02.01. The Hope of the Ancient World

THE HOPE OF THE ANCIENT WORLD. When the curtain rises in the drama of humanity, one of the first scenes revealed is the discussion of the riddle of human life. What is man? Is he a worm, or is he a god? When he dies, does he "surrender his individual being and go to mix with the elements, to be a brother to the rock and to the clod which the rude swain treads upon?" Is he dust and does he return to dust, or has he a divine and deathless spark which shall survive the dissolution of the body, the grave, and even the wreck of worlds?

Probably no one of the mysteries of which our anxious souls ask the solution has had so painful and absorbing an interest as that question of the ages: "If a man die, shall he live again?" When the first parents stood over the bruised body of their slain second born, they confronted the great problem, and it is hardly indulging the imagination to suppose that the heart of the great mother suggested to her a hope, even while her tears were falling over the sad fate, of her son. Since that first funeral and first grave of the world, there has been a battle between human hopes and fears. On the one hand, to outward appearances the grave seemed to end all. The last breath is succeeded by the death pallor, dissolution, and the disappearance from human sight, apparently forever. As far as the ken of the senses can go, they have seemed to say that man died and perished as the worm, or, as the brute. Where are the millions of the fathers of our race? Where are the storied heroes of the past? Where are the pious and the good who served the world so well that it will not let their memories die? On the other hand, there has always and everywhere been some kind of intimation, whether from without or within, from nature or from revelation, which has filled the world with a vague hope. This was shown when the old patriarchs so carefully carried their dead, even from afar, to the cave of Machpelah in the Promised Land. The afflicted sage of the Land of Uz, in the midst of his sorrows, cried out in exultation as his soul caught a glimpse of the future life. When the Egyptians brought their dead to the embalmer, spared no art to render the lifeless body imperishable, laid it away in rock hewn tombs and sealed it up from the destroying hand of time, they did it in the hope of a final reunion of the soul and body. The great sages of southern Asia attempted to solve the problem by the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. The soul which left a dying body entered into some other body, whether of man or beast, and lived again. The Greek myths and poets painted the Elysian Fields and Tartarus as the homes of disembodied spirits; the Sagas of northern Europe pictured Walhalla as the abode of departed heroes; the American Indians sent theirs to the Happy Hunting Grounds; the Chinese worship their ancestors as living and divine. Indeed, wherever men have been found, as soon as their language and life is understood, it is found that in some form, however vague and imperfect, their thought has been colored by an intimation of immortality. So general is the diffusion of this hope that Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations makes the argument that a universal belief can only be accounted for by referring it to a divine intuition, and hence, that the belief in a future life is due to God’s voice in the human soul whispering to it that the grave does not end all.

Yet we always come away dissatisfied after endeavoring to silence our fears, and to give our hopes a basis of certainty, by listening to the arguments drawn from human philosophy. The death of the old year, the suspended life of the winter season, and the resurrection of the spring whisper a hope. The transformations of the worm after its burial in the chrysalis to a glorious winged life seem like a corroboration. The fact that the noblest minds are often found in those "whose bodily presence is contemptible," in feeble and diseased earthly prison houses, shows that the life, is something distinct from matter. The fact that we often observe the mind in a slowly dying body as vigorous as ever until the moment of separation seems to teach the same lesson. Then, too, the personal consciousness of every man declares to him that the body is only the clay tenement in which he, the Ego, dwells. I speak of "’my arm," "my head," "my body," and contemplate them all as my servants. I do not regard them as Me, but as Mine. But there is something, the Ego, that is myself, and it is impossible to think of myself apart from this. This self is one, a unit. I am therefore conscious of an existence of which the body is one of the possessions and the dwelling place. Why, if this something is not the body, may it not change its home as we change dwellings, and take another dwelling such as pleaseth Him who made both body and spirit?

Then again, to pursue this line of thought a little farther, free will is a matter of consciousness. We know that we weigh motives and exercise choice. We know that we are free moral agents. But matter is subject to immutable laws. Matter can never exercise choice, and hence is not a moral agent. Mr. Darwin says that "free will is a mystery insoluble to the naturalist." If matter cannot will, and we can, it follows that there is something dwelling in our bodies, the Ego, which is not matter. The life itself, that which constitutes our personal identity, must then be immaterial and spiritual since it is not subject to the laws of matter. Hence, the dissolution of the body does not necessarily end its existence. And there is yet another argument which has carried weight. The lesson of God’s great world is that where he has created wants he has also furnished the means of supplying those wants. There are mutual correspondences. There is air for the lungs; light for the eye; sounds for the ear. The body hungers and thirsts and God furnishes the harvest and the crystal stream. He has given to every species what it needs in its environment. But shall we say that the great Heavenly Father has provided the means of supplying every sense, every lower want, and yet has utterly denied the intense longing planted in every soul for life? "All that a man hath will he give for life;" ease, property, comfort, home. The whole soul cries for life.

"It is life whereof our nerves are scant,
Thee, O life, not death for which we pant,
More life, fuller life, is what we want."

Nay, all nature declares that He who has answered every lower want of our being, would not close his ears to the universal, never ceasing, agonizing cry of his children for life. Who will say that when millions of hands are outstretched to God as they cry for life that the Heavenly Father thrusts them back and pushes all his weeping children into hopeless graves!

These arguments are noted, not in order to exhaust this source, but to indicate the kind of evidences which nature provides. Yet, in spite of all, the natural world has left man with his doubts, his hopes and his fears. If there was a Cicero who could argue immortality from an eternal hope, there was also a Cæsar who could declare in his speech in the Senate on the fate of the Cataline Conspirators that death is an eternal sleep. If there was a Socrates who could insist, as he received the hemlock, on the immortality of the soul, there was also a Cebes who could dispute the fact of future, existence with the dying philosopher. If there were Platonists who declared that the soul was deathless, there were also Epicureans who claimed that in this life was our only hope, and hence that it was the part of wisdom to give full rein to pleasure, because to-morrow we die. If there were Pharisees who believed in a future world, there were also Sadducees who denied that there was angel, spirit, or the resurrection of the dead. Cato, when all hope of the Republic had been crushed out by Cæsar’s legions, might read in his last hours Plato’s dialogue on the immortality of the soul, but its pages furnished no prospect which stayed his hand, when, in despair, he turned the dagger upon his heart.

Indeed there was little in the vision of immortality vouchsafed before Christ came that could fill men with joyous hope. The poets could touch their harps to sing of the beauties of the Elysian Fields, but the departed heroes who made them their eternal abodes were empty shades who looked back with longing on the real joys of the earthly life. Socrates, the greatest saint of the pagan world, could, in the moment of departure, speak words of consolation to his weeping friends, but in the same breath he declared that whether the change would better his condition he could not tell. Death was a departure from the known to the unknown; a leap into an unexplored abyss awful in its silence and mystery. Even when Plato and Cicero exhausted their powers, all that they wrought was to convince their countrymen of the deathless existence of the soul. They had no power to reveal a heaven that would brighten their lives with the radiance of an eternal hope. That was reserved for Him who is the Resurrection and the Life.