RESEARCH XXIII.

THE CREED OF SCIENCE AS TO IMMORTALITY.

"What is the scientific doctrine on the great theme of immortality? Is there any hope for men? In one word, no . . Consider no proposition more certain than that the soul is mortal as well as the body which supported it, and of which it was the final flower and product."-WILLIAM GRAHAM, The Creed of Science, chap. v. p. 120.

"What then were God to such as I?

'Twere hardly worth my while to choose

Of things all mortal, or to use

A little patience ere I die."

LORD TENNYSON, In Memoriam, xxxiv.

WE affirm that the hope of immortality is scientific; that it would be more correct to say, "The body is for the soul, not the soul for the body:" nor is soul the final flower and product of the body; for the existence of the soul, in the body, long precedes perfection of the body. Unbelief, as to immortality, is not less unscientific than is unbelief as to Divine Revelation. We show this by statement and reply.

Statement: "Man is nothing more than a superior animal derived from the inferior. Why should he not die as the others? Scientific research has proved that all organisms, both of plant and animal, are so related as to be but varied developments from one and the same primary germ, by one and the same principle."

Reply Man should not, and does not, die as other animals; many hopes and fears, and consciousness of immortality, are his; he is not as other animals, but superior.

"The elements must vanish: be it so!

Enough, if something from our hands have power

To live, and act, and serve the future hour;

And if, as toward the silent land we go,

Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,

We feel that we are greater than we know."

Wm. Wordsworth, Conclusion to the Sonnets to the River Duddon.

There are many and vast differences in "primary germs," so called, though the microscope cannot reveal them, one germ grows into a nettle, and another. becomes a man. To assert that what seems the same, and guided by one and the same principle, is the same, utterly contradicts science and experience. It is an undoubted fact, that things apparently identical are so acted on from without and within that they become vastly different. The world does not stop where our vision ends, nor have we mastered all knowledge; but of this we are sure-man does not live, nor die, as the lower animals do; nor can it be shown that the dead are dead.

Statement: "Thought is but a function of the brain and nerves why should it not perish with them?"

Reply Thought is more than a function of the brain, as life is more than a function of the body, as speech is more than a function of the tongue. There is brain, and no thought; body, and no life; tongue, and no speech. The power by which we live, think, speak, comes from the eternal directive ordering, vitalizing Principle; which gives shape, place, force, life, to whatever is. To this Principle, not only our thought, but

every other power is due. Thought rests, for essence, as does every force, on the Eternal. Science, showing the conservation of energy, of which force is the power of work, shows that the soul, also a force, is conserved. Did all men cease to live, to think, to speak, to-morrow; the eternal Principle, now embodied in them, would not be dead.

Statement: "The cunning arrangement of atoms is the beginning; and their mysterious marshallings and combinations are the underlying essence and cause of man's whole life-drama."

Reply: Nay; the essence and cause of man's whole life-drama is that eternal Power, or Energy, working the arrangement of atoms in all their mysterious marshallings and combinations. It is one of the chiefest achievements of science to have discovered, by means of physical and philosophical research, that great truth, long ago recorded in the first verse of Holy Scripture, that all phenomena are due to one eternal Power. Look at the stars, well called “the brain of heaven,”

"Around their ancient track march, rank on rank,

The army of unalterable law.”

George Meredith, Lucifer in Starlight.

Statement: "The soul is evolved from the body, as the flower is from the plant; it came with the body, it goes with the body."

Reply The flower is by a living principle in the plant, and that living principle makes the plant and the flower. Barren unfertile seeds show that the living principle is not in every seed as its own, or as evolved, but a something given. That living principle, differentiated in the animal, is cause of the animal's intelligence.

That living principle, in the man, is more than a capacity to flower, more than an animal power of instinct, it is an intellectual, responsible, moral energy, by which he knows of God, of the future, and uses power to fit himself for that future. There is not less sureness as to there being an eternal God, and an everlasting future, than there is of a living principle giving flowers to the plant, and instinct to the beast. The higher faculties of man are not less certainly and accurately in relation to their corresponding realities, than are the properties of flowers and beasts adjusted to the unseen realities of which they are phenomena.

"Nature is always wise in every part."

Lord Thurlow, To a Bird. The scientific creed, held by the best men, the most experienced investigators, the most accurate thinkers, has been fairly well stated thus: "In our corporeal life, it is not the eye of the body, properly speaking, which sees; but the soul which sees through the eye. It is not the bodily tongue which speaks, and so forth. Thus there exists a spiritual capacity of seeing, hearing, speaking, which may find its operation, and act without the organs of the earthly corporeal body." The thought is common to man, and well stated by the poet

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Yea, the world is strong,
But what discerns it stronger, and the Mind
Strongest; and, higher still, the ruling soul.
Wherefore, perceiving Him who reigns supreme,
Put forth full force of soul in thy own soul;

Fight, vanquish foes and doubts. Dear hero, slay
What haunts thee, in fond shapes, and would betray."

Edwin Arnold, M.A., The Song Celestial,

Translated from the Sanskrit.

Quoted in Stier's "Words of Jesus," vol. iv. pp. 227, 228, Pope's transl.

The inner life of every man is a wonder greater than any marvel of romance. There is in the silent endurance of sufferings a force sublime that physical science cannot interpret. A moment suffices for the loyal and mean desire; for the outburst of a murderous thought, and the sharp lash of repentance: to think of God, and to worship. Despite mortality, the failing of flesh and heart, there is a determined never-ending conflict against death, and in every heart-history is a photograph of future life. How can this be, if thought is nothing more than a mechanical product of the brain; and the soul, a sort of gas evolved from material particles? If we possess nothing more than the body, how is it that the eye sees not, the ear hears not, the brain thinks not; but something that recalls thought, hearing, vision of things in the body, when every particle of that body has long ago passed away? How is it that we think of a future that cannot possibly concern any merely mortal being; and throw around that future hopes and fears, accountability to God, and visions of angels ?1 Our mental, personal, physical, spiritual identity, is preserved, not by continuance in us of the same material substance; but by co-ordination of somewhat similar particles into a fac-simile of the former body. We live on, the old body of our childhood, and many old bodies in which we lived, being dead. Surely, consciousness of that past, with which no portion of us is now in material connection, is similar to that future consciousness which we shall have of the present when it also is far away? Whatever unbelieving and unscientific opinions a man

"Proprium est naturæ rationalis ut tendat in finem quasi se agens et ducens ad finem."-Thomas Aquinas, in "Summa."

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