which thus set forth, to the extent the individual mind is capable of
receiving it, the completed notion of diuturnity. This highest love is
the "love of God." A Supreme Intelligence, one to which all truth is
perfect, must forever dwell in such contemplation. Therefore the deeper
minds of Christianity define man's love of God, as God's love to
himself. "Eternal life," says Ernest Naville, "is in its principle the
union with God and the joy that results from that union."[263-1] The
pious William Law wrote: "No man can reach God with his love, or have
union with Him by it, but he who is inspired with that one same spirit
of love, with which God loved himself from all eternity, before there
was any creation."[264-1]

Attractive as the idea of personal survival is in itself, and potent as
it has been as a moment of religious thought, it must be ranked among
those that are past. While the immortality of the soul retains its
interest as a speculative inquiry, I venture to believe that as an idea
in religious history, it is nigh inoperative; that as an element in
devotional life it is of not much weight; and that it will gradually
become less so, as the real meaning of religion reaches clearer
interpretations.

Its decay has been progressive, and common to all the creeds which
taught it as a cardinal doctrine, though most marked in Christianity. A
century ago Gibbon wrote: "The ancient Christians were animated by a
contempt for their present existence, and by a just confidence of
immortality, of which the doubtful but imperfect faith of modern ages
cannot give us any adequate notion."[264-2] How true this is can be
appreciated only by those who study this doctrine in the lives and
writings of the martyrs and fathers of the primitive church.

The breach which Gibbon remarked has been indefinitely widened since his
time. What has brought this about, and what new moment in religious
thought seems about to supply its place, will form an appropriate close
to the present series of studies. In its examination, I shall speak only
of Christian thought, since it leads the way which other systems will
ultimately follow.

In depicting the influences which have led and are daily leading with
augmented force to the devitalizing of the doctrine of immortality, I
may with propriety confine myself to those which are themselves strictly
religious. For the change I refer to is not one brought about by the
opponents of religion, by material