VI.-The Animal in Man.

IT is allowed that man MAY live after death. But it is held that it is hardly likely that he will: first, because of the "multitudinousness" of men; secondly, because of the low and grovelling condition in which the masses of men are found;* and lastly, because man is so prodigiously like an animal, that you cannot well prove him "immortal" without immortalising by the same logical fiat every mollusc and mammal, zoophyte and zebra, that ever breathed; and that is surely so enormous a conclusion that only ill-balanced minds can contemplate it with composure.

We know, or think we do, that our neighbours the animals are mortal, and most of us believe that they are only and wholly mortal. The rocks are full of their relics. Death has reigned over them without a moment's break from the beginning, and is destined to hold them for ever under his sway. Fossils are found in the oldest rocks of all; and the vast successions of sedimentary strata show that millions of beings in myriads of ages have followed one another to the grave. Man also dies like the brutes that perish. To all outward seeming alike in origin and in growth, in decay and in death, in doom and in destiny, the earth that supports him finally receives him, as it does them, and he goes to it as to his home. Bryant, with equal truth and beauty, says―

"Not to thine eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone-nor could'st thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth-the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales,
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods-rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste-

Are but the solomn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,

Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful, to the tribes

That slumber in its bosom."

The flight of years began, have laid them down

In their last sleep: the dead reign there alone."

But the improbability of man's life after death appears greater as the resemblances between him and his neighbours of the animal kingdom are further traced. Why, in effect, it is asked, should the creature man be immortal? Not because he is different in physical substance! He is the same. Hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and the like elements make either an unwieldy elephant or a beautiful Helen of Troy. Not because man has found his place here by a different road! His way is

On these two points cf. pp. 122-5 of this Magazine, 1878.

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the same. He comes out of the great unknown, along the same path as the tiger and the lion. Not because he is sustained in life by different processes! They are one in essence, notwithstanding civilised man may cook his dinner, and the lion prefer it in its fresh and uncooked condition. Not because man has mind and animals have not! "The mind of animals is as real as that of man." Does man think? So does his dog! Does he love? So does his dog! See how the mastiff watches his master's movements, and lingers in affectionate and inconsolable grief at his master's grave. Has man memory and conscience? So "cats," as every housewife knows, are not lacking in recollection, and by skilful and well-regulated treatment can be made capable of movements not unlike those attributed to the monitions of conscience. Indeed, if the lowest type of man be compared with the highest type of animal, it will be difficult to detect a grain's weight of reason for lengthening the existence of one beyond the other; and even that grain's weight may be against the man.

But that is a method of reasoning essentially unfair. The same process would prove the identity of plants and animals. Their lives are full of analogies. Both start existence in the same way-beginning from a previous life, an egg or a seed. Both are fed in the embryo state in the same manner-the germs in the egg and the seed using up the stored food with which they are provided at the start. Another 'tendency," which may also be compared to an instinct "like that in animals," "is the power possessed by the growing parts of plants of perceiving the position of the chief source of light." Again, some plants, like the fly-trap of Venus, catch flies and digest them, converting them into their substance. How unspeakably improbable, therefore, that the lark should pour forth sweet strains of music from its little throat, and the hound become an ally of man in the detection of crime. Plants and animals are full of resemblances to one another, yet the vegetable kingdom gives no hint whatever of bursting song or of police arrangements. Speaking, therefore, in supposed ignorance of facts, talking from mere resemblances and probabilities, and as if we had not heard the notes of the feathered tribes, or read of the detective skill of the brute, we should judge it extremely unlikely that the lark will ever sing, or the bloodhound scent the course of the murderer.

Certainly, if we are to build probabilities upon resemblances at all, we must take care to lay our foundations securely; and we can only do that as we take the highest types in each department, the fully-developed specimens of each province. Contrast, for example, the most intelligent St. Bernard dog, in the hour of his greatest fidelity, when he has just uncovered a wearied traveller and saved a life, with Newton discovering the law of gravitation, Shakespeare composing Hamlet, Paul regenerating the world. There is "body" in each. The animal is common to each. Mind is characteristic of the dog and of the poet. Good follows the deed on the mountain snows and the work of St. Paul; but the interval is so unspeakably gigantic, that whilst no offence is done to our sense of justice by the idea that the dog ceases to live after death, our whole being revolts against the conception that the martyrdom of Paul is the termination of his existence. Clay Cross coal and the Kohinoor

*The Analogies of Plant and Animal Life, by F. Darwin. Nature, vol. xvii., 388.

diamond are both carbon; but we burn the one in the fire-grate, and reserve the other for the crown of our Queen. The enormous difference between coal and diamond necessitates a difference in destiny.

The bare fact, then, that men are largely animal counts for nothing against any real evidence, even the slightest and most fragmentary, that they are also destined for immortality. Again, therefore, we conclude, that though the lion is in the way, still it is chained.

VII.-The First Link.

We now proceed to cite the evidence in favour of man's immortality. But at the outset it must be remembered that the question is not, "Have we such evidence of the life of man after death as amounts to demonstration, and makes doubt impossible?" That kind and degree of evidence we do not get concerning any spiritual things; nay, we fail to obtain it concerning some material things, and yet we give them ready credence, and shape our works by our faith. Our inquiry does not find its parallel in such questions as "What is the size of this room in which I am writing?" "How many books are there on these shelves?" "What is the distance of the earth from the sun?" and "At what rate does our planet revolve on its own axis?" These are questions of material fact, and can be answered so as to leave little or no room for doubt.

But the inquiry "Is man immortal?" is of the same character as "Is there a God?" "Is man a responsible being ?" "What is the criterion of truth?" and like them, never can be answered so as to make a sceptic an impossibility, and a doubter as rare as roses in Greenland and ice at the Equator. All that can be done is to secure that high degree of probability which will amount to a soul-sufficing certainty, a real solace, and a practical help in our human life. The links for the chain are before us; they are abundant, perfect, and fit well into each other. Whether they are made into a chain or not, rests with each individual seeker after truth.

Such a chain, such an answer, at least one man found, and found it without written or printed Bible, without any message from inspired prophets, without the revelation of Jesus Christ, without the resurrection from the dead of the sinless Son of Man, and His ascension to the heavens as our forerunner. And surely what the patriarch Job found in his reasonings on life and its outlook ought to be and is possible to every one of us.*

"If a man die, shall he live again?" said Job, in a mood of deep and real agony. His soul was seething in sorrow and bitterness. Life was to him an unutterable perplexity, an intolerable grief. It is so brief, that you can do nothing in it if you want; and it is as miserable as it is brief. You have not time to repair your faults; and as for any lofty purposes, they are scarcely born before you have to leave them. "Man is of few days and full of trouble." "He cometh forth like a flower, all promise and all loveliness, but he is soon cut down. He fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not." He comes into the world imperfect, tainted, unclean, and seems to be pursued by an angry and avenging justice that fetters his limbs and dogs his steps. His days

* Cf. Job xiv. 14, 15.

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are few and his deeds are hopeless. "There is hope of a tree that, if it be cut down, it shall sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground, yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth and wasteth away, yea, he giveth up the ghost, and where is he? Even a tree is better than a man; for it has a second chance, and starts a fresh career; but a man, if he dies, that is the end of him."

So Job's bitterness and hopelessness have their swing, and his agony its say. But the crisis of doubt is at length reached and passed, and he recovers himself, and says, "No! no! it cannot be so. What! a TREE better than a MAN! More hope of a TREE than a MAN! Nay! Man, too, shall live again, though he die. For Thou, O God, shalt call, and I will answer Thee: and Thou wilt have a desire to the work of Thine hands." God does not leave trees: He will not leave men. They shall be watered from heaven, and renew their life in a sunnier clime.

Thus, by a glimpse of the Divine righteousness, is the veil lifted for Job's spirit, and in the sight of God, his Maker, he sees his own immortality, and finds in the sight solace and strength.*

Admitted that such an answer is not equal to the triumphant shout of the apostle Paul, as he exultingly recognises the defeat of sin and death by the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, and exclaims, "Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ;" but remembering that Job has no New Testament before his eyes, that he has not seen the empty grave in Joseph's garden, nay more, that he has not a page of the Old Testament, but is simply face to face with God's oldest Testament of all, the Testament of Nature, of his own nature and of his own life, and verily his victory over his doubts, his assurance that God would care for him, since he was God's own work, is as significant and suggestive an answer to the question, "Is man immortal?" as any we can have.

For has not Job opened the way to some of the most convincing and helpful evidence of our immortality? Starting from this one admission that God exists, that He is the righteous Lord and Ruler as well as the Maker of men, and that we are the creatures of His power and goodness, nothing is more fair in reasoning than to conclude that He will have desire towards his work, and will not suffer our being to terminate in ignominious failure, aggravating disappointment, a blighting and withering sense of cruelty and injustice, and a fixed wish that we had never been born. A nation does not carry Cleopatra's needle from Alexandria to the Thames, some three thousand miles, and at great risk of money and of life, to shatter it to atoms and turn it into macadam for the London roads. Emerson says, "The Creator keeps His word with us. These long-lived and long-enduring objects are to us, as we see them, only symbols of somewhat in us far longer-lived. passions, our endeavours, have something ridiculous and mocking, if we come to so hasty an end. Nature does not, like the Empress Anne of Russia, call together all the architectural genius of the empire to build and finish and furnish a palace of snow, to melt again to water

* Expositor, vol v., c. 276-284.

Our

in the first thaw. Will you, with vast cost and pains, educate some children to be adepts in their several arts, and as soon as they are ready to produce a masterpiece, call out a file of soldiers and shoot them down? We must infer our destiny from our preparation.'

Yes: "the Creator keeps His word with us;" and He keeps every word-not only those written in the clear and luminous pages of the New Testament, but those also printed in our hearts and in our experiences, in the work he has done for us and in us. So Job thought and felt. So Job reasoned. The argument is old and grey-headed; and it is true true for us to-day, as it was for the perplexed and suffering Job.

God is a perfect Worker. He has made us, and not we ourselves and we may say of Him that He has a workman's love for His work, for that on which He has bestowed great pains, and into which He has put His thought, feeling, and life. LOVE GROWS BY LABOUR. It is one of the familiar facts of our literature; one of the frequent occurrences in life. The suffering child needs most work from us, and obtains the most love. An accident happens, it excites pity, it stimulates labour; both are crowned when the love born of self-sacrificing toil is followed by a union dearer than friendship and broken only by death. Queen Elizabeth used to pray, "O Lord, look at the wounds in Thy hands, and then Thou wilt not forsake the work of Thy hands." As long as man believes in God, his Creator, and owns Him as the Lord and Ruler of His life, he need not surrender himself to the misery of doubt concerning his future. The Lord will have desire to the work of His hands. Any other conclusion is, in effect, blank Atheism. JOHN CLIFFORD.

Agreeable Guests.

DR. WATTS visited Sir Thomas Abney's, intending to stay a fortnight, and stayed forty years, at the request of the family, who found him such an agreeable guest that they would not let him depart. A writer in St. Nicholas offers these common-place suggestions to visitors who remain guests for a few days or weeks. They are so apposite and helpful, that our agreeable readers will be pleased to have their pure minds stirred up by being put in remembrance of them.

Unless you have some good reason for not doing so, let your friends know the day, and if possible the hour, when you expect to arrive. Surprises are very well in their way, but there are few households in which it is quite convenient to have a friend drop in without warning for a protracted visit.

Let your friends know, if possible, soon after you arrive, about how long you mean to stay with them, as they might not like to ask the question, and would still find it convenient to know whether your visit is to have a duration of three days or three weeks.

Take with you some work that you have already begun, or some book that you are reading, that you may be agreeably employed when your hostess is engaged with her own affairs, and not be sitting about idle, as if waiting to be entertained, when her time is necessarily taken up with something else.

Letters and Social Aims-Immortality, p. 300.