urthermore, which science
shows to have been in working existence among the preceding races
of creatures for innumerable ages before the mythical sin of Adam
and Eve, with its mythical consequences.

The fabulous scheme of an intended bodily immortality on the earth
is a discordant and disagreeable one in every respect, asthetic,
rational, and moral. It jars incongruously with the great order of
nature and providence, which everywhere interpolates a night
between two days, a sleep between two wakings, to keep the edge of
consciousness fresh and the possibilities of pleasure alive.
Imprisoned in this carcass of flesh with its ignoble necessities
for endless ages, the contemplation of the fearful burden of
monotony would be insufferable to any one who had thought the case
out in all its details with vivid realization. And yet, so
unthinking are most persons in regard to the conventional beliefs
prevalent in society, Parsees, Jews, Christians and Mohammedans,
professedly base their entire faith in immortality on this dogma
with the resurrection involved in it.

When carried out in its particulars by the imagination, the
doctrine is self evidently untenable, contradictory to the
essential facts of human nature under the given conditions of the
material creation. It had its theologic birth in the speculations
of the dualistic religion of Persia, whence it was first borrowed
by the Jews, then secondarily adopted into Christianity, and
thence finally impacted into the mongrel creed of Mohammed and his
followers. It is philosophically irreconcilable with a pure
monotheism; for, if God be infinite, no enemy could subvert his
original scheme and force Him to an arbitrary miracle to restore
it. It is a creaking and dissonant artifice, every way repugnant
to all whose reason and sentiment have learned to love the smooth
and continuous evolution of the order of the cosmos and the
connected destinies of conscious beings. It is absolutely refuted
by the double reductio ad absurdum shown above to be contained in
it.

Yet, while the grounds on which the common belief in a destined
general resurrection of the dead rests have really lost their
validity to the mind of the nineteenth century, the millions of
Islam and Christendom retain the article unchanged in their
creeds, and to question it is a heresy. No wonder skepticism
flourishes and genuine faith decays. This clinging to an outgrown
scheme is not only from the strong drift o