n in the last judgment, when guilt
and innocence are put in the balance, and thus mercy will become
justice, two conceptions which generally exclude one another.

It is harder to think of nothing than of something; when the something
is once given, harder to imagine cessation than continuance. This
earthly life cannot possibly be an end in itself. We did not ask for
it; it was given to us, imposed upon us. We must be destined to
something higher than a perpetual repetition of the sad experiences of
this life. Shall those enigmas which surround us on all sides, and for
a solution of which the best of mankind have sought their whole life
long, never be made plain? What purpose is served by the thousand ties
of love and friendship which bind past and present together, if there
is no future, if death ends all?

But what can we take with us into the future?

The functions of our earthly garment, the body, have ceased; the
matter composing it, which even during life was ever being changed,
has entered into new chemical combinations, and the earth enters into
possession of all that is her due. Not an atom is lost. Scripture
promises us the resurrection of a glorified body, and indeed a
separate existence without limitation in space is unthinkable; yet it
may be that this promise implies nothing more than the continued
existence of the individual, as opposed to pantheism.

We may be allowed to hope that our reason, and with it all the
knowledge that we have painfully acquired, will pass with us into
eternity; perhaps, too, the remembrance of our earthly life. Whether
that is really to be wished is another question. How if our whole life
all our thoughts and actions should some day be spread out before us
and we became our own judges, incorruptible and pitiless?

But, above all, the emotions must be retained by the soul, if it is to
be immortal. Friendship does indeed rest on reciprocity, and is partly
an affair of the reason; but love can exist though unreturned. Love is
the purest, the most divine spark of our being.

Scripture bids us before all things love God, an invisible,
incomprehensible Being, who sends us joy and happiness, but also
privation and pain. How else can we love Him than by obeying His
commandments, and loving our fellow-men, whom we see and understand?

When, as the Apostle Paul writes, faith is lost in knowledge, and hope
in sight, and only love remains, then we hope, not without reason, to
be assu