'The world, as it is, is growing daily dimmer before my eyes. The world, as it is to be, is ever growing brighter.' HARRIET MARTINEAU.
'... When you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past.' PROFESSOR TYNDALL.
'We, too, turn our thoughts to that which is behind the veil. We strive to pierce its secret with eyes, we trust, as eager and as fearless, and even, it may be, more patient in searching for realities behind the gloom. That which shall come after is no less solemn to us than to you.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'Theological hypotheses of a new and heterogeneous existence have deadened our interest in the realities, the grandeur, and the perpetuity of an earthly life.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'As we read, the calm and humane words of Condorcet, on the very edge of his yawning grave, we learn, from the conviction of posthumous activity (not posthumous fame), how the consciousness of a living incorporation with the glorious future of his race, can give a patience and happiness equal to that of any martyr of theology.... Once make it (i.e. "this sense of posthumous participation in the life of our fellows") the basis of philosophy, the standard of right and wrong, and the centre of a religion, and this (the conversion of the masses) will prove, perhaps, an easier task than that of teaching Greeks and Romans, Syrians and Moors, to look forward to a life of ceaseless psalmody in an immaterial heaven.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'We make the future life, in the truest sense, social, inasmuch as our future is simply an active existence prolonged by society; and our future life rests not in any vague yearning, of which we have as little evidence as we have definite conception: it rests on a perfectly certain truth ... that the actions, feelings, thoughts, of each one of us, do marvellously influence and mould each other.... Can we conceive a more potent stimulus to rectitude, to daily and hourly striving after a true life, than this ever-present sense that we are indeed immortal; not that we have an immortal something within us—but that in very truth we ourselves, our thinking, feeling, acting personalities, are immortal?' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'As we live for others in life, so we live in others after death.... How deeply does such a belief as this bring home to each moment of life the mysterious perpetuity of ourselves! For good, for evil, we cannot die. We cannot shake ourselves free from this eternity of our faculties.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'We cannot even say that we shall continue to love; but we know that we shall be loved.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'It is only when an earthly future is the fulfilment of a worthy earthly life, that we can see the majesty, as well as the glory, of the world beyond the grave; and then only will it fulfil its moral and religious purpose as the great guide of human conduct.' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'I am confident that a brighter day is coming for future generations.' HARRIET MARTINEAU.