If a
human being has technical, literary, musical, or other
tendencies, they are an essential part of his character, and to
survive without them would be to lose his identity and to become
an entirely different man. They must therefore survive death if
personality is to be maintained. But it is no use their
surviving unless they can find means of expression, and means of
expression seem to require certain material agents, and also a
discriminating audience. So also the sense of modesty among
civilised races has become part of our very selves, and implies
some covering of our forms if personality is to continue. Our
desires and sympathies would prompt us to live with those we
love, which implies something in the nature of a house, while the
human need for mental rest and privacy would predicate the
existence of separate rooms. Thus, merely starting from the
basis of the continuity of personality one might, even without
the revelation from the beyond, have built up some such
system by the use of pure reason and deduction.
So far as the existence of this land of happiness goes, it
would seem to have been more fully proved than any other
religious conception within our knowledge.
It may very reasonably be asked, how far this precise
description of life beyond the grave is my own conception, and
how far it has been accepted by the greater minds who have
studied this subject? I would answer, that it is my own
conclusion as gathered from a very large amount of existing
testimony, and that in its main lines it has for many years been
accepted by those great numbers of silent active workers all over
the world, who look upon this matter from a strictly religious
point of view.
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