Now if we know anything at all about Nature, it is that her methods are uniform, persistent, and continuous, and therefore, it may be assumed with something like safety that the method which obtains in the lower sphere of being is likely to obtain equally in the higher sphere, and, indeed, to obtain universally. It cannot be admitted that human beings are exempted from the regular operations of Nature's laws, any more than are the lower and less favoured classes of her creatures.

It may naturally here be objected, as to those who are fit to survive death, that if this survival is a gift from without or as "Conditionalists" put it, from Jesus Christ-then it is something quite apart from Nature, and above Nature. This point will be more explicitly dealt with later on. It is enough now to say that Nature, in the view here maintained, is as unlimited as is the God of Nature; that there is nothing whatever, physical, mental, or spiritual, which lies outside her operations; that, in fact, there is absolutely no super-natural, though to our faculties much may so appear, much that may justly be regarded as super-human.

We are And all

But it is not with the case of those who are fit to survive, that we have at present to deal. concerned with the survival of the unfit. that can be said is this, if it is actually destined. so to be, this involves a reversal of one of the most clearly observed laws of Nature. Those who are convinced of the Law of Continuity will find it difficult to accept such a conclusion.

Yet why should the alternative belief be looked upon as harsh or cruel? These human seedlings, that fall and perish because they found no fair surroundings, do so without any hint of punish

ment; they do what is best for themselves and for all around them, and in doing so they escape the many penalties involved in the painful effort to change themselves into something which Nature did not intend them to become.

Among the various views as to "Eschatology which have been detailed, it does not seem difficult to select those features of the outlook which are most favourable to the best interests of the race, and to reject the rest. It is true that what man would like is not certain to be, for that reason, exactly what he will get. Yet it seems very probable that the two may coincide, and this for two reasons. One is, that we are not now referring to men's casual likes and dislikes, or to their immediate inclinations; we are considering alone the things which bear on the highest and most general wellbeing, even at the risk of likes and inclinations. having to be set aside. And the other is, that this being so, and on the definite assumption before laid down of an actively benevolent Deity, there is great reason to conclude that, whatever treatment is found to be for the truest weal of man, that, and no other, will be the treatment which this benevolent Deity has assigned to man.

It remains then to bring together the points which have been described at some length.

16. These are (1) that Immortality is obtainable; but (2) by an educative process of which it is the incentive, that is, only as the result of

Results.

a sound life here; but this can hardly be without (3) continuity between this life and the next. And lastly, since terror is a bad incentive, and no education, it follows that (4) there is no

terror in prospect. The unfit will merely cease to exist, for their own benefit.

So much then as to what our poor limited and purblind human nature might choose for its own future lot. But what if Dis aliter visum? What if our very finite powers may have led us to think otherwise than has been decided by Nature, and by Nature's God? Clearly it will be a great advance

mere speculation, if we can suggest some warrant of independent authority, which may render our case more convincing, by the coincidence of its. utterances with the results hitherto attained.

For us that authority is to be the Bible. And here the writer desires to explain that in most of what follows, and for reasons to be assigned, the Bible will figure very largely. It remains to be shewn that, in the matter of Immortality, the voice of the Bible practically coincides with the yearning conclusions of human thought.

CHAPTER IV

THE "IMMORTALS” OF THE WORLDS OF SPACE

1. We have seen what Man would wish, if it rested with him to select the conditions of Immortality. We have now to consider whether those conditions coincide with such as seem laid down for him.

Before attempting to proceed further, we may spend a few words in recapitulating what has been advanced, so that we may clearly see where we stand. So far as we have arrived in our subject, we are now supposed to postulate two things, which are henceforth to be regarded as data. One is, a benevolent Deity, who is the origin of Matter as well as of Mind. The other is, that for the intelligent creatures of this Deity (Man included) Immortality, or continuity of life after death, is possible.

As to the means by which this after-life may be secured, very little of a definite character has so far been advanced. It would be premature, and scarcely intelligible to a reader who was entering for the first time on the present question, to examine at this stage the precise conditions of Immortality. Something must be carefully premised, and as far as possible established, concerning the primitive relations, as distinguished from the actual relations,

that exist between this benevolent Deity and His creatures.

Early limited views of

2. Before going further it is necessary for us to consider whom these creatures actually include. In the nature of the case this is essential. And yet the conventional theology, Creation. dating as it does from times of ignorance about the actual universe, has ignored everything except that minute corner of existence which we of this earth were, till lately, alone acquainted with. That it should have been so was quite inevitable, while men knew nothing of Astronomy; or knew but little, and that little was wholly wrong. As any schoolboy can now perceive, the question is infinitely wider than it was, and therefore more complex.

These times of ignorance "God winked at"; and then the only question was between God on the one hand and Man on the other. It was not even dreamed that any other beings existed who were on the same level, or an analogous level, to that of Man; nor was it dreamed that intermediate beings might, or did, exist, who could, and did, exercise some very momentous influence on the fortunes of races like our own.

It is a strange thing that no such idea-unless indeed the idea of "Angels" contains in it some inkling of the actual case-seems to have ever presented itself either to the mediæval mind or to the modern theological mind, which is merely a survival of mediævalism. Confined as knowledge

The author thinks it better not to complicate his argument by introducing the strange, and possibly anticipative, dreams of the Mystics.