Still more remarkable is Comte's scepticism, as being subsequent to those astronomical calculations and conclusions which are probably the greatest triumphs of the human intellect. Yet these are his words: "Scientifically considered Astronomy can be little else than the application of mathematical truth to the phenomena of the heavenly bodies. . . . It is true that we are limited to the consideration of geometric or mechanical phenomena which have already been reduced to general and abstract theories by the preceding science. All attempts to outstep this field are necessarily as vain as they are idle, even in a problem so simple as that of temperature. Distant bodies accessible to no sense but that of vision will never admit of researches deserving to be called Positive in any other of their phenomena than Extension and Motion. So far as we are concerned, it is in these that their existence consists." And these words were used within a few years of the revelations since made in Astronomy by the spectroscope.

It is evident that no position in science can be so unscientific as that of limiting the possibilities of

* System of Positive Polity, vol. i., Introductory Principles, chap. ii p. 404, Bridges' Translation.

human knowledge. An inquiry into the evidences of Immortality, if it had never yet produced any result, would still be always right and always reasonable.

This essay, indeed, is not intended to be an exhaustive treatise. It is sometimes assumed that whoever deals with an important subject ought to say all that can be said about it. The result is apt to be that books are complete, but they are unreadable, and the teaching which they might give is borne down by their excessive weight of learning. I have deliberately left a good many things unsaid. After all, the object of writing is to please some one or to help some one.

Protestantism is the democracy of religion. It appeals to the people not because they are always wise or competent judges of religious any more than of political questions, but because conscience is sacred and supreme, and, where many minds are brought to bear upon a subject, the prejudices and peculiarities of individuals are corrected, and because candour is a part of religion and truth in itself is great and it prevails.

This essay is popular rather than scientific. It is intended for readers who are not specially scholars. It is for this reason that I have translated most

quotations from classical or foreign authors which occur in it, and have generally, though not always, cited passages of the Bible in the Authorised Version.

I have tried to write it in a simple straightforward style. So far as was possible, I have avoided using technical terms. I have given at the foot of the pages the principal references for such quotations or allusions as are made in the text. But, upon the whole, I have avoided footnotes, as being needless and annoying disturbances of a reader's attention. No ancient classical writer used them or seemed to need them.

If at the end of this essay as at the beginning the doctrine of Immortality is felt to be involved in some uncertainty, may I say that I do not regret it? Uncertainty is the test of moral character. We are tested and approved by our attitude of belief and conduct in the presence of life's uncertainties. There is no such testing power in mathematical or scientific truth. It is moral and spiritual truth which tests a man and a nation of men. That is the reason why right belief as well as right action is presented as human duty in the Bible. And yet it is my humble prayer that the great doctrine of Immortality may through this essay be made a little clearer and dearer to some human soul.

CHAPTER I

NATURE OF THE BELIEF

IN the experience of every man there is no such moment as when he looks for the first time on the face of death. He can never forget that moment nor ever live as though it had not been. He may have spent many years in the world, and the years may have been rich in interest and happiness, but at last he stands face to face with the reality which solemnises and sanctifies all things. From that time, even if he be frivolous and careless, he never wholly loses the sense of the awful vision. He knows that for him-for all his hopes, desires, ambitions, enterprises, victories-there is but one end. He is another man.

But as he looks upon the dead, when the first strong agony of bereavement begins to spend itself, the thoughts which are apt to arise in his mind will be such as these:

The thought of peacefulness.

The life that is over now was embittered perhaps by circumstances; it may have been harassed with care or stained with sin or tortured with pain; it may have been distressed, misunderstood, scorned, reprobated, condemned; but its end is peace. The beating heart is still. The lips are hushed. The eyes are closed as if in sleep. The last farewell has been spoken-or it will never be spoken. In spite of the keen inevitable regrets, when it is too late to speak the word which seems so necessary, so natural, comes the feeling that "the wicked" in death do "cease from troubling," and "the weary are at rest."

The thought of beauty too.

The beauty of death is as exquisite as it is transient. It has been portrayed in impressive language by a great poet whose thoughts were wont to play about the subject of Immortality.

"He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled

(Before decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers)

And mark'd the mild angelic air,

The rapture of repose that's there,

The fix'd yet tender traits that streak

The languor of the placid cheek,