THE FUTURE LIFE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3120, 28 June 1881, Page 3

THE FUTURE LIFE.

What Science has Discoveeed.—The

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Yeai'3 ago, in the days of Bishop Butler, Very muoli stress was laid upon the analogies in nature illustrating and supporting the idea ot' a future life, and the treatises then written were models of intellectual power , and patient research. A great impression was produced, not only upon uneducated but educated minds. Since that period science has progressed with giant strides, and at every step has so largely added to the list of striking analogies or incidental proofs that the illustrations of early date seem few in number and dwarfed in proportion and force. The idea of an unseen immaterial existence involves also the idea of unseen activities and coi'respondences in in the rayless realms. The most stolid of us cannot fail to be impressed with the beautiful analogies which recent scientific discovery affords. Do we not every day converse with unseen friends a long distance away ? Do we not recognize their familiar voices in homes separated from us by rivers, woods and mountains ? These voices come out of the darkness, guided by a frail wire which science provides as a pathway. Even the curtain of night is drawn about us, the voices are heard, and we have not the shadow of a doubt of their integrity and identity. And further, have we not analogies of sight which stai tie us by their significance ? Is it not true that when abroad we are open to the view of unseen observers long distances from iis, and our every act and movement known ? The excellence of optical instruments is such that we have seen the motion of lips of persons in conversation while sitting on a house balcony three miles distant, the observed, of course, wholly unconscious of being seen by any one. If our friends in this life, dead to us (hidden as they are by the shroud of space), can be seen, and- we can hear their voices, their shouts of laughter, the words of the hymns they sing, the cries of the little ones in the mother's arms, is it very absurd to anticipate a time when those dead to us by the dissolution of the body may, by some unknown telephony, send to us voices from a realm close at hand, but hidden from mortal vision ? We have no proofs to offer that this realm of the departed, this home of the soul, is close at hand, but it is certainly more reasonable to adopt this hypothesis than the popular one of a material world or place, somewhere afar off in the depths of space. One view seems possible, the other absurd.—Boston Journal of Chemistry.