A Complete Bibliography of the Subject. [Note: bibliography not included here] BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1880 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts. Copyright 1878, W.R. Alger ELECTROTYPED BY JOHNSON & CO., PHILADA. University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge....

THIS work has passed through nine editions, and has been out of print now for nearly a year. During the twenty years which have elapsed since it was written, the question of immortality, the faith and opinions of men and the drift of criticism and doubt concerning it, have been a subject of dominant interest to me, and have occupied a large space in my reading and reflection. Accordingly, now that my publisher, moved by the constant demand for the volume, urges the preparation of a new edition i

PAUSING, in a thoughtful hour, on that mount of observation whence the whole prospect of life is visible, what a solemn vision greets us! We see the vast procession of existence flitting across the landscape, from the shrouded ocean of birth, over the illuminated continent of experience, to the shrouded ocean of death. Who can linger there and listen, unmoved, to the sublime lament of things that die? Although the great exhibition below endures, yet it is made up of changes, and the spectators s

PROCEEDING now to give an account of the fancies and opinions in regard to a future life which have been prevalent, in different ages, in various nations of the earth, it will be best to begin by presenting, in a rapid series, some sketches of the conceits of those uncivilized tribes who did not so far as our knowledge reaches possess a doctrine sufficiently distinctive and full, or important enough in its historical relations, to warrant a detailed treatment in separate chapters. We will glance

MANY considerations combine to make it seem likely that at an early period a migration took place from Southern Asia to Northern Europe, which constituted the commencement of what afterwards grew to be the great Gothic family. The correspondence of many of the leading doctrines and symbols of the Scandinavian mythology with well known Persian and Buddhist notions notions of a purely fanciful and arbitrary character is too peculiar, apparently, to admit of any other explanation.1 But the germs of

IN the Hindu views of the fate of the human soul, metaphysical subtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, slavish tradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism and heaven storming spirituality, are mingled together on a scale of grandeur and intensity wholly without a parallel elsewhere in the literature or faith of the world. Brahmanism, with its hundred million adherents holding sway over India, and Buddhism, with its four hundred million disciples scattered over a dozen

THE name of Zoroaster is connected, either as author or as reviser, with that remarkable system of rites and doctrines which constituted the religion of the ancient Iranians, and which yet finds adherents in the Ghebers of Persia and the Parsees of India. Pliny, following the affirmation of Aristotle, asserts that he flourished six thousand years before Plato. Moyle, Gibbon, Volney, Rhode, concur in throwing him back into this vast antiquity. Foucher, Holty, Heeren, Tychsen, Guizot, assign his b

ON the one extreme, a large majority of Christian scholars have asserted that the doctrine of a retributive immortality is clearly taught throughout the Old Testament. Able writers, like Bishop Warburton, have maintained, on the other extreme, that it says nothing whatever about a future life, but rather implies the total and eternal end of men in death. But the most judicious, trustworthy critics hold an intermediate position, and affirm that the Hebrew Scriptures show a general belief in the s

ISLAM has been a mighty power in the earth since the middle of the seventh century. A more energetic and trenchant faith than it was for eight hundred years has not appeared among men. Finally expelled from its startling encampments in Spain and the Archipelago, it still rules with tenacious hold over Turkey, a part of Tartary, Palestine, Persia, Arabia, and large portions of Africa. At this moment, as to adherence and influence, it is subordinate only to the two foremost religious systems in th

IN entering upon an investigation of the thoughts of the New Testament writers concerning the fate of man after his bodily dissolution, we may commence by glancing at the various allusions contained in the record to opinions on this subject prevalent at the time of the Savior or immediately afterwards, but which formed no part of his religion, or were mixed with mistakes. There are several incidents recorded in the Gospels which show that a belief in the transmigration of the soul was received a

WITH reference to the present subject, we shall consider the period of the Church Fathers as including the nine centuries succeeding the close of the apostolic age. It extends from Clement, Barnabas, and Hermas to OEcumenius and Gerbert. The principal components of the doctrine of the future life held during this period, though showing some diversities and changes, are in their prevailing features of one consistent type, constituting the belief which would in any of those centuries have been gen

THE period of time covered by the present chapter reaches from the close of the tenth century to the middle of the sixteenth, from the first full establishment of the Roman Catholic theology and the last general expectation of the immediate end of the world to the commencing decline of mediaval faith and the successful inauguration of the Protestant Reformation. The principal mental characteristic of that age, especially in regard to the subject of the future life, was fear. "Never," says Michel

THE folly and paganism of some of the Church dogmas, the rapacious haughtiness of its spirit, the tyranny of its rule, and the immoral character of many of its practices, had often awakened the indignant protests and the determined opposition of men of enlightened minds, vigorous consciences, and generous hearts, both in its bosom and out of it. Many such men, vainly struggling to purify the Church from its iniquitous errors or to relieve mankind from its outrageous burdens, had been silenced an

THE power of the old religions was for centuries concentrated in the Mysteries. These were recondite institutions, sometimes wielded by the state, sometimes by a priesthood, sometimes by a ramifying private society. None could be admitted into them save with the permission of the hierarchs, by rites of initiation, and under solemn seals of secrecy. These mysterious institutions, charged with strange attractions, shrouded in awful wonder, were numerous, and, agreeing in some of their fundamental

A DOCTRINE widely prevalent asserts that, at the termination of this probationary epoch, Christ will appear with an army of angels in the clouds of heaven, descend, and set up his tribunal on the earth. The light of his advancing countenance will be the long waited Aurora of the Grave. All the souls of men will be summoned from their tarrying places, whether in heaven, or hell, or purgatory, or the sepulchre; the fleshly tabernacles they formerly inhabited will be re created, a strong necromancy

A HELL of fire and brimstone has been, perhaps still is, the most terrible of the superstitions of the world. We propose to give a historic sketch of the popular representations on this subject, trace them to their origin, and discuss the merits of the question itself. To follow the doctrine through all its variations, illustrating the practical and controversial writings upon it, would require a large volume; but, by a judicious arrangement, all that is necessary to a fair understanding of the

MORALITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE. IN discussing the ethics of the doctrine of a future life a subject here amazingly neglected, there more amazingly maltreated, and nowhere, within our knowledge, truly analyzed and exhibited1 it is important that the theme be precisely defined and the debate kept strictly to the lines. Let it be distinctly understood, therefore, that the question to be handled is not, "Whether there ought to be a future life or not," nor, "Whether there is a future life