The victory over death, then, which the Invisible King is said to achieve, does not consist in its abolition. It may probably be best defined as the perfect reconcilement of the believer to the extinction of his individual consciousness. And what are the grounds of that reconcilement? Let us search the scriptures. Where the steps are described by which the catechumen approaches the full realization of God, it is said that at that stage he feels that "if there were such a being he would supply the needed consolation and direction, his continuing purpose would knit together the scattered effort of life, _his immortality would take the sting from death_" (p. 21-22). A little further on, the idea is elaborated in a high strain of mysticism. God, who "captains us but does not coddle us" (p. 42), will by no means undertake to hold the believer scatheless among the pitfalls and perils that beset our earthly pilgrimage. "But God will be with you nevertheless. In the reeling aeroplane, or the dark ice-cave, God will be your courage. Though you suffer or are killed, it is not an end. He will be with you as you face death; he will die with you as he has died already countless myriads of brave deaths. He will come so close to you that at the last you will not know whether it is you or he who dies, and the present death will be swallowed up in his victory" (p. 39). The passage has already been quoted in which it is written that, at the end of the fight for God's Kingdom, "we are altogether taken up into his being" (p. 68). In a discussion of "the religion of atheists" we are told that unregenerate man is "acutely aware of himself as an individual and unawakened to himself as a species," wherefore he "finds death frustration." His mistake is in not seeing that his own frustration "may be the success and triumph of his kind" (p. 72). At the point where we are told that "the first purpose of God is the attainment of clear knowledge," we are further informed that "he will apprehend more fully as time goes on" the purpose to which this knowledge is to be applied. But already it is possible to define "the broad outlines" of his purpose. "It is the conquest of death; first the overcoming of death in the individual _by the incorporation of the motives of his life into an undying purpose_" (p. 99), and then, as we saw before, the defeat of the threatened extinction of life through the cooling of the planet. These, I think, are the chief texts bearing directly on this particular matter; but there is one other remark which must not be overlooked. "A convicted criminal, frankly penitent," we are told, "... may still die well and bravely on the gallows, to the glory of God. He may step straight from that death into the immortal being of God."