izenship is in heaven. But neither the apostle nor his Master ever
urges this fact as a reason for apathy or indifference. Life may be
brief, but it is not worthless. The thought of life's brevity must not
act as an opiate, but rather as a stimulant. If our existence here is
short, then there is all the greater necessity that its days should be
nobly filled, and its transient opportunities seized and turned into
occasions of strenuous service.

{155}

(5) To the considerations just mentioned must be added a cognate truth
which has coloured the whole Christian view of life, and has been a most
powerful factor in shaping Christian conduct--_the idea of Immortality_.
It is not quite correct to say that we owe this doctrine to Christianity
alone. Long before the Christian era it was recognised in Egypt, Greece,
and the Orient generally. But it was entertained more as a surmise than
a conviction. And among the Greeks it was little more than the shadowy
speculation of philosophers. Plato, in his _Phaedo_, puts into the mouth
of Socrates utterances of great beauty and far-reaching import; yet,
notwithstanding their sublimity, they scarcely attain to more than a
'perhaps.' Even in Hebrew literature, as we have seen, while isolated
instances of a larger hope are not wanting, there is no confident or
general belief in an after-life. But what was only guessed at by the
ancients was declared as a fact by Christ, and preached as a sublime and
comforting truth by the apostles; and it is not too much to say that
survival after death is at once the most distinctive doctrine of
Christianity and the most precious hope of Christendom. The whole moral
temperature of the world, says Jean Paul Richter, has been raised
immeasurably by the fact that Christ by His Gospel has brought life and
immortality to light. This idea, which has found expression, not only in
all the creeds of Christendom, but also in the higher literature and
poetry of modern times, has given a new motive to action, has founded a
new type of heroism, and nerved common men and women to the discharge of
tasks from which nature recoils. The assurance that death does not end
existence, but that 'man has forever,' has not only exalted and
transfigured the common virtues of humanity; but, held in conjunction
with the belief in the divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood, given to
life itself a new solemnity and pathos.[14]

2. But if these are the things which ac