rts
a powerful influence in promoting justice between individuals. If one
actually thinks that man dies as the brute dies, he will yield more
easily to the temptation to do injustice to his neighbour when the
circumstances are such as to promise security from detection. But if
one really expects to meet again, and live eternally with those whom he
knows to-day, he is restrained from evil deeds by the fear of endless
remorse even when not actuated by higher motives. We do not know what
rewards are in store for us or what punishments may be reserved, but
if there were no other it would be no light punishment for one who
deliberately wrongs another to have to live forever in the company of
the person wronged and have his littleness and selfishness laid bare.

The Creator has not left us in doubt on the subject of immortality. He
has given to every created thing a tongue that proclaims a life beyond
the grave.

If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless
heart of the buried acorn and to make it burst forth from its prison
walls, will He leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, made in
the image of his Creator? If He stoops to give to the rose-bush, whose
withered blossoms float upon the autumn breeze, the sweet assurance of
another springtime, will He refuse the words of hope to the sons of men
when the frosts of winter come? If matter, mute and inanimate, though
changed by the forces of nature into a multitude of forms, can never
die, will the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has
paid a brief visit like a royal guest to this tenement of clay? No, He
who, notwithstanding His apparent prodigality, created nothing without
a purpose, and wasted not a single atom in all His creation, has made
provision for a future life in which man's universal longing for
immortality will find its realization. I am as sure that we shall live
again as I am sure that we live to-day.

In Cairo, I secured a few grains of wheat that had slumbered for more
than thirty centuries in an Egyptian tomb. As I looked at them this
thought came into my mind: If one of those grains had been planted
on the banks of the Nile the year after it grew, and all its lineal
descendants had been planted and replanted from that time until now,
its progeny would to-day be sufficiently numerous to feed the teeming
millions of the world. An unbroken chain of life connects the earliest
grains of wheat with the grains that