He is near."(878) No man is so poor as he who calls in agony: "O God!" and
to whom neither the heaven above nor the heart within answers, "Behold,
God is here." Nor is any man so rich with all his possessions as he who
realizes, like the Psalmist, that "the nearness of God is the true good,"
and imbued with this thought exclaims, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee?
And beside Thee I desire none upon earth."(879)

Chapter XLIII. Death and the Future Life

1. The vision of man is directed upwards and forwards; he will not resign
himself to decay in the dust like the beast. As he bears in his breast the
consciousness of a higher divine world, he is equally confident of his own
continuity after death. He cannot and will not believe that with the
giving up of his last living breath his being would become dust like that
of the animal; or that his soul, which has hitherto accomplished and
planned so much, should now suddenly cease altogether to exist. The
longing for a future life, however expressed, has filled him and buoyed
him up since the very beginning of history. Even the most primitive tribe
does not allow its dead to lie and rot like the carcasses of the beast,
but lays them to rest in the grave with all their possessions, in the
expectation that somewhere and somehow, under, over or beyond the earth,
they will continue their lives, even in a better form than before.

This longing for immortality implanted in the human soul is so represented
in the legend of Paradise that the tree whose fruit bestowed upon the
celestial beings the gift of eternal life--like the Greek ambrosia, "the
food of the gods"--was originally intended for mankind also in the divine
"Garden of Bliss." But after man fell through sin, all access to it was
denied him, in order that he might not stretch out his hand for it and
thereby attain that immortality which was vouchsafed only to divine
beings.(880) According to his original destiny, therefore, man should live
forever; and, just as legend allows those divinely elected, like Enoch and
Elijah,(881) to ascend to heaven alive, so at a later period prophecy
predicts a time when God will annihilate death forever.(882) Accordingly,
through the power of his divine soul man possesses a claim to immortality,
to eternal life with God, the "Fountain of life."

2. It was just this keen longing for an energetic life on earth, this
mighty yearning to "walk before God in the land of the living,"(883) whi