
 of the ultimate Reality, St. Augustine, 
 
 [71] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 gained a true imaginative perception of 
 the higher order and dramatic unity 
 of nature and history when he said, the 
 creation is a poem of the Divine ideas. 
 Whenever we can trace real analogies 
 between things natural and things spir- 
 itual, we can trust such principles with 
 reasonable assurance. They are dis- 
 closures of the structural lines of the 
 universe. They are the principles of 
 reason that run through nature, and 
 bind together all the spheres. It gives 
 to our reason a sense of sureness when 
 we find them and follow them. We 
 shall not be liable to prove mistaken in 
 our essential faiths, if we have good 
 reason to believe that we are not chas- 
 ing after illusive fancies, but are keeping 
 in the way of the same law of life from 
 one field to another, from the least to 
 the greatest revelation of life, and press- 
 ing on in the way of the same law 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 of development toward the goal in 
 the world to come. When knowledge 
 reaches the borders of the material 
 world, imaginative reason, continuing 
 along the same lines, ventures, as far as 
 it can, into the unknown, and forms a 
 working theory concerning things su- 
 pra-sensible. Immortality cannot in 
 this way be demonstrated ; but the con- 
 tinuance of life on the same principles, 
 in accordance with real analogies, is 
 rendered credible. Unbelief will thus 
 appear to be more irrational, unnatural, 
 and contradictory of known truths than 
 belief. The immortal hope is the out- 
 come of the best experience of life. 
 
 There are some men of scientific 
 training who now would venture far- 
 ther than this. They not only hold that 
 real analogies, such as those with which 
 these pages have been occupied, leave 
 us with a reasonable hope of immor- 
 
 [73] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 tality; they look with some confidence 
 to see the progress of investigation 
 push still farther back the confines of 
 the known, and more than half expect 
 that some sensible sign from beyond the 
 grave may be credibly communicated 
 as the result of further psychical re- 
 searches. They ask whether it is not 
 now possible for us to verify in some 
 occult phenomena actual influences 
 from disincarnate spirits. If it be so, 
 faith, they think, hard pressed in con- 
 flict with the materialism of these days, 
 may receive much needed help in a 
 time of need. Even a slight extension 
 of evidence of the continued existence 
 of departed spirits, though it might 
 bring little knowledge of their state, 
 would prove a providential re-enforce- 
 ment of our expectation of immortality. 
 Before accepting or declining alto- 
 gether the help of such alleged com- 
 [74] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 munications, we have need to wait for 
 much more definite results of investiga- 
 tions of the border-land around our 
 conscious life. Recent experiments in 
 this direction have extended the range 
 of the possible working of mind be- 
 yond the limit of the senses. Telepathy 
 can hardly be regarded longer as a word 
 without some psychic meaning. The 
 threshold of consciousness, the sublimi- 
 nal consciousness, the powers of mind 
 in abnormal states, and their limita- 
 tions, — these and kindred phenomena 
 indicate that there is something more 
 for us still to know about ourselves, 
 and that we may be possessed of latent 
 faculties, and are capable of farther- 
 reaching influence than we had sup- 
 posed. It would not be a thing in- 
 credible if mind should be found in 
 some cases to use a swift and extensive 
 wireless telegraphy of its own. The 
 
 [75] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 openness of the material texture and 
 web of things is not a secret to physical 
 science, however closed it seems to our 
 eyes. The complex field of lines of 
 force, the ceaseless pulsations of ethe- 
 real waves, the interpenetration of ele- 
 mental energies, the play to and fro 
 and everywhither of diverse motions, — 
 all these newer ideas are easier for a 
 trained scientific man to represent in 
 his higher mathematics and to imagine 
 in his working theories, than it is for 
 the ordinary man to comprehend. This 
 being so, it is unreasonable to regard 
 any supra-sensible manifestations as 
 unworthy scientific observation and 
 analysis. It would be scientific pre- 
 sumption to regard as impossible any 
 manifestations which might serve to 
 extend knowledge in any direction. Nor 
 do frequent exposures of fraud exhaust 
 the field of abnormal or super-normal 
 
 [76] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 psychic phenomena. Patient and pro- 
 longed research in this as in other fields, 
 combined with scientific ingenuity in 
 methods and instruments of precise ex- 
 periment, may yet open definite knowl- 
 edge in this outlying region of life. But 
 the utmost that may safely be said now 
 is, that around clear self-conscious- 
 ness there seems to lie, as it were, a 
 magnetic mental field pervaded by 
 lines of force as yet untraced and 
 undetermined. 
 
 While requiring this much from the 
 scientific side in relation to such mys- 
 terious happenings, we may add an- 
 other reflection from the religious point 
 of view. Is it necessarily to be true of 
 every generation since Christ to the end 
 of time that though it seeks for a sign, 
 no sign shall be given it ? The age of 
 his mighty works lies already in the far 
 distance, and men generally are become 
 
 [77] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 sceptical of all miracles. They cannot 
 verify the evidences of the supernatural 
 in the past, and they see none in the 
 present. Christianity to-day is belief 
 in Christ, not so much for the works' 
 sake, but for all that the Christ has be- 
 come in human history; for what he 
 himself is now in the life of the world. 
 But from this it is not of necessity to be 
 concluded that ways of more direct 
 spiritual manifestation, once perhaps 
 open, have been forever closed. It 
 is quite possible to conceive that new 
 modes of spiritual communication might 
 be providentially disclosed, if ever the 
 need should arise for more evidential 
 presence of the Spirit in the life of hu- 
 manity. It is further possible to sup- 
 pose that by knocking man some time 
 may find doors opening outward into 
 the unseen, which before were closed. 
 We cannot therefore exclude as either 
 
 [78] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 naturally or morally impossible such 
 spiritual manifestations as at any time 
 may present themselves for critical ex- 
 amination. A reserve of evidence for 
 the immanence in nature of the tran- 
 scendent God, as well as for our hope 
 of life after death, may be providentially 
 held back until in the progress alike of 
 human knowledge and need man may 
 be able to draw for himself upon such re- 
 serves of knowledge ; until some gener- 
 ation may be scientifically wise enough 
 to avail itself of the spiritual disclosures 
 of the natural world, which it may need 
 to save its higher life. 
 
 Be this as it may, immediate spiritual 
 communications are not as yet part of 
 the providential training by which we 
 are to be made strong to hold and to 
 practise our faith in immortality. We 
 must live as immortals, if we would be- 
 lieve as immortals. There is little at 
 
 [79] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 present to add to the modern argument 
 for man's survival after death from the 
 voluminous results of psychical re- 
 search — little unless it be an increasing 
 sense of wonder. The most competent 
 investigators acknowledge that they 
 know not much more than when they 
 began; but they add that the little 
 which they have learned leads them 
 to think that there is much more 
 which in time will be known con- 
 cerning the spiritual influences which 
 work within ourselves, and amid which 
 we live. 
 
 To return from these speculations, 
 finding no certain light in the flashings 
 upon peculiarly sensitive minds of illu- 
 mination from no common source, we 
 stand again on sure ground when we 
 rest our faith on the supreme fact of per- 
 sonality. We know in what we believe, 
 when we realize what the personal life 
 
 [80] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 contains within its own spiritual energy 
 and will. 
 
 After all has been reasoned and said, 
 one shadow sometimes will fall across 
 a clear Christian faith: it is the doubt 
 which arises from inability to imagine 
 how these things can be. It is well to 
 recognize the fact that the last difficulty 
 of a well-reasoned and assured hope is a 
 difficulty of the imagination. It is im- 
 agination that fails us, not reason that 
 betrays us, in the very presence of death. 
 Our thoughts become silent when we 
 long to know how and where those who 
 have vanished from our homes are 
 living now. 
 
 In such hours of utter bereavement, 
 our questionings return into our hearts 
 unanswered. In utter inability to con- 
 ceive of the present state of those who 
 but yesterday were with us, we sit by our 
 
 [81] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 fireside, having drawn the curtains to 
 shut out the lonely mystery of the night, 
 thinking of them as they were, and as 
 living and loving still, nearer perhaps 
 than we may know. Our memories be- 
 come our prophets of the life, theirs and 
 ours, which is to be; their remembered 
 faces look down upon us, as our hopes, 
 from the unseen. 
 
 In such moods, of one truth we may 
 be assured: the splendid personal gifts 
 of memory and imagination have not 
 been bestowed upon us to empty our 
 hearts of joy, and to fill them with vis- 
 ionless sorrow. They are powers meant 
 to enrich and to sustain us in any trial 
 and grief. They are always to be ar- 
 rayed on the brave, bright, hopeful side 
 of life. They should be trained and 
 used to help us do happily our daily 
 work. To the reasons for belief in 
 immortality, therefore, something may 
 
 [82] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 be added concerning the cultivation and 
 exercise of imagination for the sake of 
 rendering more real and vivid the 
 spiritual side of our existence. 
 
 The aid of religious symbolism may 
 be intelligently accepted for the pur- 
 pose of quickening religious feelings and 
 faith. All spiritual truths are brought 
 to us in some symbolic representations. 
 Words are symbols of realities. Images 
 are not idols when they lend some nearer 
 sense of reality to faith in that which is 
 transcendent and divine. It is when the 
 symbol is substituted for the reality; 
 when a form of words is held as the 
 divine revelation itself; when the sac- 
 ramental emblems are received as in 
 themselves the real presence, that idola- 
 try of creed or worship may enter in. 
 Hence what is needed for the present 
 aid of faith is to choose those forms of 
 representation of things invisible and 
 
 [83] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 eternal that may fall in most naturally 
 with our modern habits of mind. Every 
 age must find for itself the forms and 
 symbols best fitted and most natural to 
 its thought. But it should use its full 
 power of imagination in visualizing and 
 rendering vivid its beliefs. It would be a 
 barren age, scorched by its own light, 
 if it should not create for itself a relig- 
 ious poetry and art. Modern science 
 has made for itself symbols of forces and 
 motions that run into the mathematical 
 infinite. One must be possessed of 
 power of imaginative representation to 
 become a great discoverer in science. 
 It is no less true that one must exercise 
 the power of spiritual imagination to 
 be a great believer. In either case we 
 approach thereby into closer touch with 
 the living truth; we see revealed the 
 unifying principle, the fundamental 
 reality. The poet of the spiritual is 
 
 [84] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 always to be looked for. It may be said 
 that only in the mediaeval time, when 
 the heavens were nearer earth than now, 
 could Dante have traversed the celestial 
 spheres and become the great poet of 
 the invisible. And still the spell of his 
 imagination falls upon our thought, 
 though we know how far the stars have 
 receded from us. But now physical 
 theories are become too sublimated to 
 render scenic imaginations of things 
 celestial congenial to the modern mind. 
 Nevertheless the poet of the ideal and 
 the supersensible is not to be banished 
 by the extension of knowledge. From 
 our more intimate, as well as vaster 
 knowledge of the universe, the poet of 
 to-day and of to-morrow may draw 
 fresh and rare material to weave into 
 the imagery of his song of human trust 
 and immortal hope. 
 
 Every one who would render real to 
 
 [85] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 himself his personal faith is called to 
 make right and 'lelpf ul use of his imagi- 
 nation, to be in his own thoughts the 
 poet of his faith. He must accept the 
 help of the spiritual suggestions of the 
 world in which he sees and lives. He 
 must not only read the parables of the 
 Master who without a parable spake not 
 to his disciples ; he must seek to imitate 
 the Master in the parable-making habit. 
 Believers may train their ears to hear 
 the higher meanings in common things ; 
 they may open their eyes to discern 
 the ever fresh suggestiveness of nature. 
 A familiar landscape, some remembered 
 scene, a look out of the window, a 
 momentary glory in the sky, or evening 
 peace on the hills, may awaken thoughts 
 beyond all words. From the silence of 
 nature a voice from beyond may seem 
 about to speak. A gleam over the face 
 of nature may come and go as a spiritual 
 
 [86] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 expression, and leave us feeling our- 
 selves in the presence of an infinite 
 friendliness. From such spiritual as- 
 pects of nature and intimations of some- 
 thing diviner than is seen, we return to 
 take up the commonplace of life with 
 thoughts refreshed and a cheerful light of 
 spirit within us to brighten the daily care. 
 Even passing fancies of what things 
 unseen may be like, though they be 
 as children's imaginations or as our 
 dreams, if they be not held too fast, and 
 be suffered to fall from us as quickly as 
 they come, may have a quickening 
 touch, and impart a happier sense of 
 invisible presences we fain would see. 
 Freely and gratefully then we are to 
 use, as best we may, the gift to faith 
 of the symbolizing imagination. No 
 poet's utmost flight can enter within 
 the veil ; but the least spiritual imagina- 
 tion may help us trust that it is only 
 
 [87] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 a veil between the earthly and the 
 heavenly. 
 
 There will come indeed times when 
 all symbolism will lose its quickening 
 virtue, and every imagination fail ; when 
 the mystery of the world overshadows 
 us and faith itself seems lost as in a 
 vast and homeless wonder; whether 
 there be prophecies or tongues, they 
 shall cease; but love never faileth. At 
 such times when all else fails, we shall 
 have need of the last lesson which the 
 great Parable Maker taught his dis- 
 ciples. For when the hour of his de- 
 parture drew nigh, he spake to them 
 without a parable. He did not then 
 bid them look abroad and see the 
 sower going forth to sow, or to lift up 
 their eyes and behold the fields white 
 for the harvest. He did not remind 
 them of the lilies of the field or the birds 
 of the air. He opened to them no 
 
 [88] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 visions of the New Jerusalem coming 
 down from God out of heaven. He 
 looked into their hearts, and spake di- 
 rectly from his own. He himself was 
 to them in that last hour the revelation 
 of the Father, His God and their God. 
 Only these two simplest things — the 
 bread of life and the cup of communion 
 — were the symbols which he blessed 
 to bring him always to remembrance. 
 His last and most definite revelation of 
 the life beyond death he put in the plain 
 and common language of our human 
 homes and fellowship; for he said of 
 his and their future state such personal 
 words as these: I, thou, we: all made 
 perfect in one : I will come to you : ye 
 shall see me : where I am, there ye may 
 be also : continue ye in my love. Thus 
 he spoke of what shall be, as one might 
 speak of what had been. He taught 
 what heaven is in personal words. 
 
 [89] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 Years afterward that disciple who 
 had known him best, in his last letters to 
 those who had fellowship with him in 
 the life that he had seen manifested in 
 the Master, drops all the apocalyptic 
 imagery of the city of God; St. John 
 likewise puts his sure hope of immor- 
 tality in the same simple words of the 
 abiding personal life; for he said with- 
 out a parable: Perfect love casteth out 
 fear: now are we the sons of God, 
 and it doth not yet appear what we 
 shall be: we shall be like him, for we 
 shall see him even as he is. 
 
 "And they shall see his face." The 
 perfect symbol of the spirit is the face. 
 It is the clear disclosure to our eyes of 
 the other than ourself. The fairest 
 thing that we know is not a star, "when 
 only one is shining in the sky"; it is 
 not the beauty of the earth; it is the 
 human face. What does it signify? 
 
 [90] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 What does it mean to us? One of 
 Darwin's best studies was his account 
 of the physiology of the expressions in 
 animals and in man. He has taught 
 us the alphabet and some of the simple 
 combinations of letters in the natural 
 language of expression. The human 
 face has acquired a language of its own. 
 It is the first speech of intelligence; it 
 is the one universal language which all 
 men understand at sight. It is the di- 
 rect communication of spirit to spirit; 
 it is at once question and answer; face 
 answereth to the face of man. In this 
 expressiveness of a human face there is 
 something more than the forms of the 
 Darwinian grammar of it to be ex- 
 plained ; what is it within us that makes 
 use of these expressive changes of the 
 face ? What is it that conveys by these 
 expressive variables a meaning all its 
 own ? What spirit is this that plays at 
 
 [91] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 will upon this marvellous refinement of 
 gross matter, causing it to reveal its 
 secrets, or veiling them at its pleasure ? 
 The eye is material, but the light in it is 
 human. There is something in a glance 
 that is more than the action of a muscle. 
 Physiological changes, with marvellous 
 quickness, telegraph meanings of mind 
 and heart, messages of love and joy, of 
 care and sorrow, of will and purpose, of 
 life and death. The human face divine 
 is the fairest product of evolution which 
 our eyes may see; and it is of and for 
 the spiritual. Other forms fairer and 
 more spiritual there may be, for it doth 
 not yet appear what we shall be; — the 
 face of an angel, the transfigured coun- 
 tenance of the Lord on the holy mount, 
 and the faces of our blessed dead, whom 
 after a little while we shall see again, 
 the same but changed as from glory 
 unto glory. 
 
 [92] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 Here the belief in immortality must 
 rest before the revelation of the personal 
 life in its full power, at its highest and 
 its best in the Son of man. Here reason- 
 ing from nature ends, and faith abides, 
 at the last ascent of life, on the height 
 where He to whom the Spirit was given 
 without measure looked up into the 
 heavenlies, and knew the Father. The 
 sciences must take account of the per- 
 fection of life in the person of Christ. 
 We cannot live and die as though the 
 sun had not risen, for the light of his 
 spirit now fills our skies. Modern sci- 
 ence will not think the whole process 
 and intent of evolution through, until 
 it shall come to the Christ, and be- 
 hold all that the Jesus of history has 
 become, and now is in the light of the 
 world. No full and final answer to our 
 human questionings of life and death 
 and the world to come can be given ex- 
 
 [93] 
 
MODERN BELIEF 
 
 cept in the presence of the perfect man- 
 ifestation of life in the Man of men, as 
 we behold his glory, even the glory of 
 the Father which was from the begin- 
 ning — the glory that invests all lives 
 which are lived in the same mind that 
 was in him. 
 
 For this generation, then, the ultimate 
 reason for belief in the transfiguration 
 of this body into the spiritual, and the 
 continuance of the whole personal life 
 after death, is not so much the witness 
 of the first disciples to the empty tomb, 
 or any possible manifestation to the 
 senses of what lies within the veil; it 
 is above all that great assertion of 
 Peter's Pentecostal faith that it is not 
 possible for God's Holy One to see cor- 
 ruption. The living Christ cannot be 
 holden by death. The impossibility 
 of death overcoming life, such life as 
 was seen in the Christ, such life as is 
 
 [94] 
 
IN IMMORTALITY 
 
 witnessed in men of his Spirit, — that 
 was the last, full assurance of the Apos- 
 tolic faith ; and it is our reasonable hope 
 in the midst of all knowledge. Having 
 fellowship in the life which is too divine 
 to perish, we wait for the fulfilment of 
 faith in vision. The perfection of sense 
 is the eye. And God is light. The 
 Scriptures of the world's imperishable 
 faith call us alike the children of the 
 resurrection and the children of the 
 light. Faith shall end in perfect vision. 
 
 [95] 
 
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