nominated
by "correspondence." And the truth to be emphasized resolves itself into
this, that Spiritual Death is a want of correspondence between the
organism and the spiritual environment.

What is the spiritual environment? This term obviously demands some
further definition. For Death is a relative term. And before we can
define Death in the spiritual world we must first apprehend the
particular relation with reference to which the expression is to be
employed. We shall best reach the nature of this relation by considering
for a moment the subject of environment generally. By the natural
environment we mean the entire surroundings of the natural man, the
entire external world in which he lives and moves and has his being. It
is not involved in the idea that either with all or part of the
environment he is in immediate correspondence. Whether he correspond
with it or not, it is there. There is in fact a conscious environment
and an environment of which he is not conscious; and it must be borne in
mind that the conscious environment is not all the environment that is.
All that surrounds him, all that environs him, conscious or unconscious,
is environment. The moon and stars are part of it, though in the daytime
he may not see them. The polar regions are parts of it, though he is
seldom aware of their influence. In its widest sense environment simply
means all else that is.

Now it will next be manifest that different organisms correspond with
this environment in varying degrees of completeness or incompleteness.
At the bottom of the biological scale we find organisms which have only
the most limited correspondence with their surroundings. A tree, for
example, corresponds with the soil about its stem, with the sunlight,
and with the air in contact with its leaves. But it is shut off by its
comparatively low development from a whole world to which higher forms
of life have additional access. The want of locomotion alone
circumscribes most seriously its area of correspondence, so that to a
large part of surrounding nature it may truly be said to be dead. So far
as consciousness is concerned, we should be justified indeed in saying
that it was not alive at all. The murmur of the stream which bathes its
roots affects it not. The marvelous insect-life beneath its shadow
excites in it no wonder. The tender maternity of the bird which has its
nest among its leaves stirs no responsive sympathy. It cannot correspond
with those