THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Eastern Star Home
 
 C^ Z-^Lc^i. 
 
 ry JifiW J^v"^- 
 
 (/ft,*
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE
 
 Etbtng for tlje Jfuture 
 
 A STUDY IN THE ETHICS OF 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ROTHWELL SLATER, PH.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ROCHESTER 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 cbe fiitocnji&e press CambriDge 
 1916
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY JOHM ROTHWELL SLATER 
 ALL RIGHTS RKSERVKD 
 
 Published October iQttt
 
 DEDICATED TO A GREAT TEACHER 
 
 Who loved the past, labored for the present, and 
 lived for the future : 
 
 WILLIAM RAINEY HARPER 
 1856-1906 
 
 " Our low life was the level's and the night's, 
 He's for the morning." 
 
 " Greet the unseen with a cheer." 
 
 AVE MAGISTER 
 SALVE IMMORTALIS 
 
 BENE SIT TIBI 
 VALE UBICUMOJJE LABORAS 
 
 TIBI POST DECEM ANNOS 
 
 INVISO INAUDITO HAUD INCOGNITO 
 
 DISCIPULI CONCLAMANTES GRATULAMUR 
 
 867050
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE
 
 THE JOURNEY 
 
 As we rush, as ive rush in the train, 
 
 The trees and the houses go TV heeling back, 
 
 But the starry heavens above the plain 
 Come flying on our track. 
 
 All the beautiful stars of the sky, 
 
 The silver doves of the forest of Night, 
 
 Over the dull earth swarm and Jly, 
 Companions of our flight. 
 
 We will rush ever on without fear; 
 
 Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet I 
 For we carry the Heavens with us, dear, 
 While the Earth slips from our feet I 
 
 JAMES THOMSON 
 (From Sunday at Hampstead}
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 WITHIN a few years all of us will be 
 thinking without brains, feeling with- 
 out nerves, seeing and hearing without 
 eyes or ears. Lacking hands and pock- 
 ets, we can carry nothing with us, not 
 even credentials of good character. All 
 that we shall have will be what we 
 are. Stripped of all possessions, tradi- 
 tions, and apologies, we shall, so it 
 seems now, find ourselves somewhat 
 at a loss to explain ourselves to the 
 universe. 
 
 Yet somehow, somewhere, we shall 
 be very much alive, more alive than 
 we can now imagine. Let us not al- 
 i
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 ways speak about our souls when we 
 contemplate the future. Your soul is 
 yourself, more or less imperfectly pos- 
 sessed of a body which is sure to elude 
 you in the end. Some little fiber snaps, 
 some cell or bit of tissue protests five 
 minutes too long against its ancient 
 enemies, and suddenly a curious bit of 
 machinery is stopped forever. In the 
 temple of life there hangs a precious 
 lamp, carefully tended for these many 
 years by the unseen ministers of being; 
 but now its silver cord is loosed, its 
 golden bowl is broken. In the last 
 brief flare of that fallen lamp you see 
 your last of darkness. Those about you 
 had been shaking their heads at one 
 another, but now their heads all nod 
 together. You wonder what they have 
 found to agree upon after all this dis- 
 2
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 sent. Somebody says, "He's gone"; 
 but instead of that, they are suddenly 
 gone, and you find yourself alone. 
 
 "Very well," you say to yourself, 
 " those nerves and arteries were n't of 
 much use to me anyway for the last 
 five years. Most of what I really ac- 
 complished had to be done in spite of 
 them, for they were always quarreling. 
 Now for a free life at last. Good-bye, 
 dust and ashes. Your feeble spark 's 
 gone out. I thought it was night when 
 I turned away from your cold hearth, 
 but when I open the door I find myself 
 outdoors in the sun. Come, let's be 
 off." 
 
 Now there are many ways of look- 
 ing at this inevitable prospect. There 
 is the fatalistic way as Edgar says, 
 in King Lear, 
 
 3
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 ** Men must endure 
 
 Their going hence, even as their coming hither ; 
 Ripeness is all." 
 
 There is the way of curious and 
 somber speculation, the anatomy of 
 melancholy, Hamlet's way: 
 
 ** What dreams may come 
 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil 
 Must give us pause." 
 
 There is the way of studied and 
 forced indifference, the way of those 
 who say, " One life at a time." Walter 
 Savage Landor, on his seventy-fifth 
 birthday, wrote these proudly pagan 
 lines: 
 
 "I strove with none, for none was worth my 
 
 strife. 
 
 Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art. 
 I warmed my hands before the fire of life ; 
 It sinks, and I am ready to depart." 
 
 4
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 This attitude, which seeks to be stoi- 
 cal, grows morbid by and by. There 
 is an age when old friends begin to 
 drop off faster than new ones come. 
 "All, all are gone, the old familiar 
 faces." Then comes the time when you 
 go round the house at twilight, locking 
 up unused rooms until you are fairly 
 burdened with the keys, and are tempted 
 to throw them away. 
 
 There is the way of religious exalta- 
 tion, the way of martyr and saint and 
 apostle " to be absent from the body, 
 and to be present with the Lord." While 
 for the Christian it ought to be true 
 that " to die is gain," the general senti- 
 ment of the Christian world at the 
 present time is not altogether in keep- 
 ing with scriptural teaching at this 
 point. If Christians really believe that 
 5
 
 I LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 death is only an incident in eternal life, 
 separating the visible world from an 
 invisible world of equal reality and su- 
 perior opportunity, they have a strange 
 way of showing it. Mourning is just as 
 black, sorrow is often just as blind, 
 among Christians as among those who 
 profess no such comfortable faith. But 
 the fact remains that, except when the 
 sharpness of personal grief prevents, 
 the Christian way of looking at man's 
 mortality is a hopeful way. At Easter 
 we celebrate, not the Pauline doctrine 
 of the resurrection of the body, which 
 is incomprehensible to many in this 
 age, but the Platonic doctrine of the 
 immortality of the soul, which has 
 quietly taken its place as if it had always 
 been a part of the Christian view of the 
 future. 
 
 6
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 And finally, the last way of looking 
 at this mystery is the way of supersti- 
 tion on the one hand, and of so-called 
 psychical research on the other. One 
 hesitates to class them together, for any 
 fair-minded observer must be aware 
 how carefully the leaders in psychical 
 research strive to avoid those elements 
 of credulity, fear, and commercial ex- 
 ploitation in the attitude of the seeker 
 toward the unknown which make up 
 what we call superstition. Psychical 
 research deserves the respect even of 
 those who see no use in it and have no 
 use for it; superstition does not. Yet 
 the two have this in common, that they 
 tend to subordinate the plain duties, 
 the main business of life, to a study of 
 that which is hidden. They are both 
 absorbed in an inquisitive and over- 
 7
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 anxious search for whispers in the 
 darkness. 
 
 One sits in his little amateur wire- 
 less laboratory, listening for wandering 
 flashes from the ships at sea; and now 
 and then he hears the cross-currents 
 crackling in the air from amateurs like 
 himself. There are many of them " lis- 
 tening in," and some of them, he sus- 
 pects, sending out spurious messages. 
 Sometimes in a great storm there is a 
 strange humming in his ears, as if un- 
 known, powerful currents of the upper 
 air were interfering with his aerial. 
 And once, when the night was very 
 still, he thought he heard one of the 
 great Government stations on the Isth- 
 mus calling Arlington ; but whether the 
 call came from the land or from the 
 ocean side, he could not tell. He only 
 8
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 knows that the air is full of voices, and 
 that for most of them his little toy ap- 
 paratus is totally inadequate. He does 
 not conclude that there is nothing there, 
 but rather that there is too much for 
 man as yet to comprehend, or even to 
 apprehend. In other words, those who 
 have looked longest and most patiently 
 into the alleged phenomena of psychi- 
 cal research are, on the one hand, the 
 readiest to admit the marvels of in- 
 tercommunication between the minds 
 of living men across wide spaces, and, 
 on the other hand, profoundly skepti- 
 cal of the existence of any real evi- 
 dence for communication with the 
 spirit world. 
 
 Now it may be interesting for once 
 to dismiss all these ways of looking at 
 the future the fatalistic way, the raor- 
 
 9
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 bid, agnostic way, the stoic, the devout, 
 the occult and to consider this most 
 tremendous of all subjects from a new 
 angle.
 
 II 
 
 UPON the threshold of such an in- 
 quiry, does any one have the feeling 
 that these thoughts are uncanny, un- 
 wholesome, unwise? Is it morbid for 
 an immortal being to look more than 
 thirty or forty years ahead? We do 
 that when we are taking out life insur- 
 ance, or making a long lease, or writing 
 a will. In youth we feel immortal, and 
 will have no bounds to our domain. 
 Can it be that as years come and wis- 
 dom widens, the wise man ought to 
 accustom himself to shorter instead of 
 longer views? Why climb, except for 
 the hope of seeing far? Hamlet, though 
 not unaware of the danger of "thinking 
 too precisely on the event," yet speaks 
 ii
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 with assurance of the duty of man to 
 face the future without dismay: 
 
 " Sure he that made us with such large discourse, 
 Looking before and after, gave us not 
 That capability and god-like reason 
 To fust in us unused." 
 
 Or, if it be not morbid, is it, as some 
 seem to think, irreverent to speculate 
 beyond the meager revelation of con- 
 ventional religion? Is it profane to turn 
 from the earthly altar, where we think 
 we worship God, to gaze up that wind- 
 ing stairway by which our friends have 
 ascended into the unknown? Is there 
 not also a great altar there ? 
 
 We find it profoundly stimulating to 
 study in anthropology and in history the 
 question, whence we have come. Why 
 should it be either dispiriting or unspir- 
 itual to study, wherever and however we 
 12
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 may, the equally interesting question, 
 whither we are going? In this world of 
 destiny much depends upon whether we 
 stand weakly waiting for destiny to come 
 and find us, or march boldly forward to 
 meet it in the open. Lack of complete 
 information about the future is no reason 
 for indifference, nor is the lack of ade- 
 quate means of getting information. We 
 are all looking further than we can see, 
 hoping more than we can prove, and at- 
 tempting more than we can finish; if we 
 are not, we are dead already, and some- 
 body had better tell us so. At sea the 
 lookout ahead is doubled in foggy 
 weather. What a fool that captain would 
 be who called in the watch because the 
 heavy curtain of ocean mist shut out the 
 horizon. In our attitude toward all the 
 other secrets of the universe, the less we
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 can see the harder we look. Here alone, 
 because we can prove nothing, we are 
 asked to refrain from reasonable infer- 
 ence and useful hypothesis. 
 
 This demand for a prohibition of all 
 speculative inquiry concerning the future 
 must be denied. We are not to shut our 
 eyes when the way grows obscure; that 
 is neitherfaith nor common sense. " Man 
 goeth to his long home." He knows it, 
 and has always known it. He knows not 
 where that home maybe, but he knows 
 that he is a pilgrim. It is useless for him 
 to pretend otherwise. Austin Dobson 
 gives us the picture in his couplet: 
 
 " Time goes, you say ; ah, no, 
 Alas, time stays ; we go." 
 
 But why "alas"? Lorado Taft, our 
 idealist sculptor, sees no melancholy in the 
 poet's verse. He has made it the theme of 
 H
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 a great sculptural group which will some 
 day find a place in Washington Park, 
 Chicago, at the western end of the broad 
 boulevard called the Midway Plaisance. 
 His Fountain of Time, of which models 
 have already been exhibited, will repre- 
 sent the heroic figure of Time overlooking 
 the vast, hurrying procession of mankind. 
 Out of ajetof waterriseinfantforms, who 
 turn their childish footsteps after the 
 youths and maidens that have preceded 
 them. In the center of the long column 
 are warriors, horsemen, strong men and 
 beautiful women, all marching forward 
 with heads erect and banners floating. 
 Beyond them are the bending shoulders 
 of the aged and the halting footsteps of 
 those who are about to sink back to 
 the earth from which they came. But 
 all, all the children, the youths, the 
 
 15
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 heroes, and the grandsires every one 
 are gazing forward toward some goal 
 they cannot see. This vision it is that 
 keeps them marching; and for it, we 
 may be sure, Time envies them their 
 eternity. 
 
 It is not the brief cycle of the body, 
 dust to dust, but this long straight line 
 of the soul's vision, that will make Lo- 
 rado Taft's fountain a work of prophetic 
 genius when it is some day embodied 
 in marble; not the dust, rising in tran- 
 sient foam and falling in vanishing 
 spray, but the spirit that endures as 
 seeing that which is invisible; man the 
 unconquerable, man the imperishable, 
 man the explorer and the heir of eter- 
 nity. 
 
 " Time goes, you say ; ah, no, 
 Thank God, time stays ; we go." 
 
 16
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 There is then no theoretical ground 
 upon which we need hesitate to consider 
 the subject of living for the future. If 
 there were any practical ground, it would 
 be the fact that under a superseded the- 
 ology Christian people once thought so 
 much of the future that they forgot the 
 present and its duties. That is no longer 
 true. The pendulum has swung so far 
 the other way that to listen to some 
 of our preachers one would almost 
 think they were as much ashamed of 
 heaven as they have long been politely 
 skeptical of hell. The gospel of the 
 kingdom is now so nearly identified in 
 some quarters with model tenements, 
 district nurses, and eugenics, that one 
 wonders if hygiene and holiness are the 
 same thing. Religion has done so much 
 during the past thirty years to make this 
 17
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 world a better place to live in that some 
 of us have become curiously indifferent 
 to the relative values of sociology and 
 character. Cleanliness is indeed next 
 to godliness, whatever the mediaeval 
 church may have thought about it; but 
 it does not follow that a daily bath is 
 a complete substitute for the holy 
 communion. 
 
 It is to be hoped that Christianity may 
 succeed in bringing into the industrial 
 world enough of unselfishness (or of en- 
 lightened selfishness, whichever it may 
 be) to insure the success of profit-shar- 
 ing and the living wage and other cor- 
 rectives for economic inequalities. But 
 we may find then that neither employers 
 nor employed have thereby added mate- 
 rially to the store of heavenly treasures. 
 No one doubts that to abolish bad drain- 
 18
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 age or improve the milk supply is a 
 Christian act; but it may have less than 
 we suppose in common with the real 
 elevation of mankind. Both in sanitation 
 and in scientific and mechanical effi- 
 ciency this age is immeasurably superior 
 to all preceding centuries. Yet it has 
 not been shown that in intellectual effi- 
 ciency or spiritual quality we can even 
 equal the past. 
 
 Such reflections diminish in no sense 
 the value of the social emphasis in con- 
 temporary Christianity, but they do lead 
 us to inquire whether the loss of the long 
 look forward and upward is not to be 
 regretted. Let us agree that our ances- 
 tors thought too much about the future 
 and too little about the present. Let us 
 agree that for practical purposes it is 
 best to live chiefly as if we were prepar- 
 
 19
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 ing to leave the earth a better place than 
 we found it. But let us also give our- 
 selves the pleasure now and then of a 
 brief excursion into the world where 
 we shall all be when men celebrate 
 the centenary of the great war, and of 
 the great peace that we hope shall fol- 
 low. What sort of world must it be? 
 And what bearing has that world upon 
 this? 
 
 John Ruskin complained, in the intro- 
 duction to " The Crown of Wild Olive," 
 of "the difficulty of knowing whether 
 to address one's audience as believing 
 or not believing in any other world than 
 this." He said : 
 
 " If you address any average modern 
 English company as believing in an eter- 
 nal life, and then endeavor to draw any 
 conclusions from this assumed belief as 
 20
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 to their present business, they will forth- 
 with tell you that i What you say is very 
 beautiful, but it is not practical.' If, on 
 the contrary, you frankly address them 
 as unbelievers in eternal life, and try to 
 draw any consequences from that unbe- 
 lief they immediately hold you for an 
 accursed person, and shake off the dust 
 from their feet at you. . . . The dilemma 
 is unavoidable. Men must either here- 
 after live or hereafter die; fate may 
 be bravely met, and conduct wisely or- 
 dered, on either expectation, but never in 
 hesitation between ungrasped hope and 
 unconfronted fear. We usually believe 
 in immortality so far as to avoid prepara- 
 tion for death ; and in mortality so far as 
 to avoid preparation for anything after 
 death. Whereas the wise man will at 
 least hold himself ready for one or other 
 21
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 of two events of which one or other 
 is inevitable, and will have all things 
 ended in order for his sleep, or left in 
 order for his awakening."
 
 Ill 
 
 IN the following inquiry, which as- 
 sumes the belief in immortality as a 
 starting-point, images derived from the 
 Scriptures will be deliberately avoided, 
 for the sake of whatever freshness of ap- 
 prehension may come from studying an 
 old subject from a new angle. Further- 
 more, the speculations of spiritualism, 
 theosophy, and other systems that have 
 their center in the invisible world will 
 not be examined or criticised. Our pur- 
 pose is not philosophical but practical; 
 not metaphysical but ethical. There are 
 several things about the future life that 
 seem absolutely certain, provided we 
 believe in personal immortality at all. 
 That belief, of course, is a matter not of 
 
 23
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 proof but of faith or of intuition; and the 
 correctness of it is not an issue in the 
 presentdiscussion. Readers who expect 
 to find here any arguments in support of 
 immortality itself will be disappointed. 
 But readers who believe in personal im- 
 mortality, without being able to attach 
 to that belief any sense of reality or any 
 practical consequences, may perhaps be 
 led into certain inferences, conjectures, 
 and hopes, that will be not without in- 
 terest for the intellectual and the moral 
 life.' 
 
 1 Although the inquiry Is not metaphysical, two 
 philosophical objections are likely to occur to some 
 readers of these pages. In the first place, the language 
 used may at times seem to imply a dualistic view of the 
 universe, in which matter and spirit, or mind, are re- 
 garded as two separate and more or less antagonistic 
 entities. Such a misapprehension of the writer's posi- 
 tion would be due to the limitations of language in 
 dealing with fundamental questions in a non-technical 
 way. It is not easy to see what part that which we 
 colloquially call "matter" can have in a spiritual 
 
 24
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 Our reasoning will be altogether de- 
 ductive or a priori inference from the 
 
 world ; and from this point of view a spiritual being, 
 deprived of his physical body and continuing to exist, 
 might be thought of as pure spirit unrelated to matter. 
 But of course the universe is really not a duality but a 
 unit ; matter is probably only the manifestation of the 
 divine as Force, while mind is the manifestation of the 
 divine as Consciousness. And a new organization of 
 forces, dominated by laws partly unknown to us at pres- 
 ent, may serve the individual soul in the future life as 
 his means of impression and expression, his "spiritual 
 body." Instead of a greater gap than now appears to 
 exist between mind and matter, there may be a higher 
 synthesis. The subject involves so many profound 
 metaphysical problems, over which wise men have 
 pondered for ages, that one could not hope to do more 
 here than to enter a caveat against the charge of dual- 
 ism. It is perhaps unnecessary to add an even more 
 emphatic disclaimer of pantheism. In view of the de- 
 liberate avoidance in this essay of Christian doctrines 
 about human destiny, it may be well, however, to say 
 that the whole discussion is based on the reality of 
 what we call personality, and that personality implies 
 a personal God. 
 
 Again, the argument from analogy, here so widely 
 used, may be attacked on the ground that we are so 
 utterly ignorant of the nature of the invisible world 
 that no attempted analogy can carry any force, not 
 even a probability or a plausible hypothesis. The ob- 
 jection is a grave one ; and if anything approaching 
 philosophical demonstration were here attempted, it 
 
 25
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 assumed and implied meanings of the 
 two words "personal immortality." 
 That these speculations can ever be 
 checked by any sort of credible confir- 
 mation from the other side is highly 
 doubtful. There is no commoner obser- 
 vation made by those who examine the 
 alleged communications from the spirit 
 world than that their uniform triviality 
 forbids us to consider them seriously, 
 even if no other question were raised. 
 In the main, the criticism is justified. 1 
 While scientific investigation of the so- 
 called psychic phenomena is both inter- 
 would be fatal. But we start with the postulate of per- 
 sonal immortality, and must inevitably attach to the 
 terms such meanings as the present world gives us. If 
 one rejects the postulate, and prefers to substitute for 
 personal immortality either annihilation or a merging 
 of the individual soul into the divine, he will of course 
 not care to read beyond this point. The argument from 
 analogy, precarious as it is, is the only form of reason- 
 ing that can yield even speculative results here. 
 1 But see below, page 129, footnote. 
 
 26
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 esting and indirectly valuable to the 
 world, we seem not yet to have derived 
 from it any atom of proved fact regard- 
 ing the nature of immortality. Indeed, 
 many who would be glad to think other- 
 wise feel obliged to deny that any con- 
 firmation of immortality itself can be 
 found by the unbiased mind in all the 
 curious records of more than thirty years 
 of organized collection of data in this 
 field. Such fascinating books as that 
 of the late F. W. H. Myers on " Human 
 Personality and Its Survival of Bodily 
 Death," and Henry Holt's "On the 
 Cosmic Relations," derive their chief 
 interest for many a thoughtful reader 
 from their searching and often brilliant 
 analysis of the inner life as lived in the 
 body, rather than from any of the occult 
 marvels which they relate or the theo- 
 27
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 ries based thereon. After all such read- 
 ing one is left with a disappointed, but 
 still with an open mind. Hamlet, who 
 was a charter member of the Society for 
 Psychical Research, and lived and died 
 in its service, has summed it all up in 
 the familiar lines, 
 
 " There are more things in heaven and earth, 
 
 Horatio, 
 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 
 
 But in this discussion nothing will 
 be based on occult speculation. We 
 are here interested to examine solely 
 those implications concerning immortal- 
 ity which arise from what we know of 
 personality and personal life. Assum- 
 ing that we shall survive as persons, 
 what follows?
 
 IV 
 
 IN the first place, our future life will 
 not be idle. Instead of repeating the 
 rather trite and tasteless witticisms at 
 the expense of a heaven where rest and 
 worship are eternal, we may simply ask 
 for a candid answer to these questions: 
 " Do you want immortality with nothing 
 to do? If.it were offered you on those 
 terms, would you not find a way of re- 
 fusing it? Would you not rather be ex- 
 tinguished than exist forever in a world 
 full of idle saints?" 
 
 The questions answer themselves. 
 Life, the life of the soul as well as of 
 the body, is in its very nature rhythmi- 
 cal. It is made up not altogether either 
 of effort or of relaxation. There is the 
 29
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 work and the play and the rest. After 
 the sleep there is the waking, after the 
 hour of calm and contemplation the day 
 of struggle and of victory. However it 
 may be with the oriental mystic, reli- 
 gion for us is only half renunciation and 
 communion. The other half is the reali- 
 zation of the higher self through effort. 
 If we are assuming a "personal immor- 
 tality," both terms of the assumption 
 forbid an idle heaven. For personality 
 demands effort to resist the constant 
 tendencies toward degeneration and im- 
 personality; and immortality, which is 
 only another name for life, must, if it 
 be anything like the life ive know, 
 represent a permanent resistance to the 
 forces of spiritual mortality. There must, 
 if the soul really lives hereafter and is 
 not merely preserved or embalmed in an 
 3
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 arrested state, be an endless spiritual 
 integration, in order to prevent the far 
 easier disintegration that so easily over- 
 takes us. This is by no means a sinister 
 suggestion that we may have to carry 
 into another world our weary struggle 
 against moral failure and collapse; it is 
 only a reminder that if heaven be, as 
 most of us think, a place of moral prog- 
 ress and improvement, it must also be 
 a place of moral effort. In some form 
 or other, the discipline and the delight of 
 work must not be altogether lacking. 
 
 What a disappointing heaven it would 
 be, if we should find when we got used 
 to it that all the really interesting work 
 belonged to the angels; that whenever 
 a messenger was to be sent somewhere 
 to avert a danger or to announce a joy, 
 the task was assigned to an impossibly
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 perfect being who had never lived on 
 earth, and so had never really done any- 
 thing to earn the coveted privilege of 
 work! If this sounds flippant, one may 
 put it in more decorous words, but some- 
 how the question must be answered : " Is 
 it not certain that a future life worth 
 having will give us something to do that 
 is worth doing, and supply us with the 
 means to do it?"
 
 V 
 
 IN the second place, if the future life 
 is not to be an idle life, its activities 
 must be such as belong to the realm of 
 the spirit. 
 
 By the spirit (or soul) will be meant 
 throughout this discussion all of the 
 mind that can survive physical death. 
 We are not here raising the grave 
 question how any of the mind can re- 
 main after the loss of the brain, which 
 has seemed to be its organ. That in it- 
 self is a staggering thing to believe, but 
 most of us do believe it, nevertheless. 
 We believe it as a matter of faith; and 
 the whole of the present inquiry is noth- 
 ing more than an attempt, not to defend 
 that faith by reasoning, but to apply 
 
 33
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 reason to the analysis, the illustration, 
 the imaginative development of a belief 
 which must itself be taken for granted. 
 A very large part of the mystery and 
 gloom with which some religious people 
 surround this whole subject is due to an 
 untenable and impossible psychology. 
 Many persons have a feeling, which 
 they have never put into words, and 
 would perhaps be slow to confess, that 
 somehow the only part of them that can 
 survive death is the specifically religious 
 instinct. They think of the soul as that 
 part of their total personality which is 
 supposed to be active chiefly on Sunday 
 mornings, and when they are saying 
 their prayers and reading their Bibles. 
 The notion is about on a par with the 
 idea of heaven that most of us acquired 
 in childhood, as a place up in the sky 
 
 34
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 near the stars. Both are illogical survivals 
 from a type of religion which has itself 
 well nigh disappeared, wherein spiritual 
 experience was divorced from daily life. 
 It is unthinkable to-day that there can 
 be such a thing as a soul or spirit in 
 man which is independent of his intelli- 
 gence, his feeling, his will. 
 
 The fact that the Greek and the Latin 
 languages have separate words for soul 
 and spirit, as well as various words for 
 the different functions of the mind, has 
 tended to confuse and embarrass our 
 modern thought. In popular usage, and 
 in this present discussion, the words 
 "soul" and " spirit" are practically syn- 
 onymous. It is possible, even in Eng- 
 lish, to make a distinction between them 
 in a philosophical vocabulary, but un- 
 necessary and over-subtle in ordinary 
 
 35
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 speech. But all of us feel that between 
 them on the one hand and the word 
 " mind " on the other there is some sort 
 of difference. When we speak of the 
 mind, we use it as a collective name for 
 all those thoughts, feelings, and volitions 
 which appear in the stream of conscious- 
 ness at one time or another ; many of them 
 trivial, many of them almost or entirely 
 automatic, many of them entirely de- 
 pendent on the bodily functions. When 
 we speak of the soul, we do not think, 
 as the ancients did, of some subtle vital 
 principle or essence. We do not think 
 of the spirit as a breath or a vapor. We 
 think rather, in either case, of that which 
 is dominant in personality, the higher 
 feelings, the higher ideals, the immedi- 
 ate intuitions of truth, and most of all, 
 the will. 
 
 36
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 It is both interesting and important 
 to observe that when we speak of the 
 " souls " of men whose higher feelings 
 are very low, whose ideals are sensual, 
 whose intuitions of truth, if they have 
 any, are rudimentary, and whose domi- 
 nant control is not will but impulse, we 
 mean by that word their assumed capa- 
 city for a spiritual growth which can 
 arise only from a mental stimulus. 
 About all the "soul" such a man 
 seems to have is a dormant and unde- 
 veloped will, which can be aroused 
 only through his dormant recollections, 
 his perverted imagination, his blunted 
 feelings. In him the soul is apparently 
 only a very small and insignificant part 
 of the mind, and derives its supreme 
 importance in the moral world from 
 the mysterious power of the hidden 
 37
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 seeds of goodness to germinate and 
 grow in any soil. 
 
 What we must for the moment dwell 
 upon is that those higher aspects of 
 consciousness, those factors of person- 
 ality, which we call the soul, and be- 
 lieve to be immortal, can by no means 
 be separated from what we call the 
 mind. Remember how closely the dawn 
 of religious experience in the normal 
 life is associated with the physical and 
 psychical changes of childhood and 
 adolescence. Consider how inseparably 
 the spiritual experiences of mature life 
 are connected on the side of religious 
 aspiration with such mental experi- 
 ences as those of imagination and mem- 
 ory, in the recollection of past events 
 and in the emotional effects upon us of 
 poetry, music, painting, and architec- 
 
 38
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 ture; and equally connected on the 
 side of conduct with the duties, the 
 problems, the physical and mental crises 
 of the individual and of society. A 
 soul which had lost all its powers of 
 contact with the rich and wonderful 
 treasures of memory and imagination, 
 which could no longer perceive and 
 conceive and reason as we do (or in 
 some better way), would be no friend 
 of ours. He might be an angel, but we 
 do not want to be angels. We want to 
 be ourselves.
 
 VI 
 
 IF it is the whole man, the real per- 
 son, that survives the death of the body, 
 then it ought to be evident to any one 
 that an immortality which preserves 
 only the one religious function of ado- 
 ration or worship is impossible, and, to 
 the healthy mind, undesirable. If "con- 
 gregations ne'er break up, and Sab- 
 baths have no end," many of us besides 
 the traditional small boy would ask to 
 be excused. If we could not look 
 forward to Monday morning, we had 
 rather stop at Saturday night. 
 
 Frank speech on this subject may in- 
 deed offend sensitive ears long used to 
 the traditional platitudes. It may also 
 trouble the souls of those whose inner 
 40
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 life is so wholly and genuinely saintly 
 that the heaven of Milton or of Dante 
 is really thinkable and congenial to 
 them. All that one can reply to the 
 one class is that if we had more frank- 
 ness about our future it would be much 
 better for our present; and to the other, 
 that if we were all saints, the saintly 
 future of devout mediaeval imagination 
 would doubtless seem as attractive to 
 us as it did to the monkish author of 
 "Jerusalem the Golden." A Cardinal 
 Newman can write, and his rapt dis- 
 ciples can understand, a "Dream of 
 Gerontius." But if we really believe, 
 as we seem to, that the invisible world 
 is full of people who were not while 
 on earth primarily given to religious 
 ecstasy, but rather to the plodding pur- 
 suit of homely duty, we must make a
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 place for them incur speculations. And 
 as these plain people are in the majority 
 in this world, they can hardly be treated 
 as exceptional in the next. 
 
 It cannot be irreverent to try to con- 
 ceive of a sort of heaven where our 
 dear friends the beloved physician, the 
 busy man of affairs, the scholarly sci- 
 entist, the soldier, the college athlete, 
 the restless boy, the home-loving mother, 
 the playful child, have been happy and 
 busy through all the long years since 
 they left us behind. If we are to think 
 of them all as living still their own 
 lives, doing their own best work, play- 
 ing their own best play, being their 
 own best selves, then we must think of 
 them as having carried with them all 
 of memory, all of reason, all of the curi- 
 osities and interests and sympathies and 
 42
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 helpful ministries of whatever sort that 
 made them what we loved and honored 
 here. That is why we are led to think 
 that the spirit which is immortal is 
 nothing less than the mind, minus only 
 that part of mental life clearly tempo- 
 rary because dependent on the body.
 
 VII 
 
 BUT to say that the spirit is nothing 
 less than the mind with the excep- 
 tion just noted is not to say that the 
 spirit is nothing more than the mind 
 as we know it. If it were, what could 
 we hope for the future of those whose 
 minds have given way under the strain 
 of life, or those others whose minds 
 were from the beginning clouded and 
 incapable of education? Have they no 
 souls ? Is there no immortality for the 
 innocent victims of disease, the helpless 
 tools of crime ? These darker mysteries 
 might well appal us if we were to make 
 the fatal error of identifying soul and 
 brain, or brain function. But who that 
 has not witnessed some of the miracles 
 44
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 of subconscious life suddenly brought 
 to the surface in hours of crisis can 
 realize how much more the spirit may 
 be than the conscious mind as we ordi- 
 narily know it? What vast reservoirs 
 of spiritual sympathy and endurance 
 may not lie hidden beneath the com- 
 monplaces of our little days; what won- 
 ders of patience beneath the worn-out 
 nerves, what hidden purity below the 
 polluted surface, what undiscovered 
 heroism in the defeated, what unused 
 strength in the weak, what hopes of sal- 
 vation in the lost, what light behind the 
 darkness, what life within the dead? 
 
 This hidden life, this real life of the 
 soul, which we see here only as by 
 lightning-flashes in a storm, is a won- 
 derful thing. Life itself is the great sur- 
 prise, the unguessed secret, " the undis- 
 
 45
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 covered country from whose bourne no 
 traveler returns." For all those who 
 really understand life have left it, and 
 left it without revealing its ultimate 
 meaning. If we could read all its mys- 
 teries, we could have heaven here and 
 now. The human mind is the true Apoc- 
 alypse of God, and out of it or nothing 
 must be made the New Jerusalem. It 
 is too precious to be lost, too full of 
 worth to be laid away like an outworn 
 garment, too eternal to be altogether 
 bound to Time. 
 
 "All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of 
 
 good shall exist, 
 Not its semblance, but itself ; no beauty, nor 
 
 good, nor power 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives 
 
 for the melodist 
 When eternity affirms the conception of an 
 
 hour."
 
 VIII 
 
 WE have already reasoned from the 
 nature of personality that the future life 
 must be an active, not an idle life, and 
 that its activities must be such as be- 
 long to the spirit. We have enlarged 
 the vague popular conception of the 
 spirit to include all that is highest in 
 the mind. Now we must inquire what 
 kind of activities can belong to a spirit 
 without a physical body. 
 
 Notice that it is the physical body 
 only that we must learn to do without 
 Who can doubt that the spirit will be 
 somehow equipped with senses more 
 acute, and means of expression more 
 accurate and more powerful, than any 
 of which we know? A spirit able to 
 
 47
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 know but not to tell, able to wish but 
 not to do, sensitive to force but incapa- 
 ble of exerting force, would deserve 
 our pity, not our admiration. If the im- 
 mortals, in the presence of mightier 
 powers than we have yet perceived, 
 lack even such humble efficiency as 
 goes with human hands and lips, they 
 are but souls in prison; and that we 
 may be quite sure they are not. For 
 immortality is only another name for 
 freedom. But of what sort the " spirit- 
 ual body " may be, what forces it may 
 control, what limitations it may have, 
 what relations it may sustain to the 
 world of time and space which is all 
 we know, are questions quite beyond 
 the scope of this discussion. Knowing 
 only that the physical body must be left 
 behind, we can still speculate not un-
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 profitably on the question how far a 
 spirit can be thought of as active with- 
 out a literal voice for speech or a fleshly 
 hand for labor. 
 
 It is not so hard a question as it was 
 a generation ago. We live in the age of 
 wireless the wireless telegraph, the 
 wireless telephone, wireless transmis- 
 sion of electrical power. When the hu- 
 man voice can be heard from the banks 
 of the Potomac to the Eiffel Tower, and 
 its echoes roll half way round the world 
 to Honolulu, telepathy no longer seems 
 an impossible violation of natural law. 
 Force acting across space without any 
 medium save the hypothetical ether that 
 no chemist will ever find is a common- 
 place to-day. Mind acting across space 
 through the same medium, or without 
 any medium save mind itself, is not so 
 
 49
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 wild a dream as it seemed even twenty 
 years ago. Much is here possible that 
 is yet unproved, and perhaps unprova- 
 ble. So far as the evidence is concerned, 
 all that can be said is that occasional 
 genuine instances of minds acting upon 
 minds at a long distance have not been 
 plausibly explained as coincidences ; and 
 that mind-reading at short distances, 
 however explained, is accepted as a fact 
 by nearly all who have themselves wit- 
 nessed the phenomena. 
 
 But what I have reference to here is 
 something much less obscure and less 
 debatable. You get a letter from your 
 friend, and your whole life is changed. 
 Changed by what? By the letter? By the 
 ink and the paper? Absurd. Changed 
 entirely by your own motives and per- 
 sonal history, which really had deter- 
 So
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 mined your destiny even before the let- 
 ter came? Equally absurd. Changed, 
 then, by your own powerful image in 
 memory and imagination of your friend, 
 freshly raised to the focus of conscious- 
 ness by the stimulus of the letter so, 
 really, changed by yourself after all? 
 Often, of course, it is so. But who has 
 not felt, if only once or twice, the in- 
 visible hand upon the shoulder, the 
 inaudible whisper in the soul, that is 
 something altogether outside the self, 
 that commands the self, and draws it 
 away from the compelling past and to- 
 ward the mysterious future ? Who does 
 not know the difference between the 
 commonplace feeling, " I am thinking 
 of my friend," and the rare and utterly 
 different feeling, " He is thinking of 
 me"?/
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 May one go further, and tread upon 
 holy ground? May one ask you what 
 you knew to be true when you found, 
 after the gates of silence had closed 
 upon your friend, some written word 
 of his meant for your eye alone, some 
 last message, some treasured memento, 
 some ultimate revelation of unsuspected 
 love ? Could you say only in that hour, 
 " So he thought last month, last year, 
 so he loved, so he hoped, so he wished 
 to help, but could not then because he 
 feared to be misunderstood"? Some of 
 us can say more. We can say, "So he 
 thinks and loves and hopes now. So 
 he helps me now, from those hills 
 whence cometh all my help." 
 
 It is* not only of the divine that we 
 may use Matthew Arnold's phrase, " a 
 power not ourselves that makes for 
 52
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 righteousness." There is an influence 
 that comes to us unawares, a hush 
 of the spirit, a high summons like 
 a bugle, a solemn reminder like a bell; 
 a strange joy that sends us singing 
 through the day. These are the things 
 we feel and do not tell. There ought 
 to be many things we feel and do 
 not tell, for only so perhaps can we 
 keep well filled the spiritual reser- 
 voirs that feed the streams of life. May 
 it not be that the things which they 
 who have gone from us feel and do not 
 tell are among the things that keep us 
 going? May it not be that those hours 
 of exaltation to which we look forward 
 and backward along our way are in part 
 our times of sharing the rich, deep wis- 
 dom of the dead? 
 
 Who knows, indeed, but that the rea- 
 
 53
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 son why the immortals speak to us only 
 through their eloquent silence is that 
 they have too much to say? What have 
 words to do with perfect love? At 
 Christmas time, when something of 
 childish magic comes back to grace 
 the little festivals of the home, when 
 sparkling snow and twinkling candles 
 lighten the eyes of old and young 
 together, may it not be that there is 
 one among us whom we see not, who 
 is not known in the breaking of bread, 
 who stands beside the hearth and beside 
 the table, and hallows all, as indeed she 
 used to do, and has always done ? 
 
 At Easter, your soul rises again. Who 
 lifts it? Are there not many hands that 
 beckon, and many voices that swell 
 your resurrection choral ? Has not God 
 invisible helpers, who know best how to 
 
 54
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 reach your heart and mine and make us 
 better? "This corruptible must put on 
 incorruption, and this mortal must put 
 on immortality." When shall we begin 
 to put it on, and how, if there be not some 
 few who already wear the white gar- 
 ments of eternity, and can show us how 
 to weave heaven out of earth? It may 
 be fancy and it may be fact, that some 
 of us, if we are ever saved, will be 
 saved by the patience of our unseen 
 friends. 
 
 Of the activities possible, then, in a 
 spiritual world, the first and perhaps 
 the greatest may be the silent influence 
 for good upon other spirits, in both 
 worlds. Influence for good is a very 
 broad term. It may mean the enlighten- 
 ment of error, the reinforcement of 
 weakness, the steady, persistent re- 
 
 55
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 minder of past privilege and aspiration. 
 Matthew Arnold understood this when 
 he wrote: 
 
 " We cannot kindle when we will 
 The fire which in the heart resides ; 
 The spirit bloweth and is still, 
 In mystery our soul abides. 
 
 But tasks in hours of insight willed 
 Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled." 
 
 Hours of insight; hours sometimes of 
 a purely intellectual insight, when the 
 worth of the moral ideal is suddenly and 
 briefly revealed in all its beauty. But 
 hours often when your good angel says, 
 " Remember ! " You ask in vain, whether 
 in petulance or in prayer, " Remember 
 what?" The answer comes only as be- 
 fore, like a distant bell that sounds the 
 passing hours, "Remember, remem- 
 ber!" It is life's warning signal, eter- 
 
 56
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 nity's cipher message to time, the fu- 
 ture's summons to the present. There 
 are many that send that message to us 
 by night and by day; many that live 
 beyond the mountains, and some that 
 sleep beyond the sea; all of them 
 friends. 
 
 John Masefield, in one of his poems 
 on the war, has said: 
 
 " If there be any life beyond the grave, 
 It must be near the men and things we love, 
 Some power of quick suggestion how to save, 
 Touching the living soul as from above. 
 
 " An influence from the earth from those dead 
 
 hearts 
 
 So passionate once, so deep, so truly kind, 
 That in the living child the spirit starts, 
 Feeling companioned still, not left behind." 
 
 George Eliot wrote, " What makes 
 life dreary is the want of motive." She 
 
 57
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 might have added that the want of mo- 
 tive in the popular conception of immor- 
 tality makes it even drearier than life. 
 Her own adequate motive for this world 
 was duty for duty's sake, duty viewed 
 as self-conquest, self-renunciation, re- 
 sistance to instinct and desire; and for 
 the next world she hoped, rejecting as 
 she did the definitely personal immor- 
 tality of the Christian faith, for a hum- 
 ble and indistinguishable voice in that 
 which she beautifully called " the choir 
 invisible." In her poetic thought the 
 dead survive in memory; they are re- 
 vived when we remember them and 
 are inspired by their example. They 
 
 " live again 
 
 In minds made better by their presence ; live 
 In pulses stirred to generosity, 
 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
 
 58
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 For miserable aims that end with self, 
 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like 
 
 stars, 
 And with their mild persistence urge man's 
 
 search 
 To vaster issues." 
 
 According to such a view the dead, 
 though dead indeed, may through mem- 
 ory and history yield motives to living 
 souls who otherwise might perish of 
 inertia. But in a far less vague and un- 
 satisfying sense we, who believe in per- 
 sonal immortality, may think of the 
 future as a time when it may be our 
 duty, our privilege, our delight, to give 
 back to earth in spiritual energy what 
 heaven has given us here. 
 
 To suppose, as we commonly do, that 
 such wordless, subtle communication 
 from one human spirit to another is im- 
 possible, or belongs among the improb- 
 
 59
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 able speculations of poets and mystics, 
 is really a very dangerous and radical 
 doubt. Our belief in the reality of prayer 
 as spiritual communion with the unseen 
 might be gravely undermined or de- 
 stroyed by a general denial at this point. 
 For, so far as we know, it may not 
 be the mere omnipotence of God that 
 makes him able to communicate im- 
 mediately with us through prayer; it 
 may be just the fact that he is a spirit. 
 Perhaps some of those who lightly 
 brush aside the suggestion of telepathy 
 among the living, and of any kind of 
 spiritual influence of the invisible world 
 upon the visible, might think twice 
 about it if they perceived that their ob- 
 jection, when it is a priori, verges upon 
 materialism, and tends to make prayer 
 and worship irrational. 
 60
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 Let us admit frankly that there is no 
 objective evidence whatever for the 
 speculation that the spirits of the dead 
 may be near the living, aiding and en- 
 couraging them without articulate mes- 
 sages. It is only a guess; but, in view 
 of all the analogies, not an unwarranted 
 guess. Tennyson did not believe in the 
 reality of spirit messages, but he wrote, 
 in " In Memoriam " : 
 
 " Be near me when my light is low, 
 
 When the blood creeps, and the nerves 
 
 prick 
 
 And^tingle ; and the heart is sick 
 And all the wheels of Being slow. 
 
 " Be near us when we climb or fall ; 
 
 Ye watch like God the rolling hours 
 With larger, other eyes than ours, 
 To make allowance for us all." 
 
 And if the undying do indeed so watch 
 61
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 and guard the living, it must be, as 
 Tennyson said, that they " make allow- 
 ance for us all." They know our frame; 
 they remember that we are dust.
 
 IX 
 
 WE are considering the possible ac- 
 tivities of a purely spiritual world, and 
 the first that has suggested itself to 
 us has been the silent communication 
 of spiritual refreshment and energy to 
 the living. What other occupations 
 may there be in the life of the fu- 
 ture? 
 
 Surely, for one thing, there will be 
 the occupation of discovery, the joy of 
 finding out that which is new. Robert 
 Browning wrote to his wife in that per- 
 fect love-poem entitled " By the Fire- 
 side," 
 
 " Think, when our one soul understands 
 The great Word which makes all things 
 new 
 
 63
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 When earth breaks up and Heaven expands 
 
 How will the change strike me and you 
 In the House not made with hands ? " 
 
 And it was also Browning, who is, even 
 more than Tennyson, the poet of im- 
 mortality, who wrote of the wonders 
 we shall perhaps behold 
 
 u when there dawns a day 
 
 If not on the homely earth, 
 Then yonder, worlds away, 
 
 Where the strange and new have birth, 
 And power comes full in play." 
 
 This occupation of discovery is per- 
 haps not for all; it is for the young, 
 and for those who are young at heart. 
 Peter Pan remarked naively, as the 
 waters of the lagoon crept up his little 
 rock and threatened to sweep him 
 away, " To die will be an awfully big 
 adventure." The words came naturally
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 to the lips of a friend of Peter Pan, 
 Charles Frohman, on that fateful May 
 afternoon when he stood calmly on the 
 sinking deck of the doomed Lusitania. 
 " Why fear death ? " he said to a young 
 actress who stood beside him. " It is 
 the most beautiful adventure of life." 
 To him, the man of large enterprise, 
 the friend of actors, himself an actor at 
 heart, the moment had thrilling dra- 
 matic interest. It was what theatrical 
 people call "a good curtain." A "good 
 curtain " is an ending for one act that 
 leaves the spectator stirred by its ade- 
 quate climax, but eager for the begin- 
 ning of the next act. Charles Froh- 
 man's particular work and play in this 
 life had been to discover genius. It 
 was his profession to discover a girl 
 and make out of her a star. Some other 
 
 6s
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 man's business is to discover a star and 
 make out of it a friend. 
 
 Here is a chemist who will never be 
 content until he knows the whole truth 
 about the behavior of the atoms within 
 the molecule. One such died not long 
 ago after a long life of more than four 
 score years, mostly spent in college teach- 
 ing ; and at the end, as he thought over 
 the quiet past and the unknown future, 
 he said to those about him, thinking 
 perhaps of the students he had been 
 used to watch from his window over- 
 looking the campus, "Tell them this 
 is my commencement day." Having 
 received from the University of Life its 
 last graduate degree, he proposed to be- 
 gin a new career of original research. 
 
 What is the future going to do with 
 the restless traveler, who has crossed 
 66
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 all the deserts and sailed the seven 
 seas, yet hears like Kipling's explorer 
 the call of the unknown : 
 
 " Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and 
 
 look behind the ranges 
 Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and 
 waiting for you. Go I " 
 
 One cannot help asking in what new 
 fields of celestial romance and en- 
 deavor such pioneering spirits will con- 
 tinue their great adventure. Stevenson 
 has given us in the "Requiem" his 
 thought of the ultimate content: 
 
 " Home is the sailor, home from sea, 
 And the hunter home from the hill." 
 
 That is a beautiful thought for all 
 whose wandering has been only exile. 
 Stevenson was a landsman at heart, and 
 it is well that he wanders no more. 
 But many of the old vikings preferred
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 the sea-burial to the cairn upon the hill. 
 Captain Scott sleeps better beneath the 
 frozen ground of his Antarctic new- 
 found-land than he could even in an 
 English churchyard. But upon what 
 strange seas shall his soul discover God 
 anew, as the great stars circle forever 
 about his southern pole ? Where sails 
 Columbus now? Raleigh and Drake, 
 Sir John Franklin, David Living- 
 stone what heavenly frontiers have 
 they not explored? It is vain to seek 
 for Ulysses among the home-keeping 
 ghosts of Hades. He is not there; he 
 is still afloat, where Dante and Tenny- 
 son have sighted him, sailing toward 
 the setting sun: 
 
 " It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ; 
 It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 
 And see the great Achilles, whom we knew." 
 
 68
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 Who would condemn the Happy 
 Warrior to the punishment of eternal 
 peace, or consign the untiring student 
 of the stars, the molecules, the crystals, 
 or the cells, to a paralyzed heaven of 
 completed knowledge? We are pretty 
 deep in the mazes of unprofitable specu- 
 lation when we begin to inquire what 
 there will be left to discover after the 
 first surprises of the future life are over. 
 But if anything is sure, on the basis of 
 analogy and reasonable inference, it is 
 that heaven will not be like the morning 
 after Christmas, when all the toys have 
 lost their novelty and are laid away. We 
 hope and believe that it will not be like 
 the end of the play, when the curtain 
 falls and the garish house-lights shutout 
 our vanished dream. If life be illusion, 
 and death the door to a dull and final 
 69
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 reality, some of us would prefer to carry 
 the illusion with us into oblivion. Better 
 to fail, better to forget, than suddenly to 
 know all and never to learn any more. 
 One would rather watch forever beside 
 the Sphinx amid the desert sands than 
 to be told the answer to her riddle, if 
 that answer explained everything. For 
 man is a question rather than an answer; 
 and his immortality must be something 
 more than a reply. 
 
 One sometimes thinks we know too 
 much rather than too little here; the 
 wisest of men set a child in the midst of 
 his disciples. Perhaps it is because we 
 know too much too much that is only 
 half true, or not true at all, that we spend 
 our years as a tale that is told. Life 
 grows dreary because it grows uninter- 
 esting. We have had our look behind 
 70
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 the scenes, and tire of the play because 
 we cannot forget the painted canvas and 
 the ropes. I am not at all sure that the 
 Greeks were not right about it when 
 they invented Lethe, the waters of for- 
 getfulness. Perhaps a cool bath of ob- 
 livion for the worldly-wise, the disil- 
 lusioned, the blase*, would not be a bad 
 thing after all. 
 
 But however that maybe, surely those 
 who have never lost their eager curios- 
 ity, never have ceased to be seekers 
 after the unknown, may go right on dis- 
 covering truth the moment they enter 
 the Elysian Fields. And it will take a 
 long time to discover it all. Tennyson 
 may study his "crannied flower" long 
 and earnestly before he fully knows 
 "what God and man is." William Blake 
 as a mortal may " see the world in a
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild 
 flower." But Blake the immortal will 
 hardly even yet " hold infinity in the 
 palm of his hand, and eternity in an 
 hour." Children in heaven as on earth 
 will probably go on searching for the 
 end of the rainbow. We have to grow 
 up to discover the beautiful fact that the 
 rainbow has no end. 
 
 If heaven does not provide tasks for 
 our explorers, our scientists, our engi- 
 neers, our captains of industry, some of 
 them at least will set to work to make 
 work. They will invent something use- 
 ful to do. Dante had no occupation for 
 the saints in Paradise more exciting 
 than debates about scholastic theology 
 with mediaeval ecclesiastics. But talk 
 is not work; it can hardly be called dis- 
 covery, though the renewal of earthly 
 72
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 acquaintance and the making of new 
 friends may, as hereinafter suggested, be 
 among the principal occupations of the 
 future life. What discoveries in the realm 
 of what we call nature that future may 
 permit, what activities in the investiga- 
 tion and control of force, we cannot even 
 conjecture.
 
 X 
 
 THE art of the ultimate future is for 
 artists to imagine. Browning has shown 
 us Abt Vogler dreaming of the music 
 of the future. Kipling has given us his 
 quaint vision of that spacious studio 
 where all the immortal painters of the 
 world's academies shall gather to paint 
 what they choose in the way they 
 like. 
 
 " Those that were good shall be happy : they 
 
 shall sit in a golden chair ; 
 They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with 
 
 brushes of comet's hair ; 
 They shall find real saints to draw from 
 
 Magdalene, Peter, and Paul ; 
 They shall work for an age at a sitting, and 
 
 never be tired at all. 
 
 74
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 " And only the Master shall praise us, and only 
 
 the Master shall blame ; 
 And no one shall work for money, and no one 
 
 shall work for fame. 
 But each, for the joy of the working, and each, 
 
 in his separate star, 
 Shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the 
 
 God of Things as They are." 
 
 Thus we may at least conceive that 
 those who have tried here to represent 
 beauty will try there to work with beauty 
 itself. The musician may work with har- 
 monies impossible for the imperfect in- 
 struments of this world. 'The artist may 
 draw as with the cunning finger of the 
 frost, and paint with the very colors of 
 the sunset. There will perhaps be less 
 copying and more creating. The poet 
 will become once more, as he was when 
 Greece was young, the "maker." St. 
 James tells his early Christian readers 
 75
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 that they are to be "poets of the Logos," 
 or, as we more commonly hear it, " doers 
 of the word, not hearers only." Dead 
 poets who have done with words may 
 help more beautifully, more subtly than 
 others to reveal that Word which was 
 in the beginning. Shelley wrote of the 
 vanished spirit of John Keats, 
 
 ' ' He is a portion of that loveliness 
 Which once he made more lovely." 
 
 Celestial architecture figures largely 
 in the quaint visions of the Hebrew 
 Ezekiel and the Christian John; but 
 one fancies they hardly realized that 
 souls need neither roofs nor walls. 
 Architecture is the art of transfiguring 
 the human need for shelter. In the fu- 
 ture, like all other arts, it must become 
 pure symbolism. And this will be no
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 loss but a gain. For psychology teaches 
 us that not in the external world but 
 within the mind are built all those 
 myriad forms of beaut} 7 , in form and 
 light and color and sound, of which our 
 earthly arts give us back but faint re- 
 flections. Beauty has its objective basis 
 in the symmetries of nature, as music 
 has its basis in the mathematical ratios 
 of tones; but the symmetries and the 
 ratios themselves are subjectively per- 
 ceived as well as enjoyed. When the 
 time comes that the soul works alto- 
 gether in the realm of the ideal, unham- 
 pered by poor materials and imperfect 
 tools, the arts, which have so long sub- 
 limely baffled man, will at last express 
 him and reveal his Maker. 
 
 Imagination pauses here, but it does 
 not admit the possibility of a spiritual 
 
 77
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 world in which the master spirits be- 
 come the slaves of an eternal paralyz- 
 ing calm. " What 's come to perfection 
 perishes." There is a touching tribute 
 of Matthew Arnold to his father, Thomas 
 Arnold of Rugby, in the lines enti- 
 tled " Rugby Chapel." He voices this 
 thought, that there are souls that can- 
 not be happy without endeavor: ^ 
 
 " O strong soul, by what shore 
 Tarriest thou now ? For that force, 
 Surely, has not been left vain ! 
 Somewhere, surely, afar, 
 In the sounding labor-house vast 
 Of being, is practised that strength, 
 Zealous, beneficent, firm." 4
 
 XI 
 
 ON the other hand, discovery is not the 
 usual occupation of mankind. Abound- 
 ing energy that would be punished by 
 idleness is not so common that we can 
 shape our thought of the future prima- 
 rily by it. Not all the good men love 
 work so much that they do not gladly 
 lay them down to sleep. There comes 
 a time when all we want is just to get 
 home and get to bed. There is a deep 
 beauty in the solemn words of the an- 
 cient requiem, 
 
 " Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord, 
 And may perpetual light shine ever on them." 
 
 How many folded hands have we all 
 seen in our time that seemed content 
 79
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 to be folded forever; how many fast 
 closed eyes that seemed to have seen 
 enough. Rest, the long rest of God's 
 long Sabbath, seemed all that they could 
 have wished. As the Earl of Kent said 
 of the dying Lear, 
 
 " O let him pass ! He hates him 
 That would upon the rack of this tough world 
 Stretch him out longer." 
 
 When we think of the young and the 
 daring, whose great adventure has been 
 transferred to other and broader fields, 
 we are not to forget the weary who 
 wait for release "as a servant that ear- 
 nestly desireth the shadow." Browning, 
 in his "Old Pictures in Florence," voices 
 this hesitation between a heaven of 
 vaster enterprise and a heaven of re- 
 pose: 
 
 So
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 ' There's a fancy some lean to and others hate 
 
 That, when this life is ended, begins 
 New work for the soul in another state, 
 Where it strives and gets weary, loses and 
 
 wins; 
 Where the strong and the weak, this world's 
 
 congeries, 
 
 Repeat in large what they practised in small, 
 Through life after life in unlimited series ; 
 Only the scale's to be changed, that's all. 
 
 " Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen 
 By the means of Evil that Good is best, 
 And, through earth and its noise, what is 
 
 heaven's serene, 
 When our faith in the same has stood the 
 
 test 
 Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, 
 
 The uses of labor are surely done ; 
 There remaineth a rest for the people of God : 
 And I have had troubles enough, for one." 
 
 This is exceptional rather than char- 
 acteristic in Browning, who is the poet 
 of the active heaven ; but many other 
 81
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 poets have presented to us the contrast 
 between the strenuous life of this world 
 and the future life of surcease. Let us 
 face life cheerfully, even as a long and 
 unrewarding task, they say, if only we 
 may view death as a long repose. Chris- 
 tina Rossetti, for example, gives utter- 
 ance in lines of haunting beauty to this 
 promise of the rest that comes with the 
 shadow: 
 
 " Does the road wind up-hill all the way? 
 
 Yes, to the very end. 
 ^Will the day's journey take the whole long 
 
 day? 
 From morn to night, my friend. 
 
 " But is there for the night a resting-place? 
 
 A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin. 
 May not the darkness hide it from my face ? 
 You cannot miss that inn. 
 
 " Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? 
 Those who have gone before. 
 
 82
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? 
 They will not keep you standing at that 
 door. 
 
 " Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? 
 
 Of labor you shall find the sum. 
 Will there be beds for me and all who seek? 
 Yea, beds for all who come." 
 
 While, therefore, we have reason to 
 suppose that the future life will be in 
 some degree active, at least for those 
 for whom activity is the highest good, 
 we have no need to fear the forcing of 
 labor upon the weary, or of discovery 
 and adventure upon the perplexed and 
 bewildered soul. For the vast majority 
 of mankind, work in this world means 
 a dull routine in which the soul can 
 have little share; and for them it is not 
 easy to conceive of an active future 
 which can be anything but a perpetua- 
 83
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 tion of irksome toil. All such may rest 
 in the conviction that the future will 
 provide the highest good for each and 
 all. " He giveth unto his beloved sleep."
 
 XII 
 
 ARISING naturally out of the thought 
 of the future as giving unbounded op- 
 portunities for discovery comes the oc- 
 cupation of discovering old friends, of 
 renewing the severed ties of earthly 
 love and friendship, and of learning to 
 know one another better than earthly 
 barriers permit. This is what most of 
 us think of first when our minds turn 
 with an increasing sense of nearness to 
 the place where so many that were 
 closest to us have preceded us. It was 
 not mentioned first, because it seemed 
 better to begin by trying to get a cer- 
 tain sense of reality and variety into our 
 thought of the future before turning to 
 this purely personal interest. But it 
 
 85
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 comes up now, and at once we are con- 
 fronted by many perplexities. 
 
 We must assume some kind and de- 
 gree of recognition as a necessary infer- 
 ence from our starting-point, personal 
 immortality. Persons cannot perma- 
 nently live alone; if they do, they cease 
 to be in the largest sense persons. We 
 are social beings. Life as we know it is 
 so intricate, so complex an interweaving 
 of human destinies, that so far as we 
 can conceive, the threads can never be 
 wholly disentangled. 
 
 A future world in which you and I 
 are individually conscious of ourselves 
 and of God, but just as unconscious as 
 we are now of the presence all around 
 us of invisible spiritual beings, would 
 hardly be personal immortality. For 
 personality requires other persons in 
 86
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 order to realize and to express itself; 
 and life, of which immortality is only the 
 superlative degree, means adjustment 
 to environment. The raising of barriers 
 between personalities is in so far a limi- 
 tation which, if made absolute, as for 
 example by insanity, brings the paraly- 
 sis, the apparent negation, of what we 
 call the person. We say of such an un- 
 fortunate, " He is not himself." Personal 
 immortality, then, must carry with it, 
 not a multiplication but a removal of 
 barriers. Some have thought of heaven 
 as the world where virtue is instantly 
 recognized by any one that sees it. 
 "Then shall I know even as also I am 
 known." 
 
 Apparently some kind of mutual rec- 
 ognition of persons in a spiritual world 
 is a necessary corollary of personal im-
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 mortality. But it is a very different ques- 
 tion whether we shall find it any easier 
 to recognize those we have known in 
 the earthly life than to learn to know 
 the passing stranger. What will be the 
 signs by which soul greets soul ? Do 
 you know your friend so well that if you 
 could read his heart you would know 
 him without the familiar features, the 
 friendly smile, the long-remembered 
 voice? There are those who suppose, 
 like the spiritualists, that we shall some- 
 how recognize our loved ones in the 
 future world by a kind of retained vis- 
 ual image of their personal appearance, 
 which will remain associated with the 
 spirit after its departure from the body. 
 Why should we pause upon a point so 
 entirely beyond even possible conjec- 
 ture? You think of your friend as you 
 88
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 last saw him, years before he died, and 
 perhaps expect to know him by a sort 
 of spiritual image of a man in the vigor 
 of youth. But there are others for whom 
 the image stamped upon memory is the 
 lovely serenity of declining years, the 
 whitening hair, the deeply lined face, 
 the failing strength. It was so they knew 
 him, so they loved him, so only that 
 they would recognize him if spirits are 
 to be known by such signs. 
 
 These speculations raise at once so 
 many incongruous and absurd conse- 
 quences that the healthy mind is apt to 
 brush aside the whole inquiry as inane. 
 Let us pass on, with the remark that if 
 there be any future life, the lives that 
 were really linked here by anything more 
 than the accidents of temporary associ- 
 ation will somehow find each other out.
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 I do not feel sure they will all be 
 discovered easily. One can conceive 
 of many a half-formed soul hurried into 
 eternity and searching long for one whose 
 real life had been infinitely distant from 
 his own, though they had passed their 
 years side by side. When Alcestis went 
 for the second and last time to wander 
 like some white vestal virgin in the gar- 
 dens of Proserpine, and there was no 
 Hercules to bring her back, Admetus 
 must have been a long time finding her. 
 He may not have known her when they 
 passed; but she would have known him, 
 and taken pity on him. Since 1914 there 
 must have been many a rough Tommy 
 Atkins, many a French chasseur, many 
 a German gunner, whose simple, sinful, 
 loyal soul has risen suddenly from the 
 screaming, cursing earth to the land 
 90
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 where all good soldiers go, who will 
 yet be a long time finding his mother, 
 his sweetheart, when they come. Per- 
 haps the church knew very well what 
 it was about when it introduced the 
 doctrine of purgatory. 
 
 Indeed, one wonders whether any but 
 the closest and most spiritual ties, ties 
 rare or unknown in many lives that are 
 lived out here both in cottage and in 
 mansion, can bridge the gulf that parts 
 us all. For, while we like to talk about 
 the coming removal of barriers, and the 
 probability of some kind of future rec- 
 ognition, there is no use in denying that 
 there are mysterious and unfathomable 
 spaces between soul and soul. They are 
 bridged here or seem to be by the 
 easy and fallacious intimacies of com- 
 mon life. To have sat side by side, to
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 have walked together, to have been 
 sheltered by the same roof, fed from the 
 same table, warmed by the same fire 
 these seem more than they are. Fel- 
 lowship is something more than to lodge 
 in the same hotel. To suppose that all 
 who have been associated here by the 
 ties of business or of kinship will meet 
 in eternity would be as foolish as to sup- 
 pose that all the students who now sit 
 together in the classroom will find one 
 another congenial twenty years after 
 graduation. 
 
 The real ties may be those deep nat- 
 ural affinities that figure in poetry and 
 romance. Quite as often they are the 
 growth of long years of mutual sacri- 
 fice and communion, of deliberate and 
 sometimes difficult sharing and helping, 
 of groundless hopes and useless fears. 
 92
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 They are knit together by the long chain 
 of joys and sorrows, beginnings and ends. 
 They begin in some common thrill at 
 dawn, some hand in hand at sunset; and 
 they lead to twilight together, and dark- 
 ness severed only by those dreams which 
 cannot be told. Such comrades, though 
 their paths seem always a little apart, 
 come somehow to be one at last; for 
 parallel lines meet at infinity. 
 
 Recognition in the future life will 
 not be a cheap, easy prologue to heaven. 
 It will not be over in an hour, or an 
 age. There will be many a quest 
 wherein he who started gayly forth to 
 find his lady will wander long before 
 he finds what he had not sought the 
 Holy Grail, whereof she is now a hum- 
 ble minister. You thought you knew 
 your brother, your business partner, 
 
 93
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 your college mate, and look for him 
 among the unready crowd about the 
 gates; but when you find him, he is 
 with one so holy that you see only the 
 shining of his face. 
 
 And what of those who die in youth ? 
 Do they grow up in heaven ? It is 
 hard to think there are no children 
 there, and most of us refuse to believe 
 it. More likely many of those who en- 
 tered that unseen world in early life 
 remain always children, children in 
 happy heart and simple faith, though 
 growing in wisdom and in grace. Shall 
 we see them as they were, or as they 
 might have been? Are the parents to 
 expect a welcome from one who has 
 still his proud little secrets to confide, 
 his shy and adorable evasions of just 
 praise, his delight in being taken for 
 
 94
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 granted as a comrade? Or will there 
 be a wise man-soul waiting there, with 
 fulfillment written where promise was 
 before ? Is the little one that vanished 
 with the violets to be still the eager 
 child of spring, or will she walk sedately 
 and be queen of the summer? Who 
 knows? And who will not know soon?
 
 XIII 
 
 RECOGNITION in the future can hardly 
 be limited to those spirits whom we 
 have chanced to be acquainted with 
 here. A fascinating subject of fanciful 
 speculation in all ages has been the pos- 
 sibility of knowing and learning from 
 the great dead of all the past. I need 
 only refer you to the "Divine Comedy" 
 for innumerable illustrations of it. Peter, 
 on the mount of transfiguration, behold- 
 ing the spirits of Moses and Elijah 
 talking with his Master, eagerly pro- 
 posed a longer stay; he would gladly 
 have talked a while himself with those 
 ancient worthies, for they had seen a 
 good deal of life in their day. Every 
 one of us has his heroes in history, in
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 literature, in the long honor roll of 
 sages and martyrs and saints. If you 
 were offered the chance to choose just 
 five names out of all the good and the 
 wise whose absent souls have been 
 your guides, through those golden 
 words and deeds which they have left 
 behind, and to talk with each but a 
 single hour, would not that hour be 
 worth a year of life? It is a trite say- 
 ing that as a rule those who go as 
 strangers to visit great men in this 
 world come away disappointed. Emer- 
 son explains this; he says: "The young 
 scholar fancies it happiness enough to 
 live with people who can give an inside 
 to the world; without reflecting that 
 they are prisoners, too, of their own 
 thought, and cannot apply themselves 
 to yours." 
 
 97
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 The imperfect sympathies and the 
 limited time that make hero-worship 
 at close range a dangerous amusement 
 in this life can hardly survive in the 
 future. Here surely discovery as an 
 occupation for eternity will have its 
 widest scope. If it should take us un- 
 numbered years really to know the 
 hearts of those few we have thought we 
 knew already, what can be said of the 
 prospect opened here? Mankind will 
 never cease to be interesting, and a 
 heaven in which there are all kinds of 
 people can never grow dull. Ennui is 
 not to be thought of in a world where 
 Chaucer and Shakespeare and Mark 
 Twain can be just as happy as St. Au- 
 gustine and John Wesley. Probably the 
 one sort may never fully appreciate the 
 other even in heaven, but fortunate no-
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 bodies like ourselves can enjoy them 
 all. If one is ever tempted to think that 
 we must some day get to an end of our 
 resources, it is pleasant to remember 
 that all the wisdom, all the wit, all the 
 beauty and bravery of this world, as 
 well as all its saintliness, must go on 
 growing and shining forever if the souls 
 of men do really live beyond the grave. 
 (And if they do not, nothing matters 
 after all, for we shall never know it.)
 
 XIV 
 
 ANOTHER occupation of the future 
 may be the education of newly risen 
 souls. Have you ever tried to imagine 
 what it must mean, on the hypothesis 
 of immortality, that during the great 
 war millions of young men have been 
 hurried out of this world into the pres- 
 ence of God? They were without any 
 of that discipline of the spirit that life 
 itself unfailingly imparts. Many of them 
 had never learned, either by victory or 
 by defeat, how really to be men, save 
 in such ways as legs and arms and 
 brains can be called men, until they are 
 shot to pieces. Flesh they knew, and 
 loved it, but not too well; blood they 
 knew, and spilled it for a flag; but 
 100
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 spirit they knew not, and spirit they are 
 now, or nothing. If anything is left of 
 those boys except a vast decay, it must 
 be a vast ignorance, a blank dismay, an 
 unformed hope, an unanswered ques- 
 tion. Who is to teach those murdered 
 soldiers, whose only memorial now is 
 a helmet on a rude cross ? Who is to 
 show them how the great war can have 
 brought them into a great but unknown 
 peace? 
 
 Are there not guides that wait above 
 the fields of France ? Has God no scouts, 
 no sentries posted at his frontiers ? Per- 
 haps the barren plains this side of the 
 great divide are paced by the lonely 
 horsemen of the border patrol. They 
 know no more of heaven than just to 
 give the first salute, and to point out 
 the road across the valley of the shadow. 
 101
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 There is among them a Roman centu- 
 rion who watched the darkness cover 
 Calvary. There are swarthy troopers 
 of Custer's band and Sheridan's brigade. 
 There are the leaders of lost causes, 
 captains of many a forlorn hope, and the 
 forgotten soldiers of many wars. They 
 have been saved so as by fire; and their 
 souls still wait, through all this desolating 
 celestial peace, for one more chance to 
 strike a blow for some cause which 
 they deepty love, and dimly understand. 
 And meanwhile, they can train the raw 
 recruits who are ever rushing forth from 
 the cannon smoke and the horrid din of 
 battle. 
 
 And when we are thinking of the edu- 
 cation of new souls, what of the chil- 
 dren ? God will always need some very 
 kind teachers in his kindergarten, for 
 102
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 there is a new class every day. Are 
 there not mothers waiting to meet all 
 the little children that come crying into 
 this world? And shall there not be 
 mothers to meet those that go so quietly 
 and trustfully out of it? There are some 
 women in heaven that could never 
 stand it to see a lost child looking for 
 the way home ; they would run to take 
 his little hand and lead him up to God. 
 You don't have to prove that; you know 
 it. 
 
 Would you not love to stand there 
 watching for the soul that needs you; 
 the weakness that needs your strength, 
 the weariness that needs your peace, 
 the apprehension that your fuller know- 
 ledge can best remove? Perhaps we 
 shall all be teachers in heaven. The 
 least learned of us can somehow keep 
 103
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 a day or two ahead of the freshman 
 class; and none of our pupils will ever 
 forget us when they have learned what 
 little we can teach.
 
 XV 
 
 BY such an imaginative survey of 
 some of the possible occupations of the 
 future life we have perhaps been led to 
 consider that life as having more points 
 of contact with the present than we had 
 supposed. We have distinguished five 
 activities which seem not only possible 
 but probable in a world of immortal 
 spirits. They are, first, silent influence 
 for good upon the living; second, the 
 discovery of new truth and new beauty 
 in the universe of which heaven is only 
 the spiritual aspect' the study of celes- 
 tial philosophy and science and art, pur- 
 sued for the sheer joy of knowing and 
 of doing, by those to whom learning or 
 action is indispensable to full self-realiz-
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 ation; third, the renewal of earthly ties 
 of love andf riendship ; fourth, the making 
 of new friends; and fifth, the education of 
 novices. It would not be difficult to add 
 further illustrations of the general prop- 
 osition that the future life is a life of 
 progress, of change, of growth, of multi- 
 plying contacts and sympathies with the 
 infinite world of the human as well as 
 of the divine. 
 
 That such inherently spiritual activi- 
 ties as have been vaguely sketched can 
 be really separated from the Christian 
 view of the future life is obviously im- 
 possible. But by avoiding the biblical 
 terminology, by considering what one 
 may perhaps inaccurately call the secu- 
 lar aspects of immortality, we gain per- 
 haps a certain freshness in the point of 
 view, which may appeal to some for 
 1 06
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 whom matters of faith are quite beyond 
 the realm of the imagination. We may 
 even keep this unusual attitude a little 
 longer, while we inquire what the conse- 
 quences of such speculations are for our 
 present life. 
 
 Our very title is a challenge. It is 
 meant to be a challenge. Living for the 
 future with what scorn the practical 
 man is apt to receive such a suggestion, 
 when he comprehends that the future 
 we are talking about is the future beyond 
 the grave. What we need, he tells us, 
 is more living for the present, or for the 
 immediate future, and then the distant 
 future will take care of itself. If there is 
 to be any living for the future, he adds, 
 it ought to be mostly that far-sighted 
 morality which may be described as 
 living for the next generation. We are 
 107
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 sure to be accused of having reached, 
 by a different path from that of the older 
 theologians, an other- worldliness which 
 is not only useless but even harmful to 
 social progress. 
 
 There is enough truth in the criticism 
 to keep us from any tendency toward 
 over-emphasis of a side of truth which 
 most of the world altogether neglects. 
 It is true that to allow one's mind to 
 dwell over much on curious specula- 
 tions about the nature of immortality is 
 likely to encourage indifference to the 
 reality and the importance of those bat- 
 tles which we ought now to wage for 
 the morality, the justice, the human 
 brotherhood of the present world. Our 
 business just now is to play the game, 
 while we have a chance. Browning has 
 given us, in his " Epistle of Karshish " 
 1 08
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 concerning Lazarus of Bethany, a vivid 
 picture of the effect upon the human 
 mind of an unveiled vision of eternity; 
 the daze, the lack of perspective, the 
 dreamy and mystical outlook on a ma- 
 terial world no longer regarded as su- 
 premely important: 
 
 *' Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, 
 Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing , 
 heaven." 
 
 The poems of William Blake and of 
 Emily Dickinson are a sufficient illustra- 
 tion both of the strange, unearthly beauty 
 of a life taken possession of by the power 
 of the world to come, and of the utter 
 inability of such a life to enter into the 
 struggles of its own generation. Poets 
 and prophets may be pardoned if some- 
 times they see the goal so clearly that 
 they neglect the means; but the rest of 
 109
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 mankind will do well to remember that 
 a little duty done is better than a great 
 ideal unapproached. " Whatsoever thy 
 handfindeth to do, do it with thy might" 
 is good advice for this world, though it 
 is the advice of an agnostic Hebrew 
 philosopher who had no place in his 
 philosophy for the ethics of immor- 
 tality. Living for the present, working 
 for proximate ends, seeking to raise the 
 general level of human welfare and hap- 
 piness an inch or two by practicable 
 means, is rightly esteemed by the ma- 
 jority of thoughtful men to be the best 
 way for society to prepare for whatever 
 heaven may some day be realized on 
 earth.
 
 XVI 
 
 BUT when all that is said, we have a 
 haunting consciousness thatwhat is true 
 for society is not always enough to sat- 
 isfy the individual heart. Your reform 
 may be worked out twenty, thirty, forty 
 years from now, but where shall you be 
 then ? Your scheme for the uplifting of 
 the race may some day triumph, but 
 what is your own outlook into that in- 
 visible world where too many of the 
 brightest and best have already gone 
 before their time? 
 
 The philosophy of living for the pres- 
 ent, in the higher and more unselfish 
 sense, seems entirely adequate in the 
 case of those fortunate men and women 
 who live out the full span of human life, 
 in
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 and fill it with happy and successful and 
 enduring labor for others. But there are 
 more chances of failure than of success 
 for the individual in his attempts to con- 
 tribute to social progress. A wrong con- 
 ception of the problem, misguided effort, 
 external hindrances, a premature or a 
 belated start, a lack of resources, the 
 interruptions due to physical limitations, 
 the untimely end of a long, unequal 
 struggle these make up the history of 
 many a noble and (as we say) ineffec- 
 tive life. As we grow older, and per- 
 ceive in how small a proportion of the 
 worthier lives about us it can be said 
 that "the end crowns the work," we are 
 moved, not to pessimism, but to a more 
 transcendent faith; a faith that climbs 
 over failure and sees the ultimate suc- 
 cess, not alone for the many, but for 
 112
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 the very one who tried and seemed to 
 fail. 
 
 The fact is, that none of us is really 
 satisfied, when we first realize that our 
 own larger life-plan is sure to fail, by the 
 assurance that some one else in distant 
 years will achieve what we attempted, 
 that the thing itself will somehow be 
 brought to pass. That is all right for 
 society, but not all right for us; not 
 enough to satisfy us as a final and ade- 
 quate motive for a victorious life. The 
 physician who gives his life as a sacrifice 
 to demonstrate the cause of a mysteri- 
 ous disease, or to help find a remedy for 
 it, is hailed as a true martyr of science; 
 he has his reward. But what of that 
 much larger number who take equal 
 risks and meet an equally untimely end 
 through some stupid accident, with no
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 useful result that either they or society 
 can perceive? They need immortality 
 to justify life; they need the future to 
 explain the present. 
 
 Living for the future is no coward's 
 philosophy. It is not an ingenious and 
 pious scheme for evading present duty, 
 or explaining away one's failures. Rather 
 is it the inspiration of the weak, the 
 crown and culmination of the strong 
 man's race. The very mention of it 
 brings the sting of shame to the indo- 
 lent and selfish, of fear to the sensual. 
 Even those who see most clearly and 
 grasp most eagerly the splendid oppor- 
 tunities of the present come sooner or 
 later to the point where they too realize 
 that they have all along been living for 
 the future, and have missed something 
 because they did not know it before. 
 114
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 No, we cannot escape the lure of eter- 
 nity. We cannot shut out its all too 
 dazzling light. It flashes upon us in some 
 sudden splendor of the morning. It sets 
 us dreaming in broad daylight. Shelley, 
 in his "Adonais," has told us how 
 
 " Life, like a dome of many -colored glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity." 
 
 But there are times when all the glow- 
 ing colors of the spectrum, the light 
 and the dark, the solemn and the gay, 
 are fused for an instant by our keener 
 sense, and we are aware of the invisible 
 sun beyond. As Emily Dickinson puts 
 it: 
 
 44 Our lives are Swiss, 
 
 So still, so cool, 
 Till, some odd afternoon, 
 The Alps neglect their curtains, 
 And we look farther on.
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 " Italy stands the other side, 
 
 While, like a guard between, 
 The solemn Alps, 
 The siren Alps, 
 
 Forever intervene ! " 
 
 It was Browning's Bishop Blougram, 
 the worldly and half-cynical ecclesiastic, 
 who told his agnostic companion why 
 we cannot permanently keep our doubts 
 untouched by faith : 
 
 44 Just when we are safest, there 's a sunset- 
 touch, 
 
 A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
 A chorus-ending from Euripides, 
 And that 's enough for fifty hopes and fears 
 As old and new at once as nature's self 
 To rap and knock and enter in our soul." 
 
 There is a sense, then, in which we 
 
 ought to live for this future, about which 
 
 we know nothing and hope everything. 
 
 Of such preparedness as belongs to 
 
 116
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 the distinctly religious view of life and 
 death, it is unnecessary here to speak; 
 just because it is so important that every 
 one remembers it first when such sub- 
 jects are discussed. There are three 
 other ways, beside reconciling our wills 
 with the divine, by which we may in 
 some degree learn how to live without 
 a body. These three ways are, to live 
 intensely, to live communicatively, and 
 to live helpfully.
 
 XVII 
 
 FIRST, because of our probable future 
 we must learn to live intensely. We 
 must pack every day with personality. 
 We must give to every task that per- 
 mits it as much of ourselves as can be 
 put into it. For in the degree in which 
 we succeed in becoming most thor- 
 oughly ourselves, our best selves, in the 
 degree, that is to say, in which the gen- 
 eral human stuff in us receives the unique 
 stamp of a distinctive personality, just 
 so far and perhaps no further we 
 begin to have within us the germ of a 
 possible personal immortality. 
 
 It is not every day nor every week 
 that } 7 ou can be in any large sense per- 
 sonal. You go on for weeks, for months, 
 118
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 sometimes for years, mastering a rou- 
 tine; and then comes the moment when 
 either the routine will master you, or 
 there must be a new start, a creative in- 
 stant, "a flash of the will that can." 
 You live dully, shallowly, shabbily, 
 apologetically, through a whole winter; 
 and then some fine day winter melts, 
 April shines, something stirs within, and 
 your soul has its chance. It is perhaps 
 the one half-hour in the year when you 
 feel as if you might still begin to be 
 yourself. For part of one golden after- 
 noon your will is free. For a tick of 
 the clock you really see things straight. 
 It is, for the moment, evident to you 
 that your soul lives by these rare intens- 
 ities, not of mere sentiment or empty 
 aspiration, but of deep resolve and im- 
 mediate perception of truth. Instead of 
 119
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 regretting now, as you have been used 
 to do, that such moments are so rare, 
 and getting rarer every year, you rejoice 
 that they are still so intense ; that life is 
 still so rich, the world so full of beauty; 
 the past so bright, the present so alluring, 
 the future so full of wonder. 
 
 " And I have felt 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 Now the lesson of our study of the 
 
 future is that there is a sense in which 
 
 what we are at such moments is the only 
 
 true self. Accordingly as we then rise 
 
 120
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 or fall, so the vast colorless spaces of 
 ordinary life are elevated into necessary 
 though uninteresting duty, or depressed 
 into dull failure and unperceived decay. 
 They are the "hours of insight" in which 
 must be willed those tasks which " can 
 be through hours of gloom fulfilled." 
 
 These moments of intensity, when 
 personality can be raised to a higher 
 power, are seldom to be had by our 
 seeking. We may indeed cultivate, by 
 such means as our particular form of re- 
 ligion or of philosophy may suggest/the 
 state of mind in which this temporary 
 escape from the prison of the common- 
 place seems possible. Prayer accom- 
 plishes for one what music does for an- 
 other; a walk in the autumn woods, a 
 quiet afternoon beside the sea, a long 
 talk before an open fire all these may 
 
 121
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 help. They have this in common, that 
 they quiet the restless, imperious voices 
 of the petty concerns of life, and make 
 it possible for us to listen to wisdom 
 and destiny. But for the most part the 
 hours of insight come and go without 
 our calling. Our business is to recognize 
 them when they do come, and turn them 
 to account. This is Browning's doctrine 
 of the critical moments of life, as ex- 
 pressed, for example, in these lines: 
 
 " How the world is made for each of us ! 
 
 How all we perceive and know in it 
 Tends to some moment's product thus, 
 
 When a soul declares itself to wit, 
 By its fruit the thing it does ! " 
 
 The intenser living that can be called 
 
 living for the future is assuredly not that 
 
 glorified selfishness of which modern 
 
 literature is full, the intense desire and 
 
 122
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 resolve to get what we want regardless 
 of consequences. A certain type of con- 
 temporary verse and fiction tries to throw 
 a glamour over that particularly obnox- 
 ious sort of adultery and lawlessness in 
 general that is called " living one's own 
 life." Provided that the hero or heroine 
 is able to feel individual desire so in- 
 tensely as to be indifferent to the desires 
 or the rights of anybody else, the matter 
 is regarded as somehow raised above the 
 moral law by its dramatic appeal. Natu- 
 rally we must guard our principle of in- 
 tensity against all such anti-social senti- 
 mentalism. The only intensity that can 
 prepare us for a spiritual future is the 
 intensity of the best.
 
 XVIII 
 
 AND again, if we are to gain anything 
 in fitness for a world where spirits dwell 
 at once together and apart, we must live 
 communicatively. Our intensity must 
 not be entirely self-centered and con- 
 cealed. We must share. We must re- 
 veal our best. We must, once in a while, 
 speak out. It is true, as we found reason 
 earlier in this discussion to believe, that 
 there ought to be some things we feel 
 and do not tell. That natural reticence 
 which prompts us to say least when the 
 deepest truth is most deeply appre- 
 hended is not to be lightly resisted. It 
 is the modesty of the soul, the chastity 
 of the inner life. The best people we 
 know are good enough not to talk too 
 124
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 much, especially about goodness. Per- 
 haps it is not altogether a misfortune 
 that the present generation fears cant 
 more than it fears the devil; for that 
 brazen counterfeit known as cant has 
 always been the devil's most effectual 
 means of keeping gold coin out of circu- 
 lation. 
 
 But this world is so full of false proph- 
 ets and deluding dreams that when you 
 are sure, you had better tell some one else 
 who is sure just to seethe answering 
 light in his eye. And then you are to 
 risk your peace of mind by telling some 
 one who is not sure, and does not want 
 to be sure. There will be no light in his 
 eye: that is why you tell him. He, poor 
 soul, does not know he needs what you 
 have to give; but you know you need to 
 give it. A suppressed truth is a danger- 
 125
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 cms thing; it may spoil on your hands 
 before you can use it; or it may explode 
 when too much compressed by your 
 careful secrecy; or it may altogether 
 cease to be a truth for you and turn out 
 a lie, to your confusion and dismay. 
 
 And when you do try to give away 
 a real truth, whether you find that no- 
 body wants it, or that the crowd is 
 clamoring for it, in either case you can- 
 not after all really give it away. It will 
 not leave you. You give it and keep it 
 too like happiness, and love, and all 
 other eternal things. 
 
 This duty to live communicatively, 
 to reveal and to share whatever spark of 
 the divine fire may have found lodgment 
 with us, is usually urged on the ground 
 of the shortness of life. Richard Watson 
 Gilder, for example, voices it thus: 
 126
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 " This is my creed, 
 
 This be my deed : 
 ' Hide not thy heart ' ; 
 
 Soon we depart ; 
 
 Mortals are all, 
 
 A breath, then the pall, 
 
 A flash in the dark, 
 
 All's done stiff and stark ; 
 
 No time for a lie ; 
 
 The truth, and then die ; 
 
 Hide not thy heart. 
 
 " Forth with thy thought ; 
 Soon 't will be naught, 
 And thou in thy tomb ; 
 Now is air, now is room. 
 Down with false shame ; 
 Reck not of fame ; 
 Dread not men's spite ; 
 Quench not thy light. 
 This be thy creed, 
 This be thy deed : 
 Hide not thy heart.' " 
 
 Such a warning as that derives a just 
 solemnity from the fact that, so far as 
 127
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 this world is concerned, if we are to 
 speak out at all, it must be soon. But 
 there is another and less somber aspect 
 in which it appears desirable for us to 
 learn by practice here that difficult art 
 of spiritual communication upon which 
 we shall be altogether dependent by 
 and by. If we do not learn it here, we 
 may learn it there; but perhaps slowly 
 and with infinite difficulty. Even with 
 lips and tongues and eyes and ears, 
 even with the ample resources of hu- 
 man speech and the wonderful arts of 
 writing and printing, it is a very hard 
 thing to transmit a spiritual idea from 
 one mind to another. What is it going 
 to be when we live in a world where 
 there is no other way of transmitting a 
 thought than to think it intensely? It 
 is said of the stars, 
 128
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 *' Day unto day uttereth speech, 
 
 And night unto night showeth knowledge : 
 There is no speech nor language ; 
 Their voice cannot be heard." 
 
 The stars can talk without words; 
 they do it just by shining. Can we? 
 And if we cannot now, would it not be 
 well to practice a little, while we still 
 have the words ? l 
 
 1 Moreover, if it should be our duty or our privi- 
 lege in the future life to attempt what the psychic 
 researchers think many spirits are trying to do, that 
 is, to send thought messages from the other side into 
 this world for some wise and good purpose, then how 
 enormously important it might be that we should be 
 able to share our consciousness with others. Such 
 transmission might be expected to require a very high 
 electric potential, so to speak, to overcome the vast 
 resistance through which it must operate. Many in- 
 terested but critical investigators of trance mediums 
 and automatic writing are not disposed to regard as 
 entirely conclusive against the genuineness of some 
 of these phenomena the evident trivialities and inco- 
 herences mixed in with the more reasonable and inter- 
 esting material. For, they remind us, we must not 
 forget the stubborn and refractory medium through 
 which a real spirit message, if there be any such thing, 
 must have to pass in using any human mind, even one 
 
 129
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 Whether we do or do not take the 
 slightest interest in the possibility of 
 the communication of thought across 
 the borderland between the two worlds, 
 we shall certainly need before long all 
 our powers of making ourselves under- 
 stood by others. 
 
 so sensitive as Mrs. Piper's. It has seemed to them 
 that an effort of concentration sufficient to stir a mor- 
 tal brain with some vague fragments of a genuine 
 message from without might be totally inadequate to 
 avoid a large admixture of nonsense from the medi- 
 um's own subconscious mind, and perhaps also from 
 the subconscious or conscious minds of the sitters; 
 and this without any intentional fraud or interference 
 on the medium's part. In fact, they point out, there 
 is a certain v presumption that the earlier manifesta- 
 tions of genuine psychic phenomena, whether to too 
 incredulous or too credulous investigators, would be 
 fragmentary and obscure, because of this factor of 
 high resistance and inadequate initial force. The an- 
 alogies of recent scientific progress in the reinforce- 
 ment of very weak electrical currents in long-distance 
 telephony, and very slight ether vibrations in wireless 
 telegraphy and telephony, show us that this difficulty 
 is serious but not insurmountable in the realm of nat- 
 ural force. Whether it can ever be conquered in the 
 sphere of mind is a question for the next generation. 
 
 130
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 It may be, of course, that communi- 
 cation will be easier, not harder, in the 
 future. We were led to think, in con- 
 sidering the question of recognition in 
 the future, that barriers will there be 
 lessened rather than multiplied. It is 
 obvious that the polyglot vocal speech 
 of earth will be superseded there by 
 some other means of communicating 
 thought, which may, for all we know, 
 be so much simpler and better than 
 ours that we shall wonder why we 
 ever bothered with the alphabet. But 
 the mere communication of the most 
 elementary ideas is a very different 
 thing from the sharing of spiritual con- 
 sciousness which is here under consid- 
 eration. 
 
 Every time, therefore, that we suc- 
 ceed in overcoming a false fear, a shal-
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 low pride, a natural reticence, and in 
 giving out with the personal stamp that 
 truth which we have made our own, 
 we are preparing for a wider ministry 
 here, and perhaps hereafter. The sud- 
 denly genuine word in the midst of the 
 social small talk, the deliberate writing 
 of the neglected letter to an old friend 
 in order not to lose the line of com- 
 munication, the .'seeking of occasions 
 when one may appropriately, though 
 not easily, raise serious subjects with 
 the casual acquaintance, or even with 
 the stranger these are ways of keep- 
 ing alive the spirit of giving away what 
 we have no right to keep. 
 
 Yet in all this we are not to forget 
 
 the caution of one who was all his life 
 
 very generous with the things which 
 
 had cost him the most, such as love and 
 
 132
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 truth. The great Teacher said we were 
 not to waste our souls on useless speech. 
 His words were, " Cast not your pearls 
 before swine."
 
 XIX 
 
 To live for the future is, again, to live 
 helpfully. To speak of it sounds trite, 
 for here we seem to be merely echoing 
 the familiar though lofty teaching of 
 ordinary religion and ethics. But in the 
 same special sense as that in which we 
 have considered the future life as a life 
 demanding spiritual intensity and spir- 
 itual communication, it must also be a 
 life of spiritual helpfulness. Those same 
 considerations of intelligent preparation 
 for a new state of being which make it 
 desirable to learn to be intensely our- 
 selves, and to share with others the 
 best of our inner life, also demand that 
 we turn with fresh interest and zeal to 
 the working out of the Golden Rule in 
 
 134
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 the practical problems of daily life. Re- 
 ligion teaches us that we should help 
 because we have been helped, and be- 
 cause all men are our neighbors, our 
 brothers. Ethics teaches us that we 
 should help because we belong to a 
 social order of mutual dependence. The 
 philosophy of immortality teaches us 
 that we do well to learn now how to 
 help, and to find pleasure in helping, 
 because that is probably the principal 
 occupation of eternity. 
 
 In considering the possible activities 
 of a spiritual world, we distinguished 
 five: (i) helping the living; (2) dis- 
 covering new truth; (3) discovering old 
 friends; (4) discovering new friends; 
 (5) educating the new comers in heaven. 
 The first and the fifth are nothing but 
 helping. The discovery of truth and of 
 
 '35
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 old and new friends, so far as it is un- 
 selfish and not merely curious, depends 
 chiefly upon the desire to be of use as 
 its motive, and upon sympathy, intel- 
 lectual and moral, as its method. 
 
 Further, the other two kinds of prep- 
 aration for the future that have just 
 been discussed will not amount to much 
 unless they are dominated by the spirit 
 of helpfulness. For both intensity and 
 the ability to communicate one's thought 
 are, regarded as coldly intellectual pow- 
 ers, within the reach of only a small 
 minority of mankind, and perhaps of 
 comparatively little value in the spirit- 
 ual progress of the race in this world 
 or any other. To live intensely by sheer 
 force of intellect is possible to one man 
 in a thousand; to live intensely by sur- 
 rendering oneself unreservedly to the
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 great tides of love that move both the 
 heavens and the hearts of men is pos- 
 sible to all. 
 
 Again, to live communicatively by such 
 intellectual concentration as achieves an 
 efficient transmission of ideas is after all 
 not for the multitude. For most of us, 
 then, intensity, in order to be helpful, 
 must be intensity of love, not of intel- 
 lect. And the life of spiritual sharing, 
 of communication, is the life in which 
 we learn to understand others, rather 
 than try to make them understand us. 
 
 Indeed, the highest helpfulness in this 
 world, and perhaps in the next, is help- 
 ing other people to be most truly them- 
 selves; helping them to express their 
 own imperfect thought, and so to grow; 
 taking for granted in them a virtue 
 which they have by no means shown, 
 
 137
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 and perhaps do not possess, but which 
 they are thereby led to covet and to ac- 
 quire. "Our chief want in life is some- 
 body who shall make us do what we 
 can," says Emerson. The strong man 
 does that for himself, both making the 
 standard and holding himself up to it. 
 The rest of us need the stern stimulus of 
 necessity, or the kind incitements of a 
 friend. Such helpfulness as that requires 
 both intensity and communicativeness, 
 and sanctifies them. 
 
 Indeed, this third principle of spirit- 
 ual helpfulness is the corrective for an 
 otherwise pernicious and egoistic self- 
 culture like that of the Oriental mystic, 
 or some of the numerous " new thought" 
 cults of our day. We are not primarily 
 to fit ouselves to be at home and com- 
 fortable in the spiritual world of the 
 
 138
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 future. We are to train ourselves by 
 intensity and by communicativeness for 
 a life of eternal ministry. To mention 
 it is to prove it. How can any one sup- 
 pose that the need for mutual helpful- 
 ness will cease when we pass into a 
 higher sphere? Would it be a higher 
 sphere if that need had disappeared? 
 None of the great poets has thought 
 so. None of the implications of person- 
 ality points in that direction. And if you 
 and I cannot without a wrench contem- 
 plate so simple a programme as that 
 of the Boy Scouts, "Do a good turn 
 every day," how shall we hope to 
 walk without shame among those whose 
 lives are nothing more than wise and 
 happy and unhampered ministry to 
 other lives?
 
 XX 
 
 IT is time now for us to lay aside al- 
 together the flimsy pretext that the right 
 kind of living for the future can be any 
 other than the right kind of living for 
 the present. That pretext served to whet 
 our interest in a bold flight of fancy at 
 the outset, wherein we tried to reason 
 out what may be and probably are some 
 of the occupations of eternity. We found 
 them to be not unlike the higher and 
 more admirable occupations of this 
 world. Then we undertook, still with 
 the pretense of examining an unfamiliar 
 subject, to see what kinds of preparation 
 for such a world could be enumerated, 
 outside of the well-known religious 
 principles of turning away from sin and 
 140
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 seeking to be reconciled with one's 
 Maker. Having discovered several such 
 methods of learning to live without a 
 body, namely, intensity, communica- 
 tiveness, and helpfulness, we were about 
 to end the elaborate deductive process 
 with a Q.E.D. 
 
 And now it dawns upon us that these 
 and all related qualities of character are 
 just as important to our usefulness and 
 happiness in this world as in the next; 
 that every day we practice them, we are 
 better citizens and better neighbors and 
 better friends, as well as better Chris- 
 tians. There remains only the solemn 
 farce of declaring that things which are 
 equal to the same thing are equal to 
 each other. The highest duty of earth is 
 the highest duty of heaven. Life is im- 
 mortality, when it is the right kind of 
 141
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 life. " Thy will be done, as in heaven, so 
 on earth." To be truly good is to abolish 
 the dead line between the next twenty, 
 forty, fifty years of life and what follows 
 to live for the whole of it, expecting 
 no break. And all our study of " living 
 for the future " has only served to show 
 us that there is no other kind of living 
 worthy of the name. 
 
 Living for the future is living in such 
 a way that we help to make the future, 
 and the future helps to make us. It is 
 living by faith in ourselves, as the heirs 
 of eternity; in our fellow men, as the 
 companions of eternity; in God, as the 
 Light of all our seeing, the Force of all 
 our better striving, and the Goal of all 
 our journey. 
 
 It is well to remember that while 
 reason and analogy have enabled us to 
 142
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 see with a certain clearness and fresh- 
 ness what qualities of character may 
 perhaps be most important in the future, 
 as they are in the present, reason can 
 never give us those qualities. Only life 
 can do that. And the more abundant life 
 comes when to the vision of a boundless 
 eternity is joined the strenuous and sol- 
 emn energy that comes from the brevity 
 of earthly endeavor. Some of our tasks 
 and some of our privileges must be begun 
 here, or they will never be begun at all; 
 some of the opportunities we miss now, 
 we miss forever. There is no encour- 
 agement for the idler, the shirker, the 
 drone. For them it may well be true that 
 "The night cometh when no man can 
 work." 
 
 In all that has been said we need not 
 be surprised to find just what we have 
 M3
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 been hearing all our lives from the sa- 
 cred words of Scripture. Probably the 
 professional religious teacher would be 
 eager to point out that this intensity of 
 the inner life, this willingness to share 
 one's deeper thought, this desire to help 
 one's neighbor, are nothing more than 
 other names for prayer and worship and 
 Christian charity. So it is, indeed. We 
 have taken a bypath, and come out on 
 the main road. And in the presence of 
 all the mysteries and the unanswered 
 questions that we have not dared to 
 touch, there is only one word that jus- 
 tifies the confidence that the truth is 
 better than our brightest hopes. That 
 is the word of the only one who really 
 knew anything about it, and who, be- 
 cause he knew, would not tell. He re- 
 assured his disciples, not by satisfying 
 144
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 curiosity about the future, but by re- 
 minding them that he was going before 
 them into the unseen, and that all would 
 be well. " If it were not so, I would 
 have told you."
 
 XXI 
 
 IT would seem, then, both from the 
 standpoint of unaided reason and from 
 that of revelation, that the whole duty of 
 man toward the future might be summed 
 up in the three maxims, live intensely 
 - be yourself; live communicatively 
 give yourself; live helpfully forget 
 yourself in order to remember others. 
 But there is one thing more that is in- 
 volved in living for the future, not a 
 duty but a privilege. What is future for 
 us is for the great company of the un- 
 seen an eternal present. To them, as 
 they walk their unseen ways, we may 
 lift our hearts in vague but reverent sa- 
 lute, that is something more than mem- 
 ory and something less than prayer. 
 146
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 Browning's "Epilogue" is often mis- 
 quoted, or rather misinterpreted. We 
 hear the line, " Greet the unseen with 
 a cheer," spoken as if "the unseen" 
 meant the unseen mystery, the unseen 
 event, the unknown morrow as if the 
 adjective were to be construed with 
 a neuter noun understood. But what 
 Browning said was that we should greet 
 with a cheer the unseen friend, who in 
 his earthly life 
 
 4 'never turned his back but marched breast 
 
 forward, 
 
 Never doubted clouds would break, 
 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, 
 
 wrong would triumph 
 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
 Sleep to wake." 
 
 It is to him, to the poet, the prophet, the 
 
 hero, to that father, brother, lover, friend 
 
 of each one of us, who is now unseen but 
 
 H7
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 living somewhere still, that we should 
 raise a cheer. Whether -he hears that 
 cheer or not, it ennobles our own unfin- 
 ished struggle with a glimpse of the goal. 
 We have a Memorial Day for the de- 
 parted soldiers of our wars. It is a good 
 day, and should cease to be a holiday in 
 order that it may become a holy day; 
 the last Sunday in May should be cele- 
 brated forever, with an increasing per- 
 ception of its deeper meaning as the last 
 of those who began the observance pass 
 into the unknown. But we need such a 
 day for others than the veterans. We 
 need a day perhaps early in Novem- 
 ber, at about the time when a part of 
 the Christian Church celebrates All 
 Souls' Day upon which all those who 
 are so disposed may do honor to the 
 Great Majority. In every school and 
 148
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 college and university there might then 
 be recalled the memory of those illus- 
 trious alumni whose names now bear 
 the star. We need a Decoration Day 
 when there shall be garlands for the 
 heroes of peace, wreaths for genius, 
 flowers for every unseen friend. This 
 generation needs a day once in the year 
 when boys and girls, and young men 
 and young women, shall be called upon 
 in their several places of assembly to 
 stand up, and look up, and raise the 
 right hand in salute to the departed. At 
 the dinner table on that day the mem- 
 bers of the family, the club, might well 
 stand and drink in silence a cup for 
 auld lang syne. The Eucharist in the 
 churches on such a day would take 
 on a new meaning; it would stand for 
 the communion of all souls. 
 149
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 But no such day, no thought that 
 might lie ba.ck of it, could ever help us 
 much unless we thought of it as the day 
 not of the dead but of the ever-living. 
 There has been too much living for the 
 past, both in church and state. We have 
 seen dead customs and dead creeds gov- 
 erning the present and fettering and 
 thwarting its life. The memory even of 
 the just is not blessed unless it is linked 
 with hope. In all such reverence as we 
 pay to the lives that seem to have ended, 
 we do well; but in such reverence as 
 we pay by our own better living to those 
 invisible lives that have really just be- 
 gun, we do far better than we know, 
 better both for them and for ourselves. 
 By living so as to do them honor, by 
 carrying on their unfinished tasks, and 
 by sending up to them now and then the
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 swift, keen, grateful thought of recog- 
 nition and companionship, we are, once 
 more, living for the future in such fash- 
 ion as to make our present wiser and 
 better and more enduring.
 
 XXII 
 
 WE have come a long way. We have, 
 like Lear, sought to " take upon us the 
 mystery of things, as if we were God's 
 spies." We have followed the daring 
 example of Omar Khayyam, and arrived 
 at his somewhat trite conclusion: 
 
 11 1 sent my soul through the invisible, 
 Some letter of that after-life to spell : 
 And by and by my soul returned to me, 
 And answered, ' I myself am Heaven and 
 Hell.' " 
 
 And like Omar we must all say at 
 last, 
 
 " There was the door to which I found no key ; 
 There was the veil through which I might not 
 see." 
 
 Much of the fabric of our vision is in- 
 152
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 deed such stuff as dreams are made on; 
 and perhaps none the worse for that. 
 We have begun with the hypothesis of 
 personal immortality, which is itself in 
 this age a dream to many noble and 
 reverent minds. And upon that we have 
 built our airy towers and pinnacles of 
 inference and speculation, all in a vain 
 effort to guess what man was never made 
 to know. It is, when so considered, from 
 the angle of mere reason and demon- 
 stration, indeed a dream. Perhaps life 
 itself is a dream, from which some never 
 wake. But a good deal depends on what 
 sort of dream we have, both of this frail 
 mortality that we know so well, and of 
 that unimaginable morning "when we 
 dead awake,'' if the dream comes true. 
 That strange and brilliant but unfortu- 
 nate English poet, Thomas Lovell Bed- 
 
 153
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 does, asks us all a searching question 
 when he inquires, 
 
 *' If there were dreams for sale, 
 What would you buy ? " 
 
 But dreams are not for sale.
 
 XXIII 
 
 As the years go, life in an age like 
 this becomes more and more largely 
 either an admiration or a despair. By 
 such an admiration as comes from the 
 contemplation of the immortals, we may 
 escape the dullness, the pettiness, the 
 weariness, that the passing of youth so 
 easily leaves behind. See how they 
 march in victory ; behold how they rest 
 in peace. Remember their long striving^ 
 and consider their perfect calm. Ponder 
 the deep secret of their coming hither, 
 and of their going hence. But demand 
 not that they return. 
 
 For perhaps we are not to look for 
 any experimental confirmation of our 
 hope of immortality, save such confir- 
 
 155
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 mation as comes from living in that hope. 
 Commune with the earth, whence man 
 arises, and whither he seems to return. 
 Salute the sky, where light resides, and 
 where all vapors pass away. Ask of 
 them both, of the earth his mother and 
 of the sky his father, what they have done 
 with him now; and they will answer 
 only with the harvest, and with the dawn. 
 He is, they intimate, neither a flower 
 nor a star, that they should bring him 
 back in his season. He came; he is 
 gone; he comes no more, is not to be 
 repeated. The scattered fragments of 
 Osiris are not to be recovered beneath 
 the sun ; if he shines again, it will not be 
 here. The faithful Isis buried all of him 
 that she could find, but one thing escaped 
 her and so could not be buried, and that 
 was Osiris. "What is man, that thou 
 
 156
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 art mindful of him?" That which we 
 know most surely about him is, that he 
 departs. 
 
 But out of his buildings looks a soul; 
 under his music sings a deep desire; 
 between the dusty pages of his forgot- 
 ten books there is a breath of spring. 
 By men he is soon forgotten; by the 
 earth at last disowned, because even as 
 dust he ceases to be fertile; by the sky 
 rejected, because he is too much lighter 
 than the air. It is as though he were 
 not; yet we know that he has a home, 
 and that it is we that wander. 
 
 4 ' Nothing of him that doth fade 
 But doth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange." 
 
 Consider then this myster}': that nei- 
 ther in the earth nor in the sky can you 
 find that brave Spirit of the man, which 
 157
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 he truly was, and is, and shall be when 
 all flesh has passed away. And having 
 found him not, revere him; because, like 
 Eternity, of which he is a part, he must 
 for what remains of Time elude you 
 and lead you onward, in a quest that is 
 its own reward. " Greet the unseen with 
 a cheer." For to greet the unseen, to 
 recognize the reality of spirit and the 
 supremacy of love, is immortality.
 
 A SONG FOR ALL SOULS 
 
 I 
 SING for the brave whom men revere, 
 
 The brave whom no man knows, 
 Who face the dark and conquer fear, 
 Confronting unknown foes; 
 Sing for the brave. 
 
 Sing for the loyal and the true, 
 
 The silent souls obscure, 
 Who waver not the long years through, 
 
 The steadfast and the sure: 
 Sing for the true. 
 
 Sing for the gentle and the kind, 
 
 The merciful, the tender, 
 Who guide the erring, light the blind, 
 And all for love surrender: 
 Sing for the kind. 
 159
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 ii 
 Sing for the dead who died for love, 
 
 Whose life was but a song, 
 Red is the rose their graves above, 
 Green is the grass and long: 
 Sing for the dead. 
 
 Sing for the dead who died forlorn, 
 The dead who died in glory. 
 
 Tell for the children yet unborn 
 Their old, forgotten story: 
 Sing for the dead. 
 
 Sing for the dead who died to save 
 
 Freedom and fatherland. 
 They knew not why they had to die, 
 
 But now they understand: 
 Sing for the dead. 
 
 1 60
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 Sing for the dead; they cannot sing 
 What our gross ears can hear. 
 
 Echo the songs they fain would bring. 
 Sing, for the dead are near so near: 
 Sing for the dead. 
 
 in 
 
 Sing for the dead, the unfulfilled, 
 The child, the youth, the bride; 
 The poet's voice too early stilled; 
 Dreams unfinished, and hopes denied; 
 Beauty and pride the grave doth hide : 
 Sing for the unfulfilled. 
 
 Sing for the dead that tried and failed, 
 
 Or never tried at all ; 
 Who lived in vain through peril and 
 
 pain, 
 
 Fell, and never got up again, 
 And suddenly heard the last great call: 
 Sing for them all. 
 161
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 Sing for the day that is over at last, 
 
 Sing for the resting bed; 
 Sing for release, sing for peace, 
 Sing for rest that is last and best, 
 Sing for sleep that is long and deep; 
 Sing for the silent dead. 
 
 IV 
 
 Sing soft and low; 
 
 Do they hear? Do they know? 
 
 We come and we go, 
 
 But they stay. 
 Life laughs and weeps; 
 
 Death sleeps. 
 Life loves and hates; 
 
 Death waits. 
 Life sings and sighs; 
 
 Death 's wise. 
 
 No surprise, 
 
 162
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 No fear comes here, 
 No war any more, 
 No day, no night. 
 All 's well, all 's right, 
 All 's finished at last; 
 Debts paid, danger past. 
 Sun 's in the west; 
 Let them rest 
 
 With the sun; 
 
 Day 's done. 
 
 v 
 
 Sing for the lost whom God has found 
 
 Beneath the land and sea. 
 The souls astray have found their way 
 Back to the light of the endless day, 
 
 Back to eternity. 
 
 He called the armies under ground; 
 From sunken ships he called the 
 drowned; 
 
 163
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 Lost souls rose when they heard that 
 
 sound. 
 Sing for the lost and found. 
 
 Sing for the living that cannot die, 
 Because they know the way 
 
 To cross the sea and pierce the sky; 
 
 For brains wear out, but souls can fly 
 Through night to find the day. 
 
 Sing for the lives that rise and soar, 
 
 Sing for the souls that die no more, 
 
 Sing for the everlasting shore 
 
 Beyond the restless sea. , 
 
 Sing for the free, wherever they be, 
 
 In this world or a better, 
 Whose spirits bold no chain can hold, 
 No past enthrall, no fate enfold, 
 
 Whose life no death can fetter; 
 164
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 Whose souls arise before our eyes 
 From prison cells to Paradise: 
 Sing for the free, 
 Wherever they be. 
 Sing for all souls! 
 Sing!
 
 PRAYERS FOR THE ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 I 
 
 O THOU who hast set eternity in the 
 heart of man, and hast made us all seek- 
 ers after that which we can never find, 
 forbid us to be satisfied with life. Draw 
 us away from base content, and set our 
 eyes on far-off things. Keep us at tasks 
 too hard for us, that we may be driven to 
 Thee for strength. Deliver us from fret- 
 fulness and self-pity. Make us sure of 
 the goal we cannot see, and of the hid- 
 den good in the world. Open our eyes 
 to beauty by the way, and our hearts to 
 the loveliness men hide from us be- 
 cause we do not trust them enough. 
 Bind us by fast bonds to the brother- 
 166
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 hood of those who love Thee better 
 than they know, who serve Thee in the 
 darkness, and even in their doubts will 
 never give Thee up. Shine Thou upon us 
 with such light as we can bear. Show us 
 such truth as we can understand and 
 obey. Save us from ourselves, and fill our 
 hearts with the vision of a world made 
 new. Help us to desire no reward but 
 the utter freeing of our souls from the 
 bonds of flesh when the days of our years 
 on the earth are fulfilled. 
 
 ii 
 
 O Everlasting Father, steady us in 
 the midst of a changing world. We have 
 lost our fatherland, and have not found 
 the land beyond the sea. Our hearts are 
 restless and athirst for the living God, 
 who made us what we are. But Thou, 
 167
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 O Lord, art steadfast and unshaken. 
 We know that Thou art the Master of 
 all things visible and invisible, and that 
 there is none among all the powers of 
 evil that can withstand Thee. Quiet our 
 nameless fears, drive out the dread of 
 death, and of a dreary, helpless life after 
 death. Grant to us a hope of immortal- 
 ity that shall not vanish in shadows 
 when our sun is setting. Show us an in- 
 visible world far better than men have 
 dreamed of or desired, and a light too 
 bright for mortal eyes. We ask not for 
 a heaven wherein to be made happ 3 ',but 
 only to have more time to do the tasks 
 we have failed in here, and to learn how 
 to be free. Deliver us from haste and 
 dismay, and set our daily life before 
 us in the quiet light of eternity. 
 
 1 68
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 ni 
 
 O Thou who art the shepherd of all 
 wandering souls, we who have loved 
 too few, and none aright, beseech Thee 
 to teach us compassion. Show us the 
 hungry hearts of men and women, 
 turned bitter with long waiting, that 
 with understanding we may love those 
 who love us not. Blot out of our re- 
 membrance all harsh words, and make 
 us ever mindful of the hidden pain that 
 others must endure. To all weakness 
 that men bear as a burden from the 
 past make us very merciful. To all de- 
 fect of love in those who have never 
 been loved make us forgiving, when 
 we remember how richly we have been 
 forgiven. Show us the hidden tragedies 
 and thejiidden heroisms of those whom 
 169
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 we have thought to be our enemies. 
 Help us to look upon the thwarted 
 souls of men in the days of their life as 
 we shall look upon their still faces in 
 the day of their death, in order that 
 now, rather than then, understanding 
 all we may forgive all. 
 
 IV 
 
 We thank Thee, O God, for light 
 after darkness, and for the endless re- 
 newing of life. Thou that art never 
 weary of setting us free from the bonds 
 wherewith we have bound ourselves, 
 make us to walk abroad in this new 
 day without fear, or any kind of bond- 
 age. Teach us to enter humbly into 
 the heritage of truth won for us by 
 saints and martyrs of old, that their 
 sacrifice may not have been in vain, 
 170
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 but that they, being perfected in us, 
 may be glad after all their griefs. Open 
 our eyes to perceive new light, and our 
 ears to hear the new voices of the age 
 that is calling us. Show us how to help 
 men and women to be more truly them- 
 selves. Fit us for the life that is await- 
 ing us in the new kingdom of heaven 
 upon earth that is near at hand. And 
 may we gladly give up all things for 
 that. 
 
 v 
 
 O Thou who art the Father of all the 
 faithful, give us the great gift of faith. 
 Help us always to believe in the best 
 that we know, and the best that our 
 hearts have hoped for. And may we 
 never be utterly cast down when we 
 look upon the ruins of our happiness, 
 171
 
 LIVING FOR THE FUTURE 
 
 'jr the failure of all our strivings after 
 goodness. Bid us then arise in patience 
 and good cheer to take up the broken 
 task once more, to rebuild the eternal 
 mansion-house of God in the midst of 
 our vanishing days. And so teach us 
 that by our daily failures we may learn 
 how to outlast Time, to rescue from 
 decay and oblivion all that is best and 
 loveliest and most fleeting, and to be- 
 come true citizens of the kingdom of 
 heaven that passeth not away. 
 
 THE END
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 T,os Angeles
 
 A 000 602 358 4 
 
 Syrian 
 
 By 
 
 Abraham Mitrie Rihbany 
 * 
 
 An illuminating interpreta- 
 tion of the life and teach- 
 ings of Jesus Christ by a 
 Syrian who has become 
 one of America's most fa- 
 mous preachers ***** 
 
 * 
 
 FOR SALE AT 
 ALL BOOKSTORES OR BY THE PUBLISHERS 
 
 Houghton Mifflin Company 
 
 4 Park St., Boston : 16 E. 40th St., New York
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 Txw Angeles 
 
 It *' 
 
 is unusual significance 
 in this study and interpreta- 
 tion of Jesus Christ by a Syr- 
 ian. As a prophet and a seer, to be 
 sure, Jesus belongs to all races and 
 all ages. Yet as regards his modes of 
 thought and life, and his methods of 
 teaching, he was distinctly a Syrian. 
 It was natural, therefore, that the 
 truths of his Gospel should be handed 
 down to succeeding generations, and 
 later should come to us of the Occi- 
 dent, in Oriental moulds of thought. 
 
 Conditions of life in that country 
 have changed but little since the days 
 of Jesus, and Mr. Rihbany's own ex- 
 perience and knowledge qualify him 
 to throw fresh light on the life and 
 teachings of Christ and on other por- 
 tions of the Bible whose correct under- 
 standing depends to a large extent on 
 accurate knowledge of the original 
 environment. 
 
 Not the least of the good qualities 
 of this book is its charming style and 
 its freedom from technicalities and 
 doctrinal appeals. Bathed in an Ori- 
 ental atmosphere, the story as told by 
 Mr. Rihbany reads almost like a ro- 
 mance. "The Birth of a Man Child," 
 
 THE LIBRARY
 
 A nno 
 
 II 
 
 Jbo 
 
 "The Star of Bethlehem," "Filial Obe- 
 dience," "Feast and Sacrament "(the 
 Last Supper), "The Oriental Manner 
 of Speech," "Bread and Salt," "Sis- 
 ters of Mary and Martha," and other 
 chapters, are charming stories told in 
 a simple, direct manner which is at 
 once pleasing and reverential. 
 
 As a whole the book is not only of 
 vital importance to the preacher and 
 the Bible teacher, but it is also a vol- 
 ume for home reading as well. Its 
 varied scenes of Syrian life appeal 
 alike to the scholar, the layman, and 
 the child, and reproduce for Western 
 readers the original atmosphere in 
 which the Bible was first written. As 
 an eminent preacher wrote to the au- 
 thor, this work is "a real key to the 
 Scriptures." 
 
 Mr. Rihbany is the minister of the 
 Church of the Disciples in Boston, 
 with which James Freeman Clarke 
 was so long identified. In 1914 he 
 published "A Far Journey." an ac- 
 count of his early life in Syria and his 
 extraordinarily interesting career in 
 this country, to which he came as a 
 penniless immigrant. 
 $1.50 net.
 
 UNIVER! 
 
 A FAR JOURNEY 
 
 BY 
 
 ABRAHAM MITRIE 
 RIHBANY 
 
 " It is a marvelous recital, this 
 bridging of the thousands of years 
 that separate Turkey and the United 
 States, and one that every true Amer- 
 ican can read with almost as great a 
 pride as the teller of the story must 
 feel." The Dial. 
 
 "A book to be grouped with those 
 of Jacob A. Riis, Dr. Steiner, and 
 Mary Antin." The Continent. 
 
 " Written in a simple, fine English 
 style, there is something of the Ori- 
 ental flavor about it. It gives an 
 insight not only into the soul of the 
 immigrant, but also the life of his 
 people in Syria." St. Louis Post- 
 Dispatch. 
 
 Illustrated. $1.75 net
 
 BT 
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