Abstract
It seems hardly possible that the doctrine of Immortality will always occupy the comparatively subordinate position to which it is usually relegated by religious thought. God, the world, and the individual give us the ultimate terms of all our highest thinking. And the last is in a special way privileged: for the thinker himself is an individual, whereas he is neither God nor the world. In the long run, if he is ignored, the very meaning on his religion will shrivel to nothing. If self-renunciation is made the one ground-principle of the religious life-if we are taught to regard the permanence of our very existence as secondary and unessential-then self, taught to despise its own selfhood, may with consistency despise all that that selfhood contains or bears: its growth, its aspirations, its conscience, its religion, Nothing can claim an eternal significance for a being that is not eternal. If we ignore the self-regarding impulses, we cannot consecrate them. And if we do not ignore them, then they can have but one goal, a personal standing in the eternal Kingdom of God.