The hymn they
were singing now also spoke surely and naturally of the saints. The same
proud note, the young man observed, ran through the service from
beginning to end. Hymn and prayer and reading all confidently assumed
that Fifi was dead only to this mortal eye, but in another world, open
to all those gathered about the grave for their seeking, she lived in
some marvelously changed form--her body being made _like unto his own
glorious body_....
In the homeward-bound car, Queed fully recaptured his poise, and
redirected his thoughts into rational channels.
The doctrine of the immortality of the soul had not a rational leg to
stand on. The anima, or spirit, being merely the product of certain
elements combined in life, was wiped out when those elements dissolved
their union in death. It was the flame of a candle blown out. Yet with
what unbelievable persistence this doctrine had survived through
history. Science had annihilated it again and again, but these people
resolutely stopped their ears to science. They could not answer science
with argument, so they had answered her with the axe and the stake; and
they were still capable of doing that whenever they thought it
desirable.
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