By J. ARTHUR HILL

In these days of widespread bereavement, and when the thoughts of even those who have lost no dear ones are turned to the graver things of life, it is natural that the question of Immortality should come very much to the front in many minds. The world-old query, more or less obscured in ordinary days, insistently presents itself: "If a man die, shall he live again?" Religion has always said "Yes"; Science - or some of its votaries, in the name of science - has sometimes said "No"; and the general mind has naturally been perplexed.

What is the state of affairs now - is there any nearer approach to agreement? Can we reach any firmer ground in this momentous matter? I say that undoubtedly we can; for a summing-up of Science and Philosophy at the present day is vastly more favourable to the religious view than ever before. Indeed, Science is now definitely on the side of Religion, and the average mind is no longer pulled two ways. We can be religious without being unscientific; we can be scientific without being irreligious. And this is as it ought to be.

As a result, very largely, of investigations and general advance in certain branches of psychology during the last thirty years, the best scientific minds now take an entirely different view of the soul from that of the earlier scientists such as Biichner and Hackel.

The body is no longer looked on as producing the mind as the liver produces bile - in the materialist's famous and foolish phrase - but as transmitting it. The mind works through the body, but is in no way dependent on it for existence. The body is merely the vehicle or organ for the mind's manifestation in the present world. Naturally, if the material instrument gets damaged - as in apoplexy by a blood-clot on the brain - the mind's manifestation is interfered with: the mechanism is out of order, the current does not flow. But it is only a block, not an extinction - the mind is there all the same, as it is - equally really - in sleep, which is a similar, though in this case quite healthy, cessation of manifestation. And if the organ is smashed completely, as at death or soon afterwards, it makes no difference to the spirit. The latter simply withdraws when the body ceases to be usable for manifestation. It "goes up higher"; quits the material world, where it had lessons to learn but which has now served its purpose; and turns to other and higher activities of a wider range, in the spiritual world - though not forgetting loved ones left behind, for there is good reason to believe, on purely scientific grounds, that the "dead " can still interest themselves in our affairs, that they often are still with us and aware of our thoughts and needs, and that they exert themselves to comfort and to help the sorrowing and burdened soul.

This "transmissive" view of the soul's relation to the body was held by the greatest psychologist of modern times - Professor William James, M.D., of Harvard - who expounded it only a few years ago, and not long before his lamented death, in his brilliant little book "Human Immortality," in the Ingersoll Lecture series. And it is held, on strictly scientific grounds, mark you - and as a result of his own investigations - by the most famous scientific man in England, who is at the same time probably the best-known scientist in the whole world to-day, namely, Sir Oliver Lodge. Other great names might easily be added: Sir William Crookes, President of the Royal Society; Sir William Barrett, the foremost scientist in Ireland; Professor Bergson, the greatest living philosopher, whether of France or the world; Mr. A. J. Balfour, Mr. G. W. Balfour, Dr. F. C. S. Schiller, leader of the Pragmatists in England - all these are names taken at random from the large array of the foremost thinkers of our time who accept a doctrine of the soul which permits or definitely involves its independence of the body and its consequent survival of that body's death.

A further question here arises, as to whether "survival" is the same as "immortality." Strictly, it is not. The latter is usually understood to mean endless life as individuals, while survival of bodily death does not necessarily involve endlessness. It may be that after much growth and advance as individuals in the heavenly world, we sooner or later drop the limits and fetters of personality, achieving a more intimate union with the Divine, such as some mystics have attained even while on earth. This, or something like this, seems a reasonable supposition, for it is a commonplace of our experience that perfect happiness is most nearly attained by sacrifice of the self, by giving up our own wants and surrendering ourselves to God. "In His will is our peace," as Dante has it; and perhaps, when the spirit is purged and sufficiently worthy, it may really and truly enter into the joy of its Lord and be with Him in closest union. But it is likely that many stages of progress, as individuals, will precede that beatific culmination.

Another cheering thing about modern psychology is its new view of the structure, so to speak, of human personality. We all are disgusted with ourselves at times, in our failure to live anywhere near up to the level of our own conceptions and ideals; and when we think of the survival, or immortality, or even the lengthy duration of our present self after death, we feel a certain shrinking. Shall we not get very sick of ourselves - shall we not weary of the eternal struggle against our baser part? As the boy said, quoted by Emerson: " It makes me so tired when I think of ' for ever.' "

But psychology here steps in to the rescue. It has established that our present self is only a fraction of our total self. As Wordsworth says: "We are greater than we know." We are like icebergs - in Sir Oliver Lodge's simile - which float with only one-twelfth of their bulk above water, this twelfth, more or less, representing our present consciousness.

So we need not indulge exaggerated fears about the tedium or stress of our own society in the heavenly world, for we shall be different from and larger than ourselves as known to us now. Identity will continue, as identity continues between the ignorant child and the mature wise man he develops into; but, as in the parallel, there will be a gain, an accretion, a growth, and we shall be changed. We do not yet know what we shall be - not exactly or by experience, which is yet to come in its due course but we know enough to infer that our transcendental self is really a much greater thing than the small and often very unsatisfactory self which is now being manifested here through the channel of the body. And with this scientifically justified inference we can look forward with contentment to the introduction to our wider self which awaits us at the time of transition. It was probably knowledge of this greater range of the real total personality that led to the phrase (quoted approvingly by Christ, but puzzling to many) "Ye are gods" - i.e. you are greater and more divine than you yourselves know (Psalm lxxxii. 6; St. John's Gospel x. 34).

It is sometimes asked: "Shall we know our friends when our turn comes to join them on the other side - will they not have changed, or shall we not ourselves have changed out of recognition in the interim, particularly if it has been long? "

The answer is that we shall know them, and shall be known, perfectly; if we think otherwise, or have doubts, it is because we are thinking how bodily changes make us unrecognisable sometimes, in our earth life, to friends of thirty or forty years ago.

But in the heavenly world recognition will not depend on material bodies; we shall put on spiritual bodies, as St. Paul says, and shall perceive each other's minds and souls much more clearly than ever before - in other words, we shall not only know each other but shall know each other much better than we did in the earth life when clogged by the material body through which we saw only dimly.

And, as to changes, minds change less than bodies. We meet old friends, school chums and what not, after long separation, and at once the old intimacy is re-established.

I have just had a striking illustration of this. My dearest chum of twenty years ago has just revisited the Old Country after long sojourn in his adopted country - Canada, Pacific Coast. Little correspondence had passed between us after the first year or two, and I almost feared to meet him; for it seemed that we must inevitably have diverged as to our individual interests in life, our respective environments having been so different; and this feeling of strangeness, after the old times of affection and close sympathy, would be painful.

But when the meeting came all was well. My friend was the same good old fellow, the same personality that I had known, and in half an hour we felt as close as of old. True, each had much to tell the other, each had developed on different lines, but evidently the fact of our ancient congeniality had ensured that any further growth of the one would be of a kind which would interest and attract the other. The personality is the thing; its knowledge or experience is but a garment. So with after-death recognitions. We need not fear that we shall not know our dear ones, or that they will have left us hopelessly behind. They will have much to tell us, and there will be much comparing of notes; but the mutual recognition of the selves will be full and intimate and happy. Indeed it may be - nay, it will be - that we shall be in some sort necessary to their joy; "that they without us should not be made perfect."

Therefore in these world-shaking times let us hold to cheerfulness and faith. God is over all; the present life is but a dream, a discipline, an education. It is better on before, when we shall have awakened to the wider horizons that await us - to the fuller life and activities, to the companionship of those we have loved and temporarily lost, and to the closer union with God, who is Love itself.