300 FJNAL CAUSES I THEIR BEARING, ETC. 



midable. By inculcating that the elevatory process is one 

 of natural law, not of moral endeavour, — by teaching, infer- 

 entially at least, that in the better state of things which is 

 coming there is to be an identity of race with that of the ex- 

 isting dynasty, but no identity of individual consciousness, — 

 that, on the contrary, the life after death which we are to in- 

 herit is to be merely a horrid life of wriggling impurities, ori- 

 ginated in the putrefactive mucus, — and that thus the men 

 who now live possess no real stake in the kingdom of the fu- 

 ture, — it is its direct tendency, so far as its influence extends, 

 to render the required co-operation with God an impossibility ; 

 for that co-operation cannot exist without belief as its basis. 

 The hypothesis involves a misreading of the geologic record, 

 which not merely afiects its meaning in relation to the mind, 

 and thus, in a question of science, substitutes error for truth, 

 but which also threatens to affect the record itself, in relation 

 to the destiny of every individual perverted and led astray. 

 It threatens to write down among the degraded and the lost, 

 men who, under the influence of an unshaken faith, might 

 have risen at the dawn of the terminal period, to enjoy the 

 fulness of eternity among the glorified and the good. 



