FOOTNOTES:
[36] There is an argument which, I believe, now influences more or less consciously the minds of many intelligent persons against the belief in the immortal life. It amounts to this: Granted that there is a God, and that he is absolutely benevolently disposed toward mankind, it does not follow (as commonly assumed) that He will bestow immortality on man, because it is quite possible that there may be an inherent absurdity and contradiction in the idea of an immortal finite creature,—it may, in short, be no more within the scope of divine power to create an immortal man than to make a triangle with the properties of a circle. If we could be first assured that the thing were possible, then arguments derived from the justice and goodness of the Deity might be valuable, as affording us ground for believing that He will do that possible thing. But, while it remains an open question whether we are not talking actual nonsense when we speak of an ever-living created being, such reflections on the moral attributes of God are beside the mark. No justice or goodness can be involved in doing that which, in the nature of things, is impossible.
Now, of course, there is a little confusion here between a future life—a mere post-mortem addition of so many years or centuries to this mortal existence—and an immortal life, which, it is assumed, will continue either in a series of births and deaths or in one unbroken life forever and ever. In the former idea, no one can find any self-contradiction. It is only the latter notion of immortality, strictly so described, which is suspected of involving a contradiction. Practically, however, the two ideas must stand or fall together; for almost every argument for the survival of the soul after death bears with double force against its extinction at any subsequent epoch of its existence.
Taking then the future life of a man as, to all intents and purposes, the immortal life, we are bound to confront the difficulty,—“What right have we to assume that immortality and creaturehood are compatible the one with the other?”
A priori argument on such a matter is altogether futile. We know and can reason literally nothing about it. For anything we could urge antecedent to the observation of a man’s actual state, it was, apparently, just as probable that he could not be made immortal as that he could be made so by any conceivable power in the universe. But we are not quite in the position of lacking all such a posteriori assistance to our judgment. We can see how God has actually constituted the human race, and the problem is consequently modified to this: “Are there any signs or tokens that man is meant for something more than a mere mundane existence?” It is obvious that, if immortality were an attribute which in the nature of things he could never share, nothing in his mental or moral constitution would have been made with any reference to such an unattainable destiny. If, on the other hand, there be in his nature evidences of a purpose extending beyond the scope of this life, and stretching out into the limitless perspective of eternity, then we are authorized to draw the inference that the Author of his being planned for him a future existence, and, of course, knew that he might enjoy that divine heritage.
Here, then, the argument lies in manageable shape before us. It is true we only see a small portion of humanity, as it has yet been drawn out; but just as mathematicians can determine, from any three given points, the nature of the curve to which they belong, so we have enough indications to guide us to a conclusion respecting the character of our race. In every department of our nature, save our perishable bodies, we find something which seems to point beyond our threescore years and ten,—something inconsistent with the hypothesis that those years complete our intended existence. Our busy intellects, persistently wrestling with the mysteries of eternity; our human affections craving for undying love; our sense of justice, born of no past experience of a reign of Astrea, but resolutely prophesying, in spite of experience, a perfect judgment hereafter; the measureless meaning which moral distinctions carry to our consciences; the unutterable longing of our spirits for union (not wholly unattained even here) with the living God, the Father of spirits,—all these things seem to show that we are built, so to speak, on a larger scale than that of our earthly life. The foundations are too deep and wide, the corner-stones are by far too massive, if nothing but the Tabernacle of a day be the design of the Architect. In brief, then, we may admit freely that, for aught we know, “God could not give to a triangle the properties of a circle,” and yet, nevertheless, hold our faith undisturbed, since we find that the line which His hand has actually drawn is a CURVE already,—a few degrees of the circumference of a stupendous circle.
[37] There is an insect, the Lunar Sphinx Moth, which exhibits, in its first stage, not only the usual prevision for its security while in the helpless chrysalis state, but a singular foresight of its own requirements when it shall have become a winged moth. Having made, by eating its way upward through the pith of a willow, an appropriate hiding-place, it finds itself with its head in a position in which, were it to become a moth, it could never push itself down, and escape at the aperture below. The little creature accordingly, before it goes to sleep, laboriously turns round, and places its head near the entrance, where, as a moth, it will make its happy exit into the fields of air. There seems something curiously akin in the unaccountable foresight of this insect, of a state of existence it has never experienced, and the vague and dim sentiment of immortality, common to mankind since the days of the cave-dwellers of the Stone Age.