be promoted, nor evil extirpated, by rewards and punishments inflicted by external authority. The power of law, as St. Paul proclaimed, is limited; it is political rather than moral; its office is to preserve society from harm, rather than to save souls from sin. Now, the received doctrine is merely the application of law, that is, the fear of punishment and the hope of reward, to induce men to be good, and therefore it is doomed to failure that grows more marked with every step in man's moral advancement, and at every successful vindication of his higher nature. We may indeed cheerfully admit that much good has resulted, in past times, from the experiment of trying to control conduct by a future state of happiness or misery; it was in the nature of things inevitable, and the belief itself has lasted so long, and prevailed so widely, just because it expressed the unselfish antagonism to evil, and zeal for righteousness at all costs, which constitute man's highest moral achievement. But for artificial and outwardly inflicted penalties, must now be substituted the spiritual idea of good and evil working out their own eternal results, and, further, as being distinguished from each other in the same character, rather than as separating man from man or class from class. The moral continuance of man, meaning thereby that justice will be wrought not by intervention but by consequence, brings religion into harmony with the highest truths that the human intelligence has so far attained, while freedom from unsubstantial speculation will leave the way open for an outlook upon the future inspired by deep spiritual intuitions, and full of practical helpfulness in the increasing struggle for personal existence. And, at the least, men will cease to have their reason perplexed by propositions concerning the unknowable, their sense of justice tormented by the material notion of endlessness, their freedom overawed by superstitious terror, their instinct of development and expansion thwarted by a stereotyped state of illusory bliss or imaginary woe.

Consider next the silence of Christ in its relation to the growing consciousness of the worth and importance of humanity, of the

essential unity which binds the race into one organic whole, of the increasing purpose which links age with age and man with man. The very sense of humor, itself one of our highest gifts, which in former days found vent for its instinctive protest against the popular creed by associating with it all kinds of ludicrous notions, images, fables and questions, has in later days turned aside with ironical disdain from the futile attempt to sum up the eternal destiny. of man under the conceptions of an outworn Paganism. Thus it is quite possible to give to the moral aspect of the future life far too exclusive a place in our thoughts concerning it. There are more things in life, whether here or hereafter, than rewards and punishments, nor is religion conterminous with morality, even when touched by emotion. If, according to the famous saying, conduct is threefourths of life, then it follows, not that religion is also three-fourths of life, but that conduct is three-fourths of religion. For Christianity is all life and all nature viewed in relation to the Creating and Redeeming God, and the higher we come to think of man, the more certain we shall be that he belongs not to himself but to God, and that the future life subserves other purposes besides that of meting out to conduct its due reward. It is a sure sign of feebleness in religious thinking, when it is made to turn exclusively upon the wants, the objects, or the destinies of the creature, rather than upon the will, the purpose, and the glory of the Creator, who may surely be supposed to have designs for the future of the human race (as part of a universal law or system of things), far transcending our powers of even guessing at. But if we must needs occupy ourselves with the doctrine of the life to come, then what we require is to be left alone, and unfettered by dogma, so as to allow nature, through which God works, to shape, in the absence of revelation, our opinions, as surely as it will ultimately shape our destiny.

Another deeply interesting result of modern thinking is that of progress by evolution rather than by catastrophe. Now, eschatology, like all primitive thinking, tends to be catastrophic: it delights

in sudden overwhelming changes: it is always at root an exaggeration of some one condition, or set of conditions, to the exclusion of others. Thus sensuous pleasure, intellectual rapture, the triumph of good over evil, rest from the pain of existence though bought at the cost of annihilation, in turn play their part upon the scene, so fanciful, so humorous, such a mixture of honest moral endeavor and idle untutored imagination. Now, in opposition to all this moral and intellectual waste, the silence and self-restraint of the Bible concentrate the forces of religion upon the task of establishing upon earth a heavenly kingdom, that is, of reducing the world to that state and order which may be supposed to represent the ideal residing in the creating mind, and realized, as the word heaven indicates, elsewhere in the universe of God. And if this be so, then the establishment of the kingdom of heaven, or the rule of Christ, here, is the best preparation for life hereafter; and for each man to take part in bringing that result about is the surest way of attaining whatever "reward" life hereafter has in store for us.

And thus we gain an insight into the meaning of spiritual immortality which will guide our conduct and strengthen our resolution, and cheer our hearts, at least as much as the popular doctrine, which is slowly and sadly dying before us, as old people die who have outlived their strength and use. Immortality is the survival of that which has proved itself fittest to do the will of God under temporal conditions, and is therefore "selected" to work out the same will in the life eternal. Nor does Jesus Christ leave his people in doubt as to what the "fittest" is; for it is the sacrifice of self that rises from the dead, and tells us almost in the act of doing so-" Where I am, there shall also my servant be."

Thomas W. Zouke