dge of its mortality. But this, to know God, stands
alone. To know God, to be linked with God, to be linked with Eternity--
if this is not the "eternal existence" of biology, what can more nearly
approach it? And yet we are still a great way off--to establish a
communication with the Eternal is not to secure Eternal Life. It must be
assumed that the communication could be sustained. And to assume this
would be to beg the question. So that we have still to prove Eternal
Life. But let it be again repeated, we are not here seeking proofs. We
are seeking light. We are merely reconnoitering from the furthest
promontory of Science if so be that through the haze we may discern the
outline of a distant coast and come to some conclusion as to the
possibility of landing.

But, it may be replied, it is not open to any one handling the question
of Immortality from the side of Science to remain neutral as to the
question of fact. It is not enough to announce that he has no addition
to make to the positive argument. This may be permitted with reference
to other points of contact between Science and Religion, but not with
this. We are told this question is settled--that there is no positive
side. Science meets the entire conception of Immortality with a direct
negative. In the face of a powerful consensus against even the
possibility of a Future Life, to content oneself with saying that
Science pretended to no argument in favor of it would be at once
impertinent and dishonest. We must therefore devote ourselves for a
moment to the question of possibility.

The problem is, with a material body and a mental organization
inseparably connected with it, to bridge the grave. Emotion, volition,
thought itself, are functions of the brain. When the brain is impaired,
they are impaired. When the brain is not, they are not. Everything
ceases with the dissolution of the material fabric; muscular activity
and mental activity perish alike. With the pronounced positive
statements on this point from many departments of modern Science we are
all familiar. The fatal verdict is recorded by a hundred hands and with
scarcely a shadow of qualification. "Unprejudiced philosophy is
compelled to reject the idea of an individual immortality and of a
personal continuance after death. With the decay and dissolution of its
material substratum, through which alone it has acquired a conscious
existence and become a person, and upon which it was dependent, the
spi