Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/75

 the believer in annihilation and the believer in immortality, would have nothing to say to a doctrine which divides men into castes radically distinguished from each other. Only while one of these finds his principle of brotherhood solely in this life, and ridicules the notion of looking for it to an unimaginable life beyond, Mr. Baldwin Brown finds it in the spiritual life, to which Christ gives the law, and of which Christ presents the type.

We think the issue between them, as regards, at least, the view of immortality and annihilation, might fairly be said to turn on this,—whether or not Professor Clifford is right or wrong in saying that "longing for deathlessness means simply shrinking from death." If it does, the brotherhood of man is a brotherhood born of keen but temporary sympathies, and cemented by the prospect of a common annihilation. If it does not, the brotherhood of man is a brotherhood born of the common glimpse and participation of something which is infinitely beyond us, which never does get itself adequately shadowed forth at all in this life, and which instead of dying out of us, as human intensity begins to fail and human activity to dwindle, only becomes the fuller and brighter, because it does not depend on us at all, but on a greater life which is in ours, though not of ours. According to Professor Clifford, it is the human vitality in us, and that only, which protests against the image of death. According to Mr. Baldwin Brown, it is the divine light, often waxing as that vitality wanes, which renders the conception of annihilation not only frightful, but unnatural,—and the more unnatural, the less there is of ourselves, and the more there is of that which is not ourselves, to light up the gloom beyond. Unquestionably the belief in immortality should wane with waning life and energy, if Professor Clifford's view were true. It is nothing but the shadow of our own abundant activities and affections, and should fade as those activities diminish and those affections sober down. The very opposite seems to us to be the truth. The life of youth and energy is the light which puts out the stars. "If light can thus deceive," said Blanco White, "wherefore not life?" The "longing for deathlessness" is so far from being a "shrinking from death," that it is a growing yearning for that which in life we have never really possessed, though we have tasted it. It is a longing which deepens as the gladness of human faculty fails, which survives the keenness of the sense of beauty, the purity of scientific enthusiasm, the intoxication of human power,—for it is a longing which is fixed upon God, and which is fed by God. For our own parts, we believe that the brotherhood of the negative scientific creed, the creed whose only immortality springs from the stream of consequences which flow from your actions,—an immortality which seems to us quite as accessible to the wicked as to the good, and quite as likely to be enjoyed by the one as by the other,—in short, the brotherhood in energy here and in nothingness hereafter,—is a sort of brotherhood which will not make brothers, but will rather make very suspicious and mutually distrustful allies. The brotherhood of Christ, on the other hand, is a brotherhood in the Head of which we are mere members, in the fire of love of which we are but the coldest sparks, in the holiness of which we are but the penitent worshippers,—and that is a brotherhood which cannot easily fail, even while the heart beats high, and still less when the pulses begin to sink, and the last frost to steal upon us.

A SEQUENCE OF ANALOGIES.

I.

is drear, The trees they are sere, And she that is dear Is far far away; I wander in night For lack of her sight, For she is my light And she is my day.

The year it is dying, The leaves are all lying Where sad winds go sighing Through forest and grove; My heart it is failing Through hope unavailing, Through weeping and wailing For her that I love.

Rest! Rest and peace! Death is our release, Our haven where cease All the ills of our clay. When spirits are freed From this earthly weed, They will live above With those they love In a glorious summer-time, ever and aye.