The Destiny of the Soul Part 62

"Then, side by side, along the dreary coast Advanced Achilles' and Patroclus' ghost, A friendly pair."

In this representation that there was a full recognition of acquaintances, all the accounts of the other world given in Greek and Roman literature harmonize. The same is true of the accounts contained in the literature of the ancient Hebrews. In the Book of Genesis, when Jacob hears of the death of his favorite child, he exclaims, "I shall go down to my son Joseph in the under world, mourning." When the witch of Endor raised the ghost of Samuel, Saul knew him by the description she gave of him as he rose. The monarch shades in the under world are pictured by Isaiah as recognising the shade of the king of Babylon and rising from their sombre thrones to greet him with mockery. Ezekiel shows us each people of the heathen nations in the under world in a company by themselves. When David's child died, the king sorrowfully exclaimed, "He will not return to me; but I shall go to him." All these pa.s.sages are based on the conception of a gloomy subterranean abode where the ghosts of the dead are reunited after their separation at death on earth. An old commentator on the Koran says a Mohammedan priest was once asked how the blessed in paradise could be happy when missing some near relative or dear friend whom they were thus forced to suppose in h.e.l.l. He replied, G.o.d will either cause believers to forget such persons or else to rest in expectation of their coming. The anecdote shows affectingly that the same yearning heart and curiosity are possessed by Moslem and Christian. A still more impressive case in point is furnished by a picture in a Buddhist temple in China. The painting represents the story of the priest Lo Puh, who, on pa.s.sing into paradise at death, saw his mother, Yin Te, in h.e.l.l.

He instantly descended into the infernal court, Tsin Kw.a.n.g w.a.n.g, where she was suffering, and, by his valor, virtues, and intercessions, rescued her. The picture vividly portraying the whole story may be seen and studied at the present time by Christian missionaries who enter that temple of the benevolent Buddha.2 From the faith of many other nations ill.u.s.trations might be brought of the same fact, that the great common instinct which has led men to believe in a future life has at the same time caused them to believe that in that life there would be a union and recognition of friends. Let this far reaching historical fact be taken at its just value,

1 Alexius, Tod and Wiedersehen. Eine Gedankenfolge der besten Schriftsteller aller Zeiten und Volker.

2 Asiatic Journal, 1840, p. 211.

while we proceed to the labor in hand. The fact referred to is of some value, because, being an expression of the heart of man as G.o.d made it, it is an indication of his will, a prophecy.

There are three ways of trying the problem of future recognition.

The cool, skeptical cla.s.s of persons will examine the present related facts of the case; argue from what they now know; test the question by induction and inference. Let us see to what results they will thus be led. In the first place, we learn upon reflection that we now distinguish each other by the outward form, physical proportion, and combination of looks, tones of voice, and other the like particulars. Every one has his individuality in these respects, by which he is separable from others. It may be hastily inferred, then, that if we are to know our friends hereafter it will be through the retention or the recovery of their sensible peculiarities. Accordingly, many believe the soul to be a perfect reflection or immaterial fac simile of the body, the exact correspondence in shadowy outline of its gross tabernacle, and consequently at once recognizable in the disembodied state. The literature of Christendom we may almost say of the world teems with exemplifications of this idea. Others, arguing from the same acknowledged premises, conclude that future recognition will be secured by the resurrection of the material body as it was in all its perfection, in renovated and unfading prime. But, leaving out of view the inherent absurdity of the doctrine of a physical resurrection, there is a fatal difficulty in the way of both these supposit.i.tious modes of mutual knowledge in another world. It is this. The outward form, features, and expression sometimes alter so thoroughly that it is impossible for us to recognise our once most intimate companions. Cases are not rare of this kind. Let one pa.s.s in absence from childhood to maturity, and who that had not seen him in the mean time could tell that it was he? The trouble arising thence is finely ill.u.s.trated by Shakspeare in the motherly solicitude of Constance, who, on learning that her young son has been imprisoned by his uncle, King John, and will probably be kept until he pines to death, cries in anguish to her confessor,

"Father cardinal, I have heard you say That we shall see and know our friends in heaven: If that be true, I shall see my boy again; For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child, To him that did but yesterday suspire, There was not such a gracious creature born.

But now will canker sorrow eat my bud And chase the native beauty from his cheek, And he will look as hollow as a ghost, As dim and meagre as an ague's fit; And so he'll die; and, rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heaven I shall not know him: therefore never, never Must I behold my pretty Arthur more."

Owing to the changes of all sorts which take place in the body, future recognition cannot safely depend upon that or upon any resemblance of the spirit to it. Besides, not the faintest proof can be adduced of any such perceptible correspondence subsisting between them.

Turning again to the facts of experience, we find that it is not alone, nor indeed chiefly, by their visible forms and features that we know our chosen ones. We also, and far more truly, know them by the traits of their characters, the elements of their lives, the effluence of their spirits, the magic atmosphere which surrounds them, the electric thrill and communication which vivify and conjoin our souls. And even in the exterior, that which most reveals and distinguishes each is not the shape, but the expression, the lights and shades, reflected out from the immortal spirit shrined within. We know each other really by the mysterious motions of our souls. And all these things endure and act uninterrupted though the fleshly frame alter a thousand times or dissolve in its native dust. The knowledge of a friend, then, being independent of the body, spirits may be recognised in the future state by the a.s.sociations mutually surrounding them, the feelings connecting them. Amidst all the innumerable thronging mult.i.tudes, through all the immeasurable intervening heights and depths, of the immaterial world, remembered and desired companions may be selected and united by inward laws that act with the ease and precision of chemical affinities. We may therefore recognise each other by the feelings which now connect us, and which shall spontaneously kindle and interchange when we meet in heaven, as the signs of our former communion.

It needs but little thought to perceive that by this view future recognition is conditional, being made to depend on the permanence of our sympathies: there must be the same mutual relations, affinities, fitness to awaken the same emotions upon approaching each other's sphere, or we shall neither know nor be known. But in fact our sympathies and aversions change as much as our outward appearance does. The vices and virtues, loves and hatreds, of our hearts alter, the peculiar characteristics of our souls undergo as great a transformation, sometimes, as thorough a revolution, as the body does in the interval between childhood and manhood. These changes going on in our a.s.sociates frequently change our feelings towards them, heightening or diminishing our affection, creating a new interest, destroying an old one, now making enemies lovers, and now thoroughly alienating very friends. Such fundamental alterations of character may occur in us, or in our friend, before we meet in the unseen state, that we shall no more recognise each other's spirits than we should know each other on earth after a separation in which our bodily appearances and voices had been entirely changed. These considerations would induce us to think that recognition hereafter is not sure, but turns on the condition that we preserve a remembrance, desire, and adaptedness for one another.

If now the critical inquirer shall say there is no evidence, and it is incredible, that the body will be restored to a future life, or that the soul has any resemblance to the body by which it may be identified, furthermore, if he shall maintain that the doctrine of the revelation and recognition of the souls of friends in another life by an instinctive feeling, a mysterious attraction and response, is fanciful, an overdrawn conclusion of the imagination, not warranted by a stern induction of the average realities of the subject, and if he shall then ask, how are we to distinguish our former acquaintances among the hosts of heaven?

there is one more fact of experience which meets the case and answers his demand. When long absence and great exposures have wiped off all the marks by which old companions knew each other, it has frequently happened that they have met and conversed with indifference, each being ignorant of whom the other was; and so it has continued until, by some indirect means, some accidental allusion, or the agency of a third person, they have been suddenly revealed. Then, with throbbing hearts, in tears and rapture, they have rushed into each other's arms, with an instantaneous recurrence of their early friendship in all its original warmth, fulness, and flooding a.s.sociations. Many such instances are related in books of romance with strict truth to the actual occurrences of life. Several instances of it are authenticated in the early history of America, when children, torn from their homes by the Indians, were recovered by their parents after twenty or thirty years had elapsed and they were identified by circ.u.mstantial evidence. Let any parent ask his heart, any true friend ask his heart, if, discovering by some foreign means the object of his love, he would not embrace him with just as ardent a grat.i.tude and devotion as though there were no outward change and they had known one another at sight. So, in the life beyond the grave, if we are not able to recognise our earthly companions directly, either by spiritual sight or by intuitive feeling, we may obtain knowledge of each other indirectly by comparison of common recollections, or by the mediation of angels, or by some other Divine arrangement especially prepared for that purpose. And therefore, whether in heaven we look or feel as we do here or not, whether there be any provision in our present const.i.tution for future recognition or not, is of no consequence. In a thousand ways the defect can be remedied, if such be the will of G.o.d. And that such is his will every relevant fact and consideration would seem to prove. It is a consistent and seemingly requisite continuation and completion of that great scheme of which this life is a part. It is an apparently essential element and fulfilment of the wonderful apparatus of retribution, reward, and discipline, intended to educate us as members of G.o.d's eternal family. Because from the little which we now understand we cannot infer with plainness and certainty the precise means and method by which we can discriminate our friends in heaven need be no obstacle to believing the fact itself; for there are millions of undoubted truths whose conditions and ways of operation we can nowise fathom. Upon the whole, then, we conclude that we cannot by our mere understandings decide with certainty the question concerning future recognition; but we are justified in trusting to the accuracy of that doctrine, since it rests safely with the free pleasure of G.o.d, who is both infinitely able and disposed to do what is best, and we cannot help believing that it is best for us to be with and love hereafter those whom we are with and love here.3

There is a way of dealing with the general subject before us wholly different from the course thus far pursued. Ceasing to act the philosopher, laying aside all arguments and theories, all dry speculations, we may come as simple believers to the Christian Scriptures and investigate their teachings to accept whatever they p.r.o.nounce as the word of G.o.d's truth. Let us see to what results we shall thus be led. Searching the New Testament to learn its doctrine

3 Munch, Werden wir uns wiedersehen nach dem Tode. This work, based on the Kantian philosophy, denies future recognition. There is an able reply to it by Vogel, Ueber die Hoffnung des Wiedersehens.

in regard to reunion in a future state, we are very soon struck with surprise at the mysterious reserve, so characteristic of its pages, on this entire theme. Instead of a full and minute revelation blazing along the track of the gospel pens, a few fragmentary intimations, incidental hints, scattered here and there, are the substance of all that it expressly says. But though little is directly declared, yet much is plainly implied: especially the one great inference with which we are now concerned may be unequivocally and repeatedly drawn. In the parable of the Rich Man and the Beggar the Savior pictures forth the recognition of their souls in the disembodied state. Dives also is described as recollecting with intense interest, with the most anxious sympathy, his endangered brethren on earth. Although this occurs in a parable, yet it is likely that so prominent and vital a feature of it would be moulded, as to its essential significance, in accordance with what the author intended should be received as truth. Jesus also speaks of many who should come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; from which it would appear that the patriarchs are together in fellowship and that the righteous of after times were to be received with them in mutual acquaintance. On the Mount of Transfiguration the witnessing disciples saw Moses and Elias together with Jesus, and recognised them, probably from their resemblance to traditional descriptions of them. Jesus always represented the future state as a society. He said to his followers, "I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there ye may be also;" and he prayed to his Father that his disciples might be with him where he was going. At another time he declared of little children, "Their angels always behold the face of my Father in heaven:" he also taught that "there is joy in heaven over every sinner that repenteth;" pa.s.sages that presuppose such a community of faculties, sympathies, in heaven and earth, in angels and men, as certainly implies the doctrine of continued knowledge and fellowship. When heaven was opened before the dying Stephen, he saw and instantly knew his Divine Master, the Lord Jesus, and called to him to welcome his ascending spirit. Paul writes to the Thessalonians that he would not have them sorrow concerning the dead as those who have no hope, a.s.suring them that when Christ reappears they shall all be united again. In the Apocalypse, John saw, in a vision, the souls of the martyrs, who had died for the faith of the gospel, together, under the altar. From community of suffering and a common abode together in heaven we may safely infer their recognition of each other. The Gospels declare that Christ after his death remembered his disciples and came back to them to a.s.sure them that they should rejoin him on high; and the apostles a.s.sert that we are to be with Christ and to be like him in the future state. It follows from the admission of these declarations that we shall remember our friends and be united with them in conscious knowledge. Few, and brief, and vague as the utterances of the Scriptures are in relation to this theme, they necessarily involve all the results of an avowed doctrine. They undeniably involve the supposition that in the other life we shall be conscious personalities as here, retaining our memories and const.i.tuting a society. From these implications the fact of the future recognition of friends irresistibly results, unless there be some special interference to prevent it; and such an interposition there is no hint of and can be no reason for fearing.

Such is really all that we can learn from the Scriptures on the subject of our inquiry.4 Its indirectness and brevity would convince us that G.o.d did not intend to betray to us in clear light the secrets of the shrouded future, that for some reason it is best that his teaching should be so reserved, and leave us to the haunting wonder, the anxious surmise, the appalling mystery, the alluring possibilities, that now meet our gaze on the unmoving veil of death. G.o.d intends we shall trust in him without knowledge, and by faith, not by sight, pursue his guidance into the silent and unknown land.

Therefore, after a.n.a.lyzing the relevant facts of present experience and inferring what we can from them, and after studying the Scriptures and finding what they say, there is yet another method of considering the problem of recognition in the future state. That is without caring for critical discussion, without deferring to extraneous authority, we may follow the gravitating force of instinct, imagination, and moral reason. We are made to love and depend on each other. The longer, the more profoundly, we know and admire the good, the more our being becomes intertwined with theirs, so much the more intensely we desire to be with them always, and so much the more awful is the agony of separation.

This, what is it but great Nature's testimony, G.o.d's silent avowal, that we are to meet in eternity? Can the fearful anguish of bereavement be gratuitous? can the yearning prophecies of the smitten heart be all false? Belief in reunion hereafter is spontaneously adopted by humanity. We therefore esteem it divinely ordered or true. Without that soothing and sustaining trust, the unrelieved, intolerable wretchedness in many cases would burst through the fortress of the mind, hurl reason from its throne, and tear the royal affections and their attendants in the trampled dust of madness. Many a rarely gifted soul, unknown in his nameless privacy of life, has been so conjoined with a worthy peer, through precious bonds of unutterable sympathy, that, rather than be left behind, "the divided half of such a friendship as had mastered time," he has prayed that they, dying at once, might, involved together, hover across the dolorous strait to the other sh.o.r.e, and

"Arrive at last the blessed goal Where He that died in Holy Land Might reach them out the shining hand And take them as a single soul."

Denied that inmost wish, the rest of his widowed life below has been one melancholy strain of "In Memoriam." Many a faithful and n.o.ble mourner, whose garnered love and hope have been blighted for this world, would tell you that, without meeting his lost ones there, heaven itself would be no heaven to him. In such a state of soul we must expect to know again in an unfading clime the cherished dead. That belief is of Divine inspiration, an arrangement to heal the deadly wounds of sorrow. It is madness not to think it a verity. Who believes, as he shall float through the ambrosial airs of heaven, he could touch, in pa.s.sing, the radiant robes of his chosen friends without a thrill of recognition, the prelude to a blissful and immortal communion? Is there not truth in the poet's picture of the meeting of child and parent in heaven?

4 Harbaugh, The Heavenly Recognition. Gisborne, Recollections of Friends in the World to Come. Muston, Perpetuation of Christian Friendship.

"It was not, mother, that I knew thy face: The luminous eclipse that is on it now, Though it was fair on earth, would have made it strange Even to one who knew as well as he loved thee; But my heart cried out in me, Mother!"

Think of the unfathomable yearnings, the infinite ecstasies of desire and faith from age to age swelling in the very heart of the world, all set on the one hope of future union, and who then can believe that G.o.d will coldly blast them all? They are innocent, they are holy, they are meritorious, they are unspeakably dear. We would not destroy them; and G.o.d will not.

Man's life is the true fable of that beautiful youth, Narcissus, who had a twin sister of remarkable loveliness, strongly resembling himself, and to whom he was most tenderly attached. She dies young. He frequents fountains to gaze upon his own image reflected in the waters, it seeming to him the likeness of her he has lost. He is in pity transformed into a flower on the border of a stream, where, bending on his fragile stem, he seeks his image in the waters murmuring by, until he fades and dies. Has not G.o.d, the all loving Author who composed the sweet poem of Man and Nature, written at the close a reconciling Elysium wherein these pure lovers, the fond Narcissus and his echo mate, shall wander in perennial bliss, their embracing forms mirrored in unruffled fountains?

Looking now for the conclusion of the whole matter, we find that it lies in three different aspects, both of inquiring thought and of practical morality, according to the lights and modes in which three different cla.s.ses of minds approach it. To the consistent metaphysician, reasoning rigidly on grounds of science and philosophy, every thing pertaining to the methods and circ.u.mstances of the future life is an affair of entire uncertainty and hypothesis.5 If in the future state the soul retains its individuality as an identical force, form, life, and memory, and if a.s.sociates in the present state are brought together, it is probable that old friends will recognise each other. But if they are oblivious of the past, if they are incommunicably separated in s.p.a.ce or state, if one progresses so much farther that the other can never overtake him, if the personal soul blends its individual consciousness with the unitary consciousness of the Over Soul, if it commences a new career from a fresh psychical germ, then, by the terms, there will be no mutual recognition. In that case his comfort and his duty are to know that the anguish and longing he now feels will cease then; to trust in the benignity of the Infinite Wisdom, who knows best what to appoint for his creatures; and to submit with harmonizing resignation to the unalterable decree, offering his private wish a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of natural piety. That he shall know his friends hereafter is not impossible, not improbable; neither is it certain. He may desire it, expect it, but not with speculative pride dogmatically affirm it, nor with insisting egotism presumptuously demand it.

5 Gravell, Das Wiedersehen nach dem Tode. Wie es nur sein konne.

To the uncritical Christian the recognising reunion of friends in heaven is an unshaken a.s.surance.6 There is nothing to disturb his implicit reception of the plain teaching of Scripture. The legitimate exhortations of his faith are these. Mourn not too bitterly nor too long over your absent dead; for you shall meet them in an immortal clime. As the last hour comes for your dearest ones or for yourself, be of good cheer; for an imperishable joy is yours. You:

"Cannot lose the hope that many a year Hath shone on a gleaming way, When the walls of life are closing round And the sky grows sombre gray."

Put not away the intruding thoughts of the departed, but let them often recur. The dead are constant. You know not how much they may think of you, how near they may be to you. Will you pa.s.s to meet them not having thought of them for years, having perhaps forgotten them? Let your mind have its nightly firmament of religious communion, beneath which white and sable memories shall walk, and the sphered spirits of your risen friends, like stars, shed down their holy rays to soothe your feverish cares and hush every murmuring doubt to rest. From the dumb heavings of your loving and trustful heart, sometimes exclaim, Parents who nurtured and watched over me with unwearied affection, I would remember you oft, and love you well, and so live that one day I may meet you at the right hand of G.o.d. Early friends, so close and dear once, who in the light of young romance trod with me life's morning hills, neither your familiar faces nor your sweet communion are forgotten by me: I fondly think of you, and aspire towards you, and pray for a purer soul, that I may mount to your celestial circle at last;

"For many a tear these eyes must weep, And many a sin must be forgiven, Ere these pale lids shall sink to sleep, Ere you and I shall meet in heaven."

Blessed Jesus, elder Brother of our race, who sittest now by thy Father's throne, or pacest along the crystal coast as a leader, chief among ten thousand, whose condescending brow the b.l.o.o.d.y thorns no longer press, but the dazzling crown of thy Divinity encircles, oh, remember us, poor erring pilgrims after thine earthly steps; pity us, help us, and after death bring us to thy home.

To the sympathetic poet, the man of sentiment and meditation, who views the question from the position of the heart, in the glory and vistas of the imagination, but with all the known facts and relations of the subject lying bare under his sight, the uniting restoration, in another sphere, of earth's broken ties and parted friends, is an unappeasable craving of the soul, in harmony with the moral law, powerfully prophesied to his experience from all quarters, and seemingly confirmed to his hopes by every promise of G.o.d and nature.7

6 Grafe, Biblische Beitrage zu der Frage, Werden wir uns wiedersehen nach dem Tode.

7 Engel, Wir werden uns wiedersehen. Halst, Beleuchtung der Hauptgrunde fur den Glauben an Erinnerung und Wiedersehen nach dem Tode. Streicher, Neue Beitrage zur Kritik des Glaubens an Ruckerinnerung nach dem Tode.

Received as a truth, it is a well of inexhaustible comfort, making experience a green oasis where it overflows. The denial of it as a proven falsehood is a withering blast of dust blowing on the friendly caravan of sojourners in the desert of life. If existence is the enjoyment of a largess of social love, and death is to have a solitary hand s.n.a.t.c.h it all away forever, how dismal is the prospect to the poor heart that loves and clings, loses and despairs, and can only falter hopelessly on! It cannot be so. Love is the true prophet. Heaven will restore the treasures earth has lost.

The mourner by the grave! Eve convulsed over the form of Abel!

Jesus weeping where Lazarus lay! America embracing the urn of Washington! The Genius of Humanity at the Tomb of the Past! It is the most pathetic spectacle of the world. As in the old myth the pelican, hovering over her dead broodlets, pierced her own breast in agony and fluttered there until by the fanning of her wings above them and the dropping of her warm blood on them they were brought to life again, so the great Mother of men seems in history to brood over the ashes of departed ages, dropping the tears of her grief and faith into the future to restore her deceased children to life and draw them together within her embrace. And that sublime Rachel will not easily be comforted except when her thoughts, migrating whither her offspring have gone, seem to find them happy in some happy heaven.

The poet, lover of his race, who cannot trust his happier instinct, but perforce believes that beyond the sepulchral line of mortality he shall know no more of his friends, may find, as helps to a willing acquiescence in what is fated, either one of two possible contemplations.8 He may sadly lay upon his heart the stifling solace, There will be no baffled wants nor unhappiness, but all will be over when hic jacet is sculptured on the headstone of my grave. Or, with measureless rebound of faith, he may crowd the capacity of his soul with the mysterious presentiment, In the unchangeable fulness of an infinite bliss, all specialties will be merged and forgotten, and I shall be one of those to whom "the wearisome disease" of remembered sorrow and antic.i.p.ated joy "is an alien thing."

8 Wieland's Euthanasia expresses disbelief in the preservation of personality and consciousness after death. The same ground had been taken in the work published anonymously at Halle in 1775, Plato and Leibnitz jenseits des Styx. See, on the other side of the question, Wohlfahrt, Tempel der Unsterblichkeit, oder neue Anthologie der wichtigsten Ausspruche, besonders neuerer Weisen uber Wiedersehen u. s. w.

CHAPTER VII.

LOCAL FATE OF MAN IN THE ASTRONOMIC UNIVERSE.

ACCORDING to the imagining of some speculative geologists, perhaps this earth first floated in the abyss as a volume of vapor, wreathing its enormous folds of mist in fantastic shapes as it was borne along on the idle breath of law. Ages swept by, until this stupendous fog ball was condensed into an ocean of fire, whose billows heaved their lurid bosoms and reared their ashy crests without a check, while their burning spray illuminated its track around the sable vault. During periods which stagger computation, this molten world was gradually cooled down; constant rivers wrung from the densely swathing vapor poured over the heated ma.s.s and at last submerged its crust in an immense sea. Then, for unknown centuries, fire, water, and wind waged a t.i.tanic war, that imagination shudders to think of, jets of flame licking the stars, ma.s.sive battlements and columns of fire piled to terrific heights, now the basin of the sea suddenly turned into a glowing caldron and the atmosphere saturated with steam, again explosions hurling mountains far into s.p.a.ce and tearing the earth open in ghastly rents to its very heart. At length the fire was partially subdued, the peaceful deep gla.s.sed the sky in its bosom or rippled to the whispers of the breeze, and from amidst the fertile slime and mould of its sheltered floor began to sprout the first traces of organic life, the germs of a rude species of marine vegetation.

Thousands of years rolled on. The world ocean subsided, the peaks of mountains, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of islands, mighty continents, emerged, and slowly, after many tedious processes of preparation, a gigantic growth of gra.s.s, every blade as large as our vastest oak, shot from the soil, and the incalculable epoch of ferns commenced, whose tremendous harvest clothed the whole land with a deep carpet of living verdure. While unnumbered growths of this vegetation were successively maturing, falling, and hardening into the dark layers of inexhaustible coal beds, the world, one waving wilderness of solemn ferns, swept in its...o...b..t, voiceless and silent, without a single bird or insect of any kind in all its magnificent green solitudes, the air everywhere being heavily surcharged with gases of the deadliest poison. Again innumerable ages pa.s.sed, and the era of mere botanic growths reaching its limit, the lowest forms of animal life moved in the waters, the earliest creatures being certain marine reptiles, worms, and bugs of the sea. Then followed various untimed periods, during which animal life rose by degrees from mollusk and jellyfish, by plesiosaurus and pterodactyl, horrible monsters, hundreds of feet in length, whose tramp crashed through the woods, or whose flight loaded the groaning air, to the dolphin and the whale in the sea, the horse and the lion on the land, and the eagle, the nightingale, and the bird of paradise in the air. Finally, when millions of aons had worn away, the creative process culminated in Humanity, the crown and perfection of all; for G.o.d said, "Let us make man in our own image;" and straightway Adam, with upright form, kingly eye, and reason throned upon his brow, stood on the summit of the world and gave names to all the races of creatures beneath.1

At this stage two important questions arise. The first is, whether man is the final type of being intended in the Divine plan for this world, or whether he too is destined in his turn to be superseded by a higher race, endowed with form, faculties, and attributes transcending our conceptions, even as our own transcended the ideas of the previous orders of existence.

Undoubtedly, had the ichthyosaurus, ploughing through the deep and making it boil like a pot, or one of those mammoth creatures of the antediluvian age who browsed half a dozen trees for breakfast, crunched a couple of oxen for luncheon and a whole flock of sheep for his dinner, been consulted on a similar problem, he would have replied, without hesitation, "I exhaust the uses of the world.

What animal can there be superior to me? beyond a question, my race shall possess the earth forever!" The mastodon could not know any uses of nature except those he was fitted to experience, nor imagine a being with the form and prerogatives of man. Therefore he would not believe that the mastodon race would ever be displaced by the human. We labor under the same disqualification for judgment. There may be in the system of nature around us adaptations, gifts, glories, as much higher than any we enjoy as our n.o.blest powers and privileges are in advance of those of the tiger or the lark.

It is a remarkable fact that the mature states of the antediluvian races correspond with the foetal states of the present races, and that the foetal states of embryonic man are counterparts of the mature states of the lower races now contemporaneous with him.

This great discovery of modern science, though perhaps dest.i.tute of logical value, suggests to the imagination the thought that man may be but the foetal state of a higher being, a regent temporarily presiding here until the birth and inauguration of the true king of the world, and destined himself to be born from the womb of this world into the free light and air of the spirit kingdom!

The resources of G.o.d are inexhaustible; and in the evolution of his prearranged ages it may be that there will arise upon the earth a race of beings of unforetold majesty, who shall disinter the remnant bones and ponder the wrecked monuments of forgotten man as we do those of the disgusting reptiles of the Saurian epoch. But this is a mere conceit of possibility; and, so far as the data for forming an opinion are in our hands, it is altogether incredible. So far as appears, the adaptation between man and the earth is exhaustive. He is able to subdue all her forces, reign over all her provinces, enjoy all her delights, and gather into his consciousness all her prophecies. And our practical conviction is absolute that the race of men is the climax of being destined for this earth, and that they will occupy its hospitable bosom forever with their toils and their homes, their sports and their graves.2

The other question is this: Was the subjection of the human race to physical death a part of the Creator's original plan, or the retributive result of a subsequent dislocation of that plan by sin? a part of the great harmony of nature, or a discord marring the happy destiny