9. Therefore prayer offered with the community upon the sanctified ground of the house of God exerts a specially powerful influence upon the individual. In the silent chamber the oppressed spirit may find calm and composure in prayer; but the pure atmosphere of heavenly freedom and bliss is attained with overwhelming might only by the united worship of hundreds of devout adorers, which rings out like the roaring of majestic billows: “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.”(876) The familiar strains from days of yore touch the deep, long-silent chords of the heart, and awaken dormant sentiments and repressed thoughts, endowing the soul with new wings, to lift itself up toward God, the Father, from whom it had felt itself alienated. In the ardor of communal worship the traditional words of the prayer-book obtain invigorating power; the heart is newly strengthened; the covenant with heaven sealed anew. To such communal prayer, which springs from the heart, the rabbis refer the Biblical words, “to serve Him with the whole heart.”(877) The synagogal worship exerts an ennobling influence upon the spirit of the individual as well as that of the community. For after all the main object is that the soul which aspires toward God may learn to find God. “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him while He is near.”(878) No man is so poor as he who calls in agony: “O God!” and to whom neither the heaven above nor the heart within answers, “Behold, God is here.” Nor is any man so rich with all his possessions as he who realizes, like the Psalmist, that “the nearness of God is the true good,” and imbued with this thought exclaims, “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And beside Thee I desire none upon earth.”(879) Chapter XLIII. Death and the Future Life 1. The vision of man is directed upwards and forwards; he will not resign himself to decay in the dust like the beast. As he bears in his breast the consciousness of a higher divine world, he is equally confident of his own continuity after death. He cannot and will not believe that with the giving up of his last living breath his being would become dust like that of the animal; or that his soul, which has hitherto accomplished and planned so much, should now suddenly cease altogether to exist. The longing for a future life, however expressed, has filled him and buoyed him up since the very beginning of history. Even the most primitive tribe does not allow its dead to lie and rot like the carcasses of the beast, but lays them to rest in the grave with all their possessions, in the expectation that somewhere and somehow, under, over or beyond the earth, they will continue their lives, even in a better form than before.