ain the third day. It can tell us that the gate of everlasting
life is open, but not that the dead shall be raised incorruptible. We
have other faculties for investigating the evidence for past events;
the inner light cannot certify them immediately, though it can give a
powerful support to the external evidence. For though we are in no
position to dogmatise about the relations of the temporal to the
eternal, one fact does seem to stand out,--that the two are, _for us_,
bound together. If, when we read the Gospels, "the Spirit itself
beareth witness with our spirit" that here are the words of eternal
life, and the character which alone in history is absolutely flawless,
then it is natural for us to believe that there has been, at that
point of time, an Incarnation of the Word of God Himself. That the
revelation of Christ is an absolute revelation, is a dogmatic
statement which, strictly speaking, only the Absolute could make. What
_we_ mean by it is that after two thousand years we are unable to
conceive of its being ever superseded in any particular. And if anyone
finds this inadequate, he may be invited to explain what higher degree
of certainty is within our reach. With regard to the future life, the
same consideration may help us to understand why the Church has clung
to the belief in a literal second coming of Christ to pronounce the
dooms of all mankind. But our Lord Himself has taught us that in "that
day and that hour" lies hidden a more inscrutable mystery than even He
Himself, as man, could reveal.

There is one other point on which I wish to make my position clear.
The fact that human love or sympathy is the guide who conducts us to
the heart of life, revealing to us God and Nature and ourselves, is
proof that part of our life is bound up with the life of the world,
and that if we live in these our true relations we shall not entirely
die so long as human beings remain alive upon this earth. The progress
of the race, the diminution of sin and misery, the advancing kingdom
of Christ on earth,--these are matters in which we have a _personal_
interest. The strong desire that we feel--and the best of us feel it
most strongly--that the human race may be better, wiser, and happier
in the future than they are now or have been in the past, is neither
due to a false association of ideas, nor to pure unselfishness. There
is a sense in which death would not be the end of everything for us,
even though in this life only