We eat the kernel and throw away the shell. IV. Our most Implicit Faith in the Continuity of Life remains.—We have no more confidence in Materialism than we have in Atheism. We believe that some men at least are immortal—that the intellectual and moral giants should be blotted out at death is unthinkable. We find in this doctrine of a future state much that has a moral tendency. It inspires self-respect and esteem. It leads to a proper appreciation of humanity. It inspires hope for the future. It affords comfort in bereavement. It furnishes a proper motive for aspiration and progress. When we consider the millions of years that have been employed in bringing man to his present high estate, it is rational to assume that a capacity for such immense progress is good ground for faith in still greater progress, so that there shall be no end to the advancement and attainments of humanity. If primitive man was not immortal, there may have been a time when he became immortal, just as there is a time when the embryo becomes a conscious, breathing babe, and when the undeveloped child begins to exercise the functions of rationality and becomes an accountable being. It is not true that even the extreme Darwinian doctrine is necessarily opposed to the doctrine of a future life for man. On the contrary, its fundamental principles suggest the hypothesis of immortality. If the “conservation of energy” is a true principle of science, it favors the faith of man in the doctrine of a future life. Greatness and goodness developed in man must be “conserved,” and how can it be done if death is a destroyer? The “persistency of force” in the human personality must at least be equal to the primary elements which environ that personality. Is it rational to suppose that the sweep of evolution which has brought man from such unfathomable depths will not carry him up to still more illimitable heights? Are these vast achievements of Nature to be so un-thriftily wasted? Do not the products of a past eternity point unmistakably to still greater things in an eternity to come? And, then, does not the scientific doctrine of the “indestructibility of matter” favor the belief in life after death?