By LEE DANVERS

To construct is always better than to destroy, to build up better than to pull down; therefore, the simple, unquestioning faith of the Christian in a life after death must obviously be finer than the complicated reasoning of the scientist and the discontented questioning of the unbeliever. For Christianity constructs a Hereafter, whereas most of the scientists and all of the unbelievers do their best to demolish the Christian idea of a Hereafter without seeking to supply any substitute.

What happens to us when we die? According to the Christians we live again; according to the unbeliever we do not live again; according to the scientist it is impossible that we should live again, except as part of the impersonal force which they call "matter." The Christian used to believe in a life after death that should consist of becoming an ethereal creature with wings on one's shoulders and a harp in one's hands, and eternity was pictured very largely as an eternity of music. Such a belief is grotesquely absurd according to the scientist and the unbeliever, but, at least, it is more attractive than a belief in nothingness or nothing in particular after death.

The Christian has virtually ceased nowadays to believe that he will become an angel and spend the timeless space of the everlasting in singing. The parsons have listened uneasily to the voice of science, they have tried to accommodate religion to the discoveries of men, and they have ceased to preach a wonderful gospel in a simple way. But religion has not gained anything by its adaptation to the scientific thought of the twentieth century. It seems quite reasonable to suppose that we shall not become angels when we die; indeed, it seems reasonable to suppose that there never was such a being as an angel, but, all the same, angels serve a very useful purpose, if not as facts at least as figures.

A disembodied spirit could not possibly wear wings on its shoulders, since it would have no shoulders, but the wings are excellent as a symbol. A disembodied spirit could not hold a harp, let alone play on it, since it would have no hands or fingers, but the celestial harp is quite a beautiful image. One cannot, in any practical way, think of eternal music, but, then, one cannot think, in any practical way, of death once the earth has been filled in about a grave, because the rest is mystery. Yet music, because it stirs our deepest emotions and creates longings which we cannot understand, is a perfect means of expressing the inexplicable mystery of eternity.

The wings and the harp and the music are held nowadays to be the childish figments of childlike minds, and the ministers of the gospel have agreed to banish them from their talk of an after-life out of deference to the fact that humanity has, so to speak, grown up. But those things ought not to be banished; we need them.

In the face of eternity we are as much children to-day as when the world began. We have grown accustomed to the system that governs the universe, we have given commonplace names to things we do not understand, and deceived ourselves, with the names, into the belief that we understand them. But our vaunted knowledge of the universe is purely a superficial knowledge. We know that the earth revolves on its own axis. Do we know why it revolves? We say that the sun is so many miles from the earth. Do we know any more than Adam knew how it came there, and why it stays immovable in space? We are children in these matters - children who have adopted an air of grown-up wisdom. And because the sun shone through all the yesterdays we call it reasonable to expect that it will shine to-morrow, whereas, in truth, there is no reason in it, but only natural human expectation. Similarly, we dare to "reason" about death, which, of itself, has never given us any sort of human expectation.

Reason is a useful thing to apply to the commonplace incidents of everyday life, but death is utterly beyond the domain of reason; therefore, we cannot reason about it. We can only have faith, or be lacking in faith, concerning what it conceals. We can speculate concerning its meaning, or we can decide to leave it out of our thoughts, but we cannot argue about it and prove our arguments right before we ourselves die. No. So far as death is concerned, we are still children, and therefore we should do better to cling to childish symbols than to throw them scornfully away.

Wings are suggestive of a state superior to the human state; harps are suggestive of happiness transcending all known forms of human happiness; music is suggestive of an utterly different condition of existence to the conditions of our present existence. In a literal sense they may seem absurd as heirlooms of death, but in a symbolic sense they stand for a higher, finer existence than earthly life; why, then, should we not cling to them?

It may be true, as some would have us believe, that there is no future life for any of us; that when we die nothing happens except the thing which is obvious to us all - the decomposition of our bodies; but, at least, it is no more "reasonable" to think that death means nothingness than to think that death means a spiritual world of infinite grandeur, infinite happiness, for all who strive to deserve it. And it is vastly less satisfactory. The doctrine that when we are dead we are dead for all time is not a doctrine that helps; on the contrary, it is one that discourages goodness, encourages lawlessness; it is one that favours a pitiful state of existence in this world because it denudes us of all incentive to live well.

If everyone believed that death meant utter annihilation the world would promptly become a place of unspeakable horror. It is all very well to argue that many people would live honestly, soberly, and decently, that they would do right for the mere sake of doing right; but we all know well enough that the majority would do wrong, for the simple reason that it is so very much easier to do wrong than to do right. Let us not deceive ourselves. It is the simple faith of the bulk of mankind in a life after death of infinite possibilities that prevents the world from becoming a hell of madness, murder, and debauchery.

If the scientists and the unbelievers had their way they would destroy this faith, giving us no other faith in its stead - and there would be nothing left to live for. But just as it is impossible for any rational being to disbelieve in God, so it is impossible for any sensible being to disbelieve in a Hereafter. There could not be a world without a God, let alone a million worlds, and there could not be death without a future state. Do you suppose that God would have put the craving - the need - for a future life in our souls if there were, in fact, no future life for us?

But, the "reasoning" man may argue, how can there be a future life for us if we know nothing about it? The only necessary answer lies, I think, in another question: How could we be content with this life if we knew that it were temporarily withholding us from a far more perfect life ? We do not know exactly what happens to us when we die, because it is not good for us to know; but in every human soul has been implanted a yearning for something after death - for a light beyond the veil of darkness - and that yearning is so strong, so universal, that it must necessarily make even the most matter-of-fact scientific man pause at times, though it were idle to expect him to confess such a thing to his fellow-creatures.

A belief that death is the end of all things is as impossible as a belief that there is no God. The atheist declares that there is no God, but the real truth is that there is no atheist. There are professed atheists, just as there are professed Christians, but there is no genuine atheist. There is no man or woman on the face of the earth who does not believe in the existence of an omnipotent God. Atheism is nothing more than a wanton, impotent bravado. It is a sheer impossibility for anyone to live and disbelieve in an Almighty, no matter what name you may bestow upon Him.

And so we come back to the wings and the harps and the music, for these are the symbols of simple faith, and simple faith is best. Christianity may be assailed, but it has endured and spread these nineteen hundred years. The Bible may be full of faults and contradictions, but it has been the biggest power in the world for many centuries. The man who believes in God, in Christ, and in the Bible, may be able to produce but little evidence in support of his beliefs satisfactory to men of science and infidels, but the fact that he is happier than the man who does not believe in God, or Christ, or the Bible, is more than sufficient justification for all who are prepared to accept mysteries as mysteries and not as myths.

We are children, and as children we must accept the big but hidden truths of life and death, believing of them what it is best for us to believe. The Christian religion teaches that death is but a dark passageway to a brighter world. There could not be a more attractive teaching than that; why, then, should any of us feel inclined to turn from it to gloomier teachings? Because reason urges us?

Decidedly not, for what, after all, is reason but the working of a mind in a sensible way when dealing with known things or things arising out of known circumstances; and how can it proceed in a sensible way from known things to unknown things? Why, not even death itself appears to be reasonable. Some of our cleverest men are cut off at the moment of their existence when they would be of the greatest possible profit to the world. If reason cannot explain why this should happen, how can reason explain what does or does not happen to these men after they have been cut off?

The simplest faiths are best, not merely because they are simple, but because they are comforting and ennobling. They help, whereas lack of faith hinders. Far better, surely, to die confident of life to come than to die in despair. And far better than all the arguments in favour of nothingness after death must be the symbols of the wings and the harps and the music, since they serve to uplift mankind rather than to crush mankind down.