est I take in the mysterious person
we are going to welcome.

"I cannot tell you when the idea of a Soul in every man had its
origin. Most likely the first parents brought it with them out of
the garden in which they had their first dwelling. We all do know,
however, that it has never perished entirely out of mind. By some
peoples it was lost, but not by all; in some ages it dulled and
faded, in others it was overwhelmed with doubts; but, in great
goodness, God kept sending us at intervals mighty intellects to
argue it back to faith and hope.

"Why should there be a Soul in every man? Look, O son of Hur--for
one moment look at the necessity of such a device. To lie down
and die, and be no more--no more forever--time never was when man
wished for such an end; nor has the man ever been who did not in
his heart promise himself something better. The monuments of the
nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are
statues and inscriptions; so is history. The greatest of our Egyptian
kings had his effigy cut-out of a hill of solid rock. Day after
day he went with a host in chariots to see the work; at last it
was finished, never effigy so grand, so enduring: it looked like
him--the features were his, faithful even in expression. Now may
we not think of him saying in that moment of pride, 'Let Death
come; there is an after-life for me!' He had his wish. The statue
is there yet.

"But what is the after-life he thus secured? Only a recollection
by men--a glory unsubstantial as moonshine on the brow of the great
bust; a story in stone--nothing more. Meantime what has become of
the king? There is an embalmed body up in the royal tombs which
once was his--an effigy not so fair to look at as the other out
in the Desert. But where, O son of Hur, where is the king himself?
Is he fallen into nothingness? Two thousand years have gone since
he was a man alive as you and I are. Was his last breath the end
of him?

"To say yes would be to accuse God; let us rather accept his better
plan of attaining life after death for us--actual life, I mean--the
something more than a place in mortal memory; life with going
and coming, with sensation, with knowledge, with power and all
appreciation; life eternal in term though it may be with changes
of condition.

"Ask you what God's plan is? The gift of a Soul to each of us at
birth, with this simple law--there shall be no immortality except
through the Soul. In that law see th