NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CCCCLXX. JANUARY, 1896. THE FUTURE LIFE AND THE CONDITION OF MAN THEREIN. BY THE RIGHT HONORABLE W. E. GLADSTONE. I.-OF A FUTURE LIFE. THE teaching of Bishop Butler with respect to a life beyond the grave divides itself under two heads. The first of these embraces the likelihoods which can be collected out of the "course of nature" with regard to the effect of death upon our existence. This is a physical or metaphysical, and in neither aspect a moral, discussion; it occupies the first chapter of the "Analogy." From its position on the threshold of the treatise, as well as from the nature of its topics, it has attracted much attention, and, it is fair to add, much criticism. There is, however, a larger strain of teaching, which pervades the work, but which for the most part is scattered piecemeal through it, as the opening up of the general argument into wider spaces gives occasion for its introduction. This relates not to the question whether we are barred by death from passing into another world, but to the prospects of man. in that other world; and in one part of the treatise it gives rise to a discussion not metaphysical but moral: which is also one of VOL. CLXII.-NO. 470. 1 Copyright, 1895, by LLOYD BRYCE. All rights reserved. |