From The Christian Register we republish, under the above title, the following review of 's last lecture:—
The Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University provides once a year an occasion for the public consideration of the doctrine of immortality. Dr. John Fiske's little volume just issued by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. contains the lecture delivered in this course last December. It was carefully written, and is now printed without change, and may be regarded as his last message to those whom he has left behind in a world which he enjoyed to the uttermost.
It is difficult to describe this address, and impossible to state the grounds of the confidence which is imparted to the reader by the argument. It is not an array of proofs, and no appeal is made to divine inspiration; and yet few statements are so convincing. Dr. Fiske seems to take it for granted that what we need is not a proof of immortality, whether derived from science or given by authority. The process of evolution through which we have come has put us at the point of view where it is natural to take for granted an unseen world, and to believe that, when things seen and temporal pass away, things unseen and eternal will come into view. With full confidence, therefore, the statement is made that, no matter how we came to it, "the belief in a future life, in a world unseen to mortal eyes, is not only coeval with the beginning of the human race, but is also coextensive with it in its subsequent stages of development. It is, in short, one of the differential attributes of humanity." Starting with this faith in immortal life, a "sublime poetic conception" which gives human life its atmosphere, the remainder of the address is a stately march along the King's highway, of which the progress is marked not by successive proofs, but by a setting aside of disproofs that are vain and a scattering of the obstacles which, in the name of science, have accumulated in the way of faith.
