or both, existing
apart from the body and continuing after the destruction of the body,
and being still a person and an individual" (p. 59). He does not
actually say that there _is_ no difficulty about this conception: he
only says that, as a matter of history, the great mass of men have
found it easy and natural to believe in ghosts. But it is hard to see
any force in his argument at this point unless he means to imply that
he himself finds "little or no difficulty" in conceiving the continued
existence of a spiritual consciousness and individuality after the
dissolution of the body to which it has been attached; and if he does
mean this, it is hard to see why he does not take his stand beside Sir
Oliver Lodge on the spiritist platform. To many of us, the extreme
difficulty of such a conception is the one great barrier to the
acceptance of the spiritist theory, for which remarkable evidence can
certainly be adduced. This, however, is a digression. So far as _God
the Invisible King_ is concerned, Mr. Wells must be taken as ignoring,
if not rejecting, the idea of personal immortality.

The victory over death, then, which the Invisible King is said to
achieve, does not consist in its abolition. It may probably be best
defined as the perfect reconcilement of the believer to the extinction
of his individual consciousness. And what are the grounds of that
reconcilement? Let us search the scriptures. Where the steps are
described by which the catechumen approaches the full realization of
God, it is said that at that stage he feels that "if there were such a
being he would supply the needed consolation and direction, his
continuing purpose would knit together the scattered effort of life,
_his immortality would take the sting from death_" (p. 21-22). A
little further on, the idea is elaborated in a high strain of
mysticism. God, who "captains us but does not coddle us" (p. 42), will
by no means undertake to hold the believer scatheless among the
pitfalls and perils that beset our earthly pilgrimage. "But God will
be with you nevertheless. In the reeling aeroplane, or the dark
ice-cave, God will be your courage. Though you suffer or are killed,
it is not an end. He will be with you as you face death; he will die
with you as he has died already countless myriads of brave deaths. He
will come so close to you that at the last you will not know whether
it is you or he who dies, and the present death will be swallowed up
in his vi