Article May 27, 1905 Issue

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with contributions from F. S. Hoffman, James M. Campbell

If we grant the goodness of God, then the endless life of man follows as a necessary corollary. For if God is infinitely wise and good, He will not annihilate man at death, cutting him off in the infancy of his powers. The reason and conscience in God will find their permanent expression in the reason and conscience of man. God will seek in man, possessed to some extent of like powers with Himself, perpetual fellowship. For man is continually finding himself able, with ever increasing approximation to the truth, to "think the thoughts of God after Him."

This implies that the human and divine have, to some extent, a common nature; just as man's power, partially at least, to transcend in thought the temporal, implies some relation to the eternal. It is hard to see how any being thus capable of entering into ethical relationship with God could drop out of existence without occasioning a definite loss to God, leaving a void in His experience that no other being could fill.

Each finite human person is a unique ethical being of far more worth to God than he is to himself. No other creature can take just the place he takes in his relationship to God. The value of man is, therefore, beyond all human calculation, for he is not only derived from God and sustained by Him, but he is the reflex of His own infinite powers. How can we possibly regard death as the termination of this relationship? Must it rather not be a mere incident in the earthly system of things, of no significance outside the physical order with which alone it is concerned?

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