Did it ever strike you, dear reader, that it must be a particularly
pleasant thing to be dead? To say nothing hackneyed about the blessed
freedom from the cares and vexations of life—which we cling to with
such tenacity while we can, and which, when we have no longer the power
to hold, we let go all at once, with probably a feeling of exquisite
relief—and to take no account of this latter probable but totally
undemonstrable felicity, it must be what boys call awfully jolly to be
dead.
Here you are, lying comfortably upon your back—what is left of it—in
the cool dark, and with the smell of the fresh earth all about you.
Your soul goes knocking about amongst an infinity of shadowy things,
Lord knows where, making all sorts of silent discoveries in the gloom
of what was yesterday an unknown and mysterious future, and which,
after centuries of exploration, must still be strangely unfamiliar. The
nomadic thing doubtless comes back occasionally to the old grave—if the
body is so fortunate as to possess one—and looks down upon it with big
round eyes and a lingering tenderness.
It is hard to conceive a soul entirely cut loose from the old bones,
and roving rudderless about eternity. It was probably this inability to
mentally divorce soul from substance that gave us that absurdly
satisfactory belief in the resurrection of the flesh. There is said to
be a race of people somewhere in Africa who believe in the immortality
of the body, but deny the resurrection of the soul. The dead will rise
refreshed after their long sleep, and in their anxiety to test their
rejuvenated powers, will skip bodily away and forget their souls. Upon
returning to look for them, they will find nothing but little blue
flames, which can never be extinguished, but may be carried about and
used for cooking purposes. This belief probably originates in some dim
perception of the law of compensation. In this life the body is the
drudge of the spirit; in the next the situation is reversed.
The heaven of the Mussulman is not incompatible with this kind of
immortality. Its delights, being merely carnal ones, could be as well
or better enjoyed without a soul, and the latter might be booked for
the Christian heaven, with only just enough of the body to attach a
pair of wings to. Mr. Solyman Muley Abdul Ben Gazel could thus enjoy a
dual immortality and secure a double portion of eternal felicity at no
expense to anybody.
In fact, there can be no doubt whatever that this theory of a double
heaven is the true one, and needs but to be fairly stated to be
universally received, inasmuch as it supposes the maximum of felicity
for terrestrial good behaviour. It is therefore a sensible theory,
resting upon quite as solid a foundation of fact as any other theory,
and must commend itself at once to the proverbial good sense of
Christians everywhere. The trouble is that some architectural scoundrel
of a priest is likely to build a religion upon it; and what the world
needs is theory—good, solid, nourishing theory.