The Christian's Eye.
Once more let Huxley speak as to the scientific possibility "with regard to the other great Christian dogmas, the immortality of the soul, and a future state of rewards and punishments, what possible objection can I, who am compelled, perforce, to believe in the immortality of what we call matter and force, and in a very unmistakable present state of rewards and punishments for all our deeds, have to these doctrines? Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them."[9] But when all conditions are considered, and just weight given to all the probabilities, the full persuasion of immortality comes through Him who has "brought life and immortality to light." These seem part of His communication to the souls in whom He dwells. To them He says, "Because I live, ye shall live also." Into their being He injects the power of an endless life. Their hopes, faith, affections center less and less on time. The truer, fuller, richer life is felt to be coming. It is to surpass the earthly life in quantity and in quality only because the soul, as it flutters Godward, must here feel the attrition of its fleshly tabernacle. This dissolved, the fullness and the freedom come. The house not made with hands henceforth enshrines the spirit. Christ's great Word is finally interpreted: "I am come, that they might have life, and have it more abundantly."
The Life Everlasting.
Literalism.
"The life everlasting!" This is the grand finale of the Creed as it is the end which all devout souls seek. It is made probable by what man is, which is the same as saying that there are, from considerations above mentioned, probabilities in its favor. It has been the habit of pious souls to attempt to understand and describe this life, and many are the volumes which proceed upon the literalness of the Bible descriptions. I suppose there are phases of faith which can not reach beyond literalness, and hence do not rightly interpret the splendid imagery of St. John. Such we must leave to the blessed surprise and ecstatic awakening of Paradise.
Great Figures.
Locating Heaven.
Eternal Punishment.
To other minds the life everlasting is unbelievable except as the great pictures of John are spiritualized. To such the place becomes a state or condition. It is of no interest to us to inquire, as did the Christian philosopher, Dick, into the locality of heaven and hell. Such ideas as those recently put forth by a preacher, not of our Church, thank God! that hell is in one of the spots on the sun, and heaven in the chromosphere are distasteful to the last degree to those who believe that "God is a Spirit," and that "flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom of God." Such feel that heaven may be anywhere and everywhere; that the gulf which separates the rich man and Lazarus may be only a moral gulf, seeing that they talked across it. They see eternal punishment in the perception of the sinner that he has forever stunted his soul by his sinfullness and the grossness of his affections. Though he should begin a progressive life from his present status, he could never catch up with a soul which has a purer point of departure.