CHRISTIANITY AND IMMORTALITY.

IT may be desirable to explain at the outset what is the precise object of the present paper, inasmuch as the title may be thought to cover much wider ground than I am at all disposed to enter upon. The relations of the Christian belief in the Resurrection of Christ to the doctrine of immortality, have been already pointed out, (see p. 470), and do not need to be further discussed. That the Resurrection, if true, amounts to a scientific proof of immortality, that the witnesses for it are honest, and the testimony sufficient to prove any non-miraculous event, are statements which, even if they be challenged, I do not think it necessary to substantiate by additional arguments. Life after all is but short, and may be wasted in endless discussions upon matters perfectly obvious to all who are not blinded by invincible prejudice. The man who says, "I do not believe the history because it is avowedly supernatural," is, need it be remarked, an intellectually honest man, and deserves the most respectful attention. But the man who says, "I have no prepossessions against the supernatural; but I disbelieve the history upon exactly the same grounds as I should any statement whatever," who tries, in short, to reach Hume's conclusion without the resolute common sense that marked his method, must be dismissed as impracticable. There is, it must really be remembered, an enormous à priori probability attached

to every straightforward statement made by, apparently, honest men, which holds good in all cases where it is not balanced by some antecedent improbability, such as the existence of a supernatural element in the narrative. There is, indeed, a conceivable case in which a man might claim to be heard. If there be anyone who believes that miracles have occurred more or less frequently, but that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not proved to be one of them, then the very absurdity of his position entitles him to be considered an honest thinker. But I deny that the term applies to any (if such there be) who do not, as a matter of fact, believe that miracles have occurred, and yet pretend to reject the Resurrection upon the ground that it is not proved by evidence sufficient to substantiate ordinary historical events. Some little impatience with the men who are constantly throwing up barriers against the progress of reason to right conclusions, or who try to direct her march into byways formed by their own intellectual idiosyncracies, is surely not altogether unjustifiable.

But the task I have in hand is a much more serious, and, to say the truth, a much more unwelcome one. I have let it be understood with tolerable plainness in various parts of my former articles that, in my judgment, modern religious teaching is answerable for the errors, whether of disbelief or of superstition, which have gathered about the doctrine of man's immortality. Modern Christianity does not make the doctrine acceptable or useful to men, because it does not possess the mind of Christ, and does not teach the nineteenth century the things which He taught the first. A kind of moral weakness and littleness is creeping more and more over the minds of religious people; and religious doctrines, once full of life and power, have become mere dogmatic negations of some error as unreal as themselves. Somehow or other, the salt has lost its savour in the judgment of those to whom intellectual truth and practical morality are things of the first importance. I say this with the same kind of feelings that might inspire a French soldier to speak of the moral and professional corruptions that have plunged the French army into the depths of disaster. My life is bound up with the religion to the faults of which it is impossible to shut our eyes. I am not insensible to the good works, the doing of which has come down to us as a tradition from the great Evangelical or Catholic revivals. I am keenly alive no less to the exalted history of the past than to the equally noble responsibilities and duties of the future; but in spite of all this, or rather because of it, the truth requires to be proclaimed aloud, that modern Christianity, as generally received, does not represent the teaching of Christ, and is not fit to be charged with the task of teaching the world a suitable and satisfactory mo

rality. That this is true with respect to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul I now proceed to show.

The popular conception of the religion taught by Jesus Christ-a conception that underlies the doctrines and practices of all Christian churches is to the following effect:-He came to reveal the facts of a future life, which, when revealed, are found to consist of an endless life of happiness or misery, our destinies therein being decided by the relation which we hold towards Him. In this conception we must distinguish two erroneous notions: the first, that His teaching mainly concerned the next life; the second, that it consisted in the proclamation of heaven and hell as the ultimate destiny of mankind. Of these, the first, though not so striking, contains a more subtle power of evil than the second, and will require careful examination.

I must, however, first say a word in answer to the objection that these conceptions have ceased vitally to affect the religion of the world, or can be said fairly to represent it. I am convinced that no greater mistake can be made. It may, indeed, be admitted that the belief in endless torments is ceasing to exercise a real influence upon men's minds, but even this admission must not be made too much of. In the Roman Church, and in many Protestant sects,* it is still a predominant feature of religious teaching, while in none has it been formally withdrawn as an article of faith. It is, perhaps, thought that it may die out in silence; but, apart from the moral cowardice this involves, all history seems to show that when once a doctrine has laid firm hold of the popular mind, nothing short of active denunciation and determined opposition can destroy it. And then, too, it must be remembered that the system of theology of which it forms a cardinal point, still remains and flourishes. All the power of the priesthood, and all the logical value

* Almost as I write this sentence, the Standard contains the following item of news. Can anything be more abominable?" At Kingston, Jamaica, there has been considerable excitement, occasioned by a funeral sermon preached for the late Mr. Emanuel Lyons, a benevolent Hebrew of that city. The preacher, the Rev. J. Ratcliffe, endeavoured to prove beyond a doubt that the deceased had gone to heaven. The sermon had since been denounced as displaying as un-Christian sentiments as could come from the lips of any man. Christ, it was said, was dishonoured in it, as it indicated that any man may be saved without Christ on account of his own kindness, charity, and manly worth, and that the human soul, with its constitution, and the consciousness which it received from the Divine hands before a Bible was made or a revelation given, outweighs in importance all revelations and all religion. Several ministers had preached sermons specially designed to set forth Mr. Ratcliffe's errors, and also joined in the issue of a declaration denouncing them.

"The following ministers signed the declaration :-D. H. Campbell, Enos Nuttall, W. E. Pierce, Episcopalians; Henry Bunting, Samuel Smythe, Wesleyans; D. J. East, J. Seed Roberts, Baptists; James Ballantine, United Presbyterian; Mr. J. Gardner, L. M. Society; Mr. Griffiths and Mr. F. Church."

of the Calvinistic scheme of salvation, are really involved in ultimate ruin with the rejection of this doctrine. And again, though hell as a place of endless torment may be vanishing from men's minds, yet the idea of heaven as a place of endless happiness is almost as potent as ever. This seems to me the worst feature of all. Whatever may be said of the evils wrought by the fear of endless punishment, those wrought by the hope of endless happiness are certainly greater. The former is, at least, due to man's sense of the greatness of sin; the latter is the result of his selfish desires for enjoyment. The fear of hell has kept many a rough, wayward spirit in something like conformity to decent behaviour, and it has unquestionably been the turning point in thousands of lives, and the beginning of better things to men beyond the reach of any argument save fear. But the common idea of heaven can claim no such moral achievements, while it has enfeebled the character of myriads of human beings, and has ministered in the name of religion to human selfishness and love of ease. And if this assertion seems a strong one (as in truth I mean it to be), let any one who doubts whether it can be justified bethink himself of the hymns which have become more and more popular in these later days. Sentimental longings for paradise, excessive, though easily understood amid the moral wretchedness of the middle ages, are now among the most marked features of modern praise. Sensuous descriptions of mere outward details, passionate longings for happiness and idleness, are put into the mouths of grave British citizens, whose one great virtue is to do their duty like men, and who hate idleness as the source of all evil. How far we may believe that the minds of men are really drawn off from the realities of life, or how far they are merely softened and diverted for the moment, depends upon the amount of practical weight we are willing to admit that religion now possesses. All I am concerned to observe is, that there are tendencies which seem to be powerful, and are certainly popular, that are demoralizing in the extreme.

And lastly, as an additional proof that, however details may have been modified or abandoned, the general conception of the future life under the forms of heaven and hell is still a living part of the consciousness of man, I would point out how in times of earnest feeling it exercises a subtle influence upon the strongest minds. Two of the most eminent of living Englishmen, desirous of expressing themselves strongly in antagonism to popular notions, have done so by declaring their intention under certain circumstances of "going to hell." It is odd, on the other hand, to read of a man like Descartes affirming that he was as desirous to go to heaven as any one. The very idea of the two, hell especially, has been engrafted in the minds of men by grotesque poetry and legends. All this is indeed compatible with

the truth, which I do not for a moment deny, that there is a gradual loosening of the hold these beliefs once had upon the minds of men. What was once a tremendously earnest conflict between the preacher and his hearers, in which neither of the two ever doubted that the stakes were the endless destiny of an immortal soul, has now shrunk into a kind of amicable contest, in which the latter easily stops every attempt made by the former to reach his heart by means of the fear of hell. Respectable men no longer leave church with the same profound conviction, that without conversion their damnation is assured, and so that the only practical question is, how long it can safely be postponed. But then this is just the state of things in which doctrines, the errors of which might well be pardoned in consideration of their effectual moral power, have become nothing but pernicious. To confine all men's ideas of a future life to the one notion of decisive judgment, was certainly a mistake in the face of Christ's teaching, and of simple elementary moral truths. But to keep the idea of judgment before men's minds and force it upon their thoughts had at least a useful deterrent effect. But now that this is practically vanishing, there remains but one duty for all who love the truth as Christ taught it, and to whom human morality is unspeakably precious. Once more we are face to face with a popular religion that abuses the tremendous fact of man's immortality to unworthy purposes. The second Reformation must treat heaven and hell as the first treated purgatory and indulgences: it must preserve the moral idea while abolishing the literal fact, and must supersede the old forms of thought by new conceptions, gathered from the experience and the discoveries of the ages, but founded upon a closer adherence to the actual teaching of Christ.

In examining what the main characteristics of that teaching were, it is of great importance to observe in what relations it stood to the common religious teaching of His time. To begin then, it is not in the least true to say that Christ was the first to stamp the idea of immortality upon the minds of men under the forms of heaven and hell. He found, indeed, those ideas already existing, and He used them for His own purposes; but He took from them their future and remote, in order to give them a present and immediate, force and aspect. The Pharisees believed that the souls of good men would be for ever blessed (there is some doubt as to their ideas about the resurrection of the body), and that hell, or gehenna, would be the inevitable portion of the wicked. These beliefs had grown up exactly on the soil that might have been expected to produce them. They were the fruit of that, taken as a whole, dark and melancholy period of Jewish history which intervenes between the return from captivity and the coming of the Messiah. As in the middle ages, so in these,