that the sun is about as big as the table, and that the stars are tiny lamps, and the astronomer whose truer knowledge lays before him the vaster problem. So modern science, even in its most materialistic moods, is leading us from mystery to mystery, and lands us at last on the strange boundary-line which divides the unseen from the seen: but it never ceases to tell us that the great secret is on the other side.

One other basis of belief may be mentioned here, and perhaps with some hope that it may hereafter be considered more seriously than seems possible now. In every age of the world, and in every nation, it has been believed that, at times, the unseen has been able to manifest itself in the sphere of the seen. The late William Howitt's voluminous work, "The History of the Supernatural in all Ages and Nations," abundantly proves that the Jewish, Christian, and Pagan religions are full of instances of so-called supernatural relations between the unseen and the seen, and, in our own day, millions of people in all parts of the world, and these not the least credible and thoughtful of mankind, persist in maintaining that communion between the unseen and the seen may, under certain conditions, be enjoyed. It is only to be expected that such experiences should be tainted by fraud and embarrassed by folly;

but it is very difficult to believe that where there has been so much smoke there has been no fire, and that all the solemn records and testimonies of ancient and modern times have nothing but hungry credulity or discreditable trickery behind them. Besides, if we are in any sense believers in the Old and New Testaments, we are committed to spiritual appearances, and the occasional passing over of unseen beings into the sphere of the seen. The Old Testament is full of it, and the New has plenty of it; and unless we say that every one of these spiritual appearances recorded in the Bible was a delusion, or was special, exceptional, and strictly miraculous, we are bound to come to the conclusion that, under certain conditions, there may be intercourse between beings in the spheres of the unseen and the seen. It does not follow that such intercourse will be equally possible in all ages or in all conditions of society; or that it will necessarily be always elevated, or productive of high spiritual results; or that what is said by beings from beyond the veil will necessarily be wise, or good, or true. But if it can be proved that such beings can demonstrate their presence, it is manifest that, altogether apart from their superiority or inferiority as intelligent beings, we have here the possibility of an immense aid to faith.

I would only add one thought, and I build it on what Mr. Row said we might almost take for granted, from one point of view-that if it were the purpose of man's Creator to call him into judgment hereafter for his conduct here, He would not have left him in the smallest doubt on this subject. Be that as it may, it does seem overwhelmingly clear, if we follow the lines that reason and the moral sense mark out, that if it were the purpose of God to make man's eternal destiny depend upon his faith here, He would have made both the fact of that eternal destiny and the truth of the right faith abundantly clear to him. But, to use Mr. Row's own words, "this is precisely what God has not done." Men are as divided as ever about the right faith, and seem likely to be so. Does not that suggest a doubt as to whether man's eternal destiny is, after all, being determined here; and a still further doubt whether his faith, or opinions in time, and his destiny in eternity, have anything to do with one another? "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." That is good sense and good doctrine, and beyond that it is difficult to go. If man persists after what we call death, his moral and spiritual and intellectual place of ending here will be his place of beginning hereafter; and we may reasonably hope that the process of education

and development below may be continued above, and that the life of progress in the unseen will be even more orderly, natural, and hopeful than the old earth-life in the seen.

ARTICLE IV.

BY RABBI HERMANN ADLER.

T will be my purpose in this article to indicate

IT

the strong foundations of the belief in a future life to be found in the Hebrew Scriptures. The author of a preceding paper, the Rev. Prebendary Row, maintains that "the entire range of ancient thought prior to the Advent left the question whether a conscious existence remained for man after death entirely doubtful." He argues that "nothing affords a stronger proof of the inability of reason alone to place the belief in a future state on a sure foundation than the position which it occupies in the Scriptures of the Old Testament." The revelations which these Scriptures record contain, in his opinion, no direct affirmations of the existence of a future state. It will be the aim of the following pages to show that this proposition is untenable. And, indeed, if it be agreed that the Hebrew Scriptures are divinely inspired, how is it possible that the doctrine of human immortality could have been omitted from its teachings?

It is true, Holy Writ is not a catechism or