1.—All peoples and tribes, in all ages and of all grades of intelligence have conceived a life beyond death. Isolated exceptions are so rare that they may be accounted for by the loss, through degeneration, of an instinctive idea. This belief built the Pyramids of Egypt, reared the great Etruscan tombs, led men to embalm their dead, placed food and utensils within the tomb for use beyond, slaughtered the horses of the dead warrior and burned the widow on the husband's pyre. There is a deep-rooted and universal feeling that the spirit of man is distinct from, and superior to, the body, and survives the body. The universal fact of mortality has suggested the universal belief in immortality. This is all the more remarkable in face of the lack of immortality in nature. Nature presents the aspect of an indefinite series of things succeeding one another. It would seem that the human mind is so constructed that it tends in the direction of belief in the survival of personality. This may be but a candle light; yet it is a light.
2.—This belief in immortality persists. Various fancies and superstitions have been outgrown and cast aside in the progress of the ages. Many conceptions of the past have proved unworthy to survive. But this belief has a stronger grip on the modern world than it ever had in the past. While advance in knowledge reveals an interdependence of soul and body, it accentuates their distinction. To-day progress is interpreted to mean the triumph of the spirit and is marked by an increasing consciousness of the reality of the self which knows and wills and feels. A belief which thus survives must surely have in it something of the vitality of truth.
3.—This belief develops and waxes strong as life itself develops and climbs higher. The higher a man is in the scale of being, the wider his thoughts, the deeper his affections, the nobler his life; the more likely is he to believe that the soul lives on. The more fleshly, selfish and materialistic is the life, the harder it is to be sure of immortality. Thousands may live in the slime, with the beasts, and may not have a steadfast hope in a life beyond; but the great-minded and great-hearted men of the race are surest of life everlasting. Tennyson once said to Bishop Lightfoot: "The cardinal point of Christianity is the life after death." Tennyson is supremely the poet of immortality. It is his master thought; and herein he is typical of the greatest minds in human history. This belief, universal and persistent, is most vigorous in the hearts of the supreme men of our civilization.
4.—This belief, however vague may be the ideas in its context, exercises a real influence on life. It energises men. It nerves them to struggle and achieve. It enlarges their view. It inspires them for vaster enterprises. It enables them to do hard things and to persevere to the end.
WHAT PHILOSOPHY SAYS.
II. Philosophy lights more candles on the problem. Philosophy goes deeper than the statement of facts; it gives a theory of the facts; it seeks to find causes, relations and purposes.
1. The thoughts of the normal man are long thoughts. He has an instinctive yearning for immortality. If this instinct is absent, the man is not normal. If this instinct is suppressed, the man's soul is injured. If he does not believe in immortality, he will believe in something far less credible. It may be continued existence in the complex-life of humanity; it may be absorption of individual personality in some Oversoul. The issue is sorrow of heart, bitterness of soul, pessimism of creed, "Pessimism is the column of black smoke proceeding from the heart in which the hope of immortality has been burned to ashes." If a man remains normal, he believes in immortality. What is the inference? Tennyson has drawn it.
"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust,
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And Thou hast made him, Thou are just."
A just Creator will not place instinctive longings in His Creature's soul, only to betray them.
2.—The affections of the soul are as true witnesses as the mind. "The heart has reasons which the reason cannot understand." It is impossible for love at its purest and strongest to believe that death ends all. Love shrinks in pain from such a possibility. It protests against such a violation of the fellowship of heart with heart. The longing for reunion is no vain desire, awakened only to be mocked.