Consciousness and Personality [pp. 273-287]

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PERSONA LIT Y.
oxysms of grief there was not an utterance that indicated sympathy or pity, but only an indignant sense of personal loss and
wrong. Is there anything in such love that ought to-live, that
could live? But if love has been unselfish; if it has mounted
to God, thence refluent earthward; if it has loved kindred and
friends in him, and him in them, why should it die? Why
should it not flow on through the years of separation, to be con:summated when those who lived together here shall be united
in the same apartment of the many-roomed house on high?
In conclusion, our philosophy concurs with Christian faith in
postulating a personal immortality; that is, the immortality of
whatever in man is God-breathed and is thus brought into harmony with all else that is God-breathed. Consciousness can
discriminate without error between what is merely individual and
what is truly personal. The personal alone belongs to the God-born, undying soul. All else may perish; that, if it be, will be
forever. Can it fail to be in any man? or can it die out before
the man seems to die? We know not; but the bare possibility
-may well blend the voice of philosophy with that of the Divine
Teacher and Saviour, "What is a man profited, if he shall gain
the whole world and lose his own soul?"
ANDREW P. PEABODY.
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