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Title: The Destiny of the Soul
A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life

Author: William Rounseville Alger

Release Date: August 19, 2006 [EBook #19082]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL ***

Produced by Edmund Dejowski

THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL.

A CRITICAL HISTORY
OF THE
DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE,

BY
WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER.

TENTH EDITION,

WITH SIX NEW CHAPTERS, AND

A Complete Bibliography of the Subject.
[Note: bibliography not included here]

COMPRISING 4977 BOOKS RELATING TO THE NATURE, ORIGIN, AND
DESTINY OF THE SOUL. THE TITLES CLASSIFIED AND ARRANGED
CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH NOTES, AND INDEXES OF THE AUTHORS AND
SUBJECTS.

BY EZRA ABBOT,

PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION IN
THE DIVINITY SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1880

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United
States for the District of Massachusetts.

Copyright 1878, W.R. Alger

ELECTROTYPED BY JOHNSON & CO., PHILADA.

University Press: John Wilson & Son,
Cambridge.

PREFACE TO THE TENTH EDITION.

THIS work has passed through nine editions, and has been out of
print now for nearly a year. During the twenty years which have
elapsed since it was written, the question of immortality, the
faith and opinions of men and the drift of criticism and doubt
concerning it, have been a subject of dominant interest to me, and
have occupied a large space in my reading and reflection.
Accordingly, now that my publisher, moved by the constant demand
for the volume, urges the preparation of a new edition introducing
such additional materials as my continued researches have gathered
or constructed, I gladly comply with his request.

The present work is not only historic but it is also polemic;
polemic, however, not in the spirit or interest of any party or
conventicle, but in the spirit and interest of science and
humanity. Orthodoxy insists on