subjective, probability of a soul other than material transcending time and space and asserting its kinship with Heaven.

Between these beliefs the religious spirit will not long hesitate to choose.

CHAPTER VI

THE CHRISTIAN AMPLIFICATION OF THE BELIEF

THIS essay has hitherto been concerned with the general evidences for the Immortality of the soul. These are such evidences as are in the main independent of any special religious belief, although they presuppose a spiritual attitude of mind. No doubt it is true that the estimate formed of these evidences will be, or may be, influenced by a particular creed. Thus to a Christian the authority of Christ Himself is final; it cannot be resisted or disputed; and as soon as it becomes clear that He announced authoritatively this or that truth concerning Immortality, there can no more be any question about it.

But it would be wrong to connect the belief in Immortality, or to connect it exclusively, with any

special form of creed. It is a belief natural to all persons who take a religious view of human nature. It is in fact the common property of all the great spiritual systems of belief in the world.

The belief in Immortality is a philosophical as well as a religious doctrine. It is chiefly upon philosophical grounds that the belief has been recommended in this essay. Yet no sooner is it accepted as a matter of Philosophy than it becomes stamped with a religious type or character. It is in fact what religion makes it to be. Thus a Mohammedan may believe in Immortality as well as a Christian; but he does not believe in the same Immortality. Immortality is one thing, Christian Immortality is another.

And it is not the mere abstract doctrine but the Christian doctrine of Immortality which is the faith of Christian souls in a Christian land. This is, in effect, the doctrine advocated in this essay; for it cannot be doubted that no system of Philosophy or Religion has done so much to invest the thought of the Immortal Life with a definite consistent character as Christianity. St. Paul in one of his Epistles, speaking of his Divine Master, says that He "only hath Immortality;" and in another that He II Timothy vi. 16.

"hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality (or 'incorruption') to light through the Gospel." Immortality, then, is the dominant note in the Christian Revelation. It pervades and influences Christ's whole teaching. And the Christian Revelation, above all other teachings, has not only impressed upon human minds and consciences the fact of personal Immortality, but has elucidated, or at least suggested, in various manners, what the nature of Immortality may be. It may be laid down, then, in Tennyson's words, that "the cardinal point of Christianity is the Life after Death." 2

It is indeed the function of religious philosophy to create, by more or less persuasive arguments, a belief in Immortality; but it is the function of special revelations to fill up the space of the Immortal Life. The mere philosophical belief is as the outline of a picture; but it is from religion that the picture derives its form, colour, completeness, reality, truth. The Immortal Life, as regarded by minds of highest intellectuality and spirituality, is not mere existence; it is existence characterised and conditioned by the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Christianity does not prove Immortality. It as

sumes Immortality; or to speak exactly, it breathes a spiritual atmosphere in which the assumption of Immortality is felt to be natural or even necessary. But taking Immortality as a fact, Christianity impresses upon it a character.

Is it possible to determine that character ?

Immortality, as an abstract, colourless dogma, possesses no adequate satisfaction for mankind. It may be held to gratify the longing for continued life. But we desire to know not only that we shall live after death but, so far as possible, what our life will be, and where and under what conditions it will be, and how we may so acquit ourselves in the present as to attain the reward of felicity in the future. And to all such questions Jesus Christ affords an answer, not indeed as absolute or definite (at least apparently) as human curiosity is prone to demand, but sufficient for the conduct of life, for the inspiration of duty, and for the satisfaction of the "obstinate questionings" which are the witnesses of the affinity of human nature to the Divine.

We believe, then, not in Immortality alone, but in Christian Immortality. We are not philosophers only, or Theists; we are more than these, we are disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.