2 TIMOTHY I. 10 171
that the resurrection of Jesus took place ! This legend enshriues a precious truth.^
(3) He gave it forth to the world. — So far as the Jewish belief rested upon the Scriptures of the Old Testament, it had some- thing of a local and national aspect; Christ broke the fetters that bound the Book to the Jewish territory and the Hebrew people, and sent it forth as the inheritance of the world. So far as the belief sprang from general reasoning and logical probabili- ties, it was the same as any of the theories of the Gentiles — a thing that required Divine confirmation in order to its being invested with regal authority. By His utterances, whose words were " with power," who " spake as never man spake," who " gave himself a ransom for all," and who came to be " the light of the world," the doctrine He adopted, enlarged, and ratified was stamped with the character of universality, and was commanded to be carried to Jew and Gentile alike.
^ Whatever Christianity has done, or failed to do, this at least we need not fear to claim for it ; that it has availed to plant the belief of our immortality among the deepest and most general convictions of our race : that it has borne even into the least imaginative hearts the unfailing hope of a pure and glorious life beyond the death of the body: that it has shot through our language, our literature, our customs, and our moral ideas the searching light of a judgment to come and the quickening glory of a promised Heaven ; that it has sustained and intensified this hope through countless changes of thought and feeling in centuries of quickest intellectual development : and that it is now im- possible to conceive the force which could dislodge from so many million hearts the axiom which they have learned from the gospel of the resurrection,^
^ Professor Ed. Gasc Desfosses writes : " A reason for believing in personal immortality to which a certain number of philosophers only accord a very limited credit, but which in my opinion is very important, is the argument furnished by moral anthropology, which may be termed an ethnographic (race) argument. Amongst all people, at all epochs of history (even at prehistoric times), from the rudest and least civilized tribes to tliose of the highest intellectual development, the belief in an after-existence is every- where ; often this belief is clothed in the most primitive forms,
* E. P. Parker, in The Hartford Seminary Record, zxiii. 94. ' Bishop Francis Paget.
172 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY
the most materialistic, if we may so express it. But after allow- ing for the special guidance which philosophical or religious systems, whatever they may be, can give to these beliefs, I think one can say that it is an indication of the existence of an instinct of a high order which is one of the characteristics of humanity. This is what the old traditional philosopher called ' the proof of universal consent.' If the name of science is given especially to all research based on facts, it can be said that this argument in favour of the immortality of the soul has a scientific value, as all its strength lies in establishing a fact which is universally human." ^
2. What were the means used by Christ to make life and incorruption part of His gospel ? How did He accomplish it ?
(1) By His words. — It is not that Christ dwells upon the de- lights of Heaven, thus fixing or stimulating the imagination, as has been done by founders of other religions. It is a striking fact, indeed, that our Lord never seemed ready to satisfy mere curiosity. It has been truly said that He alone could, if He would, have told us all, and yet that He refused to do so. He knew all ; He knew also how much we could safely hear, how much it was good for us to know. But He did teach us of God, of His character, of His justice and holiness and mercy. He did teach us of man, of his value, his opportunity, the infinite reach and consequences of his actions. And both these teachings would be meaningless unless man were immortal. He did more ; He placed before men an ideal of their life, an ideal to which conscience and the higher spiritual nature at once and involuntarily in every true soul re- sponds— an ideal wholly inconsistent with the theory of man's nothingness beyond the grave. He went further. Incidentally, but plainly, upon suitable occasions He referred in actual terms to our interest in an eternal world. God " is not a God of the dead," He said, "but of the living: for all live unto him"; "In my Father's house are many mansions. ... I go to prepare a place for you " ; " Father, I will," He prayed. " that they whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am " ; and other passages. Certainly for the Christian such teachings — and they might be almost indefinitely multiplied — leave no room for question but that we are immortal, that this life is but preliminary to another.
^ R. J. Thompson, Proofs of Life after Death, 206.