he desire of perfect happiness does not imply
immortality, even if there is a God, for:

( 1 ) God may not have implanted it, but merely suffers it to exist, as
He suffers sin to exist, the desire of wealth, the desire to live longer
than we do in this world. It is not held that God implanted all the
desires of the human heart. Then why hold that He implanted that of
perfect happiness?

(2) Even if He did--even if a divinely implanted desire entail its own
gratification--even if it can not be gratified in this life--that does
not imply immortality. It implies _only_ another life long enough for
its gratification just once. An eternity of gratification is not a
logical inference from it.

(3) Perhaps God _is_ "a deceiver" who knows that He is not? Assumption
of the existence of a God is one thing; assumption of the existence of
a God who is honorable and candid according to our finite conception of
honor and candor is another.

(4) There may be an honorable and candid God. He may have implanted
in us the desire of perfect happiness. It may be--it is--impossible to
gratify that desire in this life. Still, another life is not implied,
for God may not have intended us to draw the inference that He is going
to gratify it. If omniscient and omnipotent, God must be held to have
intended, whatever occurs, but no such God is assumed in M. Flammarion's
illustration, and it may be that God's knowledge and power are limited,
or that one of them is limited.

M. Flammarion is a learned, if somewhat "yellow" astronomer.

He has a tremendous imagination, which naturally is more at home in
the marvelous and catastrophic than in the orderly regions of familiar
phenomena. To him the heavens are an immense pyrotechnicon and he is the
master of the show and sets off the fireworks. But he knows nothing
of logic, which is the science of straight thinking, and his views of
things have therefore no value; they are nebulous.

Nothing is clearer than that our pre-existence is a dream, having
absolutely no basis in anything that we know or can hope to know. Of
after-existence there is said to be evidence, or rather testimony,
in assurances of those who are in present enjoyment of it--if it is
enjoyable. Whether this testimony has actually been given--and it is the
only testimony worth a moment's consideration--is a disputed point Many
persons while living this life have professed to have received it.
But nobody professes, or ever has profe