The problem of uniting the invisible and visible worlds presented itself under three principal aspects. The first was the problem of creation, or how the invisible Primal Cause could ever come in contact with visible matter and impart to it form and meaning. The second problem was the relation between God and the individual soul. The third problem was the return of the soul from the visible to the invisible world, from the prison of its mortal body to the freedom of a heavenly paradise. The individual soul as dwelling in a material body forms part of the created world, and the question of the return of the soul to God is therefore closely connected with that of its creation by, or its emanation from, God. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ When the original oneness of earth and heaven, of the human and the divine natures, has once been discovered, the question of the return of the soul to God assumes a new character. It is no longer a question of an ascension to heaven, an approach to the throne of God, an ecstatic vision of God, and a life in a heavenly Paradise. The vision of God is rather the knowledge of the divine element in the soul, and of the consubstantiality of the divine and human natures. Immortality has no longer to be asserted, because there can be no death for what is divine, and therefore immortal, in man. There is life eternal and peace eternal for all who feel the divine Spirit as dwelling within them, and have thus become the children of God. _Gifford Lectures, IV._ No doubt the soul must find it difficult in childhood to accustom itself to the human body, and it takes many years before it is quite at home. Then for a time all goes well, and the soul hardly knows it is hidden in a strange garment till the body begins to be weakly, and can no longer do all the soul wishes, and presses it everywhere, so that the soul appears to lose all outward freedom and movement. Then one can well understand that we long to be gone, and death is a true deliverance. God always knows best when the right time comes. _Life._ Let us remember that we do not know what the soul was before this life--nay, even what it was during the first years of our childhood. Yet we believe on very fair evidence that what we call our soul existed from the moment of our birth. What ground have we, then, to doubt that it was even before that moment? To ascribe to the soul a beginning on our birthday would be the same as to claim for it an end on the day of our death, for whatever has a beginning has an end. If then, in the absence of any other means of knowledge, we may take refuge in analogy, might we not say that it will be with the soul hereafter as it has been here, and that the soul after its earthly setting will rise again, much as it rose here? This is not a syllogism, it is analogy, and in a cosmos like ours analogy has a right to claim some weight, in the absence of any proof to the contrary. _Last Essays._