. J I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign https://archive.org/details/origindestinyofm00thom_0 -‘‘ylar.flubi Aurvr&W ruA-jid THE Origin and Destiny of Man, BY H. W. THOMAS, D. D. PHONOGRAPHIC REPORTS OF A SERIES OF SUNDAY EVENING SERMONS. AURORA, ILL. : Pieroe Burton & Co. 1 877 . Copyright, 1877, By PIEECE BUETON & CO, * V 25a, m T2>(^ justified by the well-known fact that man assimilates to that which he worships. When he bows down before images of wood or stone, or before any beast, he degrades himself to the level of that which he adores. It is only as the Supreme Being is supreme in human thought that the best conditions for human advancement are possible. I would like, as a mat¬ ter of curiosity, to see what, if such a state of facts were possible, would be the effect of the enlightened ideas we have of the extent of the universe, on the religion of the ancient Greeks or Romans. How would they represent a being capa¬ ble of making and upholding this vast universe ? It would be interesting to see some one try to make an idol in our time. It would be impossible, with any such notion of the Deity as we 68 The Origin and Destiny of Man. entertain. And God says, Do not attempt it; you cannot do it. The government of God then says : “ Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." What is the reason of this ? This Supreme Being must be forever hallowed in human thought. He must dwell in the human mind as the source and fountain of justice, goodness and love. And just as the making of an image to represent the Deity degrades the high ideal of the Divine One, so profaning His name degrades the thought of his holiness. It is spoiling the beauti¬ ful idea of divinity when you profane that name. Supreme love and reverence must have fled from the heart before yon can do it. “ Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," is the fourth commandment in the decalogue. You need the Sabbath as a day of physical rest, when man will turn from things that we call secular, and have a day of devotion ; when he shall forego his money-getting and worldly scheming, and direct his thoughts to the contemplation of sacred things. Our Saviour, taking up these commandments, says they mean supreme love to God. If we love that Supreme Being, we shall want no other ; we shall set up no false idols ; we shall not profane His name nor His holy day. Now the government of God proceeds and takes up the other table of laws in reference to man’s relations with his fellow-beings. “ Honor thy father and thy mother , that thy days may be long upon the land ” where you shall dwell. God instituted the family relation in the garden of Eden, and it is only as reverence and honor are paid by the child to the earthly father and mother that the stepping stone is reached The Government of God. 69 by which its devotion is carried up to the Supreme. The gathered wisdom of the world cannot put down a better foun¬ dation-stone for human life and character than is contained in this commandment. Where children grow up to love and respect their parents, you may look for a good outcome. The child that can turn away from the love of a mother, the child that can scorn the teachings of a father—that child travels to a dark after-life. “ Thou shalt not hear false witness .” What is the reason of this ? Simply that there must be truth among men. Truth is the basis of confidence, and confidence is essential to the very structure of society. The entire social order would fall to pieces if you take away confidence. And that good may be enforced, this law of truth was established. God has builded every thing on that law, and it is a strange fact that there is nothing in the vast realm of nature that lies, but man. Every crystal that forms is true to the law of its nature. Every plant, every tree, every iron bolt, may be counted on with perfect confidence so far as the law that governs it is known. We trust our lives in the structure of this building We know that the massive stones are true ; we know that the arches are true ; we measure the strength of the wood and the iron, and we know that they will not fail us. We launch a vessel, because we know that the waters will float her, and the winds will waft her to her destination. God comes to man and says, Be true. The Saviour of the world impressed upon us this same law when he said, “Let your nay be nay, and your yea yea.” When you say no, mean no ; and when you say yes, mean yes. 70 The Origin and iJestiny of Man. The next commandment is : “ Thou slialt not commit adul¬ tery." Preserve the sanctity of home, the purity of the marriage vow. Do. not adulterate the very source of life. Defile not the fountain of being. The best wisdom of man¬ kind stands by this law, and it has received the sanction of civilized society in all ages. God announces another law, and says : “ Thou shalt not steal." Do not take that which belongs to another. Don’t steal by misrepresenting the value of your property in a bar¬ gain. Do not steal another man’s property by running it down. Do not rob another man of his reputation and char¬ acter by circulating falsehoods about him. Let there be simple, even-handed justice among men as to property and reputation. The government of God announces another law to protect the sanctity of life— “ Thou shalt not kill." It is not in your power to give life, and you shall not take it. The enjoyment of liberty and happiness by the individual is sacred. Covering another phase of human experience, we have the command : “ Thou shalt not covet." Do not desire that which is not in your possession, except to procure it in a law¬ ful way. Look not with covetous eye upon that which is another’s. Get what you want honorably. Dig it out of the earth, seek for it in the sea, acquire it by industry—but do not give yourself up to selfish covetousness. I have gone over more at length than I at first intended some of the principles of the government of God. Do they not commend themselves to your calmest reason, your clearest judgment ? It is a grand thought that a world of free beings, The Government of God. 71 with habits of sinning established, living under the govern¬ ment and power of a blessed God, should have given it a system of laws that civilized man has not been able to improve upon in the ages that have elapsed since they were first pro¬ claimed. And the Saviour says it is all fulfilled in just this : “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.” There is not a code of laws, from the Roman or Justinian down to this day, but what is shaped largely by that grand old law-giver, Moses. And there is not a moral philosophy that can transcend in beauty and sublimity the Saviour’s analysis of supreme love to God and equal love to man. I like to stand in the presence of the subject in this way, for it stands by me in the moment of trial. It gives me strength to feel that the laws of God are a power for good, and that they are founded in justice and right. Now it would seem that the government of God would want some method of announcing these laws—some practical system of educating the people up to them. When the He¬ brew people had wandered away from their own land, when they had been in Egypt longer than this country has been discovered, had been idolaters and nearly lost in sin and cor¬ ruption, God came to them through Moses, and gave them not only law and commandment, but a system of worship, by which they might be helped to see Go 1 as a Spiritual Being, a Supreme Being. He gave them the different rules in the old ritual worship. It was a system of religious philosophy taught by object lessons. He put them upon a system of worship and sacrifice, put them under the guidance of teachers 72 The Origin and Destiny of Man. and leaders and prophets, and held them separate from sur¬ rounding nations. What for ? That He might heal them from their idolatry. The government of God, in its practical carrying out, dealt with that nation of the Hebrews through centuries and thousands of years, till finally the lesson was so drilled and burned into their character that through all the ages that have passed the Jews have never been idolaters. They have become exiles from their own land ; they have wept by every river, and have traversed every plain and crossed every sea ; but they have kept the faith and fulfilled the grand mission proclaimed to them by Moses amid the thunders of Mount Sinai. There should be something further, it would seem. Begin¬ ning away back, there might be a dispensation of power, in which God would come forth as a world-builder. Then there would come a dispensation of love, where God would come out and reveal His love to man in His Son Jesus Christ, and then as a Holy Spirit. But should there not be something more than this—more than law, more than education—some¬ thing reaching the hearts of men and winning them back to loyalty to God ? Yes, and that man might have the thought of the Supreme One, not as an abstraction, not as a spirit in the universe, but that he might have the thought of God’s coming to him in human conditions, looking at him through human eyes, God was made manifest in the flesh. I pause before this great and glorious truth—that the Infinite and Everlasting Father, that He might know human suffering and want, came down to our w r orld ; that He might find us, found a manger ; that He might know tempted man, went up into The Government of God. 73 the mountain; that He might know poverty, found hunger and thirst; that He might know parental affection, took little children to His arms and blessed them ; that He might know our pain, He sat down by sick beds and wept by human graves. God became manifest in the flesh—becoming personal to man—but so coming to man in tenderness and love as to win him back. Man can look upon the Saviour, and thus look upon God. He is our propitiation. Take this word propi¬ tiation. What a deep meaning it has ! Suppose that you and I are friends, and I do you an injury. It is very easy for you to say, “ I forgive you.” But you want to save me, get me back where you can love me, and I can love you. In order to do this, you must suffer, you must sacrifice. Let your child fall away into sin. It is a very easy thing to forgive that child. But to bring it back to loyalty and love, to bring your¬ self back so that you can love it as if it never had sinned— this can only be done through suffering. Here we see the truth that is hid away in vicariousnoss—that God had to suf¬ fer. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. To a sinning world He said : “I will suffer, if need be. I will go down into your world, and let you turn me away from the door, while you are warmly housed. I will sleep out upon the great earth, while you rejoice in plenty. You shall put a crown of thorns upon my head, and, if need be, you may nail these hands to the cross, and pierce my side with the cruel spear, and I will pray for you all the time you are do¬ ing it! ” The words that most completely express the Divine Being 74 The Origin and Destiny of Man. are the words that God is Love. In God love is infinite, and such infinite love could not rest with less than infinite sacri¬ fice. Nothing less than Calvary could tell the yearning love of God seeking to reconcile us, to bring us back to peace and loyalty and life. Let me ask you to think for a moment on this blessed announcement: “ The government shall be on His shoulder ; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Coun¬ sellor, The mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace;” that one being chosen to represent the government of God. “ The government shall be on His shoulder.” And there let it rest forever ; for He stands forever for right, for¬ ever for truth, for justice, for God, for humanity. God has sent His Son into this world to become a king of kings among men, and we have Him to rule over us. We will be under the banner of this love and this right. Will we go by our hands and our hearts to the work of this King ? Yes, my friends, His kingdom shall be forever, and its peace shall have no end. It is lifted up in its love and purity, and human hearts are coming to it. It was said, in our Saviour’s day, that He had no place to lay His head ; but now the world is full of temples for His worship, and the press is full of activity in sending forth His word to the people in every corner of the earth ; and we, as ambassadors, beseech you to become reconciled to God. I do not ask you to join this church or that, to believe this creed or that; I stand here to win souls to Christ; I stand for the great principles of God on earth. I beseech you in Christ’s name to come into His kingdom — live for Him, and reign forever. VI. SALVATION. Marvel not that I said unto ye, Ye must be born again.— John, in, 7. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh : that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after th* Spirit.— Romans, vui, 1-4. T HE traveler has often to journey over long roads sim¬ ply that he may reach certain points, and the student has often to pursue long studies simply as a means of being able to reach other studies beyond. And so in the pursuit of truth, we must travel over its whole road as far as we can, and it requires no little thinking power to deal with many of its questions, especially as one part stands related to another. So we have come over what may seem a long way in these discourses, and have reached at length what I might call the heart of the subject. We have come to the point where you will see the relations of one part of theological truth to another. We mentioned in one of our discourses the fact of the Tripartite nature of man. We have bodies; these 76 The Origin and Destiny of Man . bodies are built out of the earth, and have a life much like that of the lower forms of existence about us. We have men¬ tioned the fact also that we have minds; that these minds stand related to truth; and that there is a world of truth outside the mind, answering to the laws of truth as laid or imbedded in the mind. We have mentioned the fact, also, that we have about us, as another part of our being, that which is denominated the spiritual or Godward side of our nature; that which some writers have called the God- consciousness ; that which puts us in relations to the divine, brings before us the realm of conscience, and enables us to distinguish good from evil. I want to insist upon the accu¬ racy of this doctrine from the Biblical standpoint, for it is one not usually found in our works of philosophy. Take the various accounts of creation. We have the creation of the body. This is distinctly marked. Then we have the other distinct fact of the breathing of the divine nature into man— the imparting of something that comes from God. And we have the fact, too, of the mental activities of man, made man¬ ifest in his power to name and classify the things brought before him. The Apostle Paul insists upon this Tripartite nature of man. He speaks distinctly of the same as body, soul and spirit. I mention this fact thus particularly, because it stands related not only to what I have said, but to what will come after. I briefly alluded, also, in the discourse on Evil, to the con¬ dition of man at his creation — that is, the Adamic man, the spiritual man. In the light of the holy Scriptures, we stand in the presence of the fact that man was not only created in Salvation. 77 the image of God, but stood innocent before him. And we mentioned the additional fact that he was put upon trial for the attainment of active holiness, personal virtue; for it was not in the nature of things for even God to give to man an actively holy nature. He could give to man a nature that was pure, a nature that was potentially good; but the making of that nature actively good must be the work of the individual. It would not be personal righteousness, it would not be per¬ sonal virtue, if it were something wrought out by another, or conferred upon us. And we have alluded to the fact that our first parents, in the trial, failed. The appetites and the pas¬ sions, the senses lodged in the body, proved too strong for that which was spiritual. The appetites went up and the spirit went down, and our first parents failed to establish themselves in active holiness. They failed to work out per¬ sonal virtue, and, failing in this, they dropped down to the plane of animal life, and the spirit became subordinate to the animal. This again establishes the relation of the present condition of the human family. There is in the nature of the case such a unity between the original family, or first pair, and their descendants, that we cannot do otherwise than in¬ herit their nature. If we possessed the simple fact that the first pair had fallen, our knowledge of the laws of descent would enable us to predict that their race would be a fallen race. Look at this in the light of what may be called a philo¬ sophical statement, and you will see how profound a truth is this doctrine of human depravity. Take our lives as we appear here to-night. These lives were derived from our parents, and their lives from their parents, and our grand- 78 The Origin and Destiny of Man. parents’ lives were derived from their parents, and so on; so that to-night we have within us the life of hundreds and thousands of years ago. There is flowing through your veins and through mine the blood of a thousand years ago, the blood of five thousand years ago. There has been no time in the course of these centuries when the stream of life has dropped down. It has flowed steadily and continuously through these earthen vessels. This grand law of inheritance is a fact of great possible good — a liability to possible mis¬ fortune. There is not only a transmission of actual nature, but there is a transmission of habits and principles. Take God’s policy in educating the Jewish race, and see how the great doctrine of the unity of God was wrought into that fam¬ ily, and how it has stood there through all the ages. We stand then in the presence of two great facts: that we are related to the fortunes of the past, and that in our natures we have a tliree-fokl being. Let us take up life, as it appears in the light of these two facts, and examine it. Childhood has its body-life ; the body grows. It has mind-life. As mind-life, it develops till it reaches spirit-life, and there it stands related to God and goodness. But being in the line of those who have fallen through the appetites and passions, we have this strange fact occurring in the childhood of our race : In the first few years the sense of truth and right seems, if anything, stronger than the body or the mind. But watch the life of any child that is a child,—it may not be the case with the ideal fairies of the Sunday school books, who never live to be over eight or ten years old,— but take a child made of ordinary flesh and Salvation. 79 blood, and you don’t go very far before the body-life begins to get stronger than the soul-life and to assert a mastery over the conscience. The problem is to get the heart on the right side. It is right enough to begin with, so far as purity and innocence are concerned; but some how it comes to pass with every one of us that we are not only fallen beings, but we fall ourselves. We come out of the innocence of infancy. The appetites and senses get the mastery over the spirit, and man, who should be a spiritual being, and walk with this fair crown upon his brow, finds himself down here in bondage. The divine administration, dealing with beings that in the nature of the case must be free, and that have this three-fold nature about them, has also to deal with fallen beings. The government of God comes to us, and taking hold of these facts, seeks man’s recovery, seeks the prevention of evil and the promotion of good. How does it proceed ? It seeks to give man, as it were, a period of irresponsible life, a trial, where he stands under the shadow and help of others. In other words, it provides that we come into this world in the family relation, under the sanctity of home, under the guar¬ dianship of tenderest love; and that we have a number of years when we are not responsible, but under the care of those who are made, in a sense, responsible for us. I do not know whether you clearly see this point, but it seems to me there is in it something worthy of great attention — that our race should have the beginning of its perilous course in child¬ hood; that we have a kind of irresponsible period during which we are not held accountable, but are put under instruc¬ tion and guidance — a period in which we are gradually 80 The Origin and Destiny of Man. taught experience in the affairs of life, and exercised on the questions of truth and right that may arise. And that the divine administration may help parents, there is provided the beautiful and sacred ordinance of baptism for children — the consecration of our children to God. Not that I suppose this baptism works any change upon our children ; not that I sup¬ pose the old right of circumcision was a preventive against evil. But it is one of those things in which the parents act for the child; bringing the child to God and acting in its place; putting the child over on the side of God, and starting it on the line of a divine education. Under this thought of baptism the child looks for guidance to our experience as parents, and for protection against the sins and temptations about us. It seems to me that the least we can do for our children is to endeavor in some way to bring them to God, to act for them, to stand in their stead; and not, as some say, wait and let the child grow up, and let it decide for itself whether it wants to be religious or not. We do not wait and let children choose whether they will be ignorant or not. Our first thought is to see that the mind is carefully instructed. Why should not the heart be also ? So it is enjoined upon us that in helping our race we take our children, and put them over on the Lord’s side. Now, what does the divine administration do further ? Ad¬ mitting the fact that all that may be done for children is done, still there is the fallen nature about us. The divine adminis¬ tration comes to us with the law and commandments. I elab¬ orated these at some length last Sunday night. They are the rule of life, telling us what we should not do and what we Salvation. 81 should do. What does it seek to do by this ? As we are fallen beings, the law and commandments are placed by the side of our lives, so that we may see wherein we have failed to do right. There must be something which is straight before you can detect that which varies from a straight line. So the commandments of God are put alongside of our lives as a rule, that we may know wherein we have failed to live up to that rule. They require us to do certain things. If we have not done these things, we are convicted of sin. They forbid us doing certain other things. If we have transgressed these commandments, the commandments convict us of sin. God not only seeks to enable us to distinguish the right from the wrong—he wants to reach our hearts, and bring us back from our wandering, sinning and fallen state, back to the law of right, back to the condition of purity. And here we reach the strength of the text from the book of Romans : “For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Man needs something more than simply the law of right. He wants purity to be in sympathy with that law. The first thing that God seeks to do with you and me, as we approach matu¬ rity, is to awaken in us a sense of our sin and our need, and to lead us to that state of mind we call repentance—an old doctrine, founded in great truth and fact. What is it ? Re¬ pentance means a knowledge of sin—a conviction of the fact that we have done wrong, or failed to do right. This is the first step in repentance. A man comes to think, and sees the divine law, and finds that his life is not conformed to it, and awakens to the consciousness that before the law he is con- 6 82 The Origin and Destiny of Man. victed as a sinner. But the divine administration wants to go deeper than the conviction of the mind that life has not conformed to the rule of law. There must not only be con¬ viction of wrong, but real sorrow for the wrong. It is not enough that man should simply admit that his life has not been perfect. It is a serious thing to do wrong. It is not only a transgression of the statute—it is a violation of the ever¬ lasting law of principle and right; and the man who, in the exercise of his voluntary powers, has committed the act, has disturbed the moral order, broken its harmony, and intro¬ duced discord into his own nature. God wants to work in his creatures sorrow for having done wrong ; and to bring forth this result, to work out genuine repentance in human hearts, He has come to us along that great law of vicarious¬ ness—that law of love. As a knowledge of sin comes from the law, sorrow for sin comes from the cross. It is when infi¬ nite love comes down to a manger, seeks out a Gethsemane and a Calvary ; it is when infinite love sends its own Son into the world to honor and glorify the law of right, and save an erring and wandering race, that the hearts of men begin to be touched. God would say to us through Christ: “I love and honor this everlasting principle of right ; I love the divine in your wandering and sinning natures, and by my suffering, by my life of anguish, I want to work in your hearts a state of sorrow that you have done wrong.” God wants to touch character from within, to work a mental and spiritual conversion from sin, a turning away from it because it is wrong. And this is the next stage in a genuine repentance. It for- Salvation. 83 sakes sin. It stops not short of ceasing to sin. It is not simply a struggle with sin. Many a man regrets that he is fallen in his appetites and passions, that he is doing wrong; but the love of evil is too strong to be overcome, and he clings to it. Many a man is sorry for the widow and the orphan he has wronged and defrauded, but his sorrow is not deep enough to make him restore his wrongful gains, or to keep him from cheating or robbing in the future. Repent¬ ance has not done its work till it has brought a change in character, till the soul turns away from sin. I like the repent¬ ance of that square old republican, Zaccheus, who climbed a tree that he might see his Lord as he passed by. The sight of Heaven’s own Son walking earth’s dusty way so impressed him, the divine purity so loomed up before him in its beauty, that he said: “ Lord, if I have wronged any man, I will re¬ store him four-fold, and the half of my goods I will give to the poor.” This is genuine repentance. This is the repent¬ ance that many fail to reach in this world. Our money-loving age has held a struggle right here. We are sorry that we are sinning, but it is too good to give up. We are sinning with one hand, and repenting with the other—sinning during the day and repenting at night. Many men have come to imagine that Christ is a kind of bankrupt policy, by which they can sin on through life, and take the benefit of this act, and slip out of punishment at last. There never was a more mistaken idea. The dying thief might obtain pardon on the cross, but there has got to be a paying-up in some way for the wrong doing. The economy of God strikes at the root of the tree. He wants to work in you and me such a hatred of evil that 84 The Origin and Destiny of Man. we will turn away from it—to work in us suck a love of right that we take it for its own sake. He not only wants to work a repentance for wrong, but a state of trust, a state of confi¬ dence. Some how in our moral darkness we are afraid, and God wants to reach us through the mercy of Calvary, to put before us the light of His goodness, so that we shall turn in confidence to Him. He wants us to feel that, when we repent of our sins, they are forgiven. In other words, God not only wants to work repentance, but faith. Now, when we repent of sin and forsake it, casting our¬ selves upon His love, the divine economy is such that man receives in the first place forgiveness. He is pardoned ; his sins are blotted out. You take the most beautiful and touch¬ ing example of this in the Scriptures. Possibly it is found in the parable of the prodigal son. Though the prodigal had wandered away, and given himself up to riotous living, still the memories of home and paternal love came to him in his hour of sadness, and he said : “I will arise and go to my father, tell him all, acknowledge my sins, and take the lowest place in his household.” And, as he came, his father was looking out for him, and saw him while he was yet a great way off, and ran towards him, and threw his arms about his neck, kissed away his tears, ordered forth the best robe, put the ring on his hand, shoes on his feet, and killed for him the fatted calf. He took the erring son into the bosom of his family, and made him feel that he was forgiven and loved as before he had wandered away. And so, dear friends, the In¬ finite Father of us all looks out in longing for you and me to return ; and though our sins tower up like the mountains, and Salvation. 85 are red as the crimson, if we come with our hearts broken with contrition, God meets us with sweet forgiveness, puts His arms of love about our neck, takes away our rags, gives us white garments, and makes for us a royal feast. There is not only repentance and pardon for us—God wants to reach the very centre of our being, and there is provided for every member of our fallen race a new birth, a new life, a new heart. Man having the law, but having yielded to appetite and passion, God comes now with His Holy Spirit and touches the God ward side of man’s three-fold nature — touches the conscience, and communicates new life to it. I honestly be¬ lieve in the doctrine of regeneration taught by the churches. There is a vital union between the Divine Spirit and the spirit in man. There is an actual birth ; there is a being born from above. This is what God wants to do with human character— not only blot out the sins of the past, but give man a new life, a new nature—a life not of the flesh, but of the spirit. Thus you see how the divine administration comes to man, working conviction, working sorrow for sin, imparting confi¬ dence to the human mind, drawing souls to Himself, pardon¬ ing sin, and then changing man’s heart and making him a new character. The atonement is vastly more than a plan or method by which justice may be satisfied and the sinner set free. It is at-one-ment —making man one with God, charac¬ tering him in righteousness, carrying him back into the very life of God. I ask you to ponder what I am saying here. I ask you to not only ponder it, but to put what I am saying by the side of consciousness, by the side of human sorrows, by the side of human wants, and see if it is not worthy of God’s 86 The Origin and Destiny of Man. truth. If what I have said is true, the purpose of God in dealing with the world is, meeting it in its mature years with the Bible and a revealed law, meeting it with the offer of pardon and a pure nature—the purpose of God is to carry man back as far as may be into that state where law is not needed, where man is a law unto himself, where man does not live by simply looking at the statute, but where each one so loves truth and right that he does the right for its own sake. Hence, He seeks to reach character. In the light of what I have said, we may see the difference between what I call the moral and the religious side of man. There seem to be two hemispheres to the God ward part of our being, as there are two tables of laws. One part looks down upon the earthly relations, and takes in the question of duty to man. The other looks heavenward, and takes in our obligations to God. And it seems that this lower part of our nature may be so illumined, that in almost every community men may be found who discharge their duty to man with scrupulous fidelity, and yet have very little conscience toward God. I know, and you know, plenty of men who seem to be illumined and awakened on the side of right, and yet their souls are dead to the Divine Spirit. I am glad to say even this much for this class of men, for there was a time when I thought it right to preach against simple, naked morality, for I took the ground quite commonly held that it was easier to win a sinning soul to God than to convert an unbeliever entrenched within the rigid lines of morality. But since the Methodist preachers’ meeting in Chicago has been discussing the question whether the tendency of the church is to make Salvation. 87 men moral, we may be glad that some men can be moral, even if we cannot win them to Christ. But there is something more needed, my friends. A man may be thoroughly awake in his conscience toward his neighbor, yet, when you talk to him of prayer or worship, there is an utter want of sympathy. But there comes a time to all of us when that which is Spirit in God touches that which is spirit in us, and man feels some how that he is called to render unto God the things which are His. The truly religious man is distinguished from the moral man as the one that has both hemispheres of his being touched, and has love to God as well as to man. There are some strange things in human character. Sometimes a man who is sensitively alive towards God, is dark towards man. I have known cases where men seem completely possessed with the Divine Spirit; the coronal part of their being seemed open to God. And yet you never know whether they are telling the truth or not. You know that they will cheat, and you feel that your wife or daughter is not any too safe in their society. As examples of such abnormal development of the religious side of man, take the two noted Methodists in the East, who have just disgraced not only Methodism, but religion itself. If Beecher fell, he fell in that way. His conscience was illumined on the religious side, but obscured on that pre¬ sented to man. On the other hand, a man may be wanting in devotion towards God, and yet be true towards man. I know men who do not pray, and yet, on any question of hon¬ esty, they are absolutely above suspicion. The character that I plead for, the holiness I plead for, is 88 The Origin and Destiny of Man. the conversion of both hemispheres of our nature ; that which takes man from his sins and helps him into purity ; sets him to praying, singing, shouting, if need be ; unlocks the fountains of his being towards God ; makes him walk the earth, sweetly conscious of the life above, and with the tenderest regard for justice, and truth, and sympathy, and love among men. And this is what God is striving to do with human character. When we get at the inmost secret of things, we shall find that what is Supreme in our being is the Spirit. Be, then, a man in the fullest sense. Live a life of conscious love to God and love to man. I will not be thought boasting, for that is not in my heart, but I say it from firm conviction, that here in this heart-work is the spirit, the genius, the animus of the Methodist church. Wo may depart from it, but its genius is to work upon the inward forces of man’s nature. John Wesley was so liberal a man in his theology that the Calvinists claim him to-day as being on their side. This is the spirit in which I would teach, and that T would leave as a sweet memory in your minds when I may have gone to other fields of labor—that God’s great purpose is to touch our hearts, to win us by His love, to make us pure within, and send us out into t'he world doing good. It you have wandered from God, come back to His open arms. If you are strug¬ gling with sin, battling with appetite and passion, bring your fallen nature to Him ; ask Him to touch it, and it shall be whole j ask Him to lift up your broken nature, and He will do it. He will give you peace, and love and joy—a home ever¬ lasting in the skies. VII. THE CHANGE WE CALL DEATH. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. —Genesis, hi, 19. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.— Psalm xc, 12. T HE mind of man is not satisfied with observing things as they appear, or to study them as they are. It seeks for both causation and ultimation. It wants to go back of even the origin of things, and then it wants to go forward and see to what they tend. In other words, the mind of man wants to know both the origin and the end. In deference to this desire we have thought it might be instructive and profit¬ able to go back into the deep past, and we have for a time been living in this past. We have stood back in the shadows of the star-mist, when the solid material of this globe, and perhaps of all the worlds in the universe, existed only as a nebulous mass. And in thought we have seen the impact communicated to this mass by the Divine Mind, and we have seen the systems of worlds slowly evolved and taking their place in the orderly heavens. We have attempted to stand, too, at the beginning of life, and to journey forward and upward with the life on our planet, till from its little begin¬ nings in the vegetable and the animal we have reached the 90 The Origin and Destiny of Man. perfect forms that are about us. We have sought, too, in thought, to stand back in the infancy and purity of our race, and have contemplated the tragedy of evil; have looked upon our world in its trial, in its fall, and in its sin; and have tried to study the government of God over such a world, and the results of this government in the recovery, so far as may be, of the race, and the building up of character during a period of probation. We now, in deference to the other desire, to know the future, will attempt to go forward. It is the 13th day of the month of February, in the year 1876, and from this little point of time we shall essay the task of journeying into the future, and seeking through all open gates and by all possible ways, to thread the destiny of things. For, see¬ ing these forces set in motion, and standing in the results of this mighty causation, we can but feel an interest in knowing what is to be the destiny of man, the destiny of the little world on which we live. Were we for the first time to look out upon life, and study its phenomena, we would find one of these to be growth ; that under a law ceaseless and silent there is an accretion of ele¬ ments about the germinal principle ; and that the life-forms, both vegetable and animal, increase in size—some with more, some with less rapidity, some through a longer and some through a shorter period. Had we never seen anything of the kind before, the fact would at once fix our attention, and we should wonder to see the plant lift up its stem and throw out its branches, and the branches throw out their leaves and flowers; or to witness the tree coming forth from its little germ, and steadily holding its way up in the air, till its top- The Change We Call Death. 91 most branches may be a hundred feet high. Had we never seen such things before, these facts would be called interest¬ ing and extraordinary. And so. were it not so common that it ceases to attract notice, it would be called wonderful to see a human being take on additional size, additional height, and breadth and weight, till the child has grown to be a man. If we still keep our minds on the phenomena of life, we find that another peculiarity is that the things which grow reach the point of maturity, where they cease to grow. This fact, also, is so common that it fails to awaken interest, much less sur¬ prise. But if w r e studied this as a new world, and. having ascertained the law of growth in the plant, in the animal, and in man, found that this process of growing stopped, we would be led to inquire what this means. The thought may seem strange the first time you reflect upon it —“ I have ceased to grow.” If we watch the life-forces beyond the point of growth, beyond the point where they reach maturity and cease to grow, we would observe another strange phenome¬ non. We should find that there appeared in the plant, in the tree, and in the animal, evidences of what we call decay, pre¬ monitions of the wasting of vitality. There would come upon the leaf, the plant and the flower the seared edge, the change¬ ful hue; on the topmost boughs of the great tree the stems would begin to wither; on the faces of our friends the lines of time are borne, and the silver hair takes the place of the once golden or auburn locks. I say, had we not witnessed this before, it would set us to asking: What is this ? What is that which grew, that which held its growth in mature life, and now begins to go down ? And here we would stand upon 92 The Origin and Destiny of Man . the threshold of the first great landmark of destiny. The first point in destiny is death. We would not be satisfied with reaching this first point. Our inquisitive minds will keep going back and going deeper, and asking why this is so—whence came death ? And now, as I study death both in the lower and the higher realms of life, I am compelled to believe that the presence of death here is as natural as the presence of life. It seems to be a part of the constitution of things, and not the result of any outcome of man’s sinning. For I must feel, I must know, that death was present in our world ages before man’s advent. We cannot turn the pages of geology without standing in the presence of overwhelming evidence that death was upon our planet long before man came. Therefore it surely cannot be attributed to his sinning. There was a time when the life- forces teemed in the marshy lowlands and in the hot, humid atmosphere, where the life-forms that now exist could not have lived for a moment. Even before man came upon the earth, whole species of animal life had lived their day, filled their mission, and passed away. One of the most incredible blunders that the theologians of the past have made is to attribute the fact of death to the sinning of man. One of the first books that I had to study in my theological course taught that the presence of storms, of volcanoes and drouths, the presence of death in any form, was to be attributed to human sinning. But this must all be given up. I look upon death in the lower orders of life not only as natural, but as absolutely necessary, and as being part of the divine plan. It is necessary in order that the old may give The Change We Call Death. 93 place to tlie new. Take tlie vegetable world : unless the fields were cleared by the death of the old crop, there would not be room for the new. Death in the animal world, also, is necessary on the simple ground of making room for new life. A curious calculation has been made as to the amount of room that would be required to furnish living places for dif¬ ferent forms of life had there been no death, and it is said that the English sparrow, which brings forth its young four times a year, producing four young at a time — that this little bird, if there were no deaths of sparrows, would in a century not only fill the forests, the fields and the air, but there would be no room for anything on the earth or in the air but sparrows. Take other forms of life. Suppose there had been no deaths among the fishes in the sea; there are not seas enough in ten thousand worlds like this to hold the fishes that would accumulate in a few centuries. Had there been no deaths among animals, from the beginning until this time, and had they gone on at a natural rate of increase, they would have enlarged the size of this round earth till it would extend beyond the orbit of Neptune. Now we come to look at death in reference to man, and the question arises: Would he have been subject to this law of death, had there been no sinning? We might be led, from our studies of the nature of man, to think it would be prob¬ able that he might be an exception to the general rule. He is an exception in many respects. He differs from every other product of nature in form, n feature, and in the fact of his mental and spiritual endowments. Were we studying this subject as a speculation, and had we found that the law of 94 The Origin and Destiny of Man. death had dominion over every form of life below man, we might reach the conclusion that man would be an exception to this law. The reasoning from causation would be in favor of the fact that he, having a divine nature, something related to God, would be an exception, and we should be justified in thinking that death came to the human family as a conse¬ quence of sin, or the violation of the law of his higher nature. Thus it is stated in our text, that, as a part of the punishment of Adam’s transgression, he should return to the dust out of which he was taken. The Apostle Paul states it very strongly when he says that by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. If the mind is disposed to carry this subject a little further, we can only say, as a matter of speculation, that, if man had continued to live on that spiritual plane where he was first placed, he might have lived above the law of decay, above the law of death. But he dropped from the domain of the spirit down to the plane of natural forces, and he took the consequences of his fall. The same objection may arise in the minds of some as to whether there would be room in the earth for man, had he been above the law of death. This would hold good if the race had remained and multiplied on the earth. But there might have been some kind of exalta¬ tion, some kind of transformation or translation. He might have arisen and become an inhabitant of other planets. We cannot tell, nor is it necessary to pursue the speculation. We find ourselves under the dominion of death, subject to its laws, like the grass, and the flower, and the fish, and the bird ; and here we look with great interest to the method of the The Change We Call Death. 95 divine carrying out of this sentence. If we studied this ques¬ tion from the outside, we might be led to think, as when we look at creation from the outside, that dying would be the result of some mechanical process working from without. We might think it would require some vast machinery, like that required to make a world. But in the presence of God’s laws, working from within and not from without, the taking down of the tabernacle of life is even easier than the building it up. There is no noise, no presence of any outside working machinery—simply the silent and intense action of the forces of God, which work from within. As we stand more immediately in the presence of the agen¬ cies by which we die, we may for a moment look upon some of the forms of disease. Many of these diseases seem to de¬ pend upon the elements which exist about us, as the subtle poison or malaria in the atmosphere, lying back of fevers which carry thousands away. There are the diseases which have become inherited in our race—the whole family of scrof¬ ulous diseases, and the wasting consumption. There are also the forms of sickness which are incident to childhood, and which are called constitutional. So that, by one cause and another, our race is actually in the presence of a whole army of diseases that hover about us—an army killing and slaying so remorselessly that it cuts down one-half our race before they are twelve miles from the cradle, and slaying one after another on the march of life, till only a few reach its remotest journey, and die at last from the wearing out of the physical organism. This, no doubt, was not the way it was intended. Even in our fallen world, were we to live up to the laws of 96 The Origin and Destiny of Man. nature in the fullest sense, we might all reach a mature old age, and die at last, as the leaf falls in the autumn, or the wheel stands still. Now the question arises as to the exact nature of this thing that we call dying, What is it ? In what does it consist ? What work does it do ? What is it that dies ? And here I come back again to the three-fold division of our nature. That which we call dying relates simply to these bodies of ours. It cuts off the relation of the mind and spirit to the physical organism in which they exist—leaves the body as dead, and the mind and spirit as undressed from the earthly tabernacle in which they exist. The change is a great one, and even a solemn one. Take the thought of dying. It is more than sickness. When a man is sick he suffers pain, the flesh wastes away, and his strength is gone. Yet there is still a hold upon the vital organism, and the man may recover. What we call dying is more than sickness or pain. It is sick¬ ness and pain carried to the point where their work is done. And what a change is this—for one to lose his hold upon a bodily existence, to lose his hold upon all the outside world that the body stands related to ! What a complete severance is there of the relations that hold us to material things when one dies! A solemn event, I say, that takes us out of this sense life—the eye closed, the ear forever heavy, the hands still, the heart pulseless, the body a mere lump of clay. Not only a removal out of the earthly house, but from everything that we have through our relations to the body. One stricken by death gives up forever his seat in the chair, his place at the table and by the fireside • he ceases to appear upon the The Change We Call Death . 97 street, to stand in the bank or at the counter, to move in the business mart; his voice is heard no more; the places that know him shall know him no more. Strange, strange destiny, my friends, awaiting you and me, that we must soon put off these bodies, and cease to live in the senses. Soon the eye that weeps, the cheek of beauty, the lip of song—soon, soon they are all but dust. Not only strange, but of all the certainties of life there is nothing so absolutely certain as the fact of this change that we call dying. We may cling to life with all the intensity of love, we may turn every leaf, thread every winding stream, visit every clime, go where we will, live as we will, this strange thing of death follows in our footsteps. There is absolutely no escape. I stand with strange emotions, as I look out upon these hundreds of faces, as I look upon the forms of youth and of age, and think that when a few years have come and gone, we shall all have been gathered to our fathers; that other feet shall press these aisles, and other voices be heard in this pulpit; that other people will walk these streets, stand in the business centres, and go out here to the city of the dead, and read the names on the white marble. And as they look at one stone, they will say : “There lies that man ; he was a banker. Do you know his son who went to California, or his daughter, that lived in this or some other city ? They are dead.” “Do you know that one that lies there? He built that great block down town. And there is the tomb-stone of that early settler, who projected so many enterprises, and helped to build up the city.” This is the way they will talk about you and about me, and the wheels of industry will roll 7 98 The Origin and Destiny of Man. on, the merry laughter of childhood will ring out, the sportive jest will go round, and the flowers will bloom and fade above you and me sleeping, sleeping down in the ground. Strange, strange destiny that all must die ! Now we may ask, Is this that we call death the end of our being ? It will be anticipating the subject of immortality, and yet I want to say a few things here. It seems to me, if we get a correct view of death, that it is only another form of birth—a kind of upward movement instead of downward. Before we came into this world we had our life in connection with the life of our mothers ; we drew our life from our mothers. And after reaching a point where it was possible to live independent of our mothers, we came out into this world, and found ourselves here in bodies, which are only a kind of walking matrix, in which the higher life is being developed. Separated from our maternal life, there is another umbilicus , the air, that seems to bind us to the great life we are now liv¬ ing. We enter upon this higher and wider life by breathing ; we hold it by breathing, and we live in this walking matrix, receiving strength from our vaster mother, nature, and we seem to develop until it is severed, and we are born up into a higher life. So it looks to me as I contemplate this strange mystery of life. It seems to me that when this life goes out, we are born into some condition of being that is higher. If we take this view of the subject, it relieves what we call dying of much of the unnecessary darkness and gloom that has been thrown about it. It reminds me of a beautiful allegory I have somewhere read. It is related that a tree heard one of its leaves crying, and coming to the leaf, asked it what it The Change We Call Death. 99 was crying about. And the leaf said that the wind had told it that the time would come when it must be blown away. Then the tree told the branch, and the branch told the leaf to dry its tears; it should not die, but should continue to sport inself in the summer breeze and the summer sunshine. But after a while the leaf saw a silent change coming over its fellow-leaves. They gradually put off their modest green, and were decked in hues of purple and gold. It looked upon this dress of beauty, and upon its own familiar green, and it began to cry again, and the branch told the tree that the leaf was crying, and the tree came again to see about what the leaf was crying. And the leaf said: “ The other leaves are dressed in garments of beauty, while I keep on my old garment of green, and I cry.” Then the tree told the leaf that this change of dress would be put off to-morrow, and that it might now, if it wished, put on these garments. And thus the leaf was per¬ mitted to put on the golden hues, and the winds of autumn came, and soon it was borne away. So, my friends, much as we dread the autumn and winter of death, we might well weep if we had forever to stay down in these lower worlds, in these feeble bodily conditions, down at the bottom of this ocean of atmosphere, when the worlds of beauty roll on forever in immensity, and souls are rising and casting off their garments of dust, and passing away. Let us rather rejoice that, having had a birth that brought us into this state, and a development as far as possible, we may welcome the approach of the hosts of joy, dressed in garments woven by angel fingers ; welcome the lines that time brings about the eye ; welcome the weight of years that 100 The Origin and Destiny of Man. begins to press us down; welcome tlie weakness of age, the decay of strength, the dimness of sight, tbe dullness of hear¬ ing ; and even let the cold winds of winter and the hot suns of summer hasten the process, for it is only the wearing out of the body, the putting on of garments for the evening, the getting ready for the morning ; and then will come the whis¬ per by-and-bye : “ You have traveled long enough, you have toiled long enough ; now lay down the burden, gather up your feet, and go to the vaster realm above and beyond ! ” In the language of this other text, we may well pray in the presence of such a strange mystery as this, “ So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom; ” that we may not live only in the body or only in the senses; that when death comes and smites this tabernacle, the spirit which inhabits it may be ready for its final home. Let us weave now the fair garment of intelligence, of purity, of truth, of goodness, and of character, my friends ; live by the law of right, that we may go down to death with anticipation, and not with dread. For the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law, and over it God has given us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. I bid you take on the higher life, the better life, the helpful life, the Christ-life. Then death will only touch that which is dust, and the freed spirit, redeemed and purified and saved, will pass through the valley and the shadow without fear, and dwell in His presence forever. May God add His blessing. VIII. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. t i God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.—M atthew, xxn, 32. O UR last discourse of this series was on that change which, in the language of our world, we call dying; and we come now, in the natural order of things, to inquire whether this change terminates our existence, or whether, in any sense, we survive death. If the former, of course the book of human destiny would close with dying; but if the latter be true, we have opened out to our view the vast fields that lie beyond. To our outward senses, death seems very much like the end of man. We are accustomed to know each other in life by the bodily form, to recognize each other by the senses of sight and hearing. But sickness comes, the body wastes away, the voice becomes feeble, the eye grows dim, and finally death closes the scene. And it does seem, to our observing, very much as though our being termi¬ nated at this point; for we may linger never so fondly over the loved clay, but there is no response to our tears, no answer to our questionings. We may go to the grave where our loved ones sleep, and hope there in some way to come into communion with those who have gone before, but the I 102 The Origin and Destiny of Man . stillness of the tomb seems only to mock our earnest prayer. I have not been surprised that scientific men, especially, find difficulty in believing in the immortality of the soul — men who are accustomed to dealing with material things, handling substances that are constantly changing in form and disap¬ pearing, seeking the ultimate source of life, and failing. It is not surprising that to such men difficulty and doubt hang over the future; for while they see that in all nature life continues, it does not seem to be the same life. The flowers of next Spring will take the place of these that now bloom, but these flowers will bloom no more. When our forests have gone down under the weight of time, others will take their place, but they will not be those that now give us shade. It is true their science teaches these men to expect a continuance of the substances that compose these organisms. A tree may be burned up, but there is so much that escapes in vapor, so much in smoke, and so much is left in ashes. We can tell where it has gone, but the tree can never be restored. Look¬ ing at the subject from this standpoint, while scientific men may think there will be a conservation of the dust of our bodies, a conservation of their vital forces, and even that mind may some how return to the great universe of truth, yet they find difficulty in believing in the continued life of each soul, in the continued identity of our being. And if in this we are to be disappointed, if we are to lose our individuality — that which in a peculiar sense makes us ourselves — then we can feel but little interest in a future existence. I want to look as closely as we may be able into this ques¬ tion, and, in so doing, return again to what seems to be the The Immortality of the Soul. 103 end of onr being in the dissolution of the body, and see if there may not be, even in our dying, evidence that will help us. If we would grapple successfully with a subject of this kind, we must come under the conditions of its truth. It is in vain that men will try to debate any question unless they are willing to yield themselves to the conditions under which that question must be studied. If a man would study music, he must cultivate his ear, his sense of time and tune. If he would study mathematics, he must cultivate his reasoning powers. And so, if he would grapple with this question, he must be willing to look closely into the constitution of our being, to consider occult or hidden forces, to look carefully within and deal with the subjective. Iam fully aware of the difficulty encountered here by people who live largely in the senses. To their mind the destruction of the body seems like the destruction of everything. But there is something more than body about us— something within us that claims owner¬ ship of the body. We naturally speak of “my eye,” “my head,” “my body,”—recognizing a proprietorship that does not reside in the body itself. It is not the physical eye that sees; it serves only as a glass through which we look. It is not the ear which hears; it is not the brain, the simple ner¬ vous structure, that thinks. There is something back of these that we call mind, or spirit. It is this that we are to look for and see whether the change we call dying reaches deep enough to uproot it. While death seems to cover the whole being, there are many cases in which the mental and spiritual power seems to shine out to the last. A man may lose any or even all of his limbs, and yet retain his consciousness. The 104 The Origin and Destiny of Man. body may be wasted with sickness, life may sink down into that valley of stillness where a breath would extinguish it, yet the mind may remain clear and strong and serene. Yea, it may gather strength by the subsidence of that which is mate¬ rial ; and all the powers of the spirit, its intuitions of God, its faith in the Supreme, all the affectional nature, may not only survive, but be intensified a hundred-fold. No love equals the love which the dying feel. When we look at the subject in this light, it would seem that there must be something on which we can hang a hope of life beyond the grave. Bishop Butler takes substantially this ground in the proposi¬ tion that if a force be found to exist, it will continue, unless there is a force competent to its destruction. And we do not find death to be that which destroys the life-principle. I want to suggest another argument. It is not new, and yet it is weighty. It is the argument founded on the univer¬ sal belief of our race in the continued life of the human soul. The strength of this argument is this : We consider as estab¬ lished the existence of a Supreme Being; that mind was made for truth and truth for mind. Now, if we find that a universal belief has settled down on our race in all ages and conditions—universal, though not equally clear—covering the great fact of a continued life after death, it seems impossible that the God who made us capable of thinking, capable of truth, should permit the race to dream on, age after age, in a delusion. A heathen would hold that whatever is the univer¬ sal belief of mankind must be accounted the will of God. Alongside of this argument is another that is also neither new nor original, but which is equally weighty. That is the The Immortality of the Soul. 105 universality of the desire for immortality. The strength of the reasoning here is that w here there is a permanent longing and desire, there is something in the natural economy of things to correspond to this desire. This law pervades all nature. We have the example of the desire for food and drink, and nature answering it. The heart is made to love, and the love of other hearts responds. Following this anal¬ ogy, and still holding to the primal belief that a God of jus¬ tice reigns, it is incredible that this, the strongest desire of our nature, should not be realized. It is not stating it too strongly to say that if this desire is without foundation in fact, the Deity mocks man in planting in his nature intense longings for that which is enduring, yet permitting the race, age after age, to go down to death in utter despair. I want to advance, in connection with these, an argument that I do not remember to have ever seen in any book or to have ever heard. The argument is this : that the same rea¬ sons which led to the creation of human beings will demand their continuance. We are not able to say certainly what were the reasons in the Divine Mind that led to the creation of man. That creation might have been the outgrowth of the univer¬ sal love, the outgrowth of a desire to create beings with whom He might hold communion and raise to the realms of His feel¬ ings, and ultimately elevate to companionship with Himself. Whatever those reasons might have been, we cannot but con¬ ceive that what led to the creation of man would in some way seek to perpetuate man’s being. It will not do to say that God is a mere model-builder, that he will go on age after age simply experimenting. When He endows humanity with the 106 The Origin and Destiny of Man. crown of mind and spirit, when it comes to that point where that which is distinctive in man is given and to love for his fel¬ low-man, belief in his own immortal destiny, and faith in God—in all reason we are bound to the conclusion that the cause which led to our creation will continue to influence the Divine Being to our preservation. We may offer another argument, not new, drawn from the pleadings of morality, the pleadings of the heart-life. This world is certainly a moral battle-field, where through all the centuries truth has been pitted against error, reason against passion, justice against injustice. The whole history of man¬ kind shows that the battle has been a tedious one. The lines have wavered, and at no time has the final result been certain except to the eye of faith. Now I would take my stand by the side of every patriot who ever loved his country, by the side of every martyr who ever died for truth, by the side of every teacher who ever taught, by the side of every minister who ever preached, by the side of every missionary who ever went forth to heathen lands, by the side of those who have wiped away the tear of sorrow, who have tried to lift up the fallen, who have sat by the bedside of the dying and tried to push back the shadows of night—in the name of every one who has ever worked or thought or suffered for humanity, do I claim that there must be some future where the results of this great struggle are to be crowned with a compensation beyond what is reached here ; a future where the uneven scales of justice in this life may find their balance, where man shall be dealt with according to his merits. Taking our stand by the heart-life, I ask, in the name of reason, is all the long- The Immortality of the Soul. 107 mg in human souls to be left out ? Is all the affection of this world, that has clung about life as the vine about the oak, to go for naught ? I may offer one argument more, and then pass to another olass of reasons, and that is the utter unreasonableness of immortality not being true. I will state the lines upon which this travels briefly. Here we have space ; we call it unbound¬ ed. We have duration ; we say it is unending. Here we have our little earth, and about us the worlds composing our sys¬ tem, and rising above these other systems of worlds, till you finally come to the universe system. Here we have the human mind beginning first with its a, b, c, with its 1, 2, 3 ; traveling out along the lines of reading and reasoning, along the lines of inquiry, along the pathways of truth. Now, in an ordinary lifetime, in which one-third is given to sleep and another third to work, these lives have grappled with some of the problems of the world ; these bodies have sailed over some of its seas, and climbed some of its mountains; these minds have looked around and learned something of science, a little of language, have pored over a few pages of history, and have peered anxiously into the great future beyond ; we open the Bible, and learn a little of divine truth; we work and study, and these are the results we reach against we are sixty or seventy years of age. Now, if there be no immortal¬ ity, we have this amazing spectacle : lines of truth going out forever, ^et the mind that shows capacity to grapple with truth, that builds its scaffolding to the stars, weighs the plan¬ ets, measures their distances, and marks their orbits—the mind capable of grappling with these mighty truths just get- 108 The Origin and Destiny of Man. ting a start, just reaching a point where life seems valuable, then dropping down into non-existence ! When a Humboldt, a Newton or a Descartes dies, a child is born ; it travels out to the point of knowledge they reached, and it dies. Another child is born ; it journeys to the farthest outpost of learning, and it dies. The process goes on through endless generations. The human mind is ceaselessly working out the problems of health, of science, of society and government ; the whole world is struggling in its heart-life ; yet we only live lives that come up to a certain point where existence ends in nothing 1 In the name of reason, I say it cannot be. I now shall advance a few arguments of a different charac - ter. The first of these is the empirical testimony on the subject. I cannot of course claim for this the same weight in all minds. By empirical testimony, I refer to the experi¬ ences of thousands and millions of persons,— experiences of a spiritual character, experiences that touch the heart-life, the spirit-life, for there are millions on earth who will tell you that they have tasted the worn of God, that they have felt the powers of the world to come, that they have felt and do feel that they are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, that they do feel that they are dwellers of the world to come as well as of the earthly world. They feel it must be so in the light of the divine experience that has come to them. As a rule, those who have come into deep religious experience have no difficulty in spanning the gulf between this and the future. There is another class of evidence that I call phenomenal. To this I ask you to give only such weight as you may think The Immortality of the Soul. 109 it entitled to. What I mean by phenomenal testimony is that testimony which seems to come from the life beyond. We might say, had there been no accumulation of literature and history on this subject, that we could hope the spirits of the departed would in some way make themselves present to the living. But history and literature abound in testimony of this character. I think it is Carpenter’s Mental Physiology which gives a case in point. The mother of an idiot son died when the latter was about three years old. The son lived until about the age of thirty. He was utterly without the power of reason or memory. He was taken sick, and brought to the point of dying. Just a few moments before he died, he seemed to wake to conscious intelligence. He looked up and said : “ Oh, mother ! mother! How beautiful! how beautiful 1 ” It would seem that a distinct image must have been presented to the vision of the unfortunate young man— an image that could not have been produced by any faculty of reason, or brought up by memory, for these were a hope¬ less wreck. I will relate a case that has fallen under my own observa¬ tion—the experience of one of the most intelligent physicians in Iowa. I have known him over twenty years as a true, hon¬ orable man. He is one of the best scholars and most acute ob¬ servers in the State. He grew up a materialist, and remained a skeptic many years, and had often taken part in debates on the question of immortality, always holding the negative side. He was sitting in his office a few years ago, about nine o’clock in the evening. He sat there reflecting, the lights burning low. All at once his father appeared before him. He said 110 The Origin and .Destiny of Man. he brushed his eyes, thinking it was some kind of apparition, and he looked again, and his father stood there. He sum¬ moned all his intelligence and all the personal consciousness which he possessed, and his father stood there. He still wondered if it were not some illusion, and he blew out the light and stepped outside the door, and his father stood there. He went home ; his wife noticed there was something unusual the matter with him, and inquired the cause, but he felt re¬ luctant to tell her at once. Next day a telegram reached him. He knew what it was before he opened it. It was the an¬ nouncement of his father’s death, a few hours before his form had appeared in the office the evening before. There are some who may say: “All nonsense!” “All superstition!” But I say this to you as an honest man : If I am not to be¬ lieve the testimony of the senses of men as intelligent as any one here, how am I to believe anything ? I am quite willing to set it down as something I cannot understand ; but to deny it, I dare not. The impression on the mind of that man was so great that he began a life of prayer, and is now an earnest member of a Christian church. If you will go down into the inner life of many of the most prayerful souls, you will find them walking the earth in the sweet consciousness of the com¬ panionship of departed loved ones. Some may call this spirit¬ ualism. I do not care what you call it. The Bible is full of a pure spiritualism. It records instances where the spirits of the departed have appeared to those on earth. In our efforts to get away from what is gross and sensual in modern spiritualism, we have possibly drifted from the Bible and from that which is a happy and holy conviction to thousands. The Immortality of the Soul. Ill Bishop Clarke, of our own church, who died a few years ago in Cincinnati—a patient, scholarly, devout man—said to his wife and grown-up children, as they gathered about his death¬ bed, that this was very present to him, that he should still be permitted to be near them after death, that even when they might not know it he should be with them. This phenomenal evidence is something which comes with a peculiarly convincing power to the minds that are favored with it. Some how truth has been advanced, in this material age, even in the grosser forms of the spiritualism of our time, and the souls that are sensitive to the sweet influences from beyond have felt its power. We are nearing the time, I think, when the river that flows between this life and that of the future will indeed be very narrow, when the gulf will be almost bridged, when millions will walk this earth in the sweet companionship of the departed, and God and the future will be as imminent and real as are the things of the present world. I beg your attention, for a moment, to the argument based on the Scriptures. The Bible does not usually argue ques¬ tions by taking them up topically, and enforcing them point by point, and the Old Testament is not luminous on this ques¬ tion. The Jewish economy related quite largely to the affairs of this world. Yet there is a reasoning by examples as well as words that points with unmistakable language to a future state. Take the old idea of the patriarchs being gathered to their fathers. That does not mean that they should be gath¬ ered to the dust of the dead, but to the living spirits of those who had gone before. Take the language of Job : “ Though 112 The Origin and Destiny of Man. the worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.’' Take the beautiful words of David : “In the valley and shadow of death I will fear no evil; I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” In the New Testament, in the 14th chapter of St. John, our Saviour says : “Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God ; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions ; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again to receive you unto myself.” “If it were not so, I would have told you.” The assurance comes to me with a frankness, a candor, an honesty, that exalts the great Teacher in my thought. For the whole world has been reasoning on this question since the beginning of recorded time. Socrates discoursed of it for hours before he drank his poison, strengthening his own heart and the heart of humanity by writing or dictating his immortal Phsedo. But while humanity approached the sub¬ ject from this side with all its reason, its love and its tears, the immortal Teacher comes to us from the other shore and says : “ If it were not so, I would have told you ', immortality is a fact.” Above all other things in the character of Christ stands his perfect loyalty to truth. If the denial of immor¬ tality had cut the last thread that sustained millions of hearts, he would not have hesitated had truth required it. In the twenty-second chapter of Acts, where there was a dispute between the Sadducees and Pharisees, we have the evidence of Paul. The Sadducees believed neither in angels nor in spirits. The Pharisees believed in both. In this discussion Paul says; “I am a Pharisee.” That is to say: I believe The Immortality of the Soul. 113 on this point as the Pharisees believe ; they believe in angels and spirits, and I believe in them. Or you may take the argument of our text, one of the most beautiful and philosophical in the Bible: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” If God were the God of the dead, then death must be the destiny of every one, and into its dark vortex God himself must ultimately fall. I want you to get the full force of this statement, for there is philos¬ ophy in the argument, and it is the philosophy that runs through the Bible. “God is the God of the living.” Being the living God, He is the fountain of life, and while He lives His children shall live also—live after the rolling centuries shall have completed their long cycles. Being the God of the living, He gathers life unto Himself, and not death. Like music on the sweet morning air, souls are evermore going up to their fountain, going up to the source of their being. God is the God of the living; the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, who have been dead thousands of years—dead in the earthly sense, yet living unto Him. As I look into your faces, and think of the many hearts longing for the life to come, I am glad that immortality is not only a faith but a great fact. I am glad that while the snows of winter may lie over the graves of loved ones, their spirits are up with God. I am glad that life is the ultimatum of the race, and not death. I am glad that in this world of graves we may walk along the shore of the stream that divides time from eternity, and say, Our friends are just over there. Yes— “Over the river they beckon to me, Loved ones who’ve crossed to the farther side; 8 114 The Origin and Destiny of Man. The gleam of their snowy robes I see, But their voices are lost in the dashing tide. There’s one with ringlets of sunny gold, And eyes the reflection of heaven’s own blue; He crossed in the twilight gray and cold, And the pale mist hid him from mortal view. We saw not the angels who met him there, The gates of the city we could not see; But over the river, over the river, My brother stands waiting to welcome me. “Over the river the boatman pale Carried another, our household pet; Her brown curls waved in the gentle gale; Barling Minnie! I see her yet. She crossed on her bosom her dimpled hands, And fearlessly entered the phantom bark; We felt it glide from the silver sands, And all our sunshine grew strangely dark. We know she is safe on the other shore, Where all the ransomed and angels be; Over the river, the mystic river, Our household pet is waiting for me. “And I sometimes think, when the sunset’s gold Is flushing river, and hill, and shore, That I shall one day stand by the water cold, And list for the sound of the boatman’s oar ; I shall catch a gleam of the snowy sail, I shall hear the boat as it nears the strand; I shall pass, with the boatman pale and cold, To the better shore of the spirit land. I shall know the loved who have gone before, And joyfully sweet will the meeting be, When over the river, the peaceful river, The angel of death shall carry me.” God grant that this immortality may be yours and mine im the heavenly world. IX. THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. But man dieth, and wasteth away : yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?—J ob, xiv, 10. O UR present mode of being is denominated life, and in this we have three forms of consciousness, or con¬ sciousness under three expressions. We have what is called sense-consciousness, or the consciousness that comes to us through the medium of the senses ; as what we hear, what we see, -what we feel, a form of life that opens out through the senses to the outer world. Then we have what may be called self-consciousness ; or perhaps it might more properlv be called mind-consciousness — the consciousness that does not realize itself in looking outward, but finds its being by introspection; that which w r e rest upon when we turn the mind within. In addition to these* we have what may be called God-consciousness, the consciousness of the divine, that by which we are impelled to goodness, that which looks upward and heavenward. In other words, in this mysterious trinity of life we have in sense-consciousness the complement of om bodily powers, in mind-consciousness the complement of the mental powers, in spirit-consciousness the complement of the spiritual powers. The change spoken 116 The Origin and Destiny of Man. of in our text, which we call death, takes away from us the first form of consciousness. In other words, death is the dis¬ solution of bodily conditions, of the x^owers of the senses; a severance of the relations which the mind in its x>resent state holds with outward and material things. It is affirmed in the text that “man dieth, and wasteth away.” This change called dying and wasting away, so far as the body is con¬ cerned, is the most absolute we can imagine. There is in death not only a cessation of the bodily functions, a loss of the x>owers by which life is maintained, but there is a wasting away, an utter dissolution after death of the particles that w r ere held together by the vital principle. In our last dis¬ course we attempted to show that the real self, that about which the inquiry in the text started—beyond the wasting away, “where is he ?”—that this self is not affected by death, but lives on. Our inquiry now shall be in reference to the mode of life of the disembodied spirit. It would be a very great gratification were I able to sx>eak with assurance on this subject. It would be no ordinary pleasure could I x>art the veil, and reveal to you just what the spirit-life is. But I cannot, in truthfulness, sx>eak to you on this subject with any great degree of definiteness or certainty. In the first xdace, I shall refer to the literature in regard to what is called in the language of theology the Intermediate State—the state of the disembodied spirit before its re-invest¬ iture with the organism or body of the spirit-world. It is interesting to go back and trace out the thought of the early ages in reference to spirit-life. There was among the old Egyptians the general thought that the spirit did not die. The Intermediate State. 117 But in those early times, in grappling with these subtle ques¬ tions, they seem not to have reached very definite conclusions. The nearest that the ancient Egyptian mind came to a con¬ ception in reference to the disembodied spirit was that it was something like a shadow, an indefinite spirit-form of some kind, and they thought that this spirit-form went downward instead of upward. They seemed to think of it under the idea of its having an underground or cavernous existence — possibly something that corresjmnded to the Hebrew idea of sheol and the Greek idea of hades — meaning a dark or unseen world. Beyond this there was the idea, possibly originating also in Egyj)t, and developed more fully in Greek philosophy, of the transmigration of souls, called the doctrine of metem¬ psychosis. This doctrine comes out in the Greek philosophy under the teachings of Pythagoras, that the spirit went into some form in the animal creation, and that the form which it entered corresponded to the character of the spirit in this life. If a man were of a vicious nature, his spirit went into some vicious animal. If he were low and coarse, it went into something of that kind. If he w^ere gentle and refined, the spirit -would possibly enter something of a lamb-like or dove- like nature. If he were soaring and ambitious, the spirit might dwell in the eagle. If he were shrewd and crafty, it might live in the fox. Pythagoras did not look upon this doctrine as the most pleasant thing to contemplate, and he sought some means by which the period of the soul’s trans¬ migration might be shortened. He went so far as to teach his followers that if they w-ould observe the rules of life he would lay down, they might possibly escape this transmigra- 118 The Origin and Destiny of Man. tion altogether, and might at death rise at once to some degree of communion with the Infinite. Plato taught that there were ten changes in the condition of the soul after death, and that it lived in each of these conditions a thousand years, making ten thousand years of the journey of the human spirit in some animal form. It is difficult to say on what ground of reason the ancients reached these strange conclusions. It is difficult to conceive of the human spirit leaving the body and taking possession of some animal — toiling all day as a horse, or roaming the woods as a deer. I think it is Baring Gould, who suggests that it may have grown out of the idea of man’s distant sep¬ aration from the divine; that he possibly had to go through some form of preparation or punishment, to atone for the wrongs done in this life. If the doctrine of Evolution, as held by many in our day, be true, then the doctrine of the transmigration of souls would not seem so unnatural, or unreasonable. For if man is evolved from the brute, and fails while in the human form to reach up and take hold of that which is above, fails to develop his spirit-powers, to reach and stand in spirit-life; if he, on the other hand, tends downward in his nature, developing only the animal that is within him, then there may be a law of retrogression, by which he is remanded, or sinks back again, to that from which he came, or to the animal condition. From this second animal life he might gradually rise to the human again ; or, more likely, abide under the diminishing power of retro¬ gression, and possibly lose conscious identity, or sink to non-existence. The Intermediate State. 119 Then there is the doctrine of the sleep of souls, which holds that when the body dies the spirit goes into a sleep, or unconscious state, and will have no conscious life till it is raised in the resurrection. There is also, in the Roman Catholic Church, the doctrine of purgatory — a doctrine that provides for the spirit not only a state which is intermediate, but a place that is intermediate betw r een what we call heaven and what we call hell. This doctrine was authoritatively affirmed by the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century, and later was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent. The doc¬ trine is substantially this : that the soul, after leaving this world, enters a state where it undergoes a process of purifica¬ tion before going to the realms of bliss. They teach, in addition to this doctrine of purgatory, that souls in that state may be reached and affected favorably by the prayers of the church, and by the alms-giving of their friends and relatives. The Episcopal Church holds to a doctrine somewhat similar to that of purgatory, in the sense that the spirit dwells in a state of liberation for a kind of strengthening or purification that it cannot receive in the body. I should be very sorry to misrepresent either the Catholic or Episcopal Church, and these statements of their views are chiefly from the readings of other years, and since my late illness I have not felt like looking up the matter anew. My impression is that the Episcopal Church holds to this idea : that the soul, after dwelling in the sensuous organism of this life, is permitted, in this intermediate state, to get a certain strength, or devel¬ opment, to make it practically safe for it to take on the bodily condition in the resurrection. 120 The Origin and Destiny of Man. I have thus looked at some of the general ideas that have obtained on this subject. It seems from the Scriptures, also, that there is some such state as we may properly term inter¬ mediate, loi they do not seem to favor the idea that the soul sleeps or dies with the body. They rather seem to teach that there is a life after the dying and before the rising. This is illustrated in the case of Christ, for it is not to be supposed that the period between his crucifixion and his resurrection was passed in a state of non-existence. The thought of the church has ever been that this was a period of consciousness of some kind, a view supported by the words of Christ him¬ self to the thief on the cross : “Verily I say unto thee, this day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” It seems also to have been the thought of Paul that to be absent from the body was to be present w'ith the Lord. Let us now pass to some reflections of a general character, for the mind of man is strangely inquisitive. The first is in reference to the probable appearance of spirit-life — not as it may appear to mortal eyes, but the appearance that is real and present to the spirits themselves. Probably few of us have thought upon the form of what we call mind. We read¬ ily fall into views and feelings in reference to the body, as that is visible and real to the outward senses. And if we rea¬ son on the matter from analogy, it w r ill not seem improbable that the human soul should have definite form. Our nervous system is distributed throughout the entire body, but always conforms to the shape of the human figure. So likewise the veins and arteries. Even the human skeleton preserves an outline of the body. To return now to the mind. I see no The Intermediate State . 121 reason for supposing that the mind and spirit of man are not governed as to form by the same law. I cannot see why my mind may not reside in my fingers as well as in my head. I cannot see why the mind itself may not have body-form ; nor why there is not, in this body of ours, a mental and spiritual being, having a real form, corresponding to that in •which we dwell. Indeed, I suppose it is mind and spirit that give bodily form. This is the doctrine of the New or Sweden- borgian Church. I do not see that it is contradicted by any¬ thing in the teachings of physiology or metaphysics, or by anything in the Scriptures. "Wherever the Scriptures tell of the coming to earth of the spirits of the departed, the spirits appear in bodily form. So, also, the angels, which are possi¬ bly spirits of the departed — they, too, appear in bodily form. I would call attention to another fact: that when life grows feeble in the body, and the sense-perception begins to fade, there is a turning inward of the mind upon itself — an inten¬ sifying of the mental self. I have seen this illustrated in the case of persons who have lived largely in the appetites being suddenly smitten with sickness. When such persons find the outer world fading from their view, finding no pleasure in eating and drinking, and unable to pursue the ordinary avoca¬ tions of life — these persons will often experience what seems to be a sinking in from the outer world ; their thoughts will be turned inward * their spiritual natures will become inten¬ sified ; they will become alarmed, and will pray. Then if, on experiencing a recovery of health, they fall away from this spiritual exaltation, many people will say they were not sin¬ cere. But I can conceive how it is that such men, their life 122 The Origin and Destiny of Man. driven in npon itself, find themselves standing face to face with their mental consciousness, face to face with God. And it is not strange that when thoughtless, sinning men are brought to this point, they should call out to God for mercy. Then, if health is restored, and they find the greater portion of their life again residing in the senses, they forget the vivid spiritual experience they had in sickness. This seems to me to point by analogy to the fact that when the body is thrown off, the spirit will have an intensified perception of spiritual truth, and will be in a sense shut up to itself. I cannot think there is any foundation for a belief quite generally entertained that some great change is wrought upon the spirit itself in dying. Looking upon death as simply touching the body, and releasing the spiritual being, I cannot think that it in any sense affects our natures excejot to inten¬ sify them. It does not make an uneducated man a scholar; it does not give an inexperienced man experience ; it does not give a coarse nature culture and refinement. The miser remains a miser, the lecher lustful, the liar untrue. Death leaves a man just as it finds him. The birth out of the bodily condition does not in the least affect the character of the man. It is only a step out of the conditions of this life. It is a change, but not a complete revolution from the low condi¬ tions of earth to the highest conditions of the future. There is another feeling in the human mind, that is possi¬ bly founded on an old pagan idea—a dread that some persons have of dying, not only of the physical suffering, but a dread to face the change, a dread to pass the narrow gate. One might naturally dread this if he supposed he were to go into The Intermediate State. 123 some dark cavernous region, or to enter into some animal. He might well shrink from a deep sleep, undisturbed even by a dream. But if we are Christians, if we abide in Christ, if we cling to the idea that Christ has abolished death, that he has removed its sting, then there is nothing left of dying but the simple passage from one shore to the other. In most cases the suffering of the dying is far less than is generally sup¬ posed. I have been at the point, as perhaps many of you have, where the suffering of death would have been far less than the tedium of recovery. Let us then take the human spirit at the point of its journeying down to the death of the body, and try to get all the light that is possible on the change. There is, first, a sinking down, a wasting away, the feeling of the weight of years, or the fact of disease enfeebling the physical powers ; and at last there is the coming down to the point where the spirit leaves the body. It may or may not be a moment of unconsciousness. The Swedenborgian Church teaches that it is three days from the time when death comes to the body to the time when the spirit-form is fully born out into the light of the other world. It is supposed by some that there is a point of unconsciousness. By others it is thought that what is called unconsciousness is only the passing from one life to the other. The mind having consciousness of itself, of the world it is leaving and the world to which it goes, what will be the con¬ dition of the spirit just as it emerges from the body ? There is a beautiful work entitled “Yesterday, To-Day and For¬ ever,” in which the writer represents himself at the dying moment, in the sweet consciousness of passing out of his 124 The Origin and Destiny of Man. body, liis friends standing around his bedside. Then he pic¬ tures himself in his spirit-form, lingering about his body, witnessing the wife and children gathered about the lifeless form. Then, passing out into the streets of the city, he sees the great world and the mighty spirit-struggle that is not vis¬ ible to mortal eyes — the good spirits surrounding youth and trying to lead them upward, and evil spirits, in their dark investiture, seeking to lure them downward. Then, being borne above, he is received by bands of angel friends and con¬ ducted to his place of rest. This, of course, is poetry, but it gives what the author conceives will be the experience of the spirit in its transition from the body. Personally, I think that one coming down to the point of dying may find it something like the setting of the sun. Had we never seen the going down of our sun, we would dread the thought of darkness coming on. Men would gather in the deepest alarm as the great orb began to descend in the west. They would gaze anxiously at the last lingering rays on the tree-tops and liill-toiDs. But as the sun gradually dis¬ appeared, and darkness began to settle over them, they would see in the distance a twinkling star; and as they looked at this, another would ajDpear, and another, and another, till, as they stood gazing, the whole starry heavens would shine out before them. Instead of the going down of the sun being an eclipse, it only makes visible the splendor of the heavens. So we should go down to dying, thinking of the change as only revealing to us the vaster universe beyond. Again, I think that death, being a birth out of the body into this other condition, the life beyond is possibly one of The Intermediate State. 125 gradual unfolding, not unlike our childhood life here. I can¬ not think that a man is one thing here, and the next moment something very different in the other world. I cannot think that a man passes at once from low earthly conditions to a life far away among the angels. It seems to me that whatever change the spirit undergoes after leaving the "body will be gentle and gradual. The tired spirit may need rest; the weak spirit may need strength. In the land where all is new, there will be a gradual learning, a tender leading out into the morning of that glad day. In my own feelings, I have not a doubt that not only will life continue, but that it will experi¬ ence a gentle disclosure of the things beyond. I have not a doubt that angelic spirits will be in attendance to accompany us to our final home. I can think of nothing sweeter than a mother coming to stand by the death-bed of a child; or a child coming to meet its mother ; or friends and neighbors, with whom we have held sweet converse, coming to greet us at the last hour on earth. They will come to reassure our dying hopes; and, passing from the hands that soothe our aching brow and the lips that whisper in our heavy and un¬ hearing ears, we shall find ourselves by the side of friends in the other life. Socrates, before he died, said he expected soon to be with Homer, and Hesiod, and Orpheus, and Musaius. Cicero apostrophized his departed daughter, and said he should meet her in the realms of the blest. Dante thought to find his Beatrice in the spirit-life. It is the hope that you and I carry that w r e shall meet our children in the other land; that we shall there meet our friends who have died here, and that they will be our guides, guardians and 126 The Origin and Destiny of Man. counsellors; that they will lead us forth into that fair land, and will continue to minister unto us. As I stand here, it seems like a dream that I am talking to you in the light of this beautiful room; that the time will soon come when others shall be here and we shall be gone. Yes, my friends, the strange mystery lies before us. “Man dieth and wasteth away,” but the spirit goeth up from the body. While I feel, as I said before, that I talk without that firm foundation under me that I could wish as to exact facts, yet I have a conviction that is present and immovable that the spirit-life of those who trust in God will be as it should be ; that the life of the spirit will be suited to the spirit. Journey on in life, then. Do what is right. Trust in God. When the time comes to give up your friends, give them up not as one without hope, but trustfully, aye, cheerfully. And when our own time comes to go from this world, let us joyfully bid good-bye to the songs of friends, and go in the hope of a reunion and happiness in the land beyond. X. THE RESURRECTION. Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchr®?— Mark, xvi, 3. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?— Acts, xxvi, 8. M AN has appeared everywhere on the earth as a con¬ queror. He subdues the forests, reclaims the waste places, and drives out the wild beasts. He makes use of the power of the -wind and water and electricity. In everything he seems to be the master — as he is. But he has never been able to fully resist disease, nor to overcome the tendency to decay and death which is found in his own body. And, one age following after another, he may be represented as coming with the mourners who came to the grave of Jesus, and standing tearfully, questioningly in the presence of the great mystery of death, asking this question, “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre ?” Who shall hang a light in this dark way ? Who shall help us to see clearly into that which is beyond ? As a rule, truth does not come at once in its fullness to the mind. It is more like the breaking of a new day. First we have the gray twilight of the morning, then the rising of the sun, and then the full- 128 The Origin and Destiny of Man. ness of the clay. Especially when we come to look at matters in reference to the spirit, at questions in reference to the future, we cannot at once get the impressions of great truths upon the mind. It is only by much looking, by steady look¬ ing, and long looking, that the picture seems to take on its fullness, that a life beyond the grave seems to become a fact to us. And this is one of the benefits that I have hoped might arise from this series of discourses—that you will be benefited far beyond what I may say; that the light shall come to you that comes from looking into the future and keeping the subject before the mind. So, after having looked at the question of death, and in the next discourse trod with what seemed a firm and sure footing on the shores of the beyond, we last Sunday evening took up the question of the Intermediate State. I said to you then that while my mind was not very clear on the subject, I thought it was one that should not be passed over. My con¬ clusions were that the soul of man, on leaving the body, does not at once enter upon the fullness of bliss or of sorrow ; that it does not go at once to what we call heaven or to what we call hell; but that there is a time of longer or shorter dura¬ tion in which it gathers strength and preparation for the spirit-life. Then it is the faith of the church, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, that in some form there is to be a resur¬ rection or re-living of the body, and this intermediate state lies between death and that event. The exact question we now come to, seems to be this : Death takes away our body, deprives us of the senses through which we have held communion with material things ; now is man to live on for- The Resurrection. 129 ever in the absence of this body ? Or is he to be re-invested with a material organization ? I will first ask youi attention while I read ? few selections from the Scriptures, which seem to be the basis on w hich the church has founded its belief that there would be a resurrec¬ tion of the body. I will read first from the 19th chapter of Job, beginning at the 25th verse with the well-known text, “For I know that my redeemer liveth For I know that my Eedeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth : And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God : Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me. But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me ? Be ye afraid of the sword ; for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment. There must be a special interest about this text from the fact that it reflects the old patriarchal conception of the sub¬ ject. According to our Bible chronology, Methuselah lived in the time of both Adam and Noah ; and then, possibly about three generations from the time of the flood, the human family journeyed to the plains of Shinar and built the tower of Babel. Soon after this the book of Job was written. It thus comes in back of the time of Abraham ; and whether we look at it as literal history or as one of those poems written to illustrate truth, it is valuable as giving us that conception of truth which was back in the ancient mind. Here was this man, sick in mi-id and in body, smitten in property, and wasting away under the touch of disease, yet he exclaims : 9 130 The Origin and Destiny of Man. “I know that my Redeemer livetli.” So great is liis faith under every form of affliction that he says: “Though after my skin worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” There is in the 13th chapter of Hosea, in the 14th verse, this remarkable scripture : I will ransom them from the power of the grave : I will redeem them from death. O death, I will be thy plagues : O grave, I will be thy de¬ struction. And this from Daniel, 12th chapter, 2d verse: And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting hie, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. This subject, of course, like the question of immortality, was but dimly seen in the old Scriptures, and it is not till we reach the New Testament that we get full light. I will now read from the 22d chapter of St. Matthew, beginning at the 23d and ending at the 32d verse : The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and adied lnm, Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren : and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: Likewise the second, also, and the third, unto the seventh. And last of ail the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be of the seven ? for they ail had her. Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither many nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Ja¬ cob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. The Resurrection. 131 Of course, this is a hypothetical case, but it is a very clear illustration of the Saviour’s argument and cf His answer to what was supposed to be the greatest difficulty in the way of the doctrine. So, also, is the text: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” If he were the God of the dead, He would be a dead God, gathering death unto Him ; but being the God of the living, He is a living God, and gathers life unto Himself. Our Saviour here sides with the thought that there is a resurrrection, and bases it on the fact that the spirits of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are still living, and that the living spirit will some how call out for a living body. Now let me read from the 15th chapter of First Corinthians. You will remember the whole chapter is devoted largely to the discussion of this subject : Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead ? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen : And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testi¬ fied of God that he raised up Christ; whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised : And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins. Then they, also, which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from tho dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all bo made alive. The strength of the apostle’s argument lies in this : He 132 The Origin and Desting of Man. makes the resurrection of Christ the proof of the fact of the resurrection of man, and then goes on to show that, if Christ be not risen, certain consequences follow. He wants to make sure of the fact of Christ’s resurrection, for he joins the resurrection of man with it. He says, in the first place, “ If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain.” Paul could well make such a challenge as this, for his preaching had caused governors and kings to tremble, and had shaken the foundations of society to their very base. Christ’s apostles had filled the world with new ideas. Their preaching was actually transforming character, and was becoming a power before which the pagan leaders felt it became them to stand up and defend their own gods and their temples. Paul based the power of his preaching on the resurrection of Chist. Another result would be, that, if Christ be not risen, “your faith is also vain.” I may not be able, in reference to some proposition, to prove to you that it is certainly true ; but if it be a question whether my faith in Christ is vain, then I may say, even as the blind man said : “Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.” And Paul could well base his arguments on this appeal to consciousness. He felt that here was a faith which could not be vain, for it had accomplished great things; it had worked a clear reformation of character, and made new creatures of those who believed. Then the apostle says, if Christ be notrisen, “we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ.” If Christ be not raised, their preaching was vain ; second, the faith of the people was vain ; third, the apostles must be set The Resurrection. 133 down as self-convicted falsifiers before the world; and he finally draws one other consequence — “Then they, also, which are fallen asleep in him are perished.” Let me read, now, from First Thessalonians, 4th chapter, beginning at the 13th verse : But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them, also, which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God ; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. In this scripture there seems to be a special care that we be instructed on this subject, that those who know sorrow shall not be “as others who have no hope.” God knows it is hard enough for us to see our loved ones torn from our embrace, even when we are possessed with the assurance that they live hereafter. But what would be the gloom of that night, the fathomless depth of that shoreless ocean of sorrow, if we had not some such hope as this ! And he says, “Comfort one another with these words.” Pass them around from home to home, from house to house, from heart to heart; take cour¬ age and comfort from this assurance that, as “Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.” 134 The Origin and Destiny of Man. I will only ask your attention to one more selection, which is from the 20th chapter of Revelation, beginning at the 11th verse : And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God : and the books were opened ; and another book was opened, which is the book of life : and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them ; and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. It seems evident from these scriptures, and there are many more I might read, that the Bible certainly teaches the doc¬ trine of the resurrection. If we could be certain what is meant by this resurrection, we could feel that we had gained a great point. But here we are in the conflict of opinions, not as to the fact of the rising, but as to the manner. There is a large class of thinkers who claim that by the scriptural idea of resurrection there is meant simply the rising up of the soul from the body, its going up into a higher life after death. They claim, and justly enough, that the word we translate res¬ urrection may mean rising up, as well as rising again. Another view, maintained by a minister of our own church, of the California conference—Rev. Mr. Dryden—in a work published by our church, takes the ground that by the resurrection is meant not in any sense the rising of the body that dies, or that has lain in the grave, but the rising up of souls out of The Resurrection. 135 what is called the intermediate or unseen state. He takes the general ground that souls, at death, go into this hades; that they linger in this for a longer or shorter time; that the resurrection is a rising out of this state, and it may be going on constantly ; and that it is not a rising of the material body. Then there is the doctrine of the church accounted orthodox, which holds, though not in the most definite form, to the rising of the body. In some sense, the general thought of the church is the resurrection of the body that dies. Now, I have stated these various theories to you, and I would be glad if I could state with certainty just where the exact truth lies. You can find plenty of younger men than myself who can tell you just where it is, but to one who has read and thought long and deeply on the subject, it is hard to speak definitely. Yet, out of all the different opinions that are held, this one truth seems beyond question : that the faith of the church and the teaching of the Bible assure us of a life beyond, a life that some how or in some way will have a bodily form, will answer to the thought of the re-living of the bodies that die; for that seems to be the idea of a resurrec¬ tion. This man who holds that the resurrection is a rising out of the intermediate state makes a strong point on this, that it is the rising of the dead—not what we call dead in the sense of the body being dead—but of the living souls of those who have departed, applying the term “dead” to those who have died in the sense of bodily death, but who are living in the unseen state, out of which they arise. Passing now from these views, I want to look at the subject 136 The Origin and Destiny of Man, from a different standpoint. Most writers have thought that the analogies of nature seem to illustrate the doctrine of the resurrection, and there are many beautiful thoughts connected with this view, but to my mind they do not have very much weight. There is the thought of day rising out of night; the thought of spring rising out of the cold grave of winter. Possibly a better analogy might be found in the rising of the seed to the stalk, blossoming in the flower, and ripening in the fruit. Perhaps a still better one is that found in the change which the caterpillar undergoes, passing from its unseemly form to its chrysalis state, and emerging the bright-winged butterfly, resting in the air, and going from flower to flower. Passing from these analogies, I want to look back at some of the difficulties that hang about the question of the resur¬ rection. It may be a help to some minds to state them and answer them. In the first place, it is objected that there can¬ not be a resurrection of the body from the fact that the human body during life is frequently changed in its entire composi¬ tion. Formerly high authority used to controvert this fact, but it is better not to attempt that now. It is a pretty well established fact that a man living to the age of sixty will have at least six or seven bodies in that time. Now, the objectors say, a man having all these bodies, which one is it that will live hereafter ? At first view there seems to be something in this objection, but it really has very little strength, for that which we call identity, that which is our identity, does not desert us in these changes of the bodv. A man convicted of crime and sentenced to the penitentiary when a youth cannot say at the age of thirty : “I am not the man that was sen- The Resurrection. 137 tenced here ; the body that was first put in prison is not the body I now wear.” It might be true that he would not have one particle of the body with which he entered the cell, yet he would have that which satisfies the idea of selfhood, of per¬ sonal identity. It has been objected to the thought of the possibility of a resurrection, again, that the particles of the human body, when it dies and is placed away in the grave, not only return to dust, but that this dust may be again vitalized in other forms ; that it may grow in the tree and ripen in the fruit; that it may go to nourish that which is eaten by other bodies, and may be assimilated with and become part of these bodies, and that in this way the fact of resurrection is made impossible. Now I do not see that there is much weight in this argument, for in the first place what we mean when we speak of the particles of the human body is the substances which compose it. Take an example : a human body contains so much iron, so much oxygen, so much hydrogen, so much lime—in a word, so many of the elementary principles of nature. Now suppose that this body be dissolved, what becomes of these elements ? The iron is iron still; the oxy¬ gen is oxygen still; the hydrogen is hydrogen still ; the lime is lime still. And it does not matter whether, in the human body, you get back just the same hydrogen ; it does not mat¬ ter whether you get back just the same carbon, the same lime and the same iron. I breathe at this moment so much ogy- gen, and exhale so much carbon. The oxygen may have passed through other lungs, and thus have been a part of other bodies, but it is still oxygen. It remains itself ; and all 138 The Origin and Destiny of Man. that is required to fulfill the idea of even a literal resurrection is that we have bodies composed of the same elements that went to make up our bodies here—tha. is, of oxygen, carbon, &c. Whether it be the same oxygen and carbon that once were a part of ourselves matters not ; for those elements are always and everywhere the same. So it is that out of these elementary particles human bodies are builded, and out of nature’s storehouse God will in some way re-invest the spirit with a material organism. We can well believe that this is possible in the light of what chemistry can do. There are many things which the chemist can do which we would not believe to be possible did we not know them to be facts. I think it is Dr. Brown, who quotes from Mr. Hallett the story of a gentleman who was something of a chemist, and who had a number of servants. One of these had been particularly faithful, and he had given him a silver cup as a reward. The servant dropped the cup in a vessel of what he supposed to be pure water, but which in reality was aqua fortis. He let it lie there, not thinking it could receive any harm, but returning some time after saw the cup gradu¬ ally dissolving. He was loudly bewailing his loss, when the other servants told him that his master could restore the cup for him. He could not believe them. “ Do you not see,” he said, “that it is dissolving before our sight?” But they insisted, and at last the master was brought to the spot. He called for some salt water which he poured into the vessel, and told the servant to watch. By-aud-by the particles of the silver cup began to gather as a white powder at the bot¬ tom. When the deposit was complete, the master said to the The Resurrection. 139 servant: “Pour off the liquid, gather up this dust, have it melted and run together, then take it to the workman and let him hammer the cup out again.” You may take gold. You may file it down to a powder, mix it with other metals, throw it into the fire, do what you will with it, and the chemist will bring back with certainty the exact gold. Thus our bodies are built up by fruits from the tropics, by grain from the prairies. The flesh that roamed the plains as cattle has become part of us. If God can build up human bodies here, can he not find an d convert the dust that we put away in the grave, and bring it back to forms of life ? In my judgment, God is able to preserve even the particles of the human body and restore them. So far as the power is concerned, it can be done, and will be done, as God may think best. It seems to me there will be a resurrection in the sense of the soul being clothed with a material organism—something that will put it in relation to material things. I cannot think that this being of mine and yours, with all its experience of work and rest, of joy and sorrow, of struggle and victory, may have to go on without an outward bodily organism. I cannot believe that the spirit is to go on forever, leaving its companion behind—this body, which is the highest ideal of physical beauty. I need not now retrace the lines of thought given in the third of these discourses as to the processes which have led up to the perfect human form ; how they be¬ gan away down in the simplest forms of life, passing on through fish and serpent and quadruped, till we reach man, the being with the erect form and heavenward glance—man, with the hand that works, with the eye that weeps, with the 140 The Origin and Destiny of Man. face that laughs, with the reason that thinks, with the heart that feels. This human form is the highest ideal of physical organism. Well may we fondly linger about the ideals of Greek art. The perfect human form stands without a rival in the whole world of beauty. God having given us this body to illustrate the highest expression of beauty, and per¬ mitted us to rejoice in living in this form, and given it for a high purpose, then is it simply to be worn as a garment here ? This body seems to be the medium of sense communication. Now the material world is a fact, and it is one of the greatest facts which the mind can conceive. Here is the great earth on which we live ; there are the worlds of our solar system, and the worlds, infinite in number, that make the vast uni¬ verse. These are stupendous facts that endure. Then we have another variety of facts that live on. Water will run, trees will grow, flowers will bloom, fruits will ripen, the autumn breeze will rustle in the leaves, and sunshine will linger forever in beauty on the mountain tops. The question, as it looks to me, is this : Is man to be forever isolated from these things of beauty, and live in a sort of sublimated state, accessible only to the cold conceptions of thought; or is he to have such a body about him as will be capable of touch and taste, of sight and hearing—such a body as may stand by the running brook, sit beneath the shadows of the groves, and listen to the sweetness of song ? And reason seems to say to me that the spirit of man is to have such a body in the great future. I know not, and I care not, myself, whether in some way we take the germ of that body with us when we pass to the The Resurrection, 141 other side and our new body come as a growth, or whether by some divine agency the particles of the old body are gath¬ ered together. The great fact that I stand for is that the spirit lives, and that it is to have some such organism as will make it the connecting link between matter and spirit; that man is forever to fill that place where he takes hold of God and of the material universe. I have a beautiful dream—the thought that not only does the soul live, not only will there be some bodily organism for you and me, one in which material and mental and spiritual things will unite, but that some how the resurrection body will be infinitely glorious. The Scriptures say that the body is sown in corruption and that it shall be raised in incorruption ; sown in weakness — and oh, how weak ! sinking down to the last gasping breath—it is raised in power ; sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. You take these elements and put them together. Take incorruption— the thought of a body that shall never feel the touch of dis¬ ease or decay. Take the thought of strength ; we sometimes feel the thrill and trill of life all through us; one moment of such feeling is worth half-a-dozen ordinary days when we are oppressed with the sense of weakness. Take the thought that we shall at last put on incorruptibility, put on an organ¬ ism that disease cannot touch, an organism that shall never know the weakness and weariness that come from work and thought—that we shall have strength equal to any undertak¬ ing. How often in this life do we turn away from some book and say, “My head aches; I will have to quit reading”? How often do we hear persons say, “I shall not be able to build that house, or plant that orchard ” ? The body that so 142 The Origin and Destiny of Man. fails us is to be placed beyond tlie contact of disease, beyond the touch of -weariness ; it is to be endowed with the endur¬ ing strength of God Himself. I have a thought that the longing for the beautiful will find a realization in the perfect forms of our being hereafter. One of the most striking things in life, and perhaps one of the saddest, is to see the endless chase after beauty—the endless changes in the fashions of this world, the constant seeking for new types and higher realizations of the beautiful. The painter has put his ideal on the canvas and the sculptor in the marble, but our world goes on, seeking and finding not the perfect rest that is in the beautiful. The flowers whose fragrance we inhale are perfect as flowers ; the birds ard the trees are each perfect in their way. But man journeys on, never feeling that he has reached the exact idea of beauty in which he can rest. This idea is some how to be realized. What shape the spirit-form may take we know not, but we feel sure that in it man will find his yearnings for the beauti¬ ful satisfied. Carrying our mental consciousness, with its power of reason ; our spiritual consciousness, with its power of love and devotion and sympathy; and the thought of being re-invested with bodies beautiful beyond our present dreams, forever strong, forever young; and the vast universe being our home—the question comes, can all this be ? Yes ; it is no greater marvel than the present world that is about us. And He who has carried forward this vast work of creation is able to conserve the powers of mind and spirit, re-investing them with bodies, and giving them the vaster eternity in which to live, and labor, and love. XI. THE JUDGMENT DAT. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, butafter this the judg¬ ment. —Hebbews, ix, 27. O F death, the first step in the problem of human des¬ tiny, there can be no possible doubt. Of immortality, or the fact that our real being survives death, I think we may be well assured. That the spirit does not at once enter upon the fullness of its after-life or condition, but exists for a time in what the church has called the interme¬ diate state, has been in the main the faith of the church, and is possibly the actual truth. That there will in some sense be a resurrection of the dead, we sought to prove from the Scriptures and from reason, on last Sabbatli evening. The point we sought to make was that man, who in the present life is the one being endowed with both a material and spirit¬ ual nature, who seems to be the connecting link between matter and divinity, will in the future continue to hold the same place. I now come to talk to you of the Judgment Day. In our text, the first part speaks of the dying of man as an event occurring under the operation of law or by ap¬ pointment. “It is appointed unto man once to die.” And 144 The Origin and Destiny of Man. in the same appointment, after death he is to be judged. When we have once taken the problem of destiny out of the realm of chance, and rested it upon law, we have gone a great way in the direction of the reasonable probability of the outcome of that destiny. If we are left to chance, we can only dwell forever in the domain of speculation. And if we can once ascertain the nature and bearing of those laws, we may calculate with considerable certainty on their results. We find the law which consigns us to dust to be one of ancient appointment, for, in the morning of our Adamic race, God said: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” It was the simple announcement of a great law, and this law has silently, steadily, ceaslessly held on its way, not¬ withstanding all the efforts that man has made to avert it. Notwithstanding the learning, the wealth and the labor expended in the direction of resisting this law, it has, without seeming effort, taken the old and the young, the wise and the simple, the rich and the poor, and consigned them all to the dust of the grave. And it seems entirely probable that we shall find the judgment day to be ordered by law also. We shall find within ourselves, possibly, that on which the judg¬ ment day will turn and depend. Just as we find within us the elements on which the law of our dissolution depends, so we have about us mind, memory, conscience, and the sense of justice, and these seem to be the basis of a future judg¬ ment day. I shall pursue the same course that was followed last Sabbath evening—looking at the subject first in the light of the Scriptures, and then in the light of reason. I will read The Judgment Day. 145 first from the 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes, 13th and 14th verses : Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments ; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. Conclusions are usually reached late in life, and this seems to be the substance of the wise man’s thought and experi¬ ence— looking over the whole of human life and conduct — that its importance was found in fearing God and keeping His commandments, and that the reason for this was the fact that God would bring every one into judgment. I will next read from the 25th chapter of St. Matthew, beginning with the 21st verse: When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory : And before him shall be gathered all nations : and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world : For I was ahungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in : Naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee ahungered, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee drink ? When saw wo thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee ? And the King shall answ r er and say unto them, Verily I say unto yon, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand. Depart from me, 10 116 The Origin and Destiny of Man. ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels : For I was ah lingered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ya gave me no drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me not in : naked, and ye clothed ma not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Loid, when saw we thee ahungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee ? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. The point I want to make from tills Scripture is that the kind of judgment spoken of is a continuation of a life-history that begins in this world. First, we have in this chapter the representation of the virgins who went forth to meet the bridegroom — the live wise ones who forecasted the future and made ready for the occasion, and the live foolish who lived on in unconcern. Then we have the parable of the tal¬ ents, in which it is said that the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man who went into a far country, giving to each of his servants talents according to his ability, and upon his return he called each servant to account for the talents entrusted to him. These talents may represent the different number of years we live; to some are given ten years, to some twenty, to some forty, and it may be the parable teaches that we shall be called to a reckoning for the time placed at onr disposal. Or the talents may represent the different conditions of life; some have plenty of money, they are blessed with advantages for education, and have many opportunities for doing good; while others are born to poverty and ignorance, and have but little power to benefit their fellows. Or they may represent the gradations of ability among men : some have great talents The Judgment Day. 147 in tlie direction of song, in tlie direction of reason, of oratory, of love, of faith. Then possibly we shall be called to answer for the powers that are entrusted to us in this world, the places of trust we have held. And when it is asked in the last day, Who are these that come up to pass before the Judge ? we must turn to the earth-history, and find there the starting point we seek. The talent-bearers all started down in the earth-life ; without the starting down here there would be no occasion for the judgment beyond. So it is that the judgment is not an isolated fact. It is rather a part of the history of this life. It grows out of the fact of man’s account¬ ability in this life, out of the fact that man is on probation. I will read one verse from the 17th chapter of Acts : Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained ; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. In this chapter the apostle is arguing that God winked at the times of past ignorance, but now commands all men to repent because He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world. He bases the truth of this fact on the other fact that God has raised Christ from the dead. In our last discourse, you will remember, particular weight was laid on Paul’s argument for the resurrection. The apostle based his whole argument for the resurrection of man on the resurrec¬ tion of Christ. This resurrection stands prominently in the argument, because the consequences that would follow if it were not true were such as to make any other conclusion im¬ possible. And here he makes the judgment an assured fact, because of, and as related to, the resurrection of Christ. If 148 The Origin and Destiny of Man. Christ is risen, then is the judgment a fact. I read next the 10th verse of the 5th chapter of Second Corinthians : For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that h* hath done, whether it be good or bad. This verse is so clear and definite that I shall add no word to it. I will read two verses from the 4th chapter of Thessa- lonians : For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. I will read also a few verses from the 3d chapter of Second Peter, beginning with the 10th verse : But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness. Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. In tlie verse from Tliessalonians the coming of the Lord is represented to be heralded by the last trump, and attended by the rising of the dead, and there seems also to be the thought that at the last day there is to be a dissolution of the structure of our earth. I am not certain, in my own mind, as to how much of this is to be taken in a figurative and how The Judgment Day. 149 much in a literal sense. Of this, however, we may be sure, that even so great an event as the end of our world is not at all improbable. It is not probable that God will always con¬ tinue the race on this earth in its present condition. When we turn to astronomy, our authors are full of teachings that there are burned-out worlds, that there are deaths of worlds as well as births of worlds. Dr. Clarke thinks there is a sci¬ entific accuracy in this picture of the destruction of our world at the last day. It is stated here, further, that “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.” It is a known fact that electricity is an agent that has the power to separate water into its com¬ ponent gases. Now the aerial heavens surrounding our earth support a great quantity of watery vapor. It is also known that the heavens are highly charged with electricity, and it is supposed that all that would be necessary to a literal fulfill¬ ment of this Scripture would be such an action of electricity upon the waters of the earth and the vapors in the clouds, as would resolve them back into their primitive gases, leaving the oxygen by itself and the hydrogen by itself. These prim¬ itive elements of water are highly inflammable and explosive. You put one drop of water on an anvil, and place over it a bar of hot iron, and strike it with a hammer, and there is a noise equal to the report of a gun. If this action of electricity on water be the method of the earth’s final destruction, it is reasonable to suppose that there would be successive explo¬ sions of the particles of the waters composing the oceans and seas of the earth and the vapors of the clouds. And as these elements are highly inflammable, the earth might be wrapped 150 The Origin and Destiny of Man. in a great conflagration, even tlie “elements melting with fer¬ vent lieat.” “We look for new heavens and a new earth.” Nothing is finally destroyed. Out of the fiery ordeal a heaven and an earth, grander and more beautiful, shall arise, in which righteousness shall dwell. There is one more Scripture I will read, and then pass to consider the subject in another light. In the 20th chapter of Revelation, lltli and 12th verses, we have this Scripture : And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away : and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life : and the dead were judged out cf those things which were writ¬ ten in the books, according to their works. Before passing to look at the subject in the light of reason, I want to give an example of how it was viewed by the ancients. I quote from memory from the writings of Plato. It is recorded in the book of Plato called the Georgias, that Socrates, in his disputations with the Skeptics on the things that lie beyond this life, gives this legend : That the custom used to be to judge men before they died, but that con^laints reached the earth in regard to the judgments passed here, both from the Elysian fields and from the regions of Pluto. It was said that persons would arrive in the Elysian planes whose character was such as not to merit everlasting bliss; and, on the other hand, persons were sent to the regions of Pluto who did not deserve endless punishment. Hearing these complaints, the gods took counsel together, and rea¬ soned that it is not well to judge men in this life, because The Judgment Day . 151 around their death-beds may assemble influences that ought not to weigh at such a time and on such a matter — the influ¬ ence of money, of intellect, of social standing, of friendship. Moreover, you may not be able to get accurately at the true worth of their lives. After due deliberation, therefore, the gods resolved to remove the power of judgment from the earth, and appointed three judges : one for Asia, one for Africa, and one for Europe — Ehadamanthus, Minos, and Eachus. These judges were stationed in the meadow just beyond life, where the paths met and parted, and the dead came unto them, not in the body-form, but as spirits. It was argued that if a man be large before death, his body will be large after death. If he be beautiful before death, he will be beautiful after death. If his bodv be coarse in life, so will he be after death. If it has received scars in this life, it will carry those scars after death. And so of the soul: if in this life it be coarse or refined, good or bad, if it be pure and beautiful or scarred and diseased — whatever it be in this life, it will be the same after death. When a soul came into the presence of these judges, they knew not whether it was a rich man or a poor man, king or jmasant. All they saw was the character, and they judged only by the character; and so judging, no more complaints reached the world of unjust judgments. I have related this as an instance from classical literature of the thought of the ancient mind as to the final judgment. I want now to look at the subject in the light of reason. Among the sentiments of which we are conscious, that of jus¬ tice is prominent — the sentiment of right, the feeling that in 152 The Origin and Destiny of Man. some way justice should be and will be accorded to all. This sentiment is so strong that, if it have permission to speak, it will not rest if injustice be done to any, or if any fail to have justice accorded to them. It is also felt that the judgments of this world are uncertain, that justice is not and cannot always be meted out to men on earth. Lawyers are familiar with cases where men, after an impartial trial, have been sen¬ tenced to death and executed, and after all facts have come to light that proved their innocence. And it is not enough that the juries that convicted them have gone out and planted the white flag above their graves ; they could not undo what they had done. Reason points to a higher tribunal, where there can be no mistakes; where final and even justice shall be done to all. It points to the future for this judgment, from the fact that in the jiresent the proofs are not all at hand. God is in a sense judging men all the time; and men are judging themselves, as they array themselves on one side or the other of great principles. But the influence of our lives does not terminate with life itself, and until all the influences of each life can be determined, there can be no final judg¬ ment. Take the lives of Thomas Paine and John Wesley. Paine was an infidel, possibly an honest infidel. He has been greatly abused by the church. He wrote many things that have been very injurious to the human mind. He set many influences at work in this world for error that have not vet been arrested, and mav not be arrested till the end of time. ' */ It is impossible to judge Thomas Paine and mete out justice according to the deeds done in the bodv till the final influ- ence of his writings may be estimated. John Wesley labored The Judgment Day. 153 in another direction. He labored to build up faith, not to tear it down ; he believed in the Bible, and worked for God, and not till time shall be no more can all the sweet and holy influences he set in motion be estimated in the good they have wrought for the human family. Take Alexander, whose ambition led him to a career of conquest that drenched the world in blood, and whose example has not yet ceased to have its influence on the human mind ; or Napoleon, whose ambi¬ tion filled Europe with war. None of us can estimate the good or the evil we may have done till the influence of our life here is seen in the last day. Hence, while the sentiment of justice demands an impartial judgment, reason pushes that judgment into the far future. Reason argues the methods oi judgment from an analysis of the human mind and heart. "We read in Revelation of the opening of books, and of the dead being judged out of these books. I think the meaning of this is not that God has angels who keep actual books, recording therein all human events, but that there is a great book of God kept in each human heart. These books are the books of our own nature. There Is the book of memory, and the book of conscience. Take memory, that power which conserves all that the mind has received, the thoughts as well as the events of the past. We may suppose that the great bulk of what we have learned is in time forgotten. The probability is that nothing of what is once lodged in the mind is lost. Sir William Hamilton gives many instances of the marvelous power of memory. He tells of a Corsican youth, noted for this faculty, who was brought before judges and put to a test of his power. Men read for 154 The Origin and Destiny of Man. hours in various languages, and when they were all done, this youth went on and repeated, word for word, all that had been read. There are instances of persons being able to repeat hundreds of verses read in tlieir hearing. Even the slightest impressions upon the mind are never wholly lost. There is a case recorded in medical books of a young lady who was taken ill, and who, while in delirium, talked in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. She had never studied those languages, and the people were amazed. It was supposed she was inspired. Scientific men investigated the matter, and found that some years before she had been servant to a clergyman. A German scholar was called in, who took down these utterances, and it was ascertained that they were quotations from ancient au¬ thors, which the girl had heard the clergyman repeat as he walked back and forth in his study. There are instances of persons nearly losing their lives by drowning, where the mind is so aroused in the moment of peril that all the events of the past spring at once to the foreground. Now, if what I am saying be true, and it seems to be founded on the nature of mind, we carry within us the great book of memory, and memory has only to turn her pages to the long-lost and for¬ gotten deeds that have been done, to the words spoken in anger, to the profane speech or the heartfelt prayer, to the words of kindness and the deeds of love. They may seem to have passed from memory, yet will they stand out in con¬ sciousness in the last day. Take conscience, that strange monitor whose office is to dis¬ approve that which the mind thinks is wrong, to approve that which the mind thinks is right; which is ever impelling us in The Judgment Day. 155 the direction of right, and holding us back from wrong. Take the book of conscience along with the book of memory, and as the pages of memory are turned, and the deeds therein recorded are pointed out, conscience will be there present, saying: “There I cautioned you against the approach of temptation ; there I condemned that angry word, that wicked thought, that evil deed ; there I approved that act of charity, that word of kindness.” We have the elements of judgment within us. We carry about us the records on which we will be judged in the last day. And reason and revelation both point to the solemn fact that each one, however he may seek to hide away from himself, or from his God, must at last stand face to face with all he has thought or done; must stand face to face with conscience and the highest sense of right. The hour will come when the darkness can no longer conceal, and when the noise of passion can no longer drown the voice of judgment. Oh ! what shall it be to be alone with memory, alone with conscience ! The everlasting prin¬ ciples of justice will bring us each to that tribunal sooner or later. I have said that we cannot tell what will be the outward attendants of the judgment day. We cannot tell whether this final trump is that which arouses the consciences of men, or whether it is some great awakening that shall call forth the dead ; or whether the throne of God shall be erected in mid¬ heavens, or in the chambers of the soul. The central point is that there is to be a judgment where all shall answer for the deeds done in the body and justice be done to each one. In this there is certainly something that commends itself to all 156 The Origin and Destiny of Man. right-minded people. There is nothing in the judgment day that should fill candid-minded, prayerful men with fear. I believe that God is father, God is love; Christ is brother, Christ is judge. And though my life may not have been all that it could have been or that it should have been, I am not unwilling that that life shall go before God. There is some¬ thing remarkable in man’s heart in its readiness to go to God. Men will turn to God in the supreme moments of their lives, the moments of great anguish or profound joy, when they will not turn to each other. They know that His judgments are true and righteous. Let me entreat you, then, to be care¬ ful of this great book of memory. "Write on its leaves such lines as you would have read in the last day. Put on its pages such pictures as the ages may look at and be the better for seeing. Pill it up with good thoughts, good words, good deeds. So live in an approving conscience as to merit the approval of the Great Judge. So live that conscience will approve now, and you need not fear what conscience will say in the great day. XII. THE QUESTION OF FUTUEE PUNISHMENT. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the right¬ eous into life eternal.—M atthew, xxv, 46. W E have reached a point in these discourses, my friends, when it seems not only proper but necessary to consider the question of future punishment. The theme is not a pleasant one. We naturally turn aside from the contemplation of suffering, and in these discourses I would gladly pass this subject in silence did the interests of truth permit. But we must bring ourselves to the task of looking at both the pleasant and the unpleasant phases of the different questions we w r ould study ; and take whatever view we may of this subject, it is not free from difficulty. There is a darkness that hangs about the problem of evil that is not readily dissipated, whether considered as to its origin, its progress, or its final issue. The wisest and best of our world have not been able to agree as to its solution. It has long been in controversy, and will probably continue in contro¬ versy ; and possibly, from the controversial standpoint, each party could wish that truth were on their side. It is, how¬ ever, a much higher and better thing for us all to desire to be 158 The Origin and Destiny of Man. on the side of truth. It is better to be on the side of truth than to plant ourselves on some proposition, and then want truth to come on our side. For we must remember that truth will endure. It is not affected by our views concerning it. Whatever may be my views in reference to any g en fact, the fact remains. My belief or unbelief cannot change it. Were we for the first time in life to stand in the ju’esence of an array of men drawn up with pointed guns, and look upon the victim about to receive their deadly aim, our sympathies would at once turn to that man, and we would say that he should be released. Were we to look for the first time at the law, through its officers, arresting, condemning, sentencing, and then executing a culprit, our sympathies would at once say, “Release that man ! Don’t take his life ! ” Had we from some fairy world come down to this earth on a bright spring day, and should we, while looking out on every scene of beauty, journey by the jail, and should we be told that hun¬ dreds of men were there locked in behind iron doors, we would at once say, “ Set them free ! ” But not till we should be brought to see these circumstances in all their bearings in the light of the facts of this world, should we be in a condi¬ tion to judge correctly. Hot till we should know all the facts that lie back of war and crime, could we decide whether it were best for that man to be shot, whether it were best for those men in prison to be set free. So of the subject we are now to consider. We must not project our thoughts into the far beyond, and there consider the subject of after-death punishment as an abstraction. The question, in any broad sense, can be studied only in its relation to facts both human The Question of Future Punishment. 159 and divine. It can be studied in a broad sense only when we remember tliat there is such a thing as right, such a thing as wrong; that right is not an arbitrary dictation of some sover¬ eign power, but is something that resides in the very nature nature of things. "We must also recognize the other fact, that there is such a thing in this world as sin. Y^e must recog¬ nize the fact, too, of a divinely established government; that not only has God established laws by which he rules the nat¬ ural world, but there is also a moral law, and that God has come forth in this world in organized government; that this government is for the prevention of wrong, for the protection of right, and the jireservation of order in His dominions. And I think, if we would look at the subject fairly and under- stanclingly, we must recognize still another fact: that men are forming character here, and that with this character they are passing beyond into the other state. If the subject had never been raised before, and we had proceeded thus far in its consideration, the question would arise: "What is the condition in the other world of the un¬ good ? And would we not be led to suppose that there would be a difference in that world between the good and the bad ? It is not, however, a new question, and it has gathered about itself no little literature. It is not only interesting to know what is true, but to know wdiat men have thought to be true ; and so it may be both instinctive and profitable to dwell for a time on the theories that have been and still are held on this subject. First, there is the theory of what are called the orthodox churches. That theory, briefly stated, is the theory of endless punishment. It is held not only by what are 160 The Origin and Destiny of Man. known as the orthodox churches of the Protestant faith, but is also the doctrine of the Homan Catholic church. Though it is true that the Catholic church holds to the theory of a period of after-death probation, or purgatory, it teaches the doctrine of endless suffering. I will read a few texts from the Scriptures upon which this doctrine has usually been based. The first is the text from which I am speaking : “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” The argument here is that the same Greek word is employed to state the duration of the punishment of the wicked that is used to state the duration of the happiness of the righteous. If the doctrine of endless punishment is taught anywhere in the Bible, it is taught here ; and this text does seem to fairly teach it. And yet it is but just to state that not a few good scholars claim that the words may be fairly rendered, and that the meaning is, that souls shall go, not into unending punishment, but into the punishment of eternity, and the life of eternity, as carried over and distin¬ guished from the punishments and rewards of time. It is a fact, also, that the word translated “punishment” carries the idea of eloping or pruning, of restriction, or restraint, of chastisement, and this would seem to be for the purpose of improvement. Then there is the text found in the 9th chapter of Mark, 43d to the 48th verse: And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched : Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shail be quenched; The Question of Future Punishment. 161 Where their w orm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. Then there are the ‘28th and 29th verses of the 5th chapter of St. John : Marvel not at this : for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth : they that have done good, unto the resurrec¬ tion of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. Then there is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, recorded in the 16tli chapter of Luke. The substance of the parable is that there were two men, one living in wealth and ease, and the other a beggar at his gate. The beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried, and in hell, being in tor¬ ment, and seeing Lazarus afar off, he cried that he might come and bring him relief. But Abraham answered him, say¬ ing there was an impassable gulf between him and Lazarus. There is another class of Scriptures, which teach that cer¬ tain sins exclude from the kingdom of heaven. The first I read is from First Corinthians, 6th chapter, 9th and 10th verses : Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulter¬ ers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortion¬ ers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And similar teaching is found in Galatians, 5th chapter, the 19th to the 21st verse : 11 162 The Origin and Destiny of Man. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these : adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedi¬ tions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. From Ephesians, 5th chapter, 5th verse, I read : For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor cov¬ etous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. From the 21st chapter of Revelation, I read the 27th verse : And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketli abomination, or maketh a lie : but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life. These are some of the texts on which this doctrine of endless punishment has been based. I would state, however, that there is not a practical agreement among teachers of the ortho¬ dox school as to the grounds of this punishment. Dr. Bledsoe, the author of ‘'Theodicy,” a w r ork of great strength and merit, says it is not strange that men have found themselves unable to believe in the doctrine of endless misery, because it has been based upon the sins of this life, and it is unreasona¬ ble to suppose that the sins of the brief life of man here will receive an eternity of punishment. The only true ground for eternal punishment, he says, is the ground of eternal sinning; and he holds that men will sin eternally, and therefore they will in justice suffer eternally. I think Dr. Bledsoe's argu¬ ment breaks down in this : he teaches that it is not for the sins of this life, but for eternal sinning that men will receive endless punishment. Now if it is not a fact that the sins of this life so determine character that men will as a consequence The Question of Future Punishment. 163 sin forever, then in the other state men may reach a point where they will cease sinning, and then according to his own theory their punishment will come to an end; but if the sins of this life necessitate endless sinning, then it is virtually the deeds done in the body for which men are to be punished eternally. Dr. Landis, in his work on immortality, holds to the doc¬ trine that it is for the sins of this life that men are to suffer eternally. The general argument advanced in behalf of this doctrine is briefly this : that God is judge as well as father; that justice is an attribute of His character as well as love and mercy; that the period of probation looking to the develop¬ ment of character must, in the nature of things, have an end some time ; and that however long you may make that proba¬ tion, whether it be seventy or seventy thousand years, to be a probation, it must some time come to an end ; and whenever it does end, then beyond that is eternity. I now pass from these general statements of the theories of eternal punishment to another doctrine held on this sub¬ ject—the doctrine of the Universalist church. The old school Universalists taught that there was salvation immediately after death for all souls. They seem to have had the thought that sinning related solely to the things of this life, and that when the spirit left the body it was freed from the conse¬ quences of sin and went at once into happiness. The later school of Universalists hold to an after-death punishment, but to final salvation. There are two routes by which they reach their result. One is the Calvinistic route. The Calvinists teach, and the Westminster confession of faitli teaches, that 164 The Origin and Destiny of Man. all for whom Christ died will certainly be saved. The Calvin- istic branch of Universalists take the Bible and very easily prove that Christ died for all; then they logically reach the conclusion that all wull be saved. I am very frank to say that if I were a Calvinist, I could not be less than a Universalist. The other route leads its travelers by the freedom of the human will. They hold that all punishment must be correc¬ tive ; that the object of its infliction must be reformatory. Adding this to the thought of the sovereignty of God, and the thought of the infinite love of God, and they claim that men will some time reach a point where they will cease to sin; ceasing to sin, they will begin to rise ; rising, they will ulti¬ mately reach the plane of perfect bliss. The main difficulty that I see in this doctrine—admitting after-death probation—is this: how can you certainly predicate in regard to a free being that there will be a reform in conduct and character ? I will bring to your notice a few of the texts on which Universalists found their belief. The first is the parable of the prodigal son. I will not read it, as it is somewhat lengthy, and all are familiar with it. It represents a younger and an elder son. The younger leaves his home and goes out into the world to seek his fortune, falling into evil courses, and wasting his substance in riotous living. When he is reduced to poverty and distress, thoughts come to him of his far-off home, and he resolves to return thither, ready to be a servant in his father’s house if that be permitted him. But his father, gladdened by the sight of his long-lost son, receives him with great rejoicing, and makes a feast in his honor. It is reasoned from this parable that our Heavenly Father will forever be The Question of Future Punishment. 165 looking out for the return of His wandering children from all worlds, ready to receive them with open arms. Then there is the 22d verse of the 15th chapter of First Corinthians : For as in Adam all (lie, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. They argue from this, that, whatever may be the death in Adam, there is set over against it the life all have in Christ. There are also the 9th and 10th verses of the 1st chapter of Ephesians: Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth ; even in him. Their argument is that the purpose of God is to gather in Christ all things, whether in heaven or on earth. I will also read from the 2d chapter of Phillippians, the 9th and 10th verses : Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name : That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth. And from the 1st chapter of Colossians, the 19th and 20th verses: For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell: And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. I have thus given you some of the Scriptures on which both parties rest their arguments. I can, of course, in this hour, give only by suggestion their arguments. The next doctrine I would call your attention to is the doctrine of annihilation. You may remember that in our discourse on the intermediate 166 The Origin and Destiny of Man. state we referred to the teachings of those who claim that, when a man dies, he enters a state of unconsciousness. This same school claims tha': in the resurrection both the good and the bad shall be raised, and that after judgment the good shall go into happiness and the wicked into annihilation. Their argument is that immortality is not a natural necessity, and that if a soul is not endowed with immortality by coming in contact with perfect goodness in the person of Christ, it passes into non-existence. I confess to you, my friends, there is not a little that seems to favor this doctrine. Probably none of us believe in the necessary immortality of the soul. Probably all of us believe that immortality is conferred by the will and purpose of God ; and if souls are held in being by the purpose of God, if probation prove a failure, there being no hope of ultimate reformation, it does not seem unreasonable that they may be permitted to drop into non-existence. I say, from the standpoint of reason, there is not a little to favor this theory. Then there is the doctrine of the New or Swedenborgian Church, which teaches that, as we pass through this life, we develop what is termed a preponderance of character for good or evil, and that this character becomes our life. This char¬ acter may not reveal itself fully and clearly before the world. A man may seem to be good in the eyes of his fellows, and yet away down in the depths of his soul he may not be a good man. Or his character may carry many outward signs of evil, and yet he may have every wish to do right. Swedenborg teaches that what we want to be is what we will be. If a man wants to be good, his nature will gradually and surely be The Question of Future Punishment. 167 brought to goodness. If the germ of his being be evil, when he dies he is the thing he wants to be. Swedenborg claims that you cannot change this tendency after death without annihilating the being, this love, whether it be of good or evil, being the life. He teaches that, while there is endless suffering, it is not of that unmitigated character that is usually supposed. He makes the hell of the wicked the best condition that is possible for them. His thought is, they will be cared for much after the manner that our governments here find it necessary to look after convicted criminals. While •we shut them up in prison, we make their condition in con¬ finement as tolerable as may be under the circumstances. So he claims that the future condition of the wicked is not one cf unmitigated suffering. It is the best that God can do for them. But as the very germ of their being is evil in its essence, their life is fixed forever on that plane. Then there is the theory of Dr. Bushnell, in whom I have great confidence as a clear thinker and sincere man, and yet I think his teaching on this point is very strange. He holds to the doctrine of endless punishment, but on a diminishing or descending scale. Say that the agony of the soul may now be ten—in the next generation it descends to nine, in the next to eight, and thus gradually drops down to zero, or to the point of unconsciousness. In a word, his thought is that the wicked will finally become as burned-out cinders—startling monuments of the consequences of sin. They are to be held in being, yet at a point of consciousness so low as to be scarcely w r orthy to be called life or conscious of their misery. Others hold to the doctrine of endless punishment in this 168 The Origin and Denting of Mon. light: that it is a dark background of misery, into which free beings may be forever plunging, and from which they may be forever emerging, and there will be endless misery, but not for the same souls. Souls may plunge into this dark back¬ ground, and they may emerge out of it. Then there is the theory that endless suffering will be the feeling of endless loss that all will experience who have wasted opportunities of serving God, who have buried the talents confided to them. There will be never-ending regret in the thought that they cannot be in the life eternal what they would have been had they improved these wasted opportunities. Turning from the various theories that have obtained on this subject, you may now want me to tell you my own views, and I have no reserve in expressing them. In the first place, I believe in the eternal and immutable distinctions between right and wrong. I l elieve in the everlasting principles of right. In the second place, I believe that the laws of God are unchangeable, and that the laws of God in this world and in all worlds are the same ; that the same laws that abide here will abide yonder, now and forever ; that what is right in this world is right yonder, and what is wrong here is wrong there. I believe, further, that there is what in moral philosophy is called the law of sequences, that certain results follow certain courses of conduct ; if a certain act be performed, a certain result will follow—it may be immediately or it may be long delayed ; and that the laws of sequence are as immutable and as certain as the law of gravity or any law of chemistry or of the natural world. Believing these things, it seems to me that both heaven and hell begin in this world. Men begin The Question of Future Punishment. 169 the formation of character in this life. They array themselves on the one side or the other of these great principles ; they become, as it were, parts of right or parts of wrong ; they have characters which assimilate to the right or to the w ? rong, according to the nature of their desires and associations : and with these characters men are passing through the gates that open into the endless beyond. Believing this, I have not a shadow of doubt of after-death suffering for men who die in sin. The opposite of this would be to me illogical and unreasonable. But the great question you would ask is, Will this punish¬ ment be eternal ? The answer depends on the answer to two other questions : First, will there be, after death, a period of probation that will probably eventuate in a reformation of character ? The Scriptures are painfully silent on this subject of an after-death probation. "While there is less than is gen¬ erally supposed to teach that there will not be a future proba¬ tion, they nowhere, as I can see, affirm that there will be. I would not, for my right arm, lead any soul to believe there is an after-death probation. I do not know the fact. Nor am I able to affirm certainly that there may not be. I do not know what changes may be effected as the soul journeys on. I can only say, while there is nothing that would positively encourage the thought of a probation beyond the grave, there is nothing which positively forbids the thought. After years of study, and an agony on this subject, that none but myself can understand, I can only say, I don’t know ; and I am very certain that no one else knows. Nor is it essential that we do know, or even believe in endless punishment in order to be 170 The Origin and Destiny of Man. Christians. It is a risk I ask no soul to take. The other question is : If there be a probation, will it certainly eventu¬ ate in the reformation of character ? If it will, then the doc¬ trine of Universalism will be true. But holding, as I do, to the doctrine of the freedom of the human soul, I cannot cer¬ tainly predict the turning around of a free being. I cannot say with certainty that some time it will turn from the wrong and do the right. We hear people say : “Oh, if I could have another trial, I would live differently;’’ or, “If I could live my life over again, I would live abetter life.” You do not know the fact. If there be another trial, and another and an¬ other, each trial must begin where the other left off. If there be a trial after death, that trial must begin where the other ends; and if the life lived here have sent its roots down into lust, or if it have perverted its powers of truth and justice, it must begin the next world just as it leaves this. So that I cannot say, if there be a probation, that it will certainly mean reformation ; nor can I say that it will not be a reformation. Admitting the doctrine of the soul’s freedom, I do not see how any man can form an opinion as to what will certainly be the result. Of this I am certain—that so long as there is sin¬ ning, so long there will be suffering. If men die in sin, they will suffer after death. If men sin in the future, they will suffer in the future. There can be no heaven without purity. As to the nature of future punishment, I do not and cannot believe in a literal lake of fire, into which human souls are plunged to burn forever. I do not and cannot believe in the terrible ideas of hell that have come down to us from the sensuous past, such as the representations of Dante, Mil- The Question of Future Punishment. 171 ton, Pollock and Allien’s Alarm. Sucli severe literalism, such awful pictures of torment, are enough to negate the idea of God. That a God of love could so torment His lost chil¬ dren, or any sentient beings, is absolutely unthinkable. Nor can I believe in a punishment that is wrathful or vindictive. I must forever stand by the thought of the Eternal Goodness. To me it seems that it is more a suffering than a punishment that comes upon lost souls—a suffering of the consequences of wrong-doiug, and of the deep sense of loss of what they might have been, but are not. And then there may be the raging of angry passions, and the fire of human lusts, and the dark companionships of evil spirits. Such a hell we can read¬ ily conceive; men carry it out of this world with them, and in some such suffering mankind can easily enough believe. But there is evidently a very general turning away of the public mind from the cruel ideas that have come down to ns from the darkness of the past. To preach such a hell now is either to disgust sensible men with the idea of religion, or drive them into infidelity. While God reigns and the love of justice lives in human breasts, there must be some respect to what is reasonable and right, even in our ideas of hell. But the reaction from the old view is likely to carry us too far in the opposite direction. We are in danger of losing the strength and character that can come only from a proper conception of law and justice and reward and penalty, and lapsing into a weak and irresponsible sentimentalism. The ideas of law and penalty cannot, with safety either to the individual or to society, be let go in any world. They are founded in fact, and must be held fast in theory. In parting from the old and 172 The Origin and Destiny of Man. over-statements concerning future punishment, we are in dan¬ ger of losing sight of the truth that still remains. The real hell of the Bible is certainly as much a fact now, and as much to be feared now, as ever, and as such should be preached from every pulpit. And it is to be feared that not a few min¬ isters, feeling unable in a good conscience to state the doc¬ trine in the old way, and dreading to encounter the criticism and the cry of “heresy” that would come upon them if they preached a modified view, say nothing at all. I have detained you fully as long as I ought in the discus¬ sion of this painful subject. Let me bid you look to a higher and different ground or motive. I assure you that, if any soul dreams of going to heaven on the slender hope that there may be a trial after death, and on that hope continues the love and practice of sin, that soul is very far from heaven. That soul has got to reach a point of character that turns from the wrong because it is wrong, that leaves the wrong and clings to the right. It must be so in the nature of things. If you would be sure of a blessed life hereafter, turn in this life to the right. Do right for the sake of right, and not from the low motive of evading punishment. The highest type of virtue is that which turns away from wrong with aversion, and cleaves to the good because it is good. There is darkness along the way of sin, so far as we can see, here and hereafter. The wisest way is to break with sin in this world. Unite yourselves to the right here, and enjoy the hope of endless life in the regions of right hereafter. XIII. THE HEAVENLY WORLD. In my father’s house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.— St. John, xlv, 2. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly : wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.— Hebrews, xi, 16. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain : for the former things are passed away. —Revelation, xxi, 4. T HUS, my friends, from the light that comes from this word of God do we catch glimpses of the world and the glory beyond. I say glimpses, for I think it is not given to any of us to discern with clearness the outlines even, much less with fullness of detail, all that may await us in the after¬ life. It is not strange, indeed, that there is a vagueness in our conception of the future life and world. This arises partly from the fact that in this life we are so limited as to time. We remain here but sixty or eighty years at most, and during that brief period we are narrowly conditioned as to space and as to the working of our imperfect senses. We dwell here upon the ground, pressed down by a heavy ocean of atmosphere. We see but little ; we hear but imperfectly ; 174 The Origin and Destiny of Man. our feelings are blunt; our perceptions are not clear. So it is not strange that when we attempt to look into that which is beyond it is vague to many of us. This comes again, I think, from what I might call the improper method of looking at the life to come. The habit of many in considering the ques¬ tion of the other life, is to wholly let go of this world and this life, and then to try to project themselves some how into the future, and to build around them the conditions of another state of being; and it is often the case that in letting go of this life, we fail to grasp the life and the world beyond. A more natural and rational way of trying to pass over in thought the bridge-way between the two states of being is not to let go of this life nor of this world, but to think of this life as living on, of the world as enduring, and of the soul as passing right on through what we call death without any break in its journey. My object in this discourse will be, partly, to try to make the future world and the heavenly life seem real to us, and partly to suggest by outline the possible and more probable conditions of that world and that life, leaving each one to construct his own heaven out of these conditions. In order that we may make the heavenly world seem real, we pursue the scriptural line of thought, thinking of it as a real place, a material condition ; or, in the words of our texts, considering it under the thought of a country, of many mansions, of a city. There should be more about these thoughts than mere words ; they should have a definite mean¬ ing. There should be something in the thought of a country that corresponds to the meaning that we give to the word in The Heavenly World. 175 this life; something in the thought of mansions that corres¬ ponds to the thought of mansions here; something in the thought of a city that may correspond to the idea of a city here. The Scriptures speak of the heavenly world not only as a country, as a city, as a place, but they speak of it as something far better than anything we have in these con¬ ditions here. The Scriptures take the best things of the earth, as the land of Canaan, the city of Zion, the most valu¬ able minerals, the most precious stones — they take all the best things of this world, and then lead us to think there is something better still in the future. Now in thinking of our world, we shall be mistaken if we suppose that the highest possible degree of perfection as a world is here attained. Indeed, this world, so far as relates to its physical appoint¬ ments, is a very imperfect world. It has passed through periods of still greater imperfection, and it still falls far beneath the thought of what a perfect God may do to say this is the most perfect world that souls shall ever dwell upon. There have been periods in our earth’s history when it existed simply as a fiery ball. There was a time when it rolled on in darkness. There was a time when it was cov¬ ered with water; a time when its continents were not lifted up, when the greater portions of the earth’s surface were but marshes; when there was no dry land, no hard wood, no flowering plant, no fruiting tree. Had some one lived upon the earth at that time, he might even then have thought it a fair world. But the earth traveled steadily on along the line of development, progressing onward toward perfection, and we are not at all warranted in thinking that there is not to be 176 The Origin and Desting of Man. a more perfect condition of this earth, or more perfect worlds beyond this. Nature, in its wonderful processes, takes the dullest and most imperfect things, and builds out of them the finest and most precious. The diamond is produced out of common carbon ; the polished marble is but an outgrowth of the rough limestone. Thus our world seems to be traveling along its appointed way towards a perfection it has not yet reached. There are worlds outside of this, that mav be far more perfect than this. Our poor earth journeys on with but one moon as an attendant, and that is shown to us only half of each month. We know that Jupiter has four moons, and that Saturn has eight, and we can easily conceive that on the plains of those far-off planets there is a beauty in the night¬ time of which we have no knowledge here. We know not what may be the physical perfection of some of the worlds in God’s universe. We know not but that the fairest flowers that bloom here are only types of the flowers that bloom else¬ where ; that the most beautiful rivers, the fairest landscapes, the loftiest mountains, the greatest oceans, are but the begin¬ nings of what shall be in God’s material universe. The Scriptures not only warrant us in the thought that there is to be a material heaven, but they speak of it under the thought of many mansions. A theory held by many is that it is to be this earth redeemed and purified. Another theory, advanced by Dr. Dick, is that, as our sun is five hun¬ dred times larger than all its planets, so all the stars in the heavens may possibly have a common centre, about which all revolve, and which is proportionately greater than all of them together. This great central world he denominates the throne The Heavenly World. 177 of God, the capital of the universe. Astronomers now look to the beautiful star Alcyone, in the Pleiades, as this possible centre of the entire universe. It seems to me that, under the thought of many mansions, the most reasonable conception of the future world would be that it is not only this earth renewed and made more perfect; that it is not only the planets of the solar system, and the stars that deck the sky; not only this, but the vast universe of material worlds — sys¬ tems rising above systems, worlds ranging beyond worlds, till the whole universe is spanned. This is what I think is meant by the language of Scripture, that ‘‘in God’s house are many mansions.” The whole universe is God’s house, and its many worlds are its many mansions. Let us now take up, as another thought, ourselves, and see what we may possibly be in relation to the future world and to each other. According to the theories that I have been advancing in these discourses, we look upon death as some¬ thing that severs our relations with material things, but we expect these bodies to be in some way or in some sense restored to us in the resurrection. So it is competent for us to think of ourselves in the heavenly world as having bodies corresponding to our bodies here; bodies that will bring us into relation with material things by the senses — by touch and sight and hearing. In this thought our life in the heav¬ enly world will not be a sublimated experience, abstracted from the material universe; but in the development and exaltation of the senses we may have conceptions of beauty and perfection in the heavenly material world of which we do not now dream. It is reasonable to suppose that our 12 178 The Origin and Destiny of Man. bodies will enjoy many blessings in the future state that we have not here. These will come in their more perfect devel¬ opment. Take the power of sight. Very remarkable indeed is it that an instrument so small as the human eye can take in so broad an expanse of landscape and sky. Yet, wonderful as is its power, the eye is imperfect. It is limited as an organ, and the obstructions which it encounters limit the range of vision. The heaviness of the atmosphere and the lowness of our position are among the impediments to perfect sight. It is possible that the eye will be made so perfect that not only shall we be able to see with ease, but the power of vision may be so augmented and exalted that we may be able to see with clearness for miles, and even hundreds of miles, possibly from world to world. This will not seem impossible when we think that the telescope has brought the moon within two hundred miles of our earth, and that by the microscope there has been revealed to us a world of beauty undreamed of before—the beauty in the speck of dust and in the insect, that the natural eye cannot see. In metaphysics there is discussed what is called the minimum visihila , the point where we begin to see. But the microscope has taught us that there is a point below that, and a point below that, and a point below that. It is probable that God has made no beauty in the gem or in the flower that he will not some time reveal to the perfected human eye. Take the sense of hearing. There is also in metaphysics what is called the minimum audibila y the point where we begin to hear. Then there is the point where the volume of sound overpowers the sense of hearing, as when we listen to the roar of Niagara. Huxley tells us that, had The Heavenly World. 179 we an ear fine enough, we might catch the sweet music of the rippling rill that comes from the circulation of the sap in the thorn and the thistle, and the sweet music that murmurs in the flowers and sings in the leaves. Man may yet have an ear that will take them all in. There may be in this physical perfection not only an im¬ proved power of sight and hearing to go along with the per¬ fect physical universe, but there may also be a perfection of beauty. God’s highest thought of the beautiful seems to ultimate in man, yet man is ever reaching forward to new ideals of beauty, and only in the other world is it probable that this yearning for the beautiful will be satisfied. Along with this there will doubtless be a sense of life, a sense of enduring strength, a sense of the satisfaction that comes from the harmonious action of all the functions of life. You may search the world over, and you will not find one in ten thou¬ sand who does not carry some scar, some blemish, some weakness. Yet there are times when we seem to revel in perfect health. It sparkles in the eye and glows upon the cheek, and we feel that life is in itself a blessing. I have no doubt that God intends to give us bodies in which these feel¬ ings of perfect health and strength will endure forever. Possibly these bodies will have power to transport them¬ selves from place to place. In the narrowed conditions of this life, how slowly we walk, with what difficulty we rise. We have brought the vessel and the car to our help, and yet how difficult it is for us to travel. The Scriptures abound in instances of the ability of heavenly beings to transport them¬ selves from place to place, from world to world; and it is 180 The Origin and Destiny of Man. possible that when the human body exists in the highest per¬ fection, it will be no longer weighed down by gravity to the surface of this little star, but will have the power of rising to worlds of surpassing beauty and magnificent proportions, worlds whose mountains are larger than our earth, whose lakes would swallow up our oceans, whose rivers are like the confluence of all earth’s streams. Take this body and make it perfect, give that body an eternity amid such scenes of mag¬ nificence and beauty, and you have some of the conditions of the future life. Then, again, according to the theories upon which we have been going, we shall have with us in the life to come our minds. We shall carry with us the power of learning, the power of remembering, the power of reason. The Scriptures seem to make a point of the difference between the knowledge that is here and the knowledge that is hereafter, in this, that now we know but a part, then shall we know as we are known; here we see through a glass darkly, there we shall see face to face. The Greek of this work “darkly” is en ainigmati — that is, in a riddle, in an enigma. We seem to see things now, not as they really are, but only by a reflection and by a correspondence. And we read the language of correspond¬ ence but imperfectly. Possibly, could we see the likeness or correspondence of all things in earth and air and sky, in mountain and plain, in running streams and living trees, in day and night, in cloud, in storm, in calm, to something within ourselves, we should see all the phases and varied moods of human minds and hearts, reflected back from this vast and changeful outer world. Into some such vision does The Heavenly World. 181 the poet come in his charmed hours, and then gives us a glimpse, a faint sound, or echo, of all the beauty and senti¬ ment and truth that seek to reach us from what we thought the dumb world about us. Take the first feeble steps of childhood in knowledge ; take the advance in knowledge with youthhood, and the greater attainments of mature manhood. How little do we know, and how imperfectly do we know it! Newton said that we travel along the shores of knowledge, picking up a few pebbles here and there, but the vast ocean beyond is all unknown. Take this thought of the human mind in the future. Possibly God will clothe it with a more direct perception of truth than is here possible. Here we see but “ darkly.” Take it in the truths that we try to bring before our minds. How often do we ponder over them in deep study, seeming to get them, and yet not to get them. How often do we hang over problems, and only after days and weeks of looking can we say, “Now I see it.” Not only this, but there is the difficulty and slowness with which the mind works through the senses, getting the real beauty and charm of a scene only after much looking. Take a beautiful picture, a fair landscape, or lofty mountains ; you cannot sat¬ isfy yourself with once looking. It is only gradually and slowly that we become possessed of all the beauty in the face on the canvas, of all the charm in the landscape. Take the sweetest tones of the organ ; the music steals over the mind, and we want to hold it, but how futile is the effort. We get to a point where music ravishes the soul, then leaves us noth¬ ing but its memory. I love to think that these dull ears will after a while take in and hold a world of song beyond what vve 182 The Origin and Destiny of Man. dream of now ; that these dull eyes will see nothing darkly or imperfectly, but that the mind will see truth, see beauty—that it will grasp it as a fact, carry it as a fact, wear it as a gar¬ ment, live upon it as a tree of life. Then, again, we may make some calculation of what the mind will be in the future—the mind that begins here with its a, b, c, its 1, 2, 3; the mind that begins in the primer and goes to the reader ; that starts in the garden, the meadow and the field, and goes out to the continent; that begins with its home, its county and state, and expands to the history of our material earth ; that begins to reason by adding its eight or ten figures, and grasps the combinations that enable it to travel out into space, weigh worlds and calculate their orbits. Give that mind five hundred years, with a body that knows no weakness, no weariness, no dying. Give it a thousand years, give it a million, a billion, a trillion years—give it eter¬ nity, and what may this mind of man be ! Take the power of memory. We value memory here because it saves the past to us. Without it we should have to begin a new life every day. We could carry with us no experience, no lesson, no truth. Each day we should have to begin anew. By memory we hold to-day what we learned yesterday. By memory, as we journey out of sweet childood, we do not forget the cradle, the yard, the orchard, the home. Think of the preciousness of memory. I would not for anything you can imagine lose the recollections of the scenes where I played when a boy, the experiences of innocent childhood, the days when the family group gathered with father and mother by the old fire-place in the sunny South—days gone now and forever, but The Henveuly World. 183 living in memory. As we grow older, memory becomes dearer because the yesterday gets longer ; it becomes more and more our life. Look at the grandmother sitting on the porch, knitting, knitting away, but her mind is unraveling the long past. Now, if memory serve to keep up the past here, and if, as I have argued, it is probable that nothing will be for¬ gotten, -what is memory to be in the everlasting years ? If the memory of eighty years is worth so much, what will the memory be that preserves our life and thoughts, our joys and loves, in the future state ? When the cycles of the everlasting days shall have come and gone, when its suns shall have risen and set, still memory brings up the past. The heavenly world will include this. Take our heart-life, that which apprehends God, that which apprehends goodness, and take the voluntary element of our being ; and if you would enter into the thought of what the heavenly world will be, you must remember the method which God has selected to develop human life. He has come forth to us in instituted government, a government that works upon the heart of man. He has not only built around man a moral scaffolding, but He seeks in this life to write His laws on the tables of the human heart, as He wrote them for Moses on tables of stone. Bv the law of vicarious- ti ness and atonement, He touches the centre of our being. He makes us at one with Himself, at one with truth, at one with goodness, and so carrying us into the realm of goodness that, being true here, He knows we will be true up yonder ; purity being man’s life here, purity will bo his life forever. For it is written in the Scriptures that nothing that defileth can 184 The Origin and Destiny of J fan. enter into the kingdom of God. Another thought : If the soul find such sweet satisfaction here in passing from under the law of commandment to the law of love, what will be its joy in that liberty wliich the law of love imparts in that state where men do the right for the love of right, where men love each other, love God, love the true, the beautiful and the good, and where no fear of harm, no alarm of danger, shall ever disturb its peaceful rest. We shall have, too, our friendships—the friendships that begin in childhood, grow strong with our manhood, and ripen in old age. Then, too, there, are the loves of life ; loves that watched over and cared for the blossom of infancv; loves that have been shadowed by little graves; loves that death can never conquer; loves, too, deep and tender, that, alas ! often find no answering love here, but shall meet it there. I think that all these loves are to be carried over into the other state. Then take the social conditions of the heavenlv world. There *J is a passage in Revelation that speaks of the kings of the earth bringing their treasure into the heavenly state. The idea seems to be that God will gather there all the most beau¬ tiful things of this life, all those things that contribute most to man’s happiness here, those things that have been attained by the longest study and the hardest work. What would be our social life were sickness and death no more; what would it be if we had the means of gathering and enjoying the largest libraries, the fairest flowers, the richest fruits ; if we could admire the works of the great masters in the finest galleries, listen to the sweetest voices and to the music evoked by the most skillful fingers; if we could hear the reasoning The Reavenlu World. 185 of the wisest men, and learn of foreign lands from travelers who have seen the most—with these powers and advantages, what a school could we build up in this world! But think that all these things are gathered over yonder. Think of the pure hearts that have been going over there since time began ; the great thinkers from Pythagoras to Hamilton and Haven ; the great artists, from the days of Ruebens and Raphael; the great singers, from Mozart to Haydn ; the sweet voices that sang on the plains of Judea, that have shouted from the high¬ lands of Scotland, and warbled in the melody of the Parepa Rosas ; the great historians, the travelers, the philanthropists; take childhood with its innocence, take the love of father and mother, of brother and sister, take the affection of friend for friend,—gather them all over there, and what may we not hope for ? There is one thing more, but I dare not talk longer — the thought of eternity. Anything less would make being but a mockery to man, a curse instead of a blessing ; for I honestly say to you that if there be not eternity, in which these souls can expand and live on, better, better would it be never to have been. If the problem were put to me to-night to die now forever, or to live five hundred years and then die with no hereafter, I would say, let me go now. If there be no eter¬ nity, life is a vain mockery, a delusion which had better never have been. But with eternity, with bodies stong and health¬ ful forever, with every sense acute and trained, with minds open to knowledge from every source, and hearts free to the sweet impulse of love — then the blessed thought of time enough will be with us forever. You do not know how much 186 The Origin and Destiny of Man. meaning there is to me in that thought. How many things we would gladly undertake, but we have not time. I would like to travel, but I haven’t the time. I would like to sail, not only on the Hudson but on the Nile, not only on the lakes of our own country, but on the oceans of the earth ; I haven’t time. I would like to study the musty records of Egypt and Babylon, but I haven’t time. I would like to study so many things, but there isn’t time. There is time enough over there. I would like to give a few hundred years to botany, and win the love of every tree and flower upon the earth. I would like to study for a few thousand years in the strange and accurate combinations of numbers. I would like to read his¬ tory, beginning back in the far-off past when the hieroglyphs of Egypt were written. I would like to read everything that has ever been written or spoken by the great thinkers of earth. I would like to give thousands of years to music. I would like to make the acquaintance of ever soul in this city, in this state and in this vast country. I haven’t time. But there is time enough there, and I am looking for the day when you and I will gather on the other shore, no longer feeling that it is 12 o’clock or 1 o’clock, that the sun is sink¬ ing, we must hurry home. "We shall not feel that we have only a few more years, but we shall wake up in the fair morning of eternity, feeling that a youth of endless years is ours. Then we shall begin to plan and work forever; then we shall sit down by the rippling stream and talk till the heart is satisfied ; wander through groves of stately trees and by paths strewn with flowers ; listen to sweet voices as they may come to sing from other planets, till the heart is satisfied. The Heavenly World. 187 Time enough for every study, every journey, every love. What learning man may gather in the endless beyond—what friendships he may have—what a traveler he may be—what a singer, what a reasoner, what a philosopher, may the years of endless experience devolop. 0, summerland of the soul! land of beauty, land of flowers, land of love! Often when the soul is heavy here, when the shadow’s are deepening, when the grass grows above the graves of loved ones, do we think of thy far-off shores, and glad will be the day when the angels shall open the gate for us to enter in. God grant, my friends, that this hope of a future world may be yours and mine. God grant that we may listen to sweeter music than w T e have heard here, know a deeper joy, a dearer truth, and live in a holier love in the long forever. XIV CLOSING THOUGHTS. And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter : Fear God, and keep his commandments : for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil. —Ecclesiates, xii, 12-14. Who will render to every man according to his deeds: To them who, by patient continuance in well doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life : But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil; of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile. But glory, honor and peace to every man that worketh good ; to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile. For there is no respect of persons with God. —Romans, n, 6-11. Y OU may remember, my friends, that, as introductory to these discourses, one was given upon the Uses and Abuses of Doubt; and now that the series has been gone through with, it seems proper that something should be said in the nature of general conclusions. But, first, I think it not out of place to allude to the fact of the unusually large audiences that for fourteen long weeks have given their closest attention to what has been said—without any doubt, the largest audiences that have regularly assembled in any Methodist chuch in the entire Northwest, and possibly, with Closing Thoughts. 189 one exception, the largest in any church. I am the more free to refer to this, because it is not so much the fact that I have been speaking as the character of the subjects that have been discussed that has brought you together; and I am free to refer to it again, as it speaks well for the thoughtfulness and intel¬ ligence of this community. Let it no longer be said that people are tired of everything that is not sensational. Let it be known that there is still, especially in this city, a deep and untiring interest in those questions requiring the closest thought — questions that are farthest removed from that which is sensational — questions that are as old as time itself, and that have been gone over thousands of times before they came into your hands and mine. I may remark, again, that in the beginning of this series I had no thought whatever that they were to appear in print. When the publishers of the Herald requested my manuscript for publication, I had to tell them I hadn’t any, for to not one of these discourses have I ever done anything in the way of written preparation more than what might be noted on half a sheet of paper. But I said to them, as Socrates said to his friends when they gathered around him as he drank the fatal hemlock, and asked him about his preference in regard to the mode of his burial—he told them, if they could “catch him,” it made but little difference about the rest. So I said to these friends, if they could catch these discouses, they were wel¬ come to them. And I now, in behalf of the audience, thank them for their courtesy, and for their enterprise in thus preserving them for the future. It cannot be expected that there should be that closeness of reasoning, that finish and 190 The Origin and Destiny of Man. perfection of style, that thorough working ont of thought on all points, in an extemporaneous address that you will find when discourses are printed from written manuscript. It is a fact that, of all the sermons which are given in Chicago papers, nearly every one is printed from the manuscript entirely; and there is hardly one man in a thousand, or in ten thousand, who is willing to have his words reported and printed in the papers just as he speaks. I have felt it not improper to allude to this, for it is one thing to speak to the ear, and quite another thing to write for the cool and critical eye. I could wish these discourses were more perfect, but I have all along felt that the work was not wholly mine, but, in a measure, His who has called me into this field; and my prayer has gone up more than once that God’s blessing might rest upon the hundreds who have read them, whom I have never seen. It seems proper now, after these fourteen weeks, that we turn aside and look for a moment over the vast range that we have been led to travel. Beginning with what we call time, and going back in the search for the origin of our race, we were naturally led to think of the first cause, the cause that lay back of this, and so we pushed off from the shores of time, and found ourselves back in eternity, and then, retrac¬ ing our ste£>s to the point where w r e began, we attempted to go forward with the questions of the future. We soon traveled out again beyond the bounds of time, and found ourselves launched upon the eternity to come. Thus we have gone both ways tin we stood out in the dim and distant shadows. Searching for the origin of things, we were led to think of Closing Thoughts. 191 the first cause. Then we found ourselves not alone, but in the midst of a vast creation, in the midst of a world full of beings and life, in the midst of a system of worlds, and this joined to other systems, making the vast universe itself. Then, again, coming to ourselves, we found a nature endowed with consciousness ; we found ourselves not only possessing bodies and minds, but spirits that were nearly related to God. Then we found ourselves in a world where there is both good and evil. Having looked at this we were brought face to face with the question of the divine government over man, the methods of promoting good, for repressing evil, and for the formation of character. Then taking up the questions of destiny, we were brought to look at the change we call death; to think of the life of the spirit after death ; to try to fathom the deep waters of immortality; to think of the spirit-life as separated from the bodily organism, and then as having a resurrection body; to consider the question of our responsi¬ bility and of our answering to God in the great judgment; then to take up the difficult question of the consequences of evil, the future suffering of the ungood ; and finally to con¬ sider the life of the redeemed in heaven. Now, before passing again from this field, we want to stand aside a moment and look at the magnitude of these questions. How great they are ! How easily, how almost automatically, we pronounce the words that seem to indicate them, and yet it is only when we come to look at them and turn them over in thought that we feel and grasp even the shadow of their greatness. Think of the magnitude of the question of God. How shall we bound this question ? With what lines shall 192 The Origin and Destiny of Man we fathom, it—undoubtedly the greatest question that ever engaged human thought—this question of God ? Think, too, of the greatness of the question of the universe. How amazing is its vast extent, how wonderful that the stars above us should be but parts of it, and that it goes out to the most distant regions of space. How great a question is even the fact of human existence ! How inexplicable our own being, that you and I live, that we hear each other’s voice, and see each other’s face ! How great a question is that of destinv ! How wonderful the thought that the worlds which are about us continue ; that we continue beyond death ; how solemn the thought that we have entered upon a being that is never to end ! How great a question is that of the rewards to the good, how deep and solemn the question of the suffer¬ ings that come upon those who do evil. In looking at the vastness of these questions, I have felt more than once, and perhaps you have had the same feeling, how little, how very little, do we know concerning them. I was conversing about a year ago with one of the most learned men in the Northwest, a professor of one of our colleges, and I asked what he thought about these questions, and the honest reply of the honest, gray-headed man was this : “As I have come up into years, and have had time to think, one thing has become plain to me. 1 am reaching a point where I can draw a line between what I know' and w'liat I don’t know r , and almost everything is on the side I don’t know.” So it must ever be vuth beings so limited in their faculties. So it has been and must be with all the great thinkers of the earth. We must all sooner or later reach the conclusion that Closing Thoughts. 193 the problem is too great for us. We must sooner or later reach the point where we are not only willing but glad to confess how little, how very little, we know with any fullness. Beginning with the simplest things of life, we must feel that we know but little about them. We know these flowers upon the desk bloom in sweetness and beauty. We may know their names, and may be able to classify them, to speak of their colors and know their peculiarities. We have only learned a few things about them. What they are, we do not know; how they are, we do not know. We may know that we are here ; what we are, and how we are, we do not know. The moment we begin to think upon ourselves, we are in a world of mystery profound. Whether we look on the singing-bird, or the leaf stirred by the wind ; whether we look at the ray of light, or the rainbow in the heavens ; whether we look at the cloud that sweeps across the sky, or at the rainstorm that floods the valley; whether we look up or down, within or without, at the cradle or the grave, if we look with intelli¬ gence enough to perceive what is, we can but feel how little we know. Then, when we attempt to go back into the past, we are lost in the dim light of tradition. Go back and weigh the balance as best we can, the past is shadowed in mystery. Attempt to go out into the vast realm of creation, into the interstellar depths above and about us, and we are lost again. Attempt to think of God : how deep the thought! The heart may feel its meaning, and may know its presence, but it is not given to man by searching to find out God. I would not discourage any one by saying how little we know. Bather 13 194 The Origin and Destiny of Man. would I try to lielp you, if you have found out this fact. Hather would I have you begin down in the primers of truth. Rather would I encourage all to think that we only turn a few leaves here, and that the book of thinking and learning will have other leaves to turn when the millions of vears that await us in the future have become a part of the ever-length¬ ening past. I want to stand aside from the field we have been going over, not only to reflect upon how very little of these things we know with fullness, but I want to try to pick out from this vast world of the known and the unknown, a few of the things that we may account as pretty well settled in human thinking. For you may ask: If there is so little we know, what are we to do ? Are we to sit down and feel that nothing is certain ? Far from it. There is a difference between knowing certainly and knowing fully. I hold to the philoso¬ phy of realism — that our senses do not deceive us, that consciousness is not a lie, and that we certainly know. Yet so limited are our powers that we cannot know fully and exhaustively. The fact that we cannot know everything is no good reason for saying that we cannot know anything. We are like those who may know but one language, going to some monument on which there is a writing in English, in French, in German, in Latin, in Greek, in Syriac. They might find the tomb, but, reading only English, they would not know what the other languages said. It is like our knowing a field, a garden, and the roads that traverse our neighborhood or county. We know these things certainly, but there is always a beyond that we do not know. We know only a paid of any- Closing Thoughts. 195 thing. Take the question of God. I beg you to receive and rest upon this great truth, not so much from the arguments that give it plausibility, but rather from the quick and certain intuitions of the heart that come out and perceive God. I would not, for my own j)urpose, give one penny for all the arguments # that have been offered, from the days of Clarke and Descartes and Butler down to the latest utterances of Mill, in proof or disproof of the question of God. They are valuable; they are interesting as displays of mental power, of deep thinking. They may be very helpful to some minds. To me, personally, as far as assuring the fact, they are value¬ less. I perceive God from the spiritual intuitions of my being. I walk in His presence and companionship by the light of the spirit rather than by the conclusions of the intellect. Another fact we may regard as settled is the existence of material things. It may seem simjde to place emphasis on a statement like this, but it is in the stating and restating that the worth of such a fact consists — the fact that there is a material existence ; the fact that there is wood, and iron, and stone, and water ; the fact that this great system of worlds is not an illusion ; when realized, it is a great fact. Another fact I would mention as settled in human thought is the fact of law. Not only is there a Supreme Being and a material exist¬ ence, but there is certainly the presence of what we call law, also—the presence of order, of purpose, of design, so that things do not fall out by chance or accident. You can, if you once find the law of anything depend upon the everlasting trueness of that law. And it is a wonderful fact, if it dawns 196 The Origin and Destiny of Man. upon our mind, that ourselves and the universe about us are the subjects of law; that there is something back of what occurs to determine and shape it ; that we are in the midst of certainty, not of uncertainty. For without the presence of law, we could not calculate ; we could not live for the future ; we could not lay plans, saying, to-day I will begin, and to-morrow I will continue. Law gives to wood its strength, to iron its strength, to stone its endurance, and the builder knows and depends upon this law in every step he takes. There is also another fact—the fact of moral laws. There is such a thing as right, such a thing as wrong. There is character that is formed along the line of good, or along the line of evil. Another fact accounted settled in the world of thought is the fact of a future state. I state it as a fact. Possibly, to some, I am straining a point when I do this. But it does seem to me, that man may stand here upon these shores and calculate with certainty, and feel it as a truth, that there is a future state of being—that the life that is here is carried over there. And as we stand in the presence of this fact, another fact comes before us, that there, as well as here, goodness will have its reward, and evil its suffering. Now as I have more than once led you to feel, and have felt with you myself, the presence of the uncertain, and as we have more than once come up to the line of the partially known and to the unknown, I want to state to you that, giving full sweep to all the doubts we have encountered, admitting fully the little that we know and making full account of the things that are uncertain, there is yet enough left on which to anchor ourselves ; enough left on which to build character; Closing Thoughts. 197 enough, left to sustain the idea of right and the blessed teach¬ ings of religion. I want to say this because many sincere people feel that if we reveal, or admit, the fact of doubt, everything is liable to fall through. If we know so little, they say, how can we be sure that we know anything ? But I want to say to you, my friends, give the doubt its full bene¬ fit, draw the line between the known and the unknown and make the unknown the greater part, and still there is enough left. Take this first question on which we began, and on which we have been talking more or less directly in every one of these discourses — the question of God. Suppose I admit that by reason I cannot find out God. Suppose I admit that I cannot even conceive in my mind of a personal God. Sup¬ pose I admit that when I talk to you of infinity, of a universe of worlds rolling on through space, I am utterly unable to think of a personal being back of all this ; that I cannot com¬ pass the thought of God. What then ? Suppose even— though I have no fear of it—that we should be driven to the point of admitting that there is no jmrsonal God. Even if we should be forced to that extreme, everything is not gone. Matthew Arnold, in his late work entitled “God and the Bible,” says that though we may not be able to conceive of a personal God, we must admit that there is a something not of ourselves that makes for righteousness. Here is the jjres- ence of the world and the universe ; the fact of law, the fact that goodness is rewarded and evil punished. Make these facts and these laws God, if it so seems to you, think of it as you will, still this great fact is before the mind, that there is 198 The Origin and Destiny of M