“the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit” that here are the words of eternal life, and the character which alone in history is absolutely flawless, then it is natural for us to believe that there has been, at that point of time, an Incarnation of the Word of God Himself.  That the revelation of Christ is an absolute revelation, is a dogmatic statement which, strictly speaking, only the Absolute could make.  What we mean by it is that after two thousand years we are unable to conceive of its being ever superseded in any particular.  And if anyone finds this inadequate, he may be invited to explain what higher degree of certainty is within our reach.  With regard to the future life, the same consideration may help us to understand why the Church has clung to the belief in a literal second coming of Christ to pronounce the dooms of all mankind.  But our Lord Himself has taught us that in “that day and that hour” lies hidden a more inscrutable mystery than even He Himself, as man, could reveal.

There is one other point on which I wish to make my position clear.  The fact that human love or sympathy is the guide who conducts us to the heart of life, revealing to us God and Nature and ourselves, is proof that part of our life is bound up with the life of the world, and that if we live in these our true relations we shall not entirely die so long as human beings remain alive upon this earth.  The progress of the race, the diminution of sin and misery, the advancing kingdom of Christ on earth,—­these are matters in which we have a personal interest.  The strong desire that we feel—­and the best of us feel it most strongly—­that the human race may be better, wiser, and happier in the future than they are now or have been in the past, is neither due to a false association of ideas, nor to pure unselfishness.  There is a sense in which death would not be the end of everything for us, even though in this life only we had hope in Christ.

But when this comforting and inspiring thought is made to form the basis of a new Chiliasm—­a belief in a millennium of perfected humanity on this earth, and when this belief is substituted for the Christian belief in an eternal life beyond our bourne of time and place, it is necessary to protest that this belief entirely fails to satisfy the legitimate hopes of the human race, that it is bad philosophy, and that it is flatly contrary to what science tells us of the destiny of the world and of mankind.  The human spirit beats against the bars of space and time themselves, and could never be satisfied with any earthly utopia.  Our true home must be in some higher sphere of existence, above the contradictions which make it impossible for us to believe that time and space are ultimate realities, and out of reach of the inevitable catastrophe which the next glacial age must bring upon the human race.[406] This world of space and time is to resemble heaven as far as it can; but a fixed limit is set to the amount of