BOOKS.
IMMORTALITY.* Tins is a volume of essays edited by Canon Streeter, in which the question of Immortality is discussed from various points of view. For the scientifically inclined there is an excellent, though neces- sarily inconclusive, paper by Dr. J. A. Hadfield upon the intimations of immortality in the relations of mind and body. From his own medical experience in curing physical ailments by psychical means, he proves the dominating influence of mind over body ; and from the history of the evolution of consciousness and will, he con- jectures that the mind, having in the course of centuries gained this mastery, may one day be completely emancipated, and "perhaps find or create for itself a spiritual body adapted to a different sphere of existence." Again, the artist or man of letters is likely to turn with most satisfaction to two essays by Mr. Clutton-Brock. In the first of these he discusses the cause of much prevalent disbelief in immortality, and finds it partly in an honest passion for" absolute values," without thought of reward, and partly in a reaction against the popular notion of what the future life will bring with it. But in reply to such an agnostic position Mr. Clutton-Brock points out that man's invincible desire for these "absolute values," such as justice, cannot be satisfied without a future life ; and that such a future life is really involved in a spiritual conception of the universe :— "Is there such a thing as spirit, or merely a complicated
mechanical .process which becomes conscious of itself ugh some extra intensity in its working ? Either spirit is the supreme fact, supreme over all changes of process and lasting through them all; or life is to be defined as a mechanical process suffering from the illusion that it is not mechanical. . . . The mechanical explana- tion of the universe would be quite satisfying, if only it were not we poor machines that had hit upon it. . . . The fact that we are capable of conceiving these [mechanical] theories must always in the long run make it.impossible for us to believe them. There- fore men will continue to believe in a future life, will indeed believe in it more and more with every increase of consciousness."- In his second paper Mr. Clutton-Brock uses art, which he regards as a representation of life "emptied of irrelevance," to suggest some characteristics of what Heaven may be. The irrelevant in our case is the unreal and evil dreams we make for ourselves- " our hatreds, our hostile generalisations about hostile classes and people, our senile of status, our formulae moral, intellectual, and aesthetic, our habit of valuing the temporal as the eternal." These things, not being part of reality, will not follow us to Heaven ; but we shall be more ourselves without them, and Heaven will seem.ta
James on finding us more our home than earth has ever been. Using the key supplied by art, Mr. Clutton-Brock finds for himself a solution of many problems about the future life. He has written a very fresh and stimulating essay, relieved here and there by touches of hiunow, as when he pictures the behaviour of Henry self in "the conventional Heaven of the conventionally devout._
• Immortality an &say in Discovery co-ordinating Scientific, Psychical, and Biblical Research. London : Macmillan and Co. 1101. Od. net.)
This analogical method of handling the questipn as to the nature of the future life seems to us more satisfactory than that adopted by Canon. Streeter in his two essays, because it frankly pretends to nothing but suggestion, whereas Canon Streeter is tempted to speculation of a perilous, because too popular, kind. For example, the nature of the resurrection body is a topic on which knowledge is impossible. The thought that this new body is being moulded day by day by our thoughts and wishes, so that at death we stand revealed to friends and foes alike as what we are, with no possi- bility of disguise, might be allowable in a sermon for its cautionary value ; but it is not St. Paul's doctrine; and it has no special cogency. Similarly there is nothing to be gained by speculation upon the probable nature of the activities of the life to come. Canon Streeter is perhaps writing for more matter-of-fact people than Mr. Clutton. Brock, and wishes to assure them that they will not necessarily spend eternity "sitting on a damp cloud and playing the harp."
Biblical exegesis, except for an occasional reference by Canon Streeter, is represented in only one paper, that by the Rev. C. W. Emmet on "The Bible and Hell." Mr. Emmet's essay was well worth undertaking, and it is a learned and satisfactory piece of work. Many Christians have probably never realized how small a place the subject of future punishment occupies in the Bible. Mr. Emmet shows that the idea first arose with the Apocalyptic writers ; in the Old Testament it is fouild only in Daniel xii. 2; and was chiefly thought of as the doom of persecutors and apostates. He shows also that the epithet " eternal " was commonly applied to this future punishment, even when the time was definitely limited. Modern scholarship has been able to trace the origin of much of the New Testament doctrine as to future punishment to the Jewish Apocalypses ; and therefore the critical question arises how far such passages represent the teaching of Christ Himself. Mr. Emmet discusses the question with care, pointing out that the crucial passages occur chiefly in St. Matthew, whose Gospel shows most traces of editorial revision, and in the Apocalyptic Epistles 2 Peter and Jude and the Revelation. We cannot attempt to reproduce the evidence in any detail, but we may call attention to a principle of great importance in the investigation : "we must bear in mind that the real and fundamental meaning of any writer is to be found in the ideas which are original and characteristic, not in those which are simply inherited from the current thought of the age." The latter part of Mr. Emmet's essay, which discusses the doctrine that the Church holds, or should hold, to-day, does not strike us as quite so satisfactory as the critical part. To his main position that, as the doctrine of future punishment arose from the sense of justice which demanded retribution upon powerful persecutors, it must still and always carry an ethical sense along with it, we entirely assent. But we think he somewhat underrates the acquiescence of the Christian conscience to-day in the idea of punishment, and also lays insufficient stress on the consequences of human freedom. Like St. Paul, we may trust that some day" God shall be all in all," without venturing to deny the possibility that a human spirit may become so hardened that God's love can only beat upon it in vain. "There may be heaven," says the poet, "there must be hell." Finally, three essays are contributed by Miss Lily Dougall, author of Pro Christo at Eectesia, upon Spiritualism and Theosophy and telepathic communication with "the beyond." These are very timely papers, and they strike us as well argued and likely to prove helpful to persons who are attracted to occultism. One story in the writer's experience is worth reproducing for the evidence it furnishes that telepathic impressions may be conveyed to the " medium " from some one not present at the séance through a person who unconsciously has received and transmitted them :— " My friend, whom we will call Miss A, received a visit from an acquaintance we will call Mrs. B. The mind of Miss A was at the time absorbed by the details of some striking events which had lately occurred in her own circle, but she did not mention these events to Mrs. B, who was not an intimate friend and was not personally concerned in them. In the course of conversation Mrs. B said she was on her way to keep an appointment with a visualising medium. Asked why she made such appointments, she replied that this medium had the power to see as in a vision the most important factors of her life, and in that way to give her wise advice as to how to act in the present and immediate future. Mrs. B took her leave, but in a short time unexpectedly called again on her way home, to tell Miss A that her visit to the medium this time had been disappointing and useless. The medium had had and described a series of visions, but nothing in them was recognized by Mrs. B and neither she nor the medium could make any sense out of them. Out of politeness Miss A enquired their nature, and was amazed. when Mrs. B's recital set forth with considerable detail the events which had absorbed her own mind during Mrs. B's visit before she went on to the séance."
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