The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eternal Life, by Henry Drummond

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Title: Eternal Life

Author: Henry Drummond

Release Date: January 6, 2010 [EBook #30876]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ETERNAL LIFE ***

Produced by Michael Gray

Eternal Life

By Professor
Henry
Drummond

Philadelphia
Henry Altemus

Copyright 1896 by Henry Altemus.

ETERNAL LIFE.

"This is Life Eternal--that they might know Thee, the True God, and
Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent."--_Jesus Christ_.

"Perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there no changes in
the environment but such as the organism had adapted changes to meet,
and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met them,
there would be eternal existence and eternal knowledge."--_Herbert
Spencer_.

ONE of the most startling achievements of recent science is a definition
of Eternal Life. To the religious mind this is a contribution of immense
moment. For eighteen hundred years only one definition of Life Eternal
was before the world. Now there are two.

Through all these centuries revealed religion had this doctrine to
itself. Ethics had a voice, as well as Christianity, on the question of
the _summum bonum_; Philosophy ventured to speculate on the Being of a
God. But no source outside Christianity contributed anything to the
doctrine of Eternal Life. Apart from Revelation, this great truth was
unguaranteed. It was the one thing in the Christian system that most
needed verification from without, yet none was forthcoming. And never
has any further light been thrown upon the question why in its very
nature the Christian Life should be Eternal. Christianity itself even
upon this point has been obscure. Its decision upon the bare fact is
authoritative and specific. But as to what there is in the Spiritual
Life necessarily endowing it with the element of Eternity, the maturest
theology is all but silent.

It has been reserved for modern biology at once to defend and illuminate
this central truth of the Christian faith. And hence in the interests of
religion, practical and evidential, this second and sc