THE CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY. 385 



traditions of the Christian Church apparently sup- 

 port the doctrine of a future life, its assurances are 

 anything but explicit, and we must be easy to 

 satisfy if we are content to accept them as conclu- 

 sive. For it would be difficult to devise any eschato- 

 logy more obscure, fragmentary and ambiguous than 

 that of the traditional religion, or one which so 

 ingeniously combines the defects of raising insoluble 

 difficulties, and of yet leaving us without answer 

 upon the most critical points. 



The end and the origin of the soul are alike 

 shrouded in perplexities which religious dogma 

 makes no serious attempt to dispel. For instance, 

 what happens to the soul after death ? Does it 

 sleep or is it judged ? If it sleeps, — and to judge 

 from the inscriptions of our graveyards this may 

 claim to be the accepted view, — is not this an admis- 

 sion of the possibility of its annihilation at least for a 

 season ? And if for a time, why not for ever ? Or 

 if it is judged, what are the relations of this prelim- 

 inary judgment to the Last Judgment ? 



Or, again, whence does the soul come ? Does it 

 exist before the body, is it derived from the souls or 

 the bodies of its parents, or created ad hoc by the 

 Deity ? Is Pre-existence, Traducianism, or Cre- 

 ationism the orthodox doctrine ? The first theory, 

 although we shall see that it is the only one on 

 which any rational eschatology can be or has been 

 based, is difficult, and has not been very prominent 

 in religious thought, but the other two are alike im- 

 possible and offensive. And it would be difficult to 

 decide which supposition was more offensive, whether 

 that the manufacture of immortal spirits should be 



I a privilege directly delegated to the chance passions 

 of a male and a female, or that they should have 

 R.ofS. c (^. 



