The Destiny of the Soul
A critical history of the doctrine of a future life. By William Rounseville Alger. Tenth edition, 1878, with six new chapters, and a complete bibliography of the subject comprising 4977 books, compiled by Ezra Abbot. Alger’s book is accessible for nearly everyone and in some measure, intense.
“If all experienced good and evil wholly terminate for us when we die, still, every intrinsic reason which, on the supposition of immortality, makes wisdom better than folly, industry better than sloth, righteousness better than iniquity, benevolence and purity better than hatred and corruption, also makes them equally preferable while they last. Even if the philosopher and the idiot, the religious philanthropist and the brutal pirate, did die alike, who would not rather live like the sage and the saint than like the fool and the felon? Shall heaven be held before man simply as a piece of meat before a hungry dog to make him jump well? It is a shocking perversion of the grandest doctrine of faith. Let the theory of annihilation assume its direst phase, still, our perception of principles, our consciousness of sentiments, our sense of moral loyalty, are not dissolved, but will hold us firmly to every noble duty until we ourselves flow into the dissolving abyss. But some one may say, “If I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me if the dead rise not?” It advantageth you every thing until you are dead, although there be nothing afterwards. As long as you live, is it not glory and reward enough to have conquered the beasts at Ephesus? This is sufficient reply to the unbelieving flouters at the moral law. And, as an unanswerable refutation of the feeble whine of sentimentality that without immortal endurance nothing is worth our affection, let great Shakspeare advance, with his matchless depth of bold insight reversing the conclusion, and pronouncing, in tones of cordial solidity,--
“This, thou perceivest, will make thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”