Charles Josselyn. LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY BY WILLIAM HANNA THOMSON, M.D., LL.D. Author of " Brain and Personality," "What is Physical Life" etc. CONSULTING PHYSICIAN TO THE ROOSEVELT HOS- PITAL ; TO THE NEW YORK STATE MANHATTAN HOSPITALS FOR THE INSANE ; AND TO THE NEW YORK RED CROSS HOSPITAL; FORMERLY PRO- FESSOR OF THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE AND OF DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY MEDICAL COLLEGE; EX-PRESIDENT OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE, ETC. NEW YORK AND LONDON FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 1911 T5" COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Published, November, 1911 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Facts and not Theories about Life on this Earth 9 II. Three Great Epochs in the History of Life on this Earth . . . . 21 III. The Third Epoch, that of Personal Beings 27 IV. The Brain ...... 35 V. Immortality 49 VI. The Verdict of History as to Human Nature 59 VII. Can Life Come into Existence by Chance? . . . . . 73 VIII. Resurrection of the Body . . . 91 IX. Heaven as Described in the Bible 105 015753 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY Chapter I FACTS AND NOT THEORIES ABOUT LIFE ON THIS EARTH Chapter I FACTS AND NOT THEORIES ABOUT LIFE ON THIS EARTH A PURE theorist is one who on occasion can altogether part company with facts. Such persons are particularly numerous when the subject of the origin and nature of Life is under discussion, for they find it affords such wing to speculation that they need no approach to facts. There- fore both in ancient and in modern times we hear life spoken of as a great ocean from which every individual life is derived and to which it shall return. Thus a Hindu taking up a little water from the River Ganges in the palm of his hand said, " There is the life of man as 9 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY he now lives here," and emptying it back into the great flowing river, " there is man returning to the whence from which he came." Such pantheistic conceptions have always had a fascination for many minds who claim to worship great ideas instead of great things. Ideas are their only realities, and everything else they look upon as helow their notice. This they can well do so long as they keep clear of the great subject of life, because life on this earth, which is the only life we can observe and know anything about, does not exist apart from living things, as the first mosquito that bites them would show. To them, however, everything is one, and one is everything. This compels them sooner or later to confound subject and object as one and the same, in order to escape from dualism. Hence when a man is looking at that interesting object, the moon, as he is the subject which sees that 10 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY object the moon, therefore he and the moon are one, a conclusion which only lunatics would draw. Life is encountered everywhere on this earth, but always obstinately refuses to present itself except in separate living forms. Life here belongs to nothing which is either universal or general, rather it is invariably individual and particular. It is in vain that we can look for some ex- ception to this certain fact by hunting for life with the microscope, though there we actually meet with the largest department of the living kingdom whose forms, how- ever minute, never merge into each other or into anything else, any more than cows merge into sheep. Among bacteria, ./ tho eight billions of a larger form can find room in the space of a pin's head, not one of these billions ever merges into the rest, any more than the blades of grass will mix on a prairie. Nor is the case anyj 11 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY different if we turn to those powerful agents like the virus of hydrophobia or of yellow fever, which are too small to be seen by any microscope. Every biologist, or student of life, is certain that these are as distinct and specific as any species which are visible, for hydrophobia no more re- sembles yellow fever than a horse looks like a fish. Life indeed is much the most important fact that we know of. If this earth were without life it would certainly be an un- interesting vacuum, as uninteresting as lifeless, interstellar space. But as it is, it furnishes an endless variety, not of ideas, but of important facts. Hence we cannot escape asking the question whether life associated with ma- terial bodies exists elsewhere than on this earth. The answer is that at best it must be very scarce in the universe, owing to one certain fact, namely, the extremely LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY narrow range of temperature in which physical life is possible. The temperature 212, or that of boiling water, usually sterilizes or kills all life. But the temper- ature of the sun is estimated at 13,000, and storms rage in its hot atmosphere, be- side which the worst earthly cyclone would be but a gentle zephyr. But our sun is relatively a cool body among those fiery suns called the fixed stars. Professor Simon Newcomb calculates that the mighty Canopus is 100,000 times larger, and 100,000 times hotter than our sun, so that if the earth were to approach Ca- nopus as near as it is to the sun, that is about 90,000,000 of miles off, it would be instantly vaporized. Theories, however, are the most elastic of things. Hence as no one can think of peopling burning suns, theorists imagine that these may have numerous planets, LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY and that all which is needed in a planet is to be a planet, and it will then have in- telligent inhabitants just as it has rocks and stones. As no fixed star has yet been discovered with planets, it is taken for granted that these are too small to be vis- ible at such a distance. However, since so many of the fixed stars are double, what would happen to planets revolving around or between them is not hard to imagine. Our only course, therefore, is to come back to our own sun and its planets, for these can give us facts instead of hypoth- eses, and these facts show that not one of the sun's planets except the earth is the abode of life. Thus Venus, which is the nearest to us, and almost the size of the earth, cannot support life, because it al- ways turns the same face to the sun as the moon does to us. Its people, therefore, would be persistently scorched on one side LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY of that planet, while on the other side they would be frozen stiff in their cold, unend- ing night. The case is just the same with the planet Mercury. We must therefore turn to the other planets, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Jupiter is certainly big enough for a great popula- tion because it is 1,300 times larger than the earth, but Jupiter is of such low spe- cific gravity that it must be largely made up of fluids and vapors. Our own solid earth, which is seven times heavier than if it were all granite, would go clean through Jupiter, if it hit him, as easily as a bullet would traverse a large pumpkin. But if Jupiter has a solid surface, which astronomers doubt, then according to the law that the weight of a body at its sur- face is directly proportional to the plan- et's mass, a man who weighs 140 pounds here, on Jupiter would weigh considerably 15 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY over ten tons, a very inconvenient weight for either walking or dancing. Conditions for life are no better on Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune, for astron- omers are generally of the opinion that all four of these planets, including Jupi- ter, are in much the same state as the earth was before it cooled so as to have a solid surface largely covered with water and surrounded by its atmosphere. There remains little Mars, which has a diameter of 4,000 miles, or about half that of the earth, with a corresponding amount of light and heat. Mars has lately been the favorite planet with theorists, but the facts are that it has an atmosphere, tho, as thin as that on the top of our Andes. It has periods of summer and of winter, during which its poles alternately turn white as if from snow. Its surface is marked with long straight lines which the astronomer Lowell takes to be veritable 16 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY canals dug by its inhabitants. But we must protest against astronomers having anything to say about life, for their only instrument is the telescope, while the in- strument of the biologist, or student of life, is the microscope. The training of an astronomer no more fits him to speak' about life than it fits him to understand Chinese, as Mr. Lowell shows when, in- stead of primitive rhizopods or sponges, he finds on Mars engineers with the pow- ers of archangels digging canals beside which the Panama Canal would be like a farmer's ditch. More recent telescopes, however, with larger apertures, have al- tered the appearance of these markings on Mars, and made them like the results of simply physical agencies similar to the great rifts in the Antarctic ice cap. What is left to us, therefore, is the story of life upon this earth, and that presents us with enough facts to claim our whole 17 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY attention, because that story is fully illus- trated by remains in the rocky strata of the globe, so well preserved that the most delicate ferns have left perfect imprints in what are now masses of solid rock. Chapter II THREE GREAT EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF LIFE ON THIS EARTH Chapter II THREE GREAT EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF LIFE ON THIS EARTH THE story of life on this earth presents three great epochs in its development. The first is when microscopic unicellular or single-celled forms held the field for untold ages exclusively to themselves, and have left great portions of the earth's crust to mark their work. All limestones for example were made by them. To this day these microscopic forms constitute the largest division of the kingdom of life, because whereas all visible forms, wheth- er plant or animal, are necessarily local, the microscopic forms are everywhere where life is possible. They therefore 21 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY hold very important relations to the other divisions of the living kingdom, for all plants and animals would soon cease to exist but for them. The second epoch occurred during what is called the Cambrian period of geology, whose rocks contain the first known re- mains of multicellular instead of unicellu- lar forms of life. This marks a por- tentous change from the former period, because, whereas before every living cell existed by itself and for itself, and multi- plied only by simple division, new cells then appeared whose business it was to co- operate with each other and thus form a multicellular body as our own bodies are now. We must keep these facts in mind in order adequately to appreciate what a change took place upon the advent of cells bound together to cooperate with one another to form a multicellular body. From this time on every kind of progress LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY became possible because so universally, and yet so nicely is one part of a multi- cellular body related to the others that Professor Richard Owen, by studying the relations of a single tooth finally correctly reconstructed the whole animal, as was afterwards proved by the discovery of its fossil remains. But now another important element ap- pears. The tissues of a multicellular body are by no means all of the same rank. Some are merely mechanical in their func- tions, such as the tendons and ligaments or the cartilages which cushion the sur- faces of joints. But other cells are for necessary secretions. Other cells again are much higher in rank than the preced- ing, namely, the muscle cells, but the high- est of all is a new cell altogether, the nerve cell, furnishing the most perfect instru- ment for promoting quick coordination in the whole body. Thus it is difficult to LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY measure the distance between the animal called Stentor, which has only one affer- ent nerve bringing a sensation to its one center, and one efferent nerve which re- acts to the stimulus, and the vast array of associated centers with their connect- ing fibers in the nervous system of a cat. But what is the problem which now con- fronts us? Bacteria might multiply to infinity and still remain only bacteria, just as bricks would never themselves make a great building, but only a pile of bricks. Yet now that infinitely complex organ- ization found in an ear takes the place of separate cells, however numerous, it is plain that we have passed into a world altogether unlike that of the first epoch in which life began. Chapter III THE THIRD EPOCH, THAT OF PERSONAL BEINGS Chapter III THE THIRD EPOCH, THAT OF PERSONAL BEINGS THE third great epoch in the life history of this earth is so different from anything which preceded* it that it can neither be called an evolution nor a development of any sort. It can be denoted only by the Latin phrase sui generis. Preceding it in time the ascending development of ani- mal forms had culminated in the anthro- poid apes. Biologists then correctly in- cluded among the primates the animal Homo, because there can be no doubt that physically he is as much an animal as the rest. But Man is infinitely more than an ani- mal, while there is absolutely nothing in LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY his physical frame which explains why he is so. In every other animal its physical development explains everything, but nothing physical explains Man. It is foolish to seek in the human brain for that explanation, because this is closely pat- terned after the brain of the chimpanzee which contains every lobe and lobule found in the human brain. But to all eternity the chimpanzee with his brain could not overtake Man. The light of the sun takes eight minutes to reach the earth, while it takes the light of Alpha Cen- tauri, the nearest to us of the fixed stars, four years and a half to do the same thing. But this is an imperfect compar- ison with which to illustrate the difference between the animal Homo and Man. The sole and sufficient explanation of all this is that, besides being an animal, Man is a Person, which no other earthly creature is. Personality is the greatest LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY fact in the universe, and Man has all the attributes of personality. Owing to his personality he can learn, he can know, he can be, and he can do everything, as he would show if he had that life which is unmeasured by the flight of years, instead of the brief space of time allotted to him on this little earth. Even now he has changed the whole face of the world, tho with a material body which is too weak to bear the weight of his conscious will without resting from that burden in un- conscious sleep for one third of his bodily existence. As an engineer, he can look up from the base of the greatest mountain ranges, and forthwith tunnel a highway for the nations through them, or he can span the widest rivers with a bridge, every bolt or wire of which existed in his mind before it existed on earth. As mas- ter of the forces of Nature, thunder no longer awes or frightens him, for he has 29 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY made electricity literally his menial serv- ant, whether in the kitchen, or to traverse wires over land or on the sea bottom to convey his messages. More than that, he dispenses with wires and all tangible things to make the mysterious Ether talk for him across the oceans. .The Ether fills all space, but does not this show that man's mind does the same thing?) By a small glass prism he learns what the most dis- tant fixed stars are made of. Yet all such achievements come from but one small side of him. He can also be a great scientist, a great thinker, states- man, financier, mathematician, philos- opher or poet, in fact anything which re- quires mind and means mind. But why? Because he is an animal? There is something almost pathetic in the conclusions of Huxley and some of his contemporaries, that because they had shown how man's body had been preceded 30 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY by connected stages of evolution up to the ape's physical frame, therefore Man was thus accounted for by science! And to this day many are under the delusion that the animal Homo can explain the per- son Man. Personality instead is always and for- ever invisible. As once I left the Went- worth Hotel in Portsmouth, New Hamp- (j shire, because of the expected crowd when the Russian and Japanese ambassadors were coming there to negotiate peace, I thought how much the Russian Witte would have given if he could telegraph to St. Petersburg that he had actually seen the Japanese Komura. All that he saw, or could see was the courteous and smiling face of the Oriental and no more. Man, because he is like God, is as unseen by mortal eye as God himself. 31 Chapter IV THE BRAIN Chapter IV THE BRAIN HAVING treated of personality at length, the modern reader may ask whether per- sonality is not located in the Brain. It is well that we turn to this now universally admitted fact that the brain is the organ of the mind, if we would escape falling into the morass of metaphysics. This is because metaphysicians for ages have dis- cussed the origin and nature of personality without coming to any agreement on the subject. As metaphysics has thus become discredited, many modern writers have substituted for it the name Psychology. But this is only a change in name and not in fact, as a critical examination of their speculations show. 35 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY But we must first note that for many centuries the world had no suspicion that the brain had anything to do with the mind. (The word brain does not once occur in the Bible.") Its writers instead looked upon the heart as the seat of the feelings, and upon the bowels as the seat of the emotions, while the mind, or intellect, was in the kidneys. Thus one psalmist says, " My reins (kidneys) instruct me in the night seasons," and Jeremiah rebukes the hypocrites of his day who had the Lord on their tongues, but not in their kidneys. Nor were the Greeks better informed, for Aristotle says that the chief business of the brain was to cool the blood for the heart ! We now know that the brain can be used for any special mental processes only after a material place in it has been pre- pared or organized for each such process. Thus a man is found one morning wholly 36 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY unable to utter a word, tho he can under- stand whatever is spoken to him. This disability is explained by the fact that the brain in one particular place has been ruined by an apoplectic clot. Another person, suddenly, and without any warn- ing, cannot read a word in either book or newspaper. This is not due to any fault in his eyes, for he can see everything else as well as ever, but he cannot read a word, because he has become word blind. This also is because the special brain seat for reading has been spoiled. Or he can read French, but not his native English. This also is because his brain seat for English has been destroyed, but not the French place. Or his ability both to speak and to read may be wholly gone, but he can read and calculate in figures as well as ever. This shows that while both the places for speaking and for reading had been ruined, the brain seat for figures is 37 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY in another locality, and in his case escaped harm. Now to the end of time neither meta- physicians nor psychologists would have discovered these great facts, nor again their important bearing on the questions of the relations of the brain to the mind and to the personality. Hence many of them resent this exclusion from discus- sions about things mental, and complain that these facts have been discovered only at the bedside or on the post-mortem table, instead of in the depths of their own con- sciousness. Yet science is but another name for the knowledge of facts, and in nothing does the medical profession so justly claim to be scientific, as in thus at- tending to its own business of investigat- ing the brain, whether in health or in dis- ease. Moreover other great facts have been discovered along this line of investigation. LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY Anatomists had long been aware that the brain is a true pair organ like the two eyes, the two ears, the two hands, and the two feet, as it consists of two perfectly matched hemispheres. But in the human being it was found that only one of the brain hemispheres was the organ of the mind and personality, that mind which is so marvelous in faculty, and that person- ality which is so infinitely above the brute creation. It is with one hemisphere only that a person can learn to speak, to know, to remember, to purpose and to do any- thing, while the other hemisphere in his head is not used for any mental act what- ever, but only has the power to receive the sensations, and to move the muscles of its corresponding half of the body. This fact alone suffices to show that brain matter of itself can neither think nor do anything, because if it could, then both hemispheres would equally share in mind, 39 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY and in the attributes of personality, which is not at all the case. But we were not born so. At birth neither hemisphere knows anything. No one has ever come into this world able to do anything except to cry, but not to speak a word in any language. Soon, however, the baby shows that it is begin- ning to learn, and at first it seems to learn by the use of its busy little hands. The hand then most used wholly determines which of its two hemispheres is going on to learn what only a human brain can learn. If it be the exclusively human faculty of speech, the brain centers for speech will be found in the left hemisphere, if the baby is right handed, because the brain fibers which move the muscles cross in their paths, so that the left hemisphere governs the muscles of the right side of the body, while the right hemisphere gov- erns those of the left side. But what does 40 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY this prove? It proves that both hemi- spheres are equally good for becoming human in faculty, but only one of them achieves this high distinction according to its relation to the most used hand. As the special material seats of these great mental faculties are found in adults in the left hemisphere of the right handed, and in the right hemisphere of the left handed, the question arises, how does the hand come to hold such a relation to them? The answer is, that the child begins to make its wants known to others by gestures with the hand, and to the end of life gestures continue to accompany or actually to take the place of language. Besides this, the child is constantly trying to find out what things are by its hand or its sense of touch. Now the brain centers governing hand movements are in close proximity to the centers for moving the lips and tongue, and the child therefore soon adds vocal 41 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY speech to gesture speech, till by constant repetition the speech centers in the brain are accordingly organized. As the brain centers could not of them- selves turn into speech centers, else both hemispheres would speak spontaneously, how are these centers formed in only one hemisphere? (The answer is, that they are formed, or, in other words, created by the child's own personality, and not at all by its brain, which is the mere, passive in- strument of the personality.^ This is proved when, in after years, the person wants to learn a new language in addition *>-"' to that of his mother tongue. He can neither do this offhand, nor easily, and no ead}QT& can do it for him. He must do it all / himself by unremitting, hard work, which will take months or years. Often the per- son quits the task before it is well finished, because it makes him weary. But if he at last succeds, what has happened in his 42 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY brain? A new brain layer has been cre- ated in his head for talking, say French, which is then laid over the old English layer, but so independent of it that the English layer may be ruined by an apo- plectic clot, so that he can no longer talk English, but he can still talk French. What is true of the brain centers for speech, has also been shown to be true about any mental endowment which has been slowly acquired by practice. Thus the case of a tailor is mentioned, who sud- denly lost all ability to make clothes, and had to learn another trade. More than one case of accomplished musicians has been published, who as suddenly lost all ability to distinguish tunes, because of an injury to the music center in the temporal lobe of the brain. Now neither a tailor nor a musician could become proficient in their respective acquirements by proxy they, personally, and no others must gain LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY these things for themselves. These facts indubitably show that only by the invisible personality can the brain have in it organ- special, material places for those mental endowments which distin- guish our race. On that account every mental power of every kind, which has had to be acquired by prolonged effort on the part of the man himself, is the most personal of all things. A great mathe- matician, a great chemist, a great scien- tist of any kind has become so solely after years of hard work, and now we learn the reason. Brain centers can be formed in such cases only by the efforts of the pos- sessors of these kinds of knowledge. It is the sculptor himself, slowly and with stroke after stroke who makes a statue out of marble, and likewise it is not the brain, but the man himself who gains preemi- nence in anything. Physicians were once charged with be- 44 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY ing the most materialistic of all profes-j// sional men, but they are now coming for- /^ ward with discoveries about the unseen personality in us, which furnish the most convincing arguments of all against the doctrines of materialism. Chapter V IMMORTALITY Chapter V IMMORTALITY WITH every person his own existence is the greatest of certainties. Whatever there be outside of him, whether it be only an appearance or not, he knows that he exists because he can always say, " I am." Modern science also proves that this " I " is no more in his brain that it is in his hand or foot, for either can be amputated without any part of his personality going with it any more than if his hair were cut. This could not happen if he was his body, or the body was himself. In fact there is no room for personality in the brain, for as we have just shown, one half of it does not think at all, while the other half which thinks, does so be- 49 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY cause the man has taught it to do so, using either of the hemispheres which happens to be the more convenient to him when he begins. It is owing to the instinctive recogni- tion that the real self in us is not the same *Ju u^ with perishable flesh and blood, that all r i . / mankind have believed in personal immor- tality. This fixed conviction is so univer- sal in the human race that it is as generic as the faculty of speech itself. It may take different forms here and there, but its es- sential oneness remains the same through them all. Among the Chinese and the Japanese, who together constitute one- third of the peoples of the earth, and who certainly are not a whit inferior, intellec- tually, to the rest, it takes the form of be- lief in the continued existence after death of their ancestors whom they worship as now supernatural beings. This faith in the power of their ancestors caused us all 50 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY to be amazed with the dispatch of Admiral Togo to the Mikado after his great battle in the Sea of Japan where he destroyed the Russian fleet. " It was not owing to our bravery or skill or devotion," he wrote, " but solely because of the power of your Majesty's ancestors." Indeed we can scarcely appreciate the hold of this con- viction upon the minds and lives of those eastern peoples, because it is so contrary to our own modes of thought. A gentle- man who lived a number of years in the city of Amoy in China told me that he could secure any number among the com- ^ mon people of that town to commit sui- cide for one hundred dollars apiece. As 4 ) t> o a *ili human nature is the same everywhere, he explained that as we may find many who will lay down their lives for their country, and whom we highly honor on that ac- count, so an ordinary Chinaman is will- ing thus to die for the benefit of his chil- 51 Ji LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY dren in order that they may worship him afterward as an ancestor who died for their benefit. This explains also that noble rev- erence for their parents which the Chinese display, because their parents will soon be endowed with all the mysterious powers of J u /the next world. Chinese statesman will also submit to the greatest personal incon- venience in the cessation of their public functions during the long period of their mourning for the death of either father or mother. It should, however, be noted that this doctrine of immortality gives rise di- rectly to sheer atheism. Since their an- cestors are all-sufficient for the direction and gudiance of their descendants on earth, so there is no need for God, whose name they have even forgotten. Chris- tian missionaries, therefore, have found it difficult to agree upon a name in the Chi- nese language for Our Supreme Being. The doctrine of human immortality, there- 52 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY fore, does not necessarily lead to anything like Christian faith. Yet so strong is the hold of this belief in the survival of their ancestors after death,, that it overrides everything else, both in their philosophy and in their religion. Hence Confucian- ism is powerless against it, for Confucius taught nothing but a system of ethics which enjoined how men here in this world should behave to one another. Buddhism, which so many millions among those ea s ern races profess, is really not a religion , t)&\t f/ at all, but a system of philosophy. Start- / ing with the premise that evil comes from consciousness which is the source of all appetites and desires, therefore the high- est attainment of the Buddhist is to pass into Nirvana, which is an eternal state of unconsciousness. But this certainly is not the state of Togo's powerful spirits who defeated the Russians. It is easy to show how fundamentally LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY opposed to Christian truth this doctrine is. It peoples the next world with innu- merable millions of human spirits whose nature is not a whit changed from that centric principle of self and of self-inter- est which actuates men who have not been spiritually changed on this earth. Such an immortality therefore would be noth- ing but the worst condition of existence that can be imagined. We have said that faith in human im- mortality is universal in the human race. Among the vast peoples of Christendom, of Mohammedanism and of the Jews it is of course a fundamental doctrine, but so it has been always and everywhere. The ent Egyptian was no simpleton. The / more we learn about that remarkable peo- ple the higher rises our estimate of their V kfaev* mental ability. But the Egyptian thought more about the other world than he did of this, and raised the mightiest of human 54 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY structures, the pyramids, to mark his tomb. The Book of the Dead is his one literary legacy to the world. Nor is his belief a product only of advanced thought. It is too instinctive for that, and is equally shared with the rest by dwellers in wig- wams as by those living in palaces. We all know what the American Indian meant by his Happy Hunting Grounds. Like- wise when and wherever men are sane and natural, death appears simply as an earth- ly accident, which instead of finishing the personality sets it free for a wider life. 55 Chapter VI THE VERDICT OF HISTORY AS TO HUMAN NATURE Chapter VI THE VERDICT OF HISTORY AS TO HUMAN NATURE IT was not until men lost their self-respect by submitting to tyrants that traces of weakening of a belief in the future life began to appear, as when Greece entered upon her decay, and the Roman Horace jested about throwing away his shield while he ran from the field of Philippi. This is also illustrated by that exclu- sively human performance, a funeral. It was the belief in the existence of a here- after which was the origin of funerals. Twenty thousand years ago the cave dwellers had their funeral rites, and bur- ied with the deceased their implements, and in the case of children their toys, as if 59 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY they were to be used in the world beyond. Hence we ourselves can stretch the hand of sympathy across the thousands of years to these primitive men and women who wept over their dead, while, like us ? they felt what a grievous disappointment to the human heart death is. But, as we well know, the most personal of all things is character. This raises the question what kind of person man is. A solemn question indeed ! History answers with its terrible record of cruelty, exempli- fied from the flint arrow of the stone age, which for war was barbed so that it could not be extracted, through the war weapons of all ages. The Assyrians, when they wasted the earth, began that awful sys- tem of captivity, which for inflicting suf- fering could not be surpassed. In one inscription Tiglath-Pileser named thirty peoples whom he thus treated, each of whom finally became extinct. Only one 60 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY people ever survived that terrible ordeal the Jews in their Babylonian captiv-' ity, and that was because they miracu- lously survive everything, as Moses fore- told that they would. But the acme of cruel and insolent pride was reached in the Roman triumph, when many brave, high-souled men and women were often kept for months, before the time came for them to be chained to the chariot wheels of the victor and dragged till he ascended the Capitoline Hill, when they were all basely massacred. But this Roman people were hereditary murder- ers, who for five centuries had no enter- tainment equal to the nightly spectacle of many men killing each other in the amphitheater. As if that were not enough, wild beasts were also kept hungry until they were let out to devour men, women, and children, whose screams afforded sport to the vast multitude of onlookers. It is 61 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY well-nigh impossible for us now to think of a state of society in which Maecenas, Horace, Virgil, and other choice guests were entertained by that refined literary critic, the Senator Asinius Pollio, at a banquet in which a species of little fish were said to have such an exceptional flavor because they were fed on the flesh of cut-up slaves. Yet we in these days need not wonder at these hideous examples of ancient human depravity. In our own times the contests k * u are changing from war between peoples and countries to strife between classes. - But this change has not touched human nature. What can surpass the cowardly and cold-blooded murders of those dyna- mite outrages at Los Angeles and other places in our land? Outrages which only show that men can be as bad now as they ever were. History proves that nothing so lowers -e, LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY the estimate of the value of human life here as a disbelief in man's immortality hereafter. The historian Sallust reports a speech by Julius Caasar in the Roman Sen- ate in which Cassar said that death puts an ^ end, and the same end, to all men. Caesar ^ himself showed afterwards that he cared as little for killing human beings as he would swarms of flies. Once in his cam- paigns he relates how, after defeating a German tribe on the banks of the Rhine, he noticed that their wives and children were on an island which could be reached by his cavalry, whereupon (as Gibbon remarks) with cool brevity he adds: " For slaughtering them Caesar sent his horsemen." But why should this man, who, it is estimated, destroyed 1,900,000 of his fellowmen, care? Slayer and slain would all soon end in nothing. But this doctrine logically leads to an- other conclusion. It is not easy in this 63 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY world to be good and virtuous, and why, therefore, should anyone trouble himself about it? The good man will come to the same end, and to no better end, than will the most abandoned wretch. But where is justice, if after death there be no judg- ment? Viewed from this aspect alone, death appears as a kindly angel, whose mission is to cut short human evil. A miser does not grow less miserly as he grows older, but rather each year adds to his avarice. And so with ambition. Age hardens man in every form of wrong. Therefore, let death come to free the world from pro- gressive human evil! Some theorists would have us believe that evil men are punished for their wrong in this life, and they point to instances in which this is true, but Julius Caesar ac- complished whatever he undertook, and the ages so abound with those who are 64 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY like him in intention and in effect, that the ill success of wrong does not have a feather's weight with practical men. But we were not made to die, answers the human heart! Only abnormal and diseased minds contradict this. It was on this account that when a few men from despised Judea came to Rome in the time of Nero, a vast multitude, according to Tacitus soon joined them. This was be- cause they preached not only the universal brotherhood of men, but also the glad tid- ings of another world, not of death, but of eternal life. We must recall what Rome then was, and how these men were literally as sheep among wolves. Most of them therefore were killed. But this message in time triumphed, despite the bloody op- position of the Cassars owing largely to the following potent reasons: The belief in immortality is instinctive with us all, and when the kind of immor- 65 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY tality which these Judeans preached was understood, the appeal became all pre- vailing. It was not mere existence in an- other world, but existence in a world al- ready presaged in this life; for there is nothing which here so marks a high de- gree of civilization as cooperation. All the vast undertakings of our modern world could not exist but for cooperation, and I have heard Mohammedans wonder how men could so trust one another as to form a great commercial company. The old East India Company, which for so long ruled over India's millions, was al- ways an enigma to Asiatics. But self-seeking and self-aggrandize- ment ever strike at the root of coopera- tion. Among pure self-seekers coopera- tion must be weak or altogether absent. It is because for the world beyond, Chris- tianity made the first requisite to be the denial of self that it promised such great 66 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY rewards. Ignorant persons sometimes de- cry Christianity, because it does promise exceeding great rewards; but no one can earn these rewards except he deserves them. An engineer is paid highly here for the erection of some vast structure, not because he is an engineer, but because men think that he can do it well. And so in the world of all cooperation he will be the greatest who can help or minister the most to others, in imitation of Him who first sacrificed himself on the Roman cross. Throughout a long life I have heard many preachers, but not one whose ser- mon had for its text, " Nay but I say unto you, except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish " (Luke xiii-5). In these impressive words our Lord was referring to God's righteous and universal law, which is none other than the law of Cause and Effect. Everyone admits that this law governs the whole material universe, 67 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY but they may well pause when they think that the moral law must be equally uni- versal. Pride, cruelty, and every form of human evil are caused by a self -prefer- ence at the expense of others, and this is the centric principle in human nature which history proves that man has pos- sessed in every age. How can bloody and every other kind of crime fail to be the outcome of such a characteristic? But men have always known of an inner voice whose stern accents have made more than one Felix tremble. Justice is eternal, as even the pagan Roman testifies in his saying, " Let justice be done, tho the Heavens fall." Yet in this world we do not see this principle sufficiently enforced. All great races, therefore, have looked for- ward to a world of retribution for the wicked, and no religion emphasizes like Christianity the need of a judgment to come. It was only when the church, after 68 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY that ruinous, so-called conversion of Con- stantine, adopted the barbarian concep- tions of hell as a place of physical tor- ment by consuming fire, that the far more awful picture which reason draws was wholly obscured. The parable of Dives and Lazarus did not teach the doctrine of hell fire, but only the impressive lesson that the human will can refuse to change its conduct even though it be appealed to by a messenger from the other world. For if they did not believe Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe tho one should rise from the dead. No picture of the imagination can equal that which rea- son tells of the inevitable condition of an eternal world peopled by the like of human beings, unchanged in spirit from what they have been on this earth. What they would then do without a God to in- terfere for the punishment of wrong, can only be appreciated after considering the 69 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY awful record of the history of men's deal- ing with one another during the short life on this earth. Truly, therefore, did our Lord say that no man can enter Heaven without he be born again. 70 Chapter VII CAN LIFE COME INTO EXIST- ENCE BY CHANCE? > GjfAS&uS tyse* /$skf1/l> '4A* t &l<* ***+< VII CAN LIFE COME INTO EXIST- ENCE BY CHANCE? A CONSISTENT materialist maintains that the only and ultimate cause of anything is Chance. Of course he does not mean by this that the varied phenomena of physical life do not occur according to fixed laws, for that would be absurd, but his contention is that those same laws came into existence by chance and had nothing to do with intel- ligent purpose or design. This was one reason why the Darwin- ian Theory was so enthusiastically wel- comed by many writers. Darwin did not for a moment assume that his theory ac- counted for the origin of life, but only 73 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY for the Origin of Species. In this he entirely ignored the most ancient, stable, and largest division of the Kingdom of Life, that of the microscopic unicellular organism, and he nowhere alludes to it. But this Kingdom in the living world is characterized by the greatest variety of distinct and permanent species. Darwin, however, confines himself entirely to the multicellular forms which first appeared in the Cambrian Period. Starting with the immeasurable fecundity of living forms illustrated in the seeds of plants and the eggs of insects and of fishes, the survival of the very few who come to ma- turity he ascribed to a fortuitous or chance possession by the individual of some spe- cial advantage which was better adapted to its environment. This was the basic principle of his celebrated doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest. In other words 74 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY environment kills off all those not adapted to it. This doctrine, however, began to show many weak points. First its basic prin- ciple was wholly negative. Natural Se- lection produces nothing, but only kills off the unfit. When a housewife throws away the decaying apples in a barrel, she has not created one of the sound apples which remain. Moreover unlimited fe- cundity rapidly diminishes as we rise in the scale, so that mammals give birth not to great numbers of offspring, but ordi- narily to less than a dozen. But the inadequacy of this theory ap- pears most when applied to the internal organization of animals. An animal does not come into being just so. An eye for example, must all be accounted for by natural selection not as a whole eye, but in all its parts and their adjustments to the rest of the organ. I once counted the 75 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY number of structures which must enter into the make-up of a fit human eyelid, and they considerably exceeded three hun- dred. Now the deficiency of any one of these structures would be sure to spoil the eye itself, and natural selection could not do anything but extinguish all who had such incomplete eyelids. But the re- mainder of this visual organ is made up of structures infinitely more complicated than the eyelid, and for each one of these natural selection must be rigidly called to give the explanation according to its one principle. When further it be asked to explain all the other parts of the multi- cullular body, whether an ear, a lung, or a brain, its constant inadequacy has led the great majority of biologists to reject it altogether. Some scientific investiga- tors indeed, especially in Germany, treat the Darwinian Theory with unmerited ridicule. 76 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY Sir George Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin, in his presidential address to the British Association of Science, when it met in South Africa in 1905, says that the problem of physical life is as inscrutable now as ever. Indeed modern science finds that problem more and more inscrutable in proportion to the progress of investi- gations on the subject. One fact alone, among others of like import, suffices to illustrate this statement, and that is, the endless complexity of the chemistry of any living thing, or of anything which has been produced by vital agency, com- pared with the chemistry of things with which life has nothing to do. Inorganic chemistry, or that which deals with non- living substances, is simplicity itself by the side of organic or life-originated chem- istry. Thus one atom of hydrogen, one atom of chlorin, and one atom of sodium will make one molecule of sodium chlorid 77 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY or common salt. These three separate atoms might possibly come together by chance that only deity of the materialist anywhere where these atoms exist, say in the planet Saturn. But for any animal on this earth, with red blood, it must, in order to live, have in its blood cells that definite substance called hemoglobin. Now a molecule of hemoglobin must con- tain the following number of different atoms in their due proportions, namely, of hydrogen atoms, 1,130; of carbon atoms, 712; of nitrogen, 214; of oxygen, 245; of sulfur, 2; and of iron, 1, or 2,304 atoms in all. Moreover, if that one atom of iron, in its peculiar relation to the rest ("masked," as some physiologists say), were left out, the animal could neither ab- sorb oxygen nor give off carbonic acid, in other words, it could not breathe. I once asked a well-known physiological chemist, himself of German extraction 78 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY and educated in Germany, how could' those atoms in a molecule of hemoglobin thus come together by chance? His brief reply was, "D n chance!" It would be tedious to cite the number- less illustrations of special adaptations on the part of the different organs of the body in their functions, or working, any one of which can be shown to be necessary for the continuance of life. We will therefore only allude to the absolute de- pendence of life on the healthy perform- ance of their duties by four small and widely separated organs called the duct- less glands, because they discharge their secretions directly into the blood and not like other glands through ducts. These glands are the adrenals ; the peculiar struc- tures embedded in the pancreas called the Islands of Langerhans, after their discov- erer; the thyroid gland, and lastly the Pituitary Gland. It has not yet been 79 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY demonstrated, but it is strongly suspected that both the liver and the kidneys also possess structures which add internal se- cretions of their own to the blood. To understand what part the adrenals take, we must first state that we have three great nervous systems, namely, the brain, the Spinal Cord, and the Great Sympa- thetic. This last, or the Sympathetic, is for the purposes of life, the most impor- tant of the three. The poor brain may rea- son and argue all in vain about a love affair, for that matter belongs exclusively to the Sympathetic, and is one reason for its name, because it governs the emotions and feelings. Now it happens that at an early period in fetal life a twig of the sympathetic begins to roll on itself like a ball of twine till it finally breaks away from its parent nerve and taking to itself a capsule it then adheres to the top of the 80 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY kidney on each side for life. These two small glands therefore are called the adrenals, but they are more essential to life than the kidneys themselves, for both kidneys may be surgically removed with- out the animal dying so promptly as when the adrenals are cut away. Slow destruc- tion by tuberculosis, for example, of the adrenals causes that remarkable and fatal disorder called Addison's Disease from the English physician who first demon- strated its dependence on derangements of the adrenals. The sufferers die from pure debility, and often the skin becomes strangely discolored. Now the adrenals make nothing less than a veritable drug called adrenalin which is now sold over the counter like any other drug, and which possesses very valuable properties. Among others it can arrest the progress of Addison's Disease so long as it is taken 81 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY in daily doses, as I in common with other physicians have prescribed in several cases of this affection. But it should be noted that branches of the sympathetic ramify on the coats of the arteries of the body, and whose office is to contract the arteries or to relax them ac- cording to the time needs of the different organs. Thus the stomach requires nine times as much blood when it is digesting food than when it is empty, and its vaso- motor branches of the sympathetic, as they are called, perform all this most impor- tant duty of blood distribution. But in Addison's Disease these vasomotor nerves are paralyzed from deficiency of adrenalin in the blood, and we can remedy this by giving this nature-made drug. The Islands of Langerhans, on the other hand, are peculiar structures consist- ing of special cells making isolated, but as 82 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY now demonstrated, very important little glands whose secretion is discharged di- rectly into the blood like the secretion of the adrenals. These glands are embedded in the body of the pancreas, but they have nothing to do with the secretion of that vital organ, for this is discharged into the intestine through its own duct. A wasting of the Islands of Langerhans at once causes an incurable form of that fatal disease called Diabetes Mellitus, in which bread, called the staff of life, becomes a virulent poison. Diabetics, therefore, not only cannot eat bread, but also no sugar nor starches in any form, and they are very apt to die in a kind of coma caused by a too acid con- dition of the blood. The functions of the thyroid gland in the neck are very obscure. They have to do mainly with the needs of the body dur- 83 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY ing the reproductive period of life, for after that time is over they waste away. All that we can otherwise observe is that atrophy of this gland in early or middle life is accompanied by a great secretion of a mucouslike fluid in all the tissues of the body, resembling dropsy, and causing a serious depression of nervous functions, particularly of the mind. This condition is now successfully treated by administer- ing extracts of the thyroid glands of sheep or of pigs. But other affections of the thyroid have given rise to a greater num- ber of treatises or monographs than on any other subject in medical literature, those on Graves's Disease of the thyroid alone already amounting to two thousand. In the course of these investigations a number of little glands have been found embedded in the body of the thyroid which are called parathyroids. When these are LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY removed the animals die from tetanic con- vulsions, provided that they are not too old, because old dogs, for example, can have the whole thyroid removed without bad effects. But the most remarkable structure in the body is the Pituitary Gland, which is situated in a little depression in the most solid of bones, at the base of the skull. This depression is called from its shape the sella turcica, or Turkish saddle. This little gland weighs on the average only five grains, and is divided into two parts, only the anterior of which seems to be endowed with its exceptional proper- ties. Stimulation of this gland by the proximity of a tumor, for example, causes frightful deformities in the growth of bones, especially of the face, and in the development of the joints of the hands and feet. If these changes begin early in life they lead to gigantism, some of these per- 85 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY sons growing to over seven feet in height. On the other hand atrophy or wasting of the pituitary leads to infantilism, or dwarfing of the body, with general arrest of growth in mind as well as in body. The pituitary gland from its solitary position at the center of the skull was once sup- posed to be the seat of the soul. But how it produces its widespread effects we have no conception. We have adduced enough to show that the growth of an animal body with all its parts and their functions is wholly sui generis, or of its own kind. There is noth- ing in the laws of physics or of chemistry which in the least approaches or explains what life is. And when we remember that everything which lives, whether a giant sequoia in the vegetable kingdom, or an elephant or rhinoceros in the animal world, have each to begin their individual growth 86 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY from a microscopic dot, which dot never- theless contains all the past story of the living growth and every part of its fu- ture frame, how can we say that all this comes by soulless and mindless chance?' 87 Chapter VIII RESURRECTION OF THE BODY Chapter VIII RESURRECTION OF THE BODY WE are told that if we do not believe in the resurrection of the body our faith in Christ is vain (1 Cor., xv: 13-14). In other words the body of Christ died as surely and as naturally as any other hu- man body dies, but it came to life again so that He truly rose from the dead. We are not left to doubt that this statement was the very foundation of the belief in Christ by the whole Church in the days of the Apostles. Before we go further we should recog- nize how natural it was that the Resurrec- tion of Jesus should outweigh all other doctrines about His personality. There 91 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY is nothing so universal or so certain as death, nor anything so desolating to the human heart. What, therefore, could be so welcome as the Glad Tidings of the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead? We should put ourselves in the place of the Apostles, and after seeing a dear friend of ours unmistakably die and be buried in his grave before our own eyes, what would the effect then be upon us if after three days he appeared to us as unquestionably alive again? Our whole lives would thereafter be wholly changed. We would then know that death does not end all, but that beyond death there is the world of Life. All the concerns of this short life on earth would then shrink into insignificance. Something like this must have occurred to explain the remarkable and permanent change which took place in the thinking and in the doing of those men at that time 92 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY and place, which change lasted with them to the end of their days. They were per- fectly sincere and good men. All admit that. Nor did anything in their subse- quent course ever shake their conviction in its truth. For it was not based upon a single or isolated apparition. ' To whom He also showed Himself alive after His passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days and speak- ing of things concerning the Kingdom of God" (Actsi:3). Subsequently, whether addressing com- mon or learned men, or when arraigned before governors or kings as their Master had foretold, the resurrection of Jesus was their unvarying theme. " O King Agrippa," exclaimed Paul, " why should it be incredible to you if God should raise the dead? " Previously on Mars Hill, when confronting the curious and skepti- cal philosophers who were gathered to 98 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY hear him, he spoke of the resurrection of Jesus, whereupon some naturally mocked. But so it was from the beginning. Only a few days had passed, when upon the arrest of Jesus his disciples tell us that they all forsook Him and fled for their lives. Their spokesman Peter from the same fear three times swore that he knew nothing about Him. But after the Resurrection they were wholly altered into the boldest of men. We can scarcely im- agine the awe with which common persons whose Galilean dialect at once betrayed their origin, would feel, when brought be- fore the national Senate or Sanhedrin to face the charge that they laid the murder of their Master on those same high offi- cials. Yet they did this without hesita- tion, and they were therefore scourged for it. But we may be told that often there is 94. LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY no accounting for the vagaries of human conduct or beliefs. Our knowledge pro- ceeds wholly from experience, and a story which is contrary to all human experience must, on its very face, be improbable. But we cannot so dismiss the Resurrec- tion, because the fullest and most detailed account of it was written long before the narratives of the four Gospels. St. Paul wrote the fifteenth chapter of First Co- rinthians as near the time of the Resurrec- tion as we in America now are to the last Presidential term of Mr. Cleveland. He says that our Lord appeared at one time to above five hundred men, the greater part of whom were living when he wrote, while some had fallen asleep. He then mentions five other appearances at differ- ent times and to different persons, the last being when He appeared to Paul himself, whereupon the persecuting Saul 95 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY changed finally into the great Apostle Paul until he bowed his head to the Roman ax. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body was by the Pharisees and by our Lord Himself held to be the same with what we term human immortality. The body, therefore, is as deathless as the soul (Matt, xxii: 31-32; Mark xii: 26-27; Luke xx : 35-38). But the very important statement fol- lows that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God nor doth corruption inherit incorruption ! (1 Corinthians 15- 50. ) The risen body, therefore, cannot be like the body which we know, for that is composed of flesh and blood, and with no other kind of body have we yet any ac- quaintance. But he goes on to explain in the words, " It is sown a natural (or phys- ical body), it is raised a spiritual body," while he further adds that the physical 96 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY body is sown in weakness to be raised as a spiritual body in power. Here he hears one say, How are the dead raised and with what body do they come? Paul loses patience with this ques- tion, and appeals to the greatest mystery of physical life a seed. Nothing could be more unlike a seed than the grown product which comes from it. Unless it were actually shown to be so, no one would think of connecting the two to- gether. But Paul could not then have imagined how modern science would strengthen his comparison. He looked upon the seed of a common grain as the ultimate living reality, whereas we now know that the living germ within the seed is incalculably smaller. The unicellular germ of a tow- ering oak is as much smaller than the acorn which contains it, as the acorn it- self is smaller than the oak. But so it is 97 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY in every form of life, whether plant or animal. ( Every elephant and every whale begins its individual existence with a ma- terial dot, barely visible by a high-power microscope. Yet in that vanishing speck of matter its future body all exists, for the whale cannot finally grow into a fish, be- cause whales are mammals, and therefore separated by an impassable biological gulf from all fishes. These are facts which only science could make credible. The argument, therefore, is this: The human body has already passed through as great and marvelous, yet always connected, changes here as that final change at the Resurrection. The Almighty who has decreed those changes in the body of this life can equally order that final change in the body of the life to come. But through all those changes nothing is altogether new, but rather actually 98 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY connected with what preceded it, so that each seed has its own body given to it. During its earthly life the human body is incessantly changing its materials, but always under the control of one unseen agency. If we saw a great building con- stantly changing the stones of which it is made as they were worn out, and new ones appearing, each according to its proper place, so that a stone forming part of an arch is never found in a straight wall, we would conclude that an architect unseen by us was superintending it all. And so it is that all our bodily changes are under the most rigid supervision. " Even the very hairs of your head are numbered," says our Lord. But what is this invisible architect? None other than the real and true body within us, given to us from the beginning. The New Testament, therefore, warns us 99 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY from committing sins against the body, for they are not forgiven. Physicians well know what these sins are, and that they are often visited upon the third and fourth generations till that stock becomes extinct. The accounts which the Gospels give of our Lord's actions after the Resurrec- tion when He asked His disciples to reach forth their hands and learn for them- selves that He was not a spirit or ghost, are given for us to know that the preva- lent conceptions of the dead being ghosts or shades without substantial existence were forever wrong. The glorious truth is that in Heaven our living bodies will be more real and our own selves more per- sonal and recognizable than ever in this present clouded and imperfect being. All Christians, therefore, should comfort themselves about their dead with the words 100 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY written in Paul's earliest epistle: " For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him" (1 Thess. iv:14). 101 Chapter IX HEAVEN AS DESCRIBED IN THE BIBLE Chapter IX HEAVEN AS DESCRIBED IN THE BIBLE THO, as we have seen, a belief in the con- tinuance of life after death is universal in the human race, the Christian religion differs from all others in its teachings of the conditions of the Future State. Men naturally have tried to picture to themselves what those conditions are by the help of the imagination. Now the im- agination is purely an earthly faculty which can draw its pictures only with ma- terials furnished by earthly experience. Scenes of which no earthly vision can catch a glimpse are quite beyond our pic- turing. Men, therefore, in all ages and everywhere have represented the future 105 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY world as more or less a reproduction of this world. Thus the ancient Egyptian, as we have said, dwelt in thought more on the next world than he did on this. But he was going to another Egypt whose broad fields with their rich productions, and whose whole life, indeed, was but a dupli- cate of that in the Valley of the Nile. Among the Greeks, Homer first pic- tured the coming world as a very gloomy place, not to be mentioned by the side of this for light and joy. Poets and philoso- phers, however, later substituted for his great subterranean abode the Isles of the Blessed and the Elysian Fields, both de- rived from their Egean Archipelago, or the fair slopes of Arcadia. But the most earthly of all creations was Mohammed's paradise. Here every- thing sensual which would appeal special- ly to the Arab mind was given in the 106 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY minutest detail, including new female be- ings called houris, who would there con- stitute an eternal harem. In the Old Testament we first meet with that reticence about the scenes of the next world which is still more characteris- tic of the New Testament. So strikingly is this the case that some writers have maintained that the old Hebrews were like the later Sadducees in altogether de- nying the existence of another world, or at best in believing in a dark Sheol as the abode of the dead, quite in keeping with Homer's conception. But they thus ignore those beautiful passages which read, " I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel. Therefore my heart is glad. For Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol. Thou wilt show me the path of life. In Thy presence is fulness of joy. In Thy right hand are pleasures forever- more " (Ps. xvi, R. V.: 7-11 inclusive). 107 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY " Deliver my soul from the wicked by Thy sword. From men of the world whose portion is in this life. As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I wake with Thy like- ness " (Ps. xvii, R. V. : 13-15) . Also an- other psalmist, " Tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever " (Ps. xxiii, R. V.:4-6). Also another, "Neverthe- less I am continually with Thee. Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel and af- terwards receive me to glory " (Ps. Ixxxiii, R. V.: 23-26). Still more remarkable, considering how insatiable human curiosity is on this subject, is the reticence of the New Testa- ment. Apart from the accounts describ- ing the appearances of our Lord after His 108 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY resurrection, and which, after all, were in earthly surroundings, the only glimpse given us about conditions in Heaven is the narrative of the Transfiguration. There we learn the precious truth of personal recognition in the future world. Moses was Moses, and Elijah was Elijah, tho separated by centuries in their life here. All the many writers of the New Testa- ment refrain from describing any place or places in Heaven till we come to its last book, that of Revelation. But in it we immediately find that everything is hid- den under an impenetrable veil of meta- phor. It begins with the appearance of seven great lights on their golden stands. But these are seven Christian churches lighting up the thick darkness of the world around them. The book then ends with a glorious city whose walls are built with precious stones and with gates of pearl. But we soon read that it cannot 109 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY be a literal city, but instead is a great so- ciety of perfected persons, and also is the Bride of the Lamb. Thus in great contrast with other re- ligions the Bible, whether in the Old or New Testament, says next to nothing about where we shall be in the coming world. In all other religions place is everything, and all their descriptions are those of place. But instead of place and its circum- stances, nothing can be more full than the Bible in telling us with Whom we there shall be. We shall indeed meet there with minds and persons, and above all we shall be in the immediate presence of God Him- self! The fullest description of Heaven in the Bible is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount. Read between the lines it proves to be an account of the King- dom of Heaven, and not of a heavenly 110 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY kingdom on earth. It begins with all that need be said about God whom we shall meet there. " Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." But comforted by Whom? This is, and always has been the world of those who mourn, and often mourn from no fault of theirs. These words are not limited, but will include those millions of women in Asia and in Africa whose lot is so mourn- ful, just because they were born there. So they include those multitudes everywhere whose sufferings often appear so mys- teriously contrary to the ordering of a good Providence. But these words tell us that for all such mourners there is to come an explanation, and it will be a glad explanation. So the Sermon goes on describing Who and What God is, and no description could be more attractive. "Blessed are they 111 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY who do hunger and thirst after righteous- ness, for they shall be filled." Again by Whom? except by Him who is the blessed source of all righteousness. " Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God," be- cause children resemble their father. Like- wise no one can, like a hypocrite, pray to Him, while he prays to be seen of men. So He who gives freely and to al] His children, who sends His rain alike on the just and on the unjust, is not like those men who sound the trumpet in the streets and draw attention to their gifts. In our times men have a much longer trumpet than the Pharisees could blow through, in the shape of the modern newspaper, " But verily they have their reward," by then having the trained beggars of a continent crowding to their doors. All true prayers instead are to be privately addressed to the God who will see to their being answered. LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY " Be ye therefore perfect as your Heav- enly Father is perfect." But the description goes on to include the redeemed ones of the human race whom we shall meet there. Men are not to harbor any resentment here, for either insult or oppression, because resentment and anger or revenge will have no place in the Kingdom of Him who is the God of Peace. The absolute necessity, if one would en- ter Heaven, of freedom from every trace of enmity in his heart is further expressed in the Sermon on the Mount by giving this the precedence in all religious observances. " Leave there thy gift at the altar, and go first and be reconciled unto thy brother, and then offer thy gift." Still more sol- emnly is this duty enjoined in the Lord's prayer itself. " For if ye forgive men not their trespasses, neither will your 113 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY Heavenly Father forgive your tres- passes." We often hear the Sermon on the Mount spoken of as a merely ethical dis- course, teaching men how they are to be- have to one another in this world. As if men needed to be informed about such commonplace truths! Men everywhere know what they ought to do in such mat- ters, and the world is full of books on good morals, from the writings of that wretched sycophant Seneca down. What is it that i 11 k -r rt.- i, . makes all such discourse nothing better than talk compared with the profound effect on this human world of the Sermon on the Mount?) It is because of the as- tonishing tone of authority of Him who spoke these words as a divine messenger by God to reveal Himself to men, and to teach what they must be, to enter after death, the blessed world beyond. The other writers in the New Testa- 114 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY ment never lose sight of the next world even when enjoining how the Christian should live here. But what a world it is which they speak of! What is its glory which so often is their theme? Here in this world the word glory suggests some- thing spectacular, which ministers to pride, and for such earthly glory this world has often been drenched with blood. But in the Bible the glory of God is never apart from His goodness. "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify," not you, but " your Father who is in Heaven." As if all men's good works are due to His prompting. So will it be forever when men shall stand before their Father in Heaven, evermore shining through their good works. We now see that man is worth saving. Some may think that man is insignificant enough as he dwells on this little earth, 115 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY which is as but a grain of sand among the great stars in the sky above him. But every world of matter shrinks to insig- nificance before one immortal mind, and when that deathless mind is a human mind, endowed with all the capacities which he took with him from this world, imagination fails to picture such a being occupied with things of eternity. God cannot, as He willingly would, be- stow all His good things on man here in this world, because such prosperity would ruin him. What good therefore man can gain here, he must appreciate first by its cost in labor. But labor from the begin- ning is a curse. When in Heaven a man shall be so changed, that being rich toward God will never injure him, he will then freely inherit those true riches which never can be lost because they are so inherent and personal. Why, then, need we be told what sort 116 LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY of a place Heaven is? (Here on this poor earth a place is a garden or a desert according to those who live there.) By Nature, Asia Minor is one of the fairest countries on earth, yet now it is covered with ruins, because in it both robbery and murder are considered honorable. But in the blessed world beyond there will be op- portunities without end for the develop- ment of human excellence in the service of Our Heavenly Father. 117 ADVERTISEMENTS Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible By ROBERT YOUNG, LL.D. Universally recognized as the greatest Bible Con- cordance. It contains 31 1,000 references, marking 30,000 New Testament readings. One feature which makes Young's Bible Concordance so widely accepted is that it gives the original Hebrew or Greek of any word in the English Bible with the literal meaning of each, together with parallel passages. THE zoth EDITION marks a great advance on all previous editions. It is thoroughly revised with scrupulous care. Its valuable and important SUP- PLEMENTS in the form of Index Lexicons to the Old and the New Testaments will prove of great service to those unacquainted with Hebrew or Greek. Then, too, there is given in this new edition a Complete List of Scripture Names, giving their modern pronunciation, with accurate transliteration of the originals. The Sketch of Recent Explora- tion in Bible Lands has been brought down to date. Neither bishop nor student would want to be with- out Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible. " It is unquestionably the best and most complete work of the kind ever published." The Episcopal Recorder \ Philadelphia. In one volumt, fto, Cloth, 1,238 pages, $6.OO; Half Morocco, $IO.OO; Full Morocco, $I2.OO, all net. With Denison Thumb- Index, J cents extra. With Bible Lexicon, Cloth, $7.50, net. Carriage extra FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers NEW YORK AND LONDON A Dictionary OF the Bible Not a Volume of Speculations ABOUT the Bible. STANDARD BIBLE DICTIONARY IN ONE VOLUME Prepared under the Editorial Direction ofMelancthon W. Jacobus, Chairman , (Hartford), Edward E. Nourse (Hartford), and jlndrew C. Zenos ( McCormick) ,in conjunction 'with the most emi- nent Bible Scholars of 'America , Germany, and Great Britain. "This is the best single-volume handbook for Bible study that has ever appeared in any language. Being a wholly new work, not an abridgment or adaptation or imitation of any other dictionary; being prepared almost wholly by men who have actually tested by class-room teaching the facts and inductions presented in their several contributions, and animated by the desire to set forth the established results of Biblical study and research, without personal or theo- logical bias, it should satisfy, to the fullest measure possible, the needs of Bible students." J. F. Me Curdy, Ph.D., LL.D., University College, Toronto. "It is the most valuable one- volume Bible Dictionary ever published. The articles are remarkable for lucidity, compact- ness, and range." Frank K. Sanders, Ph.D.,D.D., late Dean Yale Theological Faculty. In one Octavo Volume. 940 pages, 300 illustrations, n new maps in colors ample bibliographies and cross-references} thumb in- dex. Prices: cloth, $6.00 ; half morocco, $10.00$ full morocco, $12.00 (with or without thumb index). Carriage charges prepaid. FUNK esf WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers NEW YORK AND LONDON A WORK OF GREAT VALUE TO PHYSICIAN AND LATMAN THE Psychic Treatment