Here was a demand beyond the power of any man or council; to induce a hundred men and women to go out to China, on the precarious allowance which the Mission offers, will be seen to be quite quixotic if we imagine any committee asking for people to do any work on similar terms. How could the right people be reached, or if reached, persuaded to give up home and prospects for this visionary enterprise ?

But we read on, and find that the following autumn proved the worth and reality of this faith, and brought the answer to the Council's prayer. Before the year was ended the last detachment of the hundred sailed, and a further party, which included Miss Guinness, was arranged for, that left in January, 1888.

Now to conclude our discussion. Prayer is an instinct so irrepressible that possibly no human being ever lived without ejaculating a prayer. When men give up prayer they do violence to one of the most sacred and persistent impulses of their nature. By a process of rationalising they persuade themselves that the instinct is a delusion, and that the practice is vain. Or by the deadening weight of superstition prayer may be reduced from a living power, to a dead form, an irrational magic, a numbing mechanical exercise.

But if the instinct is allowed fair and free play; if prayer is exercised in the highest form we know, that is, in the faith and spirit of Jesus; certain facts establish themselves in experience, and may be certified by all who will apply the necessary tests. It becomes plain that the habitual practice of this prayer makes and moulds the character to the noblest model with

which we are acquainted; that by this prayer the strongest and most salutary influence can be exerted on others; and finally, that by the order of the Universe and the will of God, petitions made in this kind of prayer are granted, answers are given, sometimes after long delay and in unexpected forms, but answers which by their fitness and completeness and wonder can only be regarded as the action of the God whose most tender designation is, that He hears and answers prayer.

Let me close with an earnest appeal. Never give up praying. Even if faith has faded, and you cannot believe that there is a God, pray that you may find Him. The Bible has said, "He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that seek Him." But the Bible comes from an age and a race in which the existence of God was never doubted. The movements of modern thought have unsettled the most ancient foundations. And if there should be a reader of these pages who has lost that primal faith that there is a Father of love and power, responsible for his life, I urge you: "Pray, pray in the name of Jesus, that you may find your Father."

Book recommended: "The Open Secret," by R. F. Horton (Thomas Law).

X

THE AFTER LIFE

THE Confusion which prevails in our view of what happens to us at death is largely due to this: In a vague way we accept the Bible teaching on the subject; but we forget that the Bible has not a clear and consistent doctrine of the future life. When we attempt to shape our thought by the Bible, as a whole, we obtain the blurred effect of a generalised photograph, made by superimposing several portraits on the top of one another. For, not to go into minor varieties, there are three very decided differences in the Bible-an earlier stage, a middle stage, and a final stage. Order can be educed out of the whole by recognising a development, and accepting the final as the true. But it is quite impossible to obtain a consistent doctrine by combining the several doctrines of the successive ages. Broadly speaking, the Law says nothing of a future life, the prophets teach a resurrection of the dead, Christ teaches the continuance of life through death. But the difficulty of the question is great, even when this progress is recognised, for vague reminiscences of an older view always survive in the later stage. And in the case of Jesus Himself, His teaching, original and startling, is transmitted to us through minds which were deeply and indelibly stained with the opinions of

their time. By reviewing the three stages and recognising the principle of progress, we may reach the ultimate teaching of the Bible on the subject. The question whether the Bible is our final authority, or whether some other teaching takes us further, must be left in abeyance. For until the Bible teaching is better understood, we can scarcely judge how it stands in relation to other views. Perhaps, however, the discussion will be clearer if I avow my own complete agnosticism on the subject outside the Christian revelation. Apart from Christ, His teaching, His own resurrection, and His bestowal of the Spirit, I know of no authentic evidence for the fact, or for the nature, of a future life The prolonged investigation made by the late Mi. F. W. H. Myers into the phenomena of Spiritualism led that honest and gifted mind back to the Christian faith. At the conclusion of his work, he writes, "we can now claim to have discovered something within us which belongs to an environment which is exempt from earthly conditions, and which may antecede at once and interpenetrate our material scheme of things. Those ancient views, therefore, which represent the soul's immortality as determined by its very nature and origin find themselves now as never before supported and reinforced." But the conviction felt by

the author is not conveyed to the reader.

Raking among the pathological facts of double personality, the experiments of hypnotism, the extraordinary experiences of dreams, visions and trances, is a sordid

1 "Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death," by F. W. H. Myers, ii, 525.

and unsatisfying way of establishing the soul's survival of death. And when all is said and done, it is the bare survival that is established, with no light upon the condition of the after-life.

Outside of this dubious psychology, science has nothing to say about immortality. Its final word is a suspense of judgment. Some minds incline to a belief in the future, some do not; on the whole, the belief is humanising and expanding; where nothing, therefore, can be known, let us incline to the hope, the unsupported hope! 1

Other religions have nothing to tell us on the subject which is original or credible. The dreary transmigrations of Buddhism, with the distant hope of Nirvana, are an unmitigated curse to the human intellect. Compared with the typically Indian conceptions, it would be advantageous to convince the Hindoo that at death he dies for ever, and must, therefore, make the most of life. Theosophy, which is Hinduism adapted for the West, has not succeeded in conveying to men a message of life and immortality brought to light; it is not a Gospel, it is only an esoteric philosophy.

The practical alternative is, therefore, Christ or nothing. In Christ we know that we shall survive death, and we know the manner of the survival; apart from Christ, we know nothing, and speculation seems singularly futile. If Christ be not risen, the solid and valuable hope of mankind on this subject falls to the ground. It will be seen, therefore, that we are justified in confining the enquiry here to the teaching of the Bible. 1 See Professor Osler's beautiful booklet on the Immortality of the Soul.