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THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE

... μὴ σκοπούντων ἡμῶν τὰ βλεπόμενα, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὴ βλεπόμενα· τὰ γὰρ βλεπόμενα, πρόσκαιρα· τὰ δὲ μὴ βλεπόμενα, αἰώνια. Πρὸς Κορινθίους, Βʹ. δʹ.

Animula! vagula, blandula,

Hospes comesque corporis,

Quae nunc abibis in loca,—

Pallidula, rigida, nudula....

Hadrian.

‘God hath endowed us with different faculties, suitable and proportional to the different objects that engage them. We discover sensible things by our senses, rational things by our reason, things intellectual by understanding; but divine and celestial things he has reserved for the exercise of our faith, which is a kind of divine and superior sense in the soul. Our reason and understanding may at some times snatch a glimpse, but cannot take a steady and adequate prospect of things so far above their reach and sphere. Thus, by the help of natural reason, I may know there is a God, the first cause and original of all things; but his essence, attributes, and will, are hid within the veil of inaccessible light, and cannot be discerned by us but through faith in his divine revelation. He that walks without this light, walks in darkness, though he may strike out some faint and glimmering sparkles of his own. And he that, out of the gross and wooden dictates of his natural reason, carves out a religion to himself, is but a more refined idolater than those who worship stocks and stones, hammering an idol out of his fancy, and adoring the works of his own imagination. For this reason God is nowhere said to be jealous, but upon the account of his worship.’—Pilgrims Progress, Part III.

‘To die,—to sleep;—

To sleep! perchance to dream;—ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause.’—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act iii. Scene 1.

THE

UNSEEN UNIVERSE

OR

PHYSICAL SPECULATIONS

ON A

FUTURE STATE

BY

B. STEWART AND P. G. TAIT.

——the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are
not seen are eternal.

SEVENTH EDITION

(Revised, and Enlarged.)

London

MACMILLAN AND CO

1878.

[All Rights reserved.]

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience, and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.—Amen.

Edinburgh University Press:

T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY.

PREFACE.

[The following was prefixed to our Sixth Edition. Though many changes, some of importance, have since been made in the text, we do not think it necessary to call attention to them here.]

Our readers will find near the end of our work the following paragraph, which has appeared in every edition:—‘We are in hopes that when this region of thought comes to be further examined, it may lead to some common ground on which followers of science on the one hand, and of revealed religion on the other, may meet together and recognise each other’s claims without any sacrifice of the spirit of independence, or any diminution of self-respect. Entertaining these views, we shall welcome with sincere pleasure any remarks or criticism on these speculations of ours, whether by the leaders of scientific thought, or by those of religious inquiry.’

A work like ours, containing a challenge of this sort, has naturally called forth a great amount of criticism. Bearing in mind the existence of the ‘odium theologicum,’ we are bound to confess that at first we were disposed to tremble on opening any review of our work in a theological journal of repute. We were soon however delightfully perplexed at finding that the leaders of religious inquiry were disposed to treat us with the utmost courtesy, agreeing with us in very many points, and stating when necessary any difference of opinion in a manner calculated alike to preserve their independence and to conciliate our self-respect. We feel much gratified and encouraged by this treatment, and we think that if our fourth edition be compared with our first, it will be found that we possess some plasticity and have learned to make some use of the criticism so faithfully and courteously bestowed upon us.

Here we would wish to take an opportunity of stating that the Principle of Continuity as upheld by us has reference solely to the intellectual faculties. We are led, for instance, by this principle to assert that the process of production of the visible universe must have been of such a nature as to be comprehensible more or less to the higher intelligences of the universe.

But we are not led to assert the eternity of stuff or matter, for that would denote an unauthorised application to the invisible universe of the experimental law of the conservation of matter which belongs entirely to the present system of things.

Nor are we led to assert that the ether must play some important part in our future bodies, for our knowledge of things is vastly too limited to enable us to come to any such conclusion.

Notwithstanding these remarks, if any theologian of repute thinks that our fourth and subsequent editions savour too much of ideas of this nature, we will gladly amend our language when a suitable opportunity occurs. It is probably due to misconception of our words, possibly to a difficulty, which we have all along felt, of finding words exactly fitted to express some of the more novel of the conceptions to which we have been led, that we have been spoken of, to a certain extent even by some friendly critics, as ‘subtly materialistic’ or as ‘loose Positivists.’ Unless we were to coin new terms (which we may yet find it necessary to do), it will probably be found all but impossible to escape such charges when writing on such matters.

While the treatment we have experienced from the true leaders of religious thought has been all that we could wish, and while some of them have come forward as our champions rather than our critics, we regret to think that certain of their following have not invariably imitated the good example thus set them. All are not Bayards, whether we regard the temper of the blade or that of the individual who wields it.

Pages of so-called ‘extracts’ from our book have been strung together, now by some writers of the High Church school, anon by writers of the very lowest Evangelical type, in each case with absolute disregard of their original collocation and surroundings, and the result is of course as utterly unfair a representation of our meaning as could possibly be given. These ‘extracts,’ which are always scrupulously enclosed in inverted commas, are not merely altered in meaning by being arbitrarily detached from the context—they are often altered by the insertion of terms (e.g. luminiferous force!) which we, as scientific men, could not possibly have employed.

People who adopt a system like this deserve to have, once for all, thoroughly brought home to them the bitter rebuke administered to their analogues long ago by a witty if semi-profane divine, who proposed to choose his text on their principle, and gave out, to the astonishment of his audience, part only of a verse, viz., ‘Hang all the law and the prophets’!

We have placed at the commencement of this Preface the only words of ours which appear to commit us to controversy, and we trust that a study of them will convince our readers, as it has convinced us, that we do not stand committed to the hopeless task of entering the lists against this species of controversialist.

It is with reluctance that we have felt ourselves compelled to allude to a method of controversy, in our opinion, as deficient in Christian courtesy as it is powerful to stifle the interests of truth.

The attacks which have been made on our work since the sixth edition was published, are (all at least that we have seen) completely met by the Introduction. Their basis, when such exists, has usually been some short passage, arbitrarily detached from its context, and thus made susceptible of any gloss desired.

November 1877.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Forgetful of the splendid example shown by intellectual giants like Newton and Faraday, and aghast at the materialistic statements now-a-days freely made (often professedly in the name of science), the orthodox in religion are in somewhat evil case.

As a natural consequence of their too hastily reached conclusion, that modern science is incompatible with Christian doctrine, not a few of them have raised an outcry against science itself. This result is doubly to be deplored; for there cannot be a doubt that it is calculated to do mischief, not merely to science but to religion.

Our object, in the present work, is to endeavour to show that the presumed incompatibility of Science and Religion does not exist. This, indeed, ought to be self-evident to all who believe that the Creator of the Universe is Himself the Author of Revelation. But it is strangely impressive to note how very little often suffices to alarm even the firmest of human faith.

Of course we cannot, in this small volume, enter upon the whole of so vast a subject, and we have therefore contented ourselves with a brief, though, we hope, sufficiently developed discussion of one very important—even fundamental—point. We endeavour to show, in fact, that immortality is strictly in accordance with the principle of Continuity (rightly viewed); that principle which has been the guide of all modern scientific advance. As one result of this inquiry we are led, by strict reasoning on purely scientific grounds, to the probable conclusion that ‘a life for the unseen, through the unseen, is to be regarded as the only perfect life.’ (See [Chap. VII.]) We need not point out here the bearing of this on religion. Incidentally, the reader will find many remarks and trains of reasoning which (by the alteration of a word or two) can be made to apply to other points of almost equal importance.

We may state that the ideas here developed—very imperfectly of course, as must always be the case in matters of the kind—are not the result of hasty guessing, but have been pressed on us by the reflections and discussions of several years.

We have to thank many of our friends, theological as well as scientific, for ready and valuable assistance. The matter of our work has certainly gained by this, though it is likely that the manner may have suffered by the introduction, here and there, of peculiarities of style which could not easily be removed without damage to the sense.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

As a preface to our Second Edition, we cannot do better than record the experience derived from our first. It is indeed gratifying to find a wonderful want of unanimity among the critics who assail us, and it is probably owing to this cause that we have been able to preserve a kind of kinetic stability, just as a man does in consequence of being equally belaboured on all sides by the myriad petty impacts of little particles of air.

Some call us infidels, while others represent us as very much too orthodoxly credulous; some call us pantheists, some materialists, others spiritualists. As we cannot belong at once to all these varied categories, the presumption is that we belong to none of them. This, by the way, is our own opinion.

Venturing to classify our critics, we would divide them into three groups:—

(1.) There are those who have doubtless faith in revelation; but more especially, sometimes solely, in their own method of interpreting it; none, however, in the method according to which really scientific men with a wonderful unanimity have been led to interpret the works of nature. These critics call us, some infidels, some pantheists, some dangerously subtle materialists, etc.

(2.) There are those who have faith in the methods according to which men of science interpret the laws of nature, but none whatever in revelation or theology. These consider us as orthodoxly credulous and superstitious, or as writers of ‘the most hardened and impenitent nonsense that ever called itself original speculation.’

(3.) There are those who have a profound belief that the true principles of science will be found in accordance with revelation, and who welcome any work whose object is to endeavour to reconcile these two fields of thought. Such men believe that the Author of revelation is likewise the Author of nature, and that these works of His will ultimately be found to be in perfect accord. Such of this school as have yet spoken have approved of our work.

Our readers may judge for themselves which of these three classes of belief represents most nearly the true Catholic Faith.

Many of our critics seem to fancy that we presume to attempt such an absurdity as a demonstration of Christian truth from a mere physical basis! We simply confute those who (in the outraged name of science) have asserted that science is incompatible with religion. Surely it is not we who are dogmatists, but those who assert that the principles and well-ascertained conclusions of science are antagonistic to Christianity and immortality. If in the course of our discussion we are to some extent constructors, and find analogies in nature which seem to us to throw light upon the doctrines of Christianity, yet in the main our object is rather to break down unfounded objections than to construct apologetic arguments. These we leave to the Theologian. The Bishop of Manchester has very clearly described our position by stating that [from a purely physical point of view, [§ 204]] we ‘contend for the possibility of immortality and of a personal God.’

To vary the metaphor, we have merely stripped off the hideous mask with which materialism has covered the face of nature to find underneath (what every one with faith in anything at all must expect to find) something of surpassing beauty, but yet of inscrutable depth. For indeed we are entire believers in the infinite depth of nature, and hold that just as we must imagine space and duration to be infinite, so must we imagine the structural complexity of the universe to be infinite also. To our minds it appears no less false to pronounce eternal that aggregation we call the atom, than it would be to pronounce eternal that aggregation we call the Sun. All this follows from the principle of Continuity, in virtue of which we make scientific progress in the knowledge of things, and which leads us, whatever state of things we contemplate, to look for its antecedent in some previous state of things also in the Universe. This principle represents the path from the known to the unknown, or to speak more precisely, our conviction that there is a path. Nevertheless it does not authorise us to dogmatise regarding the properties of the unknown lying beyond or at the boundary of our little ‘clearing.’ We must go up to it and examine it often, with long continued labour, under great difficulties, before we can at all say what its properties are.

Among those who recognise us as orthodox, and for that reason attack us, there is one of deservedly high authority. Our ‘brother,’ Professor W. K. Clifford, has published a lively attack on our speculations in a recent number of the Fortnightly Review. We are bound respectfully to consider the arguments of an adversary of his calibre.

He appears to be unable to conceive the possibility of a spiritual body which shall not die with the natural body. Or rather, he conceives that he is in a position to assert, from his knowledge of the universe, that such a thing cannot be. We join issue with him at once, for the depth of our ignorance with regard to the unseen universe forbids us to come to any such conclusion with regard to a possible spiritual body.

Our critic begins his article by summoning up or constructing a most grotesque and ludicrous figure, which he calls our argument, and forthwith proceeds to demolish; and he ends by summoning up a horrible and awful phantom, against which he feelingly warns us. This phantom has already, it seems, destroyed two civilisations, and is capable of even worse things, though it is merely the ‘sifted sediment of a residuum.’ He does not tell us whether he means Religion in general, or only that particularly objectionable form of it called Christianity.

Our critic shows that he has not read our work,—has, in fact, merely glanced into it here and there. This is proved by what he says of Struve’s notions, on which we lay no stress whatever, while he puts them forward as the mainstay of our argument. We are also made out to be the assertors of a peculiar molecular constitution of the unseen universe, although with reference to this we say in our work, [page 217], ‘for the sake of bringing our ideas in a concrete form before the reader, and for this purpose only, we will now adopt a definite hypothesis.’ Of course it is too much to expect a critic now-a-days to read every word of a book which he is content to demolish, but we did hope he might have noticed the italics.

Our critic too commits several singular mistakes due to imperfections of memory. Why speak of the negative as universal, which appears in such words as immortality, endless existence, etc., when the most common of all expressions connected with the subject are the phrases, ‘eternal life,’ ‘everlasting life,’ etc., none of which involve the negative?

How the sun could go down upon ‘Gideon’ is not obvious. Had it done so it would certainly have occasioned personal inconvenience (to say the least) to that hero. But what’s in a name? Our critic was evidently thinking of Joshua and ‘Gibeon,’ and why should a critic care about the difference between Amorites and Amalekites? It is a mere matter of spelling,—a trifle. Similar mistakes in a previous article are apologised for in a footnote appended to that on the ‘Unseen Universe.’ Probably the author designed the apology to extend to it also, but forgot to say so; again a trifle. But it is of straws, some even weaker than these, that the imposing article is built; so that when we come forth to battle we find nothing to reply to.

To reduce matters to order, we may confidently assert that the only reasonable and defensible alternative to our hypothesis (or, at least, something similar to it) is, the stupendous pair of assumptions that visible matter is eternal, and that IT IS ALIVE. (See [§ 240].) If any one can be found to uphold notions like these (from a scientific point of view), we shall be most happy to enter the lists with him.

We have made numerous small though sometimes important changes in the text, but none of them at all modify the general tenor of the work as it first appeared two months ago.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

We have reason to think that notwithstanding all we have said, the position we take is not yet clearly understood, and we would therefore utilise the Preface to our Third Edition to put ourselves right with the public on this vital point.

To begin with the scientific side of our argument, we must once more make the statement that it is not we who are the dogmatists, but rather that school of scientific men who assert the incompatibility of science with Christianity.

Persistent as they have been in their endeavours to close the door leading from the seen to the unseen, we as resolutely maintain that it must be left open.

This class take credit to themselves for having thus barred the entrance to a throng of superstitious fancies which would inevitably rush through an open avenue—forgetting that they have by the same act barred the way to all the higher aspirations of man.

But though we have founded no argument for immortality on the existence of these higher aspirations, we cannot allow our adversaries to bar the way upon the plea that it would inevitably be the resort of unworthy passengers.

If it be the King’s highway it must be left open; if the unseen universe be a reality, surely we are not to dismiss it from our minds lest some people might entertain absurd views regarding its relation to the present visible universe. Such fancies are no new thing in the progress of knowledge. When two things are known to exist, we may have ten thousand erroneous hypotheses regarding their mutual relations, but only one true theory.

In the next place, we would say one word to that religious school which is more particularly affected by our present inquiry,—we mean the school who assert the resurrection of our material bodies, and a grossly material future state.

We have endeavoured to explain to this class of men that their belief is inconsistent with the integrity of that Principle of Continuity which underlies not only all scientific inquiry, but all action of any kind in this world of ours.

Under these circumstances such men have three honest alternatives before them.

In the first place they may acknowledge the truth of our position and change their views; or, secondly, they may combat our argument regarding the alleged incompatibility of their position with the Principle of Continuity; or, lastly, they may decline to accept this scientific principle in matters which concern their faith. What we complain of is, that the members of this school have chosen none of these alternatives, but have rather attempted to brand us as infidels and materialists, apparently forgetting (as usual) that such a method of conducting a discussion is neither Christ-like nor convincing.

But while one class of religious men have tried to brand us with these names, those of another school consider our theology narrow and gloomy. We reply to these men that we do not pretend to be theologians in any sense of the word. Our position in this respect has been greatly misunderstood. We are, no doubt, endeavouring to bring about a reconciliation between science and religion. In order to accomplish this we must first find out what is the fundamental principle of science, next what is the fundamental creed of the great majority of Christians, and then endeavour to show that the two are not incompatible with each other. In carrying out this process we have been led to regard the Principle of Continuity as the great law which regulates scientific inquiry, and there cannot be a doubt that the Old and New Testaments are regarded as authoritative expositions of religious truth by the great majority of the Church of Christ.

Now we find that the expressions in the Scriptures regarding the future of man and the constitution of the unseen world, taken in their obvious, if not absolutely literal meaning, are not inconsistent with scientific deductions from the Principle of Continuity.

We know very well that, especially of late years, a multitude of religious schools have risen up who take many of these expressions in a non-literal and far from obvious acceptation, and who, perhaps, do not accord the same authority to the writers as was formerly done. Into the disputes between these various religious schools we do not pretend to enter, nor do we see that the Shibboleths of such schools can be affected by our arguments, inasmuch as their discussions have, in the great majority of cases, nothing whatever to do with Physical principles. They are rather founded on historical, or moral, or metaphysical considerations, all of which are foreign to our argument.

Having no pretensions to a title which we certainly do not covet, we trust that we shall no longer be regarded as theologians either of a narrow and gloomy, or a lax and heretical school, or indeed of any school whatsoever.

September 1875.

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH AND FIFTH EDITIONS.

In consequence of misapprehensions into which several of our critics have fallen, we have prefixed to this edition an Introduction wherein the objects of our work, and the mode in which we seek to attain them, are fully but compactly explained. We need therefore say nothing on these matters here. The work has been greatly enlarged, and in many parts almost rewritten; but we have nowhere found it necessary to alter or recall any of the statements hitherto made by us.

As we now give our names, we can at length complain of the conduct of a London ‘Weekly,’ which, only a few days after the first appearance of our book, took the (we hope) very unusual course of stating the authorship as a matter of absolute fact, not of conjecture. It was, of course, not authorised to do so, either by ourselves or by our Publisher:—and we regret to find that the exigencies of competition for public favour can be thought capable of justifying, in the eyes of any one, such a course of conduct.

As Professors of Natural Philosophy we have one sad remark to make. The great majority of our critics have exhibited almost absolute ignorance as to the proper use of the term Force, which has had one, and only one, definite scientific sense since the publication of the Principia. As such men are usually among the exceptionally well educated, ignorance of this important question must be all but universal. In addition to what we have said on the subject in the text ([§ 97]), we would now only mention that the sole recorded case of true Persistency or Indestructibility of Force which we recollect having ever met with, occurs in connection with Baron Munchausen’s remarkable descent from the moon. It is, no doubt, a very striking case; but it is apparently unique, and it was not subjected to scientific scrutiny.

B. STEWART. P. G. TAIT.

April 1876.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

The present age is one of very rapid progress in almost all branches of knowledge.

Like a wave swelling as it advances shoreward, this progress has violently transformed whole regions of thought, while it has repeatedly invaded others not heretofore deemed accessible to such catastrophes.

Presuming upon a soil of great natural richness, the inhabitants of these latter regions had for a long series of years given themselves up to a species of husbandry which was beginning at length to be detrimental in its effects.

It thus came to pass that while the immediate result of each inundation was a sudden alarm and consequent confusion, yet nevertheless a fertilising residuum was always left behind, together with a very plain intimation that no region of thought can permanently flourish if it be entirely cut off from any of the intellectual influences around it.

Suchlike, we take it, have been the results of the recent great floods of intellectual energy, much of them seemingly subversive, which have repeatedly invaded the region occupied by the followers of Christianity. At present there is no book more read than the Bible, no life more deeply studied and discussed than the life of Christ. There is probably a greater amount of earnest attention devoted to these subjects than to any other branch of human inquiry. Nevertheless there is great confusion, and an almost despairing outcry from many of the inhabitants of the Christian region. It is imagined that fences and landmarks have disappeared, and that at length the rising tide is about to attack, as it has long threatened, the very lives and holdings of the community.

It will be our endeavour to reassure these somewhat over-timid people. Being students of physical science, we will try to gauge the strength of the tide, and more especially of the forces which give it motion, and endeavour to convince those who are sufficiently calm to receive conviction, that there neither is nor can be any real danger to their lives and holdings from the violence of the waters; but that, on the contrary, they will ultimately receive a blessing from that which will remain behind after the present confusion has disappeared.

‘Skin for skin,’ said a certain evil one, ‘yea all that a man hath will he give for his life,’ and the proverb is true (with a modification) as regards the life of the soul, no less than as regards that of the body. Take away all hope of a future state,—appear to demonstrate, if not with absolute certainty, yet with an approach to it, that such a condition of things is antagonistic to well-understood scientific principles, and we feel certain that the effect upon humanity would be simply disastrous.

At any rate, those who propound an argument of this kind must reasonably expect determined opposition from the followers of religion.

Let us here, before proceeding further, take the opportunity of stating that we discuss only the physical aspects of the argument regarding a future state. Being neither metaphysicians nor moral philosophers, we leave to others more competent than we can be the argument which may be based upon the universal craving among the intelligent races of mankind for a life beyond the grave.

In the fourth and following editions of our work, while we have not materially altered our argument, we have recast to some extent the shape in which it was first put before the reader, and this recasting has taken a more definite form in our present edition.

The large amount of friendly criticism which our work has called forth has convinced us that we did not at first sufficiently separate between certain conclusions which inevitably flowed from our argument, and certain others which, while deriving their strength from a totally different quarter, were yet not inconsistent with the former, but even, it might be, supported by them. The consequence has been that we have found ourselves credited with attempts which were very far from our thoughts, such, for instance, as the endeavour to deduce Christian theological doctrine from mere physical considerations.

We have therefore thought it desirable to bring in review before the reader, in this introductory chapter, the fundamental points of our argument, more especially as in what follows we may not always be able without an undesirable formality to keep separate the foundation and the superstructure.

In his justly renowned Analogy, Bishop Butler begins with a chapter on a future life. He says with great truth that if there is an idea that death will be the destruction of living powers, that idea must arise either from the reason of the thing or the analogy of nature. ‘But it does not arise (he proceeds to say) from the reason of the thing; for we do not know what death is. Again, we do not know on what the existence of our living powers depends; for we see them suspended in sleep, for example, or in a swoon, and still not extinguished. Neither does it arise from the analogy of nature; for death removes all sensible proof, and precludes us consequently from tracing out any analogy which would warrant us in inferring their destruction.’ Now, it is well known that since the days of Bishop Butler a school has arisen, the members of which assert that they have at length learned what Death is, and that in virtue of their knowledge they are in a position to tell us that life is impossible after death. It is one of the main objects of this volume to demonstrate the fallacy which underlies the argument brought forward by this school. We attempt to show that we are absolutely driven by scientific principles to acknowledge the existence of an Unseen Universe, and by scientific analogy to conclude that it is full of life and intelligence—that it is in fact a spiritual universe and not a dead one.

But while we are fully justified by scientific considerations in asserting the existence of such an unseen universe, we are not justified in assuming that we have yet attained, or can easily or perhaps ever attain, to more than a very slight knowledge of its nature. Thus we do not believe that we can really ascertain what death is.

To those, therefore, who assert that there is no spiritual unseen world, and that death is an end of the existence of the individual, we reply by simply denying their first statement, and in consequence of this denial, insisting that none of us know anything whatever about death. Indeed, it is at once apparent that a scientific denial of the possibility of life after death must be linked with at least something like a scientific proof of the non-existence of a spiritual unseen world. For if scientific analogy be against a spiritual Unseen, then evidently it is equally against the likelihood of life after death.

But if, on the other hand, we feel constrained to believe in a spiritual universe, then though it does not follow that life is certain after death, inasmuch as we do not know whether any provision has been made in this unseen world for our reception, yet it does follow that we cannot deny the possibility of a future life. For to do so would imply on our part such an exhaustive knowledge of the Unseen as would justify us in believing that no arrangement had been made in it for our transference thither. Now, our almost absolute ignorance with regard to the Unseen must prevent us from coming to any such conclusion.

We have been accused by some of our critics of being dogmatists. So far is this from being true that in the first part of our argument—namely, that which relates to a spiritual unseen:—we are content to develop from the present recognised condition of things. We take the world as we find it, and are forced by a purely scientific process to recognise the existence of an Unseen Universe.

We are likewise led to regard the Unseen as having given birth to the present universe, a conclusion to which one of our leading critics has apparently given his assent.

Here, however, we join issue with the materialistic school. They continue to insist—against all analogy as we take it—that this Unseen Universe is a dead one, having no life worthy of the name, although it must have existed for inconceivable ages before the present Universe arose.

Let our readers remark that in all this we introduce no dogma—we do not require to assert or even assume the existence of God. We are content to develop our argument from a position which is common to our adversaries and to ourselves.

An objection has been raised that our argument tends to the Swedenborgian doctrine of a spiritual body. Now, the same principles which guide us from the continuous existence of the outer world to acknowledge an Unseen, lead us on the assumption of our own existence after death to acknowledge what we may term a spiritual body. In other words, our conception of something which retains at once a hold upon the past and a possibility of future life assumes the form which we clothe in this or similar language.[1] But why Swedenborgian? Why not Pauline? Was it not the great Apostle who first gave utterance to his belief in these very words? If it be said to us that the way in which we regard the spiritual body is decidedly Swedenborgian, we would reply by asking our critics to tell us in what way we regard it.

We certainly hold that if we are to accept scientific principles, one of the necessary conditions of immortality is a frame surviving death, but we as resolutely maintain that of the nature of this frame we are and must probably remain profoundly ignorant.

It has likewise been objected that we do not sufficiently allow for the possibility that the present universe may be infinite, and that thus it might last for ever and continue, although spasmodically, to be the residence of living beings even in spite of the constant degradation of its energy. Unquestionably we cannot prove that the present visible universe is not infinite; this we have acknowledged in our work. But our chief argument is derived rather from the past than from the future. We maintain that the visible universe—that is to say the universe of atoms—must have had its origin in time, and that while The Universe is, in its widest sense, alike eternal and infinite, the universe of atoms certainly cannot have existed from all eternity.

While we freely confess that we cannot prove the finite magnitude of the universe of atoms, inasmuch as we cannot be sure that the stars which we see represent more than a small portion of this universe, we are unable to perceive any scientific principle which leads us to conclude that the number of such atoms must necessarily be infinite.

But whether it be finite or infinite, we have very great difficulty in imagining this universe to be eternal. Regarding the atom as something that has been developed from a previously existing unseen universe, we cannot readily believe it capable of lasting for ever. But if there be any element of decay in the material substance of the visible universe, the assumption of its present infinity will not enable us to predicate its future eternity.

Having thus defined our position, we may allow that in our earlier editions we have possibly given undue prominence to the particular argument in favour of an Unseen, which is derived from the future degradation of the energy of the present visible universe.

We come now to the second part of our subject. All that we have yet endeavoured to show is that the theory of a future life is not in any way whatever in contradiction to any ascertained facts or principles of science. But we have not succeeded in finding any proof that arrangements have been made in the Unseen world for our translation thither after death.

It has been shown that there is nothing in the whole range of science to lead us to suppose that life is impossible after death; but we have yet to inquire what evidence, if any, exists in favour of a future state. Now it is well known that the followers of Christianity believe they have received such evidence in virtue of the resurrection of Christ, and it is equally well known that of late years a school of scientific men have arisen who reject such an event as one impossible to be believed.

It is not, however, rejected mainly because it is an uncommon event, or one unconfirmed by modern experience, for it is sufficiently well known that uncommon events have a recognised place in the universe. Thus, for instance, there are certain conjunctions of the planets which are very uncommon, and have not occurred in modern experience, but we do not hesitate for a moment to believe in the possibility of their occurrence. Nay, we are in a position to go further, and to assert that at particular epochs of time, which we are capable of defining with greater or less precision, such uncommon conjunctions took place in the past, and will again take place in the future. An absolutely new comet, one which (from the fact that its orbit is hyperbolic) was probably never in the solar system before, and probably cannot again return to it, is by no means a rarity.

Now we believe that an extension of purely scientific logic drives us to receive as quite certain the occurrence of two events which are as incomprehensible as any miracle; these are:—the introduction of visible matter and its energy, and of visible living things into the universe. Furthermore, we are led by scientific analogy to regard the agency in virtue of which these two astounding events were brought about as an intelligent agency, an agency whose choice of the time for action is determined by considerations similar in their nature to those which influence a human being when he chooses the proper moment for the accomplishment of his purpose.

If this be true, the discussion regarding miracles must be removed altogether from the domain of science, and this for the very good reason that scientific logic admits the occurrence of events at least as astounding. The question is now rather one for the historian and the moral philosopher to decide. The first of these is clearly bound to examine the evidence in favour of the life and resurrection of Christ, while the latter is bound to look around and ask what moral necessity there was for the interference of this peculiar intelligent agency, and also whether, as a matter of fact, the interference has proved beneficial.

But neither of these two ways of regarding the subject is at all cognate to our inquiry.

We simply show that a reception of the miracles of Christ leads to no intellectual confusion. Meanwhile, there are some who regard such a reception as tending to historical confusion, or to moral confusion, or to both; but with these sources of doubt we have nothing whatever to do. It may be thought by some of our readers that here our discussion ought to end; but, as it appears to us, there yet remains another point vitally connected with our inquiry. There is, perhaps, hardly a human being who seriously questions the moral beauty of the character of Christ; there are many who question the truth of the miracles recorded as having been wrought by Him; while still more, it may be, question the truth of certain of His sayings, especially such as have reference to the constitution of the Unseen world.

Entertaining the most profound reverence for Christ Himself, many of the latter class, rather than believe that Christ enuntiated the doctrine to which they object, maintain that it may have been a late human fiction which grew up with and finally incrusted itself around the true sayings of Christ: some again maintain that the sayings were really those of Christ, but insist that the common interpretation of them is erroneous. On this account we conceive that in order to complete our programme we should extend our inquiry beyond the miracles of Christ so as to embrace those of His sayings which have reference to Himself and to the constitution of the Unseen world. We are thus led to the consideration of another subject, which is, we venture to think, intimately connected with that which appears on our title-page; and in this respect the Bishop of Manchester has very clearly defined our position by stating that (from a purely physical point of view) we contend for the possibility of immortality and of a personal God.

We must now, however, start from a new basis and assume the existence of a Deity who is the Creator and Upholder of all things. It is not our intention to enter into the argument by which the existence of a Deity may be derived from a consideration of His works. Here, therefore, we must necessarily part company with our materialistic friends, for while they may have been content to go along with us in our first argument to a greater or less length, they will most assuredly not even set foot upon the second stage of our journey. We cannot help it.

Assuming therefore the existence of a Deity, who is the Creator and Upholder of all things, we further look upon the laws of the universe as those laws according to which the beings in the universe are conditioned by the Governor thereof, as regards time, place, and sensation.

Nothing whatever lies, or can be even conceived to lie, outside of this sovereign and paramount influence. There is no impression made upon the bodily senses—no thought or other mental operation which does not take place under conditions imposed by the will of God.

If it be asked how we can imagine any free-will or moral responsibility to exist consistently with this doctrine, we may reply that we cannot tell in virtue of what peculiar constitution of things the sovereignty of God is consistent with our moral responsibility, nor can we even conceive the possibility of our obtaining the knowledge requisite to reply to this question. But it may, we think, be shown that the doctrine of the sovereign power of God as above defined is not inconsistent with moral responsibility. For in the statement made three things are spoken of. In the first place, there is God, the source of power; secondly, there are the conditions which He imposes; and thirdly, there is the Ego, the being who is thus conditioned. Now, the laws of thought absolutely forbid our dismissing this Ego. It may possibly be argued that we consist of a bundle of sensations bound together, just as a bundle of threads are, by something which is no less a sensation, namely, the impression that we have an individual existence and moral responsibility; to which we would reply that even if this be granted we must submit to impressions from which there is no escape.

Now, it appears to us that we cannot possibly have any impression more deeply seated or more impossible to uproot than this:—that we ourselves exist and are responsible; it is something which we continually carry about with us, even into the grotesque regions of thought, where all individuality is denied. It is into these regions that the materialists invite us to accompany them in order to perform, or rather to delude ourselves with the idea that we have performed, this singularly unhappy despatch! But, just as we cannot conceive of a man swallowing up himself, so neither can we conceive of his getting rid of his own individuality by any legitimate process of thought. Can we conceive of consciousness without a being who is conscious? or of sensation without a being who feels? We may perhaps take it for granted that the statements we have now made, acknowledging at once a Sovereign Power and our own moral responsibility, will commend themselves to a large body of thinkers who will virtually agree with our conclusions. It is to these we would now address ourselves, inviting them to accompany us upon the second stage of our journey.

Let us here, therefore, regarding ourselves as moral and intellectual beings, bear in mind that there are various avenues through which we receive instruction. We do not, of course, mean that these avenues are absolutely separate from each other, inasmuch as they must all somehow or other merge into the one grand avenue through which we perceive the Sovereign Power of God. Such avenues are,—the study of matter and its laws,—communion with our fellows, and—example.

Now why should not all these various avenues be filled with the knowledge of God, thus effecting the displacement of a vast throng of mean and loathsome influences which would otherwise run riot there?

Surely that must be a singular process of reasoning by which the Most High is altogether banished from these avenues into which it is alleged He cannot possibly condescend to enter. We are confident there is some misapprehension here; let us therefore try to point out its probable nature.

We have assumed that a study of creation leads us up to some conception of God—that we are driven by the faculties which He has given us to acknowledge the existence of a Paramount Power, and inasmuch as scientific thought leads us to regard The Universe as both infinite and eternal, so are we driven to regard this Power which underlies all phenomena as infinite and eternal also.

This at least appears to us to be the conclusion to which we are driven if we endeavour to reduce mental confusion to a minimum. It is, however, manifestly absurd to imagine that by means of this process we can ever comprehend the essential nature of God. We can no more comprehend His essential nature by this means than we can the essential nature of matter or of life. But surely we can judge of His character by the various modes in which He influences us, and indeed all scientific generalisations—even the simple conclusion that the sun will rise to-morrow—are in a sense expressions of our faith in the unchanging character of God. Now if we examine the process by which we have obtained this conception of God it will be seen that we start with a single intellectual being who is applying himself to a scientific study of the works of nature. The idea of our neighbour does not enter into it, and we agree to regard ourselves as intellectual rather than as moral or social beings. The result is that having voluntarily confined our argument to one channel, we obtain a knowledge of God’s character—that is to say, of His manifested relations towards us—which is necessarily incomplete. But are we therefore entitled to say:—Because we obtain a very imperfect conception of God by this method, we will not believe there is any other method by which this conception may be rendered more complete?

Sound argument, it appears to us, leads the other way altogether. For if we assume that the knowledge of God derived from one source is incomplete, ought we not to try whether it can be supplemented by knowledge derived from other sources? Undoubtedly if other sources furnish, or seem to furnish, conceptions of God which are fundamentally inconsistent with that which we have derived through the scientific channel, we are entitled to sit in intellectual judgment upon them until the source of confusion is in some way removed.

But does this inconsistency as a matter of fact exist? We do not think it does. The statements in the New Testament scriptures regarding God are necessarily mysterious, but mystery can be no test of their truth or falsehood, inasmuch as it must in such regions be the almost inevitable accompaniment of truth.

The question is not whether they are mysterious, but whether they are consistent with themselves, and with the knowledge we derive from other sources. We therefore devote considerable portions of this volume to a proof that the conception of God which the majority of Christians derive from the New Testament is in no way inconsistent with that deduced from scientific principles.

Meanwhile, and in conclusion, we must be allowed to express our conviction that much evil has been wrought by a certain class of sincere and well-meaning men in the various churches of Christ. By dint of contemplating lofty truths from one point of view, and only one, and by dint of developing excessively, and in one direction only, those analogies by which the mysterious has been rendered thinkable, they have produced a result for which they themselves are mainly to blame. With a strange reversal of the process by which Satan transforms himself into an Angel of Light, we have the noble, the beautiful, and the true presented to us by these men in a form which is fit only to inspire aversion or to create disgust.

It is in such terms that we reply to those of our critics, on the one hand, who attack us for adopting what they call a narrow and gloomy theology; and to those, on the other hand, who regard as dangerous the method of discussion we have pursued. We have tried honestly to view things with two eyes,—the eye of knowledge and the eye of faith: first with one, then with the other, finally with both. To what extent we have succeeded is, after all, a matter of minor importance if only the lawfulness of this mode of vision be ultimately allowed. And just as we have a better appretiation of the form and distance of natural objects when we view them with both our physical eyes, so, we venture to think, must it prove with the truths of which we now speak.

We have explained that the first part of our argument is altogether independent of revelation; proceeding as it does solely upon scientific data, and the conclusions which these seem to render inevitable. In the second part, however, we feel that we ought not to deprive ourselves of the overwhelming additional evidence which we derive from Christian records. Here, therefore, we shall neither gratify one class of our critics by starting from a point which ignores what we regard as the fully warranted belief of the great majority of Christians, nor shall we be overruled by the excessive timidity of another class who apparently regard a two-eyed man as a monster in those regions where truths of really vital importance are concerned.

The horrors and blasphemies of Materialism are at least every first day of the week so fully treated by many theologians that it is almost unnecessary for us to say anything on their view of the subject, especially as we could not compete with the great majority of them in strength and happy audacity of language. We would therefore content ourselves with mildly inquiring what sort of regard for the image of the Divine in humanity is shown by those whose creed levels us all with ‘the beasts that perish.’ Even the antient Pagans were less disposed to such monstrosities:—

‘. . . . . . . . .

finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta Deorum.

pronaque cum spectent animalia cetera terram,

os homini sublime dedit: cœlumque tueri

jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

sic, modo quae fuerat rudis et sine imagine, tellus

induit ignotas hominum conversa figuras.’

It is well for the human race that such sophistical doctrines as those of Materialism are as yet received by a small minority only. ‘If in this life alone we have hope,’ we should be led by common sense and prudence to make the best of it, our neighbour’s sufferings notwithstanding. At least we should listen to him only as did the judge ‘who neither feared God, nor regarded man,’ when he said, ‘This widow troubleth me; I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.’

We would conclude by observing that the natural disinclination to receive as true a religion whose very first effect is ‘to convict the world of sin,’ is admirably set forth in the striking words of Peter[2]: ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH.

‘L’immortalité de l’âme est une chose qui nous importe si fort, et qui nous touche si profondément, qu’il faut avoir perdu tout sentiment pour être dans l’indifférence de savoir ce qui en est.’—Pascal.

‘For he should persevere until he has attained one of two things; either he should discover or learn the truth about them, or, if this is impossible, I would have him take the best and most irrefragable of human notions, and let this be the raft upon which he sails through life—not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry him.’—Plato’s Phædo; translated by Jowett.

1. The great majority of mankind have always believed in some fashion in a life after death; many in the essential immortality of the soul; but it is certain that we find many disbelievers in such doctrines who yet retain the nobler attributes of humanity. It may, however, be questioned whether it be possible even to imagine the great bulk of our race to have lost their belief in a future state of existence, and yet to have retained the virtues of civilised and well-ordered communities.

We have said that the disbelievers in such doctrines form a minority of the race; but at the same time it must be acknowledged that the strength of this minority has of late years greatly increased, so much so that at the present moment it numbers in its ranks not a few of the most intelligent, the most earnest, and the most virtuous of men.

It is, however, possible that, could we examine these, we should find them to be unwilling disbelievers, compelled by the working of their intellects to abandon the desire of their hearts, only after many struggles, and with much bitterness of spirit.

Others, again, without absolutely abandoning all hope of a future existence, are yet full of doubt regarding it, and have settled down into the belief that we cannot come to any reasonable conclusion upon the subject. Now, these men can have had nothing to gain, but rather much to lose, in arriving at this result. It has been reached by them with reluctance, with misgivings, not without a certain kind of persecution, nor without the loss of friends and the stirring up of strife; still they have fearlessly looked things in the face, and have followed whithersoever they imagined they were led by facts, even to the brink of an abyss.

It is the object of the present volume to examine the intellectual process which has brought about such results, and we hope to be able to show not only that the conclusion at which these men have arrived is not justified by what we know of the physical universe, but that on the other hand there are many lines of thought which point very strongly towards an opposite conclusion.

2. A division as old as Aristotle separates[3] speculators into two great classes,—those who study the How of the Universe, and those who study the Why. All men of science are embraced in the former of these, all men of religion in the latter. The former regard the Universe as a huge machine, and their object is to study the laws which regulate its working; the latter again speculate about the object of the machine, and what sort of work it is intended to produce. The disciples of How are accused by their adversaries of being willing to sacrifice the individual to the system; while the disciples of Why are accused by their adversaries of being willing to sacrifice the system to the individual.

We may compare the Universe to a great steamer plying between two well-known ports, and carrying two sets of passengers. The one set remain on deck and try to make out, as well as they can, the mind of the Captain regarding the future of their voyage after they have reached the port to which they know they are all fast hastening, while the other set remain below and examine the engines. Occasionally there is much wrangling at the top of the ladder where the two sets meet, some of those who have examined the engines and the ship asserting that the passengers will all be inevitably wrecked at the next port, it being physically impossible that the good ship can carry them further. To whom those on deck reply, that they have perfect confidence in the Captain, who has informed some of those nearest him that the passengers will not be wrecked, but will be carried in safety past the port to an unknown land of felicity. And so the altercation goes on; some who have been on deck being unwilling or unable to examine the engines, and some who have examined the engines preferring to remain below.

3. Our readers will perceive from what we have said, that difficulties regarding the possibility of a future state of existence are most likely to arise amidst the disciples of How or those who study the machinery of the Universe, and inasmuch as this class has greatly increased of late, it follows that the disbelievers in or doubters of the future state have increased likewise. The disciples of Why have, on the other hand, existed from time immemorial, and have, in the plenitude of their power, frequently carried themselves with much violence towards the disciples of How, who are of comparatively modern origin. It must not, however, be inferred that this old and venerable family have always been at peace amongst themselves, for there have been numerous contentions among their various sections, not the less acrimonious because the contending members have been to some extent supporters of a common cause, believing in some fashion in the reality of a world to come. We shall therefore begin by giving our readers a sketch, necessarily and purposely a very meagre one, of the various beliefs on these subjects held by the different branches of this great family.

4. Let us begin with the Egyptians, who are perhaps the most antient people of whom we have historical records. The manners and customs of this nation have been very minutely described by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, to whose work we are chiefly indebted for the following account. In the first place it appears that we must separate between what the priests believed and what was held by the great body of the people. The bulk of the nation were left by the priests to believe in a multiplicity of deities, and even to reverence animals as divine, while on the other hand the higher orders of the priesthood, who were initiated into the greater mysteries of their religion, appear to have acknowledged the unity of God. These believed in one Eternal God, from whom all other deities were produced, and whom they did not permit themselves even to name, far less to represent under any visible form. The Egyptians likewise believed in the existence of Dæmons or Genii, who were present unseen amongst mankind.

5. The earliest Egyptian records attest the belief of this nation in the immortality of the soul:—‘Dissolution, according to them, is only the cause of reproduction—nothing perishes which has once existed, and things which appear to be destroyed only change their natures and pass into another form.’[4]

Anubis held in Egypt an office similar to that of Mercury among the Greeks, being the usher of souls in their passage to the future state. Amenti was the region to which the souls of men were supposed to go after death, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson notices the resemblance between this name and that of Ement ‘the West’—the west, where the sun was seen to sink, being looked upon as the end of the world. The guardian of the lower regions was called Ouom-n-Amenti, or the Devourer of Amenti. It had frequently the appearance of a hippopotamus, but was drawn sometimes with the head of a fanciful creature something between the hippopotamus and the crocodile.

‘The judgment of the soul was conducted by Osiris, aided by forty-two assessors, supposed to represent the forty-two crimes from which a virtuous man was expected to be free when judged in a future state, or rather the accusing spirits, each of whom examined if the deceased was guilty of the peculiar crime which it was his province to avenge.’[5]

6. As regards the fate of the soul when once the judgment had been passed upon it,—the Egyptians considered the souls of men to be emanations of the Divine soul, and each was supposed to return to its Divine origin when sufficiently pure to unite with the Deity. On the other hand, those who had been guilty of sin were doomed to pass through a series of torments ending in the second death.

7. It is considered probable by some that the Egyptian custom of embalming the body had relation to this religious doctrine, and before the mummy was allowed burial it had to be judged and acquitted by terrestrial authorities. Diodorus gives a detailed account of the ceremonies which then took place, in which forty-two judges were summoned to act as assessors and determine the fate of the body. If it could be proved that the deceased had led an evil life, his body was deprived of the accustomed burial, and on such occasions the grief and shame felt by the family were excessive. Diodorus considers that this was in itself a strong inducement to every one to abstain from crime, and praises very strongly the authors of so wise an institution.

8. Let us next consider the antient belief of the Hebrew nation.

Referring to the records of this nation, we find that at an early period they had been slaves or serfs to the Egyptians, from whom they were delivered by Moses, who became afterwards their lawgiver. Moses had by a species of adoption obtained a very prominent position among the Egyptians, and had probably been initiated into their sacred mysteries, for we read that he was ‘learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.’ Without discussing the question of inspiration, we may readily imagine that, himself a believer in the unity of God, this sagacious leader must have perceived the deficiency of a religious system in which the truth was confined to a few, while the many were allowed to remain in the most degrading idolatry.

He was thus in a fit state to recognise the paramount importance of the whole mind and mass of the nation being pervaded with a belief in one invisible, ever-present, ever-living God. We do not, however, mean to assert that Moses got his religious notions from Egypt, but we think it possible that his mind may have been prepared by the failure of the Egyptian system to receive a better one.

9. In the Egyptian system there were two peculiarities which were probably connected together. We have seen ([Art. 4]) that amongst the higher orders of the priesthood there was a profound, but at the same time a superstitious, reverence for the name of God, who was unnamed and unapproachable, unless under some deified attribute. At the same time there was, and probably in consequence of the former, an ignorance of the unity of God amongst the great mass of the people, and a worship of the various deified attributes of one supreme being as so many separate divinities.

10. Now the task which Moses believed himself divinely commissioned to accomplish was the revelation of this one living and ruling God to the whole body of his countrymen. Thus we find God, in the sacred writings of the Jews, saying to Moses, ‘I am the Lord (Jehovah), and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty (El Shaddai); but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them.’[6] We do not however intend to discuss the precise meaning of the two names of God, which we find in the Hebrew Scriptures—sufficient for us that Moses endeavoured to impress upon his people the unity and ever-living presence of the Divine Being.

11. Again, it would appear that the Jews, in addition to their belief as a nation in the unity of God, believed also in the reality of an invisible world containing spiritual intelligences, some of whom were the loyal servants and messengers of God, while others delighted in the endeavour to thwart His counsels, and were in rebellion against Him. Apparently both orders of these were supposed to have very considerable power, not only over the minds and bodies of men, but also over the operations of nature. Thus two angels were commissioned by God to destroy Sodom;[7] and again, in the poem of Job, when Satan received power over the Patriarch, he overwhelmed him by at once inciting robbers who plundered his substance, killing his children by a wind from the wilderness, and finally smiting the body of Job himself with a loathsome disease.

It is perhaps worthy of note that while we read in these records of various appearances of good spirits in the human form, we have no certain account of any such manifestation of evil spirits. It may even be supposed that a good deal of the Demonology of Scripture belongs to poetic or semi-parabolic representation of spiritual truths. Thus Coleridge and others have thought that the Satan of Job is only the dramatic accuser or adversary imagined by the poet.

12. Very little is said about man’s future state in the Scriptures of the Jews. The Hebrews, like the Assyrians and Chaldeans, believed in Sheol (Hades), a dark and gloomy abode peopled by the shades of the dead. But the continued existence of the ‘pithless’ shades (Rephaim) in this land of powerlessness and forgetfulness was not thought of as constituting immortality, but rather as the essence of death itself. The religious hope of immortality which appears in some passages of the Old Testament takes the form of a victory over or rescue from the fear of Sheol. But this higher hope was not brought before the mind of the Hebrew nation in the same way as was the presence and unity of God. It seems to us that Dean Stanley’s conjecture is probably correct where he says, with reference to this omission, ‘Not from want of religion, but (if we might use the expression) from excess of religion, was this void left in the Jewish mind. The future life was not denied or contradicted, but it was overlooked, set aside, overshadowed by the consciousness of the living, actual presence of God Himself. That truth, at least in the limited conceptions of the youthful nation, was too vast to admit of any rival truth, however precious. When David or Hezekiah shrank from the gloomy vacancy of the grave, it was because they feared lest, when death closed their eyes in the present world, they should lose their hold on that Divine friend with whose being and communion the present world had in their minds been so closely interwoven.’[8]

13. As the nation grew older we find frequent and distinct allusions indicating a belief in a resurrection of some kind. Thus we find the angel saying to Daniel, ‘And many of them which sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.’[9] And again: ‘Go thy way till the end be; for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.’[10] Again, in the Apocrypha, we find one of seven brethren who were put to death by Antiochus, saying to that tyrant,—‘It is good, being put to death by men, to look for hope from God, to be raised up again by Him; as for thee, thou shalt have no resurrection to life,’[11] and the other brethren spoke in like manner. Here it is evident from the whole chapter that the hope expressed was rather the result of perfect trust in God than derived from any process of their own reason, or even from any revelation on the subject which they imagined to have been made.

We have likewise the testimony of Josephus as well as of the New Testament that the Pharisees believed in a resurrection. Josephus tells us,—‘They [the Pharisees] say that all souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies, but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment.’[12] Again, we learn from the same two authorities that the Sadducees held sceptical notions on the subject, and Josephus says—‘They take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades.’

14. If we next turn to the Greek and Roman mythologies we find ideas of a future state very similar to those entertained by the Egyptians, from whom probably the Greek notions were originally largely derived.

They called by the name of Elysium the abode appropriated to the souls of the good, while those of the wicked suffered punishment in Tartarus. It has been well remarked by Archbishop Whately that these regions were supposed to be of the most dreamy and unsubstantial nature:—

‘The poet [remarks Whately] from whom so many were content to derive their creed [meaning Homer] represents Achilles among the shades as declaring that the life of the meanest drudge on earth is preferable to the very highest of the unsubstantial glories of Elysium:—

Βουλοίμην κ’ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ,

Ἀνδρὶ παρ’ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη,

Ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.

It is remarkable too that the same poet seems plainly to regard the body not the soul as being properly “the man” after death has separated them. We should be apt to say that such a one’s body is here, and that he, properly the person himself, is departed to the other world; but Homer uses the very opposite language in speaking of the heroes slain before Troy: viz., that their souls were despatched to the shades, and that THEY themselves were left a prey to dogs and birds:—

Πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ΨΥΧΑΣ Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν

Ἡρώων, ΑΥΤΟΥΣ δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν.’[13]

We agree with this writer that the belief in an unsubstantial region of this description can have had no real influence either in deterring men from vice, or in encouraging them to virtue. Indeed its inevitable tendency must have been to foster an undue regard for the pleasures of this present life to the absolute discouragement of goodness and virtue. For while we of the present day regard the future life as in some sense the reward of piety and goodness, the antients looked upon Hades rather as a penalty which inexorable fate had reserved for all men, and from which even piety and goodness were powerless to exempt their possessors.

Cum semel occideris, et de te splendida Minos

Fecerit arbitria;

Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te

Restituet pietas.

Infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum

Liberat Hippolytum;

Nec Lethæa valet Theseus abrumpere caro

Vincula Pirithöo.

15. The active-minded as well as the gross-minded members of the community could hardly be expected to care much for such an unsubstantial future, and this consideration may probably have led to the readier acceptance of the doctrine of some of the Greek philosophers who introduced a bodily state after death. But these, in so doing, rather favoured the doctrine of transmigration than that of a resurrection of the body which was seen to die, and which, after being devoured by dogs, or destroyed in some other manner, they could hardly conceive to rise again. It is well known that Pythagoras taught the doctrine of transmigration, although as none of his writings have come down to us we are not sure of the exact manner in which he held it. Plato also alludes to a similar doctrine, in a passage which refers no doubt to the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls, and to the view that it is a punishment to become corporeal at all. He tells us:—‘If any one’s life has been virtuous he shall obtain a better fate hereafter; if wicked a worse. But no soul will return to its pristine condition till the expiration of ten thousand years, since it will not recover the use of its wings until that period, except it be the soul of one who has philosophised sincerely or together with philosophy has loved beautiful forms. These indeed in the third period of a thousand years, if they have thrice chosen this mode of life in succession, ... shall in the three thousandth year fly away to their pristine abode, but other souls, being arrived at the end of their first life, shall be judged. And of those who are judged, some, proceeding to a subterraneous place of judgment, shall there sustain the punishments they have deserved; but others, in consequence of a favourable judgment, being elevated into a certain celestial place, shall pass their time in a manner becoming the life they have lived in a human shape. And in the thousandth year both the kinds of those who have been judged, returning to the lot and election of a second life, shall each of them receive a life agreeable to his desire. Here also the human soul shall pass into the life of a beast, and from that of a beast again into a man if it has first been the soul of a man. For the soul which has never perceived the truth cannot pass into the human form.’[14] A certain degree of choice is here supposed to be left to the soul, and those who cannot attain to the more ethereal and refined existence, have to choose a bodily one, returning, after they have become sufficiently purified, once more into human shape.

16. As a matter of course, a dim belief of this nature gave rise to a class of philosophers who denied the possibility of a future state altogether. The advent of this school of thought was probably hastened by outward events. In the golden age of Greece a vigorous republic served to concentrate upon itself the energies of the citizens, and under these circumstances their minds were not likely to question the truth of the national creed. While the gods smiled upon them they were content to acknowledge their active existence. It has been remarked by Schmitz, that the unfavourable political circumstances of the time may have been concerned in the rise of the Epicurean school—‘thinking men were led to seek within for that which they could not find without.’ The gods of Epicurus, this writer goes on to remark, ‘consisted of atoms, and were in the enjoyment of perfect happiness, which had not been disturbed by the laborious business of creating the world, and as the government of the world would interfere with their happiness, Epicurus conceived them as exercising no influence whatever upon the world or man.’

It is of such gods the poet speaks when he says:—

‘For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d

Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,

Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships and praying hands.’

The antient Roman poet Lucretius, in his well-known poem ‘De Rerum Natura,’ has beautifully interpreted the Epicurean philosophy. Adopting like Epicurus the atomic or corpuscular theory of things, he tells his readers that the soul of man perishes along with the body, and that it is the height of folly for man to be afraid of that which may happen to him after death.

17. It is unnecessary to discuss in detail the tenets of the various Greek and Roman philosophers. A number of indefinite and sometimes contradictory expressions sufficiently betrays the uncertainty of their opinions. Desirous, it may be, themselves to believe—desirous at least that the body of their countrymen should believe—in a future state, it is yet not wonderful that they should have felt strongly the difficulty of believing, or have expressed their doubts in writings which were not intended to be read by the great mass of the people.

18. Proceeding now to the extreme east, it is well known that of late years very great light has been thrown upon the antient religions of the Brahmans, the Magians, and the Buddhists. In an admirable collection of essays by Professor Max Müller,[15] we have a good epitome of what has been accomplished by the laborious investigations of oriental scholars. We learn from these that the most antient document is the Rig-Veda, or Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans, in which we have the religious belief of a large section of the Indo-Germanic race at a period supposed to be from 1200 to 2000 years before the Christian era. In these hymns the gods are called Deva, a word which is conjectured to be the same with the Latin Deus. ‘It would be easy,’ says Max Müller, ‘to find in the numerous hymns of the Veda passages in which every important deity is represented as supreme and absolute. Thus in one hymn, Agni (fire) is called “the ruler of the universe.”... In another hymn, another god, Indra, is said to be greater than all. “The gods,” it is said, “do not reach thee, Indra, nor men,—thou overcomest all creatures in strength.”... Another god, Soma, is called the king of the world, the king of heaven and earth, the conqueror of all.... Another poet says of another god, Varuna, “Thou art lord of all, of heaven and earth; thou art the king of all, of those who are gods, and of those who are men.”... This surely,’ remarks Max Müller, ‘is not what is commonly understood by Polytheism. Yet it would be equally wrong to call it Monotheism. If we must have a name for it, I should call it Kathenotheism. The consciousness that all the deities are but different names of one and the same godhead, breaks forth indeed here and there in the Veda. But it is far from being general. One poet for instance says, “They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; then he is the beautiful-winged heavenly Garutmat—that which is one, the wise call it, in divers manners; they call it Agni, Yama, Mâtarisvan.”’

19. We learn from the same author that ‘there is in the Veda no trace of metempsychosis, or that transmigration of souls from human to animal bodies, which is generally supposed to be a distinguishing feature of Indian religion. Instead of this we find what is really the sine quâ non of all real religion, a belief in immortality and in personal immortality.... Thus we read, He who gives alms goes to the highest place in heaven; he goes to the gods.... Again we find this prayer addressed to Soma:—

‘Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that immortal, imperishable world place me, O Soma!

‘Where King Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me immortal!

‘Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, there make me immortal!’

Max Müller further remarks, that the Rig-Veda contains allusions, although vague, to a place of punishment for the wicked. ‘The dogs of Yama, the king of the departed, present some terrible aspects, and Yama is asked to protect the departed from them. Again, a pit is mentioned, into which the lawless are said to be hurled down, and into which Indra casts those who offer no sacrifices.’

20. A religion like this, however pure at its commencement, was likely soon to become corrupted. It speedily merged into idolatry and polytheism, as far at least as the main body of the worshippers were concerned, while at the same time the rule of the Brahmans or officiating priests became strengthened into an insupportable social tyranny. Thus a double reformation was to be apprehended, corresponding on the one hand to the religious, and on the other to the ceremonial and social, development of the system.

21. The first reformation was that attributed to Zoroaster and his disciples, whose belief is contained in the Zend-Avesta. In his confession of faith, the disciple of the Eranian or Zoroastrian religion declares, ‘I cease to be a worshipper of the daêvas.’

It must however be remembered that in this religion daeva means devil, or evil spirit. Thus the earliest forms of the Zoroastrian religion need not have excluded, and apparently did not exclude, the worship of good spirits.

Whilst the Zoroastrian disciples believed in a supreme God who rules the world, they yet gave a prominent place to a spirit of evil, which afterwards received the name of Ahriman, and was supposed to exercise very considerable influence over the order of nature and the minds of men. Indeed, Ahriman is apparently an independent power so strong that but for the fact that he acts before he thinks, while Ormuzd (the good spirit) thinks before he acts, the victory of good would be doubtful. The whole system hinges on this and on the fact that everything noxious and evil in creation is the work of Ahriman.

Max Müller is of opinion that ‘the Zoroastrian religion was founded on a solemn protest against the whole worship of the powers of nature involved in the Vedas;’ and again the same writer says, ‘The characteristic change that has taken place between the Veda and Avesta is, that the battle is no longer a conflict of gods and demons for cows (alluding to a Vaidik myth), nor of light and darkness for rain. It is the battle of a pious man against the power of evil.’

22. The disciples of the Zoroastrian religion believed in a future state; the ill-speaker (the devil), we are told in the Zend-Avesta, shall not destroy the second life.

The following extracts given by Max Müller from a catechism of the modern Parsis or disciples of Zoroaster give us a very good idea of their present creed:—

‘Q. Whom do we of the Zarthosti community believe in?

‘A. We believe in only one God, and we do not believe in any besides Him.

‘Q. Do we not believe in any other God?

‘A. Whoever believes in any other God but this is an infidel, and shall suffer the punishment of hell.’

In another extract the disciples are told that in the world to come they shall receive the return according to their actions.

23. The next reform of the Brahminical system had reference to its social characteristics, and was occasioned by the insupportable tyranny of the priesthood. The reformer, a young prince, was born about 500 years B.C., and from his life and doctrines received the name of Buddha, or the Enlightened. After having learned from various famous Brahmans, he came to the conclusion that their austerities and doctrines could neither free men from the miseries of this life nor from the fear of death. From this stage Buddha passed into the belief that all we see is vanity—a delusion, a dream—and that the highest wisdom consists in perceiving this, and in desiring to enter into Nirvâna, or, in other words, to be blown out like a flame.

It would seem from these words that Buddha himself regarded annihilation rather than immortality as the summum bonum; but no account of Buddhism would be satisfactory which did not pay special regard to the notion so widely diffused in heathenism, that matter is the source of all evil. To be liberated from matter is to be liberated from evil; and this would seem to be the fundamental thought in the Nirvâna in all its different senses. But however this may be, we know that, allied to these extreme metaphysical opinions, Buddha inculcated a moral code which is one of the purest the world has ever known. M. Laboulaye says, ‘It is difficult to comprehend how men not assisted by revelation could have soared so high;’ and M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire does not hesitate to assert that ‘with the sole exception of Christ, there is not amongst the founders of religion a more pure or touching figure than that of Buddha.’

24. In process of time, among the followers of the Buddhist religion, the word Nirvâna came to have a very different meaning from that which it had at first. Buddha was himself worshipped as a divinity, and his Nirvâna came to denote a state in which there was a total absence of pain, or in other words an Elysium.

In illustration of this we may quote the account given by Max Müller of the dying words of Hiouen-Thsang, a famous pilgrim from China to the shrine of Buddha, who died in the year of our era 664:—

‘I desire,’ he said, ‘that whatever merits I may have gained by good works may fall upon other people. May I be born again with them in the heaven of the blessed, be admitted to the family of Mi-le, and serve the Buddha of the future who is full of kindness and affection. When I descend again upon earth, to pass through other forms of existence, I desire at every new birth to fulfil my duties towards Buddha, and arrive at the last at the highest and most perfect intelligence.’

25. Having thus surveyed, however imperfectly, the belief regarding a future state held by the greater nations both of the East and West before the advent of Christianity, let us now make a few observations.

In the first place, there are manifestly two ways in which such a belief may be held. In one of these it becomes the natural result of an implicit faith in God and his goodness, which will not suffer him to disappoint the natural and innate longings of his intelligent creatures. And such a belief is most likely to arise amongst a nation which has already vividly realised the living presence and goodness of God. Now the ancient Jews were such a nation, and the belief that even death cannot break the fellowship of the believer with God comes out clearly enough in several of the Psalms. Moreover, the notion of some sort of future life lies clearly in what is said of Enoch. All this goes beyond the mere notion of Sheol, which is not thought of as a happy place. But in the time of the Maccabees this had grown into a definite belief in the resurrection, and without insisting on the truthfulness of the Second Book of Maccabees as an historical document, we may yet be sure that it embodies the feelings of the Jewish nation at the time when it was written. It is of little consequence whether a mother and seven brethren were actually put to death because they would not transgress what they believed to be the laws of God, or whether in dying they expressed their belief that they would be continued in a bodily existence by the Creator. For it is manifest from what we know of the Jews, that not merely one family but many would under similar circumstances have acted in the manner described by the historian, dying with the same fortitude and encouraged by the same hope. We have here a region in which there is no thought of the How—this troublesome question has not yet arisen, nor is it likely to arise. No doubt has yet been entertained regarding the power of God, nor would such a doubt be likely to receive much encouragement here.

26. But the human mind will not refrain from speculation, and this brings us to the second method in which a belief regarding a future state may be held. It may be held after a mode determined by speculations regarding the possible conditions of a future state. Such speculations may of course take every variety of form, but yet there are three well-defined classes into which they naturally group themselves:—

In the first place, we have the doctrine of an ethereal state, which may or may not be eternal;

Secondly, we have the doctrine of a bodily existence, which may or may not be eternal; and,

In the third place, we have the doctrine that a future state is inconceivable or impossible.

27. The first of these beliefs was probably held by a portion of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and by most of the Jews. It was likewise held by many amongst the eastern nations. It formed indeed one of the two ways of imagining a future state, but it was of a very vague and dreary nature; and from the passage of Homer already quoted ([Art. 14]), we realise the longing supposed to be felt by the inhabitants of such a place to escape into a more substantial region. Unquestionably it was not a place in which practical men like the Jews, for instance, would wish to dwell, and yet no doubt it had great attraction for minds of a visionary and ecstatic nature, who held matter to be the source of evil.

The return of the soul to its divine original, an Egyptian doctrine, the entrance into Nirvâna, proclaimed by Buddha, and the absorption into Buddha himself, proclaimed by some of his followers, are all proofs that a doctrine of this nature has peculiar fascinations for a dreamy order of minds. Nor must we analyse too rigidly the exact meaning and tendency of such doctrines, inasmuch as we cannot easily enter into the real feelings of those who propounded them, and who probably entertained conceptions which cannot adequately be expressed in words.

28. Coming now to the belief in a bodily future existence, it is remarkable that the doctrine of a transmigration of souls was extensively prevalent among all the nations we have named, if we except the Jews. It was believed in, as we have seen, by a large class of the Egyptians; it was introduced into Greece by Pythagoras and his followers; it is considered to have been from time immemorial a common property of the various religions of the extreme East; and it is recorded by Cæsar that the Druids believed in the same doctrine, although they confined the transmigration to human bodies.

It will perhaps surprise many of our readers to learn the extensive prevalence of such a doctrine, wondering as they must how it is possible to attach certainty to an existence which passes through the body of various men and animals—something perhaps like a draught of Lethe being administered at the moment of passage. But the antients, being unable to rise to a higher conception of a bodily future, were compelled to admit either this doctrine or one yet more absurd, namely, that the very same body which was laid in the tomb will once more be animated by the spirit which formerly possessed it. It does not therefore surprise us that the antients, with the exception probably of a portion of the inhabitants of Egypt, and some of the Jews, should have preferred the doctrine of transmigration; but we are exceedingly surprised that the alternative doctrine, of manifestly Egyptian parentage, should have come to be accepted by the modern nations of Europe under the garb of Christianity. We shall return again to this subject, but meanwhile let us observe that, when men first began to ask the How of a future state, the reply was something extremely vague and unsatisfying. No wonder, then, that a class of men who had not unlimited confidence in God, and who could not believe in either of the doctrines of a future state, should have lapsed into philosophical infidelity and denied altogether the possibility of a future state.

29. We have thus arrived at a stage of development in which we may imagine the next step to be one which will throw some light upon this question of How—that is, which will give, or at any rate profess to give, some information regarding the conditions of a future life. The intellect of man had attempted to obtain such knowledge for itself, but the result was a conspicuous failure; the sword was not sharp enough, nor the arm which wielded it powerful enough, to hew down the thick and seemingly impenetrable barrier which closes the avenue to the world of spirits.

‘We cannot go to them,’ was the unanimous wail of the antient philosophers; till some of the more hopeful of them suggested as an alternative that they might come to us. For clearly, if A and B are separated from each other by a barrier, and there yet remains good-will between them, two courses are possible, and only two, if they are to be made acquainted with each other. One or other must surmount the barrier. If A be so weak as to be unable to do so, and if at the same time it would be a matter of importance to him to become better acquainted with B, then B may be expected to surmount the barrier if it be surmountable, and exhibit himself to A.

30. As a matter of history, it appears that about the time of the birth of Christ there was an expectation, however vague, that something of this nature was about to take place. And when Christ made His appearance, and gathered round Him a little band of disciples, there can be no doubt that He claimed to be the bearer of intelligence from the world of spirits. All who accept the gospel narratives, however much they may differ from one another as to the light in which they regard His person and doctrine, will yet, we think, agree in this. The claim made by His disciples for His gospel was that it ‘had brought life and immortality to light’ (2 Tim. i. 10), and that Christ had by his resurrection ‘abolished death.’ The grounds of the claim were built upon the belief that He showed Himself after His resurrection to a body of men who had not previously believed that the Messiah Himself was to die and rise again.

His disciples in short took His resurrection for a proof that life is possible after death. Christ was believed to be the first-fruits of a system which was destined ultimately to enfold in the same glorious immortality all those of His disciples who were united to their Master by a sincere and living faith. Evidently Paul attached the utmost importance to the fact of Christ’s resurrection, for he says (1 Cor. xv. 14), ‘If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God: because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ; whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.’

31. Let us now try to ascertain what sort of future state was taught by Christ. In the first place, it was a bodily state—a state which could even adapt itself with some modification to the views of the Pharisees who believed in the resurrection of the body. But the modification introduced is sufficiently important. The occasion of its announcement was a disputation with the Sadducees, who attempted to perplex Christ by stating to Him the case of a woman who had been married in this life to seven brethren in succession, and then asking Him whose wife she should be in the resurrection. We are told (Matthew xxii. 29) that in reply to this question, ‘Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.’ We may gather by implication from this narrative, that the question would have puzzled the Pharisees, who had certainly not arrived at this idea of the resurrection state.

They must evidently have thought that the resurrection body was to be similar to the present one, and although they believed in the existence of angels, and their occasional appearance to human beings, they cannot have risen to the idea that it was possible for man to reach a similar state after death.

32. It may perhaps be said that many of Christ’s sayings would seem to lead towards the doctrine of a resurrection of the very same material particles which are laid in the grave. To this, however, it may be replied that Christ undoubtedly wished to impress upon His hearers, who were for the most part unlearned and ignorant men, the substantial and bodily reality of the future state, and therefore spoke in plain language without entering into scientific minutiæ, which would only have perplexed them, and diminished the impression which His words were otherwise calculated to produce. Few of His hearers would trouble themselves about the mode, nor was it until an objection was started by the learned Sadducees that Christ took occasion to develop His doctrine. In accordance with this view we see that a similar difficulty must have occurred more than once in the life of Paul, who was brought into contact with the philosophy of Greece and Rome. For in one of his Epistles[16] he asks the question,—How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? He then replies to the supposed objector in the following noble and beautiful language:—‘There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead; it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.’

33. In the next place we remark, that this conception of a spiritual body similar to that of the angels is accompanied in the religious system of Christ by a conviction that the present visible universe will assuredly pass away. This is expressed in both divisions of the writings acknowledged as sacred by the disciples of Christ. Thus it is said:—‘Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment: as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed.’[17] Again, Paul tells us that ‘the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.’[18] Likewise also Peter says—‘The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.... Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.’[19] In like manner John tells us that he saw in a vision ‘a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.’[20]

From all this we may conclude that the more advanced disciples of Christ supposed the resurrection body to be angelic in its nature, and similar to that which they believed Christ had himself assumed; and further, that they supposed this body would remain when the present visible universe had passed away.

34. We have already remarked that it was the object of Christ to bring the future state in a very vivid manner before His disciples, so that they might realise its substantial existence, and He has accordingly given them on the one hand exalted descriptions of the joys of heaven, and on the other awful accounts of the fate of the lost. Heaven was variously described by Him as a banqueting house, as a beautiful city, as Abraham’s bosom, and, when speaking to His immediate disciples, as a place where they shall dwell together with their Master. On the other hand, it is believed that Christ’s description of hell was borrowed from the valley of Hinnom, a place near Jerusalem, which formed the receptacle for every species of filth, the combustible parts of which were consumed by fire. Putrefaction, or the worm, was always busy there, and the fire was always burning, and this may have given rise to the expression: ‘Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’ There can be no doubt, we think, that such descriptions were meant to be allegorical, the intention being by forcible earthly images to convey an idea of what could not otherwise be conveyed.

35. It is well known that many varieties of opinion have been entertained regarding the person of Christ even by those who profess to be His disciples. It is not however here our object to enter into theological controversies; our treatment of this subject is at present historical, and we will therefore bring before our readers only those views regarding the person of Christ and the constitution of the invisible world, which are held by the large majority of those who call themselves Christians.

Whilst all the Christian Churches believe in one God, yet by most of them the Godhead is believed to consist of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The first of these appears to be regarded as the Being or Essence in virtue of whom the Universe exists. Thus in reciting the Apostles’ Creed the Christian disciple says:—‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth;’ and the laws of the Universe are regarded by Christian theologians as being expressions of the will acting in conformity with the character of this Being. Thus Nature (according to Whately) is the course in which the Author and Governor of all things proceeds in His works.

But the majority of Christian Churches virtually assert that there are two other Divine Persons, who work through and by the Universe.[21] One great object of the second Person of the Trinity is held to be the manifestation of God to man, and possibly to other beings, in a manner and to an extent which could not be accomplished by finite intelligences. One great object of the third Person is to enter, as Lord and giver of life, into the souls of men, and possibly of other beings, and to dwell there in such a manner as to fit them for the position which they are destined ultimately to occupy in the universe of God.

36. In Christ it is supposed that we have an incarnation of the second Person of the Trinity, and the work which He accomplished is regarded as done not in violation of the order of things as established by God the Father, but rather in strict obedience to it. But while this is generally accepted by the Church of Christ, yet the doctrine of the submission of Christ to law has been held by some as not inconsistent with a view which regards the miraculous works of Christ as manifestations of His divine nature, so changing the order of things as to denote something wrought upon the universe rather than something wrought through it and by its means. We do not think that this theory is borne out by the words of Christ himself. He says: ‘I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.’[22] Again, we are told by Paul, that ‘when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons.’[23]

Christ also frequently represents His works as wrought by the Father, as for instance when he says:—‘I do nothing of myself; but as the Father hath taught me, I speak these things.’[24] In fine, the whole genius of Christianity would appear to point towards a total submission of Christ in every respect to all the laws of the universe: for these, indeed, as we shall soon have occasion to show, form but another expression for the will of God acting in conformity with His character. To make our meaning clear, we may say that the will of man is accomplished in conformity with the laws of the universe, while on the other hand the will of God, as above defined, constitutes in itself the laws of the universe. Now it appears to us from what we find contained in the books of the Christian religion, that Christ must in this sense be regarded as similar to man; but, inasmuch as the relation of Christ to the universe is there asserted to have been different from that of any mere man, so the works of Christ are to be regarded as different from those which any mere man can accomplish.

37. The Christian system, of which we have thus briefly described the peculiarities, was soon called upon to do battle, on the one hand with the antient philosophies of Greece and Rome, and on the other with the semi-savage creeds of those less civilised races of man which were destined ultimately to overpower the Roman Empire. But it was chiefly when the apostolic pioneers came into contact with the acute minds of the antient philosophers that we have light struck regarding what may be termed the philosophical system of Christianity; thus we have already remarked ([Art. 32]), that the nature of the glorified body is most clearly indicated to us by the Apostle Paul. As respects the more barbarous nations which afterwards embraced Christianity, they were not likely to puzzle themselves about the physical possibilities of a future state, nor even to contest the reality of a place of eternal physical torment. And so it happened that, when dealing with a lower class of converts, some prominent Christians in post-apostolic periods appealed more to their fears than to their hopes, bringing vividly before them awful ideas of the nature of hell; while on the other hand, the higher class of converts, if they had not a very clear idea of heaven, were yet drawn with intense longing to a future which they were to spend in the company of Christ.

38. In the course of a few hundred years we find the whole Roman Empire converted to Christianity, while, however, in Arabia and the East it appears either to have made very little progress, or to have become corrupted into something very different from that which we read of in the New Testament. It had not become the national religion of the Arabs; and we can well imagine that this nation, with their pretensions to be regarded as the most antient representatives of the Semitic race, would not look kindly upon a religion which took its origin in a rival branch of the same family. We can further imagine that, with such a feeling, they would be very ready to welcome any skilfully devised religious system which should spring up amongst themselves. Such an opportunity was afforded them by Mohammed. Acknowledging in some measure the claims of Moses and of Christ, Mohammed yet claimed for himself and his religion a superiority over his rivals, flattering by this means the vanity of his own countrymen, who considered themselves the elder branch of the Semitic race. The heaven which was promised by Mohammed was altogether of a sensuous character, and well calculated to strike the imagination of his countrymen. He succeeded equally well in describing hell as a place of physical torture reserved for those who did not believe in his religion. He further commissioned his followers to propagate his tenets by the sword, so that men became converts from dread of earthly punishment, and were retained in his ranks by the success which attended his arms, and by the promise of a paradise full of earthly delights, as well as by the threat of a horrible material hell which was reserved for unbelievers. We could not possibly have a better or more graphic description of such a system than that which is given us by Byron:—

‘But him the maids of paradise

Impatient to their halls invite,

And the dark Heaven of Houris’ eyes

On him shall shine for ever bright;

They come—their kerchiefs green they wave,

And welcome with a kiss the brave!

Who falls in battle ’gainst the Giaour

Is worthiest an immortal bower.

But thou, false Infidel! shalt writhe

Beneath avenging Monkir’s scythe;

And from its torment ’scape alone

To wander round lost Eblis’ throne,

And fire unquench’d, unquenchable,

Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;

Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell

The tortures of that inward hell!’

The disciples of Mohammed believed in the unity of God, but it is evident that they had not a very exalted conception of His character. Their trust in Him could infuse zeal into their hearts and vigour into their arms when they went to make proselytes by the sword, but could not produce that lofty type of character which has so frequently appeared amongst the followers of Christ.

39. We have now reached in the history of our problem the period known as the dark ages, during which the spirit of scientific inquiry was well-nigh extinct. At length, however, there arrived a time when the human mind, from a variety of causes, suddenly awoke from the lethargy into which it had sunk.

When scientific thought was once more directed to the subject of immortality it was easily seen that the doctrine of the resurrection in its vulgar acceptation could not possibly be true, since a case might easily be imagined in which there might be a contention between rival claimants for the same body. We might, for instance, imagine a Christian missionary to be killed and eaten by a savage, who was afterwards killed himself. It is indeed both curious and instructive to note the reluctance with which various sections of the Christian Church have been driven from their old erroneous conceptions on this subject; and the expedients, always grotesque, and sometimes positively loathsome, with which they have attempted to buttress up the tottering edifice. Some deem it necessary that a single material germ or organised particle of the body at death should survive until the resurrection, forgetting that under such a hypothesis it would be easy to deprive a man of the somewhat doubtful benefits of such a resurrection, by sealing him up (while yet alive) in a strong iron coffin, and by appropriate means reducing his whole physical body into an inorganic mass. Boston, again, in his Fourfold State, goes still further, adopting the idea that a single particle of insensible perspiration which has escaped from a man during his life, will be sufficient to serve as a nucleus for the resurrection body. So that according to the disciples of this school, the resurrection will be preceded by a gigantic manufacture of shoddy, the effete and loathsome rags of what was once the body being worked up along with a large quantity of new material into a glorious and immortal garment, to form the clothing of a being who is to live for ever! Unquestionably we have continuity in this hypothesis, but it is the continuity of the Irishman’s coat in the story, the owner of which always made a point of retaining as many as possible of the rags which were present on the last occasion, those only which had absolutely fallen to pieces being replaced by something new! We have only to compare this grotesquely hideous conception with the noble and beautiful language of Paul, to recognise the depth of abasement into which the Church had sunk through the materialistic conceptions of the Dark Ages.

40. But it is needless to say that this offer of a certain class of theologians to surrender everything except a single shred of the worn-out body, liberal as it may appear, was nevertheless at once rejected by the school of scientific men. Death, they replied, must be regarded as a total and complete destruction of the visible body, so far at least as the individual life is concerned. At the same time professing themselves unable to conceive such an existence as a disembodied spirit, they were forced to conclude like Priestley,[25] that the soul is not in its nature immortal. At this point, however, the scientific school splits up into two or even three sections, one believing with Priestley and others that immortality is a fresh and miraculous gift conferred upon man at the resurrection; another, unable to conceive the possibility of a miracle in the case of each individual, denying a future state altogether; while a third section maintains that there is no use in discussing the subject, because man after death has passed beyond the sphere of human inquiry.

41. Regarding the existence and nature of the Deity, various opinions have been entertained by the disciples of what we may term the extreme school of science. Some have maintained that we have no evidence of the existence of any such Being, others that we have no evidence of His personality, while others argue that although we may become convinced of His great power and wisdom from the works of creation, there are other attributes of His character which are not so revealed. We cannot, for instance, say they, maintain the benevolence of the Deity in the way in which we understand the word benevolence, nor have we any evidence that He is just in the way in which we understand the word justice. It is well known that the late John Stuart Mill would have regarded the claims of Christianity with more favour had its character been more Manichæan, that is to say, had the spirit of evil been allowed a position more nearly equal to that of the spirit of good in the government of the universe.

42. Let us here pause to indicate two points of similarity between this scientific school and the system of Christianity. Both, we conceive, maintain in some sense the supremacy of law or the invariability of the procedure adopted by the Deity in the government of the universe ([Art. 36]); both maintain likewise that the outer works of the visible universe are insufficient to manifest certain attributes of the Deity. Here, however, the likeness ends; this scientific school conceive they have no information beyond the visible universe, while the Christian system asserts the existence of an invisible order of things, and the fact of communications having taken place between the two for the double purpose of revealing God to man, and of raising man towards God.