Transcribed from the 1900 Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org





THE LIFE
OF
THE WAITING SOUL
IN
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE.


BY
_R. E. SANDERSON_, _D.D._,
ST. MICHAEL, BRIGHTON; CANON RESIDENTIARY OF CHICHESTER
CATHEDRAL; FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF
LANCING COLLEGE.

London:
WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO.,
3 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C.

FIRST EDITION, MAY, 1896.
SECOND ,, SEP., ,,
THIRD ,, FEB., 1897.
FOURTH ,, JAN., 1898.
FIFTH ,, FEB., 1900.




PREFACE.


These Addresses were delivered in Chichester Cathedral, and subsequently,
with slight alterations, at Hastings.  They would not have been printed
but at the urgent request of very many who heard them preached.  It
should be remembered that they are not a theological treatise, but a
course of plain words addressed to an ordinary congregation.  It seemed
desirable to awaken interest in a subject which has dropped out of
English Christian thought, and almost out of people's knowledge.  The
Addresses are an attempt to explain what can be known about the
Intermediate Life.  There is nothing new in them.  If there were,
probably what is new would not be true.

The doctrines of so-called "Universalism" and "Conditional Immortality"
are not touched upon.  They do not belong to the period which is covered
by the Intermediate State.  Moreover, I doubt whether we can ever regard
those doctrines as anything more than speculations invented to answer
modern and possibly ephemeral objections.

How much I have unconsciously been indebted to those who have dealt with
this subject more fully, I hardly know.  One reads and remembers, and
reproduces in preaching, often without thought of the sources from which
material has been drawn.  I gratefully acknowledge in the notes what I
know to be debts incurred.  I can only express my regret if any have been
overlooked.

R. E. S.

_Easter_, 1896.




I.


   "I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which
   are asleep."--1 THESS. IV. 13.

There are moments in the lives of every one of us, when the mind is
irresistibly drawn on to wonder what our own personal future shall be, as
soon as life is over and death has overtaken us.  We cannot help the
speculation.  However bound by present duties and absorbed in present
interests, often, in quiet hours, in times of solitude or bereavement, or
under the sense of failing hopes or failing health, in seasons of sorrow
or of sickness, the mood takes hold of us; and it may be, we know not
why, our eyes turn with an anxious and a wistful look towards that
inevitable end which is surely coming upon us.

At such moments we ask ourselves, what will my lot be when the hand of
death touches me--even _me_; when all the light of life goes out, all
thought of this world's cares, all pleasant joys and hopes and desires of
time sink down and fade into the chill gloom and shadow of the unknown?
Such questionings, brought close home to our very selves, cannot but fill
us with very anxious fears and misgivings, as we either look back upon
the past, or think upon what chiefly possesses our minds and thoughts
now.  Indeed, many of us cannot bear this forward glance, and refuse to
face it.  We would fain brush the thought aside, and with some hasty
utterance of vague trust, of shadowy self-comforting hope that GOD will
be merciful, we turn sharply round and give ourselves again to the calls
of the life which is about us.

In this way, we Christians, we children of GOD, heirs of life and
immortality, learn to be terrified at death, which, as we are taught to
believe, ushers us into life; learn to associate it with trembling doubt
and shuddering dismay.  But is this dread of death nothing else than the
natural instinctive shrinking, which the warmth of life feels at the
touch of its cold hand?  Or is it not rather, in the case of most of us,
due to some false imaginations with which religion itself--that form, at
least, of religion which to-day encompasses us--has for many years
possessed and imbued the minds of men?  Indeed, I believe it to be so.
The Christianity of to-day has too commonly accepted two untruths, which
yet it holds as truths.

1.  One of them is this: That death ushers the soul immediately and
finally into the supreme condition which awaits the souls of men; so
that, at death, the souls of good men pass at once into heaven, while the
souls of bad men pass at once into hell; in other words, that the final
and irrevocable severance between the just and the unjust takes place at
death.  Believing this, men have lost all faith in an Intermediate State
between death and the Day of Judgment.  That intervening sojourn of the
soul has virtually dropped out of recognition in the popular Christianity
of the day, and is quite ignored.  If you walk through any resting place
of the bodies of the dead, into your own churchyards and cemeteries, you
will, not seldom, find inscriptions upon tombs, which express the
confident assurance that one, whose death is recorded, has already passed
into heaven; that another has now become an angel of Light, or is singing
the praises of GOD before the throne, is, in short, in the full present
enjoyment of consummate and final bliss.  Thus it is that the
Intermediate State between death and the final condition of happiness in
heaven, which can only follow the Day of the Resurrection, is quite
forgotten and overlooked.

2.  And the second untruth, which is closely connected with the first, is
this: That there are but two classes of those who pass hence and are no
more seen; classes sharply distinguished, clearly outlined,--on the one
hand, of those who at death go straight to heaven, and, on the other, of
those who at death go straight to the place of final torment.  If then
these are the only two clearly marked and sharply defined alternatives,
it follows that, whensoever we dare not be sure of any one soul at death
that it was good enough certainly for heaven, there is nothing for it but
to fear that the worse doom awaits it and that it is lost.  For if it is
not, at the moment of death, pure enough or good enough for heaven, into
which there "shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, neither
whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie," {5} that soul,
according to this false belief, is lost.  Yet, in fact, what do we see
within us and around us, as we honestly look into our own lives, and upon
the lives both of the best and of the worst among us?  We see this, and
we are convinced that we are not mistaken, that even among the most
marked extremes of good men and evil men, few even of the best are so
free from stain or fault as, at death, to be certainly fit for heaven,
and few so vile and degraded as not to have still some good in them.  And
between these two extremes there are multitudes of mixed characters, in
part good and in part bad.  Among these, of whom we know that they are
full of worth yet full of imperfections too, we count so many who are
most dear to us, many the companions of our lives, our kindred, and
acquaintances, and cherished friends, whose failings and whose virtues we
know so well, of mixed and imperfect character, too frail for heaven, too
good, too lovable for hell, partly good and partly not good, strong and
also weak, marred with inconsistencies, and often for these very
inconsistencies the more dear to us, of whom, so truly have we loved and
even honoured them, it seems almost like an outrage upon their memory to
bring ourselves to think that there was just so much of evil in them and
just so little good, as would suffice to turn the balance against them
and thus fix, at the moment of their death, their final doom.

What are we to think of such as these?  Of some we perhaps say within
ourselves, "Would that there had been but a little amendment of this
blemish!  A little more of strength and purpose against that fault!  If
only this besetting hardness had not been the spoiler of his life, that
great heedlessness, that fatal procrastination, this too frequent sin!
Oh! but for this or that which marred the fair and well rounded
character!  But for this we should have been full of hope: there was so
much on the better side, that we should have been full of trust, and even
of confidence.  But, now, what are we to think?  If only there were some
fit and fair proportion to be thought of, duly measured out, of reward
and punishment, a mixed destiny for a mixed character, partly good and
partly evil for those who in this life were in part good and in part were
evil!  But these two awful and sharp alternatives, either reward or
punishment, these two separate issues, heaven or hell, and if not heaven
then necessarily and inevitably hell!  What shall we think?  We dare not
think.  In the Bible we are encouraged to believe that we shall receive
the due reward of our deeds, whether they be good or whether they be
evil. {8}  But how shall any receive in heaven the due reward of evil
deeds done on earth? and how, in hell, shall any wretched soul receive in
any truth the due rewards of good deeds done on earth?  Yet in each,
there was some good even in the worst, and some evil even in the best."

We see then what follows upon this false belief, that at death an instant
judgment assigns finally the destiny of all men, to men of every degree
of wickedness, without distinction, Hell; and one final and absolute
Heaven to men of every varying measure of goodness.  Surely there is a
great perplexity in this.  No wonder if such beliefs lead men to dread
the thought of death, of their own death, of the death of their friends.
No mere physical repulsion makes us shrink, but rather the uncertainty
and doubt of what may follow,

      "The dread of something after death,
   The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
   No traveller returns, puzzles the will,"

and makes us Christian men and women turn to find relief from these
bewildering fears by plunging deeply into the waters of life's amusements
and ambitions.  It is the uncertainty of things, wearing to some the
aspect of caprice, which leads to recklessness, and sometimes to
defiance.

I believe, from my heart, that Holy Scripture rightly understood solves
these confusing riddles.  I believe that a more sound and Scriptural
grasp of what will be the future of each of us after death, the
restoration of a right belief in an Intermediate State, will go far to
correct these unworthy and most un-Christian fears.  But it is said, at
times, that nothing can be really known about this Intermediate State,
that all that can be asserted of it is mere guess and vain conjecture,
and even that it betrays a too curious intrusion into things unseen to
speculate about the condition of souls after death.  Yes! if we only
speculate, but not surely if we seek humbly to find out what the Bible
has taught us.  S. Paul did not think it a too presumptuous intrusion
into things beyond the reach of our knowledge to make this enquiry.  "I
would not have you to be ignorant concerning them which are asleep."  He
would rather that the Thessalonians should know all that can be known, to
their edification.  And something can be known, or he would not have
written this.  And to know it will be to our edification also.  Certainly
to ignore what can be known has led, as we have seen, to loss and offence
in these days.  Therefore I propose to try and set before you not idle
speculations indeed, but what has been actually revealed in Holy
Scripture, or may be drawn from it about the Intermediate State.  It is
upon Holy Scripture that we must depend for our learning.  At least I
shall make no attempt to build arguments upon any other foundation than
Holy Scripture.  But let us, in GOD'S Name, get out of Holy Scripture all
that can, according to the proportion of the faith, be deduced from it.
It is as perilous, not to say as undutiful towards GOD, the Revealer, to
neglect what He has for our sakes revealed, as it would be to invent
speculations of our own about that which He has not revealed.

The unseen world is not easy to apprehend, and to our matter-of-fact
English mind and temper is especially difficult.  Yet, with the awful
future in our mind, which awaits not only those who are very dear to
ourselves, but ourselves also, we must be dull indeed, if we have no
concern for it.  Then if sober questioning may reveal more clearly to us
what Holy Scripture can tell us of things that shall befall each of us,
we may hope to gain fresh confidence, and to renew our trust in Him Who
launched us into time, that we may live with Him in eternity through
Jesus Christ our Lord.




II.


   "Jesus said unto him, Verily I say onto thee, To-day shall thou be
   with Me in Paradise."

   --S. LUKE XXIII. 43.

If we should ask what happens to the soul of a good man when he dies, the
answer would probably be that he has gone to heaven.  Of a little child
it would be said at his death, that he has become an angel in heaven.  But
this would be quite untrue, because it contradicts the Bible.  The Bible
teaches that there will at the end of the world be a day when all the
dead shall rise and stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ, to be
judged for the deeds done in the body, whether they be good, or whether
they be evil.  But if a good man's soul goes straight to heaven at death,
without waiting for the Day of Judgment, he practically has no Day of
Judgment at all.  He escapes it.  The Bible also teaches that before the
Day of Judgment there will be a general Resurrection of all, both of the
just and of the unjust. {14}  But how can one who is already in heaven,
while his body lies in the grave of corruption,--how can he, being
already glorified and even now beholding the vision of GOD, to any
intelligible purpose, or for any conceivable end, take part in the
general Resurrection?  Why should he, as it were, come away from heaven
and rise from the dead, in order to be judged?

Thus the popular belief, that the souls of the righteous pass straight to
heaven, and the souls of the wicked go straight to hell, is against the
plain teaching of the Bible.  But the Bible not only contradicts this
popular and careless fancy.  It asserts what is directly contrary to it:
it asserts positively, I mean, that there is an age-long period between
death and the final state of happiness or misery, during which period the
soul is separate from the body and remains separate.  We are, according
to the Bible, destined to undergo three great changes in the mode and
nature of our existence.  In the first period, while we are here in this
our life on earth, the soul and spirit are united to a material and
tangible body of flesh and blood, suited to our life here.  The second
stage begins at death, the name we give to the separation which then
takes place between this material fabric of the body and the incorporeal
part of us; and then the soul and spirit dwell disembodied for a time.
There follows at the Resurrection the third period, when the soul and
spirit are reunited with the body, but with the body now so spiritualized
and refined as to suit the heavenly existence.  The second of these two
periods, coming between the first and the third, is therefore fitly
called the intermediate or middle state, the state in which the
disembodied soul dwells apart from its material tenement. {15}

What has the Bible then to say about this Intermediate State?  I will not
ask you to listen to the comments or interpretations of the early
Christian writers, although, of course, very great respect is due to what
they say.  I will only beg of you to pay common attention to what the
Bible itself says.

Now, first, I will point to the words which our Lord spoke from the
Cross, just before His Death, to the thief who was also slowly dying at
His side.  "To-day," He said, "shalt thou be with Me in Paradise."  So
then within a few hours,--it was then not yet mid-day--they were both to
be in Paradise.  They both died before sunset, and at their death both
entered Paradise.  Their dead bodies were left behind upon the Cross.
What then entered Paradise?  Not their bodies, but the spiritual or
incorporeal part of them.  Was Paradise then another name for heaven?  It
cannot be; our Lord did not go to heaven until the day of His Ascension,
forty-three days after His death.  For, after His Resurrection, He said
to S. Mary Magdalene, "I am _not yet_ ascended to My Father." {17}  With
His risen body, united again to His human soul and spirit, He went to
Heaven, His whole human nature now being, by His Resurrection, again
completely one.  But into Paradise only part of His human nature passed,
the spiritual part of it, along with the spiritual part of the thief's
human nature.  Our Lord's soul and spirit came back, as we know, from
Paradise on the third day.  The soul and spirit of the thief remain there
still.  So then this is what our Lord Himself teaches us as to the state
of the disembodied spirit, that at death a just man's spirit does _not_
go to heaven, but into a sphere of life which is called Paradise.

But, if this be so, why, it may be asked, did not our Lord speak in
plainer and more definite language?  Such a truth, it may be urged, a
truth which so much concerns us, ought not to depend upon a single text.
I do not propose to ask you to be content with an inference from a single
text.  But it may be that our Lord did not say more than this about the
great truth with which we are dealing for this reason, that the disciples
whom He gathered round Him, being Jews, perfectly well knew what He meant
by Paradise.  This single reference, therefore, is enough to show that
what was a common and prevalent belief among the Jews was a true
belief,--a belief which our Lord not only recognized, but by recognizing
established and sanctioned.  But if we are once clear on this point, we
shall find the belief more plainly set forth by our Lord in another
place.  What then is the belief that we have learned from this single
passage?  We have learned this, that the human spirit of our Lord, and
the spirit of the dying thief did not pass at death to heaven, though if
any spirit should ever be fit to pass at death to heaven His spirit was
fit, but to a state which He called Paradise.

Now, there was another expression used in the ordinary Jewish language of
the day for the state to which the blessed dead passed at death.  They
were spoken of as at rest "in Abraham's bosom."  Of a very holy man they
would say, "This day he rests in Abraham's bosom."  So that in the minds
of the Jews and therefore of the disciples the term "Paradise" meant
exactly the same thing as "Abraham's bosom."  We have learned what
"Paradise" meant.  Therefore now we know what "resting in Abraham's
bosom" meant.  It meant the Intermediate State. {19}  The scene then in
the narrative of the rich man and Lazarus, which follows the deaths of
the two men, belongs not to the final state of happiness and misery at
all, but to the Intermediate State.  The joy is the joy of the
Intermediate State.  The suffering, which is in such strong contrast to
the joy as to be divided from it by a deep gulf, so that the joy cannot
be tinged with the misery, nor the misery relieved by the joy,--this
suffering also is the suffering of the Intermediate State.

The reality then of the Intermediate State is confirmed by our Lord in
this narrative.  Now observe the weight of this testimony.  If the Jews
were wrong in believing that the spirits of the just passed into Paradise
or into Abraham's bosom our Lord would never have uttered words twice
over which sanctioned their mistake.  We may observe further from these
two passages that the Intermediate State has two parts or conditions.
There are those in it who suffer, and there are those who rejoice.  At
death, the spirits of those whose lives have been evil pass to suffering
and anguish, as we read of the rich man that "in Hades he lifted up his
eyes being in torments"; and the spirits of the faithful pass to rest and
joy.  But between these two representatives in the narrative, the one of
the evil, the other of the good, there are the multitudes who are neither
very good nor very evil, so varied in the indeterminate tokens of good
and evil which marked their lives on earth, that it would seem to be
impossible for us to know on which side of "the great gulf" their
position ought to be.  But if the extremes enter the Intermediate State,
and there is room for them in it, is it to be supposed that there is no
room for those who are between the extremes?  Rather do we learn that the
spirits of all go thither, not only of the faithful and of the wicked,
but of the wavering and uncertain also, of those who were weak and fell,
of those who, with unsteady and tottering steps, sometimes rising, often
falling, now obeying, now rebelling, now believing, now doubting, now
walking in the light, now plunged in darkness, at one time treading
firmly the ground of the narrow path, and then at times wandering into
the quagmires and morasses of sin and lust, passed through the pilgrimage
of life, and, at length, when their allotted span was completed, were
assigned to the place which awaited them, to the place which was their
own and was fitted for them.

We have seen what conclusions must be drawn from the express language of
our Lord Himself.  Let us now examine the evidence afforded by His
Apostles, in the Epistles and in the book of the Revelation.  But first I
would ask you to consider what, according to the Bible, is the chief
feature in the conception of the happiness and glory of Heaven, what is
its essential nature.  Is it not this, that being the dwelling place of
GOD Himself, the glory and happiness of Heaven will consist in the
Presence itself of GOD, and therefore in the vision of GOD?  As a great
writer has said, "It must be remarked by everybody that the glory of the
future state is always put before us not as an inner consciousness or
mental communion simply, not as an absorption into ourselves within, but
as a great spectacle without us, the spectacle of a great visible
manifestation of GOD.  It is a sight, a picture, a representation, that
constitutes the heavenly state, not mere thought and contemplation.  The
glorified saint of Scripture is especially a beholder; he gazes, he
looks, he fixes his eyes upon something before him; he does not merely
ruminate within, but his whole mind is carried out towards and upon a
great representation.  And thus Heaven specially appears in Scripture as
the sphere of perfected sight, where the faculty is raised and exalted to
its highest act, and the happiness of existence culminates in vision."
{23}  If this be so, all the most entrancing spectacles and scenes of
earth shall appear dim and coarse and uncouth in comparison with the
sight on which the ravished gaze of eternity shall be fastened.  For then
shall our eyes see "The King in His Beauty." {24a}  They shall see GOD,
see Him face to face,--GOD!  No higher conception of happiness is set
before the heart of man, which ever craves for heaven and for perfection,
than GOD Himself, the sight of GOD, the Presence of GOD, the Knowledge of
GOD.  "In Thy Presence is the fulness of joy." {24b}  But we must not
lose sight of the effect which this vision of GOD produces upon those who
gaze.  To see Him is to become like Him.  "Then," says S. John, "we shall
be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." {24c}  "We all," says S.
Paul, "with open face, beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord,
are changed into the same image from glory to glory."  This is what
seeing GOD will do.

When, then, shall this vision be granted?  At death to any?  No! but only
at the Second Coming of Christ.  All the great writers of the Epistles
speak, as with one voice, of this.  What says S. Peter?  "When the chief
Shepherd _shall appear_, ye shall receive the crown of glory that fadeth
not away." {25a}  Not therefore at death, but at Christ's Second Coming
and appearance.  What does S. John say?  "We know that _when He shall
appear_, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." {25b}  Not
therefore until that time.  What again does the great S. Paul say?  "When
Christ, Who is our life, _shall appear_, then shall ye also appear with
Him in glory." {25c}  Again to S. Timothy he writes, "There is laid up
for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord _the righteous Judge_,
shall give to me _at that day_: and not only to me, but also to all them
that have loved _His appearing_." {25d}  There can be no doubt what S.
Paul means by "That Day."  It is the day when "the Righteous Judge" on
His Judgment throne shall award the crowns to those who have fought the
good fight and kept the faith.  This is the frequent meaning of the
expressions, "That day," "The day of the Lord," in the New Testament.  "We
know it," says Dr. Liddon, "by a more familiar name given it on three
occasions by our Lord Himself, and on three at least by His Apostles
after Him: it is the Day of Judgment." {26}  S. Paul, therefore, when he
says, "There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord
will give me on that day," does not expect that crown until the Day of
Judgment.

These are a few out of many like passages, all showing that heaven is not
reached at death, but only after the Day of Judgment.  From all which it
is clear that the Apostles had in their minds the firm assurance that
there was to be a waiting time, how long they knew not, or how short they
knew not, during which the spirit without the body would dwell in
expectation.  If it were otherwise, if at death the spirit passes into
the light which no man can approach unto, into the Presence of GOD and
beholds the Beatific Vision, which, as we saw, constitutes the
consummation of happiness and perfection in heaven, I would ask, how it
can be conceived that our Lord would have called Lazarus back from that
supreme happiness, which eye hath never seen nor ear ever heard, nor
heart of man ever conceived,--called him back to mingle in the griefs and
sorrows, the pains and failures, the doubts and fears, the mists and
confusions of this earthly life.  Was this the act of Him Who loved
Lazarus?  Was there no other way of consoling the living sisters, than by
so great a loss to the vanished brother?  Was it not to call him from
life to death, rather than from death to life?

One more passage must be quoted, the force of which cannot well be
missed.  In the sixth chapter of the Book of the Revelation, S. John
describes the vision which he saw at the opening of the fifth seal.  He
saw, he said, "under the altar the souls of them that had been slain for
the word of GOD,--and they cried with a great voice, saying, How long, O
Master, the holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on
them that dwell on the earth?--And it was said unto them, that they
should rest yet for a little while, until their fellow-servants also and
their brethren . . . should be fulfilled." {28}  Plainly these souls were
not in heaven, for they bemoaned the long delay, and were bidden to wait
for awhile until some great fulfilment.  Where then could they be, if not
on earth, nor yet in heaven?  They must have been in the Middle State
between the two, these martyred souls, in Paradise.  But they are not
spoken of as in Paradise, or in Abraham's bosom, but as "under the
Altar."  Where was this?  The Jews spoke of departed souls not only as in
Paradise, and in Abraham's bosom, but also as "under the throne of
Glory."  By all these expressions they meant the same thing.  S. John,
however, uses a different expression in describing the Intermediate
State, yet one so similar as to lead us to think that in the change he
substitutes a Christian formula for the Jewish, giving it a Christian
shape.  As "the throne of Glory" was associated with the Presence of GOD
in the mind of a devout Jew, so the Altar would be as naturally
associated with the Presence of GOD in the mind of a devout Christian.
What, therefore, the "Throne of GOD" was to the Jew, that "the Altar of
GOD" would be to a Christian.  For the Altar was to Christian thought the
Throne of GOD.  There, at the Christian Altar was commemorated the one
great sacrifice to which all former sacrifices had pointed, and in which
they were all fulfilled.  There the communion of Saints was, as in no
other way on earth, realized.  There, as by one simultaneous vibration
thrilling through the saintly dead, and the living communicants, the
spiritual bond unites together in one unbroken living Communion, those of
the Church expectant who are departed in the true faith of Christ's Holy
Name, and those of us who are still striving in the Church militant on
earth to perfect our probation.  These souls "under the Altar" were still
waiting, and their waiting wearied them.  "How long?" they cried.  They
were not in the flesh, their bodies had been slain.  They were absent
from the body and present with the Lord, with Christ, as the crucified
thief is still with Christ, in Paradise.

The consummation for them is yet to come.  They are waiting for it.  It
is postponed.  GOD'S work on earth is yet uncompleted.  The number of the
elect is not yet made up.  The Second Coming of Christ is yet delayed.
All things are not yet ready.  A little while longer must they wait, that
they without us may not be made perfect.




III.


   "To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life
   and peace."--ROM. VIII. 6.

So far we have examined the witness which the Bible affords in support of
the truth that there is such a sphere as the Intermediate State, in which
the spirit dwells alone, apart from the body, awaiting the Day of
Judgment.  We have now to see what can be known as to the condition of
the spirit in that disembodied state.  It is one thing to be assured on
good grounds that there is such a life, and quite another thing to be
assured what sort of life it is.  Can we fully understand what is meant
by the life of the spiritual part of our being when it is separated from
the body?  We cannot.  We cannot understand that of which we have had no
experience.  In speaking, therefore, of the disembodied spirit, we are
speaking of that which we cannot explain.  Yet it does not in consequence
follow that it is impossible to believe it to be.  For we are bound in
reason to be assured of many things of which we can form no conception.
Reason compels us to be assured of the reality of space, of eternity, of
the creation of the universe out of nothing, and, perhaps we may add, of
the being of GOD; the being of GOD, I mean, considered apart from His
nature and attributes.  Yet we cannot form any intelligent conception of
these realities.  We cannot shape to our apprehension the faintest
rational conception of the Personality of GOD, of His Omniscience, of His
Omnipresence.  Yet we are able, and indeed are forced to believe, as
Christians, in these attributes of His Nature, although we cannot
comprehend them.

In the same sense, we can be reasonably sure that the spirit can still
live after it has left the body, even though we are unable to form to our
minds any clear conception of the existence of the disembodied spirit.  We
can do more.  On the assumption of the existence of the disembodied
spirit, we are able, to some extent also, to reason upon the laws and
limits of that separate and secluded life.

We are, no doubt, in so doing, dealing with a profoundly mysterious
subject.  But it does not therefore follow that we are thereby really
intruding into things which ought not to be enquired into.  For the
questions raised in the search concern us very closely; and, moreover, it
is a matter about which GOD has made a revelation.  And to know more
about it than many people even care to know is a safeguard against many
an unwholesome fear, against many a mischievous deceit.

On the very threshold of this enquiry we are confronted with this
question: "Is the soul the same thing as the spirit?  If not, what is the
soul, and what is the spirit?"  That the Bible regards them as distinct
is sufficiently clear from the language used by S. Paul in his first
Epistle to the Thessalonians: "I pray GOD your whole spirit, soul, and
body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
{34a}  The same distinction is marked in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "The
word of GOD is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." {34b}  It is
thus that we understand the contrast which S. Paul enforces between
things of the spirit and things of the soul.  "The _natural_
man,"--_i.e._, the psychical man, the man who yields to the sway of the
soul,--"receiveth not the things of the spirit of GOD." {34c}  And again,
speaking of the resurrection, he writes: "It is sown a natural
body,"--_i.e._, literally a psychical body, a body which is subject to
the sway of the soul,--"it is raised a spiritual body,"--_i.e._, a body
subject to the sway of the spirit.  "There is a natural body, and there
is a spiritual body." {35a}  When again S. James says: "This wisdom . . .
is earthly, _sensual_, devilish,"--the word translated "sensual" is the
same word "psychical," _i.e._, subject to the sway of the soul. {35b}  S.
Jude speaks of those who are "sensual," _i.e._, psychical, "not having
the spirit." {35c}  Enough has been said to show that, according to the
Bible, the soul is the seat of the senses, the desires, the will, the
reasoning and intellectual faculties, the thoughts of the mind.  What
then is the spirit in man?  We seem to have the answer given to us in the
account of man's creation, when we are told that "GOD formed man of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and man became a living soul." {35d}  This breath of GOD could be nothing
less than the spirit, which came from GOD Himself.  It is that higher
endowment by which man is a spiritual being, and therefore has an
affinity to GOD.  It is that which makes him GOD-like, even by nature, at
least by his nature as it was before the fall.  But even the fall did not
utterly dissolve that nature; man still remained a spiritual being,
although the spiritual part of him was subject to the sway of the animal
in him, and to the senses of the lower nature.  Until that creative act
of GOD, man's body and soul were scarcely higher in the order and rank of
being than the body and soul of the brute.  It was the gift of the divine
spirit which caused man's soul truly to live, so that he became then "a
_living_ soul."  Herein, henceforth, the soul of man differs from the
soul of the lower creature.  In man the soul is in contact with the
spirit.  The beast shares with man the possession of an animal soul.  It
is the prerogative of man to be endowed also with spirit.  By the spirit,
man is capable of apprehending GOD, can commune with GOD, can long for
Him.  Herein lies his capacity for religion.  His soul is incorporeal no
less than his spirit.  It is, as it were, midway between the body and the
spirit.  It touches the body on the one side, on the other side it
touches the spirit.  The desires and the thoughts of the soul may become
enslaved by the body, or they may become the servants of the spirit.  The
soul is the prize, for the mastery of which the spirit strives, and the
flesh or body strives.  The spirit may gain the soul, or the flesh may
gain the soul.  If the spirit loses the soul, it is a loss fatal and
irreparable.  The soul is drawn now this way by the baser longings of the
flesh, now that way by the nobler appeals of the spirit.  It is the
"debateable ground" {37} on which the real battle of life is fought.  "The
flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."  The
gaining of the soul is the gaining of the whole man.  The losing of the
soul is the losing of the whole man.  Those have degraded and brutalized
their life whose human spirit has yielded up its supremacy, whose soul
has been swept along in captivity by the bodily desires.  For as in some
the spirit shapes the whole soul, so in others the soul, enslaved by the
flesh, shapes the spirit.

Death at length steps in, and tears asunder the flesh from the
incorporeal part of us; and soul and spirit, still united, pass together
to the life which awaits them in the world unseen.




IV.


   "And when he had said this he fell asleep."

   --ACTS VII. 60.

At death, as we have seen, the spirit and the soul are separated from the
body, and, still united together, are launched into the unseen world.  For
though the soul is not the spirit, these two form the incorporeal parts
of our compound nature, are the two immaterial elements of that trinity
of life,--body, soul, spirit, which are united to make one human being.
They both survive death.  For death is the separation of the soul from
the body, not of the soul from the spirit.  But it must be remembered
that the spirit, when at death it is, in company with the soul, withdrawn
from the body, passes into the Intermediate State, shaped and stamped
with the impress which the life on earth has fastened upon it.  The
spirit enters the new life, either enslaved, disfigured, degraded,
dishonoured by the sensual soul, or else strong, free, true, purified in
its victory over the flesh.  It carries with it, in short, the character
which in life it has acquired.

It may be well to fall into the usage of ordinary speech, and speak of
that which survives death as the _soul_, so long as we keep in mind what
is really meant, viz., that it is the soul _united with the spirit_ which
survives death.

When, then, we say that the disembodied soul enters the Intermediate
Life, we are bound to consider in what condition it enters it.  For
people sometimes argue thus: "Yes! I grant that there will be an interval
or waiting time between death and the Day of Judgment.  But then, during
that time, is not the soul asleep?  Surely the dying are said to fall
asleep.  Then, if asleep, they are unconscious, and to the unconscious
soul the Intermediate State will seem to last but for an instant, and
will no sooner be entered upon than it will be practically at an end.  For
complete insensibility to the passing and movement of time is one of the
effects of complete unconsciousness.  And, in truth, is it not the case
that the Bible over and over again speaks of death as a state of sleep or
taking rest? {41a}  Thus the Intermediate State is in fact a blank.  The
eyes close in death, and they remain closed till they open to gaze upon
the glories of the Resurrection, and the terrors of the judgment seat of
Christ.  Does not our own Prayer Book sanction this view in her Service
for the Burial of the Dead? {41b}  And do we not in common language
ourselves express the same belief when we give to the resting place of
the bodies of the dead the name of 'cemetery,' or sleeping place?"

The answer to all this is that the language which represents death as a
profound slumber is language applicable enough to describe what befalls
the body, but is quite inapplicable when it is used of the soul.  Sleep
is distinctly a physical and corporeal function.  The soul cannot be
liable to or affected by corporeal influences when it is separated from
the body.  The soul cannot sleep.  It is the body, in the hushed
stillness of the chamber of death, which seems, now that the last
struggle is over, and the spasm of dying leaves it motionless, to be
sleeping.  But even in life, while the body sleeps, the soul is awake.  It
is often, during the sleep of the body, even more active than during the
waking hours.  In dreams the soul is busy with its fancies.  Thoughts
flit this way and that through the mind of the sleeper.  Indeed, the body
is more often a hindrance rather than a help to the activities of
thought.  To lose all consciousness of the existence of the body, to be
as if the body for the time were not,--this is to set the mind thinking
in freedom unrestrained.  For the body and the conscious sensation of the
presence of the body seem to serve to drag down and encumber the energy
of thought.  A sound through the ear, a sight presented to the eye, a
touch, an ache,--these break off sustained thinking.  No wonder, when the
body sleeps profoundly, the soul is often then most active.  And will not
this be so when the profoundest sleep of all falls upon the body?

It is clear that the disembodied soul, if we may again go back to the
Bible, is not by our Lord regarded as in a state of lethargy and dull
unconsciousness.  "To-day," said He, "shalt thou be with Me in Paradise."
If this promise was meant to be a blessing and a solace it was meant to
be consciously _felt_ as a blessing and a solace.  How else could the
thief have been in any true sense with Christ?  S. Paul said, "For me to
live is Christ, to die is gain." {43}  Gain!  Wherein could it be a gain
to him to die, if to die was to exchange that eager, active vitality, so
full of welcome pain and happy suffering, so full of a service, whose
fruits were rich in blessing,--to exchange all this for dull heaviness
and blank oblivion?

In the narrative of the rich man and Lazarus, which, as we saw, describes
the Intermediate State, the rich man is said to have "lifted up his eyes
being in torments."  So, then, his pain was felt.  He was conscious; he
reflected; he remembered; he spoke.  Once more, in a remarkable passage
in the First Epistle of S. Peter, to which, on a future occasion, I shall
again refer, our Lord is spoken of as "having been put to death in the
flesh, but quickened," _i.e._, made alive, "in spirit" {44}; words which,
whatever the context may mean, can only have the force of bringing the
effect of death in its relation to Christ's human body into sharp
contrast with its effect in relation to His human spirit.  In respect of
His human body He was put to death; but in respect of His human spirit He
was quickened or lived, lived still, in Paradise, though His body was
dead.  I need not, I think, refer to other passages.  It is abundantly
clear, both from the necessity of the thing, and from the obvious
testimony of the Bible, that the soul still lives, still is awake, still
is conscious.

What, then, follows from the soul's consciousness in and through the
passage of death?  Obviously this,--that the life of the soul goes on,
and is therefore the life of the same soul, sustained without break or
interruption, after death, by an unsuspended continuity of the
consciousness of personal identity.  For of what is the soul still
conscious?  Of itself.  The life therefore of the soul after death is one
with the life of the soul before death.  The same soul lives on.  The
only change to it is the absence of the body, which has been withdrawn
from it, and is laid in the ground, and dissolves into dust.  And this
continuous consciousness of identity means that the soul's character is
preserved unchanged and unaffected by the shock of the separation.  For a
character it had been contracting during its sojourn in the body, a
character of its own.  The spiritualized soul before death is a
spiritualized soul after death.  The animalized soul before death remains
after death an animalized soul.  The righteous is righteous still.  The
holy, the pure, the faithful, the devout, the true, are true, and devout,
and faithful, and pure, and holy still.  The wicked and tainted soul is
still wicked and tainted when it enters the unseen, and begins its life
in the Intermediate State.  It is on the other side what it was on this
side.  Death,--the crisis and shock of death,--makes no change, no other
change than this, that it strips off the outer clothing which enveloped
the soul.  It leaves the soul the same, no better, no worse.  This is
what is implied in the personal identity of the soul.  It means the
continuity of consciousness, and therefore continuity of character.

Do we cling to some vague and fanciful expectation that the mere act of
dying, so to call it, will itself work a great change upon the soul, will
blot out our sins, will clear away our imperfections, will in an instant
heal the wounds and scars, which evil habits, long inured in us, have
wrought upon the soul?  It will do nothing of the sort.  We shall be no
better, no holier on the other side than we were on this, no more fitted
for heaven than when we died.  If this be so,--and, so far as we can see,
it must be so,--how much does it behove us to fear greatly the peril we
incur by a careless and GOD-forgetting life!  "Israel doth not know,"
said the prophet, "My people doth not consider." {47}  That was the pity
of it.  It was the thoughtlessness, and the ignorance which came of it,
that ruined the nation.

Oh! that in life we would look things in the face more steadily!  Would
that we were ready to take heed how surely we are, day by day, shaping
and moulding our character for good or for evil, a character which no
shock of dissolution will affect, which will be ours when the crisis
comes to end our probation here, and to usher us, as we are and have
become, into that unseen life beyond!




V.


   "Being confident of this very thing, that He which began a good work
   in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ."--PHIL. I. 6
   (_R.V._)

The Intermediate Life is not a state of sleep, but a waiting time.  But
is it a time of mere waiting, and of unemployed quiescence?  This would
be no better than sleep.  There must be a reason for the waiting.  And
what other reason can there be than that, during it, there is something
to be done which can only be done then?  S. Paul speaks, in the text, of
work which he is confident will be carried on till it is brought to
completion on the Day of Judgment.  What is this work?  We have seen that
the Scriptural conception of the happiness of heaven is that it consists
in the sight of GOD, the Beatific Vision.  But there can enter the
heavenly city nothing that defileth, nothing imperfect.  It is the pure
in heart who shall see GOD.  Isaiah dare hardly approach the vision of
GOD'S glory on earth, because he felt himself to be a man of unclean
lips.  The very heavens, the stars themselves, are not clean in GOD'S
sight.  And at death, who is pure?  Who is free from stain?  Who is
perfect, that he should be fit to look upon GOD?  Then, if no one that is
imperfect can enter heaven, and none are perfect at death, can we not see
what the work is that has to be done between death and the Resurrection?
It is this work of purification, that the soul may be fitted for the
vision of GOD in heaven.  And this is what S. Paul is speaking of in the
text.  The work begun in life, under the conditions of earth's life,
shall not stop at death, but, under new conditions, shall be carried on
to perfection until the day of Jesus Christ.

So far, then, we may say that we are treading on sure ground.  But when
we go on to ask how shall this work and process of purification be
effected, and what is the nature and method of it, we are approaching a
stage in our enquiry about which, it may be thought, nothing but
conjecture remains, because nothing has been revealed.  But let us see
what light may be thrown upon this question.  And, that we may narrow our
enquiry within manageable limits, let us confine our attention for the
present to the condition of those of whom it may with truth and reason be
said that they died in the favour and grace of GOD, died in good hope of
salvation, surely trusting that their sins had been forgiven through the
blood of Jesus Christ, and that, however imperfect and blemished with sin
their lives had been, there was an assured forgiveness for them and a
good hope of eternal mercy.  We will not define the exact limits of this
reasonable hope, nor attempt to show who are within or beyond those
limits.  We will only, in general terms, speak of those who have entered
upon the Intermediate Life in a condition such as would make them capable
of perfect purification.  Certainly it is impossible for any of us ever
to say of any one absolutely that he is incapable of such progressive
purification.  It is not possible, in Christian charity, to pronounce
sentence upon any.  And it may be, and we may indeed hope, that a vast
number, a much larger proportion than many now imagine, will prove on
their entrance into the Intermediate Life to be capable of such progress
of effective purification as may fit them, each according to his measure,
for the final salvation for which he may be qualified in that home where
"there are many mansions."

When then does this purification begin?  Does it begin with dying?  That
has been already disproved.  But so prevalent is the popular belief that
dying has a kind of cleansing power in itself, that it is well to touch
upon it once more.  What is dying?  It is simply the parting of the soul
from the body.  The soul, up to the moment of death, dwells in the body.
At death, in a moment it ceases to dwell in the body.  But have not the
pain, it may be asked, and the very agony of dying a chastening and
purifying force, serving in themselves to crown repentance, and to
achieve, in the instant, the complete cleansing of the soul?  Why should
it be so?  The pains which precede death are distinct from dying, from
what we may call the act of dying.  The act of dying is instantaneous.  It
is the moment, the crisis at which the soul takes its flight.  The pains
and agony which accompany the process leading up to death are not the
pains and agony of dying at all.  They are felt while the sick man is
still living.  They belong to his life, not to his death.  At the moment
of dying the sufferings are probably over.  The body has just felt its
last throb of sensible anguish, and, in the crisis of the soul's
departure, is incapable of feeling pain, and therefore is incapable of
the discipline of pain.  And it is the discipline of pain alone that has
any cleansing power.  And the discipline of pain went on in life up to
the moment, if it be so, of the dying, and then ceased.  But it belonged,
as the pain belonged, to the life, and not to the death.  During the
life, at many times in the life past, the wholesome discipline of pain
may or may not have been working a salutary change in the character, up
to the very moment, perhaps, of death.  But it ceased, as the pain
ceased, at death.

This then we conclude, that the act of dying in itself, apart from the
pain which may have preceded it, can have no moral effect, or work any
moral change.  Moral change, that is to say change of character, can only
go on in life.  Dying is a physical operation, not a moral act.  At death
the possibility of change of character has stopped, so far as this life
can be the sphere of it.  Life, not death, may be accompanied by
cleansing, life on this side of death, and life on the other side of
death, but not death, which is between, the mere transition from life to
life, from one mode of life to another.

The soul, therefore, after death begins just where it left off, just as
life left it, no better, no worse.  It passes into the unseen world,
pardoned, it may be, by GOD'S mercy, but yet no other than it was before
it left the body.  Even GOD'S pardon does not change the character, nor
yet remove the tendency to sin.  That still remains, alas! even in the
penitent.  The consequences of our acts follow upon our acts, and form
our character.  As there is uniformity in the law of cause and effect in
the realm of nature, so, in morals, is it the case with what we do.  Let
a man yield to a temptation:--is he as strong against that temptation
after he has yielded to it as he would have been if he had not yielded to
it?  We know that he is not.  We know, by our own experience, that it
needs a far greater and more strenuous effort to withstand the same
temptation after previous yielding, than it did before.  A man may repent
and be pardoned, but he is what his sin has made him, weak and frail and
prone to sin again.  GOD'S pardon has cancelled his guilt, but it has not
removed his tendency, nor the moral consequences, which sin has wrought
upon his character.

This then is what is meant when it is said that the soul, which has
received the gracious pardon of GOD before it left the body, is still,
when it is launched into the Intermediate Life, clouded and disfigured
with the stains and imperfections which it had contracted in this life.
But GOD, Who has begun the good work of cleansing in this life, will
carry it on in the life unseen, until the soul be made perfect in the day
of Jesus Christ.

Who of us, the best of us, does not feel within him the bitterness of the
lingering poison, which sin has deposited in his heart?  The holier a man
is, the more he is conscious of his sinfulness.  To the end of life this
must be so; for there is no reaching perfection here.  Those, chiefly,
who have made most progress in the struggle against sin here, know how
hateful it is.  The higher men rise here in the divine life, the more
they discern their imperfections, because they can better measure them by
the measure of GOD'S perfections.  Each loftier level is but a new
standpoint from which to lift the eyes, and view the peaks which soar
upward towards infinite elevations.  For GOD is holiness itself; and
holiness is infinite, because GOD is infinite.




VI.


   "Being confident of this very thing, that He which began a good work
   in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ."--PHIL. I. 6
   (_R.V._)

The ground is now cleared for an answer to the question,--How is the
purification of the soul effected in the Intermediate Life, and what is
the nature of the process?  We have seen, 1st, that this waiting time is
not an idle time, but a time when something has to be done which can only
be done then; 2nd, that what has to be done then is the work of cleansing
and purifying the soul, that it may be perfected for the Beatific Vision
in heaven; 3rd, that the souls of those who die in grace do yet, although
fully pardoned, retain frailties of character, the consequences of former
sins; and, 4th, that dying in itself has no cleansing virtue whatever.
What, then, are the conditions on which we may rely as grounds for
legitimate inferences?

1.  First, then, memory survives death.  In the narrative to which we
have had occasion to refer more than once, Abraham is spoken of as
bidding the rich man to remember.  "Son, remember, that thou in thy
lifetime receivedst thy good things."  The survival of memory is involved
in the soul's consciousness of its own existence.  And to be conscious of
our own existence is to be conscious that we are still the same persons
that we were.  Therefore we must be able to remember each successive
moment what and who we were in the moment previous: so that the
continuance of life involves the continuance of the consciousness that it
is ourselves that live.  And this is memory.  Bishop Butler, therefore,
says, "There is no reason for supposing that the exercise of our present
powers of reflection is even suspended by the act of dying."

But if we grant this, we may go further.  What is it which makes memory
in this life so imperfect?  What is it but the obtrusive hindrance of the
body?  The body is at the mercy of the disturbing assaults of present
impressions.  Through ear, and eye, and touch external objects invade the
mind, and dispel and distract fixed and steadfast retrospect.  The
present blots out the past.  When we look back, scenes, and events, and
words, and names fade from our memory, and are dimmed by the haze of
distance.  The past is smothered by what has happened since.  Only with a
supreme effort, only in solitude, and then only imperfectly, can we
recall what has gone by.  But there, in the Intermediate State, when the
soul dwells apart from the body, there, in the stillness of that
"cloistered and secluded life," the powers of memory will be undistracted
and perfect.  Even in this life, as we are told, some, in a great crisis,
have seen at a single glance the whole story of their past experience,
and scenes and events, long since forgotten, have flashed in an instant
before the mind, clear and vivid.  Such clearness, we may well suppose,
will the memory have in the Intermediate Life, as it recalls in that
quiet stillness the actions of the past days on earth.  Here is the first
equipment then for the work of cleansing.  All the evil things done in
life, all the forgotten sins, in all their naked and uncouth colours,
will stand undisguised before the mind.  Nothing will escape the
memory:--nothing.  The days of childhood, of youth, of middle age, of
elder years will give in their report.  The soul will see things then as
they are, no longer tricked out in false and flattering guise.  There, in
all their miserable littleness, and coarseness, and meanness, and
cowardice, bygone sins will rise up before the stern tribunal of the
unsparing memory, each as it was, each as it is, each as GOD saw it at
the time, each as GOD sees it now.

2.  But this is not all.  The souls of those who have received
forgiveness in life, and have passed into the Intermediate State in GOD'S
favour, are, we must remember, "with Christ"; with Christ, however
imperfect their characters, however scarred with traces of former wounds
of sin.  The malefactor's character at his death must have been full of
blemishes, yet he was to be ushered and welcomed into Paradise by Christ
Himself.  S. Paul again and again spoke of his own departure at death as
that which would lead him into the presence of Christ.  It may, however,
be suggested that to be with Christ is to be with GOD, and that the
vision of Christ must be the same thing as the vision of GOD.  But the
vision of GOD is specially reserved for the redeemed in heaven, while the
vision of Christ is possible in Paradise; for where Christ is there is
the vision of Christ.  For Christ has assumed the form of man, and was
seen as Man by men.  But no man hath seen nor can see GOD.  He dwells in
the light which no man can approach unto.  This is the vision of Him Who
is to mortal eyes in His essence invisible.  That vision will be granted
to the pure in heart in the infinite glory of Heaven, granted to those
who shall have become fitted to behold Him in Heaven.  But He Who took
our flesh was manifest in the flesh, and was seen, and touched, and
handled.  In that same body He rose from the dead; in that same glorified
body He ascended into Heaven, to fill all things.  And so after His
Ascension He was seen by S. Stephen {63} and by S. Paul.  That human
nature, therefore, we are to believe is so present in Paradise that the
sight of Him is vouchsafed even there to those who may be "with Him."

What, then, follows from this?  It follows that the soul will not only
remember but also be able to judge of the past.  For not only will it see
its sins, but it will behold Christ also.  It will see them, therefore,
in the light of the perfect love, and most gracious sinlessness of Jesus
Christ.  It will look upon sin's stains as they stand out in contrast
with His purity, its ingratitude in contrast with His compassion.  He
will be the atmosphere of the soul's existence.  All the shame and
dishonour, which in life the soul so complacently accepted, will then
overwhelm it with self-reproach and very bitter compunction.  This is
what is meant by seeing sins as GOD sees them.  It is to see them as the
soul will see them under the sense of the Presence of the Holy Christ.
Then will the soul know its guilt as it never knew it before.  The guilt
of sin will then be no bare expression, no conventional formula, but a
spiritual fact, not an abstract doctrine, but a concrete reality.

There will be revealed also to the soul the true meaning and significance
of GOD'S providences in life, which at the time were overlooked, or
slighted, or strangely misunderstood.  Tokens of GOD'S love and care will
then find their interpretation.  The soul will see plainly why was this,
wherefore was that, what that sorrow meant, what that loss, that parting
from one who was more dear than life.  The many perplexities which on
earth misled the soul, of these the loving mercy and the gracious reason
will then be seen.

And will there not be with the amazing surprise at these revelations a
strange and unaccountable gladness?  But, no less, at the thought of the
soul's past blindness and persistence in ill-doing, will there not be an
exquisite pain?  And the soul's pain can be even more oppressive than the
pain of the body.  "Pain," it may be asked, "in the Presence of Christ?"
Yes, indeed! pain, because in the Presence of Christ; pain in
remembering, and in the consciousness, new to the soul, of its utter
unworthiness before Christ.  The soul cannot fully feel it now, but it
will feel it then.  The fire of His love will kindle a fire of loving
self-reproach.  The weight of a heavy shame to think of the past, and to
know now of His beauty, and His love, and His care, care for so careless
a soul, love for a soul so loveless,--this will sting with an extreme
severity the soul humbled before Him.  And here we should do well to
remember that, as the characters of each differ almost infinitely,
whereby there are innumerable shades and degrees of every conceivable
distinction of merit and of sin, so the proportion and depth of the pains
which the souls will feel will vary equally.  The pains of no two souls
will be exactly the same.  They will be measured out, in subtle and exact
aptness to each, according to its guilt or goodness, precisely as the
process of its purification shall require.  There will be nothing unjust,
nothing capricious in them.

And thus the pain will surely be a very wholesome pain.  What could more
deepen penitence?  The pain of self-reproach for unworthiness, and the
pain of the sense of goodness in the Presence of Jesus Christ,--these two
pains will purify the soul.  No work of sanctification has ever been
wrought in any soul without suffering.  And none ever will.  Even Christ
Himself was not made perfect, as Man, without suffering.  But the
suffering in Paradise will be accompanied with an exquisite delight and
joy.  Do we not know, even here on earth, how near to each other very
often are joy and sorrow?  He whose spirit is swelling with a great
gladness has often a sense of an undercurrent of great pain along with
it.  How often tears and laughter go together!  So, in that home of the
disembodied soul, the very process of purification will be marked by an
intensity of joy and an intensity of pain.  They will be simultaneous.
Nay! increasingly, it may be, they will deepen in the soul.  The nearer
the soul reaches its perfection the more abounding may be its gladness,
and the more piercing its compunction.  Thus its very anguish will be a
delight, and its very delight will be an anguish, and these will proceed,
and advance, and increase until the soul is ripe for the Blessed Vision
of GOD in Heaven.  For He Which began the good work in the soul, here, in
life, will, we may be very confident, never abandon it, nor suspend it,
but will continue it and perfect it all through the after life, even
until the day of Jesus Christ.




VII.


   "Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit: in
   which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which
   aforetime were disobedient, when the longsuffering of GOD waited in
   the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing."

   --1 PETER III. 18, 19, 20 (_R.V._)

So far we have considered the case of those who die in the favour of GOD,
and, though as yet unfit for the vision of GOD in Heaven itself, are
nevertheless capable of becoming so in the course of the Intermediate
Life.

What, however, must be said of those who in life had light and knowledge
of GOD and of His will, and yet hardened themselves against GOD; who were
free, and in the exercise of their freedom rejected GOD?  Of these
unhappy souls, if there is no yielding of their will to GOD in the
Intermediate Life, if, and so far as, they have absolutely made
themselves by the fixedness of their choice incapable of yielding, if
after death they still hate GOD and set the whole force of their
determination against Him,--one can only fear that even GOD Himself
cannot help them.  On the supposition that the prerogative of free will,
once for all given to man, must be respected by GOD, we are driven to the
belief that GOD cannot force the will.  It is not that GOD changes
towards them.  It is not necessary to suppose that He is even punishing
them.  He may still be in Himself all that He is to all, full of love
towards them, full of pity, full of mercy.  "His mercy is over all His
works."  He can no more cease to be a Father to every man than He can
cease to be GOD.  He hates nothing that He has made.  But if the very
knowledge and thought of GOD'S longsuffering patience serves only to
harden and to exasperate, if it only stirs in the lost soul deeper pangs
of inexorable hatred, then,--man being man and GOD being GOD,--what can
GOD do?  It is they who reject GOD, not GOD Who is rejecting them.  It is
they who spurn Him, not He Who chastises them.  He does not banish them
from His Presence: it is they who banish Him from their presence.  And if
this defiance against GOD survives and lasts, if, as ages pass, it
becomes more resolutely inveterate and set, what power can stop it, what
love can soften it?  And if it is never to be pacified, and never yields,
what shall hinder it from going on up to and beyond the Day of Judgment?
It may be said that such utter determination is a moral impossibility,
that no will of man could finally defy and resist the love of GOD.  If
that be so, well!  But on the assumption that it is not impossible, the
inference which has been drawn is inevitable.

But there are others who in life have never heard of Christ, the millions
of heathen in all ages and all lands since the world began, of whom it
may truly be said that they never had a chance of salvation.  To these
may be added many who have indeed fallen in with Christianity, but with a
Christianity of such a sort, presented to them in such a way, in such a
form, and under such circumstances as almost naturally to create in their
minds a really honest doubt and distrust of it.  What shall be said of
these honest unbelievers, and, scarcely through their own fault, blind?
As to these, let us ask whether the doctrine of the Intermediate State
can help to give us some better hope.

In the text, {72} we are told that Christ was put to death upon the Cross
in the flesh, but was quickened in His human Spirit, that is to say, that
after His human Spirit left His Body it was still quick or alive.  We
know, from the Gospel of S. Luke, whither His human Spirit went.  It went
to Paradise.  S. Peter now tells us what His Spirit did there.  He tells
us that it preached unto other spirits, and he names the spirits of those
who for 120 years, while Noah was building the ark, were disobedient.
They had rejected Noah, "the preacher of righteousness" {73} as S. Peter
calls him; and now a greater Preacher went to preach to them.  Further,
we are told, that they were "in prison."  The word should rather be
rendered "in safe keeping," that is to say, still waiting, under GOD'S
care, for this visit of Christ's human Spirit, when He should preach to
them.  Why the spirits of these men, who lived before the flood, are
singled out for special mention, is a question that does not really bear
upon the point which we have in hand.  And we had better keep to that
point, and not be tempted to digress.  What then follows from this?  Two
things are clear,--first, that from as far back as the days before the
flood, that is to say, from the very beginning of human life on earth,
souls in the Intermediate State had been waiting in safe keeping all
these many thousand years; and, secondly, that the disembodied soul of
our Lord Jesus Christ visited them there and preached to them.  Assuming
that these souls had repented, however late, before they died, still we
learn that something more than repentance was needful to them.  In this
case, it is clear that instruction was given to them.  It would not have
been given if it had not been necessary.  And what instruction?  Christ
"proclaimed," we are told, to them.  What did He proclaim?  Surely the
good news of the Gospel, {74} which He had been proclaiming on earth by
the voice of the Apostles.  What else did He make known than the mystery
of His Incarnation and the Atonement which He had wrought out upon the
Cross, in bearing the sins of men, and their sins, too, who had so long
been waiting in the Intermediate State, to hear it to their salvation?  S.
Peter, therefore, in another place, says, "For this cause," that is,
because Christ will Himself be the Judge of the living and the dead,--"for
this cause was _the Gospel_ preached even to the dead." {75}

Here, then, we have a set of facts which throw light upon some of the
dark places of that unknown and unseen land, the Intermediate State.  If
we do justice to our Bibles we must regard these as facts, whether we can
fully explain them or not.  Scriptural facts they certainly are.  What,
then, can we learn from them?  First, we seem to learn this,--that some
provision is made in the Intermediate State for the salvation of those
souls who in this life never heard of Christ, never had a chance, as we
say, of salvation.  And when we think of it, does it not seem to belong
to GOD'S eternal justice that souls should not be condemned for that
which they could not help?  Every human soul must have had a chance of
knowing Christ, before it can justly be punished for the consequences of
not knowing Him.  Countless millions in all ages, since the world began,
in our own land, and in other lands, have never heard the good news of
Jesus Christ in life.  It is not so with us.  With them it is and has
been so.  Christ preached to those who in safe keeping had been waiting
long.  Then is it not possible for such as those in all ages to receive
the teaching in the Intermediate Life which they never received in this?
Why should Christ preach to those and not to these?

This hope helps to solve that harassing enigma which perplexes and
oppresses so many of us,--I mean, as to the condition and future destiny
of the heathen, and the outcast, and the blind, and the ignorant.  There,
in that stillness of the disembodied life, souls may be taught and
trained to know what they never could know in this life on earth, the
wonders and the blessings of the life in Christ.

And, besides, do we not at least learn this from Christ's preaching to
these souls, that intercourse and communication is _possible_ in the life
after death, and will take place?  And this suggests another aspect of
the work in that life, besides the work of progressive cleansing and
perfecting.  The souls of the faithful rest from their labours.  Yes! but
they have also a work to do which can only be done then, the work of the
soul's purification.  The work, however, which they can do for others is
better than that which can be done for themselves.  What can they do for
the souls of others?  Can they not do what Christ's human spirit did?
Here on earth men are charged, not only with the care of their own souls,
but with the care of the souls of others also.  And why should they not
be ambassadors for Christ there, if Christ's work has to be done there?
Here on earth He uses imperfect men to proclaim His Gospel.  There, in
that after life, if His Gospel is to be proclaimed to those that never
heard it in this life, why should He not employ souls also, not yet
perfected, upon the same happy task?

And may not this charge, laid on ministering souls in the Intermediate
Life, help to solve another mystery--the mystery of many an early and, as
we might think, untimely death?  How often do we see a life cut short at
the very climax of its best powers, in the very midst of its noblest
service!  All the earlier days had been directed, and had contributed to
the perfection of the instrument, and then, just when its work was doing,
came the sudden end.  Was it not so to our Blessed Lord Himself?  May it
not be said with due reverence that, if only His human life on earth had
been prolonged, His teaching, and His miracles, and His sinlessness, and
His love must have swayed and melted the hearts of men, even of those who
so long and so stubbornly withstood Him?  We might so think.  But, just
when His young life was at its prime of human excellence, He died, and
His human Spirit passed to preach salvation to souls in the spirit land.
So are souls, it may be, taken from us at the summit of their ripeness,
but only to be transferred to another scene, and to be employed upon
other work.  Their labours change, but their works indeed do follow with
them to that land where other souls of those who knew not Christ here may
learn to know Him there, and knowing Him may choose Him, and choosing Him
may be His and He theirs even to the end.




VIII.


   "Not handling the word of GOD deceitfully, but by the manifestation of
   the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight
   of GOD."

   --2 COR. IV. 2.

The Scriptural doctrine of the Intermediate Life, as I have tried, so
far, to set it forth, is a very different thing from what our
Twenty-second Article calls "The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory."
The word "purgatory" simply means the sphere or life of cleansing.  The
Intermediate State, therefore, during which the soul is being purified
and fitted for the vision of GOD in Heaven may be legitimately called "a
purgatory."  But "The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory" means much
more than this.  It is a belief which, originating in what was true and
Scriptural, gradually became so overlaid with subsequent additions, that
the original truth was at length buried and lost sight of.  What the
Twenty-second Article condemns is not any and every conceivable doctrine
concerning Purgatory, but the Romish doctrine only.  And here it is well
to note that all false beliefs which have had for any length of time a
wide currency among men have been founded upon and have retained in them
some element of truth.  This it is which enabled them to survive: this
and nothing else gives to error its vitality.  These false beliefs are
not mere error, but contain truth and error mixed together.  The error
perverts and makes void the truth; but without the truth the error could
not live.

In the case of the doctrine of Purgatory, the true and Scriptural
doctrine of the progressive purification of the soul in the Intermediate
State is the element of truth on which has been based the Romish Doctrine
of Purgatory.  Wherein then lies the error of it?

1.  In the first place, whereas the Bible teaches, as we have seen, that
every soul at death enters the Intermediate State, the souls of the
greatest saints as well as the souls of the greatest sinners, "the Romish
Doctrine" teaches that the souls of very many never enter the
Intermediate State at all.  The souls of the holy patriarchs of old, of
Christian martyrs, and of canonized Saints, it is held, pass straight to
heaven.  On the other hand, the souls of those who die in mortal sin, and
of excommunicated persons are believed to go straight to hell.  Thus
practically the Intermediate State is cancelled for these two classes.
There remains, therefore, only one class which is supposed to enter the
Intermediate State, those namely, who have died in venial sin.  And since
it is part of the Romish doctrine to regard Paradise as the same thing as
Heaven, and to hold that the souls which alone enter Purgatory, after
suffering due torments, pass direct out of Purgatory into Paradise or
Heaven, it follows that in the Intermediate State are only those who are
actually undergoing, for the time appointed, the pains of Purgatory.  For
all, therefore, eventually the Intermediate State is terminated at some
time on this side of the Day of Judgment.  Hence it came about that those
who rejected the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory rejected along with
it the doctrine of the Intermediate State, since, virtually, Purgatory
and the Intermediate State had been regarded as practically one and the
same thing, as indeed they were in duration conterminous.  In rejecting
the one therefore, men unhappily but almost naturally rejected the other
also.

2.  Further, the pains which are felt in the process of purification, as
has been shown, spring from within the soul itself, and are not
necessarily or for all inflicted as a torment or punishment from without.
Rather they arise from the soul's own action upon itself, from its own
pangs of shame and self-abasement, all deepened and made more poignant by
the ever increasing sense of the love of Jesus Christ, then as never
before apprehended, and by the holy vision of His perfections.  Thereby,
as they gaze on Him, they are changed by the influence of the sight of
Him, into greater likeness to Him.  On the other hand, contrast with
these the nature of the pains which the Romish Doctrine assigns to the
souls in Purgatory.  They are held in all cases to be penal, that is to
say, inflicted by GOD as punishment.  The souls are said to suffer
torments! {84}  Moreover these torments, as is taught in Roman Catholic
treatises on the subject, are caused by literal and material flames, by
actual fires which would feed on and consume corporeal substances such as
the human body.  But what enters the Intermediate State is the soul only,
not the body: and, in the nature of things, the sufferings of the
incorporeal part of our being can only be themselves incorporeal.  The
pains of the spirit can only be spiritual pains.

3.  Again, the "Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory" is closely bound up
with what are called in the Thirty-first Article "the Sacrifices of
Masses," and with the sale of "Pardons" or Indulgences, named in the
Twenty-second Article.  The character of the Romish doctrine, as of every
other doctrine, must be tested by what has grown with its growth.  It was
held that by these "Sacrifices of Masses" and "Indulgences" souls, one by
one, were released from Purgatorial fires sooner than, without their aid,
they could be delivered, and thus were at once admitted to Paradise or
Heaven.

What, however, does the Thirty-first Article precisely mean by
"Sacrifices of Masses"?  The expression is peculiar, and appears to have
been designedly so shaped in order to be clearly distinguished from what
is meant by the Sacrifice in the Mass, or Holy Communion.  For that the
Holy Communion has been held and taught by our chief English Divines to
be a Sacrifice cannot well be disputed. {86}  But the term "Sacrifices of
Masses" was intended to signify what were called, at the time when the
Article was drawn up, "Private Masses," which were offered chiefly for
souls in Purgatory, and in return for money payment.  The Article refers
to modes of speaking prevalent on the lips of men at the time.  It
condemns that which was "_commonly said_."  And what was it that was
"commonly said"?  It was commonly said that, while Christ's death on the
Cross was indeed a propitiation for original or birth sin, on the other
hand for daily sins, committed after Baptism, another propitiatory
sacrifice was needed, _viz._, the "Sacrifice of the Mass."  Thus the
Sacrifice of the Mass, which is not the same thing as the Sacrifice _in_
the Mass, was regarded as an addition to and distinct from the Sacrifice
on the Cross, as indeed a repetition of it, having a propitiatory value
of its own, which the Sacrifice on the Cross had not; just as though it
were what Bishop Gardiner, in repudiating it, described as "a new
Redemption." {87}  Hence it came about that the belief arose that Masses
offered for specific purposes had more virtue for those purposes than
what was called "a Common Mass."  The practice, therefore, of offering
"private Masses" for souls in Purgatory, as it was very lucrative, so it
became very prevalent.  Thus spiritual things were used for the purpose
of bringing large money gains to the Chantry Priests, and what should be,
and we may surely affirm was meant to be, for the common benefit of all
became the narrow privilege of the few.  For rich men could provide
Masses for their dead friends and for themselves after death, which it
was quite out of the power of the poor to provide. {88}

4.  But a word also must be said about "Indulgences."  An Indulgence was
an abatement or remission granted by the Church's authority of some part
of the temporal penance imposed by that authority upon an evil doer.  If
the guilty person should show sincere proofs of penitence, or by liberal
giving of alms made satisfactory recompense for wrongs done, his penance
might be eased, or the term of his excommunication shortened, and his
Church privileges partly or wholly restored.  It may well be understood
how all this might be very wisely and fitly done.  The authority which
inflicted the penance may rightly have been entrusted with the power also
of mitigating or removing it.  But gradually this remission of the
temporal punishment for sins done in the past became applicable, not
seldom, to future sin also: and it soon was no uncommon thing to grant
Indulgences for 500, or 10,000, and even for 50,000 years.  And, since
these long periods of years would, of course, extend beyond any man's
term of life on earth, it was obvious that they were intended to secure
the remission, not indeed of the guilt of the sin, but of the temporal
punishment of sin during all these years in Purgatory.  Thus it was
supposed that the best possible provision was made whereby the duration
of the long years of torments due for sin in Purgatory might be
curtailed.  But worse remained.  The Papal Court needed treasure.  And in
an evil moment permission was given that these Indulgences might be sold
for money.  Thus grew up an unholy traffic, which, as we all know, first
roused in Germany the storm of the Reformation.  Subsequently, the Papal
authorities so far yielded as to forbid all taking of money for these
Indulgences.  But the system itself had meantime taken deep root.  It
continued, and continues to this day.  It was, however, at its worst when
the Twenty-second Article was drawn up.  Can we be surprised that it
sternly condemned it?  It is all a pitiful history.  But it was necessary
to refer to it in order both to show how the growth of the Romish
Doctrine of Purgatory gradually gathered round it mischievous accretions,
and also to prove how little the belief, that in the Intermediate State
there is a progressive advance of the soul in holiness towards
perfection, is like the Romish teaching and practice.

But it would be an act of disloyalty to the truth, and of cowardice into
the bargain, if we should abandon or minimize a truth because it has been
by some corrupted and perverted.  Many a truth which has come down to us
may have lost some of the fresh lustre of its early purity.  But all the
same, if it is the truth we cannot let it go.  And that truth which tells
us something of the land, now beyond our sight, to which our dear ones
have already passed, which we shall each of us ourselves soon enter--the
truth which GOD has made known to us in Holy Scripture about this land,
we cannot afford to ignore and disregard.  Nothing is easier than to
discredit such a truth by raising the cry of Popery.  It is one of the
penalties which those have to pay who seek to disentangle the truth which
He has in His Church revealed from the untruth which has wrapped it
round.

But we must not shrink from this duty.  In days when principles are
questioned, and almost all truths disputed, we must, at all hazards,
learn to keep our sight clear and our footing steady.  For the Lord is
our Light and our Salvation.  Whom then shall we fear?  The Lord is the
strength of our life: of whom then shall we be afraid? {92}




IX.


   "The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that
   day."--2 TIM. I. 18.

We must now bring to a close the discussion which has been occupying our
attention: not that everything has been said that can or ought to be said
about it; for the interest of the subject grows with the handling of it,
as the various features of it open out to view.

So far we have been dealing with the condition of the faithful dead as it
affects themselves, with the mode of their own conscious life in the
Intermediate State, and with the nature of their own progressive advance
towards perfection.  But there is another aspect of the question, about
which nothing has hitherto been said, I mean, their relation to us who
are still living on earth.  A few words, and they must be very few, must
be said on this point.  It is asked, for example, whether the veil has
completely shut out all knowledge of what is passing on earth from those
who have gone to their rest.  No doubt, we can know very little about
this.  But, at all events, we do not know enough to warrant us in saying
with any confidence that they are aware of nothing that is going on here.
It is true that, as has been said, the door that opens between this life
and that life only "open inwards," and that none have come back to tell
us what in that after life they knew about us and about our doings on
earth.  Yet this ignorance of ours is not the same thing as knowledge of
the contrary, any more than silence is always equivalent to denial.
Because we cannot see with our eyes, nor hear with our ears, and cannot,
by our actual senses, put the question to the test, we are not on this
account justified in denying.  Do we not know almost nothing as to the
limits of the powers of the spirit world?  All we can say, so far as
reason can be our guide, is this, that it is _possible_ that souls in the
Intermediate State, if they are conscious of themselves and of their
present condition, if they retain memory, if they have means of holding
intercourse with one another, may have means of knowing what goes on
here: I say that reason will tell us that this is at least possible, and
that it is quite impossible to prove the contrary.

But does the Bible throw any light upon this mysterious subject?  I think
it does.  It will be remembered how, in the narrative of the rich man and
Lazarus, Abraham is made to say to the rich man, "They have Moses and the
Prophets, let them hear them."  We may ask, how could Abraham, who lived
more than 400 years before the birth of Moses, have known of the
existence of Moses, if there were no possible means of communication, by
which occurrences on earth could be made known in the unseen world where
Abraham was?  What could he know of the prophets who lived more than a
thousand years after his time, if no possible communication could find
its way to that other world? {96}  And we may trust this inference
because, in a narrative of this kind, whether it be historical or not, it
is not to be supposed that our Lord would have introduced a false detail.

Let us, however, turn to another passage.  In the scene on the Mount of
the Transfiguration there appeared, talking with Christ, Moses and
Elijah.  In what condition were they present?  They were still in the
Intermediate State.  The general Resurrection had not, and has not yet,
come.  "In glory" they appeared.  Yes! some outward clothing, as of a
bodily form, gloriously radiant was thrown round them, so that they
became visible for the time to the eyes of the three disciples.  But in
no resurrection bodies did they come; for in those they could not yet
present themselves, since they had not yet received them.  And what was
the theme of their conversation?  They spoke, we are told, with Christ
concerning the exodus or "death, which He should accomplish at
Jerusalem."  But how could they speak fitly of this great theme, if they
had no knowledge of the circumstances which were leading to it, of the
nature of Christ's Incarnate Life on earth, and something at least or the
real significance, known fully to the mind of GOD only, of His
approaching death?  They must have known not only of each other, who and
what they had been historically in their own generation, but also what
was now passing on earth, the course and connection of prophecies and
types, and the succession of events in history which had led up to this
climax of the fulness of time.

Thus we see that the hearts of these two visitants,--visitants not from
Heaven, but from Paradise,--were fastened with a keen interest and
strained attention upon the unfolding of that wondrous Life of Christ.
His works and words were the theme of their adoring contemplation.  May
we not learn then, that what these two great Saints could do was,
therefore, at least a possible thing to do, and, according to the will of
GOD, a thing which others might also do? {98}  If so, the barrier between
Paradise and earth is so far transparent on that further side, that what
GOD permits souls in the Intermediate Life to know, that they do actually
see and know of the occurrences that are passing here. {99}

But I must hasten to the answer of another question.  Do they pray for
us?  Surely that question is as good as answered by what has just been
said.  If those who have gone from our sight are still permitted to know
what it may be good for them to know of the trials and sorrows, the hopes
and fears, the temptations and the warfare to which we, whom they loved
so well and still love, are exposed on earth, we are sure that they take
thought of us and pray for us.  Shall not they whose eyes are opened, now
that they are with Christ, care for and pray for those whom they have
left behind, tossing still upon the troubled seas, and buffeted by the
vexing winds and storms of this earthly life?

They are, moreover, "with Christ."  What does this really imply,--to be
"with Christ"?  It must mean at least this, that, where Christ is, there
is the Church.  And Christ, though He has ascended to the Right Hand of
GOD, is still in a true sense in Paradise also.  For "He filleth all in
all." {100a}  S. Stephen, before his death, prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive
my spirit."  Our Lord, therefore, must have been there in Paradise to
receive it.  S. Paul, long after our Lord's Ascension, knew that to die
was better than to live, because it was to be absent from the body and
present with the Lord. {100b}  But if Christ is there, He must be the
object of the worship of those who are also there.  So then if Christ be
there, and the Church is there, and worship is offered there, then it
follows that the whole energy of Church life is there.  The souls in
Paradise are not so many isolated and individual units.  The Church
unites them.  They are organised in the exercise of worship, sustained,
as it surely is, in unfailing and perpetual intensity.  As the incense of
our worship rises here, it blends with the incense that ascends to Christ
there.  The Church is militant on earth, it is expectant in Paradise, it
will be hereafter triumphant in Heaven.  Yet these are not three
Churches, but one Church.  And this helps us to see more clearly what is
meant by the Communion of Saints.  The Church on earth and the Church in
Paradise are one, and one thrill of spiritual communion vibrates through
its members there and here.

But is prayer to be one sided?  Communion is not one sided.  And
communion implies that what they do for us, we should also do for them.
This brings us to one more question.  May we, then, pray for those who
have passed on before us?  Let us plainly say that there is every reason
for and none against the practice.  We have in favour of it the sanction
of Bible witness, of primitive Church custom, of Christian and human
instinct.

In the Jewish synagogues in our Lord's time, prayers for the dead formed
part of the service. {102}  Our Lord therefore, Who regularly frequented
the synagogue worship, must have been present at times when prayers for
the dead were used.  If He had disapproved of such prayers, He must have
condemned the use of them.  But did He?  He did not.  We have then His
tacit sanction of them.  S. Paul again, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, must
have warned the Gentiles against the practice, unless he approved of it.
But so far from that, there is every reason to suppose that he himself
prayed for Onesiphorus.  According to the best commentators, Onesiphorus
was dead when S. Paul wrote the words quoted in the text, "The Lord grant
unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day," _viz._, in the
Day of Judgment. {103a}  He does not pray for temporal blessings, for
health, or even for grace.  If it was too late to pray for these things,
this omission is quite intelligible.

The earliest Church Liturgies contained in them prayers for the dead.
{103b}  And the earliest Christian writers, as well as the inscriptions
on tombs bear such witness to the existence of this primitive practice,
that it cannot be disputed.  It is true that our English Prayer Book
neither expressly sanctions nor yet expressly forbids these
intercessions.  But in the Liturgy, in the Litany, and in the Burial
Service, prayers occur which appear to have been purposely so worded, as
to lend themselves to a reference in the minds of worshippers to the
faithful dead, if any should desire so to apply them.  Bishop Cosin, one
of the chief compilers of our present Prayer Book, writes that the words,
"that we and Thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all
other benefits of His Passion," occurring in our Liturgy, are to be
understood to refer as well to "those who have been here before," that is
to say, who have died in the Lord, as to those "that are now members of
it," that is, who still are living. {104}

And is not the custom reasonable?  Are we to pray for those whom we
dearly love up to the very last moment of their life, and then for ever
to refrain?  We could understand this on the supposition that death was
the end of all things, or that at death there followed an immediate
heaven or an instant hell; but not if the process of purification and of
real Church life are continuing after death.  And Christian instinct
urges it.  GOD is a Father.  As children we ought to tell Him all that is
in our heart.  Whatever we may rightly desire we may rightly pray for.  It
is only that which we ought not to desire that we ought not to pray for.
It is not right to pray that they may, as by a miracle, be restored to
us; that is not the will of GOD.  Nor is it right that we should seek by
occult and forbidden ways to hold converse with them.  But we may surely
ask for them what S. Paul asked for his friend, that they may find mercy
in that day, that they may have rest and peace and light and refreshment,
the joy of Christ's Presence, and the gladness of a blessed Resurrection.

And now these words must be brought to a close.  The arguments which have
been urged rest upon the very language of Holy Scripture, or upon
legitimate inferences from it.  What then?  If they are worthy of trust,
to accept them is to rob death of half its fears and alarms.  It is the
unknown that inspires terror.  To know but a little more than we before
knew of the land in which those who have gone before now sojourn, is to
gather fresh courage to face it with less misgiving for them and for
ourselves.  They have passed on, but they await us there.  They are only
hidden from us for a little while.  Their voices are silent.  But their
life is as real a life as ours.  No dull oblivion weighs them down.  They
live and think and see and know,--know, it may be, more of us than we
think, know as much of us as it is for their happiness to know.  A little
while and we also shall know as they know, and see as they see, in the
home and resting place of vision and of peace.




Footnotes:


{5}  Rev. xxi. 27.

{8}  2 Cor. v. 10.

{14}  Acts xxiv. 15.

{15}  See Luckock, "The Intermediate State," pp. 14, 15.

{17}  S. John xx. 17.

{19}  The expression is borrowed from the custom among the Jews of
reclining instead of sitting at a banquet.  The guest was stretched upon
a couch, his left elbow resting upon a cushion close to the table, his
feet being towards the outer side of the couch, which was away from the
table.  By slightly bending back his head he could touch with it the
breast of the guest on his left hand, and speak to him in a low voice.
Thus S. John bent back upon our Lord's breast at the Last Supper to ask
Him, "Lord, who is it?" and is therefore spoken of as "he who leant upon
His breast at supper."  To sit therefore, or to rest in the bosom of
Abraham, represented the happy lot of those who had passed to Paradise.

{23}  Mozley, Univ. Serm., p. 155.

{24a}  Isaiah xxxiii. 17.

{24b}  Psalm xvi. 11.

{24c}  1 John iii. 2.

{25a}  1 Peter v. 4.

{25b}  1 John iii. 2.

{25c}  Col. iii. 4.

{25d}  2 Tim. iv. 3.

{26}  Advent Sermon, "The Day of the Lord."

{28}  Rev. vi. 9, 10, 11 (_Revised Version_).

{34a}  1 Thess. v. 23.  But the A.V. hardly brings out the full force of
the distinction.  The definite article has a possessive force, as if it
were "_your_ spirit, _your_ soul, _your_ body"; as though the spirit was
as distinct from the soul as each of them is distinct from the body.

{34b}  Heb. iv. 12.

{34c}  1 Cor. ii. 14.

{35a}  1 Cor. xv. 44.

{35b}  S. James iii. 15.

{35c}  Jude 19.

{35d}  Gen. ii. 7.

{37}  Mason, "Faith of the Gospel," p. 85.

{41a}  For example, Acts vii. 60; S. John xi. 11, 14; 1 Thess. v. 14; 1
Cor. xv. 18, 20.

{41b}  Rev. xiv. 13.

{43}  Phil i. 21.

{44}  1 Peter iii. 18.

{47}  Isaiah i. 2.

{63}  See p. 100 _infra_.

{72}  In the A.V. the words in v. 18 are printed differently from the
R.V.  In the former the reading is "quickened by the Spirit," as though
S. Peter meant to assert, that it was by the special operation of GOD the
Holy Ghost that our Lord, after He died upon the Cross, still lived.  But
this rendering entirely destroys the evident antithesis which is marked
in the contrast between "put to death" and "quickened," and between
"flesh" and "spirit."  That antithesis limits the effect of Christ's
death to His human Body, while His human Spirit was still alive.

{73}  2 Peter ii. 5.

{74}  The same word is used constantly in the N.T. for the special
proclamation of the Gospel.

{75}  1 Peter iv. 6.

{84}  Thus the Catechism of the Council of Trent states that "There is a
Purgatorial Fire where the souls of _the righteous_ being tormented are
purified."

{86}  In the Holy Communion the priest and the people offer to the Father
"the one full, perfect, and sufficient Sacrifice, oblation, and
satisfaction for the sins of the whole world."  The Christian Society is
called in 1 Peter ii. 9, a "royal _priesthood_," ([Greek]), and in Rev.
i. 6 "kings and _priests to God_."  ([Greek]); and as [Greek] and [Greek]
are sacrificial terms, it is to be inferred that a Sacrifice is really
offered by them.  As Christ perpetually, being a "Priest forever," and
therefore "having of necessity something to offer" for ever (Heb. viii.
3), presents in the Holy Place not made with hands, in Heaven itself, the
Sacrifice of Himself before the eyes of the Father, so, at every Altar on
earth, the "kings and priests" being a sacrificing priesthood, represent
and commemorate the same sacrifice and none other, a sacrifice which
never can be repeated.

{87}  See Dr. Maclear on the Articles, p. 368.  If the Sacrifice on the
Cross served one purpose and effected one propitiation, and the Sacrifice
of the Mass another, then the inference is that they were themselves, so
far, different things.  It was the same Body of Christ which was offered
in each case, but the sacrifices of the same Body were different.
Therefore the Sacrifice of the Mass was a repetition of the Sacrifice on
the Cross for a distinct object and a distinct purpose.  It was
supplementary, and supplied a defect which the Sacrifice on the Cross
failed to supply!

{88}  What has been said on the subject of "The Sacrifices of Masses" for
souls in Purgatory must not be understood as implying that the Sacrifice
in the Holy Communion has no efficacy, when pleaded in behalf of the
souls in the Intermediate State.  To use the words of Bishop Forbes, "The
application of the Blessed Eucharist to the departed must in our Church
stand and fall with the practice of prayers for the dead.  In its aspect
of the great oblation, the Holy Communion may be considered as prayer in
its most intense and highest form.  If it is unlawful to pray for the
faithful departed, it must be unlawful to remember them in the sacred
mysteries; but, if the first be permitted, the second must be so
likewise."  (Article XXXI., p. 63.)  The subject of Prayers for the Dead
is dealt with in the next Address, page 101 _sq._

{92}  Psalm xxvii. 1.

{96}  A friend has suggested that Moses and the prophets may, one after
the other, have reported to Abraham the occurrences on earth in which
they had severally themselves taken part, and that, therefore, we have in
this narrative no more than an illustration of the mutual intercourse
which exists in the Intermediate Life.  To this it may be replied that
this suggestion, so far from discrediting, really confirms the argument
in the sermon.  The suggestion is an attempt to explain the mode by which
knowledge of what passes here is attained, which is certainly no disproof
of the existence of such knowledge.  But it is safer to say that, some
how or other, the denizens of the Intermediate State do probably know, as
Abraham certainly knew, occurrences on earth.

{98}  Both these illustrations are, I find, referred to by Canon McColl
in his "Life Here and Hereafter," pp. 105, 106.  But may I presume to
question the value of his illustration of our Lord's knowledge of what
was said, in His absence, on the way to Emmaus, and by S. Thomas?  Our
Lord's knowledge after His Resurrection, and indeed at any time, is
scarcely on a level with the knowledge possessed by souls in the
Intermediate State of what passes on earth.

{99}  There is so much doubt as to the bearing upon this point of the
words in Hebrews xii. 1, that I have not referred to it.  Yet I would
suggest that the comparison of our life on earth to the endeavours of the
runners in the games of the amphitheatre implies that those efforts are
made under the gaze of a cloud of spectators.  The existence of the
spectators, and their interest in the contests, are integral facts in the
similitude, and essential elements in it.

{100a}  Eph. i. 23.

{100b}  2 Cor. v. 8.

{102}  See 2 Macc. xii. 44, 45.

{103a}  See Plummer, Expositor, Pastoral Epp., p. 324.

{103b}  Forbes on 39 Articles, p. 612.

{104}  See the note on p. 88, Address viii. _supra_.