Eventually, it may be found that the thing which at one time seemed likely to destroy man's belief in immortality, namely, scientific research and investigation, will become the great factor in causing the minds of people to return to a belief in it, or something more than a belief; because the scientific mind of the present time is waking to the fact that the material world is not all; that there are forces, powers, at work in the universe which transcend all material things.

The question of the present is not, What is matter? but, What is Spirit? When we have answered the last question we shall have the key to the first, because we can not know in reality what an effect is without knowing something of the cause; and when we know the cause of any given effect, we shall be better able to understand the effect. Scientific thought and investigation have done much in the arrangement and classification of form, but they have gone nearly as far in that direction as it is possible to go, and are taking up, and will take up to a still greater degree, the things that are supersensuous.

Conservation of force and the indestructibility of matter tend to show that in the great economy of nature nothing is ever lost. We see people walking about on this earth endowed with animating life and physical form, and we assert that not one atom of these forms can cease to be, nor one particle of energy be lost. We are conscious of an intelligence controlling and directing the physical organism in every part, and everything leads us to believe that it is in all ways superior to the outer form. Scientifically, we are coming to know that this intelligence created or brought into existence and gave being to the very form which it now inhabits and controls.

The law of evolution goes to prove that for ages life has been tending from lower to higher stages - differentiation after differentiation taking place until in the fulness of time man appeared on the earth. At any stage in evolution we shall find intelligence displayed in the construction of form, this intelligence ever tending to adapt the form to the requirements of its environments.

Is it logical, is it scientific, to say that with the passing of the form this intelligence ceases to be, or becomes dissipated? Of course some may retort that as the physical form becomes dissipated, why not the intelligence? But for that matter, there is dissipation and renewal of the physical form taking place all through the life of man, and yet greater intelligence is constantly evolving, and what takes place at the so-called death is only dissipation in a greater degree. Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that the minds of people are often clear and active when the life of the body is nearly gone.

The people who would have us believe that this little span of life is the beginning and end of all, and that the physical brain is the mind of man, often bring up such illustrations as an injury to the brain, a fracture of the skull, or something of the kind, interfering with mental action; and these they think tend to prove conclusively that with the entire destruction of the brain comes the entire destruction of mind. Again, they have cited the circumstances where the skull has been trepanned and there has been a return of thought and reason. This, instead of tending to prove their case, in reality proves the reverse. It shows that the mind requires a perfect instrument through which to work, and when that instrument has been damaged it can no longer function in a proper way; but with a return to normal conditions it again resumes its natural activities. It would not be possible to enumerate the cases of people who, while in a state of trance, where physical animation was almost entirely suspended (so much so that attendants could not tell whether life was entirely extinct or not), when the life-principle returned to the body, have recounted many and varied experiences through which they passed during the interval while in trance.

Surely, this could not have been the result of any physical brain-action. If we had no greater proof of life after the passing away of the physical form than this, such testimony should go a long way toward establishing it. Again, there are the many cases of people who have recovered from severe sickness and who, while apparently suffering, have not been conscious of that suffering, but have had a marked consciousness of things other than this world. Of course the advocate of materialism will declare that such things were the hallucinations of a weakened or diseased brain.

The great trouble with the skeptics and agnostics, who array themselves in opposition to the thought of continued life, is that they are not honest in being unwilling to examine into the facts of the case, or else, if doing so, arrogate to themselves an arbitrary way of reaching their conclusions. They can bring no proof which will in any way tend to substantiate their own views, but only dogmatic assertions that the people who believe in immortality are either knaves or fools, and that they have no reasonable grounds whatever for their belief. It is folly to quote Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, Paul, Swedenborg, or any other great mind that has ever lived on the planet. If an angel from heaven should appear, he would not be able to change their conceited arro-gancy; what other people have known, believed, and taught they declare to have been all false; in fact, they believe that they know everything. Wherever a great scientific mind, like Alfred Russell Wallace or Camille Flammarion, takes up the study of the more spiritual side of life and considers it in an unprejudiced way, it becomes only a question of time when his investigations lead him to believe in and accept the thought of immortality.

The orthodox Christian ideas of immortality are both vague and unsatisfactory. Their particular regulations for the continued existence of those who accept what they are pleased to term the Christian faith and those who reject it, are neither in accord with the teachings of Jesus nor His immediate followers. In their blindness they misconstrue parable and allegory, thus getting meanings that were never intended, and sending the Pharisees to a heaven of everlasting bliss, while the publicans are doomed to eternal punishment.