it, when no
longer bound to the earth, shall behold the divine glory,--a vision which
transcends our powers of thought.

11. In the light of modern investigation, body and soul are seen to be
indissolubly bound together by a reciprocal relation which either benefits
or impedes them both. Wherein the spiritual bond exists that renders both
the physical organs with their muscular and nervous systems and the
magnetic or electric currents which set them in motion subservient to the
will of the intellect; what the mind actually _is_, into whose deepest
recesses science is casting its search-light to illumine its
processes,--these are problems which will probably remain ever incapable of
solution by human knowledge, and will therefore always afford new food for
the imagination. Yet it is just in periods like ours, when the belief in
God is weakening, that the human spirit is especially solicitous to guard
itself against the thought of the complete annihilation of its god-like
self-conscious personality. This gives rise to the superstitious effort to
spy out the soul by sensory means and to find ways of seeing or hearing
the spirits of the dead,--a tendency which is as dangerous to the spiritual
and moral welfare of humanity as was the ancient practice of
necromancy.(944) It is therefore all the more important to base the belief
in immortality solely on the God-likeness of the human soul, which is the
mirror of Divinity. Just as one postulate of faith holds that God, the
Creator of the world, rules in accordance with a moral order, so another
is the immortality of the human soul, which, amidst yearning and groping,
beholds God. The question where, and how, this self-same ego is to
continue, will be left for the power of the imagination to answer ever
anew.

12. Certainly it is both comforting and convenient to imagine the dead who
are laid to rest in the earth as being asleep and to await their
reawakening. As the fructifying rain awakens to a new life the seeds
within the soil, so that they rise from the depths arrayed in new raiment,
so, when touched by the heavenly dew of life, will those who linger in the
grave arise to a new existence, clad in new bodies. This is the belief
which inspired the pious founders of the synagogal liturgy even before the
period of the Maccabees, when they expressed their praise of God's power
in that He would send the fertilizing rain upon the vegetation of the
earth, and likewise in due time t