characterize as the spirit of Christ is of more importance by far than to say Lord! Lord! or to attain any accuracy of historical or metaphysical belief. By the grace of God which blesses the nineteenth century, and under teachers whom we may typify by the names of Channing and Martineau, it has added spirituality to its gentleness of judgment and its bravery for truth. It has been said: "The first shall be last and the last first;" nor is it rare for those who become proud of orthodoxy to see their crown placed upon the head of the heterodox. But here it is no marvel, that the school which first without fetters upon its belief studied ecclesiastical history and the pretensions of fixing a Canon of inspired Writ, should first raise the standard of truly Free Religion, as a direct relation between God and the soul, without any Mediator, Pope, Priest, or infallible book, between. Those who for convenience denote themselves Unitarians enlarge their thoughts and desires to embrace all devout and faithful souls as fellow religionists. Therefore I have pleasure in uniting to congratulate our friends on the inauguration of their new building, believing as I do that they will intelligently cherish whatever of devoutness, spirituality and moral wisdom the ancient Scriptures and the historical Christian church contain or have practically developed. W ON THIS AND THE OTHER WORLD. [1878.] THE HE title I have assumed for this tract may appear gigantesque : but the reader will kindly remember that no author need attempt to exhaust his subject. In fact, I do but intend to make various remarks chiefly on one writer who has devoted intense effort to the topic. The philosophers who will have no theology, except such as can be elicited by the study of that which is external to the human mind, may attain to a belief in some world-ruling Supreme Being, but in no case are likely to have even the faintest expectation of renewed existence for individual man after death. In extreme contrast to this, such Theists as were Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and, recently deceased, Theodore Parker and Mazzini, make human immortality a first principle of religion. So it is with the Bengali Theists, members of the Brahmo Somâj; to whom I cannot allude without expressing admiration and sympathy. My friend, Miss F. P. Cobbe, an ardent admirer of Theodore Parker, is by far the most vigorous and prominent advocate of this doctrine among ourselves; which, in spite of the double-edged nature of the arguments on which she relies, deeply moves me. In re-publishing her Essays on Life after Death, which appeared in the Theological Review, she has prefixed an elaborate, and, in many respects, valuable Preface, commenting on Mr. J. S. Mill's three Posthumous Essays. Perhaps it may seem needless to say, that in everything which Miss Cobbe writes, there is sure to be much that commands my interest and true sympathy; but I avow this distinctly now, because I am about to express strong dissent from her cardinal arguments and statements: and it may be well here to quote from her what I regard as a primary truth, p. iii. "We shall never obtain our truest and most reliable idea of God from the inductions which science may help us to draw from the external world. Spiritual things must be spiritually discerned, or we must be content never to discern them truly at all. In man's soul alone, so far as we may yet discover, is the moral nature of his Maker revealed," as in a mirror. "If (as we must needs hold for truth), there be a moral purpose running through all the physical creation, its scope is too enormous, its intricacy too deep, the cycle of its revolution too immense, for our brief and blind observation. It must be enough for us to learn what God bids us to be of just and merciful and loving, and then judge what must be his justice, his mercy, his love," &c., &c. One caution I desire here to add. Owing to essential differences of nature, we need to practise virtues which cannot exist in God. The exhortation, "to imitate him," in order that we may attain high virtue, is a precept in the Sermon on the Mount, which Miss Cobbe, with many assenting, regards as high wisdom, p. 316; but to me it seems a profound mistake, virtually reproved by my quotation from her, just made. We do not see by our outward eyes the moral virtues of the Most High. We find nothing of him outside of us to imitate; we only gain some knowledge of him by first knowing and feeling pure and noble impulses in ourselves. But when Miss Cobbe deduces from this precept of imitating God's indiscriminateness, "which, for eighteen centuries has rung in men's ears," that "we ought to make the same sacrifices for the vicious, as we should readily make for a beloved friend," she seems to forget that we cannot imagine the possibility of God making any sacrifices at all. At least I do not yet believe that she would seriously assert that "making sacrifices" is one of his virtues. When from an imaginary quality in Him, she deduces a superlatively high-flown and doubtful duty for us, this may warn us how dangerous is the method she employs. Nay, poetry may sternly warn us :— "Must innocence and guilt Let them all perish. Heav'n will choose its own. The earthquake whelms Its undistinguish'd thousands, making graves Of peopled cities in its path; and this Is heav'n's dread Justice; ay, and it is well. (MRS. HEMANS' Vespers of Palermo.) Surely this is as good an argument as that based upon the Rain. We cannot be wise in imitating the action of the elements. All such precepts are an ignis fatuus. In my belief, duty must stand on its own basis, as a purely human science, to which religious knowledge contributes absolutely nothing. Upon pre-existing morals, spiritual judgments are built. Religion cannot tell us what is moral, though it can give great force to moral aspirations. It can immensely aid us to self-restraint and sacrifice for the attainment of virtue, hereby in turn making individuals nobler, and conducing to more delicate moral perception, out of which rises an advance of moral science itself. But I proceed to Miss Cobbe's topic, The Hopes of the Human Race, that is, the doctrine of human immortality. The new Hindoo Theists propound it as a spiritual axiom. Apparently this was Theodore Parker's idea, who, nevertheless, also reasoned for it, if I remember, from the alledged universal yearning of mankind. The fact that all men so yearn, always appeared to me very doubtful; nay, from the history of Hebrew religious thought, a formidable objection arises: nor is any such yearning of unspiritual men to me a worthy argument. Indeed, what do they want? A life as closely like this life as possible, only more comfortable. How can such desires, however universal, be an omen that they will be gratified? But when it is asserted, that in proportion as men become sounder in morals, and purer in religion, so does this belief of an after-existence, in which sin shall be subjugated, and evil practically annihilated, grow up and take deep root; the assertion (if true), comes to me with great weight. It may not be decisive against objections, but I cannot make light of it; and the very possibility of an after-life, has, in my belief, a specific influence on spiritual thought and feeling. But to Miss Cobbe mere possibilities and probabilities seem feeble she is a bolder reasoner. To express my own judgment, I fear I must say, she is an audacious reasoner. The "existence of evil" is with her "a dread mystery," which (I am glad to say), she tries to present as an exception; yet, she only doubtfully admits Paley's assertion, that "it is a happy world after all;" and calls his solution (pp. xlii., xliii.) "an easy-going optimism.' Truly, in my sentiment, the surrender of this fact (for, a fact I consider it) would inflict on Theism a most formidable wound. If there be no future life, "Man (she says), is a failure, the consummate failure of creation." On this assertion she bases the belief, that there must be a future life, to set right what was wrong here. Seeing that we (the few) are here happy, and that others, "no worse than we, and often far better," drag out lives of misery and privation of all higher joy, and die, perhaps, at last, so far as their own consciousness goes, in final alienation 66 and revolt from God and goodness," therefore, we demand for these [Italics in the original] "another and a better life at the hands of the Divine Justice and love: and in so far as any one loves both God and man, so far he is incapable of renouncing that demand. One who thanks God for his own joys, and is satisfied without making "demand for farther existence for himself or anybody else," she entitles "SELFISH," pp. lxiv., lxv. Now, I try to apply this by taking the case of some singularly wicked man, whose crimes or vices bring him to a shameful death; and I ask myself, Could I approach God in prayer, with this man's name on my lips, and say: "Thou hast created him, and hast not hitherto shown him common justice, or common kindness; thou hast allowed him to become depraved and miserable; therefore, I demand of thee a renewed life for him, in which thou mayst redress thy injustices and neglects." To my feelings, such an address is the height of presumption: even a harsher word may seem appropriate. It reminds me of a much milder prayer, that of a Frenchman, opening with the words "Fear not, O my God, that I am about to reproach thee." Yet I cannot see wherein my hypothetical prayer differs from Miss Cobbe's argument, except that the one is said inwardly to one's self, the other is said inwardly to him who reads the heart. In substance they are the same. My reason, as well as my sentiment, is shocked by it; yet, she "commends it to us as the true method of solving the problem of a life after death," p. lxvii. Such an avowal is to me very revolting; and from one whose many high qualities are justly appreciated, cannot be passed over without definite protest and disavowal. Why are we to admit that man, as we see and know him in this world," is a failure,-the consummate failure of creation ?" This is a natural idea to those who believe that the first man was perfect in virtue, and that a golden age was succeeded by ages of silver, of brass, of iron, and of clay. "Etas parentum pejor avis," &c.! From one who not only has laid aside the fables of Gentile religions, but reads Lubbock, Darwin, and Tyndall, we might far rather expect a cheerful light-heartedness, if not a joyful exultation, that by the mysterious guidance of a hidden providence, our race is ever advancing. History is to me a book so bitter of digestion, that when consulted by aspiring ladies, I have never dared to advise their study of it, without warning them how very painful it is. Yet history brings to me an unshaken conviction that man is no failure, but a noble |