fections, the nobler his life; the more
likely is he to believe that the soul lives on. The more fleshly,
selfish and materialistic is the life, the harder it is to be sure of
immortality. Thousands may live in the slime, with the beasts, and may
not have a steadfast hope in a life beyond; but the great-minded and
great-hearted men of the race are surest of life everlasting. Tennyson
once said to Bishop Lightfoot: "The cardinal point of Christianity is
the life after death." Tennyson is supremely the poet of immortality.
It is his master thought; and herein he is typical of the greatest
minds in human history. This belief, universal and persistent, is most
vigorous in the hearts of the supreme men of our civilization.

4.--This belief, however vague may be the ideas in its context,
exercises a real influence on life. It energises men. It nerves them
to struggle and achieve. It enlarges their view. It inspires them for
vaster enterprises. It enables them to do hard things and to persevere
to the end.

WHAT PHILOSOPHY SAYS.

II. Philosophy lights more candles on the problem. Philosophy goes
deeper than the statement of facts; it gives a theory of the facts; it
seeks to find causes, relations and purposes.

1. The _thoughts_ of the normal man are long thoughts. He has an
instinctive yearning for immortality. If this instinct is absent, the
man is not normal. If this instinct is suppressed, the man's soul is
injured. If he does not believe in immortality, he will believe in
something far less credible. It may be continued existence in the
complex-life of humanity; it may be absorption of individual
personality in some Oversoul. The issue is sorrow of heart, bitterness
of soul, pessimism of creed, "Pessimism is the column of black smoke
proceeding from the heart in which the hope of immortality has been
burned to ashes." If a man remains normal, he believes in immortality.
What is the inference? Tennyson has drawn it.

"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust,
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And Thou hast made him, Thou are just."

A just Creator will not place instinctive longings in His Creature's
soul, only to betray them.

2.--The _affections_ of the soul are as true witnesses as the mind.
"The heart has reasons which the reason cannot understand." It is
impossible for love at its purest and strongest to believe that death
ends all. Love shrinks