STUDY VIII. MAN AND HIS RELATIONSHIPS. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (1 Pet. i. 3-5.) "Concerning which salvation the prophets sought and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you.” (1 Pet. i. 10.) "And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." (John xvii. 3.) "But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him." (Rom. vi. 8) PART VIL CAN WE ACCEPT THE IDEA OF THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY?1 SERIOUS arguments have been advanced against the belief in immortality. The first is that of the evolutionist, who holds that all life is a flux. Nothing is permanent or abiding, but all things are becoming. Man is simply a temporary. stage in a long process. There is no reason to believe that man, one of the most insignificant beings in this cosmic process, should be singled out for preservation. This argument tries to bully us by the preponderance of physical force. It is a purely quantitative argument. Men will no longer be browbeaten by such fallacious logic. Even though man is small as to quantity, he is supreme as to quality. Furthermore, if evolution is going anywhere, it must have a goal. There must be a residuum. It would be pure chaos, a senseless process, that eternally threw away all it produced. Man is acknowledged as the highest product of this process of the centuries; and if he is to be thrown away after a few centuries or eons, what is the reason or sense of the whole 1Cf. the author's "Personal Elements in Religious Life," Chapter process? If the universe is reasonable, surely there must be some permanent element which gives value to the process. Even the evolutionist needs the conception of immortality to save his theory from utter chaos. Again, it has been argued by the psychologist that thought is a mere function of the brain and that when the brain decays the thought is snuffed out. Thought being a central element in personality, the decay of the brain would mean personal extinction. But this is a gratuitous assumption. No psychologist has ever proved that thought is a function of the brain. It is far easier to prove that thought uses the brain as its instrument and that, when the agent is worn out, the agency may find other means of expression. There is no proof on either side, hence the psychologist who thinks that thought is a function of the brain is no more to be trusted than the psychologist who holds that the brain is the mere instrument of thought. If psychology cannot prove immortality, it just as surely cannot disprove it. The third argument, which we have noticed before in our discussion of Positivism, claims that it is evil and selfish to be thinking all the time about our own personal existence in the future. They hold that it is a mere offering of a prize, as in a high school. But we cannot see it thus. Immortality is not a prize for a good life, but it is really a chance to make the life good. We make a small start toward the development of character, and then death cuts our career short. If there be no chance to continue the growing process, what good has the struggle been? We are foreordained to failure before we start, and we had just as well not start at all. No man would start to be a philosopher if he knew that all reasoning power would be taken from him at the end of the first day. In order to make our struggle for character rational, we must conclude that there is a chance to continue the task. The conception of immortality rests ultimately on the fact of God. Having a good God, who created us, we cannot believe that he will cast us aside just as we are beginning to grow into character capable of having fellowship with him. Man being what he is and God being a loving Father, we cannot escape the belief in a continued personal existence, STUDY IX. CAN THE MODERN MAN PRAY? "But Jehovah sent out a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god; and they cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it unto them. But Jonah was gone down into the innermost parts of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep. So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not." (Jonah i. 4-6.) "And the tidings reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he made proclamation and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed, nor drink water; but let them be covered with sackcloth, both man and beast, and let them cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knoweth whether God will not turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?" (Jonah iii. 6-9.) "Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon. Then the satraps, the deputies, and the governors, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, were gathered together unto the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. Then the herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up." (Dan. iii. I, 3-5.) PART I. THE UNIVERSALITY OF PRAYER. MANY thoughtful people are much troubled about prayer. Some have dropped the habit of prayer and return to it only in hours of stress and strain. Others continue the habit, but have grave doubts as to its efficacy. A Christian worker recently came and asked the bold question: "Do you think the modern man of thought can consistently continue to pray? 7?" We must try to answer this. First, I reminded my Christian friend that all men do |