Produced by Edmund Dejowski THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL. A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE, BY WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER. TENTH EDITION, WITH SIX NEW CHAPTERS, AND A Complete Bibliography of the Subject. [Note: bibliography not included here] COMPRISING 4977 BOOKS RELATING TO THE NATURE, ORIGIN, AND DESTINY OF THE SOUL. THE TITLES CLASSIFIED AND ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH NOTES, AND INDEXES OF THE AUTHORS AND SUBJECTS. BY EZRA ABBOT, PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION IN THE DIVINITY SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1880 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts. Copyright 1878, W.R. Alger ELECTROTYPED BY JOHNSON & CO., PHILADA. University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. PREFACE TO THE TENTH EDITION. THIS work has passed through nine editions, and has been out of print now for nearly a year. During the twenty years which have elapsed since it was written, the question of immortality, the faith and opinions of men and the drift of criticism and doubt concerning it, have been a subject of dominant interest to me, and have occupied a large space in my reading and reflection. Accordingly, now that my publisher, moved by the constant demand for the volume, urges the preparation of a new edition introducing such additional materials as my continued researches have gathered or constructed, I gladly comply with his request. The present work is not only historic but it is also polemic; polemic, however, not in the spirit or interest of any party or conventicle, but in the spirit and interest of science and humanity. Orthodoxy insists on doctrines whose irrationality in their current forms is such that they can never be a basis for the union of all men. Therefore, to discredit these, in preparation for more reasonable and auspicious views, is a service to the whole human race. This is my justification for the controversial quality which may frequently strike the reader.