LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 
 
By the Same Author. 
 
 " THE USE OF SCIENCE TO CHRISTIANS." 
 " REASON IN REVELATION." 
 LAW AND FREEDOM." 
 
 PUBLISHED BY MESSRS JAMES NISBET & CO. 
 
 " PROGRESSIVE REVELATION." 
 PUBLISHED BY MR MURRAY. 
 
INDIVIDUAL 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 BY E. M. CAILLARD 
 
 *\ 
 
 AUTHOR OF "PROGRESSIVE REVELATION," ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 1903 
 

 
PREFACE 
 
 THE object of the present little volume is 
 to bring forward certain considerations on 
 Individual Immortality which, it seems to 
 the writer, have not received sufficient atten- 
 tion. So great a subject is inevitably too 
 many-sided to be grasped in its entirety by 
 any one mind, or, we may add, in any one 
 age. It presents, as do all subjects of widely 
 human interest, not only a high-road for 
 practical and speculative thought, but many 
 attractive by-paths. Thus it has come to 
 pass that side issues have not infrequently 
 occupied a larger share of attention than 
 the main question itself. The lengthy and 
 too often bitter discussions on the existence 
 and nature of reward and punishment in a 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 future life are an illustration in point. We 
 hear less of them now, perhaps chiefly because 
 many people doubt the reality of that life 
 itself. To enter into the reasons for this 
 uncertainty would be to forestall the enquiry 
 undertaken in the following pages. The 
 writer's aim throughout the book is to show 
 how far more reasonable from the scientific 
 and philosophic points of view, and how far 
 fuller from the Christian point of view, is 
 the belief in individual immortality, than the 
 greater number of those who accept or deny 
 it at all realise. 
 
 She has further attempted to point out 
 its vast practical issues in the life that now 
 is. 
 
 The prominence and importance of individu- 
 ality in the Social Order have been obscured 
 by confusing it with individualism, and in 
 the Natural Order by a misconception of the 
 significance of modern scientific theories of 
 evolution. The first step, therefore, towards 
 approaching the question of Immortality with 
 any adequacy is to vindicate the true position 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 of the Individual in the general scheme of 
 things. To this attempt chapters ii., iii., 
 and iv. of the present volume are devoted. 
 Chapter i. indicates the deep personal and 
 social importance of the enquiry to be under- 
 taken, and chapter v. endeavours to delineate 
 the Christian Ideal of Immortality as it exists 
 in the New Testament. 
 
 Each branch of the subject has been 
 treated in some detail ; but it is hoped with 
 sufficient brevity and lucidity to present no 
 great difficulty of apprehension to that large 
 class of persons precluded by the pressure 
 of their daily avocations from any continuous 
 study of modern science and philosophy and 
 their bearing on the great matter at issue. 
 We are all profoundly interested in the 
 question of our individual survival of death. 
 We are not all in a position to weigh for 
 ourselves the evidence for its reality or un- 
 reality, and too many of us stand in doubt. 
 It is to the doubters chiefly that the writer 
 ventures to address herself, in the hope that 
 the considerations she adduces may be of 
 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 some assistance in enabling them to over- 
 come their uncertainty. 
 
 In conclusion, she desires to thank the 
 Editor of the Contemporary Review for per- 
 mission to reprint the first four Chapters of 
 the present Book, they having originally 
 appeared under his auspices. 
 
 EMMA MARIE CAILLARD. 
 
 June 1903. 
 
 NOTE. The Scriptural quotations are throughout made from 
 the Revised Version. 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 URGENCY OF THE ENQUIRY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Survival after death not now regarded as of the highest 
 
 importance 1 
 
 Even Christian Ideals directed chiefly towards ame- 
 lioration of the present life 2 
 
 Advantages and dangers of this restricted outlook . 2-4 
 
 Accomplishment of social regeneration would still leave 
 
 individual life unsatisfactory 4-7 
 
 The world's failures and their bearing on immortality 7-9 
 
 Human immortality involves individual persistence . 9-10 
 Vast practical results of a firm conviction of individual 
 
 immortality 10-16 
 
 Christian uncertainty 16 
 
 Difficulties introduced by Modern Science and Philo- 
 sophy 17 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC STANDPOINT 
 
 Attempts at Scientific investigation .... 18-19 
 Assumed Scientific presumption against Individual 
 
 Immortality 19 
 
 Aspect of nature and of man with which Science deals 20-23 
 Continuity of human individual life as known to 
 
 Science 23-25 
 
 b 
 
x SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. II. THE SCIENTIFIC STANDPOINT continued. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Consciousness of Self-identity 25-26 
 
 Increase of individuality with rise in organic life and 
 
 its double aspect 26-29 
 
 Individual Man unique, unclassifiable, therefore out- 
 side the pale of Science 29-32 
 
 Individuals and "types" 32-33 
 
 Incompleteness of man's earthly life compared to 
 
 lower animals ........ 34 
 
 Scientific presumption of immortality .... 35 
 
 Kesult if it were accepted as working hypothesis . . 35-38 
 
 Omnipresence of individuality in known universe . 38-40 
 
 Scientific prediction of universal death .... 40 
 
 Analogy of insect metamorphoses with man's in- 
 dividual persistence ....... 41-42 
 
 Body-building power 42-43 
 
 Need of deeper than scientific considerations . . 44 
 
 Alleged occurrences of communication with the unseen 45-47 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHIC STANDPOINT 
 
 Subject defined 48 
 
 Initial assumptions 49 
 
 Transcendence of Time and Space in ordinary experi- 
 ence 49-51 
 
 Contrasts underlying human Self-consciousness . . 51-53 
 
 Retrospect of the scientific aspect of individuality . 53-55 
 
 Its full scope only realised in personality . . . 55-56 
 
 Self-conscious Mind as the Ground of the universe . 56-59 
 
 Character and its stamp on work 59-60 
 
 Originality of the work of genius 60 
 
 Originality, i.e. individuality of the Cosmos . . . 60-61 
 
 Infinite Individuality 61-63 
 
 Man's individuality is in partial touch with It . . 63-64 
 
 The uniqueness of each man's relation to God . . 65-66 
 
 Its significance to God as well as man .... 66-69 
 
 Physical death does not affect this relation . . . 69-70 
 
 Temporal and eternal life 71-72 
 
SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS xi 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ETHICAL INDIVIDUAL AND IMMORTALITY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Interdependence of truth ...... 73 
 
 Meaning of ethical failure in practical life . . . 74-76 
 Meaning of ethical failure in the eternal relationship . 77 
 
 Is moral evil ethical failure ? 78 
 
 Science does not recognise good and evil ... 79 
 
 Pessimistic solution creates problem of good . . 79-81 
 
 Significance of the sense of duty ..... 81-82 
 Evil eternally rejected by the Divine Will ... 83 
 
 Deliberate rejection of evil an intrinsic part of good- 
 ness and the ultimate test of ethical success and 
 
 failure 83-84 
 
 Relation of human standards to the ultimate Standard 84-86 
 
 Individual responsibility 86-87 
 
 Conscientious error and its bearing 011 immortality . 88-90 
 Influence of present ethical aims on ethical condition 
 
 hereafter 90-92 
 
 Hope beyond death 92 
 
 Moral possibilities and impossibilities .... 92-94 
 Eternity of the Divine Ideal of each man ... 94 
 Possibility of non-attainment for all time ... 95 
 But an eternal ground of hope remains . . *, 96 
 The eternity of the Divine Ideals a pledge of attain- 
 ment to the choosers of good 96-97 
 
 Spiritual death 98 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN STANDPOINT AND THE 
 CHRISTIAN IDEAL 
 
 Recapitulation of the argument 99-101 
 
 Threefold Enquiry from the Christian Standpoint . 101 
 
 Individuality recognised and valued by Christ . . 101-103 
 
 He teaches individual immortality .... 103-104 
 
xii SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN STANDPOINT AND THE 
 CHRISTIAN IDEAL continued. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Gives information respecting unseen life . . . 104-105 
 
 Supreme significance of the Resurrection . . . 106-108 
 Continuity of the human life of Christ before and 
 
 after death 108-109 
 
 Christian Ideal of Immortality 110 
 
 Individual completion ....... 110-111 
 
 One-sidedness of accepted Ideal 111-115 
 
 True Christian Ideal, completion of the whole man . 115-118 
 
 Reward and Punishment ....... 118-121 
 
 Each is worked out in life and is its inevitable con- 
 sequence 121-127 
 
 Perfect and conscious union with God, the consumma- 
 tion of the Christian Ideal of Immortality . . 127-130 
 It includes the perfect fulfilment of human affections . 130-131 
 And suffices to all human demands .... 131-13& 
 Concluding practical considerations .... 133-13G 
 
INDIVIDUAL' IMMORTALITY 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 URGENCY OF THE ENQUIRY 
 
 IT is thought by many that the great question 
 suggested by the title of this book viz., that 
 of survival after death, is not among the 
 most pressing problems of the age ; that for 
 once at any rate the highest and the most 
 practical points of view coincide, and that to 
 " leave the world a little better than he found 
 it," to add some iota of material benefit, of 
 scientific knowledge, or of philosophic truth, 
 to the general store, accumulating through the 
 passing generations for the generations yet to 
 come, is at once the wisest, the most feasible, 
 and the most unselfish aim that a man can 
 set before himself. Regard for a life beyond 
 the grave, an ordering of the present life so 
 that the interests of this larger life to come 
 may be subserved, is looked upon somewhat 
 
2 PRACTICAL NEED OF [CHAP. 
 
 askance and dubbed as " otherworldliness," a 
 mere recrudescence under a specious form of 
 selfish individualism. Even Christian Ideals 
 have been modified by this prevailing tendency 
 of thought. The amelioration of the "life 
 that now is" has become a foremost we might 
 almost say the foremost aim of the Churches, 
 social regeneration being apparently the one 
 watchword they have in common, the one 
 ground on which they consent to bury differ- 
 ences and unite forces for the general weal. 
 
 There is unmixed good in this widespread 
 and practical recognition of the Golden Rule, 
 this frank acknowledgment that we are our 
 brother's keeper, and that it is folly and worse 
 than folly to preach to his " immortal soul " 
 while no effort is made to raise and purify the 
 conditions in which his mortal body pines and 
 languishes. So much is unquestionably true, 
 and the crusade against ignorance, under- pay- 
 ment, over- crowding, foul air, vicious sur- 
 roundings which the earnest-hearted in all 
 Christian bodies support and pursue, in unison 
 (to their honour be it said,) with many who 
 obey the maxims while they repudiate the 
 dogmas of " traditional Christianity," is more 
 worthy of the name of " holy war " than 
 
i.] OUTLOOK BEYOND DEATH 3 
 
 any which has preceded it in the annals of 
 mankind. 
 
 And yet this appreciation of the value of 
 life now and here, of its possibilities, of the 
 seemingly cruel and unnecessary obstacles 
 which lie in the way of their fulfilment, has 
 its own dangers. Not to speak for the 
 moment of those which are more purely 
 spiritual, the fact that so large a proportion 
 of hope, effort and desire are concentrated 
 on the life that now is, is productive of an 
 over-eagerness for visible results which is apt 
 to defeat its own end. There would be less 
 of the unrest, the unwise haste, the dis- 
 appointment, which too often characterise 
 and impede workers in the cause of social 
 regeneration, if they were able to realise that 
 even in the case of individuals there is a 
 larger hope, a wider outlook than this present 
 life affords. And indeed such an encourage- 
 ment is sorely needed by those who know 
 anything of its conditions to the majority of 
 human beings living under the sway of our 
 boasted Western civilisation. None, save a 
 few irresponsible enthusiasts, can deceive them- 
 selves into the belief that the vast problems 
 involved, the radical changes necessitated, 
 
4 PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS [CHAP. 
 
 will even be faced in the comprehensive and 
 thorough-going manner which alone could 
 avail, in the lifetime of the present genera- 
 tion, in all probability of others to come. 
 And if in the end the Utopia of philanthro- 
 pists is realised, and peace, sufficiency, and the 
 means of full self-development are placed 
 within the reach of all, there yet remains 
 the tale of ruined lives and uncompensated 
 suffering through which its attainment will 
 have been achieved. 
 
 For were full social regeneration capable 
 of immediate accomplishment, individual 
 life would not be rendered satisfactory. 
 Under present conditions, even when, as 
 human experience goes, they are altogether 
 favourable, man never appears to himself to 
 attain the true zenith of his powers. There 
 is always a beyond which could quite con- 
 ceivably be reached were this or that limita- 
 tion, perhaps the universal one of the short- 
 ness of life, removed. The old man may 
 indeed, owing to the very decay of vitality 
 which causes it, acquiesce calmly in the 
 arrest of his powers, but would he do so 
 before decay has touched him, when body 
 and mind are still in full vigour and activity? 
 
i ] SHORTNESS OF LIFE 5 
 
 Let each man in possession of the mens sana 
 in corpore sano ask this question of himself. 
 And indeed if the first half of the condition 
 alone be fulfilled, it is hard for a man to 
 give up the hope of achievements for which 
 he feels full mental capacity on account of 
 physical infirmity, whether the latter be due 
 to age or to illness. Those who have read 
 the Letters of J. R. Green will remember 
 the pathetic exclamation uttered when it 
 was supposed he had but six weeks to live: 
 " I have so much work to do." As a 
 matter of fact his frail life had yet two 
 years to run, and he accomplished kept 
 alive, his physician said, more by sheer force 
 of will than anything else, the chief part 
 of the task which lay so near his heart. 
 But can it be doubted that even then his 
 intellectual power was unexhausted, and that 
 had it not been for physical limitations and 
 premature death, far more would have been 
 successfully attempted? The same remark 
 applies with even more force to one whose 
 death came with a shock of surprise to 
 friend and foe alike : " So much to do, so 
 little done," are reported to have been the 
 last words of Cecil Rhodes, who in his 
 
6 INDIVIDUALS SUFFER [CHAP. 
 
 fiftieth year had to leave unfinished at a 
 peculiarly critical period a gigantic task to 
 which perhaps no other living man is equal. 
 Nor are such cases exceptional, save in the 
 particulars of unusual talent and energy. 
 We have but to run over in our minds 
 the list of our personal friends and acquaint- 
 ance, and we shall find that in the case of 
 successful and unsuccessful alike a falling 
 short of possibilities is the rule. So and so 
 has done well, but he might have done so 
 much better if and then follows the in- 
 evitable qualification ; or such another would 
 have succeeded, but he was overweighted by 
 poverty, or family cares, by ill-health, or by 
 some other of the ordinary hindrances of 
 ordinary life. 
 
 Again there is the injurious effect on others 
 than the individual immediately concerned, 
 which this individual limitation occasions. 
 The statesman who is lost to his country's 
 councils just when she is most in need of him, 
 the mother who is snatched from her children 
 at the age when they chiefly require her 
 care, and the loss of whose tender watchful- 
 ness in early years is felt to the end of life, 
 the father whose counsel and ripe experience 
 
i.] DESPITE SOCIAL REGENERATION 7 
 
 would have been invaluable to the son just 
 setting forth on his career, but whose voice 
 is silenced by death at the moment when 
 it seemed indispensable, these and countless 
 other instances are so familiar that even to 
 mention them savours of the trite. Each 
 time, however, that they enter into a living 
 experience they are felt with the same keen 
 and bitter strength as though they were the 
 first sorrow of the first man. 
 
 Social regeneration is no panacea for these 
 things. It cannot secure to the individual 
 the certainty that his powers shall ripen to 
 their full development, that work which he 
 has undertaken shall be accomplished, that 
 his life shall last long enough to shelter, 
 till shelter is no longer necessary, the lives 
 dependent on him; that the desires either of 
 affection or intellect shall come even near to 
 satisfaction. 
 
 And if it is thus with the successful 
 for so far it is chiefly those whom the world 
 would deem successful that we have been 
 bearing in mind, in whose case there has 
 been at any rate a partial Mfilment of their 
 best potentialities, what shall be said of the 
 unsuccessful, of the world's failures, of the 
 
8 HUMAN IMMORTALITY MEANS [CHAP. 
 
 incurably diseased, vicious, miserable, who 
 might have been so different had their en- 
 vironment been different, who, had the 
 halcyon days of social regeneration fallen 
 to them, would at any rate have attained 
 an ordinary level of virtue, decency, satis- 
 faction ? Does it content us to regard them 
 as the necessary sacrifice to the well-being 
 of future generations? Are the victims 
 to war, pestilence, inefficient legislation ; to 
 their own and others' ignorance, neglect or 
 despair, mere age-long object-lessons of how 
 not to live? Our intellectual and moral 
 nature alike shrinks from thus regarding 
 them. And it is this fact, quite as much 
 as our private needs, aspirations and affec- 
 tions, which makes of immortality primarily 
 an individual question. We ask indeed, at 
 moments when the brevity and uncertainty 
 of life are personally brought home to us 
 by bereavement or the first warnings that 
 our physical powers have passed their zenith : 
 " Shall I survive ? Will those I love 
 survive ? Will the desires, the capacities 
 that have never found fruition here * bloom 
 to profit other where ? ' : But it is at times 
 of wider sympathy, when not our own lot 
 
i.] INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 9 
 
 nor that of any dear ones within the narrow 
 circle of home and friendship, is chiefly 
 present to us, that we realise the awful 
 futility of individual life if death indeed be 
 its term. 
 
 Nor are such questionings satisfied, 
 though they may be silenced, by the repre- 
 sentation that no life can cease to be, and 
 that the perishing of its individual forms 
 no more affects its persistence than the sub- 
 sidence of ocean waves into a great calm, 
 affects the persistence of the ocean itself. 
 The merging of the finite in the Infinite 
 cannot be rightly called death ; yet to the 
 general mind, the term life is even less 
 appropriate. 
 
 It is individual persistence in personal 
 powers and consciousness that to the great \ 
 majority of men constitutes immortality. 
 If this persistence be denied, they care little 
 for the possibility of survival as unconscious 
 component parts of a whole which they can 
 never know, and which needs them merely 
 for the sake of its own completeness. There 
 is nothing in such immortality as this (if 
 indeed it may even lay claim to the name), 
 to inspire, to deter or to fortify, save 
 
10 BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY [CHAP. 
 
 perhaps a few philosophers to whom the life 
 and ardour of humanity are of less im- 
 portance than intellectual abstractions and 
 rounded logical systems. To the minds of 
 all ordinary men it makes, and it ought to 
 make, a vast difference in the duty of each 
 individual now, whether his outlook, not as 
 regards himself only, but all other individuals 
 past, present, and to come, reaches beyond 
 earth. The training and discipline which 
 would suffice for mortals, the conditions of 
 life, the power of perseverance and 
 endeavour, the outlook of hope which 
 would be great enough for them, are wholly 
 inadequate for immortals. These, too, need 
 not shrink as mortals must from apparent 
 failure, or certain suffering either in their 
 own case or in that of others. The issues of 
 life are so large that illimitable courage 
 should be theirs. 
 
 A real living belief (not a mere intellectual 
 acquiescence), in the continuity of individual 
 human life has issues of infinitely greater im- 
 portance to society at large than those which 
 it debates with such fervour and heat. It 
 can hardly be said that we are in a position 
 to estimate them as yet. One thing how- 
 
i.] SHOULD AFFECT EDUCATION 11 
 
 ever should be abundantly plain. If death is 
 indeed no break in life, but merely an entrance 
 into different conditions of life, this fact of 
 itself should weigh immensely in education. 
 Before it could do so, however, a public 
 opinion in favour of its practical importance 
 would have to be created. At present what 
 public opinion is brought to bear on the 
 subject leans all the other way. To think 
 much of life beyond the grave is supposed to 
 unfit us for work in the world as it is. But if 
 it were realised that the individual's present 
 work is but the first stage in work to be 
 carried on by that same individual with keener 
 insight and larger powers beyond death, work 
 in itself, and in its results infinitely greater 
 than he can grasp now (just as the vast range 
 of literary attainment and possibilities is 
 beyond the grasp of the child learning the 
 alphabet), then the most practical thing that 
 could be done would be to bear in mind 
 the continuity of work here and work here- 
 after. It would assist as nothing else could 
 do to direct activity to work that is worthy 
 of so high a destiny, to open our eyes to the 
 fact that all necessary work, even if it concern 
 only the lowliest earthly requirements, may 
 
12 SHOULD RAISE STANDARD [CHAP. 
 
 be not the prelude to merely, but the basis 
 of work which is eternal in its scope and 
 issues. Even better than the work of poet, 
 artist, and statesman, humble duties may serve 
 as that training and discipline of character 
 which are the chief requisites for high avoca- 
 tions and far-reaching responsibilities. Our 
 chief aim, if convinced that we are immortal, 
 would therefore be so to think and work 
 that when we take that " one step past the 
 entrance door" to fuller life, neither we nor 
 others through our action, should be weighted 
 by limitations which our experience under 
 earthly conditions should have taught us to 
 surmount. This would debar none from 
 giving their full energy to every honourable 
 profession and pursuit, but it would im- 
 measurably raise the standard of individual 
 effort and responsibility. It would save the 
 artist and the author from prostituting talent 
 to win the poor meed of contemporary or 
 posthumous fame, the statesman from com- 
 mitting his fellow-countrymen to a policy 
 which far-seeing wisdom condemns, either 
 for the sake of present popularity or a 
 name which posterity should call great. It 
 would save the educator from aiming at 
 
i.] OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORT 13 
 
 immediate results rather than eliciting the 
 true personality, the best self in the young 
 people committed to his charge, and the 
 philanthropist from adopting hasty expedients 
 which, though they may give momentary 
 relief, are no true medicine for the social 
 body. It would rob detraction of its 
 keenest pangs and take the edge off all 
 disappointment. And this being the case, 
 it would set free even under actual condi- 
 tions, an amazing amount of human energy 
 and capacity which are at present cramped 
 and stunted by the overhanging fear that 
 whatever the individual cannot accomplish 
 before death is, so far as the individual him- 
 self is concerned, incomplete. He may 
 sow, but another will reap; he may labour, 
 but another will enter into the fruit of his 
 labours ; he shall not himself see of the 
 travail of his soul and be satisfied. Nor 
 need we condemn such a feeling as egotistic. 
 To do so would be to run counter to a 
 universal human characteristic, the character- 
 istic of all others which raises man beyond 
 animal to spiritual life, the capacity to 
 perceive, and the determination to strive 
 after, the Ideal, The man who has such 
 
14 TRUE SIGNIFICANCE [CHAP. 
 
 faith in the reality of his ideal that he can 
 say " It will come to pass though I shall not 
 see it," is strong ; but he who can assert " It 
 will come to pass and I shall see it," is 
 stronger still. This is the strength that belief 
 in the continuity of individual personality after 
 death should give to every man in whom 
 it is a living active power, and not a half 
 acquiesced-in truth which has no practical 
 bearing on life as it is now. 
 
 Another effect, far-reaching in its results, 
 but more purely personal than any which 
 has yet been touched on, might well be 
 produced, viz. : the more strenuous endeavour 
 on the part of each individual to attain to 
 the Divine Ideal for him, to fulfil the Divine 
 Conception of his own being. There is a 
 certain school of thought, of which Nietzsche 
 may be regarded as one of the principal 
 prophets and exponents, which insists before 
 all else upon self-realisation as the one im- 
 portant end of individual life. " Be yourself," 
 is the cry of these teachers : " Be what 
 you are, whether that be what is conven- 
 tionally called good or evil. Experience 
 all you can, live all you can. Fulfil 
 yourself in every way that is open to you, 
 
i.] OF SELF-COMPLETION 15 
 
 regardless of any consequence so only that 
 you can achieve and complete yourself." 
 Let this advice be taken by one whose 
 outlook is limited .to life on earth, and 
 in most instances we know but too well 
 the lamentable physical and moral wreck 
 which would ensue. But widen the horizon. 
 Say as before: Fulfil, complete yourself, 
 yet bear in mind that Self s undying Nature, 
 that as you are making it now, so will 
 it start beyond death with larger powers, 
 a greater scope, an unforgotten past. Be 
 therefore not only yourself, but true to 
 your Self. Do not prostitute it, do not 
 place in its hands that awful power of 
 reproach so terribly depicted by Rossetti 
 in one of the finest of his sonnets, where 
 he exclaims that at death 
 
 1 God knows I know the faces I shall see, 
 Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. 
 " I am thyself, what hast thou done to me ? " 
 "And I and I thyself" (lo ! each one saith), 
 " And thou thyself to all eternity." ' 
 
 The first all -important point to be con- 
 sidered is then whether we have indeed 
 assured ground for the belief in that in- 
 dividual persistence after death without which 
 
16 CHRISTIAN UNCERTAINTY [CHAP. 
 
 immortality is but a meaningless name. To 
 Christians who are firm in their faith, the 
 question is already answered in the affirma- 
 tive, but those who have a strong practical 
 grasp of that article of their creed " the life 
 everlasting," are not the majority. Many of 
 whom it would be alike presumptuous and 
 untrue to assert that they do not believe it, 
 nevertheless feel an uncertainty and doubtful- 
 ness very inimical to that rest of heart and 
 strength of purpose which should be theirs. 
 It seems to them that not only the world 
 around them, but the teaching of Science, 
 perhaps of Philosophy, is against their faith in 
 this respect, and they are distressed, unable to 
 give a reason for the hope that is in them, 
 or in fact do more than cling to it as too 
 vital and too precious to renounce, but too 
 fragile to bear examination. 
 
 It is not thus on sufferance as it were 
 that so splendid and uplifting a belief 
 should be held; and the purpose of the 
 present volume is first to enquire briefly what 
 Science and Philosophy have to say on this 
 great subject, next to consider its ethical 
 bearings, and lastly to examine the Christian 
 Standpoint, and the Christian Ideal. 
 
i] OF LIFE EVERLASTING 17 
 
 And since, as we have above remarked, 
 immortality is primarily an individual ques- 
 tion, our considerations will centre round 
 the comprehensiveness and the importance 
 of Individuality. The immensity of the 
 universe as modern Science reveals it to 
 us, the self-sufficing all-inclusiveness of the 
 " Absolute," that central conception of much 
 of the Idealistic Philosophy of our day, both 
 these conceptions tend to make the individual 
 of small account in comparison with the 
 Whole, the All. And to a certain extent 
 the result is a wider, less selfish appreciation 
 of the cosmos and of man's place in it. 
 But the tendency may easily be carried too 
 far. There is a worth, a cosmical significance 
 in individuality which we disregard at our 
 peril, and one aspect of which the con- 
 sideration of immortality brings strongly 
 to our notice. This aspect will be found 
 emphasized in the ensuing pages. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC STANDPOINT 
 
 IN approaching the consideration of Individual 
 Immortality from the side of Science, we 
 must be clear what it is we want to do, 
 and what we may reasonably expect to 
 do. It is a subject which (unlike the 
 existence of God,) is conceivably open to 
 scientific proof, that is to say, it turns upon 
 a question of fact which comes, or which 
 might come, within the province of physical 
 experience. If one came back to us in 
 visible form from that bourne whence (it 
 is said) no traveller returns, broke the 
 silence of death and spoke to us, or in 
 some evident and physical way made known 
 his presence among us again, that would be 
 a fact of which Science could take cognisance, 
 which it could examine, test and, if repeated, 
 finally classify, for no unclassified phenomenon 
 has, properly speaking, reached the scientific 
 
 18 
 
CHAP, ii.] ATTEMPTS AT INVESTIGATION 19 
 
 stage. It is well known that men of 
 undoubted scientific ability and attainment 
 have, among other matters, this very one 
 under consideration .and experiment. It is 
 also well known that it presents the most 
 enormous difficulties to investigation, and 
 the greatest facilities for deception and 
 delusion. That is no reason why success 
 should not ultimately be attained, and 
 though in the belief of many, such researches 
 are not only doubtful and difficult, but 
 present distinct mental and moral dangers, 
 that again is no reason why those who 
 regard the importance of the end in view 
 (scientific certainty one way or the other,) as 
 outweighing all other considerations, should 
 not, so long as they maintain the cool and 
 dispassionate attitude of mind which should 
 be characteristic of all scientific enquiry, 
 continue their investigations. 
 
 The course of these and the results so far 
 attained are open to all who choose to study 
 the publications of the Society for Psychical 
 Research, and their reproduction will not 
 be attempted here. Our aim is different. 
 Quite apart from these investigations there is 
 generally thought to be justification for what 
 
20 SCIENCE DEALS ONLY [CHAP. 
 
 may be called a scientific presumption against 
 the persistence of individual life after death. 
 If this be the case, a greater weight of 
 evidence is rightly demanded than would 
 otherwise be necessary before it can be 
 accepted as proved. Our object will be to 
 enquire whether such justification does in fact 
 exist, whether ascertained and classified facts 
 do, so far, make against any confident belief 
 in human immortality. 
 
 In the first place, it will be well to call to 
 mind with what aspect of the universe and of 
 man Science deals, so that we may see how 
 far she has the right and the power of 
 interpretation. She does not occupy herself 
 with the physical alone. The phenomena of 
 mind as well as body fall within her ken; 
 " Mental Physiology " and " Psychological 
 Physics," as well as pure Psychology, are 
 important and well-recognised branches of her 
 domain, and have advanced at least as much as 
 those of older date. Facts, whether psychical 
 or physical, are material for Science ; her aim, 
 is, first, to reduce their apparent chaos to 
 order. Secondly, to discover and establish on 
 a firm basis their relationships and sequences, 
 and the conditions under which they are 
 
n] WITH BODY OF EXPERIENCE 21 
 
 produced, and to simplify as far as possible 
 the expression of these relationships, sequences 
 and conditions making the necessary formulae 
 as few and as comprehensive as possible. 
 Finally, to be prepared at all points for the 
 discovery of fresh facts, discarding any theory 
 with which they are in evident disagreement. 
 There is, however, one essential requisite for 
 the work of Science. It is that the facts 
 which are her raw material shall be located 
 in space and time. If there be such things as 
 facts or experiences which are non-temporal 
 and non-spatial, with these Science in the 
 ordinary acceptation of the term cannot 
 deal. Clearly, therefore, any purely scientific 
 interpretation of the universe and of man 
 must be given in terms of space and time. 
 Science has no vocabulary to transcend them. 
 She cannot say that they are not transcend- 
 able or transcended ; but she cannot herself 
 pass beyond their bounds. We must en- 
 deavour to see what precisely this limitation 
 involves. 
 
 Perhaps it may be most forcibly presented 
 by the statement that the Scientific outlook is 
 confined to the external aspect and signifi- 
 cance of the universe, to the body of experience 
 
22 CANNOT PENETRATE [CHAP. 
 
 as we may say. Its soul, its inner meaning, 
 eludes the methods by which Science works, 
 because these are only applicable where space 
 and time are applicable. Consequently no 
 scientific explanation or interpretation can 
 be more than partially satisfactory. There 
 is always a residuum left unaccounted for, 
 and that residuum contains the " why " of all 
 the " hows " that with infinite pains and toil 
 Science has accumulated and co-ordinated. 
 The existence of this residuum can be ignored 
 or held of no account by any who are content 
 to regard the universe as meaningless, but 
 those who are sure that it has a meaning, 
 still more those who hope that the mean- 
 ing may be discoverable, are fain to seek 
 some method of interpretation which does 
 not pre-suppose space and time. Hence 
 arises the need for philosophy. Philosophy 
 endeavours to go behind the postulates which 
 Science perforce accepts unquestioningly, and 
 to examine their credentials. Our concern 
 in the present chapter, however, is not with 
 Philosophy but with Science, whose real value 
 and importance are only appreciated when her 
 limitations are recognised. She teaches us the 
 course of things, not the reason of their being; 
 
ii.] ITS INNER SIGNIFICANCE 23 
 
 she exhibits them in their relation to time 
 and space, and to the intellect of man, not 
 in their relation to their ground and source, 
 whatever that may. be. Consequently she 
 cannot reveal the secret or the meaning of 
 their existence. Yet let none despise or 
 underrate the work w r hich is hers and which, 
 though misleading, if supposed to comprise 
 the whole range of knowledge, is nevertheless 
 essential to its truth and validity. We can 
 have no reliable metaphysics unless we have 
 first made sure of our physics. In other 
 words, without a faithful representation of 
 the body of experience, we cannot hope to 
 penetrate to that inner significance which 
 we have ventured to call its soul. 
 
 So much being premised, let us turn our 
 attention to the teaching of Science with 
 regard to man, remembering that in his case, 
 as in the case of the whole order of which he 
 forms part, she is and can be presenting only 
 one and that the outer aspect of his being. 
 
 The first and most important considera- 
 tion which presents itself, is the demon- 
 strated continuity of human life with the 
 organic universe and with itself under very 
 varying phases of existence. For our 
 
24 DEVELOPMENT OF [CHAP. 
 
 present purpose we may leave on one side 
 the first half of this thesis, taking it as 
 proved that man as we know him has as 
 a race ascended from and through lower 
 types of life to his present position as the 
 crown and cope of the known organic world. 
 We are concerned more immediately with 
 his individual aspect, and this we will 
 proceed to consider in some detail. 
 
 Each human individual commences life 
 as a single organic cell, not yet so far 
 differentiated as to present distinctive animal 
 characteristics. The cell undergoes a com- 
 plicated process of subdivision, multiplies, 
 the daughter cells behave in like manner, 
 their aggregate taking to itself a more and 
 more specialised form until first the verte- 
 brate and then the human embryo comes 
 into existence. The latter grows, its sex 
 becomes apparent, its various organs com- 
 mence their functions. At the end of a 
 certain time it is ready to be born into the 
 external world as a fully-formed human 
 infant. Through all these prenatal changes 
 and transmutations the individual life has 
 been continuous, the cell is not the embryo, 
 the embryo is not the infant, but the life of 
 
ii.] HUMAN INDIVIDUAL 25 
 
 the infant is one with the life of the 
 embryo and the cell. 
 
 After birth further development is under- 
 gone. The infant grows, he shows signs of 
 consciousness, then of self-consciousness, he 
 gains the use and control of his limbs, he 
 begins to understand something of himself, 
 and his relationship to his environment, he 
 becomes capable of sympathy, love, friend- 
 ship, his bodily and mental powers increase; 
 finally, through childhood, boyhood and 
 youth, he passes to the stage of fully 
 developed manhood. And through all these 
 changes, as through those that preceded 
 birth, the individual life is continuous. The 
 man differs from the youth, the youth from 
 the boy, the boy from the child, the child 
 from the infant, but the life of the man is 
 the same life that was in the infant. More 
 than this he identifies it as such. Since 
 the first dawning of memory he knows that 
 he has been the same. "It is I myself 
 and not another who have passed through 
 these transmutations. I was that child, 
 that boy, that youth I who am now the 
 grown man." Nor do the changes cease 
 here. The man has all his experience to 
 
26 SELF-IDENTITY [CHAP. 
 
 accumulate, and as the saying goes this 
 process makes " a different man " of him. 
 He is different at forty from thirty, at 
 seventy from fifty, different, for as lie 
 constantly asserts, "/ was so-and-so, and 
 so-and-so, now / am something else " ; yet 
 the same, for the difference does not consist 
 in another individual having come into exist- 
 ence, but in one individual having passed 
 through a continuous series of developments. 
 This fact of self-identity through differ- 
 ence is so entirely familiar, so completely 
 a part (or rather the ground,) of everyday 
 experience, that the plain man simply takes 
 it for granted, guides his actions in accord- 
 ance with it, and seldom realises that there 
 is anything peculiar or requiring explanation 
 about it. Let us for the moment accept 
 this point of view, and turn our attention 
 to another less immediately obvious truth 
 which a study of modern science brings 
 very prominently to our notice. This is the 
 increase of individuality apparent as we 
 rise in the scale of organic life. It has 
 already been observed that in the earliest 
 stage of the human embryo, the future 
 man is not even so far differentiated as to 
 
n.] INDIVIDUALITY TWOFOLD 27 
 
 be distinctively animal. This fact is re- 
 produced on a larger scale. All students 
 of biology are familiar with those lowly 
 and curious organisms which throughout 
 their life-history retain both animal and 
 vegetable characteristics, so that it is im- 
 possible to classify them correctly in either 
 of the great divisions of the organic world. 
 In higher organisms we no longer find this 
 confusion existing, save in the earliest stages 
 of their life-history. The adult forms leave 
 no doubt as to the division in which we 
 must place them ; and as organic com- 
 plexity increases, so does the oneness and 
 distinctness of the individual life to which 
 it ministers. Taking for convenience and 
 brevity's sake illustrations from the animal 
 kingdom alone, compare the individuality of 
 an oyster with that of an ant or a bee, that 
 of a bee with that of one of the higher 
 vertebrates, a dog or an ape, that of an ape 
 with that of a man. 
 
 Individuality, it must be remarked, has a 
 double aspect, the outward and the inward, 
 the outward being that by which an observer 
 distinguishes one individual from others of 
 the same kind, the inward that by which each 
 
28 ITS INNER ASPECT [CHAP. 
 
 individual distinguishes and identifies himself. 
 Taking man (as we perforce must do,) as our 
 standard observer, we may notice that his 
 difficulty in distinguishing one individual 
 (of the same species,) from another, decreases 
 in direct proportion with the degree of 
 organic complexity attained. He would be 
 sore put to it to identify an oyster, he 
 would have little difficulty in identifying a 
 dog or a horse ; and it needs no argument 
 to show that the oyster is almost, if not 
 totally, deficient in that sense of self-identity 
 which is the inner aspect of individuality, 
 and which is possessed to a distinct extent 
 by the higher animals and to an incom- 
 parably higher degree by man. 1 The inner 
 and the outer aspects develop together; 
 and man, who possesses both in the 
 highest known degree, is the most indi- 
 vidual being with whom Science has to 
 deal. That constitutes the great difficulty 
 of Science with regard to him. For despite 
 her attention to details, and her accumula- 
 tion of minute separate facts, she is very 
 highly abstract in her aims. She descends 
 
 1 See, however, on the sense of self -identity in the lower 
 animals, the remarks made on p. 55 of the present work. 
 
n.] IMPENETRABLE TO SCIENCE 29 
 
 to particulars only to attain generalisation. 
 Her great end is classification, her search 
 is for types, and too persistent and assertive 
 an individuality is. her bane. She cannot 
 away with it. Yet after all, the type exists 
 quite as much for the individuals as the 
 individuals for the type, and forgetfulness 
 of this fact has caused a one-sidedness in 
 scientific interpretations of man which need 
 not have been incurred. 
 
 Even had this error been avoided, how- 
 ever, Science could never give a complete 
 account of man, and that because she cannot 
 view his individuality from within. None 
 but the man himself can do that. Psychology 
 classifies his mental conditions, feelings, 
 activities, emotions, but that very fact 
 precludes any but an external understanding 
 of him. From the internal point of view 
 he cannot be classified : he is unique. When 
 all his mental experiences have been placed 
 under their appropriate heads, perception, 
 ideation, intellection, and the rest, he him- 
 self is conscious that the central point has 
 never been touched, that all this, even when 
 he has studied it in himself, is knowledge 
 about him, but not knowledge of him. That 
 
30 SELF-KNOWLEDGE [CHAP. 
 
 is still a closed door to which Science does 
 not possess the " Open, sesame." It was 
 perhaps inevitable, though infinitely to be 
 regretted, that this being the case there 
 should have been attempts to interpret man 
 upon the important but evidently incomplete 
 data that Science could accumulate, and 
 judgment was pronounced from the outside 
 point of view, the result being that man was 
 declared to be nothing but a bundle of im- 
 pressions, a stream of consciousnesses which 
 somehow or other (it never could be clearly 
 stated how,) wove themselves into temporary 
 unity and evolved that illusory but very 
 convenient notion of self-identity. Baldly 
 stated, this doctrine, which Hume initiated 
 and which has commended itself to various 
 leaders of modern scientific thought, notably 
 to Huxley, appears so difficult of com- 
 prehension, and when grasped so innately 
 absurd, that the plain man may be safely 
 trusted to discard it. Impressions without 
 a something impressed, a stream of conscious- 
 ness self- deluded into the recognition of a 
 one and undivided non-existent self, appear 
 to the ordinary mind sheer absurdities. 
 
 The difficulty of understanding, and the 
 
n.] UNIQUE, INCOMMUNICABLE 31 
 
 impossibility of classifying individual man, 
 have played their part in helping to turn 
 aside thought from looking upon him as of 
 any great importance in solving historical, 
 social and anthropological problems. It is 
 much easier to study him in classes and 
 masses, communities, nations and races. 
 Psychology itself is occupied with generic 
 rather than individual man. It is difficult 
 to see how it could be otherwise, for even 
 in that analysis of consciousness which is one 
 of the principal psychological methods, it is 
 still always man as object who is under 
 observation, i.e., man as he can be known, 
 not as he knows. This last knowledge is 
 in the sense in which we are now taking 
 it, only possible to each individual man for 
 himself, and even by him not classifiable, 
 intuitive not reasoned. Self-knowledge is 
 impenetrable from without, incommunicable, 
 in each case unique, consequently outside 
 the range of Science, for whom the unique 
 is inadmissible. This being the case it is 
 no matter for surprise that she should 
 assume for her own purposes that man as 
 she knows him, social, psychological man, is 
 man complete, and treat that inner individual 
 
32 INDIVIDUALITY EMPHASISED [CHAP. 
 
 aspect which for ever eludes her as of little or 
 no moment. For her own purposes she is justi- 
 fied in doing this, so long as she does not en- 
 deavour to impose her point of view as sufficient 
 and satisfactory beyond her own sphere. 
 
 To attempt this would be to ignore what 
 Science is pledged never to ignore, a great 
 natural fact, to the recognition of which, as 
 we have seen, all those biological processes 
 which are one of her especial and most 
 successful studies lead up. The increasing 
 stress laid upon individuality, as we rise in 
 the scale of organic life, denotes that in 
 the economy of Nature the individual, how- 
 ever, partially understood, is of great and 
 peculiar importance. It is customary to say 
 that Nature ignores the individual, that 
 she cares only for the good of the species, 
 the improved type, and that to secure her 
 end, holocausts of individuals are offered up. 
 Tennyson saw farther than this : 
 
 " So careful of the type ? But no ! 
 
 From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
 She cries, ' A thousand types are gone, 
 I care for nothing, all shall go.' " 
 
 But " all " does not go ; there remains from 
 stage to stage an election, an election among 
 
ii.] IN ORDER OF NATURE 33 
 
 the "types," an election among the 
 individuals that conform to the types. 
 The "fittest" survive, and when that 
 abstraction the " species " is brought down to 
 concrete life, the "fittest," the inheritors at 
 any given moment of all the treasures of 
 evolution so far accumulated, are a certain 
 number of individuals. It would therefore 
 be quite as true, and often less misleading, 
 to say that individuals rather than " types " 
 are the special care of Nature. 
 
 There is, however, one fact undeniable 
 till we come to man, viz., that the raison 
 d'etre of each individual existence apparently 
 ceases at death. It seems confined to 
 physical possibilities and to be exhausted 
 by the demand made upon it in this visible 
 course of things. Taking even the highest 
 animals below man, we cannot reasonably 
 assert that they show any sign of requiring 
 for the complete fulfilment of their in- 
 dividuality a wider or a more spiritual en- 
 vironment than that of earth. With man, 
 as we have seen, the case is different. So 
 far from actual conditions exhausting his 
 individuality, they rather seem insufficient to 
 rouse its highest powers, or exhibit its full 
 
 c 
 
34 POSITION OF SCIENCE [CHAP. 
 
 scope. His conscious demand for himself 
 and his fellows is more time ; fewer physical 
 disabilities and mental limitations ; a wider 
 sphere ; a fuller experience, a larger life. 
 And making ample allowance for the truth 
 which Weismann has so prominently brought 
 forward, that as things are, the short duration 
 of life among the higher animals is racially 
 good because the function of reproduction is 
 thus reserved to those fittest to exercise it, 
 and a more vigorous vitality passed on to 
 the succeeding generations, we cannot but 
 recognise that in the case of man this 
 benefit is conferred at the cost of an in- 
 dividual loss, large out of all proportion to 
 that incurred at any lower stage in the 
 organic world. The possibilities of no human 
 individual are exhausted at death, and the 
 more highly trained, cultured, and intel- 
 lectually or practically active his life has 
 been, the more do we perceive that his 
 capacity has been greater than his attain- 
 ment. This fact is certainly no proof that 
 his individual life does not terminate at 
 death; but assuming (as in a future chapter 
 the writer hopes to show we have a right to 
 assume,) a scale of values in Nature, and 
 
n.] IF IMMORTALITY PROVED 35 
 
 recognising that if such a scale exists, a 
 premium is placed upon individuality, a pre- 
 sumption which we may justly call scientific 
 is afforded that the individual man does not 
 cease at death. If this be so, the result, so 
 far as Science is concerned, upon the 
 question of Immortality, would be the same 
 as that in other cases of a scientific pre- 
 sumption. The suggestion would be ac- 
 cepted as a working hypothesis which a 
 further accumulation and study of facts 
 would either disprove or raise to the rank 
 of an accepted theory. 
 
 Let us assume for the sake of argument 
 merely that the latter alternative has 
 occurred. 1 What would then be the posi- 
 tion of Science with regard to the persist- 
 ence of individual life after death ? She 
 would accept the fact as she accepts the 
 fact of life after birth. She would note and 
 classify the phenomena upon which her con- 
 viction is based. She would incidentally 
 urge that conduct should be such as to sub- 
 
 1 In the opinion of some it has occurred already ; but scientific 
 men as a body have certainly not yet reached so far as the 
 working hypothesis stage, and in the opinion of the present 
 writer never will, while they retain the presumption against the 
 possibility of individual survival after death. 
 
36 NO BETTER ABLE [CHAP. 
 
 serve the interests (so far as from her point 
 of view she is able to infer them,) of life 
 beyond as well as of life before death. 
 She would encourage research into that as 
 into any other unknown, or partially known, 
 region of investigation. She would en- 
 deavour to ascertain, if possible to produce 
 experimentally, the conditions of such life, 
 and in case of success we should doubtless 
 have a body of scientific men devoted to 
 this special study and with continually im- 
 proving methods of pursuing it. How far 
 this might be an advantage to mankind at 
 large it is difficult to determine, but one 
 thing is certain, the inner significance of 
 individual human life would be as far from 
 the ken of Science as ever. She would, 
 indeed, be able to assert with even more 
 confidence than she now too often denies 
 its persistence after death, and this might 
 produce a sobering and awe-inspiring effect 
 on the thoughtful, but her material would 
 still be the body, not the soul, of experi- 
 ence, and in presenting this new class of 
 facts she would be as unable to give a 
 complete and satisfying interpretation of 
 them, as she is of the facts pertaining to 
 
ii.] TO INTERPRET LIFE 3? 
 
 the life of man as she at present recognises 
 it. 
 
 These remarks are made in no carping or 
 fault-finding spirit, but to correct what seems 
 to the writer a double misconception, viz., 
 (1) that Science is justified in a presumption 
 against the persistence of individual human 
 life after death ; and (2) that were the con- 
 trary proved, she would be in a position to 
 give an entirely different interpretation of 
 that life as a whole. The considerations 
 which have occupied us in the present essay, 
 show, on the contrary, that the true scientific 
 presumption is rather for than against the 
 persistence of individual life after death, and 
 that in any case it is not within the province 
 of Science to attempt a complete interpreta- 
 tion of the life of man, whether or not it 
 persists after death in individual form. In 
 this second statement we are only asserting 
 that in the region of knowledge, as in that 
 of practical life, there is a division of labour, 
 that though Science can do much, she cannot 
 do all, and that her efforts need to be 
 supplemented by work of another kind, to 
 which her own is indispensable but which it 
 cannot supply. 
 
68 NATURAL ORDER UNIQUE [CHAP. 
 
 The presence we might say the omni- 
 presence, of individuality, not only in the 
 organic world but in the known universe, 
 might be illustrated in many ways. Man 
 is only an extreme instance of that which 
 is foreshadowed with ever-increasing clear- 
 ness as his own status in the Natural Order 
 is approached. That Order itself in its en- 
 tirety bears the impress of individuality. It 
 is not one of a class, it is unique. It is this 
 and not that. Each event occurs because 
 the universe is what it is and not something 
 else, and so complete is its individuality 
 (technically called the Uniformity of Nature,) 
 that even its possibilities the things which 
 may be or may not be are limited to the 
 kind of things which are in consonance with 
 its characteristics as a whole. 
 
 One fundamental characteristic is the 
 persistence of the same thing through 
 manifold changes of form. What is known 
 in physics as the Conservation of Energy is 
 an illustration of this on a large scale. The 
 technical definition of energy is capacity for 
 work, and by its conservation is meant that 
 in the transmutations which this capacity 
 undergoes, being now potential, now kinetic, 
 
ii.] ITS FORECASTED END 39 
 
 appearing at one moment as mechanical 
 motion, at another as heat, its sum remains 
 the same. No " energy " Science tells us 
 is ever lost. Yet this assertion needs to be 
 qualified by another, viz., that in every trans- 
 mutation some energy is " dissipated," i.e., the 
 exact equivalent does not reappear in usable 
 form. It escapes, and though still in existence 
 is, for practical purposes, whether these be 
 cosmical processes or the ends of applied 
 Science, wasted. The scientific significance 
 of this fact is that the course of things, as 
 we know it, must come to an end in time. 
 The time may be (though so far as the solar 
 system is concerned it appears possibly pre- 
 dicable within some millions of years,) im- 
 measurable, but none the less it has a term ; 
 and when that term is reached the condition 
 of the known universe will be what is best 
 described as that of death. Its whole avail- 
 able energy will by then be degraded into 
 heat of a low and absolutely uniform 
 temperature, and the result will be absence 
 of light, warmth and life. It should be 
 remarked, however, that the shell if we 
 may so call it of the cosmos will ap- 
 parently remain. Science does not seem 
 
40 NATURAL SUGGESTIONS [CHAP. 
 
 able to predict what will become of the 
 agglomerations of matter known to us as 
 Stellar Systems. Apparently the law of 
 gravitation will continue to hold, and dead 
 worlds will revolve round dark suns in hope- 
 less and impenetrable mystery. The death 
 of the universe, if such be a true representa- 
 tion of it, is thus infinitely more desolate 
 and unlovely than the death of organic 
 forms. These at any rate by returning to 
 their elements minister to the continuance 
 and furtherance of life and beauty. Though 
 they themselves perish, their dissolution is 
 instinct with promise and service ; but the 
 dead Cosmos, so far as Science can speak, 
 is devoid of promise and serves nothing. 
 Perhaps this very fact, opposed as it is to 
 all analogy with known cosmical processes 
 during the ages of their duration, may 
 point to the inference that scientific data 
 are here insufficient for prediction, and that 
 there may be, even from her own point of 
 view, possibilities in the decay of the universe 
 which she is not as yet in a position to 
 suggest. However this may be, it is more 
 important for our present purpose that we 
 should return to our consideration of the 
 
n] OF IMMORTALITY 41 
 
 persistence of individual life through organic 
 and super-organic changes. 
 
 A favourite analogy with those who 
 believe in the persistence of human individu- 
 ality after death, has been the life-history 
 of insects, the metamorphoses they undergo 
 strikingly exhibiting the possibility of the 
 same physical individual passing into totally 
 different conditions of life, yet retaining 
 its identity. This is an obvious and a 
 picturesque illustration, but it is not in 
 reality so striking as that which has already 
 been drawn from the life-history of the 
 higher animals. The changes there exhibited 
 are apparently more gradual ; but they are 
 as great, indeed greater than in the case of 
 insects. There is more difference between the 
 ovum of a vertebrate animal and the adult 
 form of that animal, than there is for instance 
 between the chrysalis and the butterfly. In 
 one respect, however, the latter analogy offers 
 a suggestion which is not found in the case 
 of the higher vertebrates, though in that of 
 reptiles it to some extent exists. 1 The fully- 
 
 1 The reference, of course, is to the periodical casting of 
 the skin, but the analogy is not so close or so striking as in the 
 case of insects, which enter into actually new conditions 
 of life. Reptiles remain in the same. 
 
42 BODY-BUILDING POWER [CHAP. 
 
 formed butterfly emerges from the chrysalis 
 case and leaves the latter behind to be resolved 
 into its elements, having no use for it in 
 the new and higher phase of life which has 
 begun. Assuming that the human individual 
 enters at death into new conditions of life, 
 this analogy may assist us to understand 
 that he need not be thought of as bodiless, 
 because the body which sufficed to his needs 
 under the old conditions has been left to 
 return to its elements and be transmuted 
 through natural processes into other forms 
 to subserve other uses. If we may so ex- 
 press it, it is not the body, but the body- 
 building power possessed by all organisms, 
 which is the important matter. Part of the 
 individuality of all living beings consists 
 in the unique way in which in every case 
 the body-building power exhibits itself. In 
 the same organic division the body is always 
 built on the same plan, yet no two in- 
 dividuals have bodies which are identically 
 the same. Even in the case of twins this 
 is true. The difference lies in some subtle 
 individual idiosyncrasy in the body-building 
 power, which so far Science is unable to 
 penetrate. The individuality of the body 
 
n.] PARTIAL FAILURE IN MAN 43 
 
 becomes far more evident, however, as we 
 rise in the organic scale, and is most evident 
 in man. In him too for the first time the 
 body-building power seems to fail in pro- 
 viding adequate expression for the being 
 to which it is linked. The man is more, 
 is capable of more, than owing to his 
 physical limitations he is able to make clear 
 to himself or to others. It is for this 
 reason that we feel impelled to speak of 
 them as limitations. The body of a bird or 
 of any animal does not strike us as limiting 
 its individuality, rather as expressing it in 
 a most complete and appropriate manner. 
 The individuality of many a human being, 
 on the contrary, seems to be fighting its 
 way to expression through bodily hindrances, 
 rather than clothing itself in a suitable and 
 controllable form. 
 
 It would be unwise to lay too much stress 
 on such considerations as the above, yet 
 they are worthy of notice. They are among 
 the facts which it should be the part of 
 Science to note and classify ; the part of 
 Philosophy and Religion to interpret. In 
 the present chapter our concern is with the 
 scientific aspect of the subject alone, and 
 
44 ALLEGED COMMUNICATION [CHAP. 
 
 enough has perhaps been said to show that 
 individuality is one of the most salient 
 characteristics of the universe, that it assumes 
 a special importance in the organic region 
 of that universe, and in man is incomparably 
 stronger, fuller, and at the same time, so 
 far as we are able to judge, less adequately 
 expressed than in that of any other living 
 being. Consequently the possibility in his 
 case of its continuance after death deserves 
 to be seriously confronted. 
 
 To do this we must have recourse to 
 philosophical considerations, considerations, 
 that is, which, while accepting all the con- 
 clusions of Science within her own province, 
 that of Space and Time, decline to regard 
 them as final, but seek to penetrate the 
 inner significance of facts of which Science 
 can only give an external interpretation. 
 
 From the scientific standpoint, then, all 
 we can claim (apart from those facts adverted 
 to at the commencement of this chapter, the 
 reality of which is still under test and dis- 
 cussion,) is a presumption in favour of the 
 persistence of human individual life after 
 death. This presumption as we have seen, is 
 founded on the prominent place of individu- 
 
ii.] WITH THE UNSEEN 45 
 
 ality in Nature, and its presence in so high 
 a degree in man that actual conditions are 
 insufficient to give it scope. 
 
 One word may perhaps be added with 
 reference to those alleged occurrences which 
 if substantiated would, it is thought, place 
 individual immortality beyond the pale of 
 scientific doubt. If any reader will be at 
 the pains seriously to question his personal 
 friends and acquaintances, accepting only 
 first-hand evidence, he will be surprised to 
 find how numerous are the instances of 
 unsought but apparently indubitable re- 
 appearances of, or communications from, 
 those who have died to those who are 
 living. They are seldom spoken of, for two 
 reasons, (1) that such experiences are usually 
 held too sacred by their subjects to be 
 freely communicated to others, and (2) that 
 there exists so great a prejudice against 
 their reality that sensible and healthy- minded 
 persons (and the evidence of no others in 
 these matters could be accepted,) shrink from 
 laying themselves open to the almost certain 
 accusation of an over-excitable imagination, 
 a morbid mental or physical condition and 
 the like. Consequently many occurrences 
 
46 POSSIBLY DUE [CHAP. 
 
 which at first sight might, as it seems, be 
 exceedingly important from the scientific 
 point of view, are either never mentioned 
 at all, or are kept back till, owing to the 
 length of time which has elapsed, and 
 perhaps the death of the chief person con- 
 cerned, they become unverifiable. This 
 would be more regrettable than it is, were 
 it not for the fact that save to this person, 
 the one to whom the communication is 
 made, it can never approve itself as reliable 
 in the present state of scientific opinion. 
 Experiences of the kind which the writer 
 has in view are, if real and unsought, so 
 absolutely impossible to reproduce and so 
 personal in their character and import, that 
 though to their subject they may be 
 absolutely convincing, and, to those whose 
 personal knowledge of him places his trust- 
 worthiness beyond doubt, highly interesting 
 and suggestive, they, like some other in- 
 dividual experiences, are not matter for 
 scientific investigation. The occurrences 
 which do so lend themselves either are or 
 tend to be reproducible under known con- 
 ditions. Consequently, though as a rule they 
 are infinitely more trivial than the unsought 
 
n.] TO TELEPATHY 47 
 
 experiences referred to, they are more valu- 
 able scientifically and more calculated to 
 overcome prejudice. 
 
 But the true natural scale of values is 
 not always the same as that of Science, and 
 at a later stage of our enquiry it may 
 appear that these strictly individual mani- 
 festations have a worth and significance not 
 to be ignored or despised. In the mean- 
 while we may close with the remark that, 
 save to the wilfully ignorant or prejudiced, 
 the existence of telepathy, that is communi- 
 cation between human beings under present 
 known conditions, without any traceable 
 physical intervention, is an established fact. 
 Assuming that human beings exist under 
 other and unknown conditions, telepathy 
 offers a means of communication with those 
 living the present visible life which it would 
 be almost impossible to suppose would never 
 be used ; and this is a reflection full of 
 pregnant suggestion to those who do not 
 regard the known as co-extensive with the 
 existing universe. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHIC STANDPOINT 
 
 WE have now to approach the question of 
 immortality from the philosophic standpoint. 
 Our aim, accepting as correct the scientific 
 presentation of natural facts, is to penetrate 
 if possible their inner significance. But 
 here, as ever, we must tread cautiously. 
 As we saw in the previous chapter, there 
 can be no reliable metaphysics without 
 reliable physics, and under the latter head 
 our knowledge is constantly growing, our 
 mental standpoint shifting, old theories 
 making way for new. This is all in the 
 line of progress and development, but it 
 means that the difficulties of interpretation 
 are great. The last word of Science has 
 not been said, never will be said while man 
 continues to enquire and to learn ; and so 
 long as it has not been said the last word 
 of philosophy cannot be said either. The 
 
 48 
 
CHAP, m.] INITIAL ASSUMPTIONS 49 
 
 latter, moreover, covers an enormously wide 
 field which we cannot here attempt even to 
 delimit. Our efforts must be strictly circum- 
 scribed. Our aim is to arrive at the 
 metaphysical significance with regard to man 
 of certain recognised facts in the physical 
 universe, to ascertain what relation they 
 bear not to the scientific aspect of that 
 universe, to space and time and the intellect 
 of man, but to the Grojini^aj^d^pjiirce of 
 his being and of theirs. This is the work 
 of that branch of metaphysics known as 
 Religious Philosophy. To enter upon it 
 as we are doing directly from scientific con- 
 siderations, is to necessitate certain initial 
 assumptions : 
 
 (1) That the universe of being, as Science 
 
 knows it, has a Ground and Source 
 beyond itself, transcending therefore 
 space and time ; 
 
 (2) That the human mind is so constituted 
 
 that it is able to some extent to 
 
 apprehend this Ground and Source, 
 
 consequently itself also partially to 
 
 transcend space and time. 
 
 Under the second head we may remark 
 
 that this capacity in man for transcending 
 
 D 
 
50 MAN'S PARTIAL MASTERY [CHAP. 
 
 space and time is a matter of common, 
 everyday experience. Memory oversteps 
 these limits ; imagination does so ; sympathy 
 does so ; abstract thought does so. The 
 old man who " lives in the past," the young 
 man who "lives in the future," the mother 
 who lives in the lives of her (perhaps absent) 
 children, the scholar or the mathematician 
 who in abstruse study or calculation loses 
 the sense of duration and of material 
 surroundings, these each and all mentally 
 transcend time and space. Physically they 
 are bound in mind they are free. 
 
 There is another and more fundamental 
 illustration of the same truth. Man's power 
 of blending his experience into a whole 
 implies the power of partially transcending 
 time. Were he indeed altogether limited 
 by it, he could be conscious only of succes- 
 sion, one thing after another, one event 
 after another, one experience after another; 
 he could not unite all those events and 
 experiences into one, and make of them 
 " My life." That he can and does do so 
 is evidence that though he cannot remove 
 his life out of time he is yet greater than 
 time, and not altogether under its com- 
 
m.] OVER SPACE AND TIME 51 
 
 pulsion. Again that man can be conscious 
 of a whole in history, in the history of his 
 own race, and hi that of the Cosmos, is 
 due to the same . time-transcending power. 
 Similar remarks apply in their measure to 
 space. That man can perceive not the 
 mere fact of juxtaposition, but the blending 
 of many juxtapositions into a whole, that 
 space is to him unifying, shows that he 
 bends it (mentally) to his own purposes. 
 It is not his master. And for our present 
 purpose it matters nothing how, through 
 w r hat stages of temporal development, man 
 acquires this unifying peculiarity of his 
 mental constitution. The central fact for 
 Philosophy is that he possesses it : that 
 whatever physical and psychological processes, 
 discovered and classified by Science, have from 
 her point of view brought about this result, 
 the result is there and is significant. 
 
 A further important point to notice in 
 the present connection is that in unifying 
 we also distinguish, as is shown by our 
 always setting our present life, the life which 
 we are living at the moment, over against 
 a larger and more comprehensive life, in 
 which that moment is included, yet from 
 
52 CONTRASTS UNDERLYING [CHAP. 
 
 which it is distinct. We do this in four 
 
 ways : 
 
 (1) In regard of any present moment 
 in our individual life, such moment 
 standing out over against, yet as part 
 of the whole into which the past, 
 present and future of that individual 
 life are combined ; 
 
 (2) In regard of our whole individual life, 
 
 as contrasted with the life of our 
 social environment and the life of 
 mankind in general ; 
 
 (3) In regard of the life of mankind in 
 
 general (of which our own is a 
 constituent part), as contrasted with 
 the whole cosmic process as we know 
 
 it; 
 
 (4) In regard of that cosmic process itself, 
 
 the whole visible temporal order of 
 things (more or less crudely con- 
 ceived according to the stage of 
 intellectual culture and development 
 attained,) as contrasted with an 
 eternal, invisible order which con- 
 ditions and transcends, while it in- 
 cludes, the temporal. 
 It is hardly necessary to observe that we 
 
in.] HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS 53 
 
 are not always giving attention to these 
 contrasts. They are often outside the actual 
 field of consciousness, lying as it were latent 
 in our minds, yet ever there, ready at any 
 moment to spring into full view, always 
 more or less affecting, though it may be 
 unconsciously, our mental attitude at any 
 given moment. The very fact, so often 
 insisted upon by ethical and religious teachers, 
 of the transitory nature of all earthly experi- 
 ence, is only intelligible to them and to us 
 because contrasted with a sense of abiding- 
 ness equally present. We should not know 
 that "the world passeth away," unless we 
 were conscious that something, not the world, 
 "abideth for ever." 
 
 The time-transcending capacity in man 
 has been thus insisted upon, because the 
 conception we form of our relation to time 
 and to eternity must very largely affect our 
 idea of individual human life. If we regard 
 the latter as being now wholly subordinated 
 to temporal conditions, we place an enormous 
 difficulty in the way of any reasonable belief 
 in its persistence after death, a difficulty 
 which, were it real, would need to be 
 candidly allowed and seriously confronted. 
 
54 CONSCIOUSNESS OF [CHAP. 
 
 Since a little reflection shows us, on the 
 contrary, that our time-limitation is but 
 partial, this fact must equally be taken into 
 account in our effort to probe the meaning 
 of human individuality. To this effort we 
 now address ourselves. 
 
 When considering the subject from the 
 scientific point of view, we saw that though 
 individuality is far more emphasised in man 
 than elsewhere in Nature, yet it is character- 
 istic not only of all organic beings but of 
 the inorganic universe as well, that in fact 
 the whole Cosmos bears the stamp of in- 
 dividuality, i.e., of uniqueness. It is such 
 that it is completely and definitely dis- 
 tinguished from all possible or conceivable 
 other orders that might have come into 
 existence. Its very possibilities are con- 
 ditioned by the kind of universe which it 
 is : they could not be otherwise unless it 
 were otherwise. When, leaving the in- 
 organic universe, we turn to organic life, 
 we find that individuality tends to become 
 what we may perhaps term increasingly 
 spontaneous. Instead of being as it were 
 stamped upon each organism, as a hall-mark 
 upon silver, the organism appears rather to 
 
in.] INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY 55 
 
 develop its own individuality in its own 
 way, strictly limited, of course, by the 
 organic division to which it belongs, yet 
 within these limits having so much of free 
 play as to enable it (very markedly among 
 the higher animals,) to develop certain 
 idiosyncrasies of its own, difficult if not 
 impossible to define, which yet distinguish 
 it from all members of the same species. 
 Among the higher animals at any rate 
 there is the further power of each individual 
 knowing itself to be such. A dog does not 
 seem at all confused about his own individu- 
 ality. How far down the scale of animal 
 life this .capacity extends it would be very 
 difficult to say. Possibly it exists in a 
 rudimentary form wherever there is sentiency, 
 but it increases with the approach of self- 
 consciousness, and reaches its culmination in 
 man, in whom alone that consciousness is 
 so fully developed as to confer upon him 
 the dignity of personality. And here for 
 the first time the full scope of individual 
 being appears to dawn upon us. It is such 
 that no other characteristic can obscure or 
 diminish its reach, which on the contrary 
 widens from the apparently superficial dis- 
 
56 SELF-CONSCIOUS MIND [CHAP. 
 
 tinction between one stone and another, or 
 one blade of grass and another, to include 
 all the vast yet delicate differences between 
 one human being and another of the same 
 age, nationality, social status and culture. 
 Individuality is not swamped in, but extra- 
 ordinarily enhanced by personality. The 
 importance of this fact in connection with 
 our present subject becomes apparent when 
 we recall the tendency of much modern 
 philosophic thought to regard finite persons 
 as evanescent manifestations of an Infinite 
 Personality which at the same time trans- 
 cends and includes them: in which they 
 so entirely live and move and have their 
 being, that they are to it as waves upon the 
 surface of a boundless deep, momentarily 
 appearing only to disappear again. 
 
 The recognition of self-conscious mind as 
 the ground of nature is characteristic of that 
 form of philosophy known as Idealism. 
 Without going into an argument which to 
 specialists would be superfluous, and to the 
 general reader essentially tedious and difficult 
 of comprehension, we may perhaps observe 
 that it becomes increasingly hard to look 
 upon any other ground as adequate. The 
 
in] THE BASIS OF NATURE 57 
 
 mind in its human manifestation appears late 
 in the Natural Order, yet when it does 
 appear, it takes precedence of all else. Men 
 seem to be, are, in so far as they are ignorant, 
 at the mercy of the laws of nature, yet 
 they become by observation and experiment, 
 capable by obedience of making these laws 
 subserve their own purposes. Man who is 
 physically but a " reed " is yet by virtue of 
 his mental and spiritual powers the mightiest 
 thing in the known universe. It may crush 
 him physically, it often does, but it cannot 
 make him cease to love, to know, to endure, 
 to rise above all physical failure to undreamed- 
 of spiritual heights. This alone would lead 
 to the surmise that mind rather than body 
 lies at the foundation of things, and con- 
 joined to other considerations, such as the 
 paradox of a universe present to no 
 mind, entering into no experience, makes 
 materialism very ineffectual as an explana- 
 tion of what we perceive and know under 
 actual conditions. 
 
 We have seen that even in man mind 
 is able to some extent to transcend temporal 
 limits. But man is finite, that is, partial: 
 he is under restriction. Essential mind, 
 
58 CHARACTER EXPRESSES [CHAP. 
 
 mind unlimited, mind apart from any finite 
 manifestation of it, would be above all time- 
 limitations ; would be what we mean by 
 eternal, infinite. Time and the temporal 
 would be conditioned by it. It would be 
 the ground of all being. This position is 
 here accepted. In accepting it, however, 
 we must be on our guard against the 
 mistaken inference that universal mind is 
 necessarily colourless, indifferent, characterless. 
 In ascending through the conception of the 
 finite to that of the Infinite, it has been a 
 common error to do so by way of negation ; 
 to repeat the formula "The Infinite is not" 
 this, that or the other, till we arrive at an 
 abstraction of which nothing whatever can 
 be said or thought. This reductio ad 
 absurdum results from making the Infinite 
 synonymous with the unconditioned. The 
 term that really expresses our meaning is 
 not unconditioned but self -conditioned, wholly 
 conditioned from within. It is not possible 
 for us to form any even approximately 
 adequate conception of what such a mode 
 of existence really is, but some faint forth- 
 shadowing of it we have in our own experi- 
 ence. We are not altogether shaped by 
 
in.] INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY 59 
 
 external conditions ; to some extent we 
 shape them, and the more will-power or 
 "character" we have, the more self-sufficing 
 we are, and the more we create our own 
 conditions. 
 
 This word " character " demands serious 
 attention. We shall find on reflection that 
 it is the chief expression of human in- 
 dividuality. Superficial acquaintanceship is, 
 perforce, obliged to distinguish one man from 
 another by differences in physiognomy and 
 general appearance, tricks of manner, voice, 
 gesture, etc. A very little more familiarity, 
 however, stopping far short of intimacy, is 
 needed in order to shift our sense of recog- 
 nition away from traits of person to traits 
 of mind and disposition ; and real intimacy, 
 whether it engender love or hatred, makes us 
 increasingly feel that it is the traits of 
 disposition, the character, which above all 
 distinguish to us this particular man from his 
 fellows. Physical peculiarities and intellectual 
 attainments seem by comparison accidents ; 
 it is the character which is for us the man. 
 And it is needless to observe that no two 
 characters are identical. A man may be of 
 the same age, social standing, culture, in- 
 
60 THE SOURCE OF BEING [CHAP. 
 
 tellectual attainment, physical strength as 
 another ; he may have had the same education, 
 social environment, opportunities ; he may 
 belong to the same family ; he may follow the 
 same profession ; and yet the character of each 
 is clear-cut and distinguishable, and the work 
 of each bears in consequence its own peculiar 
 impress which differentiates it from that of 
 the other. 
 
 The stamp of character upon work is a 
 familiar but a very remarkable fact. Other 
 things being equal, the more of it there is, 
 the better we recognise the work to be ; and 
 the hall-mark of a work of genius is not 
 excellence merely, but the supremely unique, 
 or as we say " original," impress which dis- 
 tinguishes it. It is an. individual product. 
 
 Now this as we have seen is a characteristic 
 of the Cosmos ; it, too, is an individual 
 product, unique, original. If Science can do 
 no more than state the fact in her own 
 language and manner, as she does by insist- 
 ing on the uniformity of Nature and the 
 irrevocableness of natural law, it is open to 
 Philosophy to go a step further, and to draw 
 the simple but supremely significant inference, 
 that what bears the impress of individuality 
 
ni.] INFINITELY INDIVIDUAL 61 
 
 is indeed of individual origin, that the 
 Ground and Source of the universe is not 
 only Infinitely Personal, but Infinitely In- 
 dividual. Here then we perceive the true 
 place of individuality in the cosmic scale 
 of Values. It reaches to the foundation of 
 things. It enters into the ground of being. 
 Its universal presence and its extraordinary 
 enhancement when united with self-conscious 
 mind receive thus their interpretation ; and 
 our enquiry into its significance as regards 
 man receives this first answer : that if the 
 Infinite Life from which all finite life is 
 derived be Personal and Individual, infinitely 
 Personal and infinitely Individual, then man, 
 the most personal and the most individual 
 of known beings, is marked out as in close 
 and special touch with the Ground and 
 Source of all existence. We have to examine 
 the bearing of this fact on our immediate 
 subject, Individual Immortality. 
 
 And first perhaps it will be wise to dwell 
 a little more at length on that which gives to 
 finite individuality all its worth and meaning, 
 viz., the Infinite Individuality. In fixing 
 our thoughts on the latter we must dissociate 
 from it all idea of limitation. Even in the 
 
62 FINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS [CHAP. 
 
 case of our fellow-men we feel that their 
 individuality is an assertive thing. It has 
 force and power, it declares to us what they 
 are ; it makes us know them. The loss of 
 individuality, either in ourselves or in others, 
 means the loss of all which makes recognition 
 possible. And though in us and in them 
 alike it involves limitation, that is only 
 because of our fmitude. It is not as 
 individuals but as finite individuals that we 
 are limited, even as it is not as knowers or 
 as lovers but as finite knowers and lovers 
 that our knowledge and love have bounds. 
 Infinite Individuality is not limited, but is 
 possessed of all the resources of Infinitude 
 whereby to assert and make itself known. 
 It is, if we may venture to try and express 
 what is by the nature of the case beyond 
 expression, that whereby Infinite Personality 
 is revealed, even as finite individuality is 
 that by which finite personality is revealed. 
 The two, so far as we know, are inseparable. 
 Our own experience teaches us that they are 
 inseparable in ourselves. Reflection upon 
 the universe of being, as Science shows it 
 to us, teaches us that they are inseparable in 
 the Source and Ground of that universe, 
 
in.] IS IN TOUCH WITH 63 
 
 known to us in the language of religion as 
 God. 
 
 What we have to claim for individuality 
 then is, that it enters, into the meaning of the 
 universe, that it is in fact part of that 
 meaning, and as such eternal, indestructible, 
 even as God, for and to Whom it exists, is 
 eternal and indestructible. For when we 
 speak of the meaning of the Universe, we 
 intend not what man from his limited point 
 of view can see of its meaning, but its true 
 and real significance, apprehended with clear 
 and all-including vision. No finite under- 
 standing is capable of such a grasp. Infinite 
 meaning is for the Infinite alone. Yet when 
 in a finite being self-consciousness attains 
 such development as in man, there arises a 
 capability of appreciating some part of the 
 Infinite meaning, the part which concerns and 
 is involved in that special type of being 
 human being. This capability increases with 
 the growth of intellect and spiritual insight, 
 the former slowly delineating and interpreting 
 the body, and the latter, with the aid of 
 the former, the soul of human knowledge 
 and experience. Thus hesitatingly, but with 
 continually increasing approximation to truth, 
 
64 THE INFINITE INDIVIDUALITY [CHAP. 
 
 men learn to "think the thoughts of God 
 after Him," entering as they do so a little way 
 into that Holy of Holies, the Divine 
 Individuality, which is expressed in the 
 external Universe they laboriously study, 
 and still more in themselves who study it. 
 For to be able to think the thoughts of God 
 after Him, slowly and blunderingly though it 
 be, implies to some extent a community of 
 nature between the Divine and the human, 
 just as the power of even partially transcend- 
 ing the temporal implies being so far in touch 
 with the eternal. That man can spell out 
 something of the meaning of the cosmos 
 implies that his own individuality is not alien 
 to the Divine Individuality, that the Word is 
 " very nigh him," even when he is unconscious 
 of it, that as deep answereth unto deep, so the 
 secret recesses of his being are in touch 
 with the Divine Being. What worth and 
 significance does such a reflection bestow on 
 each man's individuality ! what responsibility it 
 lays upon him to respect, develop and main- 
 tain it, both in himself and in others ! 
 
 We have already seen that as life rises in the 
 organic scale, individuality is not only more 
 marked, but becomes increasingly spontaneous. 
 
in ] THE SOUL AND GOD 65 
 
 In man this spontaneity is united to a highly 
 developed self-consciousness ; and he recog- 
 nises himself through the many and great 
 vicissitudes of life as always the same in- 
 dividual. The whole meaning of his life to 
 himself is bound up with this recognition ; 
 and when he raises his thoughts and aspira- 
 tions to the Author of his being, the whole 
 meaning also of that most intimate and 
 solemn relationship hangs upon his realisation 
 that closely as his life is interwoven with 
 the life of his fellows 
 
 "... this Atom cannot in the Whole 
 Forget itself, it aches a separate soul," 
 
 or, as Browning expresses it 
 
 " God is, thou art, the rest is hurled 
 To nothingness for thee." 
 
 This supreme meaning of individuality to 
 man, that he himself and not another alone 
 occupies or can occupy the one special 
 relationship of his "lone soul" to God, is 
 very deeply rooted in his consciousness, 
 though he is often far indeed from willingly 
 harbouring it. Where for any reason the 
 " love which casteth out fear " is not present 
 or is obscured, man's impulse is to merge 
 the individuality of his religion in that of 
 
66 SEPARATENESS OF EACH SOUL [CHAP. 
 
 the crowd, or else to put someone or something 
 between him and the Being whom he would 
 shun. Under favourable circumstances it is 
 possible for him to succeed in stifling the too- 
 insistent voice of his individuality, but it 
 cannot be slain. The merest accident will 
 re-awaken it. A touch, a memory, is 
 sufficient; the adventitious surroundings in 
 which he has thought to hide himself drop 
 away, and once more he feels that though 
 
 " Man lumps his kind i' the mass, God singles thence, 
 Unit by Unit." 
 
 It is because each man's individuality has a 
 meaning not only to himself but to God that 
 he cannot escape from it, that even when he 
 would ignore or merge it, it asserts itself 
 again, piercing him through and through as 
 with a sword of the Spirit. 
 
 It is worth while to pause upon this state- 
 ment that each man's individuality bears to 
 God its own special meaning. At first sight 
 the tremendous issues involved in it do not 
 clearly appear. Since, as we have already 
 said, the whole Cosmos is individual, and is 
 the complete expression of and fulfilment to 
 the Infinite God of His meaning in bringing 
 
m.] INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 67 
 
 it into being, each part of course enters 
 into that meaning man with the rest. Why, 
 therefore, should any peculiar significance be 
 attached to the individuality of man ? 
 
 The considerations already brought forward 
 are an answer to this question. Man alone 
 is a personal, and by consequence, an ethical 
 individual, able as such to enter into conscious 
 relationship with the Author of his being. 
 The sub-organic universe, the lower organic 
 world, express indeed God's meaning to 
 Him, but it is unknowingly. Man, with his 
 insatiable intellect, his unconquerable activity, 
 his " divine discontent " with present attain- 
 ment and constant reaching forth after 
 something more excellent, is on a different 
 plane of being. If we may venture so to 
 word it, his individuality cannot mean so 
 much to himself without meaning much 
 also to God. Man can respond to the 
 Divine intention : he can to some extent 
 consciously and voluntarily express the 
 Divine meaning. Without this co-operation 
 on his part it is indeed not fully realised. 
 To use a familiar word, each man is re- 
 sponsible for the working out of his own 
 ethical individuality. Its possibilities are not 
 
68 PHILOSOPHIC AFFIRMATION OF [CHAP. 
 
 of his making: for good or for evil these 
 originally are beyond his control. But the 
 actualising of the possibilities lies largely 
 within it, and any fair survey of history, or of 
 our own and (so far as we can enter into it) 
 of others' experience, confirms this statement. 
 At the same time, as has repeatedly been 
 pointed out, the visible course of things, life 
 as we know it, does not give full scope for 
 the working out of individuality, ethical or 
 intellectual. No man, now and here, com- 
 pletely or even with approximate complete- 
 ness, attains the measure of his capabilities. 
 He is restrained, limited, as it seems to us 
 hampered on all sides. And even in those 
 rare and fortunate instances where no other 
 restriction exists, there is that of the short- 
 ness of life. If nothing else, then more time 
 is needed for the fulfilment of individuality. 
 From our present point of view it will be 
 understood that man need not fear the lack 
 of time. Individuality, though manifested in, 
 is not a consequence of the Temporal Order, 
 but belongs to the Eternal ; and a being who 
 is, to the extent that man is, consciously 
 individual, capable of an ethical relationship 
 to God and to his fellows, could not lapse 
 
in.] INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 69 
 
 from that consciousness without some part of 
 the Eternal Meaning lapsing with him. The 
 loss of his conscious individuality would be a 
 loss to the Divine completeness of experience, 
 for in virtue of it he holds towards God a 
 unique ethical place, his own place, which 
 he only can fill. Whatever, therefore, death 
 may involve, it cannot involve such a loss 
 as this. From the philosophic standpoint, 
 indeed, death is of peculiarly small signifi- 
 cance, a mere accident of the temporal 
 order, with which alone it has any concern. 
 It cannot frustrate or interrupt the eternal 
 meaning ; and in man that meaning is bound 
 up with his consciousness of himself and of 
 God, with his individual personality, in fact. 
 The question regarding individual im- 
 mortality is thus, from the philosophic stand- 
 point, affirmatively answered. It is involved 
 in and subsidiary to the larger question ot 
 the worth of individuality itself, when mani- 
 fested in human form, and, as we have seen, 
 that worth is beyond human calculation, 
 because much as each man's individuality 
 means to himself it means yet more to God. 
 It is derived from Him, it is sustained in 
 Him, it is the reflex of His own Infinitude 
 
70 DEATH NOT ETHICAL FAILURE [CHAP. 
 
 and partakes of His Eternity. Each finite 
 personal being is to God a unique ethical 
 individual, the one in all creation who can 
 hold just this relationship to the Father of 
 his spirit. If he fails, there is no other 
 who can be to God just what he is. So 
 much of the ethical meaning of the Universe 
 has failed with him. Regarded in this light, 
 it seems absurd to look on death as even a 
 possible term to individual ethical life. It is 
 not ethical failure. There is a shadow which 
 looms far more darkly, the significance of 
 which it would be idle to pretend to under- 
 rate and from which to our limited vision 
 death gains a fictitious importance the 
 shadow of moral evil. Here indeed there 
 seems to lie the dread possibility of a unique 
 Divine Ideal being frustrated, of complete 
 and irretrievable ethical failure. 
 
 It is not possible, in a few short sentences, 
 even to touch on so vast and difficult a 
 problem as this. Mention is made of it 
 simply to intimate that it is not left out of 
 sight, and that our next effort must be to 
 discern its true proportions and indicate 
 the place it holds in the universe of being, 
 and especially of human being. 
 
ni.] TEMPORAL AND ETERNAL LIFE 71 
 
 With one further observation, the present 
 chapter must be brought to a close. Grant- 
 ing all that has been said of the worth of 
 each human individual as a unique ethical 
 being, and as a corollary his persistence after 
 death, how are we to account for his having 
 had a beginning? That which begins, must, 
 it would seem, also end. It belongs to 
 the temporal order, not to the eternal, in 
 which there is neither beginning nor end. 
 
 The answer to this difficulty must be found 
 in a twofold recognition : 
 
 (1) That in so far as it is subjected to 
 actual earthly conditions, the life of 
 man is temporal and belongs to the 
 temporal order. Birth and death are 
 facts of that order. Physically, man 
 has a beginning and an end ; but we 
 have seen already that even under 
 actual limitations he can and does to 
 some extent transcend both the tem- 
 poral and spatial, i.e., physical, limits, 
 and on his capability of so doing 
 depends his human as distinguished 
 from his animal individuality. 
 (2) And if the supreme worth of that 
 human individuality be allowed, if 
 
72 MAN'S ETERNAL EXPERIENCE [CHAP. m. 
 
 it bears a unique and consequently 
 eternal ethical significance to God, 
 we must also grant that it neither 
 began with birth nor ends at death. 
 That man should not, while re- 
 stricted to earthly conditions, be 
 conscious of the eternity of his being, 
 is not difficult to understand. It is 
 obscured to him by the temporal 
 limitations characteristic of those 
 conditions, and which, it may well 
 be, are to some extent projected 
 beyond death. If, however, the 
 considerations already advanced be 
 valid, temporal limitations must 
 ultimately cease for every human 
 individual, and when they do so, his 
 eternal experience will stand out to 
 him in a clear and perfect whole, 
 the manner of perceiving which is 
 feebly and faintly foreshadowed in 
 his actual power of regarding the 
 past, present and future of his 
 earthly experience as one life. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ETHICAL INDIVIDUAL AND IMMORTALITY 
 
 IT is a familiar but significant fact that in 
 every region of knowledge one fact involves 
 another, one truth another, one aspect of 
 experience or thought another. An isolated 
 fact or truth does not exist. It is always 
 bound by close and often unsuspected ties 
 to other facts and other truths. Nor is this 
 the case within the scope of any specified 
 region of knowledge alone. Every branch 
 of science trenches at some point or other 
 on the subject-matter of other branches, 
 the fundamental scientific assumptions 
 demand and stimulate philosophic investi- 
 gation : science and philosophy both bear in 
 manifold and important ways on practical 
 life and thought. Thus to the human 
 intellect, the known universe in all its 
 aspects inevitably comes to bear the marks 
 of a vast and systematic whole, in which 
 
 73 
 
74 MEANING OF ETHICAL FAILURE [CHAP. 
 
 every fact and every truth has its own 
 essential place and function. Our present 
 subject is an illustration in point. 
 
 Having in previous chapters indicated the 
 importance of individuality in the Natural 
 Order, its fundamental significance when con- 
 joined with personality, the unique meaning 
 of each ethical individual to God as well as 
 to himself, and the consequent loss to the 
 Eternal Meaning if one such individual 
 were to lapse from conscious being, we saw 
 that to regard the physical accident of 
 death as an even possible term to ethical 
 individuality appears a manifest absurdity. 
 But in this very recognition, another and 
 darker possibility confronted us : AVhat of 
 ethical failure itself? This we seem to see 
 on all sides of us. How does it affect the 
 worth and significance of ethical indi- 
 viduality ? 
 
 The answer to this question must obviously 
 depend on what ethical failure really is, and 
 before going further it will be well to 
 ascertain and define this, bearing in mind 
 that in dealing with so vast a subject, 
 within the present short compass, it is not 
 possible even to indicate all its aspects, and 
 
iv.] IN PRACTICAL LIFE 75 
 
 that our considerations must be limited to 
 such as bear on the immediate point at 
 issue. 
 
 In the world of practical life ethical 
 failure means primarily failure to fulfil a 
 specified social relationship. Thus a parent 
 who does not fulfil the duties of a parent, 
 a citizen who transgresses the laws of the 
 state, a friend who is false to the claims of 
 friendship, a trader who deliberately breaks 
 the terms of his contract, each and all so 
 far ethically fail. It will be observed, more- 
 over, that the failure, in each case, is failure 
 to reach a certain ideal standard of conduct 
 shaped according to the relationship to be 
 maintained. It is notorious that such 
 standards differ from age to age and 
 from country to country, being dependent 
 on intellectual culture, religious belief, 
 national custom, and many other variables. 
 Consequently the self-same conduct in any 
 given relationship might be regarded as 
 ethical failure in one individual and success 
 in another. Nevertheless, the falling short of 
 some ideal standard, partially independent of 
 the individual, but which it is supposed that 
 he " ought " to recognise, is always the chief 
 
76 ETHICAL FAILURE [CHAP. 
 
 element in ethical failure. This recognition 
 by each individual of a standard by which 
 his conduct is to be tested is universal. 
 Even the proverbial thief has his standard 
 of honour. The standard varies however, not 
 only with circumstances and social environ- 
 ment, as has already been noted, but also 
 from individual to individual, even when 
 every external circumstance and every social 
 condition is similar. The result is that 
 each individual is to a certain extent his 
 own judge. To himself as well as to an 
 external authority, "he standeth or falleth," 
 and should it so happen that the external 
 authority is satisfied, but that he falls short 
 of his own inward standard, he accounts 
 himself to have failed. Reflection on this 
 multiplicity and variableness of ethical 
 standards, individual and social, on their 
 evident importance and equally evident want 
 of stability naturally leads to the enquiry: 
 What is their meaning? How are they to 
 be reconciled ? Is there no ultimate standard 
 of ethical failure and success. 
 
 These questions have often been put, and 
 have received various answers. That which 
 will here be suggested, is led up to by 
 
iv.] IN THE ETERNAL RELATIONSHIP 77 
 
 former considerations, and is in pursuance of 
 the same line of thought. 
 
 We have seen that each human individual 
 holds towards the father of his spirit, and 
 of all spirits a unique ethical position, is 
 to Him that which no other can be. From 
 this eternal relationship temporal relationships 
 derive their meaning and value. So much 
 all readers who have thus far followed and 
 approved the argument of the present 
 volume, will be willing to grant. Real 
 ethical failure (if it be indeed possible,) is 
 failure in this eternal relationship of the 
 individual to God. We say "real failure" 
 because a man may seem to fail when 
 viewed from the temporal standpoint, and 
 yet not be failing when viewed from the 
 eternal standpoint. Something in the same 
 way we may regard his earthly life, as at 
 this and this point an ethical failure, and 
 nevertheless see that as a whole it is an 
 ethical success. Things viewed sub specie 
 aetemitatis are always viewed as wholes, 
 and therefore an individual ethical life, as a 
 whole, is viewed from and can only be truly 
 judged by the Eternal. The test of real 
 ethical success or failure is therefore, as we 
 
78 IS MORAL EVIL ETHICAL FAILURE ? [CHAP. 
 
 have seen, fulfilment of that ideal relation- 
 ship to God which is God's intention in its 
 existence, and which is not subordinated to 
 temporal conditions. 
 
 Can then a Divine, an eternal intention be 
 frustrated, an eternal Ideal be lost, the com- 
 pleteness of eternal experience be curtailed, as 
 it must be if even one of those unique relation- 
 ships which ethical individuals should fulfil, is 
 a failure? These questions are the form under 
 which, from our point of view, the " Problem 
 of Evil " must be faced and investigated. 
 
 And first there appears a certain begging 
 of the question in presupposing that moral 
 evil means ethical failure, that it is in 
 opposition to the Divine intention and 
 "ought not" to exist. So far there is no 
 reason in anything that has been said, to 
 justify the assumption that what we call 
 evil is alien to the constitution of things, 
 that it is not an intrinsic part of the ground 
 of being, does not, in fact, hold a place in 
 God Himself. If that be so, there is no 
 "ought not" in the case. Evil is simply 
 one aspect of the Divine Individuality, and 
 as such has as much right to be expressed in 
 the universe as " Good," 
 
iv.] SCIENCE EXCLUDES GOOD AND EVIL 79 
 
 As a matter of fact, in the scientific view 
 of Nature there is no such thing as moral 
 good and evil. There is the fitness or unfit- 
 ness of organic beings to perform certain 
 functions whereby their own physical welfare 
 and the perpetuation of their kind is secured. 
 
 In the case of man, there gradually results 
 from the due performance of these functions 
 a highly complex social organisation which, 
 advantageous to intellectual progress and 
 culture and to the development of the 
 artistic and aesthetic faculties, is encumbered 
 with its own difficulties and drawbacks, and 
 entails its own peculiar sufferings, so that 
 if limited to the earthly horizon, (as the 
 view of Science perforce must be,) it is 
 difficult to say whether even the greatest of 
 civilisations is really worth all the effort and 
 sacrifice by which it has been attained. 
 
 As we have seen, however, there are but 
 few minds able to rest in that external 
 interpretation of experience which is all that 
 Science can afford. It seems an inevitable 
 consequence of the mental constitution of 
 man that he should believe the universe 
 has a meaning which he can to some extent 
 penetrate, and owing to this conviction moral 
 
80 PROBLEM OF GOOD [CHAP. 
 
 evil appears as a "problem" which must 
 certainly have a solution even though its 
 discovery should for ever baffle the best 
 efforts of the human intellect. 
 
 There is, of course, the pessimistic manner 
 of cutting the Gordian Knot. We can 
 accept evil as the eternal ruling principle of 
 the universe when every manifestation of it 
 would be a necessary consequence of its place 
 at the heart of things. There would then, 
 however, arise the problem of good. We 
 should have to face the question why there 
 should be any "milk of human kindness," 
 any unselfish love, any disinterested devotion 
 to high intellectual or social aims, and, most 
 of all, why we should attach any blame to 
 ourselves if we fall short of an ideal standard 
 of "right" either external or internal. 
 
 In truth this difficulty must be widely 
 recognised, for there are very few out-and- 
 out pessimists, people whose conscious and 
 assured conviction it is that there exists a 
 " stream of tendency not ourselves making 
 for" evil, and no counterbalancing tendency 
 " making for righteousness." The thinkers 
 among us are mostly more daunted by the 
 apparent capriciousness of the adjustment 
 
iv.] THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF DUTY 81 
 
 between the two tendencies, than by the 
 presence or absence of either one. The per- 
 plexing conclusion of human experience is 
 that when man would do good, evil is 
 present with him : and when he would do 
 evil, good is present with him, for the bad 
 man as often stays from completing a course 
 of conduct which would be "no more than 
 we should expect," as the good man yields 
 to a temptation we should have supposed 
 abhorrent to him. 
 
 So far then it would seem that good and 
 evil are both root-principles of the universe, 
 that, as was suggested above, both are expres- 
 sions of the Divine Individuality. Such a 
 conclusion, apart from its repugnance, leaves 
 unaccounted for the existence of the feeling 
 of duty the " ought." Why does a man feel 
 that he "ought" to pursue whatever course 
 of conduct judged by his recognised standard 
 (be the latter low or high) of right and 
 \\Tong, is right, and never what is "wrong." 
 He may wish and intend the latter, or not 
 wishing and intending, may nevertheless 
 follow it because "the temptation was so 
 strong" that he "could not help" yielding; 
 but never if he is true to himself will he 
 
 F 
 
82 MORAL OBLIGATION [CHAP. 
 
 aver that he did wrong because he felt he 
 ought. "I must yield though I ought not" 
 is the language of his inner experience when 
 about to succumb. We may, for our present 
 purpose neglect the explanations of Science 
 as to the processes through which this sense 
 of "ought" has arisen. They are highly 
 instructive and important in their own place. 
 But the mind of man cannot rest in processes. 
 It recognises that results are at least equally 
 important, and that the meaning of results, 
 if it can be arrived at, is the light in 
 which processes can be best understood. The 
 question for philosophy is therefore not how 
 the sense of moral obligation was evolved, 
 but why it is now, and has been within 
 historical times in existence, why social 
 progress and well-being should depend on 
 its active acceptance, why good so far as it 
 is recognised is invariably felt to be that 
 which "ought" to prevail whether or not 
 it actually does so. 
 
 On the interpretation of the universe 
 which we have accepted, the ultimate reason 
 of its being what it is, as a whole and in 
 all its parts, lies in the Divine Individuality 
 being what it is. The universe which is the 
 
iv.] IN THE DIVINE NATURE 83 
 
 outcome of the Divine Activity, bears the 
 impress of the Divine Character, so that if 
 finite spiritual beings recognise moral obliga- 
 tion, that is because it is recognised by the 
 Infinite Spiritual Being of whom they are 
 the offspring. It may seem at first sight as 
 though the existence even of moral obligation 
 in the Divine Nature were a limitation of 
 its Infinitude. But this is not so. In- 
 voluntary restriction of whatever kind is 
 indeed a note of the finite, but not that 
 which is wholly voluntary, which is laid by 
 Infinite Will on Infinite Activity. In the 
 case of moral obligation, the supposed limita- 
 tion is a result of Infinite Knowledge and 
 Infinite Holiness. All the possibilities of 
 good and evil being eternally present to God, 
 good is eternally chosen, recognised as what 
 ought to be, and evil eternally rejected, 
 recognised as what ought not to be. In 
 Biblical language God "knows good and 
 evil," but at the same time " He is of purer 
 eyes than to behold iniquity." 
 
 This admission that evil is present to the 
 Divine Consciousness though only to be 
 loathed and rejected, for ever prohibits the 
 identification of goodness in the sense of 
 
84 ULTIMATE MORAL STANDARD [CHAP. 
 
 righteousness or holiness with mere innocence, 
 i.e., ignorance of evil. An intrinsic part of 
 goodness lies in the rejection of evil. It is 
 the fundamental characteristic of goodness in 
 the universe which is the expression of the 
 Divine Will and Activity, and must conse- 
 quently be the conscious characteristic of 
 goodness in every personal individual. Such 
 an one cannot fill his own place to the 
 Father of his spirit unless he chooses good 
 and rejects evil. This is part of the Divine 
 Ideal for him, of the Divine Intention in his 
 existence ; and the deliberate, conscious choice 
 of good and rejection of evil is the ultimate 
 test of ethical success and failure. It is the 
 eternal standard of right and wrong. 
 
 This explains to us how in the world of 
 human experience there comes to be such a 
 multiplicity and variety of standards. The 
 uniqueness which is characteristic of the 
 whole universe of being, and which is so 
 extraordinarily enhanced by personality, 
 reaches its highest known degree in man 
 whether we regard him collectively in tribes, 
 classes, and nations, or individually each 
 man by himself. The ultimate Standard 
 the consistent choice of good and rejection 
 
iv.] OF INEXHAUSTIBLE APPLICATION 85 
 
 of evil, is the same for all, but it is one of 
 inexhaustible applicability, it adapts itself to 
 every phase of human life and culture, to 
 every different nationality, to every different 
 age, to every rank in society, to every 
 peculiarity of individual mental and spiritual 
 constitution. Its demands are not uniformity 
 of apprehension, but the determined and 
 persistent endeavour to attain to what is 
 apprehended. In words that are almost 
 tritely familiar, it requires of each man that 
 he shall live up to the highest he perceives, 
 and it may safely be asserted that in no two 
 human individuals is that highest identically 
 the same. This in no way derogates from 
 the obvious fact to which reference has 
 already been made above, that there exist 
 collective as well as individual ideals. We 
 all recognise the existence of ethical ideals 
 shared in by whole bodies of human beings. 
 But our immediate concern is with the 
 individual, and largely as each man's ethical 
 standard is affected, in many instances actually 
 inspired by that of his social environment, it 
 nevertheless remains true in every case that 
 there is an adaptation to individual idiosyn- 
 crasies which is unique. Moreover, in ethical 
 
86 INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE [CHAP. 
 
 as in religious reform, the initiative is given 
 by individuals. The way has to be prepared, 
 indeed, by a growing though vague popular 
 sense of the inadequacy of accepted standards 
 and ideals ; but the new start is almost 
 invariably made by one man possessed of 
 insufficient insight to perceive not only what 
 ought not, but what ought to be, and suffi- 
 cient character and self-devotion to give the 
 requisite impulse in the right direction. 
 
 We are now in a position to consider the 
 import to each individual man : (1) of the fact 
 that he recognises an ethical standard of his 
 own to which he may be true or false, and 
 (2) of the existence of a unique Divine Ideal 
 of his Individuality. 
 
 In the first place it must be acknowledged 
 that no man is originally responsible for his 
 ethical standard. He does not himself choose 
 the age, nation, social rank into which he is 
 born, nor the ancestral influences which the 
 laws of heredity so strongly bring to bear 
 upon him. Yet he is not wholly bound by 
 any of these things, as the written history 
 of earth's recognised greatest men abundantly 
 shows, and the unwritten history of countless 
 numbers, whose record is in the heart and 
 
n.] AND RESPONSIBILITY 87 
 
 lives they have influenced through the power 
 of their own individuality. The internal 
 and external conditions of a man's life, as 
 through childhood, youth, and manhood he 
 gradually becomes aware of them, are the 
 raw material out of which he fashions his 
 individuality. Its possibilities, whether great 
 or small, are limited ; but they exist, and the 
 realisation of some among them inevitably 
 precludes the realisation of others. Man parti- 
 cipates in the Divine prerogative of self-limita- 
 tion, and the aim which he sets before him- 
 self, the ideal, bad or good, towards which 
 he strives, is the result of its exercise. He 
 determines to realise certain possibilities and 
 renounce others. For this determination, from 
 the ethical point of view, he is responsible in 
 the degree to which he understands, or could, 
 if he chose, understand, whether it is in 
 consonance with and in furtherance of, not 
 what he wishes to be, but what he recognises 
 ought to be. If his determination leads him 
 consistently to reject what he recognises as 
 evil, and follow what he recognises as good, 
 he is, however unconsciously, fulfilling the 
 ethical purpose of his existence. 
 
 Here, however, we are brought face to 
 
88 CONSCIENTIOUS ERROR [CHAP. 
 
 face with one of the greatest practical and 
 theoretical perplexities of human life, one 
 which seems hopelessly to confound all 
 attempts to disentangle its intricate mesh. 
 It is that to our eyes such fatal mistakes 
 are often made by those who, according to 
 what is said above, are fulfilling the Divine 
 ethical demand on them, in whom the sense 
 of moral obligation is most profound and 
 most faithfully obeyed. It is not necessary 
 to insist on this fact. There is no one who 
 
 4 
 
 has not witnessed, too often experienced, 
 heartrending proofs of its truth and the 
 tear-stained and blood-stained pages of history 
 are as indelible a record of the errors and 
 injustices of the good, as of the deliberate 
 cruelties and greed of the bad. What are 
 we to say of these things ? If individual 
 human life is limited to earth, they spell 
 ethical failure for all those men and women 
 who err from conscientious motives, failure 
 not only for themselves, but for the multi- 
 tudes they lead astray. Error, even when 
 recognised, is mostly irretrievable on earth. 
 But what if human life be not limited to 
 earth ? If each one of these men and women 
 who have seemed to do harm where they 
 
iv.] NOT FAILURE TOWARDS GOD 89 
 
 intended good, lives on after death rich with 
 the experience so hardly won under earthly 
 conditions? The case is altered then for 
 themselves and for. their kind. From the 
 eternal standpoint by which alone immortal 
 spiritual beings can be judged, these mis- 
 taken 'ones and their victims are not failures. 
 Amid temporal confusion and temporal error, 
 they are but working out the true meaning 
 of duty, the significance of moral obligation 
 and ethical individuality, learning as all 
 learners in all schools must, how not, as 
 well as how, to do it. If indeed " Man has 
 forever," we need not too greatly regret, 
 even in ethical matters, that, owing to the 
 blindnesss and ignorance - of earthly condi- 
 tions, it happens often that 
 
 " This high man with a great thing to pursue, 
 Dies ere he knows it " ; 
 
 or, again, that this other 
 
 " aiming at a million, 
 Misses a unit" 
 
 It is the high aim, the highest which the 
 degree of intellectual and spiritual enlighten- 
 ment admits of, consistently and faithfully 
 pursued, that is of importance from the 
 
90 ETHICAL LIFE CONTINUOUS [CHAP. 
 
 eternal standpoint. Men judge their fellow- 
 men by what they do, and no other test 
 is for them possible. But the judgment 
 of God is based on other and deeper know- 
 ledge, and in the Divine sight, the seeming 
 temporal failure may be a factor in the 
 eternal victory. 
 
 Caution is needed, however, in accepting 
 this truth, for it may easily be distorted 
 into mischievous falsehood. The temporal 
 ethical failure which may issue in eternal 
 victory is not deliberate, nor the result of 
 wilful ignorance. It is that which the con- 
 ditions of actual human life render inevitable, 
 even to the single-hearted followers of Good. 
 There have been religious persecutors, for 
 instance, who acted from the highest motives, 
 and in the genuine belief that they were 
 taking the only means " to save souls." 
 There have been others who used this pre- 
 tence to cloak private greed, revenge, or 
 ambition ; or who, recognising that the means 
 used were unjustifiable, yet allowed them- 
 selves, through indifference or fear, to be 
 overcome by counsels which they should 
 have withstood. If individual immortality be 
 a fact, and in this life at all costs good has 
 
n] AFTER DEATH 91 
 
 been followed, then, even though his best 
 efforts have fallen short and his feet have 
 stumbled on the path, the individual has 
 not in the life beyond death to alter his 
 fundamental aim or seek a fresh ideal. He 
 has but to pursue, unweighted by earthly con- 
 ditions, and with a deeper, wider apprehension 
 of his meaning, the goal towards which his 
 face has steadfastly been set before. But if 
 good has been rejected, or wilful ignorance 
 has called evil good, and good evil, the case 
 is very different. Then the aim and ideal of 
 the individual, his whole ethical attitude must 
 be changed before he can begin to perceive 
 or to fulfil the purpose of God in his exist- 
 ence. It is hardly conceivable, and against 
 all experience of similar changes under known 
 conditions, that so radical a transformation 
 could take place without suffering. Most 
 certainly it would require voluntary effort 
 and co-operation on the part of the individual 
 concerned, for the very essence of ethical 
 victory, as well as the test by which ethical 
 individuals are judged, is the deliberate re- 
 jection of evil and adhesion to good. That 
 evil once accepted becomes more and more 
 dominant, experience teaches us but too 
 
92 HOPE BEYOND DEATH [CHAP. 
 
 clearly ; and often the individual thus en- 
 slaved hugs his chains, not even desiring 
 that they should be struck off. Against his 
 will it is not possible, if he is ever to fulfil 
 his relationship to the Father of his spirit, 
 for that depends on the voluntary rejection 
 of evil and the persistent choice of good. 
 Yet, even for such an one, life beyond death 
 holds hope, the hope that under other con- 
 ditions, through other experience, the awaken- 
 ing may come, evil be renounced and good 
 chosen. 
 
 To dogmatise on a subject of such pro- 
 found difficulty as this, would be the height 
 of presumptuous folly, but it is one to which 
 the individual mind turns and turns again, 
 and if there are directions in which we may 
 look for light, it would be mere indolent 
 cowardice to close our eyes to them. 
 
 In the first place it is necessary to re- 
 member that in the region of ethics, possi- 
 bility and impossibility bear a different 
 meaning to that which is familiar in the 
 physical region. When we say that water 
 " cannot " flow upwards, or that motion 
 " cannot " be destroyed, we mean that such 
 possibilities as these do not enter into the con- 
 
iv.] MORAL IMPOSSIBILITIES 93 
 
 stitution of the physical universe. They are 
 not even potentially realisable. But when we 
 say of a man of whose integrity and upright- 
 ness we are fully assured, that he " cannot " 
 commit an immoral action, we do not mean 
 that he is restrained from it by any physical 
 necessity, or that such actions are potentially 
 unrealisable. We mean that a man of his 
 character and probity never will make such 
 conduct actual, though there is nothing in 
 the constitution of the universe to prevent 
 it. The bad action might be, but will not 
 be. Something in the man's own individu- 
 ality prevents it. It is possible, but not 
 possible to him, because he will not have 
 it so. 
 
 All moral " impossibilities " are of this 
 nature. Things that might be, but will not 
 be, because deliberately prevented, and in 
 the same manner all moral " possibilities " are 
 things that may be, but need not be, because 
 their realisation is voluntary. 
 
 It is to the region of moral possibilities 
 that the realisation of the Divine Ideal for 
 each ethical individual belongs. It is of its 
 very essence that the realisation in every 
 case should be voluntary. The Divine Inten- 
 
94 DIVINE IDEALS ETERNAL [CHAP. 
 
 tion is that each finite spirit should attain 
 some unique moral victory, should represent 
 to God triumphant goodness under certain 
 special, limited and unrepeatable conditions. 
 Therefore, victory is not necessitated, and 
 defeat is possible. Possible, because other- 
 wise there could not be victory ; but in no 
 case determined, because defeat does not enter 
 into the Divine Ideal of any man. 
 
 The second consideration we must take into 
 account is that the Divine Ideal is eternal. 
 In our thoughts about its ultimate meaning, 
 therefore, we must endeavour to rid our- 
 selves of the notion that it had a beginning 
 either with the man's earthly life, or at 
 some infinitely remote period of time " before 
 the world was," and that in the same 
 manner its attainment lies either in the 
 near or the far future. God's Ideals are, 
 we cannot say of them that they were or 
 that they will be, for past and future are 
 shadows cast by our finitude. To the 
 Infinite One they do not exist. When, 
 therefore, we speak of the "attainment" 
 of the Divine Ideal by any individual man, 
 we speak of it from the temporal stand- 
 point, from our own human and finite point 
 
iv.] DEATH AND ETHICAL INDIVIDUALITY 95 
 
 of view ; and from this, as we have already 
 seen, non-attainment is unquestionably 
 possible for all time, and time is not con- 
 fined to this life. . There may be (we dare 
 not commit ourselves to assert in any case 
 that for all time there is,} ethical failure. 
 Here and now we know it exists ; here and 
 now we see not only unavoidable errors 
 and shortcomings, but evil brought about 
 by preventable ignorance, culpable weak- 
 ness or cowardice, even frequently by 
 actual deliberate, persistent choice. Physical 
 death puts no term to these things. It 
 has nothing to do with ethical individuals 
 as such. It can make no change in them, 
 though through it they pass to different 
 conditions of existence. If then, they leave 
 this life deliberately choosing evil, they 
 enter the life beyond death deliberately 
 choosing evil, weighted as they need not 
 have been, crushed under disabilities which 
 they have created themselves. What revela- 
 tions await them in that other, but still 
 temporal life, what further means the just 
 and merciful God may employ to bring 
 them to a sense of what they are losing, to 
 rouse in them the consciousness of their 
 
96 ATTAINMENT ASSURED THROUGH [CHAP. 
 
 guilt and shame, and the desire to turn 
 from evil to good, it is not for us to con- 
 jecture. According to the Christian Revela- 
 tion, and may we not say according to 
 human recognition of what is befitting for 
 immortal spirits who have thus despised 
 their birthright, it is through intense suffer- 
 ing, "as through fire." But there is still 
 an indestructible hope. The Eternal Ideal 
 remains : while the individual is sinning, 
 suffering, failing, choosing evil, resisting 
 good, what God intends in him is present 
 to God, and utterly lost though he be 
 temporally, there is still the possibility, the 
 eternal possibility, of his eyes being opened 
 to the meaning of that temporal experience 
 from which till it has wrought its work he 
 can never escape. 
 
 If this Divine Ideal of every man is the 
 one ground of hope for those who are 
 otherwise the lost, it is the pledge and 
 certainty of fulfilment for those who in 
 spite of all darkness, ignorance, and infirmity 
 strive towards the highest they perceive. 
 Such as these leave this life and enter upon 
 the life beyond choosing good. To them a 
 more open vision, a larger entrance into 
 
iv.] PERSISTENCE OF DIVINE IDEALS 97 
 
 their Divine birthright is possible ; to 
 them, if we believe in their immortality we 
 cannot doubt, and the Christian Revelation 
 expressly asserts, that it is given. They 
 are on the road that leads from attainment 
 to attainment, from glory to glory, till they 
 can bear to see the temporal fade away 
 altogether, and the eternal alone remain. 
 And while they are still struggling, often 
 agonising in their earthly conflict, conscious 
 of their shortcomings and their ignorance, of 
 their half- voluntary lapses from the true path, 
 fearing, at times suffering defeat, can there be 
 a stronger source of comfort than the know- 
 ledge that the ideal of their individuality, so 
 bruised and maimed at their own hands, is 
 to God unchanged and unchangeable, await- 
 ing "eternal in the heavens," their conscious 
 attainment to and appropriation of it? It 
 matters little in what words or under what 
 imagery they picture that ideal to them- 
 selves. The keenest spiritual and intellectual 
 insight must still fall short of the reality; 
 the most ignorant and uncultured concep- 
 tion, if embodying however crudely the 
 victory of good over evil, contains something 
 
 of the truth. 
 
 G 
 
98 SPIRITUAL DEATH [CHAP. nr. 
 
 The outcome of our considerations seems 
 to be then that spiritual death, the lapsing 
 of a Divine Ideal is, by the very nature of 
 that Ideal possible in time, i.e., from the 
 finite point of view and in finite experience, 
 and further that (since evil has no place in 
 the eternal, being eternally repudiated by 
 the Divine Will,)' for no spirit persistently 
 choosing evil and rejecting good can time 
 end; There is no release and no remedy, 
 save in the unique unchangeable relation- 
 ship which each finite individual ideally 
 bears to God, and which no temporal lapse 
 can obscure to Him. 
 
 And since through all time this relation- 
 ship, the very reason and condition of indi- 
 vidual existence, has power to redeem and 
 restore the lost spirit if the latter commence 
 ever so feebly to repudiate evil and choose 
 good, eternal hope is a reality for all, 
 whether in this life or in the life beyond 
 death. More or less than this we dare not 
 say. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN STANDPOINT AND THE 
 CHRISTIAN IDEAL 
 
 WE have in the preceding chapters con- 
 sidered the subject of Individual Immortality 
 from three points of view, the Scientific, the 
 Philosophic, and the Ethical. We saw that 
 at the stage Science has now reached, she 
 can neither affirm nor deny the persistence 
 of individual human life beyond death. We 
 noticed, however, as bearing on the question, 
 the increasing stress laid upon individuality 
 as we pass from the inorganic to the organic 
 divisions of Nature, and upwards through the 
 many stages of the latter to man. In him it 
 is far more pronounced than at any lower 
 point in the scale of life, and he, moreover, 
 appears straitened in his environment, and 
 hampered by limitations of which he is 
 conscious, inward limitations, so that during 
 his short space of earthly life, he never reaches 
 the true zenith of his individuality. 
 
100 THREEFOLD ENQUIRY [CHAP. 
 
 From the philosophic standpoint we en- 
 deavoured to see what the extraordinary 
 enhancement of individuality when conjoined 
 with personality might mean, and we were 
 led to conclude that it was the result of 
 finite personal individuals having their origin 
 in, and being closely bound to an Infinitely 
 Personal and Infinitely Individual Divine 
 Being, to whom each one stood in unique 
 ethical relationship. Physical death could not, 
 we perceived, break this relationship, being 
 a mere accident of the temporal order ; but it 
 appeared that there might be ethical failure, 
 and this would be true death, spiritual death. 
 
 In our considerations from the ethical 
 standpoint, we found that since deliberate 
 and persistent rejection of evil and choice 
 of good was necessary, in order that the 
 unique relationship of the ethical individual 
 to God should be maintained, there could 
 not be compulsion to choose good. Con- 
 sequently there might be for all time 
 instances of complete ethical failure, i.e., total 
 lapses of Divine Ideals from the temporal 
 and finite point of view. But since Divine 
 Ideals are in essence eternal, the Divine 
 Ideal of each individual into which ethical 
 
v.] FROM THE CHRISTIAN STANDPOINT 101 
 
 defeat does not enter, is ever present to God, 
 and in this fact there is eternal hope for all. 
 
 We now have to pursue our investigations 
 from the Christian standpoint, to enquire 
 (1) what was the teaching of Christ respect- 
 ing Individual Immortality, (2) what the 
 Ideal of Immortality which His immediate 
 disciples founded upon that teaching, and 
 further, (3) whether it is sufficiently com- 
 prehensive to respond to the intellectual, 
 moral, and spiritual needs and aspirations of 
 all human individuals. In these considera- 
 tions it is assumed that Christ is regarded as 
 revealing God and the things of God to 
 man, so far as man can apprehend them. 
 We cannot step aside from our main purpose 
 to enter upon controversy, and it is therefore 
 taken here for granted that Christ spoke of 
 what He knew. 
 
 1. In the first place we may observe that 
 throughout the Gospels human individuality 
 is most markedly respected. Men are not 
 " lumped in the mass," but "singled out 
 unit by unit." Our Lord calls each follower 
 by name, shows that He distinguishes the 
 character of each, blames or approves each 
 separately, allows His discourses to be inter- 
 
102 INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY [CHAP. 
 
 rupted in order that He may reply to in- 
 dividual questions, or remove individual 
 difficulties, tells His disciples that not even 
 a sparrow 1 falls to the ground without their 
 Father, and that they individually are of 
 more value than many sparrows, that even 
 the hairs of their heads are all numbered. 
 
 In the epistles this teaching is carried on 
 and developed. St Paul recounts and lays 
 stress on individual experiences, and re- 
 peatedly reminds his converts of their 
 individual responsibilities, on account of 
 which he forbids harsh judgments, for " who 
 art thou that judgest the servant of 
 another? To his own lord he standeth 
 or falleth " ; 2 pleads for the runaway slave 
 as his own son. St James tells his hearers 
 that rich and poor do not exist to God, that 
 it is the individual man, whatever his social 
 status, for whom He cares. 3 St John insists 
 on the need of love for the individual brother 
 whom we have seen, if indeed we love the 
 Father whom we have not seen. 4 According 
 to New Testament records, there is no doubt 
 that both by Christ and His disciples, the 
 
 1 Matt. x. 29 ; Luke xii. 6, 9. 2 Rom. xiv. 4. 
 
 8 James ii. 1-10. 4 2 John iv. 20. 
 
v.] TAUGHT BY CHRIST 103 
 
 value in God's sight of individuals as such 
 is not only recognised, but insisted on. 
 
 When, therefore, we turn to the special 
 teaching of Christ, on Immortality, we find 
 it clearly and forcibly expressed as In- 
 dividual. The parable of Dives and Lazarus, 
 whatever else it may import, unmistakably 
 asserts their individual identity and persist- 
 ence beyond death. When Christ rebukes 
 the Sadducees for their unbelief in the 
 "resurrection of the dead" (His recognition 
 of which is meaningless unless it applies to 
 the individual dead), He bases His argument 
 on the fact that God calls Himself " the God 
 of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob," yet 
 He is not the God of the dead but of the 
 living, for all (i.e., all individual human 
 beings, even those we call the dead) live 
 unto Him. 1 On the Mount of Transfigura- 
 tion, individual saints (Moses and Elijah) 
 actually living the unseen life, appeared and 
 talked with Him. 2 Finally, there was His 
 own Resurrection, proclaiming louder than 
 any teaching, however authoritative, could 
 do, the reality of human individual life beyond 
 death, and after the Ascension, His appear- 
 ance to St Paul and in vision to St John. 
 
 1 Mark xii. 26 ; Luke xx. 38. 2 Matt. xvii. 3 ; Mark ix. 3. 
 
104 HIS INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE [CHAP. 
 
 We may further say that our Lord 
 recognised differences in the life after death 
 depending upon the kind of life which each 
 individual had lived on earth. There is, of 
 course, as every reader will at once recall, 
 His distinct teaching of reward and punish- 
 ment, in the parables of Dives and Lazarus, 
 and of the Talents, and in His discourse on 
 the last Judgment. 
 
 To this subject (of reward and punish- 
 ment,) we will return later on. It by no 
 means exhausts the direct teaching of Christ 
 on Immortality. He tells the Sadducees 
 that " when the dead rise, they neither 
 marry nor are given in marriage, but are 
 as the angels of God in Heaven," l intimating, 
 therefore, that the conditions of life will be 
 different to those we know now. He says 
 to the penitent thief: 2 "To-day shalt thou 
 be with Me in Paradise," showing that there 
 is no break in consciousness or identity, and 
 to the young ruler : "Sell what thou hast 
 and give to the poor, and come follow Me, 
 and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven." 3 It 
 is to be remarked with regard to this last 
 
 1 Matt. xii. 25 ; Luke xx. 34-37. 2 Luke xxii. 43. 
 
 3 Matt. xix. 21 ; Mark x. 21 ; Luke xviii. 22. 
 
v.] OF THE UNSEEN WORLD 105 
 
 quotation that our Lord did not threaten any 
 punishment here or hereafter if the posses- 
 sions were not sold, but simply said that if 
 they were, the renunciation, for the sake of 
 doing good, of this world's riches would mean 
 greater spiritual riches in the life beyond 
 death. The same teaching is given in the 
 celebrated promise to His disciples : " Every- 
 one that hath left houses or brethren or sisters 
 or father or mother, or children or lands for 
 My name's sake (or as it is in St Luke, ' for 
 the Kingdom of God's sake ' ) shall receive an 
 hundredfold, and shall inherit eternal life." 1 
 Lastly, there occur in the Discourse before the 
 Passion, those words which have strengthened 
 the hearts of thousands in bereavement and 
 sorrow : "In My Father's house are many 
 abiding places. If it were not so, I would have 
 told you." 2 Perhaps nowhere more strongly 
 than in this passage does Christ assert His 
 knowledge of the life to come. " There are," 
 he says, speaking with the calm distinctness 
 of one to whom the matter in question is 
 familiar, " many abiding places," conditions, 
 environments, suitable to all characters, to all 
 stages in the spiritual life. 
 
 1 Matt. xix. 29. * John xiv. 2. 
 
106 HIS INDISSOLUBLE LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 But mightier than any revelation that 
 could be made by words was that of the 
 forty days' Risen Life of Christ on earth. 
 This it was that so deeply penetrated 
 the apostles' whole spiritual outlook, so 
 moulded their conception of the work of 
 evangelisation that they, especially St Paul, 
 make the Resurrection the pillar of their 
 teaching, as central as the Crucifixion itself. 
 The Resurrection was the token that the 
 sacrifice of the Cross was accepted. The 
 apostles were "witnesses of the Resurrec- 
 tion," and as such received a special insight 
 into the meaning of the death. " Who died 
 for our sins and rose again for our justifica- 
 tion." "If we have become united with 
 Him by the likeness of His death, we shall 
 be also by the likeness of His resurrection. 
 . . . For the death that He died, He died 
 unto sin once, but the life that He liveth, 
 He liveth unto God." 1 The death, we are 
 taught, issued naturally in the Resurrection, 
 death could not hold the Lord of Life. 
 " God raised [Him] up, having loosed the 
 pangs of death : because it was not possible 
 that He should be holden of it." 2 And as 
 
 1 Rom. vi. 5, 10. 2 Acts ii. 24. 
 
v.] SOURCE OF MAN'S IMMORTALITY 107 
 
 He Himself taught, His indissoluble life is 
 the pledge and assurance of ours. " Because 
 I live, ye shall live also." l "I am the 
 Resurrection and the life : he that believeth 
 on Me though he die yet shall he live, and 
 whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall 
 never die." 2 
 
 These great words, hi conjunction with 
 our Lord's saying: "This is life eternal, 
 that they should know Thee, the only true 
 God, and Him whom Thou didst send, 
 even Jesus Christ," are the key to the 
 whole meaning of Immortality from the 
 Christian Standpoint. They show that the 
 foundation of our deathlessness lies in Him, 
 and that the power of His Life is supreme 
 over all obstacles, including physical death. 
 They also, in conjunction with many other 
 passages, point out that since the Divine Ideal 
 of human life is the life of Christ, manifested 
 before death under earthly, and after death 
 under non-earthly conditions, His risen life is 
 the norm of the risen life of men. " Father, 
 those whom Thou hast given Me, I will 
 that where I am, there they may be also." 3 
 
 1 John xvii 3. 2 John xi. 25. 
 
 * John xvii. 24. 
 
108 CONTINUITY OF HIS RISEN LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 "As in Adam all die even so in Christ 
 shall all be made alive Christ the first 
 fruits . . . ." l " As we have borne the 
 image of the earthly, so shall we also bear the 
 image of the heavenly." : " Who shall fashion 
 anew the body of our humiliation that it may 
 be conformed to the body of His glory." 3 
 
 These are but examples of many similar 
 passages which any student of the New 
 Testament can read and compare for him- 
 self. The witnesses of our Lord's Resurrec- 
 tion had seen, and ever bore in mind the 
 truth that He was not a spirit only, but 
 was clothed in a real body, the perfect 
 expression of His (human) spiritual life. 
 Further, they were assured that the death 
 through which He had triumphantly passed 
 had not affected His identity nor severed 
 His connection with the earthly life that 
 had gone before it. This He Himself re- 
 peatedly demonstrated to them. " See My 
 hands and My feet that it is I Myself, handle Me 
 and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, 
 as ye behold Me having," 4 and to Thomas : 
 " Reach hither thy finger and see My hands, 
 
 1 1 Cor. xv. 22. 2 1 Cor. xv. 49. 
 
 3 Phil. iii. 21. 4 Luke xxiv. 39. 
 
v.] WITH HIS LIFE BEFORE DEATH 109 
 
 and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into 
 My side, and be not faithless but believing." 1 
 Believe, that is, that I am the same Lord 
 with whom you held daily intercourse when 
 in My body of humiliation. " It is I Myself," 
 glorified indeed, yet whose experience before 
 death is so indelibly wrought into the essence 
 of My life that it would not be fully expressed 
 unless its physical manifestation bore the marks 
 of My Passion. There can be no plainer 
 assurance than this of the continuity of our 
 Lord's human life before and after death. 
 We may therefore pass on to other considera- 
 tions, bearing in mind that this continuity of 
 Christ's human individuality means the con- 
 tinuity of every man's. According to New 
 Testament teaching it will be " I myself" to 
 each one in the life to come. There will be 
 the same unique individuality retaining under 
 whatever different conditions the "marks" and 
 the memory of those experiences of suffering, 
 of sorrow, of joy which are the warp and 
 woof of the earthly life, so common that they 
 make all men brothers, yet so distinct and 
 peculiar in each case that no other has been 
 or can be identical with it. 
 
 i John xx. 27. 
 
110 CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF IMMORTALITY [CHAP. 
 
 2. In passing on to consider the Christian 
 Ideal of immortality, we shall find it so 
 centred about this continuity of individual 
 life before and after death, that the latter 
 truth will be constantly reappearing in new 
 connections and under new aspects. For 
 instance, one great aspect under which it is 
 regarded is the fulfilment and completion 
 of our life here. " Ourselves also which 
 have the first fruits of the spirit, even we 
 ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for 
 our adoption, to wit the redemption of our 
 body." 1 "[The body] is sown in corruption, 
 it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown in 
 dishonour, it is raised in glory ; it is sown 
 in weakness, it is raised in power; it is 
 sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual 
 body. If there is a natural body, there is 
 a spiritual body." 2 " To me to live is Christ, 
 to die is gain .... But I am in a strait 
 betwixt the two, having the desire to depart 
 and be with Christ, for it is very far 
 better." 3 " We that are in this bodily frame 
 do groan, being burdened, not that we would 
 be unclothed but clothed upon, that what 
 
 1 Romans viii. 23. 2 1 Cor. xv. 42-45. 
 
 3 Phil, i., part of 21 and of 23 ; cp. ii. 21. 
 
v.] UNDULY NARROWED 111 
 
 is mortal may be swallowed up of life." l 
 "Now I know in part, but then shall I 
 know fully, even as also I have been known 
 fully." 2 
 
 This individual completion, which in the 
 above and many other passages of the New 
 Testament is so distinctly set forth as part 
 of our "inheritance" of immortality, has 
 always been accepted by the Christian 
 Church. The conception of what such com- 
 pletion means, however, has been unduly 
 narrowed, and it is in great part due to this 
 cause that in the period through which we are 
 passing the "heavenly horizon" has grown 
 blurred and faint to many as truly Christian 
 in aspiration and effort as those early martyrs 
 who felt earth not heaven to be the illusion. 
 It is not so much historical criticism or lack 
 of scientific proof which shakes Christian 
 confidence in the "life everlasting," as the 
 inherent weakness of the ideal formed of it. 
 Nor is the reason far to seek. 
 
 Whatever may be the drawbacks of 
 Western Civilisation, there can be no doubt 
 of the increased variety and complexity of 
 life it has brought about. There never has 
 
 1 2 Cor. v. 4, 2 1 Cor. xiii. 
 
112 IT SHOULD INCLUDE [CHAP. 
 
 been a time when so large a number of 
 interests, so many branches of knowledge, 
 such wide fields of activity, were opened up 
 to mankind as now, and as a consequence 
 life is to a vast number of people fuller to 
 an almost immeasurable extent than it was 
 to their progenitors some hundreds of years 
 ago. There are those, as we know, who are 
 very far from considering this state of things 
 an unmixed advantage, even as an advantage 
 at all; but the fact remains, and it inevit- 
 ably affects our whole mental attitude. A 
 man of the twentieth century, though he be 
 of mediocre culture and intelligence, has a 
 wider outlook, a larger experience than the 
 most highly endowed intellect of the tenth 
 century could attain. Yet our conception of 
 immortality has filtered down to us through 
 the dark ages. It is still tainted by their 
 narrowness of outlook, their lack of scientific 
 knowledge, their opposition of the natural to 
 the supernatural, and we can hardly be 
 surprised that it fails to satisfy or to attract 
 a generation before which such amazing 
 vistas of the universe have opened out. 
 It is true indeed that to the saints of all 
 ages, to those who, whatever their intellectual 
 
v.] DIFFERENT TYPES OF CHARACTER 113 
 
 attainments may be or may not be, to what- 
 ever grade of society or culture they belong, 
 are the spiritual salt of the earth, one desire, 
 one possibility is alone present in their hope 
 of immortality, the perfect consciousness of 
 the Divine Presence, that "sight" of God 
 which is the especial blessing of the pure 
 in heart. To such as these no other belief 
 regarding immortality is possible or desirable, 
 save that that highest aspiration should be 
 fully satisfied. But such single-hearted lovers 
 of God, those to whom God only, God 
 always, is consciously the Supreme Object 
 of their desire, have ever been in a minority. 
 There are many different types and castes 
 of human character, and in life beyond as 
 in life before death, room is needed for all. 
 Christians should not have difficulty in 
 realising this, yet they to whom no children 
 of the Divine Father should be common or 
 unclean seem frequently to regard one class 
 of mind alone as fully acceptable to Him, 
 the saintly, in the conventional sense of the 
 term. This narrow conception is greatly 
 owing to the undue exaltation of the con- 
 templative over the active side of the Christian 
 life which for long obtained in the Church. 
 
 H 
 
114 LIFE BEYOND DEATH [CHAP. 
 
 It was an inevitable consequence of the " dark 
 ages" when intellectual and spiritual culture 
 were alike hard to come by, and could only 
 be preserved under the hot-house conditions 
 of the cloister. Such a one-sided ideal leads 
 to as mistaken a conception of the life to 
 come as of life on earth. The latter we 
 have corrected. We no longer draw the 
 sharp line between the " religious" (i.e., the 
 conventual,) life and that of the world which 
 our fathers drew. The best religious thought 
 of our day recognises that Christianity claims 
 as its own all art, all science, all culture, all 
 philanthropy, that no department of life or 
 of service lies outside religion. But our 
 grasp of the sacredness of activity, the con- 
 secration of knowledge, even of affection, is 
 most frequently limited to the sphere of 
 earth. Beyond there seems nothing before 
 us but a life of passive contemplation. We 
 can form no conception of it save that it will 
 bring us rest, freedom from care and sorrow 
 and evil, be a condition of negative beatitude 
 in fact, to the thought of which, at times 
 of sick weariness with the restlessness and 
 turmoil of the world, we turn with joy and 
 relief, but which has no attraction for the 
 
v.] IS MORE THAN REST 115 
 
 young, the strong, the healthfully busy, the 
 happy. 
 
 There is a fundamental error here which 
 it is well worth while to track and refute. 
 The spirit of the New Testament teaching 
 on this subject gives us, as chief objects of 
 hope, untrammelled service of the Divine 
 Father, unlimited development of our own 
 capacities both of body and spirit. We 
 are therefore wrong if we fix our eyes 
 only on rest ; we are injuring those whose 
 greatest need and desire is not to cease 
 from activity but to be granted full scope 
 for it. 
 
 Some may regard such an ideal as too 
 material to be permissible from the Christian 
 standpoint, and if material is to be taken as 
 a synonym for sensual, then it is true that 
 there is no place for the material in the 
 Christian conception of life, either present 
 or to come. The restriction of human beings 
 to, or their absorption in the life of the 
 senses is inimical to every spiritual religion, 
 to Christianity most because it is most 
 spiritual, because there is in it no lower 
 path for the ordinary man, no esoteric 
 mysteries for the initiated, but the same 
 
116 CONDITIONS NON-EARTHLY [CHAP. 
 
 demand made on each and all, to live up 
 to the highest they know. 
 
 But if by "material" be intended man's 
 relationship to the natural universe, nay, 
 that universe itself in all the marvels of its 
 known order, with all the dimly hinted 
 possibilities of what may yet become 
 known, then the Christian conception of 
 immortality embraces that relationship, 
 applies to that universe. One of the 
 "notes" of Christianity is that it neither 
 ignores, condemns, nor supersedes the natural, 
 but raises it to a new dignity and confers 
 upon it a larger scope, by treating it as 
 itself the expression and the pledge of 
 spirit. According to New Testament 
 teaching, the universe of Nature is a spiritual 
 creation, 1 which in the Divine ideal of it 
 is throughout " very good," and which in 
 its actual state of (to human perception) 
 non-attainment, groans and travails together 
 with man until the adoption, that is the 
 redemption of the body; 2 until, that is, 
 the material expression is so perfectly 
 moulded to the spiritual meaning that the 
 latter shines forth undimmed in its eternal 
 
 1 Col. i. 15-17. 2 Romans viii. 19-24. 
 
v.] BUT STILL HUMAN 117 
 
 beauty and splendour. Man's intellect, 
 affections, moral consciousness are spiritual 
 attributes, none the less so that not having 
 themselves attained to the Divine Ideal, 
 and being therefore imperfect, they are 
 expressed through the imperfect medium of 
 the "natural body." Christianity does not 
 teach that when this medium fails, human 
 knowledge, love, righteousness are to be 
 without expression, but that a more fitting 
 expression is to be given them. First the 
 natural expression, afterwards that which is 
 spiritual, for if there is a natural body, there 
 is a spiritual body. If, that is, under earthly 
 conditions, man needs an earthly body and 
 an earthly environment by means of which 
 to express what he is and does, so under 
 conditions which are not earthly but which 
 are and must be human, he will need a 
 human though a non-earthly environment 
 for the same reason to express his being 
 and his activity. 
 
 Thus the true Christian Ideal of the 
 completion of each human individual by 
 means of immortality, is the completion of 
 the whole man, body, mind and spirit. It 
 is the whole man whom Christ loves and 
 
118 REWARD AND PUNISHMENT [CHAP. 
 
 redeems ; it is the whole man for whom an 
 " inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that 
 fadeth not away" is reserved. 1 
 
 A second aspect of the Christian Ideal 
 of Immortality is equally with the one we 
 have just been considering, bound up with 
 the continuity of individual life before and 
 after death, viz., reward and punishment. 
 This subject has been allowed in past ages 
 to loom too largely, or rather too exclusively, 
 in the teaching of the Christian Church with 
 regard to immortality, and consequently a 
 reaction has set in, and we find one of the 
 reproaches cast upon the Faith is that it 
 should lend itself to such unexalted motives 
 as the fear of hell and the hope of heaven. 
 But it is not possible to say with honesty 
 that our Lord did not appeal to them. 
 His teaching was intended not only for 
 those whose pure unselfishness of aim and 
 motive was akin to His own, but also for 
 those who were on a lower spiritual plane, 
 who had not yet attained the liberty of 
 children, but were under bondage, the 
 bondage of sin and ignorance. Even to 
 His immediate followers to those whose 
 
 1 1 Peter i. 4. 
 
v.] AS TAUGHT BY CHRIST 119 
 
 ear was opened to His teaching, He spoke 
 of the higher fear casting out the lower. 
 " Be not afraid of them which kill the 
 body, but are not able to kill the soul ; 
 but rather fear Him which is able to kill 
 both soul and body in hell." 1 And again, 
 He told them in strong words that it was 
 better to enter into the Kingdom of God, 
 or as St Mark has it " into life," maimed, 
 than "to be cast into hell, where their 
 worm dieth not, and the fire is not 
 quenched" 2 At the same time it is wholly 
 misleading, and even absurd, to take such 
 sayings of our Lord as these, and presume 
 to define their meaning apart from His 
 whole revelation. We cannot understand 
 the significance of any part of Christ's teach- 
 ing if we isolate it. 
 
 Even the words above quoted, which seem 
 not only terrible but cruel by themselves, 
 would bear a very different meaning if they 
 were always taken in connection with those 
 which immediately follow : " For everyone 
 shaU be salted with fire." 3 The merciful 
 intention of purification through suffering 
 
 1 Matt. x. 28 ; Luke xii. 4, 5. 2 Mark ix. 49. 
 
 3 Mark ix. 56, 
 
120 JUDGMENTS PASSED [CHAP. 
 
 would then stand out in letters of light. 
 The fire is not quenched, but when it has 
 done its work, when the purging flames 
 have consumed the corruption which it is 
 their province to destroy, then the spirit 
 is "salted"; purified and ennobled, it passes 
 beyond their power. That " fire " is indeed 
 regarded in the New Testament as the 
 symbol of a purifying agent is evident from 
 other passages than the above. Thus, St 
 Paul, referring to the various labourers who 
 build up the Church on "the one founda- 
 tion," says : " But if any man buildeth on 
 the foundation, gold, silver, costly stones, 
 wood, hay, stubble, each man's work shall 
 be made manifest, for the day shall declare 
 it, because it is revealed in fire; and the 
 fire itself shall prove each man's work of 
 what sort it is. If any man's work shall 
 abide which he built thereon, he shall receive 
 a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, 
 he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be 
 saved yet so as through fire." * Again, 
 St Peter, referring to the sufferings of 
 the faithful, regards them as "the proof of 
 your faith being more precious than gold 
 
 1 1 Cor. iii. 12-16. 
 
v.] ARE FATHERLY 
 
 which perisheth though it be tried with fire" 1 
 as though that which was cast into the 
 spiritual furnace, differs from gold in that 
 it is not perishable.- Passages setting forth 
 purification by fire should be remembered 
 whenever "the hell of fire," or the "lake 
 of fire," or "eternal punishment" is mentioned. 
 We cannot understand the expressions other- 
 wise. But the real true significance of 
 spiritual reward and punishment is only 
 to be seen in the revelation of "the 
 Father," the revelation which the Word 
 became Flesh to make. The reward is the 
 Father's reward, the punishment is the Father's 
 punishment, to correct, to reform, to raise, 
 to purify, not for any other purpose what- 
 soever, either before or after death. 
 
 Without doubt, one great difficulty in 
 the way of our regarding spiritual reward 
 and punishment in a clear and reason- 
 able light, is the capricious interpretation 
 which the " Dark " and " Middle " Ages put 
 upon them, and from which we have not as 
 yet been able to shake ourselves entirely free. 
 
 In past centuries, when even the most cul- 
 tivated intellects were unable to recognise be- 
 
 1 1 Peter i. 7. 
 
122 SIN WORKS OUT [CHAP. 
 
 neath the apparent lawlessness of the Universe 
 its vast and unchanging order, it was inevitable 
 that spiritual truths also should be invested 
 with a certain amount of arbitrariness. Thus 
 the "reward" of the just, equally with the 
 punishment of the unjust, was regarded as 
 not in essential connection with the life 
 which had merited either. Consequently the 
 former could be bought by certain rites, 
 ceremonies, and benefactions, the latter could 
 be avoided in much the same way, by 
 indulgences, penances, gifts of money to 
 ecclesiastical purposes, etc. It was not 
 clearly understood that the punishment of 
 a sinful life was wrought out by that life 
 itself, and was of the kind which the 
 particular sins indulged in must inevitably 
 entail, just as a burned hand must inevitably 
 follow the thrusting of it into the fire. The 
 punishment of sin, equally with the wages 
 of virtue, is progress in the path chosen. 
 Browning has finely illustrated this in his 
 description of the man found at the Last 
 Judgment choosing earthly before spiritual 
 joys. His sentence is to possess that which 
 he has chosen, earth, but without the power 
 which he in common with all men had 
 
v.] ITS OWN PUNISHMENT 123 
 
 hitherto possessed, of looking, if he would, 
 beyond the transitory and apparent to the 
 real and abiding. 
 
 "Thou saidst, 'Let spirit star the dome 
 Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak, 
 No nook of earth I shall not seek 
 Its service further.' Thou art shut 
 Out of the heaven of spirit ; glut 
 Thy sense upon the world ; 'tis thine 
 For ever take it ! 
 
 " ' How ? Is mine 
 
 The world ? ' I cried (while my soul broke 
 Out in a transport). * Hast thou spoke 
 Plainly in that ? Earth's exquisite 
 Treasures of wonder and delight, 
 For me ? ' 
 
 " The austere voice returned : 
 1 So soon made happy ? Had'st thou learned 
 What God accounteth happiness, 
 Thou would'st not find it hard to guess 
 What hell may be His punishment 
 For those who doubt if God invent 
 Better than they. Let such men rest 
 Content with what they judged the best. 
 Let the unjust usurp at will : 
 The filthy shall be filthy still. 
 Miser, there waits the gold for thee ! 
 Hater, indulge thine enmity ! 
 And thou whose heaven self-ordained 
 Was to enjoy earth unrestrained, 
 Do it ! take all the ancient show 
 
124 THE PAST REMEMBERED [CHAP. 
 
 I promise not thou shall forget 
 
 The past now gone to its account, 
 
 But leave thee with the old amount, 
 
 Of faculties, nor less nor more, 
 
 Unvisited as heretofore 
 
 By God's free Spirit that makes an end.' " x 
 
 Further quotation from a poem familiar 
 to almost all readers is unnecessary, but the 
 italicised lines contain the crux of the whole 
 matter, indicating alike the cause of the 
 extreme anguish of the punishment and the 
 possibility (more clearly developed later,) that 
 it is purgatorial, not penal merely, " I promise 
 not thou shalt forget the past." "It is I 
 myself I who might have judged that the 
 use of flesh 'was to refine to nerve beneath 
 the spirit's play,' who might have chosen to 
 follow 'the spirit's fugitive brief gleams,' 
 until they issued in the unveiled light of 
 God. It is I myself who have thrust away 
 my spiritual inheritance, have fixed myself 
 where ' God's free Spirit, that makes an end,' 
 no longer penetrates. It is I myself who 
 have lost myself." That is the keen edge 
 of the suffering, a very sword of the Spirit 
 before which the man shrinks and quails. 
 
 1 "Easter Day." 
 
v.] REWARD NO ARBITRARY BLISS 125 
 
 But because he can thus suffer, hope has 
 not altogether departed, the pain that an 
 immortal spirit condemned to dwell amongst 
 shadows must experience, so clears his vision 
 that at the end of the poem we find him 
 whose one desire had been the enjoyment 
 of earthly life to the full, exclaiming : 
 
 " c How dreadful to be grudged 
 No ease henceforth, as one that's judged, 
 Condemned to earth for ever, shut 
 From heaven.' " 
 
 And we are left with the closing note of 
 hope : 
 
 " But Easter Day breaks ! But 
 Christ rises ! Mercy every way 
 Is infinite, and who can say ? " 
 
 And, needless to say, the same remarks 
 apply mutatis mutandis to reward. This is 
 no arbitrary bliss bestowed upon all alike 
 who at some time or other of their lives, 
 it may be upon their death-bed, have " made 
 their peace with God." It is the inevitable 
 consequence of the aim and endeavour after 
 the highest (according to the light of each 
 individual,) in thought and practice: of the 
 unworldly temper of mind, which, in what- 
 
126 CONSUMMATION OF IMMORTALITY [CHAP. 
 
 ever way shown, however painfully connected 
 with a sense of failure and shortcoming, yet 
 recognises that earth is but in some sense 
 or other a prelude, a forecast, an intimation 
 of something better, nobler, more worthy of 
 attainment than itself, " God's ante-chamber " 
 by whose variegated " arras folds " 
 
 " The wise who waited there could tell 
 . . . what royalties in store 
 Lay one step past the entrance door." 
 
 But as the sharpest edge of punishment 
 lies in the realisation of what might have 
 been, only possible because what might have 
 been is continuous with what is, so the 
 supreme reward, or one element in the 
 supreme reward, is the knowledge that what 
 is, is essentially connected with what was. 
 "It is I myself, I who strove and fell, and 
 rose to strive again, blinded, maimed, scarcely 
 daring to hope I could attain, yet keeping 
 amid all darkness, amid all defeat even, the 
 unquenchable desire of the highest, I have 
 been found faithful, my feet are set for ever 
 upon the upward path, and to me is given 
 my heart's desire." And if that desire has 
 not known and does not yet know itself to 
 
v.] UNION WITH THE DIVINE 127 
 
 be none other than the thirst for the Divine, 
 God is not straitened in the means whereby 
 He will in the life beyond draw those who 
 have been true to the light they had under 
 earthly conditions, into full apprehension of 
 and participation in that supreme desire, the 
 response to which is the vision of Himself. 
 
 And thus we are brought to what is in 
 truth the consummation of the Christian 
 Ideal of immortality, perfect union with 
 (not mergence in) the Divine. "For the 
 last enemy that shall be abolished is death," 
 the only real death, that spiritual death 
 which divides us from God, which causes 
 many now on earth, and many beyond the 
 grave, to drag on a miserable degraded exist- 
 ence, shorn of all the glory that should be 
 theirs, whelmed in darkness, without hope, 
 and, to human understanding, without help. 
 But the things that are impossible with men 
 are possible with God, " for the [Son] must 
 reign till He hath put all His enemies under 
 His feet," and His life on earth showed us 
 clearly the Son of Man's enemies not men, 
 but the destroyers of men unbelief, hatred, 
 impurity, all moral evil and all physical evil 
 all that separates men from one another, 
 
128 NO LOSS OF INDIVIDUALITY [CHAP. 
 
 and from God. "The last enemy that shall 
 be abolished is death. For He [the Father], 
 put all things in subjection under His [the 
 Son's] feet. But when He saith all things 
 are put in subjection, it is evident that He 
 is excepted who did subject all things unto 
 Him. And when all things have been 
 subjected unto Him, then shall the Son also 
 Himself be subjected to Him that did 
 subject all things unto Him, that God may 
 be all in all." 1 Not that men will ever be 
 swallowed up in God to the loss of their 
 conscious individuality, "not that Christ will 
 ever put off His humanity, or that we shall 
 ever cease to need Him, for even at the 
 climax of all things, He will still be the Life 
 and the Truth. We shall see the Father 
 face to face, but only because we shall be 
 one Spirit with the Lord. In this sense only 
 the work of redemption and mediation will 
 have an end. We shall see the Father no 
 longer [only] in the Son, but as the Son sees 
 Him, in the day when God shall be all in 
 all." 2 
 
 To see "the Father face to face," this 
 
 1 1 Cor. xv. 25-29. 
 "Christian Platonists," p. 170, Bigg. 
 
v.] PERFECT LOVE AND SERVICE 129 
 
 is indeed the highest height, the utmost 
 reach to which even the Christian Ideal 
 of immortality can attain. To know as we 
 are known. 1 To .love as we are loved, 
 to become as Him whom we behold, 2 
 to serve Him with all our being, 3 for it is 
 not passive contemplation alone, which, to 
 human beings, is the consummation of all 
 things, but the pure whole-hearted, effectual 
 service of love to Him who is Love. At 
 a lower stage than this the highest, most 
 constantly during the period of dim vision 
 and uncertain knowledge, which marks our 
 earthly pilgrimage, we need the reiterated 
 assurance that in the life beyond " we shall 
 hunger no more, neither thirst any more," 4 
 (not even after righteousness, for we shall be 
 filled,) that " God shall wipe away all tears 
 from our eyes, that there shall be no more 
 death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall 
 there be pain any more, for the first things 
 are passed away." 5 But when we once have 
 our vision so purged that it is " face to face," 
 then we know that we have all things, for 
 
 1 1 Cor. xiii. 12 ; 1 John iii. 2. 2 1 John v. 20. 
 
 3 Kev. vii. 15, and xxii. 3, 4. 4 Rev. vii. 16. 
 
 5 Rev. xxii., and John xvii. 
 
 I 
 
130 INDIVIDUAL LOVE ETERNAL [CHAP. 
 
 "we know Him that is true," the Father, 
 and we "are in Him that is true," the Son. 
 Illusion, disappointment, uncertainty, have no 
 place, and, therefore, as the Son has taught 
 us, we are in possession of eternal life, the life 
 which is without beginning or end, the life 
 which unites all in the knowledge and love 
 of the Father through the Son. 
 
 But it is not part of this supreme ideal 
 that we should cease to love one another 
 or identify one another. The Beatific Vision 
 will not render us cold and unresponsive to 
 finite love. On the contrary, "Beloved, let 
 us love one another, for love is of God, and 
 every one that loveth is begotten of God 
 and knoweth God." 1 Love is of the very 
 essence of the Divine, it cannot die. Its 
 individual manifestations are not of those 
 first things which "pass away." They are 
 eternal, needing, indeed, on earth, to be 
 tested by fire, for under present conditions, 
 love, mighty though it be, shares in our 
 limitations, is tainted by our self- concentra- 
 tion, is defiled by our sin. Its purification 
 will but give it more strength, more intensity, 
 more insight, and when the final illumina- 
 
 1 1 John iv. 7. 
 
v.] DOES CHRISTIAN IDEAL SUFFICE ? 131 
 
 tion is reached, when the temporal falls 
 from us entirely, and free from its shadow 
 we stand in the eternal alone, the Vision 
 of the Father face, to face, will involve such 
 perfect vision and understanding of our 
 beloved, as our highest aspirations here are 
 too faint to imagine. 
 
 3. We now reach the last stage of the 
 enquiry which was proposed. Does this 
 Christian Ideal of individual continuity of life, 
 individual completion, individual attainment 
 of the open Vision of God, and of man in 
 God, suffice not merely for all men, but for 
 each man? It is clear that one reservation 
 at any rate must be made. Evil aspirations 
 are debarred. The desires begotten of greed, 
 selfishness, lust, avarice, hatred, can look for 
 no fulfilment. These are equally inimical 
 to the Divine Ideal of every human being. 
 It is because of them that the fire which is 
 not quenched, the worm that dieth not, are 
 necessary, so long as even one of the sons of 
 God has not learned to repudiate the cor- 
 ruption which it is the part of the suffering 
 imaged by fire and worms to destroy. On 
 the contrary, there is no human aspiration 
 (for evil is not human, it is the nega- 
 
132 ITS MANY-SIDEDNESS [CHAP. 
 
 tion of the Divine intention for human 
 nature, as it is the negation of the Divine 
 Nature Itself), which does not find a response 
 in the Christian Ideal of Immortality. Is 
 it rest that we need ? " There remaineth a 
 rest for the people of God." 1 Is it a larger 
 sphere of activity, a greater scope for service ? 
 "Thou has been faithful over a few things. 
 I will set thee over many things." 2 "His 
 servants shall serve Him." 3 Is it recognition 
 of individual merit ? " To him that over- 
 cometh I will give ... a white stone, and 
 upon the stone a new name written which none 
 knoweth save he that receiveth it." 4 " He 
 that overcometh ... I will confess his name 
 before My Father and before His angels." 5 
 Is it deserved honour ? " Be thou faithful 
 unto death and I will give thee the crown of 
 life." 6 " He that overcometh I will give to 
 sit down with Me in My throne, as I also 
 overcame and sat down with My Father in 
 His throne." T Is it reunion with our beloved ? 
 The restoration of Lazarus to his sisters, 8 the 
 command "not to sorrow as those that have 
 
 1 Heb. iv. 9-11. 2 Matt. xxv. 21-23. 3 Rev. xxii. 3. 
 4 Rev. ii. 17. 5 Rev. iii. 5. c Rev. ii. 10. 
 
 7 Rev. iii. 21. 8 John xi. 1-45. 
 
v.] ITS POWER TO STRENGTHEN 133 
 
 no hope," l the allusion to " the cloud of 
 witnesses " that even now watch unseen our 
 earthly conflict, 2 the fact that the risen human 
 Christ held familiar intercourse with His 
 disciples, more than all the assertion that 
 God is Love, and that all love of human 
 beings for one another is of Him, 3 assures us 
 that in the Christian Ideal of Immortality 
 no individual love shall be lost. The craving 
 for knowledge, for truth, for beauty, for 
 moral and spiritual perfection is equally 
 recognised, equally promised satisfaction, as 
 has already been pointed out. 
 
 What remains then ? Only that we 
 should realise the fulness of our inheritance, 
 that we should not "faint" under the 
 difficulties, the perplexities, the physical and 
 mental suffering which make so large a 
 part of our life here, "for though our out- 
 ward man is decaying, yet our inward man 
 is renewed day by day. For our light 
 affliction which is for the moment, worketh 
 for us more and more exceedingly an eternal 
 weight of glory; while we look not at the 
 things which are seen, but at the things 
 
 1 1 Thess. iv. 13. * Heb. xii. 1. 
 
 3 1 John iv. 7-9. 
 
134 PRESENT LIFE A PART [CHAP. 
 
 which are not seen ; for the things which are 
 seen are temporal, but the things which are 
 not seen are eternal." 1 And those "unseen" 
 eternal things are not in the future, they 
 are here with us now. In the future they 
 will be seen, now they are our invisible 
 support, stay and consolation. This is the 
 truth we must lay hold of, if the reality 
 of the connection between this earthly part 
 of our life and that which is to follow is to 
 become clear to us. It is not the neglect 
 of earthly duties, the coldness towards 
 earthly sorrows or earthly joys, that gives 
 us the strongest hold on and widest appre- 
 hension of the immortality of our being. It 
 is a spirit far different from this which we 
 need, a spirit that regards the fulfilment 
 of duty and not its present reward or 
 recognition as the thing of importance; a 
 spirit which because of the transitoriness of 
 disappointment and bereavement can be 
 strong and even cheerful under them. And 
 further, a spirit which realises that every 
 activity of human nature is a sacred thing, 
 a thing which may be defiled, defamed, 
 prostituted to low uses, but yet in the 
 
 1 2 Cor. iv. 17, 18. 
 
v.] OF IMMORTAL LIFE 135 
 
 Divine Ideal of it is altogether noble, beauti- 
 ful, worthy of all honour, not destined to 
 perish in the using, but to be trained to 
 ever higher and higher perfection till its 
 scope, compared to what we in our present 
 ignorance suppose, is illimitable. Belief in 
 the continuity of our individual life before 
 and after death will serve to raise the 
 present, however seemingly sordid, to a 
 dignity it could not otherwise attain, and 
 yet will enable us to triumph over all its 
 trials, however keen, in the hope and 
 strength of the future to which it leads. 
 " Prove to mankind," said Mazzini, " that the 
 earthly duties to be fulfilled here are part of 
 their immortal life, and all the calculations 
 of the present will vanish before the 
 grandeur of the future." 
 
 This verily is our need, to live in the 
 strong conviction that this life is part of 
 our immortal life. No wrong-doing then 
 will seem insignificant, no duty trivial or 
 impossible, no sorrow overwhelming, for we 
 shall begin to realise that we are indeed 
 sons of God, and that He freely gives us 
 all things. " For all things are yours, 
 whether .... the world, or life, or death, 
 
136 ' ALL IS OURS [CHAP. v. 
 
 or things present, or things to come ; all 
 are yours ; and ye are Christ's ; and Christ is 
 God's." 1 
 
 " Wherefore . . . be ye steadfast, immovable, 
 always abounding in the work of the Lord, 
 forasmuch as ye know that your labour is 
 not in vain in the Lord." 2 
 
 1 1 Cor. iii. 22. 2 1 Cor. xv. 58. 
 
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