above any thing now experienced by us, then the destination of man
to a life after death may originally have been a fact of direct
knowledge, universally seen and grasped without any obscuring
peradventure. From that state it gradually declined into dubious
dimness as successive generations grew sinful, sensual, hardened,
immersed and bound in affairs of passion and earth. It became
remoter, assumed a questionable aspect, gave rise to discussions
and doubts, and here and there to positive disbelief and open
denial. Thus, beginning as a clear reality within the vision of
all, it sank into a matter of uncertain debate among individuals.

But if the first men were called up into being from the earth, by
the creative energy of God, as the distinct climax of the other
species, then the early generations of our race, during the long
ages of their wild and slowly ameliorating state, were totally
ignorant of any conscious sequel to the fate seemingly closed in
death. They were too animal and rude yet to conceive a spiritual
existence outside of the flesh and the earth. Among the
accumulating trophies of their progressive intellectual conquests
hung up by mankind in the historic hall of experience, this
marvellous achievement is one of the sublimest. What a day was
that for all humanity forever after, when for the first time, on
some climbing brain, dawned from the great Sun of the spirit world
the idea of a personal immortality! It was announced. It dawned
separately wherever there were prepared persons. It spread from
soul to soul, and became the common faith of the world. Still,
among every people there were pertinacious individuals, who swore
not by the judge and went not with the multitude, persons of less
credulous hearts and more skeptical faculties, who demurred at the
great doctrine, challenged it in many particulars, gainsaid it on
various grounds, disbelieved it from different motives, and fought
it with numerous weapons.

Whichever of the foregoing suppositions be adopted, that the
doctrine of a future life subsided from universal acceptance into
party contention, or that it arose at length from personal
perception and authority into common credit, the fact remains
equally prominent and interesting that throughout the traceable
history of human opinion there is a line of dissenters who have
thought death the finality of man, and the next world an illusion.
The history of this special department of thought opens a