futtock stave

Naut .: A short piece of rope served over with IMG:content-0259.png:[blocks in formation] I. Ord. Lang.: In the same sense as II. II. Composition : Relig.: A life to succeed this one; a life beyond the tomb. (1) Ethnic faiths : The belief in a future-life is very widely spread, many observers who have denied that it is entertained among certain tribes indirectly confuting themselves by the facts which they put on record. In its early form no distinction is drawn between the souls of men and brutes; for both another state of existence is reserved. In the lowest form of Animism, a figure of a deceased friend appearing to a survivor in a dream is supposed to be the actual soul of the person dead, whence faith in another state of existence becomes natural and easy. Two distinct forms of belief now diverge, the one leading in the direction of the transmigration of souls (q. v.), the other maintaining the independent existence of the personal soul after the death of the body. Among the lower races, the moral element in the doctrine of a future-life is almost wholly wanting. ( Tylor .) (2) Judaism : There are but few allusions to a future-life in the Old Testament. The most notable one is, "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightne of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousne as the stars forever and ever" (Dan. xii. 2,3), in which the doctrine seems to be not simply the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body. [(3)] (3) Christianity : "Jesus Christ," says St. Paul, "hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Tim. i.). The doctrine in this case is not merely that of the immortality of the soul, not transmigrated, but retaining its separate individuality [IMMORTALITY]; there is superadded to this the resurrection and transformation of the body. [RESURRECTION.] The moral element in the doctrine of a future-life is here all in all.