A LAY CREED 109 



constituent fabric of life to its terminal fringe, which 

 betokens an immediate entry on a farther stage of 

 development and progress, in accordance with its intrinsic 

 qualities as a material thing, and its dynamic qualities 

 as an essence that resists death, or as an organism 

 altogether immaterial, and hence, spiritual. 



Here the sublimity of the words we have quoted steals 

 into the waning consciousness, and infuses a strength 

 of faith which lights up the exit from the material world, 

 and reveals through the " shadow of death " the longed- 

 for entrance to the scene of immaterial realities, which 

 " it has not even yet entered into the heart of man to 

 conceive," the spiritual being inconceivable by the material. 

 So says lay experience, but here let us resign this 

 glorious and sublime subject into the hands of those 

 capable from their special training and knowledge to 

 apply it to the wants of humanity and should it in any 

 degree be found applicable to such service, and consonant 

 with divine or revealed truth, in the fervent hope that 

 the universal affirmative of nature's teaching may assist 

 revelation ultimately to overpower and supplant the some- 

 times boldly asserted negative of human teaching, and 

 to inspire and vitalise the supineness and inertia of human 

 purpose and effort ; and as a corollary to the words 

 " as a man liveth, so he dieth," we would add these 

 " And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write, Blessed 

 are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth ; yea, 

 saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, for 

 their works follow with them." 



Having absolutely satisfied ourselves, from the scientific 

 outlook, of the certainty of life hereafter, we may, we 

 think, apply these last quoted words to the character, at 

 least, of the earliest stage of that after-life, and would 

 claim that that character is one of continuity and con- 

 sistency like the " going down " and the " rising " of 

 the sun the works done by, riot the materials won by 

 or belonging to him or her, which are left behind with 

 those that remain, and have no representative, value, or 

 ability, to affect the immaterial transaction represented in 

 the act of death, the material body, with all its material 

 belongings, being left as the absolute property of the 



