hich is as wide as humanity." Reason asks herself,
Will God be always thus angry with me? Shall I always feel these pangs
of remorse for my sins? Will misery follow me forever, as I see and feel
that it does here? Or shall my soul exist under God's frowns, or perish
under his just sentence, even as my body perishes? Does the grave hide
forever all that I loved? Have they ceased to be? Shall we ever meet
again? Or must I say, "Farewell, farewell! An eternal farewell!" And in
a few days myself also cease to be? The only answer Reason gives
is--solemn silence.

The wisest of men could not tell. Who has not dropped a tear over the
dying words of Socrates, "I am going out of the world, and you are to
continue in it, but which of us has the better part is a secret to every
one but God." Cicero contended for the immortality of the soul against
the multitudes of philosophers who denied it in his day; yet, after
recounting their various opinions, he is obliged to say, "Which of these
is true, God alone knows; and which is most probable, a very great
question."[54] And Seneca, on a review of this subject, says:
"Immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by
these great men."[55]

The multitude had but two ideas on the subject. Either their ghosts
would wander eternally in the land of shadows, or else they would pass
into a succession of other bodies, of animals or men. From the nakedness
and desolation of unclothed spirit, and the possibility which this
notion held out of some close contact with a holy and just judge, the
soul shrank back to the hope of the metempsychosis, and hoped rather to
dwell in the body of a brute, than be utterly unclothed and mingle with
spirits. This is the delusion cherished by the people of India and many
other lands to this day. How unsatisfactory to the dying sinner this
uncertainty. "Tell me," said a wealthy Hindoo, who had given all his
wealth to the Brahmins who surrounded his dying bed, that they might
obtain pardon for his sins, "Tell me what will become of my soul when I
die?" "Your soul will go into the body of a holy cow." "And after that?"
"It will pass into the body of the divine peacock." "And after that?"
"It will pass into a flower." "Tell me, oh! tell me," cried the dying
man, "where will it go last of all?" Where will it go last of all? Aye,
that is the question Reason can not answer.

The rejectors of the Bible here are as uncertain on this all-important
subje