The future life is no longer associated with retribution, and immortality means opportunity instead of doom. Should the doctrine of moral influence follow upon the doctrine of spiritual progression, the essential significance of the tenet would be preserved, for that is ethical not individual.
Prayer, too, is no more a begging for favors, or an act of intercession. Supplication for outward benefits has given place to petition for spiritual gifts, and this to pure aspiration, the desire for excellence; still the soul's passion is as deep as ever, perhaps deeper.
If Mr. Tyndall's prophecy should be fulfilled, and we should come to "discover in that matter which we, in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life," then what we call matter would simply assume new properties commensurate with novel tasks. The properties themselves will remain as they were, and will in nowise change their peculiarity. The ancient attributes of mind will persist, whatever theory of their origin be adopted. The old sanctities will endure, and the burden of responsibility will fall upon another pair of shoulders.
Thus every virtue will be maintained in complete vigor,—reverence, aspiration, trust, submission, confidence, serenity, patience, fortitude,—and nothing will be lost.
Then there is the social world, in which we "live and move and have our being." This "encompasses us behind and before, and lays its hand upon us." There is not an hour in the day, hardly a moment of the hour, when the call of duty is not made upon us. None but the rarest spirits discharge the claims of mercy and brotherhood; people generally do not know what they are; repudiate them when presented. The preachers have more than they can do to induce practice of even the commonest virtues of good will. Humanity, in its grand aspects, is left to the writers of Utopias. Not a day passes that conscience is not over-worked, even when it is not perplexed by misgivings in regard to the amount or the kind of service it ought to render. Some have sought an escape in the immortal life from the demands of this; and some have denied the doctrine of another world because it drew attention away from this, and made the ills of the present seem light in view of some coming beatitude. In truth, the friends of that great hope will do well to remember that it is identical with moral attainment; that it is for great souls; that
The life of heaven above,
Springs from the life below.
It is, to say the least, doubtful whether any future life can do more than ripen seeds that are sowed here, or whether spiritual perfection will owe anything essential to other events of time, while it is certain that nothing is sure to abide but what is born of love.
Unless the doctrine of a future life can be used to reinforce the doctrine of moral attainment in the present state of existence, its power must depart. The cords of personal affection are not strong enough to hold the belief. The true inference from disbelief is not expressed in the words, "Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die"; but in these, "I must work while it is day." This idea is a very old one. The air was full of it when I was a youth. It was the soul of all liberal faith. The Westminster Review, which was in full force in my early manhood, having begun in 1824, two years after my birth, was animated by it. The Prospective Review, the organ of the spiritual Unitarians, and edited by such men as James Martineau, John James Taylor, John Hamilton Thom, and Charles Wicksteed, a magazine aiming to "interpret and represent Spiritual Christianity in its character of the Universal Religion," was started about 1845. In its pages "spirituality" was intimately associated with "humanity." The books of F. W. Newman, "The Soul" (1849); "Phases of Faith" (1850); "Catholic Union" (1854), teemed with this conception. The charming verses of William Blake, published in his "Songs of Innocence," had somehow came to my knowledge.
To mercy, pity, peace, and love,
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For mercy, pity, peace, and love
Is God, our Father dear;
And mercy, pity, peace, and love
Is man, His child and care.