ent, for there is little if any difference of opinion
concerning the teaching of Jesus and that of the writers of the New
Testament. They are united and consistent in assuming the persistence of
being. That belief underlies all their appeals to the solemn sanctions
of the moral law which they derived from the future life. Jesus himself
said, "If it were not so, I would have told you;" and nearly, if not
quite all the Apostles base their warnings and their invitations on
motives which reach beyond the death of the body. The masters of other
religions have been equally positive. In some form or other they have
asserted the continued existence of the spiritual nature in man.

But we turn, for the moment, from these and consider such evidence as
may be derived from the soul itself, and from what is known of its
progress.

There is no evidence that when the body dies the soul dies with it. It
may not be possible to prove the reverse; all that we know is that the
vital functions cease, and that the body decays. No eye ever saw the
soul, and no dissection ever discovered the place of its dwelling. Is
that ethereal something which we call soul simply the result of the
organization of atoms? Or is the body like a house in which a spiritual
tenant dwells? At least this may be affirmed: No one has yet been able
to prove that the soul and body die together. Then there is no
reasonable presumption against the continuance of being. No spirit, so
far as we know, has returned to the earth in visible form, and spoken
its message; and yet, for aught we know, we may be surrounded every day
by spiritual beings, moving unseen along the avenues upon which we walk,
and entering without invitation the houses which we inhabit. At this
point it is enough simply to grant that presumptions are, perhaps,
evenly balanced. If one asks for proof that the spirit persists, the
only reply must be a Socratic one--Can you prove that it is vitally
connected with the body?

Belief in the existence of the soul after death seems to be an innate
belief. It has been ascribed to the influence of the superstition about
ghosts; but that superstition is only an unscientific form of the larger
faith in the persistence of being. Where did this conviction originate?
We think only of such things as have been experienced. No thought is
ever entirely original. Even imagination cannot create anything
absolutely unlike anything which ever existed. All the fabled beings
w