When one once believes firmly in a continuation of existence that alone supplies our present life with an intelligible solution of all its questions and riddles, then a bit more or less enjoyment or pain during this short span of imperfect existence becomes more a matter of indifference, and much that was important before falls away from us as a form without meaning; while, if these thoughts are untrue, and if this is the only world, full as it is of injustices, sorrows, and passions, it is a simple impossibility to believe in a just and almighty God. Upon this single point, therefore, hangs our entire philosophy of life. To me, the continuation of existence is a certainty, but its form inconceivable; only it will be similar to our present life in its purest moments, and will surely be no sudden leap into a quite different spiritual condition, but a continuation, in which each man can receive only that for which he has become ripe here. The difference will therefore, perhaps, be smaller than is commonly thought. But the scientists are quite right in denying immortality to a soul that is simply a function of physical organs. Whatever in our nature can be comprehended by the methods of natural science can not possibly be immortal, but passes into annihilation, or rather into dissolution and change, just as surely as any other object in the physical world. But there is apparently something else in man besides bones, muscles, sinews, veins, and nerves, and this something else can be embodied again in some other form. And this seems to me relatively more conceivable than a sudden and complete annihilation of the spiritual life. Death, in itself, is therefore nothing terrible, nor even something undesirable, and whoever still fears it is certainly not yet upon the right path of life. The only fearful thing is the backward glance, when one is old, upon a life quite perverted and useless, or upon a great accumulation of guilt unforgiven. Not we shall pass away, but the present world shall pass away: this is the one great thought which must lift us above all the terrors of uncertainty. The other bright point in this darkness which the understanding alone can not illumine, is the thought that the Lord of all existence, whom we have already learned to know here as a sure friend, must be quite the same for us there also as he was here, only still nearer joined to us and still clearer known. His voice--and this all know who have once stood near the dark exit-gate of this life--his voice we shall be able to hear at last, when all else has already sunk away behind us. Then, only one step further, and “_I hope to see my pilot face to face, When I have crossed the bar._” VII. THE PROLEGOMENA OF CHRISTIANITY VII. THE PROLEGOMENA OF CHRISTIANITY