LIFE AFTER DEATH

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19917, 2 May 1930, Page 19

LIFE AFTER DEATH

DR. BARNES'S SERMON. THE CONTINUITY OF NATURE. (FROM OTTR OWJf COHEESrOHBBNT.) LONDON, March 21. From the time the human race be* gan to think at all "Life after Death" was probably a subject for argument and debate. Speculations on the sub' jeet seem to be still worthy of publication, but only if the names of these who restate the old arguments have some prestige in some sphere of human activity. For this reason, the sermon of the scientifically.inclined Bishop of Birmingham on the subject, and the subsequent comments of an ex-Lord Justice of Appeal have found a place in the columns of the Press. Preaching in Manchester Cathedral on Sunday night, Dr. Barnes asked:-» How did discoveries such as that of Peking Man affect theological belief! Many were perplexed as to how it was possible, in the light of our growing certainty as to man's animal origin, to believe that the soul of men is immortal. People were asking, at what stage of our evolution did the soul within us becomo worthy of eternal life! Must we, too, perish absolutely, at death as did the animals from which we had sprung? Our knowledge was still deplorably limited. We could not say where moral consciousness began, Yet with the beginning of moral consciousness man made the step which decisively separated him from all other animals upon earth, He was convinced that the ground of a reasonable belief in personal immortality was to be found in the fact that men were loyal to goodness and truth. Because wo could not admit that the wages of goodness were dust and nothing more, we were forced to claim that eternal life would be the reward of righteousness. The good man would survive after bodily death because he had survivalvalue. Wo could not continue to think of the universe as rational, or its Creator as other than a capricious Maker of useless experiments, if men who bad sought to serve Him perished utterly AS their bodies decayed. Obedience to the moral law was man's gift to his Maker; yot in vain would the gift be made if personal immortality were a delusivo hope. Either God roust waste what surely He pronounced good and acceptable to Himself, or in the man who gave God service there must be something immortal. When in the ape growing to the stature of man there first appeared a faint understanding of the moral law, at that moment a something worthy of eternal life was born in him. Then the process of soulmaking began: the animal began to put on humanity. Future of Development. Would there be no further development of personality for any of us after death! He could not believe that n gtatie future awaited us, He looked rather for development, achievement, and enrichment. The distinctive personality of man was not rightly to bo thought of as derived in toto from the mind of the ape. There appeared, when the human soul began, a new quality of being witnessed to by man's moral consciousness. That quality was, he believed, fundamentally independent of the. organised matter needed for its manifestation. Though man might be one of a group of mammals more or less closely akin to himself, be was decisively separated from all other animals; in him was a soul which, if true to its own nature, would enjoy eternal life. Had Peking Man moral instincts! Did he strive to live by an Inner Light however dim! If SO, he was On the side of the immortals. If so, though the sub-species to which he belonged had passed from thV earth, it was not unrepresented in the realm of God where nothing of value was ever wastod. No Discontinuity in Nature. In a letter to "The Times," Lord Wrcnbury writes: — In all essentials Igo the whole way with the Bishop, but I should ask him to go a step farther with me. Ho is reported as saying: "Must we too perish absolutely at death as do the animals from which we have sprung!' Must wo assume that the animals perish absolutely at death! I doubt it. If it were true I should doubt immortality generally. There is no discontinuity in Nature. I should be slow to follow the Bishop in thinking that when in the developing ape there appeared a first understanding of moral law there arose a state pf things in which immortality for the first time came into being. I would say a few words in advancing a theory that immortality as I seek to explain it is universal. Whether personal immortality is involved in the proposition is another matter. The more we study Nature, the more are we definite that there exist »o hard lines of demarcation. The highest intelligenee as known to us in man differs in degree but not in substance from the intelligence in the ant, the bee, the dog, or the horse, or (I do not say it in jest) from the intelligence which must exist in the bacillus which upon the introduction of the bacillus of disease into the body rushes to combat the sinister attack. There must exist something which wq call "spirit" M distinguished from matter which is universal throughout Nature, and which from generation to generation continues to be manifested in action.

Xdfe a State of |*«'ct». " Matter is a concrete thing; spirit I believe is also a concrete thing if the word "concrete" is intelligible in that context. I4fe is not a concrete thing. Life is a state of. facts —namely, that state of facts which exists when spirit and matter are in partnership. Death puts an end to that state of facts, but does not presumably destroy anything. The matter which composed that which was a living body is not destroyed. The fallen leaf or the buried body decays, but forms the nutrition of another living body. Prom Sir James Jeans's most interesting book, "The Universe Around Us » I have learned—see page 182—that there 3s or may be "annihilation of matter." Hitherto I have thought that matter was never destroyed, but was employed over and over again, now in one form, now in another. And I still venture to think that this may .well be i true. Sir James Jeans puts it that weight (that is, matter) is under circumstances transformed into radiation. Transformation is net annihilation. The radiation may well under circumstances reappear aa matter. To me it seems highly probable that the same is true of spirit—that when the spirit leaves the natural body at death it falls into the universal body of spirit, and, either as a personal item or as a constituent of ono great whole, is immortal and will go on through millions of years to higher and higher development. Part of One Great Whole. At birth the parents, in some way beyond our comprehension, are able to call into existence a new material body and, again in a way beyond our comprehension, are able ta give it a share out of that which I call the immortal body o? spirit. Is not this 8»d every other manifestation of spirit part of one great wholef Is not eaeh of us for the time being entrusted with a small portion of that great spiritual essence

which in the aggregate constitutes the God in whom, as it seems to we, every reasoning man must believe, although no one is able to define Him! And, whether there is personal immortality or not, can we not each of us look'forward to adding our little contribution to the consummation in millions 0* year? of a state of things in which man will have developed to a being as much above our present selves as we are above the primitive amoeba! •