Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/120

Rh that we see the whole matter hangs on the slender thread of the query whether there is indeed a God. If there is, then immortality — yes, the immortality of each particular soul — is certain, by God’s own immutable nature; and evolution, though it cannot ascertain it, nevertheless gives premonition of it then, and supports the real proof. But — what if there is not? The goal of evolution, as really verifiable by observation, is unfortunately not the preservation and completion of any single life, but only of a kind, — only of a human family, — ever made up, I beg you will notice, of new and wholly different members; a family, moreover, whose abode is only on this globe, and on this side of the grave, with no indication whatever that this its home will or can last forever; nay, with all the observed indications steadily against this, and all the metaphysical necessities of physical existence declaring it impossible.

And so we are brought back, perhaps somewhat sternly, to the great questions of our meeting. We have had, from men of such eminence as to command serious attention everywhere, two high efforts to set forth the conception of God and the proofs of his existence; and we have listened to a keen criticism of the first of them by the young but highly qualified pupil of all three of us, — a criticism fascinating by its speculative and almost dreamy subtlety. Now let us gather our calmness and our wits together as best we may, and, during the short period that is left to us, try to discover what abiding store we ought to set by these endeavours. What I say must be, I fear, all too brief — too brief, that is, to do these arguments the