12. The Immortality of Man.

 

I. “God created man incorruptible” (Wisd. ii. 23). It is a great wonder and a great privilege that one of the creatures of this material transient universe should be raised to immortality. This is the crown of the highest creature. Nothing more could be given than immortality of supernatural life with God. As man is raised to this, he is evidently the last term of creation; nothing higher remains to be evolved. The soul is bestowed directly by God on man; He “breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. ii. 7). This alone can account for the rational soul; for everything must have an adequate cause; life can proceed only from life, as science tells us; so intelligence can proceed only from intelligence. Matter can no more generate mind than the inorganic can generate organic life. As one modification always produces others (by the law of correlation of parts), so the special mode of communication of the soul involves the further likeness to God of the soul being separable from this body and immortal. The immortality of man brings the whole of being into relation in one great chain. Without this the universe would be a mere by-product, with no sufficient raison d’être, ending in nothing as it began in nothing. The obvious gap in the series of existence, the obvious need of an immortal class of creatures, proves that such a class must exist. Thank God for raising you to such dignity.

II. Man’s aptitude for immortality and craving for it prove that he possesses it; for it is a law of biology that no healthy appetite exists without there being provision for its satisfaction. Nothing less than immortality can satisfy the demands of human nature. None are fully satisfied with this life; all are disappointed; none have had their fill, few have had their fair share. Our capacities are beyond all that is given to them here. If this life were all, our desires, by all analogy, would be amply satisfied with what it contains. So it is with the animals; they aspire to no more, they are fit for no more, and they get no more than this world affords. But man! However much he has, he always looks for more; for more of knowledge, of truth, of love, of friendship, of justice, of goodness, of enjoyment, of activity; and among the more highly developed of mankind there is the craving for the Infinite God Himself. Without immortality to complete us, the most successful life on earth would be no more than a miserable failure—a mocking cruelty, an insoluble enigma. The Christian hope alone explains all things and satisfies us.

III. In nature, though all decays, no single atom or energy ever perishes; they are conserved, transmuted, and transmitted for millions of years without loss. Man dies: i.e. his body ceases to act, and is separated into its components, which enter into new combinations. But there is in him a force, a source of force, even a creative force, higher in kind than all the cosmic forces. An energy so noble must be more than the sun’s rays, which fell upon this earth millions of years ago, and which remain locked up in the coal-beds till brought forth by us to start on a new course of active energy. The soul must endure in a better way than the particles of its subject body, which continue with all their chemical and molecular energies for ever. It cannot be that the noblest element in the universe is the only one to perish at once and utterly. All nature returns to God in man. The forces of this earth are concentrated on the support and development of man, sustaining the body while the soul works out its destiny. Physical energies subserve intellectual energies, and they in turn are the material of the spiritual energy which rises to its completion in God. The results of all creation will abide for ever in that transmuted form. All here passes, but not unprofitably. It will never be as if the world had never been.