These prophecies are
harmonious with those of the soul, and with the positive teachings of
the Christian revelation. This then is our conclusion:--in the process
of time, in accordance with natural law, our bodies will be laid aside,
some in one way and some in another, but the soul that has dwelt in
these bodies will become free. In ways of which we know not, and of
which it would be presumption to speak, its perfecting will be
continued. What teachers will take it in hand then is beyond our
knowledge; but we are confident that its individual existence will
continue, that its perfection will be along moral and spiritual lines,
that it will grow forever and forever in intelligence, in love, in the
power of rational choice, and into harmony with Him from whom it has
come and whose glory will be its perfection. To believe less would be to
refuse to listen to the voices which speak within and the voices which
speak without,--it would be to believe in an irrational and immoral
universe rather than a rational and moral one.

Our souls have a right to be heard, and their prophecies have in them an
element of certainty. He who listens to the voices which speak within
will never believe that the death of the body is the end of his personal
being. The suggestion of a state of existence from which sin, sorrow,
and death shall be forever absent, into which there shall enter nothing
that maketh a lie, and where sacrificial love is the everlasting light,
is the highest and most satisfying ideal for human life that has ever
been spoken or imagined; and that which completely satisfies the heart
cannot at the same time be repudiated by the intellect.

Let us, therefore, reverently confess that we believe in "the life
everlasting."

PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD

Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.

What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho' I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:

My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Tho' mixed with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.

Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho' I die.

--_In Memoriam._ Tennyso