mending, in solemn prayer, all that had been done, and all the interests of the Mission, to the blessing of Almighty God.

Thus ends the record of another Conference.

"When shall we meet again;

Meet ne'er to sever?"

Joined in heart with friends at home, and with each other, we look forward with calm and holy joy to the final meeting in the presence of Christ.

"While each in expectation lives,

And longs to see the day."

NOTE.-The Sketch by Makunda Das will appear in February.

Foreign Letters
Letters Received.

CUTTACK-J. G. Pike, Nov. 5.
W. Miller, Nov. 20.

BERHAMPORE-H. Wood, Nov. 17.

Contributions

Received on account of the General Baptist Missionary Society from November 16th

Subscriptions and Donations in aid of the General Baptist Missionary Society will be thankfully received by W. B. BEMBRIDGE, Esq., Ripley, Derby, Treasurer; and by the Rev. W. HILL, Secretary, Crompton Street, Derby, from whom also Missionary Boxes, Collecting Books and Cards may be obtained.

Man after Death.

II.-Sources of Knowledge.

THERE is an old and familiar story in our early English Annals of such pathetic interest that it can scarcely be quoted without touching the tenderest chords of sympathy in all grave and thoughtful souls. In the year 626, Edwin, the Anglo-Saxon King, was consulting with his nobles as to what reception he should give Paulinus and his fellowmissionaries, who had been commended to the King's regard by his Christian wife, Ethelburga, when one of the nobles said :—

"The present life of man, O King, compared with that space of time beyond, of which we have no certainty, reminds me of one of your winter feasts, where you sit with your generals and your ministers. The hearth blazes in the middle, and a grateful heat is spread around, while storms of rain and snow are raging without. Driven by the chilling tempest, a little sparrow enters at one door, and flies delighted around us, till it departs through the other. Whilst it stays in our mansion it feels not the winter storm; but when this short moment of happiness has been enjoyed, it is forced again into the same dreary tempest from which it had escaped, and we behold it no more. Such is the life of man; and we are as ignorant of the state which preceded our present existence, as of that which will follow it. Things being so, I feel that if this new faith can give us more certainty, it deserves to be received." "If this new faith can give us more CERTAINTY, it deserves to be received."

So said not only Anglo-Saxon noble, but Greek philosopher, Roman politician, Jewish Rabbi, and heathen peasant. Men wanted more certainty about the life on the other side of death, and Christianity found a hearty welcome from suffering cottager and lordly patrician because of of its authoritative announcement of life and immortality. Jesus and the Resurrection" was the golden key that opened the heart of the world to receive and enthrone its new King. The victories of the gospel over the paganism and cruelty, the idolatry and lust of the first centuries, were won by the conquering energy of that invincible hope which the Incarnate and Risen Christ gave to a despairing and dying world.

Most nations, it is allowed, have believed, with more or less strength and insight, in the continuance of man after death. The Egyptians, according to Herodotus, first "affirmed the immortality of the soul;" built tombs for the dead surpassing in magnificence and durability the palaces of the living, embalmed the body as though the spirit had not forsaken it, or would surely re-visit it; and, in fact, spent their time as if within sight and hearing of the powers of the world to come. Into that heritage of faith nearly all peoples have entered with varying degrees of zeal and earnestness, so that as granite penetrates all kinds GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY, 1878.-Vol. LXXX.-N. S. No. 98.

of strata, so the doctrine of a future life crops up in all lands as a normal fact in the development of human experience. Emerson says, “there never was a time when the doctrine of a future life was not believed."

And yet each age, and every people in each age, has been ready to say to any candidate for confidence, "If this new faith can give us more certainty about a future life it deserves to be received." Of guesses there are enough. Aspirations abound: and they abate and increase, fall and rise, with changing moods of mind and the veering of opinion. Certainty is the chief desideratum: certainty and clearness and fulness of knowledge. Like the Anglo-Saxon noble, men yearn for that which will allay perplexity, soothe agitation, and compel conviction. They say with Mr. Greg, they "have aspirations, sometimes approaching almost to a faith, occasionally and for a few moments perhaps rising into something like a trust, but they are not able to settle into the consistency of a definite and enduring creed." "If," they add, " as you affirm, the great enigma is not insoluble, then, for God's sake, honestly and daringly solve it, being as true to the darkness you feel as to the light you see; and make its meaning, if you can, so clear to our pained and strained sight that we may believe and rejoice in our belief. If there be, anywhere, in any realm of knowledge, logical reasons, strong, coherent, and invincible, for a life after death, take any pains to let us know and feel them.

Make me to see 't, or at least so prove it
That the probation bear no hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on.'

In attempting a task of such stupendous gravity, the first question requiring treatment is, What is the source, or what are the sources, of certain and verifiable knowledge open to us in an inquiry for light concerning the condition of man after death, and the relation of the life that now is, to the life beyond, provided there be one.

Professor Crookes said recently, "Every unrecognized fact is a reproach to science, and every uninvestigated phenomenon is a probable mine of discovery."* That is true of all science, theological as well as physical, and applies with urgent force to the subject we have in hand. We cannot shut our ears to a single utterance of truth from any quarter without hurt; or ignore the slightest contribution of real and reasoned knowledge concerning man and his destiny without risking the symmetry and stability of our logical structure. The CONCLUSION we reach is of momentous importance; but the WAY we take to reach it is unmistakeably more important, and demands the utmost carefulness of enquiry and thoroughness of research. We must have all the evidence we can get. Verily the light is not so abundant that we need put up the shutters to keep out a solitary ray. Let it all come, from all quarters of the compass; for the light is good, and it is a profitable, if not a pleasant thing, for the eyes of the soul to behold the sun of truth. Only let us do our best to make sure that it is the pure light of heaven, and not some miserably deceptive will-o-the-wisp which sweeps through our lens.

Such divine light exists, if we only have the eye to see it, in the wide and enchanted realms of Revelation, in the still wider domains of

* Nature, vol. xvii., p. 44.

MAN AFTER DEATH.

43

human History and Experience, and in the various and well-traversed regions of Scientific Experiment, Investigation, and Reasoning.

SCRIPTURE,
HISTORY, and
SCIENCE,

are three burnished mirrors reflecting the beams of heaven upon the destiny of God's wandering but not forgotten child.

For many the first mirror is enough. Looking into the face of Jesus Christ they see a revelation of the future which is as distinct as it is authoritative, as complete as it is clear, and as final as it is true. From the lips of the Conqueror of Death and the Grave they hear not the first, but the best, and therefore the last word concerning the fate of men after the dissolution of the body. Christ has abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by His gospel; so that he that hath seen Him with the inward eye of the spirit hath seen not only the Father, but also his own personal immortality, and is as sure of it as he is that the sky is blue and the grass is green. Following Him we no longer "walk in darkness, but have the light of life." "Continuing in His word," which we accept, first of all, on His naked authority, we afterwards come to know the truth by inward experience" as He knew it, not indeed with the same fulness and completeness of knowledge, but with the same directness of intuition.' The Incarnate and Risen Christ becomes to us the chief source of all reliable knowledge about man's future, and our supreme business is, guided by His everlasting Spirit, to find out the meaning of His far-reaching words and wonderful work.

But valuable as the Scriptures are to the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is of greater moment to show here that they render a service to all students of man and his destiny which is positively and unquestionably unique.

For they are histories as well as revelations. The Old Testament purports to be a narrative of God's dealings with men, and is, in fact, a typical example of His work in and for all men, and for all races of men; an illustration of the laws of His universal government, and of the unvarying principles of His administration. Hebrew history gives the laws of all history, and supplies the key to its just and accurate interpretation. The annals of Greece and Rome, of France and England, receive no finer or truer exposition than that supplied in the stories of Saul and David, Solomon and Jeroboam. And the New Testament record of the appearing of the Eternal Word, of His teaching and redeeming work, is at once, the only sufficient explanation of all the past, and the perfect anticipation of all the possibilities of human experience; just as the oak is in the acorn, and the autumnal harvests of the future are in the scattered grain of spring.

Yea, more. The Bible is a necessary aid to science, gives indispensable help in the exposition of the regal faculty of conscience, illumines our intuitive beliefs, explains the ineradicable instincts of our nature, and sets in its own supernal light, not only the universe of things, but this special humanity of ours, which, after all, is the goal and centre of all scientific work. Without the Word of God the works

of God must remain an unsolved enigma.

* R. W. Dale on the Atonement, p. 18.

But God is not a respecter of nations or of ages. Enoch walked with Him although he did not carry an Oxford Bible in his hand. Job knew His ways though David had not sung, Christ had not appeared, and Paul had not discussed justification by faith. There was a Church before the book of Leviticus was written, and worship was offered and accepted ages before the tabernacle was put up in the wilderness. Six thousand years in the HISTORY OF MAN on this side of death ought to count for something in any complete list of sources of knowledge of man after death, especially considering that the education of the world. has been and is still conducted by an all-wise and all-loving Teacher. If we construct a ladder reaching "from the gutter to the university," and so make it that the lower rungs lead to the higher, and yet each rung is safely secured to its fellows, may not the Eternal have so built the ladder of the ages that these staves we are now on are not only strongly connected with those out of sight, but actually tell us the character of those on which we shall step by and bye? Assuredly, life here, and life there, will be ONE; under the same Ruler, and the same rule, subject to the same irreversible laws of righteousness, and therefore there is no quivering hesitation, no weakening uncertainty, in the revelation of man's destiny in the ever-opened books of History and of Human Experience. The law of Continuity is not local, but universal. The fact of Evolution in human experience is fundamental, and its disclosures are of measureless weight and incisive force. Church history and world history, the history of individuals and of nations and empires, are full of light; some of it soft and beautiful as the rainbow, much of it terrific as the forked lightning-but all light; and men who love light, "as light must be loved, with a boundless, all-doing, all-enduring love," will surely find it;-and find, if not enough to answer all their questions, yet sufficient to give satisfactory guidance as to what is the best thought to think, the best spirit to cherish, the best word to speak, the best deed to do, and the best life to live. To close our ears to the past, is to be deaf to God's first and longest message about our future.

Carlyle says, "History was of old an epic and Bible, the clouded struggling image of a God's presence, the action of heroes and Godinspired men. These are the Bibles of nations-to each its believed. history is its Bible, not in Judah alone, or Hellas and Latium alone but in all lands and nations. Beyond doubt the Almighty Maker made this England too, and has been and for ever is miraculously present here; the more is the pity for us if our eyes have grown owlish and cannot see this fact of facts when it is before us! Once it was known that the highest did of a surety dwell in this nation, divinely avenging and divinely saving and awarding, leading by steps and flaming paths, by heroisms, pieties and noble acts and thoughts, this nation heavenward if it would or dared. Known or not this is for evermore the fact." ... “All history, know the fact or not, is an articulate Bible, and in a dim intricate manner reveals the Divine appearances in this lower world; for God did make this world, and does for ever govern it: the loud roaring loom of Time, with all its French Revolutions or Jewish Revelations, weaves the vesture thou seest Him by. There is no biography of a man, much less any history or biography of a nation, but wraps in it a message out of heaven addressed to the hearing ear,