Regions of the Dead.

457

AS TO FUTURE LIFE.

In Zulu theology, not only do souls exist after the death of the body, but are spirits and deities worshipped by the living. In modern thought, the soul furnishes a more intellectual side to the religious doctrine of the future life; but, in all the faiths, however unintellectual, it is an essential. The most formal denial of future life, found amongst an uncultured race, is in a poem of the Dinka tribe concerning Dendrid the Creator:

"He made man :

And man comes forth, goes down into the ground, and comes no more.

There is, nevertheless, even in this tribe, testimony to belief in another life. Indeed the continued existence of the soul, after the death of the body, may be counted part of the universal faith.

Two forms of doctrine as to future life are found:

1. The Transmigration of souls, which ascending from lower stages has established itself amongst the huge communities of Asia.

2. The separate personal Existence of the Soul, found not only amongst rude and primitive men, but in the heart of Christianity-where it is at once an inducement to goodness, a sustainer of hope, and a solution to the problem presented by the mixed state of our present life.

The savage mind is generally incapable of a large and clear view of immortality; all dull and careless natures are wont to regard the world to come as far off, but the conviction of its reality finds expression in every definition of faith. Sometimes continuance of life is the main fact, sometimes retribution is the chief feature.

Four great regions are assigned to the dead: hell, earth, hades, heaven; and the conception of them does not sink into dreaminess, but is rather characterised by ghostliness. The low creeds have little moral element in connection with the state and place of the departed. It was reserved for our Christian Faith to implant righteousness and holiness, to give the inspiration of duty and love, and constitute them chief verities in the Kingdom of God.

FUTURE RETRIBUTION.

The idea of future retribution and different grades of condition is not universal, and some savage races seem in an intermediate condition between the continuance-theory and the retribution-theory, as if preparatory to that doctrine of future reward and punishment which has so great an import to human life. This confirms the New Testament statement that the revelation of a pure and glorious immortality is by Jesus Christ.

All races have the idea of the soul outliving the body in a country of ghosts; and all carnal men, whether of low or high culture, count a corner in this world the better place. In all faiths, except the Christian Faith, whether the spirit dwells with the body in the grave, or is secluded in a subterranean void, or abides in the dark classic realm of Hades, or occupies the Roman Orcus of pallid souls, or roams on the ghostly prairie of the savage hunter, the life is shadowy and dismal. The Sheol of ancient Jewish dead was, to common conception, but little better-a place where the dead met the dead. Nevertheless, we can trace amongst many barbarous nations germs of that holy comforting doctrine which lies at the very heart of Christianity; but the roads by which a happy land is attained are so strangely different that the path of life to one race seems to another a very descent into the pit. The chief idea in low culture is—what gives prosperity or renown here will give it hereafter; and present contrasts have reality in future existence: "the good are good warriors and hunters," said the Pawnee chief; but as the good, whatever it may mean, is a qualification for reward; the theory, even among lowest races, belongs to morality. The crude primitive faith pictures a spectral abode. The higher faiths more and more spiritualise the definite regions of heaven and hell into states rather than localities of happiness and misery. In the last hours of earthly dwelling men say of the coming change-"It is not death, but life." Mourners, setting aside the evidence of their physical senses, exclaim-"Life is not severed by fatal shears, only the bands of earth, the consummation is in eternal glory." The Christian Faith reveals a state of perfect purity; and to

aid our conception of it, brings to view a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

THE PRESENCE OF SPIRITS WITH MEN.

The familiar lines of Milton

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep"

have lately had startling illustration.

Emmanuel Swedenborg, in "The Christian Religion," declares "I have conversed with all my relatives and friends, likewise with kings and princes, and men of learning, after their departure out of this life, and this now for twenty years without interruption." Whatever we may think of this, and of spiritualistic theories, it is evident that spiritualism is not limited to the philosophy of savages. Materialists contemptuously throw it aside, not discerning nor separating the good from the bad; and now, that which they called savage knowledge, or no knowledge, is entering our higher civilization. The true interpretation is-men cannot rid themselves of the conviction that they and their world are really the objects and scene of spiritual strife.

The reality of this strife, deadliness of the evil, and bold resistance to it, may be taught by an old spiritualistic legend.1 A Russian sat under a larch-tree when the sun glared like fire. He saw something coming from afar-it was the Pestmaiden, shrouded in linen, huge of stature, stalking towards him. Grasping his hand, she said-" Knowest thou me? I am the Pest-maiden. Take me on thy shoulders, carry me through all Russia; miss no village, nor town. I must visit all." She clambered on his back, and he stepped on; seeing the shadow of the form above, but feeling no burden. He bore her to the towns where joy and song prevailed: she waved her linen shroud, and joy and song were gone. In place thereof were mourning, tolling of bells, funeral processions, the graves could not contain the dead. He passed on, and as he came to every village shrieks resounded from

1 "Primitive Culture:" Edward B. Tylor.

the dying, and all faces became white in the desolate houses. High on a hill, by the sea, stood his own hamlet; his wife and little children were there with his aged parents, and his heart bled as he drew nigh. Then, with high resolve to do or die, he grasped the fiend fast and plunged with her beneath the waves. She rose again, but, quailing before a spirit so fearless, fled away to forest and mountain, and was

seen no more.

THE POWER AND DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.

The attempts which have been made to discredit the claims of Holy Scripture as to Divine Inspiration, and to disprove Prophecy, have led to searching investigation.

A certain predictive power seems to be possessed by peculiar states of human consciousness, and prophecy of some kind has been found to exist amongst all nations. Apart from any sacred purpose, considering it as a mere faculty in the human mind, it is something distinct from intelligent thought and consciousness; but not inconsistent with them it is a part of the relation of the Psyche to the inner and outer world. In Hellas the office of the Pythia, with the rational prophet or opins to stand beside her; and amongst the Jews, a school of the Prophets; are proof that the human soul was considered to be the organ of a mysterious knowledge of the future.

The power, in its lowest form, is a morbid condition of consciousness, or a sickly brooding enthusiasm; but, though uncertain in the degree and accuracy of prophetic enunciation, it has, through the whole course of history, obtained and kept power over stouter minds. In high states, or the spiritual grade, we speak not of the sacred and divine as found in Holy Scripture, the inward vision is allied with the faculty of recollection. It is related to, but is not what is called, demoniacal possession.

It is an error to assume that it belongs wholly to lower culture, and will be destroyed by higher medical knowledge. Higher medical knowledge will rather do well to investigate it as psychic power. In British India, moving, writhing,

Predictive Power.

461 tearing men are entered by a psychic power, and oracles are uttered. This kind of prophecy, or prevision, arose in times of, so-called, barbarism; continued in full vigour throughout the classic world, and exists now scarcely altered. Men, who

naturally have neither ability nor eloquence, will, in the spiritual or possessed state, prophesy with earnest lofty declamation in well-knit harangue of metaphor and poetic figure.

We are not prepared with any explanation, and only use the mysterious fact as one of the many links by which human consciousness is united to a world of occult influences; and as example, whether good or bad, of the verity of that high and holy power which is manifested in Scripture. The relation seems to be somewhat like that of the divining damsel, at Philippi, to St. Paul and the preached Gospel (Acts xvi. 16-18).

These investigations, carried into fields of thought, worked for the most part, by those who refuse Holy Scripture, show that the attempt of physicists to limit the universe to material existences is in opposition to universal consciousness and experience. So far from matter being the whole and only reality, it is but as one small piece of furniture in the many-chambered House of God. There is world within world, even as there are stars beyond stars; and space, where we see nothing, may teem with a yet more manifold existence than that exhibited in known material forms. It is the high attribute of true Art and Science to suggest infinitely more than they express; suggestions that all material things are not carcases of the dead, but rather germs of life. We all, at times, have the shuddering impression, embodied by Coleridge in dark and fearful verse, that something not of earth is behind us; and he is less than man who does not weave wild contrasts of spirits, of heights and depths, of solemn mysteries, of immortal joys, of holy and eternal triumph:

"A spirit moves within us, and impels

The passion of a prophet to our lips."

Already are powers within us ready to be quickened into the life of manifold senses: senses by which we may see-not