of relief. Let
us rejoice to know that the will of God will be done in the
fulfilling order of the universe, although we may now be ignorant
of precisely what that will is. Believing the will of God to be
good, whether revealed or concealed, we can afford to wait in
peace, trying in the meantime to carry our individual character
and our social state and experience here steadily toward
perfection. Surely, that is the best way to prepare ourselves for
whatever lies beyond.

And yet we are not wholly shut up to mere blind faith. There is
always some ground of moral truth in every widely extended
dogmatic belief. In casting off the dogma we should carefully
extract its moral purport and try to give it a more authentic
setting. It will not be hard to do this with reference to the
doctrine now under consideration.

Obscure and complicated and baffling as the problem of our future
destiny is, we can already trace many a line of light, many a
prophetic signal and hint suggestive of what is ordained to happen
to the individual and the race.

Unquestionably, the genuine moral reason why the belief in the
fleshly resurrection has been so general and tenacious is the two
fold consideration: first; that we desire our future life to be an
incarnate life because our experience makes that form of being
realizable and precious to our imagination, while a disembodied
ghostliness is, perforce, repulsively vacant and abstract; and,
secondly because our affection and our imagination and our
conscience profoundly crave the complete fulfillment of the scheme
of the historic career of collective humanity in this world in
some such manner, that here, on this dear old earth, the
experience of our whole race may be brought to a clear epical
unity, and may close with an illuminating justification of
providence in the sight of all men, who shall then read the
interpretation of their entire past, and see together eye to eye.
Now we believe that the essence of this natural desire and this
sublime hope is a divine prophecy which shall be fulfilled. We
believe that in the very falsity of the doctrine of a carnal
resurrection and judgment there lurks a truth yet to break out in
overwhelming refulgence and perfectly satisfy every soul of man.
But it will be brought about by the gradual culmination of the
means and processes which God is now visibly carrying forward, and
not by any sudden convulsion of miracle.

The faculties of human consciousne