I freely confess that the life of the dead
Is a mystery alike to the heart and the head
Of all the mortals that dwell on earth,
Although revealed since our Saviour's birth,
And I fully believe in the old-fashioned God,
Who, walking in Eden, made man of a clod;
And I fully believe the same Deity still
Controls all things, here by the fiat of will.
10. EDWARD D. COPE, A.M., Ph.D., author of "Theology of Evolution."
Dr. Cope answers in a very voluminous and intricate manner, but the
following is the essence of his answer.
Of life eternal little can we know,
And yet we hope some glimmerings may grow,
By patient inference as facts appear.
I hope there's something coming near.
Science but sees extinction in our death,
And life the incident of fleeting breath.
We travel round the ologies to see
Naught but a grand revolving mystery;
But then if we have a controlling mind,
Why should not God have the same kind?
"Kinetogenesis" was ruled by will,
The conscious thought goes with it still,
And as conscious thought erst "ruled the roast,"
Why may it not become a ghost?
But as ghosts are like a vapor mixed,
All speculation is lost betwixt
The possible this, and the possible that,
And so philosophy falls flat.
11. SIR JOHN WILLIAM DAWSON, LL.D., F.R.S., Principal of McGill
University, Montreal.
We are bound to believe in eternal life,
'Tis an instinct which in humanity's rife,
Of savages, some have been found so low,
As neither a God or a heaven to know;
If civilized men sink down to their level,
They are on the highway to the realms of the Devil.