attributed to another place, "All hope abandon ye who enter here." That, after all, is only a more emphatic way of stating what Christ Himself laid down as the path by which man should attain; that only those namely who were ready to lose life should find it. And I rather question whether our Christian individualists have, up till now, been honestly prepared to "lose life" in the full sense, without condition or reserve, and whether, (if they have not), they have yet attained the spiritual standpoint necessary to bring them within the terms of the promise.
So far I have dealt with the doctrine of immortality as presented to us from the individualistic basis alone. But, in some form or another, the doctrine of immortality belongs to many religions and schools (indeed, one might almost say to all) and has, therefore, most varied and even contradictory meanings attached to it. In some schools, as we have seen, it sets great store on the survival of the individual; in others individuality is held to be of small account—a diminishing rather than a persistent factor in the ultimate ends of life viewed as a whole.
I remember in that connection discussing with the late Father George Tyrrell, in the days before Rome's excommunication fell on him, the divergent views as to immortality of Christianity and Buddhism; and at that time he held that the superiority of the Christian faith lay in its insistence on the personal
