r validity. Many of the subjects with which they
deal lie beyond the reach of scientific evidence. Science has hitherto
dealt strictly with the physical; it has made almost no effort to test
the claims of the spiritual. In fact, the highest of these claims, that
of the existence of a deity, must lie forever beyond its reach. God may
exist, and science grope for Him through eternity in vain. Finite facts
can never gauge the infinite. Proofs and disproofs alike have been
offered of the existence of an infinite deity, but the problem remains
unsolved. None of these proofs or disproofs are positive; they all
depend on ideal conceptions, and ideas are always open to question;
positive facts on either side of the argument are, and are always likely
to be, wanting, and the belief in God must be based on other than
scientific grounds.

But when we come down to the lower levels of the domain of the spiritual
we find ourselves on firmer ground. Here we are dealing with the finite,
not with the infinite, and nothing that is finite can lie beyond the
boundaries of investigation, however long it may take to reach it. The
question of the existence of spirits, for instance,--that much mooted
problem of the immortality, or at least of the future existence, of man,
which forms so prominent an element in modern religion,--dwells within
the possible reach of science, and the attempt to deal with it by
scientific evidence may reasonably be made. When we pass beyond the
realm of the senses we find ourselves in a kingdom peopled by stupendous
forms and forces,--space, time, matter, energy, and perhaps infinite
consciousness,--all in their ultimate conditions too vast for the finite
mind to grasp, all presenting problems open to speculation, but beyond
the reach of demonstration. But below these lie finite possibilities
which the human mind may now be, or may become, capable of
comprehending, and prominent among these lies the problem just
mentioned, that of the existence of a spiritual substratum in man, a
soul which is capable of surviving the death of the body. This is a
subject with which all of us are deeply and intimately concerned, and it
may be well to close this volume with a brief glance at its status as a
scientific question.

The belief in the immortality of man is comparatively modern in origin.
There is no satisfactory evidence that any such belief existed among the
old Jews, or that it arose in Palestine before the time of Chr