In Defence of the Faith

VIII.—Personal Immortality

[Dr. Albert Peel is the Editor of the Congregational Quarterly.— En. Spectator.) JHAVE just returned from an afternoon's sick visitation. Most of the people 'I hive • seen are aged people who are vividly conscious that their days on the earth are nm..bered. As I have gone from house to 'house I have been struck by the fact that every invalid has talked with absolute assurance of the con- tinuance of life, of the certainty of the recognition of loved ones gone before, and of joyous reunions soon to take place. One of them was finding solace in Whittier's words :- "When on my day of life the night is falling,

And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown, I hear far voices out of darkness calling My foot to paths unknown ;.

;Suffice it if—my good and ill unreckoned,

And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace— I find myself by hands familiar beckoned Unto my fitting place."

Most of the others were simple souls without much in the way of learning : they would probably never use the term " personal immortality," but of the -thing they have not the slightest shadoiv of a. doubt. They are -as sure as was the widow of the famous Sir John Franklin who was lost in the search for the North-West Passage. Her words, inscribed. on. his monument in St. Paul's" Cathedral, read : "This monument_ was erected by Jane, his widow, who, after long waiting and sending many in search of him, herself departed to find him in the realms of light, July, 1875." Are they under a delusion, a delusion from which they will never wake because they will never themselves wake from the sleep called death ? Is there such a. thing as a continuance of the individual personality after the death of the body ?

There is probably no subject about which there is such sustained and general interest as this one, an interest that has been heightened since the War. On the shelf before me devoted to books on this subject I can count thirty-six that have been written within the last four or five years. From every possible point of view they discuss. the question. Mystics, psychical researchers, spiritualists, fundamentalists, scientists, all ask whether the soul lives on after the death of the body and, if so, how, and under what conditions. And every day one finds men answering these. questions in different ways. One day it is a business man, a one-time theological student who saw his friend shot through the head in the War, and said, " Well, they can say what they like, but you're done for," and immediately threw Christianity and belief in immortality overboard ; the next it is .a countryman who still has a Jonathan Edwards eschatol- ogy, with its horrors undiluted ; the next a woman who only visits a church for weddings and funerals, but who has an obstinate and entirely irrational con- viction about. the Great White Throne and the certainty of future . judgment ; and the next a theologian who believes in. " conditional. immortality," and is certain that those who do not deserve to live on will just be snuffed out on the death of the, 6o4y.

It may be said at the present time that few people deny the possibility of immortality, while a great many take the agnostic attitude.. Roughly speaking, theologians who accept immortality divide themselves into three groups :- First, some s-e convinced, and they quote many scripture passages in support, that life in the flesh determines the fmal destiny of the 'individual. " As the tree falls so shall it lie," and on the death of the body, or after an interval, the righteous are welcomed into a world of bliss and the wicked go to age-long punishment. Second, the conscience of the world has revolted against this notion. Most of us recognize that we know few people good enough for " Heaven " or bad enough for " Hell." The love that is broader than the measures of man's mind will not consign a man, whatever he has done during his brief spell on earth, to eternal torment. So there has risen a belief—strongly held in many quarters, and so strongly in America that a denomination exists with the belief as its central tenet—that all men at last are to be won by the love of God, Who wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth; Such a belief rests on the conviction that God must ultimately be victor. It necessitates, of course, a state in which all men gradually learn the lessons they have failed to learn on the earth, and at last respond to the Hound of Heaven that tracks them down, the never-failing love of God. Third, the third school, generally known by the phrase " con- ditional immortality," is associated with the name of Edward White, a Congregational minister of the last century. A man may show himself steadily, consistently, arrogantly, an enemy of the Divine purpose and totally incapable of appreciating the Divine love. The best thing, ,therefore, for him and for the world, is that he should just be blotted out ; having shown himself incapable of realizing moral values and of deserving immortality, there is no immortality for him.

Amid all the divergences of theologians and ordinary folk one cannot help but be impressed by the intensity of the desire for continuance in many people. They want to be themselves—fully and entirely themselves. Life to them would lose its meaning and its joy, did they not believe that they were to be for ever conscious of themselves and able to share their hopes, their plans, their lives with those whom they have loved on the earth. Recently I heard about a distinguished schoolmaster who greatly impressed an audience by the conviction with which he declared that he would rather be himself and stand over against God than be absorbed into the Divine Being. He is, I am confident, the spokesman for a great many. On the other hand, there are those who have no such desire for personal survival. I myself never feel the slightest interest in what will happeh to me after the death of the body. The faith I have in religion is quite content to leave all that on one Side : there is little time enough on the earth to do the duty that lies nearest. I • am not anxious about what the future life contains for myself or for those I love. I believe that any such values as my life stands for are sure to be preserved. But it may be in the wisdom of God that they will be best preserved by being incor- porated in some way into the Divine Being. I cannot understand the man who believes that a petty self, with all its futilities and idiosyncrasies, deserves survival ; rather do I imagine that a man should desire everSrthing that is petty and peculiar to be swept away, and his life perfected and filled . to the full by a larger power and purpose. The trouble seems to come because people always think of eternal life as being mere duration. Eternal life, it is often forgotten, is something that we may be living here and now ; and surely we most realiie ourselves when we do not develop the pettiness that in large measure make us ourselves, but let something grander and bigger have possession of us to use us for its own ends. " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," said Paul, and because he knew such an experience, he knew life eternal, a life that made him able to rejoice always and be content in every state even while he was on the earth.

In his latest novel, Hans Frost, Mr. Hugh Walpole describes the growth of love between an old man of seventy and his niece, a girl of nineteen. He makes the old man say at the end, " We love one another— of course we do. I'm passing into a place where you can't come. It's all right. That won't - prevent our being together. We may find that our contact is eternal. Who knows ? There is a sniff of immortality about our love for one another. But here now on this earth my adventure is almost over and yours is just beginning." It seems to me that here we have the 'essence of the truth. Love is of God and, therefore, is eternal. The love which Jesus had for God expressed itself in an intimacy of communion which meant that Jesus was living the life that was life indeed, the life that was life eternal, even while He was on the earth. He and the Father were one. God lived in Him, making His personality entire and complete. Even so I believe it may be with us now and hereafter.

A few weeks ago when I was thinking over this subject I read in the Observer a poem by Mr. Ronald Campbell Macfie which seemed to me to express much of what I feel about personal immortality. It is called : " Pan- theos. St. Enogat's Bay." It is too long to quote in full, but here are the first and third stanzas :- " The doubts and discords of my heart are dumb ;

I have become Part of the cosmic rhythm of the Lord ; For all my being vibrates in accord With the blue pulses of the tide that sways

And swirls and ripples into rocky bays—

With the white tremor of the surf that smiles, ' As breakers beat upon the Breton isles.

The doubts and discords of my heart are dumb ; I have becomo An ebb and flow, an elemental urge,

Hoar of the mist, and heaving of the surge, Sigh of the wind and murmur of the waves, Seetho of the foam, and music of the caves. Grown part and partner of the Oversoul In every wavelet I partake the Whole."

The poem ends with the lines :— " I have become the Spirit of the Sea,

And know the Life in it, the Life in me."

That suggests the kind of immortality which I desire—an immortality of which I can be conscious here and now. God can dwell in man, and that in itself gives the assur- ance of immortal life, and that assurance is guaranteed by God's revelation in Christ Jesus. The fervent hope men have that they, will live on springs from the belief that there are values in every individual soul which, if the universe be ruled by purpose, must be for ever conserved. If Jesus taught one thing more clearly than another, it was that every soul is of infinite worth in God's sight. If that is so, and a man has a contri- bution to make to the world that no other man can make, a God Who numbers the very hairs of our heads will naturally see to it that every man's powers are not wasted, but employed to carry out His Divine Purpose. Victor Hugo wrote toward the end of his life :-- " I feel immortality in myself. Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear round me the immortal symphomes of the world to come . . . For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and verse ; but I feel I have not said one-thousandth part of what is in me. When I have gone down to the grave I shall have ended my day's work ; but another day will begin next morning. Life closes ui tho twilight, but opens with the dawn."

The eternal wisdom that we believe reigns in the uni- verse, the eternal love which values every human soul, will see that Victor Hugo and -all his brethren have the opportunity to carry on and complete their work. But that can only be done as their personalities are perfected, and they become what Wordsworth calls, " the blessed spirits whom Thou includest as the sea her waves."

ALBERT PEEL.

Next week we shall publish the ninth article in this second series, " The Interior Life," by the Bishop of Southampton. Pievious articles have been " The Modern Outlook in Theology," by the Bishop of Gloucester ; " The Modern Attitude to the Bible," by Canon Vernon Storr, of Westminster ; " Providence and Ffee Will,' by Rev. F. H. Brabant ; " Christianity and the Beyond," by Dr. Edwyn Bevan ; " The Wondrous Fellowship," by Mr. Alger Thorold ; " The Mystery of Suffering," by the Rev. Dr. Maltby ; and " Faith and Works," by Dr. Rudolf Otto, translated by Pro- fessor John W. Harvey.