The Future Life in the Light of Modern Inquiry

t work in both cases. Many turn away from certainty of a future life and from the demand which brooks no denial for a profound transformation of their minds, for the same reason; acceptance of either idea would inevitably lead to a far-reaching disturbance of their normal, every-day lives, to a complete reconstruction of their moral and social world. But as the years pass, the dull weight of custom, the inert, mechanical, and automatic force of convention, makes such a reversion of their normal existence a task to be evaded with all the stratagems at their command. Hence they make a compromise. They will not deny that within limits the Christian theory of repentance has its rights, but it must not interfere unduly with the claims of use and wont. So, too, with the idea of a future life. That also must not be denied, yet it must not be asserted, as if it were a fact like the law of gravitation, or like any of the data of experience, because if it were so asserted and accepted, they would be com- pelled to regard themselves and those about them in an altogether different light. They would awake to the claim of unsuspected duties and tasks. They would see their every act to be fraught with a significance unimaginably great. To escape such a revolution the idea of immortality must be lessened of its dynamic meaning, and its revolutionary power must be kept in check. But this method of dealing with a great principle brings its own Nemesis. When, through some p...