these claims are
utterly without foundation. Thousands of years before Christ was
born--thousands of years before Moses saw the light--the doctrine
of immortality was preached by the priests of Osiris and Isis.
Funeral discourses were pronounced over the dead, ages before
Abraham existed. When a man died in Egypt, before he was taken
across the sacred lake, he had a trial. Witnesses appeared, and
if he had done anything wrong, for which he had not done restitution,
he was not taken across the lake. The living friends, in disgrace,
carried the body back, and it was buried outside of what might be
called consecrated ground, while the ghost was supposed to wander
for a hundred years. Often the children of the dead would endeavor
to redeem the poor ghost by acts of love and kindness. When he
came to the spirit world there was the god Anubis, who weighed his
heart in the scales of eternal justice, and if the good deed
preponderated he entered the gates of Paradise; if the evil, he
had to go back to the world, and be born in the bodies of animals
for the purpose of final purification. At last, the good deeds
would outweigh the evil, and, according to the religion of Egypt,
the latch-string of heaven would never be drawn in until the last
wanderer got home. Immortality was also taught in India, and, in
fact, in all the countries of antiquity. Wherever men have loved,
wherever they have dreamed, wherever hope has spread its wings,
the idea of immortality has existed. But nothing could be worse
than the immortality promised in the New Testament--admitting that
it is so promised--eternal joy side by side with eternal pain.
Think of living forever, knowing that countless millions are
suffering eternal pain! How much better it would be for God to
commit suicide and let all life and motion cease! Christianity
has no consolation except for the Christian, and if a Christian
minister endeavors to console the widow of an unbeliever he must
resort, not to his religion, but to his sympathy--to the natural
promptings of the heart. He is compelled to say: "After all, may
be God is not so bad as we think," or, "May be your husband was
better than he appeared; perhaps somehow, in some way, the dear
man has squeezed in; he was a good husband, he was a kind father,
and even if he is in hell, may be he is in the temperate zone,
where they have occasional showers, and where, if the days are hot,
the nights are reasonably cool." Al