From heaven descended to the low-rooft house Of Socrates; see there his tenement, And so it seemed, when this good life declined, Of faith and hope and love and larger grace; II. ROBERT COLLYER. The Land of Promise in its bliss has seen. Mellifluous streams that watered all the Child-like, beside the way, I turn and glean schools Of Academus old and new." No wonder that Dean Stanley says: "In studying the character and life of Socrates, we know that we are contemplating the most remarkable moral phenomenon in the ancient world. We are conscious of having climbed the highest point of the ascent of Gentile virtue and wisdom. We find ourselves in a presence which invests with a sacred awe its whole surroundings. We find that here alone, in the Grecian world, we are breathing an atmosphere not merely moral, but religious; not merely religious, but Christian!" W. D. HARRIMAN. Ann Arbor, Mich. LEADERS OF FAITH. I. PHILLIPS BROOKS. Sweet posies such as Eden might supply, The while I learn what life and death may mean! Ours is a world where winter sorrows fall, But smiling summer comes a guest each year. So sun of goodness shines with gentle call To flowers of faith, and changes deserts drear. Time's troubles melt like Safe by thy side I wander to and fro: grow! snow, and violets I feel baptized with fire of fervor clean, Of life and labor that might hope defy; With thee for guide, no evil can I fear; God's love, like light, is in and over all, His mercy everlasting, true, and dear. Safe by his side I travel to and fro: Earth's sorrows melt like snow, heaven's roses grow! WILLIAM BRUNTON. Whitman, Mass. COL. INGERSOLL AND THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY. II. A FUTURE LIFE. We have seen in a preceding article that, as regards the question of the existence of a Divine Being, Col. Ingersoll is an agnostic. On the question of the future life he is also an agnostic. He says, "We do not know, we cannot say, whether death is a wall or a door, the beginning or the end of a day, the spreading of pinions to soar or the folding forever of wings, the rise or the set of a sun, or an endless life that brings rapture and love to every one." We are : placed at this great disadvantage in discuss ing this problem: whatever we may say, however strong may be the arguments in favor of the soul's immortality, there will ever remain a doubt, a fear upon the mind, until it has actually shuffled off its mortal coil. None but Spiritualists and orthodox Christians believe that any one has ever returned from the spirit-world and brought back evidence of the life there, and the evidence in favor of the spiritualistic or traditional view is too unsatisfactory to be adduced in this discussion. The most, therefore, that we may hope to do is to show that there is more evidence in favor of the continuance of the soul after the death of the body than there is in favor of its destruction by death. In other words, we may show that there is a strong probability that the soul survives its separation from the body. Col. Ingersoll has uttered some beautiful sentiments on this subject. Standing over his brother's grave, he said, "In the night of death, Hope sees a star, and Love can hear the rustle of a wing." And again "The idea of immortality, that, like a sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death." There have been found tribes of men who had no religion, or, at least, no beliefs which the observers considered religion; but none have been found who were devoid of the belief in ghosts. The Bushman of Africa believes that his departed friend lurks in the jungle near by or roams in happy realms far away. From the degraded Hottentot to the highly developed Hindu, belief in a future life has prevailed. But "the universality of a belief," says Col. Ingersoll, "is no proof of its truth." Perhaps not; but it is a presumption in its favor, since the vast majority of men are less apt to be deceived than the few, especially when the majority includes many of the profoundest minds in the world. But there are two other facts which create a much stronger probability that the soul survives the death of the body; namely, man's high development and the radical difference between mind and body. According to evolution, man is the product of unnumbered ages. Into him have been poured the energies of countless generations. It is difficult to believe that man is destined to only a momentary existence after such longcontinued progress. Mr. Darwin said, "Believing, as I do, that man in the distant future is destined to be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued, slow progress."* Victor Hugo said: "I am conscious within myself of the certainty of a future life. Just as, in a forest that is perpetually felled, young sprouts start up with renewed vigor, so my thoughts ever rise higher and higher toward the infinite the earth affords me her generous sap, but the heaven irradiates me with the light of half-seen worlds. The nearer I approach my end, the clearer do I hear the immortal symphonies of worlds that call me to themselves. For half a century I have been outpouring my volumes of thought in prose and in verse, in history, philosophy, drama, romance, ode, and ballad, yet I appear to myself not to have said a thousandth part of what is in me; and, when I am laid in the tomb, I shall not reckon that my is finished. The grave is not a cul-de-sac, it is an avenue; death is the sublime prolongation of life, not its dreary finish; it closes on the twilight, it opens on the dawn."t This inexhaustible fertility of the soul seems to indicate its power to survive the wreck of the body. It seems too great, too noble, too God-like, to be swallowed up in death. It may be said, however, that many men's souls are not so highly developed as Hugo's or Darwin's. True; but the souls of the lowest savages are vastly superior to those of the lower animals, and they are capable of high development. It is this capacity for indefinite development which constitutes the dignity of man, and seems to involve the power of continued existence beyond the grave. life But more satisfactory than anything else is the fact that the soul is radically different from the body. Mr. Ingersoll says, "The brain thinks as the heart beats, or the eyes see, as the blood pursues its course in the * Darwin's "Life and Letters," i. p. 282. + Barbou's Life of Hugo, p. 254. old accustomed ways." He is mistaken. The brain does not think. Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, Romanes, Carpenter, and scores of other eminent physicists and psychologists, have conclusively demonstrated that the brain does not think. They have shown that certain molecular vibrations occur in the brain contemporaneously with certain thoughts and feelings, but they have also shown that these molecular movements are not the cause of the thoughts and feelings. They are simply accompaniments of them. Prof. Huxley admits that, even if the agnostic view of the nature of the soul be held, it does not preclude a belief in the soul's survival of the body. "Leaving aside the problem of the substance of the soul," he says, "and taking the word 'soul' simply as a name for the series of mental phenomena which make up an individual mind, it remains open to us to ask whether that series commenced with or before the series of phenomena which constitute the corresponding individual body, and whether it terminates with the end of the bodily series or goes on after the existence of the body has ended." * It ought to be plain to any one that, if the soul is radically distinct from the body, as Huxley and the agnostics generally maintain it is, if mental phenomena are not produced by the brain,-then the one may exist after the other ends. I do not accept the agnostic doctrine of the soul,-that it consists of a series of fleeting thoughts and feelings, produced by an unknown cause; but, if I did believe this, I could rationally believe that the mental series, being radically and essentially unlike the bodily series, might continue to exist after the physical basis was destroyed. Just as electricity may exist apart from the wire through which it passes, so the soul may exist apart from the organism it uses. Thus we show that neither materialism nor agnosticism can disprove the existence or the immortality of the soul. The wonder is that we should exist at all,-that we have attained to self-consciousness,-not that we should continue to exist and retain self-consciousness. But we are so intimately interwoven with our bodies that, when we see them crumbling into atoms, we fear our souls go with them. But, when we learn Huxley's Life of Hume, chapter on "Immortality." that the soul and body are fundamentally distinct, we can more readily believe that their separation may occur without destroying the higher and nobler part of man. One reason why the doctrine of immortality is so widely doubted is that it has been associated with horrible, irrational, and incredible superstitions. The chief of these is the dogma of endless punishment. Most of the creeds of Christendom still contain this barbarous dogma. While teaching that "God is Love," while repeating countless Pater Nosters, Christians at the same time declare that God will damn the vast majority of his children to everlasting misery because of a few years of sin. Col. Ingersoll has rendered rational thought good service by attacking this damnable doctrine with all his eloquence, sarcasm, and logic; and some of the leading churches, such as the Episcopal and Congregational denominations, are rapidly giving up this disgraceful dogma. But, while Col. Ingersoll rejects the idea of an endless hell, he accepts and emphasizes the fact of retribution. "I believe in the manly doctrine," he says, "that every human being must bear the consequences of his acts. Right and wrong exist in the nature of things,—in the relation they bear to man and sentient beings. No God can step between the act and its natural effect. From certain acts flow certain consequences. These consequences increase or decrease the happiness of man; and the consequences must be borne. The relation of act to consequence cannot be altered." This should be severe enough for the grimmest Calvinist. It is true and irrefutable, and such doctrine is far more salutary than the superstition about an eternal lake of fire and brimstone in the unseen world. into its invincible array. But no more have I, and no more do I desire to have, the vision of any new organization doing this. I have very serious doubts whether there is to be any new aggregation of the people or the sects corresponding to the enlarging sympathies of religious thought. What we are coming to I think and hope is not a mighty aggregation, but a glorious sympathy. There will be separations here and there, and rearrangements of the atoms; and there will be new organizations, with new names, very carefully selected, and very much explained, with serious loss of energy that might be more profitably spent. And out of all the change and readjustment will come forth, with garments white and glistening, the Free Church of America. But it will, I hope and I believe, be an invisible church (as the true church of God has always been), except as here and there an individual society, like that of Tacoma, with which I had a happy meeting a few days ago, chooses to call itself "the Free Church" of this or that town or city, without being on that account any freer than many of its neighbors, or any freer than it was before. No one church will absorb the others, and no brand new organization will absorb them all under the banner of an abstract formula from which everything historical and special has been stripped away. There will still be Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, cherishing their honorable traditions, honoring their great names and high examples, warned and shamed by the mistakes and follies of their past, and enticed by its most perfect inspirations to the highest things; and their dividing lines shall offer as little obstruction to the preacher or the layman going back and forth among them as the equator offers to the cruiser's gliding keel. Νο vain imagination this, as Lloyd Jones, forever blessed, would have me to believe, but one that has already been materialized in a thousand places, and soon will be in ten thousand more. In that Free Church of America there will be Unitarians, too, but more of them, I trust, and better. One hears so frequently that such or such a person is "a good Unitarian" that the inference is unavoidable that some of them might be better than they are. The Unitarian op portunity is not, as I take it, an opportunity to give up our historic name and rename ourselves with some other less concrete, if haply so it may be more attractive to those who, wearying of this or that orthodox enclosure, dread the renaming of themselves by any name short of the most abstract and universal possible. So far, our name has not prevented some of the bravest and the best dissentients from the older churches from casting in their lot with us; and Mr. Dole will bear me witness that they have been little chafed by sectarian bond or affronted by the Unitarian tradition; while some who have strayed away in hopes of a more liberal fellowship or isolation have come back to us again, and been right glad to find themselves once more under the old roof and by the old fireside, and with their legs once more under the dear old family mahogany. We greatly overrate the names by which we call ourselves, and the resolutions, preambles, and statements that we make, as influencing those who are, for one reason or another, attracted to our fellowship. Call a particular church almost anything, and let its published creed or statement be any one of the dear five hundred that we have produced from time to time; and if you have a live man in the pulpit, intelligent and earnest, sympathetic and humane, those that belong to him will gravitate to him, and they will stay with him and help him if his people are as full as he is with the spirit of the living God. As for the general attraction of our body, it is not that of this, that, or the other resolution, or preamble, or statement. It is what men know of Channing and Parker and Martineau and Clarke and Gannett and Jones and Savage and Potter. It is what they know of our people as they come among us and find that we are working cheerily for God and man. But it is different with those of us who have been for a long time in the old household of faith, birth-right members, it may be. "Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name"; and, though in most particulars he was not a pattern of things holy, in this particular he was wise unto salvation. He recognized the inspiring force of a tradition, as did George Eliot, who put her thought, as he could not, into impressive words, saying: "The eminence, the nobility of a people depends receive their doon. What if the name has been used once, twice, or thrice to marshal men some meaner way? All the more reason that for raising it aloft, and honoring it with higher purpose and with fresh resolve. If in the thick of battle men should drag the standard in the mire with weak or coward hands, would that be a signal for the men who know what victories it has inspired to let it go, meaning to have a nice new one which will be all innocent of smoke and rent, and to which no forlorn hope has ever lifted up the eyes of passionate desire? Would it not rather be a signal for them to make themselves a wall about it, and to raise it up, “not a stripe erased, not a star obscured," the crying need their call of God to deeds of high emprise? Let every man be fully persuaded concerning these things in his own mind. on its capability of being stirred by memo- to bring dark spirits out of hiding to ries of striving for what we call spiritual ends, ends which consist, not in immediate material possession, but in the satisfaction of a great feeling that animates the collective body as with one soul. A people having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering thrill when it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes, who died to preserve its national existence; when it is reminded of its small beginnings and gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children's children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to great precedents in its history, and to the better genius breathing in its institutions. . . . Nations so moved will resist conquest with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all calamity, will produce poets to sing 'some great story of a man,' and thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action." There is hardly a word of this that is not just as true of the religious as of the national community. Indeed, it was in a religious community-a nation only in virtue of being such, the Jews-that George Eliot found the finest illustration of her inspiring thought. And, if the Unitarians of the present time are wise, they will take it well to heart. They will not waste their strength in devising some new name, only to waste as much again in subsequent explanation. "When a God would ride, anything serves him for a chariot"; and let our Unitarianism be something godlike, let it be even manly, and the name will carry anything of grace or glory that we can impose. Names have their rights as well as breathing men; and the Unitarian name, with its great historical and personal associations, carrying along with it, as the sun its planetary stars, the names of Priestly and Lindsey and Channing and Dewey and Martineau and Parker and Bartol and Hedge and Bellows and Clarke and Emerson and Furness and Gannett-no matter whichand Sumner and Curtis, and a host besides, too great for numbering, is a name to conjure with, to bring bright spirits from the vasty deep of thought and moral will, a As for the original meaning of the word "Unitarian," were we entirely sure of that, it ought not to have a feather's weight in determining the present use of it. In what unfathomable abysses of absurdity should we be landed every day, if we attempted to fasten upon others or ourselves the original meanings of the words which we habitually use! Then, every pin would be a feather, and every style a graving tool. Then, all our pecuniary transactions would be in flocks and herds; and every sycophant would be an informer against persons stealing figs. There are those who say that the name Unitarian originally suggested method of mutual toleration agreed upon in Transylvania by Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Socinians. That would be a meaning of which we might well be proud, but it would have no binding force. Unquestionably, what it denoted in the early history of our denomination was the doctrine of God's oneness as opposed to the doctrine of his trinity. That meaning, also, was a good meaning, and one of which we need not be ashamed, especially as it is a meaning that has gathered to itself immeasurable addition, scope, and illustration with the advance of time. Originally the doctrine was a doctrine of God as the Divine Unit; now it is a doctrine of the Divine Unity, and as such it takes up into itself the whole gist of modern science, the correlation of forces, the transmutation of species, the |