THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE WORLD IN REGARD TO NATURE AND MAN PART 5

III. Man as made in the image of God constituted for immortality.

III. From the distinction thus shown to exist between the spiritual and the material parts of man's nature, there results the possibility of the soul surviving death, and the foundation is laid for the doctrine of Immortality. The consideration of the Biblical aspect of this subject will more properly be reserved for next Lecture, where I treat of the connection of sin and death. Here I will only ask how far nature and reason have a voice to utter on these two questions: Is man constituted for immortality? And is there a presumption that the soul will survive death? These questions, it ought to be observed, are not identical. The proposition that man, as a being made in God's image, is naturally destined for immortality, is not immediately convertible with the other, that the soul will survive death; for it is no part of the Biblical view, as we shall see afterwards, that death is a natural condition of man. Now, however, that death has supervened, the question arises, Does the soul still survive? To this question also, as I hope to show, both Old and New Testaments give an affirmative answer; but the complete Scripture doctrine of immortality means a great deal more than this.

It is a significant circumstance that the modern unbelieving view of the world has no hope to give us of a life beyond the grave. With the obscuration of the idea of God, and the loss of the sense of the spiritual, there has gone also faith in immortality.1 Materialism, of course, is bound to deny a future life. The theories of Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer hold out just as little hope of it,2 though Mr. Fiske, developing a Theism out of the principles of Mr. Spencer, has developed also a doctrine of immortality, another evidence of the connection of these two belief's.3 The hope proposed to us in lieu of individual immortality is that of "corporate immortality," the privilege of joining the "choir invisible" of those who have laboured in the service of humanity, though they live now only in the grateful memory of posterity.4 Pantheism, likewise, forbids the thought of personal immortality, exalting instead the blessedness of absorption in the Infinite.1 We cannot, however, part with the hope of immortality without infinitely lowering the whole pulse and worth even of present existence.2

The only scientific plea on which the possibility of immortality can be denied to us is based on the fact that mind in this life is so intimately bound up with physiological conditions. Once grant, however, that the thinking principle in man is distinct from the brain which it uses as its instrument, and no reason can be shown, as Bishop Butler demonstrated long, ago, why it should not survive the shock of the dissolution we call death. Death need not even be the suspension of its powers. "Suppose," says Cicero, "a person to have been educated from his infancy in a chamber where he enjoyed no opportunity of seeing external objects but through a small chink in the window shutter, would he not be apt to consider this chink as essential to his vision? and would it not be difficult to persuade him that his prospects would be enlarged by demolishing the walls of his prison?"3 It may turn out, as Butler says, that existing and bodily conditions are rather restraints on mind than laws of its essential nature.4 Even so rigid a critic of evidence as the late J. S. Mill admits that this argument against immortality from the present dependence of thought and feeling on some action of the bodily organism, is invalid. "'there is, therefore," he says, "in science, no evidence against the immortality of the soul, but that negative evidence which consists in the absence of evidence in its favour. And even the negative evidence is not so strong as negative evidence often is."5 It may, at the same time, be questioned, as we have seen, whether there are not

In minds made better by their presence. . . .

This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us to strive to follow"

GEORGE ELIOT, Jubal, and other Poems, pp. 301-303, 301-303.

limits to the extent to which science has demonstrated the dependence of the higher mental operations on cerebal changes.1 Science, therefore, cannot negative the idea of immortality, but has reason no positive utterance to give on this great and solemn question of future existence? It is not men of science only, but some believers in Revelation also, who show a disposition to minimise the indications and corroborations which nature affords of man's immortal destiny. Mr. Edward White does this in support of his theory of conditional immortality;2 but many others also have held the opinion that this is a question on which reason has little or nothing to say, and which must be determined solely by the light of Revelation. This position seems to me a hazardous one for a believer in Revelation to take up. Just as in speaking of Theism I ventured to say that, if God exists, it is inconceivable that nature should afford no evidence of His existence;3 so I would say here that if human immortality be a truth, it is impossible that it should be only, or merely, a truth of Revelation. If, as he came from his Creator's hand, it was man's destiny to be immortal, his fitness and capacity for that destiny must reveal itself in the very make and constitution of his being, in the powers and capabilities that belong to him. If it could really be shown that in man's nature, as we find it, no trace of anything exists pointing to a higher sphere of existence than earth affords, no powers or capabilities for which this earthly scene did not offer full employment or satisfaction, this alone, without any other argument, would be a cogent disproof of immortality. For the same reason, immortality cannot be viewed, as in Mr. White's theory, as a mere external addition to a nature regarded as having originally no capacity or destination for it, a donum superadditum. It is impossible that a being should be capable of receiving the gift of immortality, who yet in the make and constitution of his nature gives no evidence that he was destined for immortality. Otherwise immortality loses all moral significance, and sinks to the level of a mere prolongation of existence, just as the life of the brute might be prolonged. Such evidence, if it exists, may not be sufficient to demonstrate man's immortality, but it will show that the make and constitution of his nature points in that direction, that immortality is the natural solution of the enigmas of his being, that without immortality he would be a riddle and contradiction to himself and an anomaly in the world which be inhabits. And are there pot such proofs?

1. Our minds are arrested here, first, by the fact that nearly every tribe and people on the face of the earth, savage and civilised, has held in some form this belief in a future state of existence. This suggests that the belief is one which accords with the facts of human nature, and to which the mind is naturally led in its inquiries. Assume the doctrine to be false, there is still this fact to be accounted for--that nearly all tribes and families of mankind have gone on dreaming this strange dream of a life beyond the grave.1 Mr. Spencer, of course, has a way of explaining this belief which would rob it of all its worth as evidence. The hypothesis is a very simple one. Belief in a future state, according to it, is simply a relic of superstition. It had its origin in the fancies of the savage, who, from the wanderings of his mind in sleep, and supposed appearances of the dead, aided by such facts as the reflection of his image on the water and the appearance of his shadow, imagined the existence of a soul, or double, separable from the body, and capable of surviving death.2 Were I discussing this theory at length, I would like to put in a word for Mr. Spencer's savage. I would like to ask, first, Is Mr. Spencer so sure that this is the whole explanation of that singularly persistent instinct which leads even savage minds to cling so tenaciously to the idea of a future life? May it not be, though a philosopher may not care to take account of them,

"That even in savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings,"
For the good they comprehend not,"

and that, sometimes at least,

"the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness,
And are lifted up and strengthened!" 3

And I would like, secondly, to ask, Is the savage, after all, so illogical as Mr. Spencer would make him out to be? Allow that he has crude notions of apparitions and dreams, this is not the essential point. The essential point is that, from the activity of his mind in thinking and dreaming, he infers the working of a power within him distinct from his body. Is he so far wrong in this? I do not think we do justice always to the workings of the savage mind.1 The savage knows, to begin with, that there is a something within him which thinks, feels, acts, and remembers. He does not need to wait on dreams to give him that knowledge.2 The step is natural to distinguish this thinking something from his hands and head and body, which remain after its departure.3 Going further, he peoples nature with spiritual agents after the type of the mind he finds within himself. Here, therefore, we have the clear yet not reasoned out distinction between body and spirit, and this, in connection with other hopes, instincts, and aspirations, readily gives birth to ideas of future continued existence. But, however it may be with the savage, how absurd it is for Mr. Spencer to assume that the mature and thinking portion of mankind have no better foundation for their belief than is implied in these vulgar superstitions which he names! You sit at the feet of a Plato, and see his keen intellect applied to this subject; you listen to the eloquence of a Cicero discoursing on it;4 you are lifted up by the grand strains of the poets of immortality. You really thought that it was proof of the greater mental stature and calibre of these men that they speculated on such themes at all, and expressed themselves so nobly in regard to them. But it turns out you are mistaken. You and they have miserably deceived yourselves; and what seemed to you rational and ennobling belief is but the survival of superstitions, born of the dreams and ghost fancies of the untutored savage!

2. But let us leave the savage, and look at this subject in the light of the higher considerations which have in all ages appealed with special force to the minds of rational men. I pass by here the metaphysical arguments, which at most are better fitted to remove bars to the acceptance of the doctrine than to furnish positive proofs of it. The real proofs are those which, as already said, show that the make and constitution of man's nature are not explicable on the hypothesis that he is destined only for a few short years of life on earth, but are such as point to a nobler and enduring state of existence. It is an interesting circumstance that Mr. J. S. Mill, who, in his treatment of this question, took evident delight in reducing the logical evidence to its minimum, yet practically brings all those arguments which he had thrust out by the door of the head back by the door of the heart, and uses them to found the duty of cherishing this hope of a future life.1 What are these indications which point to a fitness for, and are a prophecy of, immortality in man?

(1) There is the fact that the scale of man's nature is too large for his present scene of existence. I have already spoken of that shadow of infinitude in man which manifests itself in all his thoughts, his imaginations, his desires, etc. Look, first, at his rational constitution. In the ascent of the mountain of knowledge, is man ever satisfied? Does not every new height he reaches but reveal a higher height? Does not every new attainment but whet his appetite to attain more? Is any thirst more insatiable than the thirst for knowledge? Is it not the last confession of ripened wisdom that man as yet knows nothing as he would wish to know? Or look at the ideas which man's mind is capable of containing. His mind spans the physical universe, and ever as the telescope expands the horizon of knowledge, it reaches out in desire for a further flight. But there are greater ideas than even those of worlds and systems. His mind can take in the thought of God, of eternity, of infinity. Is this like the endowment. of a creature destined only for threescore years and ten? The same illimitableness attaches to imagination. "The use of this feigned history," says Lord Bacon, speaking of poetry, "is to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man on those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety than can be found in the nature of things."1 Finally, there is desire. Give a man all of the world he asks for, and he is yet unsatisfied.

"I cannot chain my soul; it will not rest
In its clay prison, this most narrow sphere.
It has strange powers, and feelings, and desires
Which I cannot account for nor explain,
But which I stifle not, being hound to trust
All feelings equally, to hear all sides.
Yet I cannot indulge them, and they live,
Referring to some state of life unknown."2

This argument is not met by saying, as Mill does, that there are many things we desire which we never get. This may be true, but the point is that even if we did get all the satisfaction which the earth could give us, our desires would still go beyond that earthly bound.3

"And thus I know the earth is not my sphere,
For I cannot so narrow be, but that
I still exceed it."4

The argument is further strengthened by comparing man with the other creatures that tenant the earth. Modern science justly lays stress on the constant relation subsisting between creatures and their environments. Throughout nature you find the most careful adjustment of faculty to environment. If there is a fin, there is water; if there is an eye, there is light; if there is a wing, there is air to cleave, etc. But here is a creature whose powers, whose capabilities, whose desires, stretch far beyond the terrestrial scene that would contain him! Must we not put him in a different category?

(2) The same inference which follows from the scale of man's endowments results if we consider life from the point of view of moral discipline. Everything which strengthens our view of the world as a scene of moral government, everything which leads us to put a high value on character, and to believe that the Creator's main end in His dealings with man is to purify and develop character, strengthens also our belief in immortality. The only way we can conceive of the relation of nature to man, so as to put a rational meaning into it, is, as Kant has shown, to represent it to ourselves as a means to the end of his culture and morality.1 Can we believe, then, that God will spend a lifetime in perfecting a character, developing and purifying it, as great souls always are developed, by sharp trial and discipline, till its very best has been evoked, only in the end to dash it again into nothingness? What would we think of an earthly artist who dealt thus with his works, spending a lifetime, e.g., on a block of marble, evolving from it a statue of faultless pro portions and classic grace, only in the end, just when his chisel was putting his last finishing touches on it, to seize his mallet and dash it again to pieces. It would stumble our faith in God--in the "Divine reasonableness"2--to believe that such could be His action.

(3) A third consideration which points in the same direction is that frequently insisted on--the manifest incompleteness of the present scene of things, both as respects human character and work, and as respects the Divine administration. Here, again, everything that strengthens our faith in & moral government of the world, that impresses us with the infinite worth of human personality, that intensifies our sense of justice and injustice, forces on us the conviction that the present life, with its abounding anomalies, imperfections, and iniquities, is not God's last word to us;1 that there is another chapter to our existence than that which closes on earth. Here comes in the consideration which Kant urges of the need of prolonged existence to complete the fulfilment of our moral destiny;2 the sense of accountability which we all carry with us, instinctively anticipating a day of final reckoning; the feeling of an unredressed balance of wrong in the arrangements of life and society; above all, the sense of incompleteness which so often oppresses us when we see the wise and good cut down in the midst of their labours, and their life-work left unfinished. These are the "enigmas of life" for which it is difficult to see how any solution is provided if there is not a future state in which life's mysteries shall be made clear, its unredressed wrongs rectified, the righteousness of the good vindicated, and a completion granted to noble lives, broken off prematurely here. Our faith in God leads us again to trust Him, that "He that hath begun a good work"3 in us will not leave it unfinished.

(4) Finally, there is the fact which all history verifies, that only under the influence of this hope do the human faculties, even here, find their largest scope and play. This was the consideration which, more than any other, weighed with the late J. S. Mill, in inclining him to admit the hope of immortality. "The beneficial influence of such a hope," he says, in words well worth quoting, "is far from trifling. It makes life and human nature a far greater thing to the feelings, and gives greater strength as well as greater solemnity to all the sentiments which are awakened in us by our fellow-creatures, and by mankind at large.1 It allays the sense of that irony of nature, which is so painfully felt when we see the exertions and sacrifices of a life culminating in the formation of a wise and noble mind, only to disappear from the world when the time has just arrived at which the world seems about to begin reaping the benefit of it. . . . But the benefit consists less in the presence of any specific hope than in the enlargement of the general scale of the feelings; the loftier aspirations being no longer kept down by a sense of the insignificance of human life--by the disastrous feeling of 'not worth while.'"2 The evolutionist, it seems to me, should, beyond all others, respect these voices of the soul, this natural and unforced testimony of our nature to a life beyond, which does not disappear (as it would do were Mr. Spencer's hypothesis correct), but only grows clearer and more solemn, as the history of humanity advances.

I think, then, we may conclude that reason does create a presumption, and that a very strong one, in favour of a future life. The considerations we have urged prove the possibility of immortality, and show that the soul of man is naturally fitted for immortality. We need not claim that they do more, though they have proved sufficient to inspire many of the noblest minds of our race, even apart from the gospel, with a very steady persuasion that there is a life hereafter. They cannot give absolute certainty. They may not be able, apart from the light of Revelation, to lift the mind wholly above the suspicion that the law of waste and destruction which prevails here against the body may somewhere else, and finally, prevail against the soul. But, so far as they go, they must be accepted as a powerful corroboration and confirmation, from the side of nature, of the Christian view.

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