The future life may be conceived as simply a continuation of the present life in its essential features, although under conditions more or less favourable.
The Old Testament, however, only prepares the way for the Christian doctrine of the atonement; this is clear, inasmuch as its teaching is largely concerned with the nation, and hardly touches on the future life.
After his return to Kirkcaldy he resided there two years with his mother, continuing his studies, not having yet adopted any plan for his future life.
The simple offering of food or shedding of blood at the grave develops into an elaborate system of sacrifice; even where ancestor-worship is not found, the desire to provide the dead with comforts in the future life may lead to the sacrifice of wives, slaves, animals, &c., to the breaking or burning of objects at the grave or to the provision of the ferryman's toll, a coin put in the mouth of the corpse to pay the travelling expenses of the soul.
At the same time, with the rise of ideas as to a future life and spiritual beings, this field of mythology is immensely widened, though it cannot be said that a rich mythology is necessarily genetically associated with or combined with belief in many spiritual beings.
