Religion, by which I mean something more than a mere code of morals, is concerned rather with motives than with methods.
If a child were to ask one why the sun and moon did not fall on to the earth, one might reply to the effect that they were prevented from doing so by the exercise of the Divine Will. Alternatively one might embark on a disquisition about the law of gravitation and planetary mechanics.
The two forms of explanation would be by no means mutually exclusive since the second does no more than expand the first by an exposition of the means employed.
If, as required by the Christian religion, we believe in the survival of the individual personality after death, it is evident that this survival must take place by virtue of certain properties inherent in the Cosmos and the necessity of Faith in our ultimate destiny will not be affected by any determination of the nature of those properties.
If our Consciousness does in fact persist after death it must do so in some state of embodiment, since the idea of pure essence is inconceivable.
For my part I utterly fail to understand why the study of the nature of the vehicle in which the consciousness functions after death, or of the conditions in which it lives, has any more to do with religion, in the proper sense of the term, than the study of the physical body and the physical world.
I need hardly say that I do not anticipate that Psychic Research will confirm the idea of the old-fashioned conventional Heaven and Hell of harps and crowns on the one hand and fire and brimstone on the other. But it would be a bold person who would be prepared to maintain now-a-days that these ideas form an integral part of Christianity.
Modern research on Evolution and the process of natural selection have somewhat notably discounted the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, considered as historical fact. But it would be difficult to maintain that the Christian religion has suffered as a consequence.
The account of the creation given in Genesis has had to be re-interpreted in the light of geological and astronomical knowledge, but Christianity is as vital a force in the world to-day as it was when that account was taken literally word for word.
Even so, if any specific revelation existed on the subject of the manner of survival, if, for instance, any of the words of Christ could be held to contain any precise information on the subject, it might be contended that no further knowledge was necessary. But this is not the case.