espondence; and the life will be perfect only
when the correspondence is perfect."[68]

We are now all but in sight of our scientific definitions of Eternal
Life. The desideratum is an organism with a correspondence of a very
exceptional kind. It must lie beyond the reach of those "mechanical
actions" and those "variations of available food," which are "liable to
stop the processes going on in the organism." Before we reach an Eternal
Life we must pass beyond that point at which all ordinary
correspondences inevitably cease. We must find an organism so high and
complex, that at some point in its development it shall have added a
correspondence which organic death is powerless to arrest. We must in
short pass beyond that definite region where the correspondences depend
on evanescent and material media, and enter a further region where the
Environment corresponded with is itself Eternal. Such an Environment
exists. The Environment of the Spiritual world is outside the influence
of these "mechanical actions," which sooner or later interrupt the
processes going on in all finite organisms. If then we can find an
organism which has established a correspondence with the spiritual
world, that correspondence will possess the elements of
eternity--provided only one other condition be fulfilled.

That condition is that the Environment be perfect. If it is not perfect,
if it is not the highest, if it is endowed with the finite quality of
change, there can be no guarantee that the Life of its correspondents
will be eternal. Some change might occur in it which the correspondents
had no adaptive changes to meet, and Life would cease. But grant a
spiritual organism in perfect correspondence with a perfect spiritual
Environment, and the conditions necessary to Eternal Life are satisfied.

The exact terms of Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of Eternal Life may
now be given. And it will be seen that they include essentially the
conditions here laid down. "Perfect correspondence would be perfect
life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism
had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency
with which it met them, there would be eternal existence and eternal
knowledge."[69] Reserving the question as to the possible fulfillment of
these conditions, let us turn for a moment to the definition of Eternal
Life laid down by Christ. Let us place it alongside the definition of
Science, and mark the