The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1907-08-15
IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.
Prof. Smith Comments on Mr.. Cham
berlain's Recent Communication.

bNAAehh ANCCCtIJ
There appeared the other day in the
Washington Herald notable letter by
Mr., Paul Chamberlain on Immortal
ity.' 1t took the same line as an essay
hitherto unpublished, on the same
question by Mr.. Chamberlain's late
father, which l have been permitted
to read. Both the letter and the es-
say are on the negative side of the
question, which, in the essay at least,
is pronounced the happier and better
view, as conducive to unselfshness,
though it must be unselishness of a
supreme kind. Annillilation is not a
cheerful word Bacon has a highly
rhetorical passage fiouting the fear Of
death, His was probably not a very
loving nature, nor does he seem to
have thought of the parting from
| those we love.
The life Of the late Mr., Chamber
lain was evidently happy as well as
good That of his son, I have no doubt
is the same. But of the lot Of the my
riads whose lives, through no fault Of
their own, are, or in the course Of his
tory have been, unhappy, often most
miserable, what is to lie said? II for
them there is no compensation, can we
believe that beneyolence and justice
rule the world? If the world is not
ruled by beneyolence and jsutiee, what
is our ground of hope?
| The negative conclusion rids us, 1t
! is true, of the Dantean hell which
paints the Deity as incomparably
worse than the worst Italian tyrant,
and, as it is to be everlasting, comedies
the final victory to evil.
We discard all ghost stories and
spiritualist apparitions as at most
signs of a general craving. We re-
sign all reasoning like that Of Butler,
who describes the soul as indiscerptl-
Bile, assuming that it exists separately
from the body. Nor can we be said
to have anything that bears the char
acter of Revelation. That the Found
! err of Christianity looked for a future
life, with its rewards and punishment
is evident. But He brought no spe-
cial message, lifted not the curtain of
mystery, did nothing to clear our
minds upon the subject. His apol-
ogtte Of Dives and Lazarus shows that
to Him as we'll as to us the other
world was a realm of the imagination.
is there anything in man not ply
steal or apparently explained and linz
tied by the transient conditions and
necessities Of his present state, any
thing which gives an inkling of mn
mortality? Our unitarian morality is
1.-THE offspring and adjunct of our con-
Editions here But Is there not an
aspiration to character which points
to something more spiritual and high
err than conformity to the unitarian
code? Heroism and self-sacrifce are
mot utilitarian.
We can hardly allow the investiga-
ton to be closed by the mere mention
of the talismanic word Evolution.
i There may be something still to be said
on that subject. Evolution cannot
have evolved itself. nor does it seem
capable of infallible demonstration. 1t
no doubt. postulates vast spaces of
time for it's action But within the
lspace OF time Of which we in any
way have knowledge, apparently no
case of evolution has actually taken
place. Rudimentary likeness between
the frame of the ape and that of the
man seems hardly in itself proof OF
1.-The generation of man from the ape
On no subject, however, does one
who is not a man of science or a phil
osopher feel more intensely his defici-
encv and his need of having his path
lighted by the perfectly free while
reverent inquiry, to pray for which
has been the object of these letters
N Him as wei as to us the other