mortality to light." And henceforward death itself became a helper unto life by entering, along with pain and sickness, into the new trial as a teacher of virtue and holiness. And the grand result is carried forward and made to depend upon the final judgment of soul. The final award of death only follows the rejection of grace. For such as fail to recover themselves under this new trial of grace, death resumes its course, and is completed in the second death by the extinction of all that God put into life when he made man.

CHAPTER III.

IS LIFE INDEFEASIBLE?

THE view of Life and Death offered in the preceding chapters challenges the prevalent ideas of immortality, as also the usual understanding of many passages of Scripture. It is necessary, therefore, before we proceed farther, to consider the question of human immortality.

From as far back as we can trace the history of opinion, man has held in some form a belief in a future life. This faith cannot be said to have had the universal and intuitional character of a necessary belief, for it has been widely doubted and often denied. But it is a kind of primal judgment that springs up in man's first thinking, and, even with revelation aside, there is no reason to question that it represents the truth. But it is a great mistake not to distinguish between a future life for the race and its immortality. Whether we as Christians believe in the latter must depend upon our understanding of what Christ has said regarding it.

The belief in a future life was developed in the ancient pagan world, as, e. g., among the Greeks, into the doctrine of the inherent

immortality of all souls-that souls must live always by the very necessity of their being. This was a part of the pagan philosophy most current in the time of the early Christians. From those times it has come down to us. We have been taught to think of man as immortal, we speak of him as immortal, most suppose that the Bible calls him immortal, though it never does, but distinctly says that "God only hath immortality." Few devout minds stop to consider whether this belief demands any qualification or even examination. The antiquity of any belief weighs heavily upon the mind. It is well nigh impossible to approach the question of any needed modification of a belief supposed to be so well settled without a prejudgment against it. Yet we know very well that human life can scarcely show any truth unmingled with error, that error becomes hoary as well as truth, that the truth of one opinion has often been taken as evidence of the truth of other related opinions which were not true.

In interpreting the revelation made by Jesus Christ we encounter a philosophy which originated with minds not enlightened by revelation, and which was but an attempt at a reading of nature. This attempt was made by some of the greatest minds the world has ever seen, and so attained to much truth, so much that it has been hastily concluded that Christ himself postulates this philosophy in what he has to

say to men.

And thus pagan ideas have practically determined how revelation should be understood. This method forestals the question whether or no Jesus Christ brought any new light to mankind on this subject of the continuance of the future life. But in the presence of Christ, in the presence of Him who came from God, and himself "made everything that was made," who is Plato? Can we coolly imagine that the author of life, the appointer of all its conditions, when he came to speak of life, should have no corrections to make, no new elements to introduce in the doctrine of the brightest of human minds? Plato and Socrates themselves had no such pride in their work as to doubt this. They hoped for some word to be sent from the Deity to make known what they were merely seeking after. They looked upon "their opinions as but the dawn of a day of light which they hoped would yet arise upon the world." This is expressed in the Phædo (78 and 85) where Socrates bids his hearers to search through all Héllas and all the races of the barbarians for some one to take his place, as one to charm away the fear of death by a true philosophy; and if they are unable to live by the aid of a divine word (logos), then to take the best of human words. When that DIVINE WORD came, philosophy should have been silent and waited for his voice to be clearly heard.

Yet we are by no means aiming to bring into

contempt the achievements of ancient philosophy regarding man's spiritual life. It spake the noblest, truest words that minds could speak unaided by revelation. Indeed it is not necessary to believe that they had no divine aid.

In the generic, in the ideal, they reached the truth. Man is immortal. Immortality is man's normal and perfect destiny. Everything is properly characterized by what it is at its best. The fruit of a tree is described from its perfected specimens. No one stops to qualify this by reference to its windfalls. It is not necessary in common speech or thought to take aught from our crown of glory because of those who become abortive and are lost to the world and themselves.

There is good reason, however, for denying the truth of that philosophic dictum which makes man universally and necessarily immortal. And in view of the light that Jesus Christ was able to shed on all matters of the future life, it was to be expected, as I have said, that he would correct as well as add to the best of human opinions.

A comparison of Hebrew opinion with that of other nations of their time gives additional occasion to doubt that the pagan peoples had arrived at the whole truth in this matter. How happened it that God's chosen people had less light, if genuine and sufficient light it was, on this subject than other peoples? It was the