The subject of eschatology is so vast that it is hopeless to deal with it, even in the most summary fashion, in one paragraph. It is usually said that the resurrection of the body is a Jewish doctrine, the immortality of the soul a Greek doctrine. But the Jews were very slow to bring the idea of a future life into their living faith; to this day it does not seem to be of much importance in Judaism. Some form of Millenarianism--a reign of the saints on earth--would seem to be the natural form for Jewish hopes to take. This belief, which was the earliest mould into which the treasure of the new revelation was poured, has never quite disappeared from the Church, and in times of excitement and upheaval it tends to reassert itself. The maturest Greek philosophy regards eternity as the divine mode of existence, while mortals are born, live, and die in time. Man is a microcosm, in touch with every rung of the ladder of existence; and he is potentially a 'participator' in the divine mode of existence, which he can make his own by living, so far as may be, in detachment from the vain shadows and perishable goods of earth. That this conception of immortality has had a great influence upon Christian thought and practice needs no demonstration. It is and always has been the religion of the mystic. But the Orphic tradition, with its pictures of purgatory and of eternal bliss and torment, has on the whole dominated the other two in popular Christian belief. It has been stripped of its accessories--the belief in reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, doctrines which maintain a somewhat uneasy existence within the scheme of the Neoplatonists. The picture of future retribution is even more terrifying without them. Both the philosophical and the popular beliefs about the other world are far more Greek than Jewish; but the attempt to hold these very discrepant beliefs together has reduced Christian eschatology to extreme confusion, and many Christians have given up the attempt to formulate any theories about what are called the four last things. On such a mysterious subject, definiteness is neither to be expected nor desired. The original Gospel does not encourage the natural curiosity of man to know his future fate; and the three types of eschatology which we have described have all their value as representing different aspects of religious faith and hope. We must after all confess the truth of St. Paul's words, that 'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things that God hath prepared for them that love him'. The same apostle reminds us that 'now we see through a mirror, in riddles, and know only in part'; the face to face vision, and the knowledge which unites the knower and the known, may be ours when we have finished our course. In these words, which recall Plato's famous myth of the Cave, St. Paul is fundamentally at one with the Platonists;