Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/249

Rh meeting us after a seven years' absence recognise us again in bodies no particle of which have they ever seen before; and though similarly we can recognise our inner selves across wider intervals of time, have we any reason to suppose that our identity is more fixed in the spiritual substance than in the material? For myself, I hope not. May one not prefer the idea of interchange between life and life, to the notion that one is to remain for ever fixed and self-possessed—a thing apart? The more we are compounded of other lives, the more we have contributed to the lives of others—the more can we recognise our entrance into the only eternal life that we can demonstrably be sure about, or that can (so it must seem to many of us), be sensibly desired or deserved. Is Eternal Bliss, in the individual sense, a more tolerable doctrine than eternal Hell-fire? Though, indeed, this latter may be but a scientific statement of fact perverted and made foolish by the theologians. For life, after all, is but a form of combustion for ever going on, and outside of it we know nothing. No doubt the atoms of our being, whether physical or spiritual, will forever form part of it; but I see no reason why our spirits should not be as diffused, through proper elemental changes, as our bodies are now being diffused from day to day; or why I should repine that I personally shall not always be there to preside over the operation and find it good. Even if, at the far end of