De Bary, Richard B.

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NEW VISTAS OF IMMORTALITY.BY THE REV. RICHARD B. DE BARY.^^\T ISTAS" is the fitting word for describing the latest revela-V tions of science from the viewpoint of religion. Not everyone perhaps has remarked the startling similarity between thesevistas of science and the latest amended conceptions of the signifi-cance of Christ's doctrine of the heavenly sovereignty, of the Father-hood of God, of his own unique claim of sonship, and of the destinyof humanity.In Dr. William Osier's Ingersoll lecture on "Science and Im-mortality," surprise was expressed that science, "knowing nothing ofan immortality of spirit" should have "put on an immortality of theflesh." But amid the revolutionary discoveries of current physicsand biology it is precisely this conception of a reversionary immor-tality which makes the scientific vista and the teaching of Christalmost identical.A brief survey of the amended conception of scholars,' aboutChrist's teaching, compared with the most recent scientific views onmatter, energy, and life, will make this point clear:1. God is Father to man, Christ taught, through reversion:through a "subtracting from" rather than by an "adding to," humannature. This view, it will be noted, afifords sanction to Words-worth's dictum," by grace divineO Nature, we are thine!"2. Christ always implied that he was the unique son of God,in the sense that he alone had experienced "naturally" a reversionto the Origin of life. This "intimacy with the Father" was thus.to him, the "natural order." His sonship was unique and natural.3. Christ knew that other men had not experienced this naturalreversion to their Father, the Origin of their being. An alien and* G. Dalman, N. Schmidt etc.754 THE OPEN COURT.evil power separated them from him. Their "Father" was unknown.Christ undertook the mission of removing, of taking away, of "sub-tracting" this evil and alien power. The result was conversion,that is, reversion by his own personal initiative—by divine grace.4. Physical nature, including the stars, was the "heavenly sov-ereignty," the kingdom prepared from the beginning, into whichhe who strictly disciplined himself should enter, or towards whichhe should revert ; but "in possession," that is, constructively ratherthan destructively.The voice of the people, it may be added, has gone further thanDr. Osier in making the most material of all objects, namely thestars, the true symbol of immortality. Dr. Osier stated in a popularform the conclusions of August Weismann that life was naturallyimmortal, death being an accident incidental to the evolution ofmany-celled animal life, and the single-celled animals experiencingno death in the normal sense of the word. More radical still thanthis was Christ's teaching that the coming of the divine sovereigntywas man's reversion, maintaining his individuality, to the stellaruniverse ; or, might we say, the possession of the kingdom wasthe absorption of life by morality and through faith, hope and love,not into the reputed "higher" or metaphysical sphere, but into thereputed "lower" or physical sphere, with the one single new phasethat in this reversion to the physical individuality was preserved.A few years ago the statement of this view would have soundedtoo absurd to need consideration. A brief survey, however, of themost modern conceptions of science will show that the gospel merelystates religiously what physics and biology imply scientifically inthe vistas of life that these sciences now afford.It is noteworthy that the more radical the investigators areand the more they eschew the metaphysical, the more substantialsupport they apparently give to the view of a divine reversiontowards immortality.1. In physics, J. J. Thomson, Rutherford, and Soddy—in factevery leading physicist, carrying on the noble line of mathematicalconceptions of Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz—openly admit a par-allel to the stellar universe in the composition of matter itself andof its atoms. There is here both the parallel gravitational or direc-tive force, and the parallel radiating or expressive force to thatwhich reigns in the stars.2. In biology the radical views of Professors Loeb and Mat-thews are now well known. Life, says Prof. Albert Matthews, inbrief, is a ferment in which the directive force called the "differenceNEW VISTAS OF IMMORTALITY. 755of potential energy" becomes operative in cells and complexes ofcells. First of all this sounds shockingly materialistic, but on morecareful inspection the same vista recurs of reversion to "steller"immortality within the individual.In evolutionary studies a recent noted work on Evolution byAtrophy stated that there were actual multicellular organisms re-puted among the "dying" which had "degenerated into immortality,"that is, reverted into the natural immortality of the unicellularorganisms.3. In psychology and psychical research the significance of thefact should be noted that the so-called psychic phenomena have beenclearly identified with protoplasmic activities of the brain and nervecells. Prof. S. N. Patten recently showed the importance of thefact that the germ cells in their extreme responsiveness and adap-tivity have more extraordinary powers than any other more special-ized cells. Loeb himself admits that brain and nerve cells retain theoriginal powers of the unicellular organisms. Since "personality"may be physically defined as a specific tuning of memory waves,why may not each man possess a manifold existence among thememory cells of all those whom his personality has influenced? Ingenuine modern science there are no metaphorical, only real exist-ences, nor are considerations of "great" or "small" to be accountedphilosophical. In the shrine of our memories therefore the deceasedmay really live. The attuned memory waves are the person of thedeceased, and in no mere pleasantry of speech or metaphor.Again, may not each vital memory, say of the deceased indi-vidual A, itself retain the wave rhythms of all whom A himselfknew,—say his parents—but whom his living friend did not know?A goal to evolution on the vista of the psychical might thenbe set as the reversion of humanity to the complete consciousnessof all its vital memories, with the corresponding emergence of theseindividualized memories into a new consciousness which would beequivalent to a resurrection.Since it is now admitted that directive force is as universal inatomic existence and in cellular life as it is admittedly also universalin the stellar universe under the name of gravitation; and sincedirective force and gravitation are both manifestations of the samesingle law of the "difference of potential of energy," it becomes con-ceivably within the reach of mathematical demonstration that thegoal of humanity is the reversion to a state of exact counterpartto the stellar equilibrium of forces, but interrelated in individualcareers. Would not such a reversion be identical with Christ's con-756 THE OPEN COURT.ception of a heavenly sovereignty towards the possession of whichhumanity tended as to its birthright?The ministry of Christ in the world from this viewpoint wouldwould not lie in "adding to" humanity, an idea which is incon-ceivable to evolution ; but in "subtracting from" humanity an evilinfluence, or power, which blocked its reversion into these immortalways. Christ's teaching of God's universal Fatherhood cannotcoincide with any other view of "conversion" than that includedin this conception of a "restoration to nature." The new vistas oflife revealed by science, no less than Christ's own intensely piousregard for the kingdom of nature, both call for a new reverenceon the religious man's part for the physical world. The physicaltruth of things is not only not evil, but rightly interpreted, it be-comes the "heavenly sovereignty" itself, the reign of the stars inindividual life. The discovery, lamented over by Dr. Osier, thatthe physical alone was immortal, was in truth then, a good auguryof the advent of the kingdom of heaven. Unless the spirit of manenters into the immortality of the physical world, it cannot see norpossess the heavenly sovereignty of God ; for this is nothing elsebut the eternal law of give and take in the cosmos.

New Vistas of Immortality.

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New Vistas of Immortality.

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