II. Philosophy lights more candles on the problem. Philosophy goes
deeper than the statement of facts; it gives a theory of the facts; it
seeks to find causes, relations and purposes.
1. The _thoughts_ of the normal man are long thoughts. He has an
instinctive yearning for immortality. If this instinct is absent, the
man is not normal. If this instinct is suppressed, the man's soul is
injured. If he does not believe in immortality, he will believe in
something far less credible. It may be continued existence in the
complex-life of humanity; it may be absorption of individual
personality in some Oversoul. The issue is sorrow of heart, bitterness
of soul, pessimism of creed, "Pessimism is the column of black smoke
proceeding from the heart in which the hope of immortality has been
burned to ashes." If a man remains normal, he believes in immortality.
What is the inference? Tennyson has drawn it.
"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust,
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And Thou hast made him, Thou are just."
A just Creator will not place instinctive longings in His Creature's
soul, only to betray them.
2.--The _affections_ of the soul are as true witnesses as the mind.
"The heart has reasons which the reason cannot understand." It is
impossible for love at its purest and strongest to believe that death
ends all. Love shrinks in pain from such a possibility. It protests
against such a violation of the fellowship of heart with heart. The
longing for reunion is no vain desire, awakened only to be mocked.
Not so can things be ordained in a world of order. The poets are the
prophets of the heart; and all the great poets teach immortality.
The heart, which God made, will not perpetually deceive us. "If it
were _not_ so, I would have told you." The instinct is true. The
verdict of the spiritual seers of the race is favorable.
3.--Man is constituted for an ampler and more glorious life than can
possibly fall to his lot in this world. Human powers are vast in
comparison with human opportunities. Man is too great to be crowded
within the narrow limits of seventy years. "So much to do, so little
done" were among the last words of Cecil Rhodes. To develop the latent
powers we possess, we have no adequate opportunity here. Deep in our
souls is the quenchless desire for a fuller expression of our powers.
Could God build the human soul with all its capacities for the few
years of this fleeting life on earth? Not if there is rationality at
the heart of the universe.
4.--This world is an insoluble moral enigma, if there is no other world
to explain it. Inequalities, injustices, abominations abound.
Circumstances and character are frequently at variance. Right has
often been on the scaffold; wrong on the throne. The whole creation is
groaning and travailling in pain. This world is intolerable, if there
is no other. There must be a world in which wrong will be righted and
justice done. Man's conscience whispers that the Judge of all the
earth will do right; but how can He do right with all His creatures,
unless He has more time? R. L. Stevenson well puts the argument: "We
had needs invent Heaven, if it had not been revealed; there are some
things that fall so bitterly ill on this side time." Unless this world
has been created from sheer extravagance in the infliction of
purposeless pain, there must be another to justify the present process
of discipline, to heal the wounds of struggle, to comfort sorrow, to
develop holiness. Somewhere, sometime, character and condition must
correspond.