Man's Dream Of Immortality And What It Has Done For Him

MAN'S DREAM OF IMMORTALITY AND WHAT IT HAS DONE FOR HIM

By Rev. HENRY FRANK of New York

The dream of immortality has retarded the progress and growth of the human race quite as much as it has helped it toward higher planes.

A MERELY PRESUMPTIVE BELIEF IN AN AFTER LIFE, UNSUPPORTED BY SCIENTIFIC CORROBORATION, HAS IN ALL AGES RESULTED IN MORAL DEPLETION AND MENTAL RETROGRESSION.

Any belief in immortality that detracts the attention of men from the practical duties of this life, through a hope of reward and fear of punishment in an after life based on the ipse dixit of alleged supernatural authority, MAKES MORAL COWARDS AND INTELLECTUAL SLAVES OF MANKIND AND IS A POSITIVE AND UNMITIGATED CURSE TO THE RACE, inasmuch as it makes men indifferent to mental, moral and physical conditions.

But if we are to have a paradise in the life beyond, and we wish to know it, why not have a foretaste here by exalting the moral ideals of the race and removing every social, industrial and political obstacle from the path of human progress?