The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life

by William Rounseville Alger

In a universe of law where God with all his attributes is omnipresent no trick can ever be the pathway into paradise. The true method of salvation is by the production of a good character through divine grace and the discipline of life. Thus, the real law of salvation through Christ consists not in the technical belief that he shed his blood for our redemption, but in the personal derival from him of that spirit which will make us willing to shed our own blood for the good of others.

There was, not long ago, called to her eternal home, a young woman, who, by the sweet gentleness, the heroic generosity and the unspotted fidelity of her whole life, deserves an exalted place on the roll of feminine chivalry and saintliness. Not a brighter name, or one associated with a more fearless and accomplished spirit, is recorded on the list of those Christian women who volunteered to serve as nurses in the great American war of nationality. No soldier was braver, few were more under fire, than she; still plying her holy work with unfaltering love and fortitude, both in the horrid miasma of camps and before the charge of cavalry and the blaze of cannon. Many a time, the livelong night, under the solemn stars, equipped with assuaging stores, she threaded her way alone through the debris of carnage, seeking out the wounded among the dead, lifting her voice in song as a signal for any lingering survivor who might be near. Many a time she broke on the vision of mutilated and dying men, with the light of love in her eyes, a hymn of cheer on her lips, and unwearied ministrations in her hands, transfigured with courage and devotion, gleaming on their sight through the sulphurous flame of battle or the darkening mists of disease like an angel from heaven. Receiving the seeds of fatal illness from her exposures, she returned home to delight with her noble qualities all who knew her, to make a husband happy, and then to die a contented martyr. Meekly folding her hands, and saying: "Thanks, Father, for what thou hast enabled me to do, and still more for the new home to which thou art calling me now" she was gone. The cruel creed of superstition says: "Since she was a Universalist, having no part, by faith, in the mystic sacrifice of Christ, she is doomed to hell." But every attribute of God, every promise written by his own finger in the sacred instincts of our nature, as well as the cardinal teachings of the New Testament, assure us that as the victorious purity and devotedness of her soul bore her away from the tabernacle of flesh, the welcoming Savior said: "Come, thou blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world." And heaven swung wide its gate for her; and excited fancy conceives that, as she passed in, there was a gratulatory flutter of wings and waving of palms through the angelic ranks.

In distinction from that hypothetical gate of blood, set up by a crude theology in one narrow place alone, what, then, are the real gates of heaven, which stand open throughout the realms of responsible being? All the causes which bring the will of man into consent with the will of God. Truth is the harmony of mind with the divine order; beauty, the harmony of taste with the divine symmetries; good, the harmony of volition with the divine ends. Everything that secures these for us is an avenue into the peaceful city of bliss. To be in heaven is to be a transparent medium through which the qualities of objects, the reflections of phenomena, the vibrations of aboriginal power, pass in blessed freedom, without deflection or jar, and on which the mysterious attraction of the Infinite exerts its supreme spell. To be there in a superlative degree is to have a mind which is an infinitesimal mirror of the All, and a heart responsive to that mind, every perception of truth in the realm of the intellect generating a correspondent emotion of good in the realm of affection. Not any forensic act of faith in atoning blood, but ingrained piety a modest renunciation before the reality of things is the grand gateway of souls to the blessedness and repose of God. Anselm, the great sainted Archbishop of Canterbury, said: "I would rather be in hell without a fault than in heaven with one." Can any defective technicality damn such a man? No; such a spirit carries and radiates heaven is itself heaven. That spirit is God himself in his creature, and can no more be imprisoned in hell than God can be. On the other hand, any professing Orthodoxist who, according to a horrible doctrine of the Calvinists in former days, should hope in heaven to obtain a sharper relish for his own joy by looking down on the tortures of the damned, and contrasting his blissful safety with the hopeless agony of their perdition, would find himself in hell. The infernal scenery, even there, would burst on his gaze, its atmosphere of pain reek around him, and the detestable turmoil of its experience rage in his breast. The selfishness of his character, in steep contradiction to the public disinterestedness belonging to the divine will, must invert every proper experience of heaven. Could any conventional arrangement, or accident of locality, save such a man, while his character remained unchanged? No; such a spirit carries and radiates hell, is itself hell.

A Mohammedan author says of the seventy three sects into which his coreligionists are divided, that seventy two are wrong ways, terminating in eternal damnation; the remaining one alone, in which are the party of salvation, leads through the true faith into the City of Allah. The same unwise bigotry, the same unripeness of judgment, has been generally shown by Christians. It is time they were ashamed of it, and allowed their souls to mature and expand into a more liberal creed in fuller keeping with the hospitable amplitude of the righteousness and goodness of God. Everything that tends to bring the will of man into loving submission to the infinite Father, to mould the structure of character into correspondence with those established conditions of rightful being represented by the moral and religious virtues, is an open highway of salvation. And all the great cardinal ordinations of life do legitimately tend to this result. Therefore all these are gates of heaven. Some pass in through one of them, others through another; and by means of them all, it is decreed in the sovereign councils of the Divinity, as we believe, that, sooner or later, every intelligence shall reach the goal.

First is the gate of innocence. Little children, spotless youths and maidens who have known no malice or guile, the saintly few among mature men and women who by the untempted elevation and serenity of their temper have kept their integrity unmarred and their robes unsullied, enter by this nearest and easiest gate. Borne aloft by their own native gravitation, we see the white procession of the innocent ones winding far up the cerulean height and defiling in long melodious line into heaven.

The second gate is prosperity. Through this enter those to whom good fortune has served as the guiding smile of God, not pampering them with arrogance, nor hardening them with careless egotism, but shaping them to thankful meekness and generosity. Exempt from lacerating trials, every want benignly supplied, girt with friends, they have grown up in goodness and gratitude, obeying the will of God by the natural discharge of their duties, diffusing benedictions and benefits around them. To such beautiful spirits, saved from wrong and woe by the redemptive shelter of their lot, happiness is a better purgatory than wretchedness. The crystal stream of joy percolating throughout the soul cleanses it more perfectly than any flames of pain can. And so the virtuous children of a favored fortune, who have improved their privileges with pious fidelity, move on into heaven.

Then the third gate is victory. This is more arduous of approach, and yet a throng of heroic souls, the very chivalry of heaven, press through it, wounded and bleeding from the struggle, but triumphant. These are they who have endured hardship with uncomplaining fortitude and fought their way through all enemies, seductions and tribulations. These are they who, armed with the native sacrament of righteousness, inspired with a loyal love, would never stoop their crests to wrong nor make a league with iniquity the conquering champions who tread down every vile temptation, ever hearing their Leader say, "In the world ye shall have trouble and sorrow; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

Penitence is another gate of heaven. By the instructions of Providence, by the natural progress of experience, the evolution of wisdom, a sinner may become aware of the ingratitude of his disobedience, ashamed of the odiousness of his guilt; be smitten with a regenerating love of truth, beauty, goodness, God; and, without waiting for the lash of an external judgment to drive him the way he should go, by voluntary preference may grieve over his folly and sin, and turn to his duty and his Savior. Then the blessed gate of a spontaneous repentance stands open before him; and through this hospitable entrance multitudes find admission to the divine home.

Death often gives an otherwise unattainable deliverance, and so yields the poor victim of unhappy outer conditions a passage to heaven. It is a thought no less false than it is frightful, which represents death as the vindictive turnkey of the creation, at whose approach probation ends, and the shuddering convict is thrust into hell, the hopeless bolt dropping into its ward behind him. It is rather the divine messenger of deliverance for those who are borne down here under a fate too hard for them. Oh, what myriads of afflicted ones orphan children crushed by brutal treatment; poor seamstresses starving in garrets; men and women ground and grimed almost out of the semblance of humanity, in the drudgery and darkness of coal mines; hapless suicides, who have rashly fled from this step dame world, and whose alabaster forms, purpled with bruises, are laid on the dismal beds of brass in the morgue, where a ghastly light strains through the grates, and the crowd of gazers sweeps endlessly on; unsuccessful men of genius, unappreciated, neglected, cruelly wronged, their extreme sensitiveness making their lives a long martyrdom to these what a blessed angel is death, freeing them, setting them in a new state, starting them on a fresh career, amidst fairer circumstances, in front of better opportunities! To be saved, and in paradise, what is it but to be a pure instrument to echo the music of divine things? When the corruptible parts of the instrument are hopelessly discordant, or the circumstances of its place here are jangled with evils which it cannot overcome, then the disentanglement of the spiritual harp, and the translation of it to some finer sphere; where its free chords may ring their proper music clearly out, are a blessed redemption, making death itself a triumphant gate of heaven.

Retribution is the remotest and most difficult of all the heavenly gates; and yet it is one, and one that is indispensable for many a neglectful, halting, and obstinate child of man. It is an extreme error to think punishment a gate of hell. It is rather a result of being already inside, and it legitimately serves as an outlet thence. Whatever may be the case with imperfect human rulers, in the government of God no punishment is ever inflicted for the sake of vengeance, a gratuitous evil. It is blasphemy to deem God vindictive. He always punishes for the sake of good, to awaken attention, produce insight and sorrow, and cause a reattunement of character and conduct with the laws of right, seen at last to be supremely authoritative and benignant, indissolubly bound up with the truest good of each and with the sole good of all. On every gate of hell may be written. Wherever retribution is actual, salvation is possible, equivalent to the great maxim of jurisprudence: Ubi jus ibi remedium! So, even the dark door of retribution, when men will advance by no other way, leads them to thoughtfulness, regret, and a redemptive readjustment of their passions and acts. Thus it becomes the ultimate gate of heaven. And, alas! what a dismal crowd of sufferers, refusing all shorter and happier ways, wait to be drawn through this torturing passage of remedial mercy! May the number entering by the other gates ever increase, and those entering this dwindle! And yet, may it forever stand open for the unhappy culprits who must be lost unless saved here!