till the deepest
question of the age. What is Religion? What am I to believe? What seek
with all my heart and soul and mind?--this is the imperious question
sent up to consciousness from the depths of being in all earnest hours;
sent down again, alas, with many of us, time after time, unanswered.
Into all our thought and work and reading this question pursues us. But
the theories are rejected one by one; the great books are returned sadly
to their shelves, the years pass, and the problem remains unsolved. The
confusion of tongues here is terrible. Every day a new authority
announces himself. Poets, philosophers, preachers try their hand on us
in turn. New prophets arise, and beseech us for our soul's sake to give
ear to them--at last in an hour of inspiration they have discovered the
final truth. Yet the doctrine of yesterday is challenged by a fresh
philosophy to-day: and the creed of to-day will fall in turn before the
criticism of to-morrow. Increase of knowledge increaseth sorrow. And at
length the conflicting truths, like the beams of light in the laboratory
experiment, combine in the mind to make total darkness.

But here are two outstanding authorities agreed--not men, not
philosophers, not creeds. Here is the voice of God and the voice of
Nature. I cannot be wrong if I listen to them. Sometimes when uncertain
of a voice from its very loudness, we catch the missing syllable in the
echo. In God and Nature we have Voice and Echo. When I hear both, I am
assured. My sense of hearing does not betray me twice. I recognize the
Voice in the Echo, the Echo makes me certain of the Voice; I listen and
I know. The question of a Future Life is a biological question. Nature
may be silent on other problems of Religion; but here she has a right to
speak. The whole confusion around the doctrine of Eternal Life has
arisen from making it a question of Philosophy. We shall do ill to
refuse a hearing to any speculation of Philosophy; the ethical relations
here especially are intimate and real. But in the first instance
Eternal Life, as a question of _Life_, is a problem for Biology. The
soul is a living organism. And for any question as to the soul's Life we
must appeal to Life-science. And what does the Life-science teach? That
if I am to inherit Eternal Life, I must cultivate a correspondence with
the Eternal. This is a simple proposition, for Nature is always simple.
I take this proposition, and, leaving Nature, proceed to fill it