Of the part Great God has given?
THOUGHTS ON IMMORTALITY
I do not know; yet the longings and yearnings of my soul cry out always for immortality. I seem to hope always that somewhere in the universe there is stored away a great pity that responds to the longings and yearnings of my soul, and stands ready to help me when the earth fades away from sight and the shadows fall thick and deep around me. I do not know. The desire in my soul is father to my trembling hope, and hope may pass away when life goes out into the unknown and my body of clay is left to crumble and decay and disintegrate and go back to the original elements.
There will be a physical change, the light and heat and movement will go out of my body, like the light blown out in a vacant house when the inhabitants move away. But whither goes the inhabitants that now dwell within me when the lights are blown out and the doors locked and sealed with the eternal lock that will not open to the key of time, I do not know.
In my sober contemplation of all that lies before, it seems to me that love and justice and mercy and hope are of ephemeral existence if they last only while the light is in the body. And I ask myself: “Is there no life and light and mercy and hope and pity beyond these things we feel and hear and see? Are we to suffer injustice during life that will never be righted for us? Are we to love, and lose the object of our love, and never find it again? Are these bright minds of ours, so capable of dreaming such beautiful dreams, to be brought to the very highest possible heights of intelligence, and then suddenly be snuffed out, like blowing the lighted flame from a candle, leaving all in darkness and gloom?”
I do not know. The prophets and philosophers were only men, with yearnings and longings like my own, and as weak and helpless to pull aside the curtains and peep into the future as I find myself. And yet I am not satisfied to die forever; for I do know that there is an eternity for all these things existing in space. Space is eternity itself. The human mind can not picture a condition when worlds and planets and space will be no more. Nothing can come from nothing, neither can matter pass into nothing and leave no trace behind. The length of the universe is eternity, and so is the width and the breadth. It can not pass away and leave but a hole, for even a hole must have sides and dimensions.
I do not know; perhaps the ox in the field knows more about immortality than man, perhaps less, perhaps nothing at all. It would not need to know much about it to outstrip me in knowledge on this one particular subject. He may have longings and yearnings, the same as me, for how shall the ox receive his share of justice and equity if he passes away with this life and is known no more?
I do not know; justice must surely mean the same rewards for the ox as it means for man, for how can simple justice discriminate between animals, and still remain simple justice? And the man who is willing to grasp an immortality that discriminates between him and the ox, is neither merciful, charitable, nor just. Immortality must surely embrace all the living creatures, or part of life would be left behind, and immortality would be incomplete and imperfect. God must be the God of all. If the ox is an inferior creature, the fault lies with the creator and not with the created thing. If there is no justice and mercy for the ox, then justice and mercy have limits, and God is not so powerful to save his creatures as he is to create them.