of being restored by Cyrus: 'The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish!'[1] the promise, applied literally, fails. But extended to that idea of righteousness, of which Israel was the depositary and in which the real life of Israel lay, the promise is true, and we can see it fulfilled. In like manner, when the Apostle says to the Corinthians or to the Colossians, instructed that the second advent would come in their own generation: 'We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ!'[2]—'When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory!'[3] the promise, applied literally as the Apostle meant it and his converts understood it, fails. But divested of this Aberglaube or extra-belief, it is true; if indeed the world can be shown,—and it can,—to be moving necessarily towards the triumph of that Christ in whom the Corinthian and Colossian disciples lived, and whose triumph is the triumph of all his disciples also.
Let us keep hold of this same experimental process in dealing with the promise of immortality; although here, if anywhere, Aberglaube, extra-belief, hope, anticipation, may well be permitted to come in. Still, what we need for our foundation is not Aberglaube, but Glaube; not extra-belief in what is beyond the range of possible experience, but belief in what can and should be known to be true.
By what futilities the demonstration of our immortality may be attempted, is to be seen in Plato's Phædo. Man's natural desire for continuance, however little it may be worth as a scientific proof of our immortality, is at least a proof a thousand times stronger than any such demonstration. The want of solidity in such argument is so palpable, that one scarcely cares to turn a steady regard upon it at all. And
