If a man shall tell me there is no hereafter, that death ends all, I shall take up the law of induction and argue him to a standstill along the line of unfathomable mysteries and inexplicable psychological phenomena in the constitution of man, and the inexplicable absence of the phenomena in the state of death, inexplicable upon any known materialistic ground, and I shall laugh at his inability to maintain his thesis beyond the poor shred of a hypothesis. If a man shall tell me as the result of pure reasoning that he concludes for the endless existence of the soul after death, and shall do this even upon the plane of induction, I shall turn and tell him that all his argument is based upon inference and not fact, finding its largest emphasis in the region of the unknowable and guessable--in the things he cannot explain, where certain conclusions can neither be successfully affirmed, nor successfully denied, and where, by consequence, he may console himself, if he wish, with his side of the guess; and I shall feel a keen sense of sorrow at his inability to hold his premise in the final region of the sure. And what does all this mean? Is it playing fast and loose with the mind? Am I turning in upon myself and playing the mere harlequin in the arena of mental gymnastics? No! there is sane meaning to this double method--it is this: _as much may be said along one line of reasoning as the other_. Each is a _non-sequitur_ to the other. Each negatives the other and leaves us with reason's torch inverted--the light out, the darkness deeper than ever; and standing on the threshold of the grave we are forced to cry out in the sharp agony of a continual self-smiting perplexity: "To be or not to be--_that is the question_." Question it is--always a question--always coming back from the side of every dead body--always coming back from the clod-filled grave-- coming down from age to age, coming back a question no man, not the wisest mere man who ever lived, could answer, or any living wise man can answer to-day. If Jesus Christ were not God it cannot be answered; for if Jesus Christ were not God, he did not rise from the dead and by divine power carry himself out of the region of death forever. If Jesus Christ were not God, you may go and sit by the tomb of your dead and weep bitter (because hopeless) tears. If Jesus Christ were not God, then he was not a redeemer and saviour. All the beautiful things that have been taught about him as such are false. All the hopes of heaven, the beauty of the celestial city, the tree of life, the river of crystal, the company of the saints, the arch-angelic song, the meeting and the knowing of those who long ago have left us--none of these things are so. If he were not God, then it is not true that he sits upon the throne, high and lifted up, listening to the plaints of the weakest heart that shall trust him, and hearing the sound of every falling tear.