hroughout eternity? "Marvel not," He sayeth, "the hour
cometh in which all that are dead shall hear his voice and shall come
forth; they that have done good into the resurrection of life; and
they that have done evil into the resurrection of judgment." And as He
described the final judgment upon all men after one earthly life He
says that "these shall go away into eternal punishment, but the
righteous into eternal life." Moreover, in describing the condition of
the dead He makes the faithful Abraham say to the soul of a dead
sinner, "Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed that they who
would pass hence to you may not be able to pass and that you may not
cross from thence to us." That is, He claimed that the life which we
live here so fixes the destiny of men that eternity will carry its
impress. Hence the urgency and the supreme importance of this one life
to all men. The universal succession, according to His teaching, is
life, death, resurrection, judgment, and eternal reward.

To the Buddha, who, as we have seen, held that man is the only
architect of his own destiny and that he must therefore abide the
working of his _Karma_, a single brief apprenticeship in the school of
life seemed altogether inadequate as a test of character and as a
reliable foundation for the edifice of one's eternal destiny, or as a
basis for the one irrevocable judgment. It is but natural, therefore,
that this great Indian Rishi should have adopted as his own the
doctrine of metempsychosis, or transmigration, and that he should add
great emphasis to it. To him, life was a penitentiary rather than a
school, a place, or an occasion, for eating the fruits of past action
rather than a training for the future eternity which awaits every one.

It is true that Gautama must have had some idea of the corrective
influence and disciplinary character of this earthly existence; for
there is a quiet assumption that in some unexplained and
unintelligible way the soul is improved by this multitudinous process
of reincarnation. And yet I fail to see any reason for expecting such
a development. Philosophically and morally, the _raison d'etre_ of the
doctrine of reincarnation is to explain the inequalities of life; and
it does it not, as Jesus would do it, by means of the doctrine of
heredity, but by the retributive power of _Karma_, or actions pursuing
the soul through successive births and compelling it to reveal by its
conditions and reflect by its