Volume 1 — CONTENTS (continued 2)

Now let these facts stand very clear before us. God asks us to pray to Him. Of all the things we do, there is nothing that can be more worth while doing. If we will do it, we most certainly will grow into better and nobler and more useful men and women. But we shall find it hard to do. Now let us be quite clear about the problem of the hardness of prayer; there is only one thing to do about this subject of prayer, and that is to pray. The only way to solve the problem of praying is by praying. Nothing will do instead. In spite of the difficulties, in spite of distractions, of weariness, of failure, of moods, of coldness,—we pray. Nothing will do instead. Nothing else will solve the problem. Reading books and listening to sermons on prayer will not do instead. The only way to learn to pray is to pray. The people who get things done are the people who, not having the time or the inclination often, in spite of these things,—pray.

In a word, we have to treat prayer as work, as part of our definite work as Christians. We know how it is with our work. We do it every day. We do it whether we feel like doing it or not. We keep on doing it day after day, month after month, year after year. Prayer is work. We must treat it with the respect we give to our work. Again, what a mistake it is to wait on the mood. What a mistake to say, "I do not feel like praying to-day—perhaps to-morrow!" Our moods come and go. They are very fragile things, rooted sometimes in trifling causes. One of the greatest mistakes in this connection is to think that the effectiveness of our prayers depends upon the particular state of our feelings at the time. It often happens to people who pray that they have found the greatest blessings they have won for themselves or for others have been in times when "the heavens were brass", and they had little or no sense of reality or warmth in prayer. It is said that the difference between the professional and the amateur is that the amateur depends on the mood, but the professional goes on with his work day after day, paying no attention to a mood here and there. We must be, in this sense, professionals. Prayer is part of our work as Christians. Let moods come or go, the work must go on,—the great work of Praise, Petition, Intercession, Thanksgiving.

Again, if there is one thing more than another that Our Lord was clear about in His teaching concerning prayer, it is that we must be persistent in our prayers. We must pray for an answer. This is not to say that we are to pray until we receive the answer we wish, but until we receive some light and leading in relation to the subject of our prayers. It will not be necessary to do more than remind you of the two parables on this subject in St. Luke's Gospel. There was once a man upon whom there came an unexpected traveller one night, and he had "nothing to set before him". He went to a friend at midnight and said, "Friend, lend me three loaves," and would not go away until he had received the loaves, but kept on asking and seeking and knocking. "I say unto you", said Our Lord, "that though he will not rise because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will arise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you, ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." And again, there was in a certain city a judge, "which feared not God, and regarded not man", and to him came a widow with the persistent plea, "Avenge me of mine adversary." And he would not for a while, but afterward he said within himself, "Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me". These two parables, taken with Christ's own example in Gethsemane when He prayed three times concerning "the cup", make it very clear that His followers, when they decide this or that is a matter for definite prayer, must not leave that petition or intercession out of their prayers until they have received some answer, some light or leading from the God Who always hears, and always answers earnest prayer.

And last of all, in answer to our question, How should we pray? we should pray in that name which is above every name—the name of "the one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus." We have this great name to plead. Though in our weakness we feel unworthy to pray, though in our ignorance we know not how to pray, and though with the best of our prayers there is so much that is imperfect, we have in that One Who ever lives to make intercession for us, One Who takes our poor and imperfect acts of devotion and makes them to be heard in the Presence of the Divine Majesty. It is "through Jesus Christ our Lord" we pray. Here is our confidence. In this realization we find fresh strength and hope for the whole work of prayer. His perfect knowledge of our lives and of our temptations, coupled with His place of Honour at the right hand of the Father, gives us great re-assurance that our prayers come before that Throne with power. "Having then a great high priest, Who hath passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of need."

FINDING TIME FOR PRAYER.

We are anxious that these articles should be very practical, and that our readers may be helped to practise their religion more definitely from reading them. Most of us are very busy people, and often it will seem as if there was no time for prayer. But we always make time to do things we consider absolutely essential. Prayer is one of the absolute essentials of the Christian life. You will notice that it was during times of unusual pressure of duties that we are told that Our Lord found time to pray. It was when the people thronged Him to listen to His words, and to receive healing and comfort for body and soul, that we read, "And it came to pass in those days, that He went out into the mountain to pray; and He continued all night in prayer to God". And again it was while "all the city was gathered at the door" that "in the morning, a great while before day, He rose up and went out, and departed into a desert place, and there prayed". He always found time in the midst of His thronged ministry, when "many were coming and going", and He had "no leisure so much as to eat", to go apart to enter into communion with His Father. We, too, must find time to pray.

The important thing is not how long our prayers are or how short, but that our spirits have come, if only for a moment, into contact with Him, Who is Himself Spirit. This is the vital thing. This is that which brings rest and refreshment to the soul and strengthens it in its life on earth. Let me repeat, the great essential is to get into touch with God, and to get into touch every day. Now it would seem as if the morning, first thing in the morning, is the time especially to do this? Before the distractions of the day have dulled the delicate perceptions of the spirit, before the noonday sun has absorbed the early dew of morning, is the time to open the door of the heart to God, and to lift up the hands to Him. It was in the morning, "rising up a great while before day", that the Son of Man prayed. So it should be the first thing in the day with us. It need not be anything complicated or involved. Indeed, it can be quite simple. Perhaps this simple suggestion may be found helpful. When we get up in the morning, we remember that it is God first. We must let the thought of the glory, the power and the goodness of God take possession of our hearts. We bow before Him, from Whom we came and to Whom we go, and say, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son; and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen." Then a word of thanksgiving for sleep and rest, one or both of the Collects for Morning Prayer, a little prayer for others, and special needs of the day, and the Lord's Prayer to end with, and to sum up the whole act. Such is the barest outline, but it is something that everyone could do, and could do every day. Why not? And why not forthwith?

If we are to know God, we must pray. If we are to become our true selves, we must pray. If we are to walk bravely and honestly through this life, we must pray. If we are to be useful to others, we must pray. And what is prayer? It is getting into touch with God, and getting into touch every day.

VI.

THE HOLY COMMUNION

The Rt. Rev. A. J. Doull, D.D., Bishop of Kootenay.

This volume of theology is written for laymen of the Anglican Church, and it is to them that I address myself primarily in this chapter. There can be no question in our minds regarding the importance of this subject which we are now about to consider; nor yet of the necessity of arriving at a clear understanding concerning the truth. We are about to tread holy ground, therefore a reverent spirit is needful above all things else. We are about to investigate, albeit in the briefest manner, the nature and character of that Sacrament which our dying Saviour left as the bond of comradeship between His followers and Himself, and between His followers with one another, but which historically has been the occasion of more strife and discord betwixt Christian people than any other institution or fact of our holy faith; therefore we must cast aside all prejudice and preconceived opinions, and placing ourselves at the feet of Jesus seek to learn from Him the real truth which He alone can impart.

I believe that Christ is especially anxious to teach us the truth to-day after all these centuries of strife, and I am convinced that so far as the Anglican Church is concerned that there is a wonderful measure of agreement between all her members concerning the doctrine of the Holy Communion when they heed the advice of our great theologian, the judicious Hooker, and "the more give themselves to meditate with silence what we have by the Sacrament and less to dispute of the manner how."

Let us try and consider in simple faith and simple language what is revealed to us in Holy Scripture concerning this Sacrament, what truths about it are therefore enshrined in the Book of Common Prayer, and what it is accordingly that all Anglicans really believe though their mode of expressing their common faith, and though their phraseology, may somewhat differ.

INSTITUTED BY CHRIST.

Firstly, we believe that this Sacrament is of Supreme importance because it was instituted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and by Him commanded to be observed and celebrated by His Church until His coming again. The writers of the first three Gospels give us substantially identical accounts of what our Lord said and did in the same night that he was betrayed. St. Mark, whose narrative is probably the oldest, tells us that on the first day of unleavened bread when they sacrificed the Passover, in the evening Jesus and the twelve kept this distinctive feast of the Old Testament dispensation according to the accustomed manner.

"And as they were eating, he took bread, and when he had blessed, he brake it, and gave to them and said, Take ye; this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them and they all drank of it. And he said unto them: This is my blood of the Covenant which is shed for many." (St. Mark XIV. 22-24 R.V.) St. Matthew's account and that of St. Luke are practically identical.

St. John, whose gospel was written at a much later date than those of the synoptists, does not record the institution of the Holy Communion, but does preserve for us Our Blessed Lord's wonderful teaching regarding Himself as the Bread of Life, which has such an important bearing upon a clear understanding of the true and proper place of this Sacrament in the Spiritual life of Christians. (V. St. John VI.).

St. Paul, in the eleventh chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, writes: "For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you how that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it and said, This is my body which is for you; this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the New Covenant in my blood; this do as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me." The only other occasions upon which St. Paul uses similar language to "For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you," is with reference to the Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord (1 Cor. XV. 3) and to the essence of the Gospel Message taught him by the revelation of Jesus Christ, (Galatians 1. 12). We may believe therefore that St. Paul in emphasizing the sacred importance of the Holy Communion knew himself to be under the special guidance of Christ Himself.

THE CENTRAL RITE OF DISCIPLESHIP.

Secondly, we believe that from the days of the Apostles down to the present time the Holy Communion has ever been regarded as the distinctive act of Christian Worship and the highest means of Christian grace. It is impossible to go into the proof of this statement here but it can easily be verified by those ready and desirous to investigate. From the very earliest times of the Apostles, when on the first day of the week the disciples met together for the breaking of the bread, down to the present time Christians have ever regarded the Holy Communion as the Central rite of discipleship, the Sacrament or bond of comradeship between Jesus and His people, between Christ the Lord and those who are members of the Church which is His Body.

THE REAL SPIRITUAL PRESENCE.

Thirdly, we believe in the fact of Christ's presence with us in the Holy Communion. Regarding the fact there is unity of belief amongst all Anglicans, I might go further and say amongst all Christian people. It is only when men proceed to define the mode that differences arise.

Some would regard his presence as due to a Sacramental change in the elements, or to a new relationship established between the elements and the Body and Blood of Christ. Others prefer to connect it with His promise, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them," and to lay stress upon the fact that if ever there be an occasion when two or three are gathered together in Christ's name it is when in obedience to His Command they assemble to break the bread and bless the cup.

This fact of the real spiritual presence of Christ in the Holy Communion has ever been the belief of the Church Catholic and of the Anglican Church as a part thereof. Bishop Andrewes in the seventeenth century, writing in reply to Roman Controversalists, at a time when the Church in England had at length settled down after the upheaval and conflict of the Reformation period, asserted the belief of the Anglican Church as to the fact but also her refusal to dogmatize as to the mode of the Saviour's presence. "The Presence we believe no less truly than you to be real. Concerning the mode of the Presence, we define nothing rashly, nor, I add, do we curiously enquire."

True to the teaching and to the Spirit of the early Church the Church of England devoutly accepts her Lord's words, neither attempting to explain them or to explain them away, but leaving them where He has left them a holy mystery not requiring and therefore not receiving definition. Not as attempting to define, but as a safeguard against errors which have at various times been prominent in the Church, representative writers of the Anglican Communion have been accustomed to speak of Our Lord's presence as being at once real and spiritual. To understand the full significance of this language it is necessary that we dismiss forever from our minds the idea that there is any opposition between that which is real and that which is spiritual. On the contrary, we must grasp the fact, which all are coming to recognize more and more, that the spiritual is the real, and the real is the spiritual. I do not think that it would be possible to have this truth concerning the Sacramental Presence of Our Lord expressed more clearly, more beautifully, or more truly than it has been by Dr. Hall, the present Bishop of Vermont, who says that "Christ's presence in the Baptized is as real as His presence in the Eucharist, His presence in the Eucharist as spiritual as His presence in the Baptized". Moreover, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist cannot be said to differ in kind or in degree from His presence in and with His people at other times and in other Sacramental ordinances, but it does differ in purpose.

Our Lord is present with us in the Eucharist for certain very definite and specific purposes and we must now proceed to enquire what those purposes are. We shall be on safe ground if we say that Our Lord as the great Head is present with the members of the Church which is His Body to do those things which He did or commanded to be done at the last supper.

Why then did Our Lord at the Last Supper institute and ordain the Sacrament of the Holy Communion and command it to be celebrated and observed by His Church until His coming again?

THE CONTINUAL REMEMBRANCE.

It was ordained for the continual remembrance of the Sacrifice of the death of Christ, a commemoration of Our Saviour's meritorious Cross and Passion. This commemoration is made before God, before ourselves, before the world.

(a) It is a commemoration of the Saviour's death before God. The whole service of Holy Communion as celebrated in the Church of England, with the exception of certain exhortations and invitations, consists of prayers addressed, as all prayer must be, to God. The most important of these prayers is the one which we call the prayer of consecration.

In this prayer the Celebrant, as the commissioned leader and mouthpiece of the Congregation, commemorates before God that which Our Lord did in the upper room as the Passover feast on the same night in which He was betrayed.

Before God in this prayer commemoration is made of His gift of His only begotten Son to suffer death for our redemption, before God commemoration is made of that which Christ did for us upon the Cross, before God the institution of this Sacrament of perpetual memory is recalled, before God the very acts and words of Our Saviour Christ in instituting and ordaining this Holy Sacrament are solemnly rehearsed and enacted. It is impossible for any Priest of the Church of England to celebrate the Holy Communion, or for any member of the Church of England to take part in the celebration of this Holy Sacrament, without making before God the most solemn commemoration of the death of Christ and His all sufficient Sacrifice which it is possible for the mind of man to conceive. And in so doing we are at one with the Historic Churches in all ages. If it be objected that God needs no such reminding of what Christ did, then the objection is equally valid against all mention of Christ's holy name in prayer as the ground and basis whereby we trust such prayer will be accepted and answered by God. The commemoration before God in the Eucharist is but the doing in act by the whole body of the faithful of that which each individual Christian does when he says, at the close of his prayers, "Grant this for Jesus Christ's sake," or, "through the merits of Christ Jesus Thy Son Our Lord."

It is the doing in act, and by use of those very elements and words and actions which Jesus has Himself commanded, of that which we do when in the Litany we supplicate, "By the mystery of Thy Holy Incarnation; by Thy Holy Nativity and Circumcision, by Thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation, by Thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by Thy Cross and Passion; by Thy Precious Death and Burial; by Thy Glorious Resurrection and Ascension and by the Coming of the Holy Ghost, Good Lord deliver us." This aspect of the Eucharist is perfectly expressed in Canon Bright's well known hymn, a hymn which by many not of Dr. Bright's School is regarded as their favourite hymn, and which has commended to them the truth of the commemoration before God, in a way that might not have been possible had the same form of words been cast in a prose setting.

Our Blessed Lord is therefore present as the Head of the Church which is His Body, as the great High Priest to enable us in union with Him to plead His Sacrifice, which is the sole ground of our approach to and acceptance with God. In that which has been called the Companion hymn to Dr. Bright's, part of which I have quoted just above, the Saintly Bishop Bickersteth expressed the same great truth from his standpoint as an Evangelical Churchman.

(b) But not only is the commemoration of the Lord's death made before God, it is also made before and amongst ourselves. The breaking of the Bread, the blessing of the Cup with the use of Our Saviour's words do remind us in the most solemn manner of the cost of our redemption and the great love wherewith He loved us and gave Himself for us.

The more we ponder God's amazing love in Redemption, the more wonderful does it appear and the deeper and more ardent becomes our love whereby we love Him who first loved us.

Perhaps the chiefest essential in the Christian life is that we should have a living faith in God's mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of His death, and nothing helps us to secure this essential so much as the due and devout observance of the Lord's Supper ordained by Our Blessed Master Himself in the same night in which He was betrayed and on the very eve of His tremendous death and Sacrifice.

(c) There is a third aspect of the commemoration which must not be overlooked. The Eucharist is a means of proclaiming or preaching the Lord's death before the world until His coming again. "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till He come" (1 Corinthians, XI. 26). There is not space at my disposal to do more than merely call attention to the evidential value of the Holy Eucharist to the truth of Christianity and to the Gospel history. But its constant celebration week by week is a fact, a fact which even the world must take note of, a fact which proclaims as no other institution of religion does that Jesus died and rose again. And He, Who has promised to be present where two or three are gathered together in His Name, He, Who has pledged His presence to His Church in the proclamation of the Gospel, is ever mindful of His promise when His followers meet together at His table, and amongst themselves and before the world proclaim and herald the death of Him Who died to be the Saviour of all mankind.

THE SPIRITUAL FOOD OF HIS BODY AND BLOOD.

The Holy Communion was ordained, and Our Blessed Lord is present in that Holy Sacrament, in order that He, the true Bread from Heaven, may feed us with the Spiritual food of His Body and Blood. In the language of the Prayer Book itself "it is our duty to render most humble and hearty thanks to Almighty God our Heavenly Father, for that He hath given His Son Our Saviour Jesus Christ, not only to die for us, but also to be our Spiritual food and sustenance in (this) Holy Sacrament." Whilst our Catechism asserts that "The inward part or thing signified in the Lord's Supper is the body and Blood of Christ which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper." The seeker after the truth must read and compare very carefully the following passages of Holy Scripture. St. John VI., the whole Chapter; St. Matthew, XXVI. 26-30; St. Mark XIV. 22-26; St. Luke XXII, 15-21; 1 Corinthians X. 15-22; 1 Corinthians, XI. 23-end.

If this be done there will remain no doubt but that Our Blessed Lord proclaims Himself to be the Bread of Life, the food of man's spiritual nature and being, which needs food quite as much as his physical and mental nature and being; that He ordained the Holy Communion to be the means and channel whereby we receive His flesh and blood, that is His very perfect life and nature, according to His promise as recorded in St. John VI. verses 48-58; and that St. Paul so understood its purpose and meaning.

Realizing that we are moving in the realm of the Spiritual and meditating upon the words of the Incarnate God, the very truth who can neither deceive or be deceived, we will not ask with the unbelieving Jews how can this man give us his flesh to eat, we will leave all questions as to the manner how where Christ Himself has left them, and with a most thankful heart will make the words of Hooker, the great Elizabethan Divine, our own, "What these elements are in themselves it skilleth not, it is enough that to me which take them they are the body and blood of Christ, His promise in witness hereof sufficeth, His word He knoweth which way to accomplish; why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful Communicant but this, O My God thou art true, O My Soul, thou art happy."

THE REASONABLE, HOLY AND LIVING SACRIFICE OF DISCIPLESHIP.

There is another purpose why Our Blessed Lord is present with us in Holy Communion. He is present as the Great Head of the Church, in order that we His members with Him and in Him may offer ourselves a living Sacrifice holy, acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable service (Romans XII. 1). We have sadly forgotten the real essential meaning of worship. What is worship? Surely self oblation. It is the offering of ourselves, our bodies, souls and spirits, our talents, our gifts, all we have and all we are to God for service. But this is just what we poor sinners cannot do of ourselves, it if only in Christ that we can give ourselves to serve God and humanity. And so Our Blessed Lord comes to us as the Head of the Church which is His Body, the living organism in which He lives and through which He carries on His work. He comes and pleads on our behalf the merits of His atoning death and Sacrifice once offered, He comes and applies to us the saving efficacy of His atonement, He feeds us with His Body and Blood, making us one with Himself so that He dwells in us and we dwell in Him, so that we are one with Him and He one with us; and then, in Him, in union with His eternal oblation of Himself, He offers and presents us, His Body, as living Sacrifices to the eternal Father, and sends us forth to do service for Him and our brethren, not in our own strength and power but in His to whom all power in Heaven and earth has been given.

The present era in the history of the Church and the world is one which calls for great power if Christ is to be brought to a distracted disorganized sin-laden, sin-weary world,—and if the world is to be brought to Christ its one and only possible helper and Saviour, its Saviour from present and future evils in the age that now is as well as in the ages to come. That power is in Christ and is made over to His followers when in simple faith they come to Him in a receptive attitude and with the determination to use it. The fundamental importance of the Holy Communion is, that it stands forth preeminently as the principal channel through which this power is bestowed.

May all those who bear His name and desire to do Him service realize what an inexhaustible treasury of Divine strength and power the Master has provided for us in this Sacrament of His Love. Just a few words in conclusion as to our use of it.

It is food, therefore, it must be received frequently and with regularity. It is food, therefore it presupposes life and at least a degree of health in those who take it. A corpse cannot receive food, the sick have no desire for it. The Holy Communion is for those who are Baptized and have received the life of the Risen Lord. It is for those who have been forgiven and who long to show their gratitude by becoming strong through the assimilation of Christ the Bread of Life to do Him service and perform His will.

It is food, therefore not a Spiritual luxury for good people, but the ordinary necessary food for us all, poor weak pardoned sinners, God's Children reconciled in Christ, who are trying to become good and to love Him who first loved us.

The realization of our own nothingness and the all sufficiency of Christ is the condition of heart and soul requisite for a good Communion. Repentance for the fact that it should be so with us, faith that He will supply all our needs, because He alone can and because He so wills, is the attitude of those who would really know what this Sacrament was meant to be and can be to those who come to Him "as sick to the Physician of Life, as unclean to the Fountain of Mercy, as blind to the Light of Eternal Splendour, as needy to the Lord of Heaven and earth, as naked to the King of Glory, as lost sheep to the Good Shepherd, as fallen creatures to their Creator, as desolate to the kind Comforter, as miserable to the Pitier, as guilty to the Bestower of pardon, as sinful to the Justifier, as hardened to the Infuser of Grace."

VII.

IMMORTALITY

By The Rev. Canon Cody, D.D., LL.D., Toronto.

IF A MAN DIE SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?

This question is as old as the race. Men cannot let it alone. It exercises a strange fascination. One generation, immersed in pleasure or in business, may think that this world is quite enough and may push the question aside: but the next generation will ask with increased intensity: "If a man die, shall he live again?" At one period of his life a man may care little for a question that carries him beyond the horizon of the present; but by and by no question comes to him with more poignant urgency.

The question will not rest, because death will not let us alone. As long as death breaks into our family circles, the problem will recur. Death came with his legions during the War and compelled a fresh answer to his challenge. No one who can think or feel is able to look unmoved on the face of death: he must ask "Shall he live again?"

It is passing strange that this should remain to any degree an open question. Why have not men reached a decisive answer? As a matter of fact, the history of nations and religions shows that man's tendency is to answer "Yes, he will live again." The natural inclination of man everywhere is to believe, not in his extinction, but in his survival.

The Christian doctrine of immortality implies vastly more than the mere survival of personality after death. It involves a quality rather than a quantity of life. Let us first, however, gather the manifold rays of light from various quarters that illuminate a future life of any kind. Some of them may be only candle lights; but their combination will reveal a trend towards immortality. It will appear that it is less difficult to believe that a man will live again than to believe he will be extinguished by death.

WHAT HISTORY SAYS.

I. A survey of human history discovers some candle lights on the problem of survival. These lights are certain well-established facts.

1.—All peoples and tribes, in all ages and of all grades of intelligence have conceived a life beyond death. Isolated exceptions are so rare that they may be accounted for by the loss, through degeneration, of an instinctive idea. This belief built the Pyramids of Egypt, reared the great Etruscan tombs, led men to embalm their dead, placed food and utensils within the tomb for use beyond, slaughtered the horses of the dead warrior and burned the widow on the husband's pyre. There is a deep-rooted and universal feeling that the spirit of man is distinct from, and superior to, the body, and survives the body. The universal fact of mortality has suggested the universal belief in immortality. This is all the more remarkable in face of the lack of immortality in nature. Nature presents the aspect of an indefinite series of things succeeding one another. It would seem that the human mind is so constructed that it tends in the direction of belief in the survival of personality. This may be but a candle light; yet it is a light.

2.—This belief in immortality persists. Various fancies and superstitions have been outgrown and cast aside in the progress of the ages. Many conceptions of the past have proved unworthy to survive. But this belief has a stronger grip on the modern world than it ever had in the past. While advance in knowledge reveals an interdependence of soul and body, it accentuates their distinction. To-day progress is interpreted to mean the triumph of the spirit and is marked by an increasing consciousness of the reality of the self which knows and wills and feels. A belief which thus survives must surely have in it something of the vitality of truth.

3.—This belief develops and waxes strong as life itself develops and climbs higher. The higher a man is in the scale of being, the wider his thoughts, the deeper his affections, the nobler his life; the more likely is he to believe that the soul lives on. The more fleshly, selfish and materialistic is the life, the harder it is to be sure of immortality. Thousands may live in the slime, with the beasts, and may not have a steadfast hope in a life beyond; but the great-minded and great-hearted men of the race are surest of life everlasting. Tennyson once said to Bishop Lightfoot: "The cardinal point of Christianity is the life after death." Tennyson is supremely the poet of immortality. It is his master thought; and herein he is typical of the greatest minds in human history. This belief, universal and persistent, is most vigorous in the hearts of the supreme men of our civilization.

4.—This belief, however vague may be the ideas in its context, exercises a real influence on life. It energises men. It nerves them to struggle and achieve. It enlarges their view. It inspires them for vaster enterprises. It enables them to do hard things and to persevere to the end.

WHAT PHILOSOPHY SAYS.

II. Philosophy lights more candles on the problem. Philosophy goes deeper than the statement of facts; it gives a theory of the facts; it seeks to find causes, relations and purposes.

1. The thoughts of the normal man are long thoughts. He has an instinctive yearning for immortality. If this instinct is absent, the man is not normal. If this instinct is suppressed, the man's soul is injured. If he does not believe in immortality, he will believe in something far less credible. It may be continued existence in the complex-life of humanity; it may be absorption of individual personality in some Oversoul. The issue is sorrow of heart, bitterness of soul, pessimism of creed, "Pessimism is the column of black smoke proceeding from the heart in which the hope of immortality has been burned to ashes." If a man remains normal, he believes in immortality. What is the inference? Tennyson has drawn it.

A just Creator will not place instinctive longings in His Creature's soul, only to betray them.

2.—The affections of the soul are as true witnesses as the mind. "The heart has reasons which the reason cannot understand." It is impossible for love at its purest and strongest to believe that death ends all. Love shrinks in pain from such a possibility. It protests against such a violation of the fellowship of heart with heart. The longing for reunion is no vain desire, awakened only to be mocked.

Not so can things be ordained in a world of order. The poets are the prophets of the heart; and all the great poets teach immortality.

The heart, which God made, will not perpetually deceive us. "If it were not so, I would have told you." The instinct is true. The verdict of the spiritual seers of the race is favorable.

3.—Man is constituted for an ampler and more glorious life than can possibly fall to his lot in this world. Human powers are vast in comparison with human opportunities. Man is too great to be crowded within the narrow limits of seventy years. "So much to do, so little done" were among the last words of Cecil Rhodes. To develop the latent powers we possess, we have no adequate opportunity here. Deep in our souls is the quenchless desire for a fuller expression of our powers. Could God build the human soul with all its capacities for the few years of this fleeting life on earth? Not if there is rationality at the heart of the universe.

4.—This world is an insoluble moral enigma, if there is no other world to explain it. Inequalities, injustices, abominations abound. Circumstances and character are frequently at variance. Right has often been on the scaffold; wrong on the throne. The whole creation is groaning and travailling in pain. This world is intolerable, if there is no other. There must be a world in which wrong will be righted and justice done. Man's conscience whispers that the Judge of all the earth will do right; but how can He do right with all His creatures, unless He has more time? R. L. Stevenson well puts the argument: "We had needs invent Heaven, if it had not been revealed; there are some things that fall so bitterly ill on this side time." Unless this world has been created from sheer extravagance in the infliction of purposeless pain, there must be another to justify the present process of discipline, to heal the wounds of struggle, to comfort sorrow, to develop holiness. Somewhere, sometime, character and condition must correspond.

WHAT SCIENCE SAYS.

III. Does Science throw any light on our problem? There may not be any absolute scientific proof of a life beyond; but Science has no demonstrative evidence against it. At least it leaves the question open. Some go so far as to say that the results of modern scientific research, when fairly viewed, are favourable to the reception of the belief in immortality. A great modern physicist says: "The death of the body does not convey any assurance of the soul's death. Every physical analogy is against such a superficial notion in nature. We never see things beginning or coming to an end. Change is what we see, not origin or termination. Death is a change, indeed; a sort of emigration, a wrenching away from the old familiar scenes, a solemn, portentous fact. But it is not annihilation."

Dangers have seemed to threaten the doctrine of personal immortality from the standpoint of the physiologist and the evolutionist; but these dangers have not proved fatal. The physiologist has demonstrated the close connection between the brain and the soul. It was an easy, though improper, conclusion to assert that "the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile." But the psychologist speedily pointed out that the physiologist had gone beyond his province. He had proved only that thought is a function of the brain. Functions may be productive or transmissive. Light as a function of the electric circuit represents a productive function; music as a function of the organ illustrates a transmissive function. The music is not in the organ but in the organist. The organ transmits it. So, the brain is but the organ of the soul.

The evolutionist has made men think in immensities and has given prime importance to the idea of development. But a creature like man who is alleged to be the product of ages of development is surely not going to be extinguished at the tomb. Darwin himself wrote: "It is an intolerable thought that men and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress."

What candles, then, does Science light up for us?

1.—The conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter imply that the natural forces of the world are not annihilated, however much they may be transformed. May we not hope that the peculiar form of force known as personality, the highest force in the world, will not be destroyed by the experience of death?

2.—Unfit organisms perish; fit survive. Many beliefs which once formed part of the spiritual life of man have perished in the lapse of time, but no belief has shown greater vitality and power to resist the disintegrating influences of changing environment than belief in the soul's immortality.

If this belief has survived when quickened by the most awful imaginable strain of the Great War may we not conclude that it is one of those beliefs fit to live, one of those beliefs which the Creator desires to live and grow?

3.—Whenever we find a faculty, we discover in environment something to which this faculty corresponds. Progress is possible only by the constant adaptation of faculty to environment. This is true of the animal world. Is it not also true of man? In man are found faculties peculiar to himself. There is a longing for immortality, an expanding conviction of it. Does this internal condition correspond to reality? Yes, else delusion falls on man alone. For, as a distinguished scientist (Sir J. Burdon Sanderson) has said, "there is no known instance of the development of a capacity without the existence of a corresponding satisfaction."

4.—If there is one increasing purpose through the ages, if there is development from lower to higher, from simple to complex, it is impossible to bound our vision with the grave. If personality has been attained, it is incredible that the gain of painful ages will be thrown away. "Now are we the Sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." The "forward-looking" habit has not been acquired for naught.

So far is Science from giving demonstrative evidence against immortality that it actually presents some considerations in its favour. The reasonableness and the beneficence of creation protest against the extinction of men by death.

WHAT CHRIST SAYS.

The candle-lights of history, philosophy and science cast a cumulative radiance upon the problem of life after death. They show that it is harder not to believe than to believe in immortality. But we need the light of the Sun. We need the demonstration of the power of an endless life. This we have in the Risen Christ. Christ brought into perfect light those truths about God and man, of which mankind had dim intuitions. By His Resurrection Christ abolished death (i.e., deprived it of force and power) and brought life and immortality to light (i.e., gives certainty, richness and power to the hope of immortal life).

1.—Christ has given certainty to the instinctive longing for immortality. For the shadow, He has given substance; for dimness, light; for hope, assurance. Although this hope has been virtually universal and inextinguishable, yet apart from Christ it has never become a certainty. Though historian, philosopher, poet, lover and saint have their own special arguments for the Hereafter, it is Christ Himself Who is the sure Light both of this world and of that which is to come. He has turned this hope into a full and glorious assurance.

HOW HAS HE DONE THIS?

(a) By His teaching.—Two things about mankind Christ took for granted—sinfulness and immortality. He did not argue about this life beyond; He took it for granted. No part of His teaching is explicable on the supposition that all ends at the tomb. His basis for our immortality is not our instinct but the character of God. On the bosom of God's Fatherhood rests man's immortality. If God is our Father and loves us as His children, then we are His and He is ours forever. Death cannot break this tie of life and love which binds us to Him; it cannot rob Him of His child. That God cannot be the God of the dead, but of the living, is axiomatic. His personal relations are real and are eternal.

The Christian faith is sufficient to give us certainty and comfort concerning our departed. We are assured that the blessed dead are in His safe keeping and through Him we are one with them in a union which will one day be consummated in everlasting reunion and communion. Our Christian watchwords are enough—"love in absence, trust in silence, faith in reunion."

(b) By His Life.—To the eye that can see, His life is the supreme argument for immortality. He lived such a life of fellowship with God and so near to the frontier of eternity that the glory of it shone upon and from His face. The longing for a life higher than the life of time is answered in His life. Such a life could not be holden by death. It is eternal. It has the quality now and always of everlastingness.

(c) By His Resurrection.—He confirmed the truth of what He taught, and lived, by what He did. He rose again, transformed, not merely resuscitated. He irradiated the spiritual land. It is no longer "an undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns." The empty tomb, the cumulative evidence of independent witnesses, the transformation in the lives of believers, the institutions of the Christian Church, its continued existence, the personal experience of the power of a rising life in individual Christians throughout the ages to the present time—are the attestations of the truth of the Resurrection. The Christian Church is built and still rests on the fact, luminous and sovereign, that Christ rose from the grave in fulness and newness of power. To the life beyond, Christ's resurrection gives reality and humanity and assurance. It confirmed men's subjective aspirations, it changed them into "things most surely believed." It makes every Christian certain of a higher life beyond the grave.

2. Christ has enriched the whole conception of immortality. In the ancient, as in the savage world to-day, immortality or the continued duration of life, was a dreary prospect, a sense of desolation rather than a source of joy, an impoverishment of life, not an enrichment of it; its scene was a shadowy realm of silence, where there is no voice of praise nor human warmth and cheer. In some passages in the Old Testament we find a loftier and clearer utterance. Through his faith in God, Job reached the idea that death may not be the final word. The righteous God would not abandon a righteous man. In revealed religion this faith in a life beyond the grave rested not on any conceptions of man's nature, but on the character of God, the Eternal Righteousness. If he has called men into fellowship with Him, His faith is pledged to them. The Psalmists won their sense of eternal security through their present fellowship with God. Along this line of religious experience of a living, holy and gracious God, the true hope of immortality entered the world. Just as union with God guaranteed to the Psalmist a life that would never end, so union with the Risen Saviour guarantees to the Christian triumph over death. Christ has filled this elementary thought of continued existence with moral content, because He has based it on a true conception of God. The Christian hope is not merely "immortality of the soul" but eternal life; and eternal life is not merely an infinite prolongation of existence in a future state of being; but is life at its highest and best, the life of fellowship, of vision, of growing likeness to God, of ample service. It is life in Christ. It is being with Christ, which is very far better than earthly life at its worthiest. It is not the mere translation, but the transformation of earthly values. This faith in immortality is moral and spiritual; it implies enriched and elevated being, as worthy and glorious as it is endless.

3.—Christ has so increased the power of immortality, of the Christian Hope, as almost to make it for the first time effective as a source of courage, hope and consolation. He has turned the hope of immortality into the Power of His Resurrection. All hopes exercise some influence on those who hold them; yet apart from Christ the hope of immortality has been less effective than we might expect. By His Resurrection Christ has raised this yearning hope into a mighty present power brought to bear on humanity. The Christian hope of immortality, certain and rich in the possession of abundant life, gives breadth and outlook to all human efforts. It inspires duty. Brought to bear on our work, it makes effort worth while. If all we have striven to do and yet failed to do is to be perfected in the eternal morning, we can face our tasks with fresh courage. All social reconstructions that deny or neglect the Christian thought of an endless life fail here. Their scope is too limited; their outlook too narrow. The Christian hope brings the power of endurance and victory to sorrowing hearts. Death is not a leap in the dark, but the passing into a larger, brighter room in the House of the One Father. In short, when this hope of immortality is tested by life, it is verified by the loftiness of the character it builds.

The rising life is the present demonstration of the risen life. All low, worldly, unspiritual living tends to doubt in it. If we would escape from doubt about the future, let us through the Living Christ make life larger now. If we would overcome weakening uncertainty, let us daily practice immortality. If we set our affections on things above, our rising life will assure us that we shall live forever. One of Gladstone's great exhortations was: "Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and grovelling thing, that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny." This belief is created and can be maintained only by viewing life in relation to God and immortality.

Every man should therefore put the question to himself: "If I die, shall I live again?" "What kind of life am I living now? Is it life eternal, or life merely temporal? Is it a friendship with God which death can never extinguish?" Only One Life has ever won open victory over death. Only one kind of life ever can win it—that kind of life which was in Christ, which is in Christ, which He shares with all whom faith makes one with Him.

"In the midst of life we are in death" such is the cry of bereaved and dying humanity. But in Christ we are able to say: "in the midst of death, we are in life." "God has given us eternal life, and that life is in His Son." Can death touch that life? Never.

T. H. BEST PRINTING CO. LIMITED, TORONTO

THE LAYMAN'S LIBRARY OF PRACTICAL RELIGION