venture to ask my readers, is the true God-the God of
the Theologian, or He whom we may see around us, and in whose presence
we stand each hour and moment of our lives?

CHAPTER VIII. THE LIFE EVERLASTING

Let us now consider the life which we can look forward to with certainty
after death, and the moral government of the world here on earth.

If we could hear the leaves complaining to one another that they must
die, and commiserating the hardness of their lot in having ever been
induced to bud forth, we should, I imagine, despise them for their
peevishness more than we should pity them. We should tell them that
though we could not see reason for thinking that they would ever hang
again upon the same-or any at all similar-bough as the same individual
leaves, after they had once faded and fallen off, yet that as they had
been changing personalities without feeling it during the whole of their
leafhood, so they would on death continue to do this selfsame thing
by entering into new phases of life. True, death will deprive them of
conscious memory concerning their now current life; but, though they die
as leaves, they live in the tree whom they have helped to vivify, and
whose growth and continued well-being is due solely to this life and
death of its component personalities.

We consider the cells which are born and die within us yearly to have
been sufficiently honoured [sic] in having contributed their quotum to
our life; why should we have such difficulty in seeing that a healthy
enjoyment and employment of our life will give us a sufficient reward in
that growth of God wherein we may live more truly and effectually after
death than we have lived when we were conscious of existence? Is Handel
dead when he influences and sets in motion more human beings in three
months now than during the whole, probably, of the years in which he
thought that he was alive? What is being alive if the power to draw men
for many miles in order that they may put themselves en rapport with
him is not being so? True, Handel no longer knows the power which he has
over us, but this is a small matter; he no longer animates six feet of
flesh and blood, but he lives in us as the dead leaf lives in the tree.
He is with God, and God knows him though he knows himself no more.

This should suffice, and I observe in practice does suffice, for all
reasonable persons. It may be said that one day the tree itself must
die, and the leaves no longer