LIFE AFTER DEATH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 659, 22 February 1952, Page 5

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Sir,-The Basis of Man’s Belief in a Future Lite is the title of a series of talks you announced recently. "For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it" (Isaiah, 28, 20). This seems to apply to the opening affirmation of Professor Arnold Wall as printed in The Listener, viz.: "We do wrong to preoccupy ourselves with the question of survival after death in some place, or upon some other plane, of which we can know nothing, instead of devoting ourselves exclusively to the interests and duties of our life in this world and upon this plane, of which we are as certain as we can be of anything."

Place alongside this the statement of ~Professor Henry Wadsworti Longfellow, and compare: There ig no death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call death. "Future Life" seems to have misled Professor Wall. It is more correct to speak of the "other life," because natural life and spiritual life are lived together. The following paragraph will illustrate: "He started from a very low level, but climbed upward, rising at every step, till he reached the desired height, and from his elevated position he looked down on others less successful than himself." Notice that you cannot say whether a physical or a spiritual ascent is meant. Professor Wall does not display acquaintance with the literature available on the subject, and, more strangely perhaps, with the significance

of words.

STUDENT

(Auckland).

Sir,-I hope your controversy on life after death will not attract too much notice from correspondents like "The: Student" (Listenér, February 8). It is true, as he says, that there "is a science known as psychical research," but it is certainly not true that "survival has been scientifically proved.’ All, that has been shown is that there are certain phenomena for which, so far, no physical explanations have been found. Parapsychology is still very much in an experimental stage, and the men and women who carefully collect and examine ‘the data about "haunted’’ houses, seances and telepathic communication would. be the very last to claim that they have proved anything--except, perhaps, that here and there they have proved the existence of fraud. I am ready to agree that there are unsolved mysteries; I will even admit that human survival is a possibility. But there are no "proofs," and I doubt if there ever will be.

UNDER THE TABLE

(Wellington).