to the perpetuation of your lives, and cherish one mind with
me, the One man, in my plans, the former kings will send down
on you great punishment for your crime, and say, "Why do you
not agree with our young grandson, but go on to forfeit your
virtue?" When they punish you from above, you will have no
way of escape.... Your ancestors and fathers will (now) cut
you off and abandon you, and not save you from death.[5]

Indeed, so practical is this Chinese belief, held to-day as in those
long-past ages, that "the change that men call Death" seems to play a
very small part in the thoughts and lives of the people of the Flowery
Land.

These quotations, which might be multiplied a hundred-fold, may
suffice to prove the folly of the idea that immortality came to "light
through the gospel". The whole ancient world basked in the full
sunshine of belief in the immortality of man, lived in it daily,
voiced it in its literature, went with it in calm serenity through the
gate of Death.

It remains a problem why Christianity, which vigorously and joyously
re-affirmed it, should have growing in its midst the unique terror of
Death that has played so large a part in its social life, its
literature, and its art. It is not simply the belief in hell that has
surrounded the grave with horror, for other Religions have had their
hells, and yet their followers have not been harassed by this shadowy
Fear. The Chinese, for instance, who take Death as such a light and
trivial thing, have a collection of hells quite unique in their varied
unpleasantness. Maybe the difference is a question of race rather than
of creed; that the vigorous life of the West shrinks from its