h. It involves a _quality_ rather
than a _quantity_ of life. Let us first, however, gather the manifold
rays of light from various quarters that illuminate a future life of
any kind. Some of them may be only candle lights; but their
combination will reveal a trend towards immortality. It will appear
that it is less difficult to believe that a man will live again than to
believe he will be extinguished by death.

WHAT HISTORY SAYS.

I. A survey of human history discovers some candle lights on the
problem of survival. These lights are certain well-established facts.

1.--All peoples and tribes, in all ages and of all grades of
intelligence have conceived a life beyond death. Isolated exceptions
are so rare that they may be accounted for by the loss, through
degeneration, of an instinctive idea. This belief built the Pyramids
of Egypt, reared the great Etruscan tombs, led men to embalm their
dead, placed food and utensils within the tomb for use beyond,
slaughtered the horses of the dead warrior and burned the widow on the
husband's pyre. There is a deep-rooted and universal feeling that the
spirit of man is distinct from, and superior to, the body, and survives
the body. The universal fact of mortality has suggested the universal
belief in immortality. This is all the more remarkable in face of the
lack of immortality in nature. Nature presents the aspect of an
indefinite series of things succeeding one another. It would seem that
the human mind is so constructed that it tends in the direction of
belief in the survival of personality. This may be but a _candle_
light; yet it is a _light_.

2.--This belief in immortality persists. Various fancies and
superstitions have been outgrown and cast aside in the progress of the
ages. Many conceptions of the past have proved unworthy to survive.
But this belief has a stronger grip on the modern world than it ever
had in the past. While advance in knowledge reveals an interdependence
of soul and body, it accentuates their distinction. To-day progress is
interpreted to mean the triumph of the spirit and is marked by an
increasing consciousness of the reality of the self which knows and
wills and feels. A belief which thus survives must surely have in it
something of the vitality of truth.

3.--This belief develops and waxes strong as life itself develops and
climbs higher. The higher a man is in the scale of being, the wider
his thoughts, the deeper his af