176 THE UNIVERSE 



the soul. That this is the seed time and nursery 

 of existence preparatory to the harvest of eternal 

 life when he shall drop this overcoat of atoms and 

 be transplanted to the self-luminous bosom and un- 

 fading joys of the perfected and celestial sun-worlds. 

 Here he sees incompleteness, fragmentary careers, 

 tragedies, injustice, griefs and farewells, and he 

 hungers for knowledge. His quenchless spirit seeks 

 to penetrate the mysteries of the universe, and com- 

 prehend time and eternity, and in agony of soul he 

 asks the age-old question, "If a man die, shall he 

 live again?" Then, if he turn not to the pages of 

 sacred writ for an answer, he will find written on the 

 living pages and animated forms of all nature the 

 promise of another life. He will find it in the re- 

 turning verdure of spring, in the unfading light of 

 the eternal stars, in the ever-changing beauty of 

 the bending skies, in the mysterious impulse of the 

 untaught birds of the air who start on their vast 

 migrations from the frozen seas of the north to 

 the summer-lands of the sunny south; in the tropic 

 fish, who seek their spawning nests in the clear, 

 cool rivers of the north. The bear and lion, the 

 tiger and elephant, the bees and the insects of a 

 summer day, all have the longings of their natures 

 satisfied. Why should man be an exception? If 

 the Creator of all keeps faith with all other crea- 

 tures, why not with man? 



"As something must have been eternal," says 

 Prof. Wright, "it is easier to suppose it was an 

 intelligent, designing mind which was uncreated from 

 the beginning, and which has brought the universe 

 into being with all its uniformity of laws and com- 

 plexity of adaptation than to suppose that the eter- 



