^ In a sad poem, entitled " The Great Misgiving," William Watson voices modern unsettlement and belief on this question. Writing there of our life as a feast at which we have banqueted, he asks why the worms should not have their feast too upon us, once we are done with it all. In soul-withering doubt, he estimates that it is impossible to know, when we have done with this life, whether we shall pass into the ampler day with its heavenly light, or whether we shall slip into new prospects, or fall sheer — a blinded thing ! His closing words, sounding like the shutting of the iron gate of a prison-house on man's soul, are — " There is, 0 grave, thy hourly victory ; and there, 0 death, thy sting ! " ^
Though bleak winds blow and earth grows drear, When autumn's golden days depart, We scan the skies With fearless eyes, For winter brings no blight to him
Who holds the summer in his heart.
Though death's chill shadows hover near, And billows wild about us roll, In faith's sweet calm We lift our psalm, For death no terror wears for him Who mirrors heaven in his soul.'
The answers to Job's question may be reduced to three, according as the inquirers are guided by Eeason, the Old Testa- ment Scriptures, or the Eevelation in Christ.
I.
The Answer of Eeason.
The greatest philosophers of Greece speculated on the nature and destiny of man. They felt there was something Divine in
^ G. C. Peck, Ringing Questions, 35. ^ P. Wilson, The Great Salvation, 265. » Mary B. Sleight.
JOB XIV. 14 59
human nature, as well as something which seemed to them to be only of the earth. The mortality of the body they could not deny, nor did they wish to do so. They conceived of it not as the necessary expression and organ of the soul, but as a burden, a prison, a tomb ; it was their one hope and desire that man's immortal part might one day be delivered from it. The Greek philosophers, too, as well as the great poets, rose above that moral neutrality which characterizes the instinctive faith in man's survival. They saw rewards and punishments in the once un- distinguishing future. Heroic men were admitted to some kind of blessed existence in Elysian fields ; while the conspicuously bad — giants, tyrants, lawless profligates — were tormented in some kind of hell. Such ideas, however, were confined to a limited circle ; they did not interest themselves in the common people ; and however much we may admire the nobleness of the poets and philosophers of Greece, it is not to them, any more than to the priests of Egypt, that the world is indebted for the hope of immortality.
1. The foundation of a belief in a future life is embedded in human nature. In the transient course of things there is yet an intimation of that which is not transient. The grass that fades has yet in the folded and falling leaves of its flower that perishes the intimation of a beauty that does not fade. The treasures that are frayed by the moth and worn by the rust are not as those in which love and faith and hope abide. There is a will that in its purpose does not yield to mortal wrong. There is a joy that is not of emulation. There is a freedom that is other than the mere struggle for existence in physical relations, and is not determined in its source or end by these finite conditions.
^ I have heard that the mortar in the walls of Sancta Sophia, at Constantinople, still retains some traces of the perfume with which it was mixed when built a thousand years ago. But let us make the figure complete. Suppose the fragrance of a rose had the same property in relation to the rose that the spirit has in relation to the body. What if the fragrance controlled the rose ? What if it were endowed with such a superior nature as to be able to disseminate a rich, rare, and wondrous perfume even though the rose were faded, and fallen, and broken, and dead? What if the odour had a consciousness of its own, apart from the
6o LIFE BEYOND DEATH
flower, able to say as the rose falls to fragments, " I am an odour still ! " Would we not regard it as somewhat less likely that such a fragrance could perish for ever — could be diffused into nothing ? ^
^ Huxley's consciousness of the difficulties involved in his views on life and destiny caused him to advocate a resolute front against the prospect of future nothingness. " We are grown men, and must play the man " —
Strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
He admits that a ray of light may perchance steal in upon the dreadful gloom :
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down, It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.
The natures that will find comfort in this scanty outlook are few indeed, and later teachers of the evolution school have revolted against its dismal predictions. Mr. Fiske says, "For my own part, I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work." Le Conte is more emphatic still. He holds that, without spirit — immortality — this increasingly beautiful cosmos, which has run its ageless course with manifest purpose and value, would be precisely as though it had never been — an idiot tale signifying and portending blank nothingness.^