Immortality and the Modern Mind

Had the Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality been in existence in the eighteenth century there would probably have been, in the New England world which found its centre in Harvard College, but few to question the importance of the subject or to doubt the right approach to it. Men of true piety and sound learning unhesitatingly held that the authoritative revelation of Scripture justified the expectation that after death they would retain or recover all the characteristics of their individual lives. But by the end of the nineteenth century when the Lecture was founded a rapid change had set in. Men were no longer convinced that the writers of Scripture knew more about a future life than they did themselves. Historical criticism began to suggest that writers who were far from infallible in their descriptions of the past were not wholly to be trusted in their prognostications of the future. The change, however, was made quietly. When confronted with the problem in the pulpit or in the lecture-room speakers passed bravely but silently on.