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Show DEATH. . What we call death is not annihilation, it is only a change of energy. Decay is simply the breaking up of life into new and more multiplied forms of life. The latest science recognizes at least nine different differ-ent forms of energy into which a single force may pass and repass without diminution or loss. That, of course, is the great discovery of modern science, that energy may be transformed from 0:10 body to another, but cann'.i be destroyed. Xot hmneoiately was the bearing or this scientific scien-tific law on the doctrine of immortality rocogni.eil. And yet. f.s the mind adjusted itself to the almost protean forms of energy, it became apparent that life itself, which is the highest form of energy we know, must inevitably become subject to this law. Death, when it touches a human life, is not destruction de-struction of energy, it is simply a change through which life passes into some new form of activity. Your candle, for instance, burns down to the socket, and after a flicker or two goes out. To the eye of sense that is the end of your candle, and it has been used over and over again as the image of death. But according to the law of the conservation conserva-tion of energy the light and heat of that candle are not lest. They have passed into other forms of energy en-ergy more subtle but not less real. A- log is slowlv consumed upon the hearth until nothing remains but a heap of filmy ash, but the light and energies of that log are not lost. The life which was in the tree deposited in that log certain cer-tain forces, and the fire has liberated these forces in other modes of activity. The whole universe is a vast area of ceaseless indestructible energy, of which life is the highest type. Within the las! half dozen years science has emphasized still another fact, namely that the more powerful a force is the less visible it is to human sight, the less susceptible of recognition. The energy en-ergy of radium, for example, is so tremendous that the hundredth part of a grain of radium dropped ' into its own weight of water will change the tern-perature tern-perature of that water from the freezing point to ' the boiling point in a single hour. It is of course admitted that this does not prove the immortality of the individual soul by any means, but it does prove the indestructibility of life. Religion Re-ligion has surely gained a magnificent trophy from science when science 'tells her that life is an indestructible inde-structible element in the universe. Xorth American Ameri-can Review. |