Some Essentials of Religion Part 7

WHAT PHILOSOPHY SAYS.

II. Philosophy lights more candles on the problem. Philosophy goes deeper than the statement of facts; it gives a theory of the facts; it seeks to find causes, relations and purposes.

1. The _thoughts_ of the normal man are long thoughts. He has an instinctive yearning for immortality. If this instinct is absent, the man is not normal. If this instinct is suppressed, the man's soul is injured. If he does not believe in immortality, he will believe in something far less credible. It may be continued existence in the complex-life of humanity; it may be absorption of individual personality in some Oversoul. The issue is sorrow of heart, bitterness of soul, pessimism of creed, "Pessimism is the column of black smoke proceeding from the heart in which the hope of immortality has been burned to ashes." If a man remains normal, he believes in immortality.

What is the inference? Tennyson has drawn it.

"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust, Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And Thou hast made him, Thou are just."

A just Creator will not place instinctive longings in His Creature's soul, only to betray them.

2.--The _affections_ of the soul are as true witnesses as the mind.

"The heart has reasons which the reason cannot understand." It is impossible for love at its purest and strongest to believe that death ends all. Love shrinks in pain from such a possibility. It protests against such a violation of the fellows.h.i.+p of heart with heart. The longing for reunion is no vain desire, awakened only to be mocked.

Not so can things be ordained in a world of order. The poets are the prophets of the heart; and all the great poets teach immortality.

The heart, which G.o.d made, will not perpetually deceive us. "If it were _not_ so, I would have told you." The instinct is true. The verdict of the spiritual seers of the race is favorable.

3.--Man is const.i.tuted for an ampler and more glorious life than can possibly fall to his lot in this world. Human powers are vast in comparison with human opportunities. Man is too great to be crowded within the narrow limits of seventy years. "So much to do, so little done" were among the last words of Cecil Rhodes. To develop the latent powers we possess, we have no adequate opportunity here. Deep in our souls is the quenchless desire for a fuller expression of our powers.

Could G.o.d build the human soul with all its capacities for the few years of this fleeting life on earth? Not if there is rationality at the heart of the universe.

4.--This world is an insoluble moral enigma, if there is no other world to explain it. Inequalities, injustices, abominations abound.

Circ.u.mstances and character are frequently at variance. Right has often been on the scaffold; wrong on the throne. The whole creation is groaning and travailling in pain. This world is intolerable, if there is no other. There must be a world in which wrong will be righted and justice done. Man's conscience whispers that the Judge of all the earth will do right; but how can He do right with all His creatures, unless He has more time? R. L. Stevenson well puts the argument: "We had needs invent Heaven, if it had not been revealed; there are some things that fall so bitterly ill on this side time." Unless this world has been created from sheer extravagance in the infliction of purposeless pain, there must be another to justify the present process of discipline, to heal the wounds of struggle, to comfort sorrow, to develop holiness. Somewhere, sometime, character and condition must correspond.

WHAT SCIENCE SAYS.

III. Does Science throw any light on our problem? There may not be any absolute scientific proof of a life beyond; but Science has no demonstrative evidence against it. At least it leaves the question open. Some go so far as to say that the results of modern scientific research, when fairly viewed, are favourable to the reception of the belief in immortality. A great modern physicist says: "The death of the body does not convey any a.s.surance of the soul's death. Every physical a.n.a.logy is against such a superficial notion in nature. We never see things beginning or coming to an end. Change is what we see, not origin or termination. Death is a change, indeed; a sort of emigration, a wrenching away from the old familiar scenes, a solemn, portentous fact. But it is not annihilation."

Dangers have seemed to threaten the doctrine of personal immortality from the standpoint of the physiologist and the evolutionist; but these dangers have not proved fatal. The physiologist has demonstrated the close connection between the brain and the soul. It was an easy, though improper, conclusion to a.s.sert that "the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile." But the psychologist speedily pointed out that the physiologist had gone beyond his province. He had proved only that thought is a function of the brain. Functions may be productive or transmissive. Light as a function of the electric circuit represents a _productive_ function; music as a function of the organ ill.u.s.trates a _transmissive_ function. The music is not _in_ the organ but in the organist. The organ transmits it. So, the brain is but the organ of the soul.

The evolutionist has made men think in immensities and has given prime importance to the idea of development. But a creature like man who is alleged to be the product of ages of development is surely not going to be extinguished at the tomb. Darwin himself wrote: "It is an intolerable thought that men and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress."

What candles, then, does Science light up for us?

1.--The conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter imply that the natural forces of the world are not annihilated, however much they may be transformed. May we not hope that the peculiar form of force known as personality, the highest force in the world, will not be destroyed by the experience of death?

2.--Unfit organisms perish; fit survive. Many beliefs which once formed part of the spiritual life of man have perished in the lapse of time, but no belief has shown greater vitality and power to resist the disintegrating influences of changing environment than belief in the soul's immortality.

If this belief has survived when quickened by the most awful imaginable strain of the Great War may we not conclude that it is one of those beliefs fit to live, one of those beliefs which the Creator desires to live and grow?

3.--Whenever we find a faculty, we discover in environment something to which this faculty corresponds. Progress is possible only by the constant adaptation of faculty to environment. This is true of the animal world. Is it not also true of man? In man are found faculties peculiar to himself. There is a longing for immortality, an expanding conviction of it. Does this internal condition correspond to reality?

Yes, else delusion falls on man alone. For, as a distinguished scientist (Sir J. Burdon Sanderson) has said, "there is no known instance of the development of a capacity without the existence of a corresponding satisfaction."

4.--If there is one increasing purpose through the ages, if there is development from lower to higher, from simple to complex, it is impossible to bound our vision with the grave. If personality has been attained, it is incredible that the gain of painful ages will be thrown away. "_Now_ are we the Sons of G.o.d, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." The "forward-looking" habit has not been acquired for naught.

So far is Science from giving demonstrative evidence against immortality that it actually presents some considerations in its favour. The reasonableness and the beneficence of creation protest against the extinction of men by death.

WHAT CHRIST SAYS.

The candle-lights of history, philosophy and science cast a c.u.mulative radiance upon the problem of life after death. They show that it is harder not to believe than to believe in immortality. But we need the light of the Sun. We need the demonstration of the power of an endless life. This we have in the Risen Christ. Christ brought into perfect light those truths about G.o.d and man, of which mankind had dim intuitions. By His Resurrection Christ abolished death (i.e., deprived it of force and power) and brought life and immortality to light (i.e., gives certainty, richness and power to the hope of immortal life).

1.--Christ has given _certainty_ to the instinctive longing for immortality. For the shadow, He has given substance; for dimness, light; for hope, a.s.surance. Although this hope has been virtually universal and inextinguishable, yet apart from Christ it has never become a certainty. Though historian, philosopher, poet, lover and saint have their own special arguments for the Hereafter, it is Christ Himself Who is the sure Light both of this world and of that which is to come. He has turned this hope into a full and glorious a.s.surance.

HOW HAS HE DONE THIS?

(_a_) _By His teaching_.--Two things about mankind Christ took for granted--sinfulness and immortality. He did not argue about this life beyond; He took it for granted. No part of His teaching is explicable on the supposition that all ends at the tomb. His basis for our immortality is not our instinct but the character of G.o.d. On the bosom of G.o.d's Fatherhood rests man's immortality. If G.o.d is our Father and loves us as His children, then we are His and He is ours _forever_.

Death cannot break this tie of life and love which binds us to Him; it cannot rob Him of His child. That G.o.d cannot be the G.o.d of the dead, but of the living, is axiomatic. His personal relations are real and are eternal.

The Christian faith is sufficient to give us certainty and comfort concerning our departed. We are a.s.sured that the blessed dead are in His safe keeping and through Him we are one with them in a union which will one day be consummated in everlasting reunion and communion. Our Christian watchwords are enough--"love in absence, trust in silence, faith in reunion."

(_b_) _By His Life_.--To the eye that can see, His life is the supreme argument for immortality. He lived such a life of fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d and so near to the frontier of eternity that the glory of it shone upon and from His face. The longing for a life higher than the life of time is answered in His life. Such a life could not be holden by death. It is eternal. It has the quality now and always of everlastingness.

(_c_) _By His Resurrection_.--He confirmed the truth of what He taught, and lived, by what He did. He rose again, transformed, not merely resuscitated. He irradiated the spiritual land. It is no longer "an undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns." The empty tomb, the c.u.mulative evidence of independent witnesses, the transformation in the lives of believers, the inst.i.tutions of the Christian Church, its continued existence, the personal experience of the power of a rising life in individual Christians throughout the ages to the present time--are the attestations of the truth of the Resurrection. The Christian Church is built and still rests on the fact, luminous and sovereign, that Christ rose from the grave in fulness and newness of power. To the life beyond, Christ's resurrection gives reality and humanity and a.s.surance. It confirmed men's subjective aspirations, it changed them into "things most surely believed." It makes every Christian certain of a higher life beyond the grave.

2. Christ has _enriched_ the whole conception of immortality. In the ancient, as in the savage world to-day, immortality or the continued duration of life, was a dreary prospect, a sense of desolation rather than a source of joy, an impoverishment of life, not an enrichment of it; its scene was a shadowy realm of silence, where there is no voice of praise nor human warmth and cheer. In some pa.s.sages in the Old Testament we find a loftier and clearer utterance. Through his faith in G.o.d, Job reached the idea that death may not be the final word. The righteous G.o.d would not abandon a righteous man. In revealed religion this faith in a life beyond the grave rested not on any conceptions of man's nature, but on the character of G.o.d, the Eternal Righteousness.

If he has called men into fellows.h.i.+p with Him, His faith is pledged to them. The Psalmists won their sense of eternal security through their present fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d. Along this line of religious experience of a living, holy and gracious G.o.d, the true hope of immortality entered the world. Just as union with G.o.d guaranteed to the Psalmist a life that would never end, so union with the Risen Saviour guarantees to the Christian triumph over death. Christ has filled this elementary thought of continued existence with moral content, because He has based it on a true conception of G.o.d. The Christian hope is not merely "immortality of the soul" but eternal life; and eternal life is not merely an infinite prolongation of existence in a future state of being; but is life at its highest and best, the life of fellows.h.i.+p, of vision, of growing likeness to G.o.d, of ample service. It is life in Christ. It is being with Christ, which is very far better than earthly life at its worthiest. It is not the mere translation, but the transformation of earthly values. This faith in immortality is moral and spiritual; it implies enriched and elevated being, as worthy and glorious as it is endless.

3.--Christ has so increased the _power_ of immortality, of the Christian Hope, as almost to make it for the first time effective as a source of courage, hope and consolation. He has turned the hope of immortality into the Power of His Resurrection. All hopes exercise some influence on those who hold them; yet apart from Christ the hope of immortality has been less effective than we might expect. By His Resurrection Christ has raised this yearning hope into a mighty present power brought to bear on humanity. The Christian hope of immortality, certain and rich in the possession of abundant life, gives breadth and outlook to all human efforts. It inspires duty. Brought to bear on our work, it makes effort worth while. If all we have striven to do and yet failed to do is to be perfected in the eternal morning, we can face our tasks with fresh courage. All social reconstructions that deny or neglect the Christian thought of an endless life fail here.

Their scope is too limited; their outlook too narrow. The Christian hope brings the power of endurance and victory to sorrowing hearts.

Death is not a leap in the dark, but the pa.s.sing into a larger, brighter room in the House of the One Father. In short, when this hope of immortality is tested by life, it is verified by the loftiness of the character it builds.

The rising life is the present demonstration of the risen life. All low, worldly, unspiritual living tends to doubt in it. If we would escape from doubt about the future, let us through the Living Christ make life larger now. If we would overcome weakening uncertainty, let us daily practice immortality. If we set our affections on things above, our rising life will a.s.sure us that we shall live forever. One of Gladstone's great exhortations was: "Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and n.o.ble calling; not a mean and grovelling thing, that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny." This belief is created and can be maintained only by viewing life in relation to G.o.d and immortality.

Every man should therefore put the question to himself: "If _I_ die, shall I live again?" "What kind of life am I living now? Is it life eternal, or life merely temporal? Is it a friends.h.i.+p with G.o.d which death can never extinguish?" Only One Life has ever won open victory over death. Only one kind of life ever can win it--that kind of life which was in Christ, which _is_ in Christ, which He shares with all whom faith makes one with Him.

"In the midst of life we are in death" such is the cry of bereaved and dying humanity. But in Christ we are able to say: "in the midst of death, we are in life." "G.o.d has given us eternal life, and that life is in His Son." Can death touch that life? Never.

T. H. BEST PRINTING CO. LIMITED, TORONTO