an elevation of the soul. Therefore, the Christian or the religious man in general, having regard to the soul, and not only so but to the soul as endowed with Immortality, may well accept and rejoice in such a fate as is contrary to the dispositions and inclinations of the body. The ascetic life, with its manifold, mysterious applications, depends upon the regard paid to the soul. It is in the nature of the soul too that there lies the secret of the great distinction which was not known even as a fancy to the classical pagan world, though that world was so clever and refined, but is an axiom of every modern polity—the distinction between the world and the Church, between the secular life and the spiritual, between the things which in their nature are temporal and the things which are eternal and Divine. What the issue of that distinction may be in the coming days none can tell, but it touches the very nature of Man. It determines what should be his character and his conduct in the crises of life. It renders the actions and even the language of one section of society unfamiliar, if not unintelligible, to the other. But if the soul be transcendently greater than the body, then they who render it its due importance will win the day. The conclusions and inferences of this chapter may be briefly stated as follows :— The conception, more or less vague, of the human spirit or soul as in its nature surviving the bodily life appears to be universal among the primitive and savage races of mankind. That conception was originally crude and material; it has been slowly refined into spirituality. It was the destiny of the Jewish people, though they were late in realising the conception of a future spiritual existence, to accept it eventually in its purest form and to commend it most persuasively to mankind. That conception, first imagined by the Psalmists and prophets, and afterwards purified in the Apocryphal literature, was elevated to its sublime dignity by Jesus Christ. He taught not only the existence and the pure spirituality of the soul, but its paramount superiority to any other part, and to all the other parts, of human nature. This superiority was the axiom of His own redemptive work. It is equally the axiom of all Christian devotion and philanthropy. Religion is, in a word, a cultivation of the soul. Beyond this cultivation no religious system or creed can ever rise. CHAPTER III VALUE OF THE BELIEF WE have seen what is the true belief in the soul's Immortality, and how it arose and was historically developed. We have seen that it has been purged, by slow degrees, not without difficulty, of the material grossness originally attaching to it, and has become a pure spiritual faith. But it remains to ask-What is the bearing of this belief upon the common daily practical human life? Would the world be affected, and if so, how affected? would it be the better or the worse, if the belief in Immortality should cease? This chapter, it is necessary to say, is concerned solely with the value of the belief-not with its truth or its probability, but with its value. There is no assumption that, because a belief is valuable, therefore it is true. It may indeed be urged upon the hypothesis of a beneficent Almighty Providence that 120 it is not probable that Man would be left in the unhappy position of finding a belief to be essential or important to his moral welfare and yet to be false. The belief in God then lends a certain strength to the argument from the value or necessity of any other belief to its truth. But the belief in God may or may not be treated as reasonable. The object of this chapter is to inquire the value of the belief in Immortality without any regard to its validity. in no part of this essay is candour or moderation more necessary, and in none, perhaps, is it more difficult. But It is argued that men have lived good lives, and even lives of special and remarkable virtue, without the sanction or motive of an immortal hope; that they have loved righteousness for its own sake, without any thought of reward or penalty; and that it is a foolish policy therefore to make the duty or possibility of virtuous living dependent in any sense upon a belief which has been shown to be not essential, and which may not improbably prove to be fallacious. It is better, according to this argument, so to educate and discipline mankind, that they may feel virtue to be its own reward. That good and noble lives have been lived in the absence of religious belief, in the absence of a belief in Immortality, is probable enough; it will readily be admitted by Christians. There is not so much virtue in the world that it can be right or wise to disparage what there is. The theory that human nature is absolutely corrupt is disproved by human. nature itself. And if it were absolutely corrupt, it would be incapable of responding to the appeal which religion makes to it, and religion would languish or die. The sanctions and motives of religion do not re-create human nature; they take it as it is; they elevate and purify it; they could not find root in human nature if the soil were utterly hard. No doubt the virtue as well as the vice of human nature may be exaggerated. Anti-Christian writers have made too much of the one, as Christian writers of the other; for human nature is not wholly good or wholly bad, but is composed of good and bad qualities in differing degrees, although, if no external influences were brought to bear upon it, it would probably sink, instead of rising, in moral dignity. But Theology forfeits the confidence of sensible and reasonable thinkers, if it denies such 'tendencies to goodness as exist in human nature, for the sake of magnifying the work of the Divine grace |