points of contact. Uninterrupted correspondence
with a perfect Environment is Eternal Life according to Science. "This
is Life Eternal," said Christ, "that they may know Thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."[70] Life Eternal is to know
God. To know God is to "correspond" with God. To correspond with God is
to correspond with a Perfect Environment. And the organism which attains
to this, in the nature of things must live forever. Here is "eternal
existence and eternal knowledge."

The main point of agreement between the scientific and the religious
definition is that Life consists in a peculiar and personal relation
defined as a "correspondence." This conception, that Life consists in
correspondences, has been so abundantly illustrated already that it is
now unnecessary to discuss it further. All Life indeed consists
essentially in correspondences with various Environments. The artist's
life is a correspondence with art; the musician's with music. To cut
them off from these Environments is in that relation to cut off their
Life. To be cut off from all Environment is death. To find a new
Environment again and cultivate relation with it is to find a new Life.
To live is to correspond, and to correspond is to live. So much is true
in Science. But it is also true in Religion. And it is of great
importance to observe that to Religion also the conception of Life is a
correspondence. No truth of Christianity has been more ignorantly or
willfully travestied than the doctrine of Immortality. The popular idea,
in spite of a hundred protests, is that Eternal Life is to live forever.
A single glance at the _locus classicus_ might have made this error
impossible. There we are told that Life Eternal is not to live. This is
Life Eternal--_to know_. And yet--and it is a notorious instance of the
fact that men who are opposed to Religion will take their conceptions of
its profoundest truths from mere vulgar perversions--this view still
represents to many cultivated men the Scriptural doctrine of Eternal
Life. From time to time the taunt is thrown at Religion, not unseldom
from lips which Science ought to have taught more caution, that the
Future Life of Christianity is simply a prolonged existence, an eternal
monotony, a blind and indefinite continuance of being. The Bible never
could commit itself to any such empty platitudes; nor could Christianity
ever offer to the world a hope so colorless. Not that Eternal