Such is the idea applied in the Catholic system to the future state. To those who die without a care for anything better, there is an eternity of protracted stagnation, embittered by consciousness of loss, by envy and hate. To those whose souls, however undeveloped and marred, retain some hope and desire of better things, a gradual purgation, a struggling of the spirit to appreciate what it knows to be good, but which jars against its disordered appetites. To those who have put forth all their talents to usury—wave on wave of varied and unending beauty flowing from the inexhaustible fountain of all perfection. We cannot but recognize in this life, some who are incorrigible; men who have deliberately strangled every higher and better principle within, till their natures are bare of life which may be developed; they have lost all taste and all capacity for good, just as those who wilfully neglect to educate their minds in youth are incapable of achieving any intellectual growth in old age. But, on the other hand, there are many whose expansion has been retarded by external circumstances, but who have not lost the capacity for good,-the germ to grow and blossom. Now, progress is the law of the universe. Nothing stands still that has life in it. If progress has been checked here, it must be continued in the intermediate state, a progress by pain from the imperfect tothe perfect. As I said just now, where there is the will to rise, there is the possibility of rising. This is strictly in correspondence with the law of God's dealings with man, as laid down in the second preliminary hypothesis. God has given man free-will. Therefore He uses no constraint. His action on man is moral. And by the hypothesis of the Incarnation, it is taught that when the will to return to God and to harmony is present, then the grace to enable the return is given. Consequently, so long as man has the will to enjoy what is better, the faculty of enjoying it will be given him. If, then, after death, the desire be strong to see and delight in God, restoration will be wrought out. If the desire be extinguished in life; there is no reason to believe that it will be restored; for such restoration would be an infringement of the determination of man's free-will. There is one point more on which I must touch; the resurrection of the body. This follows the law of the Incarnation. There have always been manifest two concurrent desires in man, the desire that his soul may live eternally, and that his body may remain his own. The former was the idea prevalent among the philosophers, but the latter commended itself to the popular feeling. The idea of the intellectual faculty living on was somewhat cold, and the feelings of the people desired some less abstract life. If their notion of the future state was crude and grotesque, it could not fail to be otherwise, when all their pleasure consisted in sensuality, and their ideas of happiness rarely ascended above the routine of everyday life. "Errant exsangues sine corpore et ossibus umbræ ; Parsque forum celebrant, pars nisi tecta tyranni ; In Paradise, those "regions of joy, delightful green retreats, and blessed grove-covered abodes where happiness abounds, where the air is more free and enlarged, and clothes the fields with radiant light," so beautifully described by Virgil, what is the occupation of the blessed? "Pars in gramineis exercent membra palæstris ; The custom so universal of burying the dead with honour, is a witness to the prevalence of the idea that the future life is attached to the body as well as the soul. As Molière says, "Oui, mon corps, c'est moi-même, et j'en veux prendre soin, And Heine, in his flippant recklessness— "Poor soul doth to the body say: Thou ever wert my second I, And round me clungest lovingly, As though a dress of satin bright All lined throughout with ermine white- A mere abstraction, bodiless Reduced to blessed nullity In yon bright realms of light to be. In the cold halls of heaven up yonder, In leaden slippers wearily. 'Tis quite intolerable; stay, Stay with me, my dear body, pray!" 2 And if the resurrection of the body be a positive idea and earnest wish, it will be fulfilled by Him Who is the sum of all our desires, and Who came on earth to fulfil them. The idea of the immortality of the soul does not exclude the idea of the immortality of the body; both ideas are conciliated in Him Who is " Yea" and not "Nay," that is, Who is the category of all that is positive. "Jesus Christ, qui in vobis per nos prædicatus est, non fuit EST et NON, sed EST in illo fuit." 1 Molière: Les femmes savantes, a. ii. sc. 7. 2 Heine Poems, tr. by Bowring, Lond. 1866, p. 505. 3 2 Cor. i. 19. If, then, we may conclude that what we desire imperiously will be placed within our reach by Him Who has come to satisfy our desires, it follows: 1. That death will not terminate our existence. 2. That our condition after death will be one of happi ness. 3. That this happiness will be eternal. 4. That it will be complete. 5. That it will be exactly commensurate with the desire felt by man. 6. That, consequently, it will be graduated. CHAPTER XX DEVELOPMENT Development, a subject ably treated by others-must be considered here— Were all the propositions of the Faith simultaneously or successively evolved?-Probably by degrees-If development be denied, two other theories must be maintained-Scripture an absolute authority-This the Protestant theory-Its impossibility—Or that development was suddenly arrested-This the Anglican theory, unsatisfactory-Development apparent in the Bible-and in the history of the Church-Development of doctrine-of Christian art-of appreciation of nature-of science of constitutionalism-The limits of development-Conclusion -The prospects of Christianity. THE subject of development is one upon which I would have foreborne touching, as it has been so ably discussed by distinguished theologians of late years, and I can but go over ground already trodden, but that it fits into and completes the system I am expounding, and I could not omit the doctrine of development without leaving this essay incomplete. I can but adopt the arguments of others, and shew their application to and cohesion with the dogma of the Incarnation.1 I have shewn in the preceding chapters that the dogmas 1 Newman: Essay on Development. Oxenham: The Doctrine of the Atonement, Introd. Essay. And Blenkinsopp: The Doctrine of Development in the Bible and in the Church. London, 1869. |