E-text prepared by Al Haines



Transcriber's Note:

   The Greek words in this e-book have been transliterated according
   to Project Gutenberg's Greek How-To.  Such words are indicated
   with surrounding underscores.  There are a couple of instances
   of author-transliterated Greek words.  Those words are bracketed
   and not italicized.  Underscores are also used to indicate
   italicization of words, but in this e-book such words are always
   English words.





THE GOSPEL OF THE HEREAFTER

by

J. PATERSON-SMYTH, B.D., LL.D., LITT. D., D.C.L,

  _Rector of St. Georges, Montreal, Late Professor
  of Pastoral Theology, University of Dublin_

  _Author of "How We Got Our Bible," "The
  Old Documents and the New Bible," etc., etc., etc._







New York ---- Chicago ---- Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London And Edinburgh

Copyright, 1910, by
Fleming H. Revell Company

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street




_To My Wife_




Contents


PART I

THE NEAR HEREAFTER

    I.  "I"
   II.  THE THREE STAGES OF EXISTENCE
  III.  WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER
   IV.  WHAT THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH SAY ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER
    V.  THE CRISIS OF DEATH
   VI.  "I" "MYSELF" AFTER DEATH
  VII.  RECOGNITION
 VIII.  THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS
   IX.  GROWTH AND PURIFICATION
    X.  PROBATION IN THIS LIFE
   XI.  MINISTRY IN THE UNSEEN LIFE
  XII.  CONCLUSION


PART II

THE FAR HEREAFTER

    I.  THE JUDGMENT
   II.  HELL
  III.  HEAVEN




Publishers' Note

This tenth American (and sixteenth British) edition has been carefully
revised and where necessary rewritten by the author.  We call special
attention to an interesting note on page 108.

This year a Norwegian edition has been published, translated by Judge
Hambro of the Supreme Court of Norway assisted by the Bishops of
Christiania and Trondheim.  Also request has been received for
permission to translate the book for readers in Holland.  But more
interesting is a letter from a Brahmin gentleman in India asking
permission to produce at his own cost an edition for his people and
dedicated on the front page, "TO MY SON, SEREM ALI, WHO IS NOW IN THE
NEAR HEREAFTER."




Foreword

The Lord is risen, but the people do not know it.  There is no death,
but the people do not believe it.  Human life is the most exciting
romantic adventure in the Universe, going on stage after stage till we
are older than Methuselah and then on again through the infinite
eternities--and yet men pass into the Unseen as stupidly as the
caterpillar on the cabbage-leaf, without curiosity or joy or wonder or
excitement at the boundless career ahead.

Instead of the thrill of coming adventure we have the dull grey
monotony of aged lives drawing near the close, and the horror of this
war is doubled and the torture of wife or mother as the beloved one
crosses the barrier.

What is the matter with us, Christian people?  Do we not know?  Or have
we lost our beliefs? or has imagination grown dulled by too frequent
repetition of God's good news?

      *      *      *      *      *

It was so different in early days when the world was younger, when
Christ's revelation was fresh.  Look at St. John, four-score years and
ten, like an eager boy looking into the Great Adventure: "Beloved, now
are we the sons of God, and IT DOTH NOT YET APPEAR WHAT WE SHALL BE."[1]

What we shall be!  What we shall be!  Is not that the chief delight of
being young?  Guessing and hoping and wondering what we shall be.

The dreariest thing in life is dulness--monotony.  The brightest thing
in life is outlook--vision.  And God has given us that.  Like St. John
we too can stand on the rim of the world and look out over the wall.

      *      *      *      *      *

Life is full of latent possibilities--of outlook, of romance, of
exciting futures.  God has made it so, if we would only see it.  God's
world of nature has its continuous progress, its ever new and
fascinating stages.  God's caterpillars in their next stage are going
to be soaring butterflies--God's acorns are to become mighty
oaks--God's dry little seeds in the granary to-day will in autumn be
alive in the waving harvests.  God's world of nature is full of
romantic possibilities.

And God's world of men is infinitely more so, and one of life's
delights is to know it and look forward to it guessing what we shall
be.  Outlook.  Vision.  That is what gives zest to life.  That is what
we need to make life bright and beautiful.

      *      *      *      *      *

I see a group of small boys sitting at their play, and their eyes are
bright looking into the future.  They are going to be soldiers, and
sailors, and circus riders, and travelers, and all sorts of things.
Because they are boys with the enthusiasms of boyhood, they may be
anything.  All the possibilities of boyhood belong to them.  It doth
not yet appear what they shall be, but it is delightful to look forward
and speculate about it.

      *      *      *      *      *

I see them again a dozen years later.  They are starting in life, just
left college, young soldiers and lawyers and curates and business
men--still with their visions and dreams of the future.  It doth not
yet appear what they shall be, but because they are young men, all that
belongs to young manhood lies before them, as they look forward in
their day-dreams.  What countries they shall live in and what girl they
shall marry, and what positions and what work, and what excitements,
and what pleasure lie before them.  Ah, it is delightful to be young,
realizing the possibilities in front--dreaming of what we shall be.

    *    *    *    *    *

I see a crowd of older people, men and women dull, uninterested.  "We
are no longer young," they say, "we are middle-aged or elderly.  And we
have ceased looking forward.  We have lost the vision.  We have not
become as great as we expected, or as good as we expected.  We are
fairly comfortable.  We have not much to complain of.  But life is a
bit dull.  The path is a bit monotonous now.  We have traversed most of
it.  We can see to the end.  There are no more romantic possibilities
to make life exciting, no more visions of 'what we shall be.'"

    *    *    *    *    *

Don't believe it!  Not a word of it.  The visions are there all right.
Look out over the wall.  This life of yours is only one of the stages
in your career, and not the first stage, either.  The first came to
you, silent, unconscious, "where the bones do grow in the womb of her
that is with child."  There you grew and developed for the next move
forward.  One day came the crisis of birth and you passed into the
second stage, the training stage for life and for God.  Then through a
new crisis you pass on again to new adventures.  For God has revealed
that what you call death, the end of this career, is but birth into a
new and more wondrous career which again passes you forward into still
nobler adventures, and that again, perhaps--who knows?  Who shall fix
the limit?

    *    *    *    *    *

Nay, you are not elderly.  You are not middle-aged.  These are but
comparative terms.  A house-fly is elderly in twenty-four hours.  An
oak-tree is young after a hundred years.  And you, children of eternity
with ages and millenniums before you--you are not even one year old
babies in the light of your great future.

Now do you see why the old apostle of Ephesus did not feel aged or
elderly--why he looked out like an eager boy into the adventure before
him?  "Beloved, now are we the sons of God but we don't know yet what
we shall be."  Aye, we don't know yet.  No more than did the small boys
laughing in their play and going to be soldiers and sailors and
wonderful people.  We don't know yet.  But it is all before us.  And it
is all going to be good because it is in the Father's presence.

So I bid you do what I sometimes do myself, look out into the void and
guess like the children what you shall be when you are older than
Methuselah.

Shake off the dulness and monotony from your life.  Don't talk as if
old or middle-aged any more.  Be children again in the presence of the
Father, and with happy child hearts keep guessing what you shall be.

    *    *    *    *    *

I see a woman with the deep pain in her eyes, one of the many mothers
whom I have met in these terrible four years....  They were afraid to
tell her when the War Office telegram came....  He had crept out in the
night to bring in a wounded chum, and the German sniper got him.  At
first she could not believe it.  It must be some mistake,--some one of
similar name.  But the days passed on.  And the light died in her eyes
and she became suddenly old.  Her prayers ceased.  God had disappointed
her.  There was nothing left to pray for now.  Nothing to be ambitious
for any more.  Her boy was dead--buried in a shallow grave in France
with a little wooden cross at his head.  And he was only twenty-two!

    *    *    *    *    *

The awful waste of it!  All her loving thought over his childhood--all
her care, her anxiety, her efforts, her prayers that God would make him
a good and noble man.  All her hope and pride in the high promise of
his boyhood.  He was dead.  All that he might have been and done in the
world was lost.  Her life was forever desolate.  And God had let it
happen!

Kindly friends came to comfort and sympathise.  But it was of little
use.  They had not lost their boy.  They could not understand.  They
bade her be proud that he had died in a noble cause--that he had died
to save another.  They told her that time would bring a blessed easing
to her pain.  They told her she must bow to God's mysterious will.

Ah! what is the use of it?  How can any outsider intermeddle in the
pain of a mother whose boy has just been killed?

  Not all the talking since Adam
  Can make death to be other than death.

    *    *    *    *    *

God help us all if there were no better comfort for a tortured world in
this hour of its bitterest need--to "make death to be other than death."

    *    *    *    *    *

She was a brave woman.  She faced the issue clearly.  She talked with
wise friends.  She came back to her prayers.  She recalled and
relearned the teaching of her Bible and her church which had lain
hazily in memory till her need arose.  And gradually God's blessed
comfort came to her "as to one whom his mother comforteth."  Slowly
peace came to her heart, and in spite of her pain life became worth
living again....  He was a good boy.  He loved his God.  He loved his
mother.  He had his faults, but she could trust Christ with them.  She
had had high ambitions for him.  Her ambitions came back.

She learned to think of him in the wondrous new adventure, living a
full conscious life, thinking and remembering, growing and becoming
fitted for the eternal Heaven that is still in front.  She believed
that the high promise of his boyhood might be fulfilled after all, and
that she might one day see it.

Life is still very desolate without him; but she believes that he lives
and knows, that he is growing and going on--that he remembers her and
loves her as never before, that he is waiting for her, perhaps watching
over her as in his days on earth, even though he cannot write home.
And trustfully, gratefully she remembers him in her prayers.  She
thinks that the Heavenly Father is not likely to forget what a mother
says to Him about her son.

    *    *    *    *    *

This book is a poor, imperfect attempt to put together some of the
teachings of our holy religion, to help a troubled world, in this day
of its necessity, "to look out over the wall."



[1] John iii. 2.




PART I

The Near Hereafter



CHAPTER I

"I"

The title of this chapter is a very short one.  It consists of but a
single word, and that the shortest word in the whole English language.
And though it is the shortest word, yet it is the most wonderful and
mysterious word.  Though it is a word that every one of us has on his
lips every moment of the day, yet no one who reads this book--no one in
the whole world--has ever been able to understand what it means.

Just the letter "I."--All day long, from morning till night, we are
using it:--I did this.  I mean to do that.  I ought.  I shall.  I will.
I think.  I wish.  I love.  I hate.  I remember.  I forget.  And so on
and on--ever ringing the changes on this little word in all its cases
"I" and "my" and "mine" and "me."  I want to set you thinking.  Who or
what is this "I," this "me"?

Perhaps you will say, "Oh, there is nothing mysterious about it--I know
very well what I mean by it.  'I' means myself."

But what do I mean by Myself?  Of course there is a rough work-day
meaning in which it means my whole being as I stand--clothes, body,
brains, thoughts, feelings, general appearance, everything.  But every
thinking man knows that this is not the real "I," that when he says I
can, I do, I will, I ought, I remember, the "I" means to him something
much deeper and more mysterious than that.  Ask yourself, each one,
what do you mean by "I"?


§ 1

IS IT MY BODY?  Nay, surely not.  I know that my body is only my
outward garment woven by "me" out of certain chemical substances.  In a
scientific museum I can stand before a glass case and see neatly
labelled the exact portions of lime and silica and iron and water and
other elements which compose my body.  I know that this body is
continually changing its substance like the rainbow in the sky, like
the eddy round a stone in the river.  The body I have to-day is no more
the body of last year than the fire on my hearth to-night is the fire
that was there this morning.  I have had a dozen different bodies since
I was born, but I am the same still.  Every thinking man knows that the
"I," the real self, stands behind the body looking out through the
windows of the eyes, receiving messages through the portals of the
ears.  It rules the body, it possesses the body.  It says, "I have a
body."  "This body is a thing belonging to me."

As you watch the changing expression in the face of your friend, as you
see his eyes flashing in anger, or softening in affectionate sympathy,
do you not feel that all you see is but the outward casing, that the
real self of your friend is a something dwelling within?

I hope I am not puzzling you.  What I want to do is to introduce you to
your own self, to make you really acquainted with that mysterious being
in his first stage of existence here and then to follow him out into
the great adventure of the Hereafter.


§ 2

Let us go on.  What is this I, this self?  IS IT MY BRAIN?
Physiologists tell us wonderful things of that brain; how its size and
shape, and the amount of gray matter modify my character; how it
excites itself when I am thinking; how it has different departments for
different functions; how it rules and directs everything I do.  And men
impressed by these wonders have sometimes asserted that there is
nothing more to be found.  It is the brain which originates all,
thought is only certain activities of the brain--memory is only
impressions on the substance of the brain--when the brain decays there
is no self remaining.  What I call "I" is merely a function of my brain.

But immediately the question arises, Which brain?  The particles of my
brain are always changing.  I have had a dozen different brains in my
lifetime, with not a particle remaining the same.  Which of these
brains is it that "I" am only a function of?  And how does it happen
that I remember what I thought and did and said with the old vanished
brains of twenty and thirty years ago?  Memory insists that I am still
the same "I" in spite of all those changes of brain.  If memory be but
a series of impressions registered on the brain these could no more
survive the dissolution of the brain than impressions on wax could
survive the melting of the wax.  Surely my memory, my irresistible
conviction of personal identity with my past makes it abundantly clear
that "I" am a mysterious unchanging spiritual being behind this ever
changing brain.

And that is what the best modern science asserts--that the brain is but
my instrument.  If we compare it to a violin then "I" am the unseen
violin player behind it.  The musician cannot produce violin music
without a violin, but also the violin cannot produce a musical note,
much less take part in a complex symphony without the musician behind
it.  If the strings of the violin be injured, or if they be smeared
with grease, the result is discords and crazy sounds.  If the brain be
physically injured or disordered the result is what we call mental
derangement.

To say, then, that the brain is the _seat_ of thought is not at all to
say that it is the _source_ of thought.  Everything involved in my
conscious personality is _related_ to the brain, but it is not
_originated_ by the brain.  The mysterious spiritual "I" is behind the
brain, using the brain--nay further--actually educating and fitting the
brain for its work.  The brain of a little child with its plastic gray
matter is smooth and unformed.  It is the "I" behind that is steadily
creasing and moulding and training it for its purpose.  I don't know of
anything more impressive than the study of the human brain in its
activities, and how "I" am continually changing and modifying and
educating my brain.  You feel sometimes as if you could almost lay
hands on that mysterious spiritual being that is behind it, like a
spider in his web--feeling and interpreting every quiver of it, sending
messages out into the world by means of it.  But he always eludes you.
You have no instrument that can touch him.  You only know that he is
there, enshrouded in mystery, a supernatural being not only using the
brain but educating it for use.  The brain itself has no knowledge or
thought, and no power of itself to originate knowledge or thought.  The
brain of a baboon differs very little from the brain of a man.  The
difference is in the being who is behind it.  I read lately the
statement of a great scientist: "As far as I can see, if the soul of a
man could get behind the brain of an ape he could probably use it
almost as well as his own."

I have never known a really thoughtful student of science satisfied
with the foolish notion that the brain is what thinks and remembers and
wills.  He looks upon a human brain, on the dissecting table, a mere
mass of cells and nerve centres suffused with blood, and he thinks of
the glorious poems and the mighty intellectual efforts and the noble
thoughts of God and Righteousness, and perforce he laughs at the
thought that that poor bleeding thing originated them.  Something
within him indignantly replies: "Nay, 'I' am not the brain.  I possess
it.  I use it.  It is mine, but it is not me!"


§ 3

We have not yet gone deep enough to discover this "I."  It is hardly
necessary to ask the next question which some foolish people are
speculating about to-day.  Am I merely the TRAIN OF THOUGHTS AND
FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS?  Am "I" but like an Eolian harp, played on by
the wind of sensations from without?

Surely not.  This mysterious "I" is constantly and persistently
claiming to be a real conscious person behind all these--greater than
all these--possessing all these.  Listen to the voice down deep in your
consciousness--COGITO, ERGO SUM.  "I" think--therefore "I" exist.  I am
not the thoughts and feelings and emotions--I am greater than them all.
I am the possessor of them all.  They are mine.  They are not Me.  They
are only passing phases of my being.  They are always changing.
Everything around is changing.  I remain the same being always.
Nothing else in the universe remains the same being--except God.  God
and I.  God and these selves that are in every one of us.

I cannot escape that conviction that "I" am the permanent being behind
all the changes.  No human vision can see me.  No surgeon's knife can
detect me.  But I am there, behind everything.

The particles of my body, of brain and nerves and heart are constantly
being changed--every few years they are completely renewed.  I have had
a dozen new bodies, a dozen new sets of brains and heart since I was
born--I am always wearing them out.  I change them when they are worn
out and throw them aside like old clothes.  My thoughts and feelings
are ever changing, like the ripples on the sea.

But I am absolutely certain that "I" am still there--that I am the
same--just as God is the same.  The same "I" that played as a little
child--the same "I" that lived and desired and thought and felt and
worked and sinned years and years ago.

Not a particle remains of the brain, or nerves, or tongue, or eyes, or
hands, or feet, with which I did a good or evil deed twenty years
since--but it is impossible for me to doubt that it was "I" who did it,
that I to-day deserve the praise or blame which is due to it.

Every man on earth, when he thinks about it, has this conviction of
himself as an "I"--as a person separate from all other persons, as a
self separate from all other selves, as remaining always the same
being, whatever changes may take place around him.  That is what
constitutes man--a self conscious of itself.  As far as we can
discover, the lower animals have no such idea.  Children, at first,
have not.  Did you ever notice how a little child never says "I" till
he is about three years old?  He always speaks in the third person.  It
is always "Baby does this," "Baby likes that," until the Divine
revelation of his personality gradually grows and he recognizes himself
as a person.  Then, without any teaching on your part, the child, of
his own accord, will begin to say "I."


§ 4

Oh, who or what is this awful, mysterious "I" that dwells somewhere in
the centre of my being, and rules and possesses and is responsible for
everything?  What is this self, in each of you, that is hidden behind
your faces as behind a mask--that is looking out through your eyes, and
receiving, through your ears, the thoughts that others are trying to
express for you?  Can the surgeon's knife find any trace of it?  Is it
possible to destroy it?  Is it possible to get away from it?  It has
survived the putting away of every part of the body a dozen times over.
Will it survive the final putting away of the whole body at death?
Will it survive everything?  Shall "I" be "I," the same identical
person through all the ages of eternity?


§ 5

Look in again upon this "I" within you and answer this question.  Why
does it assert so positively that it is impossible to doubt it; "I
ought to do certain things, I ought not to do certain other things"?
All over the earth this day--from the St. Lawrence to the Ganges, from
the North Pole to the South--there is no man outside of a lunatic
asylum without that conviction.  No race, not even the lowest, has been
found without it.  Where did that conviction come from?  From the
Bible, do you say?  From the teachings of Christ?  Nay, surely not.
Long before the Bible, long before the incarnation of Christ, the old
pagan had the thought clear and distinct, though not by any means so
clear and distinct as Christianity has made it.  Did you ever think of
the mystery of this authoritative utterance of the self within you: "_I
ought_"?  In the very lowest savages it asserts this.  St. Paul calls
this sense of "ought"--the law of God written in our hearts (Rom. ii.
15).  St. John calls it the light of Christ in us, "the light which
lighteth every man coming into the world" (St. John i. 9).  Longfellow
sings of it in "Hiawatha":

  That in even savage bosoms
  There are longings, yearnings, strivings
  For the good they comprehend not;
  That the feeble hands and helpless,
  Groping blindly in the darkness,
  Touch God's right hand in the darkness.

Even in the heart of the thief or the murderer it insists: I ought to
do this, I ought not to do that, and when he disobeys this mysterious
law within him he is compelled to drag himself up for judgment and
fierce remorse for wrong that no one else knows of, that no one else
can punish him for.  What do you think of that mysterious fact about
this Conscious Personality within you?  Does it not look as if it
belongs to God, that every soul is stamped with God's image and
superscription, as every coin of King George is stamped in the mint
with the image and superscription of the King?


§ 6

And this suggests a further question.  Why is there in us this sense of
imperfection, of incompleteness--of ideals always away in the front
that we can never even approximately reach on earth?  Look at this
conscience which we have just been thinking about.  It is always
holding high above us an ideal of perfect goodness and insisting that
we must strive after it.  But we can never get even near it on earth.
The very best man at the close of life sees his ideal still high above
him and feels how much better he might be and ought to be and then he
dies feeling the incompleteness of this life.  Does not this unfinished
life thus broken off, with its aim still far in the future, demand
something further?  The great German philosopher Kant founded on this
fact his famous argument for Immortality.

Or look at our efforts after knowledge.  It takes nearly all this life
to fit the student for his search after truth, and when he is just
ready and the great ocean of truth lies before him, Death comes.  Oh,
how incomplete and unfinished his life seems!  Just the scaffolding put
up for his work, just the tools got into good order.  Then he dies.

"For half a century," said Victor Hugo, "I have been writing my
thoughts in prose and verse, history, philosophy, drama, romance,
tradition, satire, ode, song.  But I feel that I have not said a
thousandth part of what is in me.  When I go down to the grave I shall
have finished my day's work."  And this thought of incompleteness
compels in him the hope, "another day will begin next morning."

Was Victor Hugo right?  Was the old pagan philosopher right?  "You may
catch my body," said Socrates, "but no man can catch me, myself, to
bury me."  Victor Hugo did not believe in the Christian Bible.
Socrates had no revelation from God, except the revelation of this self
within him.  You have the revelation of Christ as well.  What do you
think of the question?  When the dust shall return to the earth as it
was, shall the spirit return to God who gave it?  When brain and heart
and nerves are destroyed, when the sun is old and the stars grow cold,
and all that you ever saw is swept away into nothingness, will this
mysterious, lonely self remain, to say "I" and "my" and "mine" and
"me," through all the ages of Eternity?


§ 7

Now, I put a closer question still.  Is not this mysterious "I" behind
the brain the being that God is especially concerned with?  What He
sometimes calls your soul.[1]  The ceiling of the Sistine chapel at
Rome has a fine painting by Michael Angelo from the text, "Man became a
living soul."  It represents the Supreme Spirit floating in the ether
and touching with His finger the body of Adam.  As He touches it an
electric spark flashes into the body and Adam becomes a living soul.
Is not this the centre of the awful mystery that I call "I,"
myself--the same of which our Lord asks His tremendous question: "What
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own self?"

Is not this "self" the real man, the man in the centre of his life, in
the deepest recesses of his being, the man as he lives beneath the eye
of God and enters into relations with God--the man for whom the Bible
announces that exciting adventure in the long ages of the Hereafter?

Is not this "I" looking out from behind your eyes this moment--the real
man, of whom the body that you see is only the outward covering, of
whom the brain is only the outward telegraphic instrument?  Should not
we adapt our thoughts to that tremendous fact?  Instead of thinking "I
_have_ a soul," should we not rather think "I _am_ a soul"?  Instead of
thinking, that beautiful girl has an ugly soul, that insignificant
looking man has a noble soul, should we not rather think, that ugly
soul has a beautiful girl body, that splendid soul is in a mean looking
body?  Would not some such manner of thinking help to bring home the
reality, that "I" am the invisible immortal being which clothes itself
in a material body during this first stage of its life.  Should not we
be more likely to become acquainted with our own soul, to become
impressed with its existence, to think about its character?  Should we
not thus learn more easily that wealth and clothes and outward
appearance are not so important, that the character, the relation to
God is the one supreme thing?

Think out for yourself the answer to that and to all these questions.
I am not going to answer any of them.  My purpose here is not to answer
questions but to set you asking them--not to do your thinking for you,
but to set you thinking for yourselves.  Is it the spoiling and ruining
of that self within you which Christ balances against the whole world?


§ 8

Now, have I helped, even in a little way, to introduce you to
yourself--that "self" that is going out into the great adventure of the
Hereafter?  If I have, I have done a very good thing for you.  With so
many the soul is but a vague abstraction, belonging to the pulpit and
the sick-bed and the life of the hereafter.  But amid the busy daily
life, the real work and pleasure, the real streets and houses, it is
hard to think of it except as something shadowy and unreal.  My effort
here is to take it out of the region of the vague and unreal and bring
it into the region of every-day, practical life.

Try to respond to my thoughts.  Try to get acquainted with your own
self--your own soul.  Try to watch its wondrous life.  Try to become
impressed with its existence--to think about its character.  Think
whether, when the Bible says anything about your soul, it means this
mysterious being that you call "I."  Think whether this "I" is an
emanation from God's nature, and therefore is intended to be in harmony
with Him.  Think whether it must live for ever and ever, and therefore
if its character be not of enormous importance--if its character-making
be not the one supremely important thing in your life.

Then realize that whether you exalt or degrade it, it is with you for
ever.  You CAN NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GET AWAY FROM YOURSELF.  You will be
the very same self after death as before.  I read some time since of
the sinking of a ship and how the captain dived through the cabin door,
and keeping the light above in view, swam up through the hatchway and
escaped out of the wreck.  There is a deceitful expectation in human
nature that when we go down in the sea of death and eternity we shall
in some way escape out of ourselves, swim away from our own
personalities, and thus leave the ship at the bottom of the sea.  If
the "I" meant only the body, that would be true.  But this "I" is where
character exists, where love and desire and will exist.  This "I" is
the captain himself.  The captain cannot swim away from the captain.
Myself cannot swim away from "myself."  "I" must be "I" to all
eternity.  I cannot shake off my character, be it good or bad.

Realize next what you mean to the God who created you and lovingly
planned for you your magnificent destiny.

Let the soul within you feel its dignity, its priceless importance in
the eyes of its Maker.  Measure the value of it by what God has done
for it.

Why was this world slowly built through thousands of ages?  Just as a
platform for this "I" to develop character.  Why was the Incarnation
and Death of the Everlasting Son of God?  Why is the gift and energy of
the Holy Spirit?  Why is the perpetual intercession of Christ in
Heaven?  Why is the grace and power of the Sacraments in life?  Why are
the boundless prospects opened beyond the grave?

All for the sake of this mysterious permanent supernatural being that
we call "I."  Measure I say by what God has done for it, the tremendous
value He sets on your immortal soul.



[1] In a simple, popular statement such as this it would but be
confusing to go into nice metaphysical distinctions of soul and
"spirit."




CHAPTER II

THE THREE STAGES OF EXISTENCE

§ 1

Now, grip with both hands the fact that this life, as you know it, is
but one single stage in God's plan for you--the Kindergarten stage, the
caterpillar stage of your existence.  That in five thousand years that
spiritual being looking out from behind the mask of your face to-day
will be living still, and feeling still, and thinking still.  That what
you call death, the end of this career, is but birth into a new and
more exciting career, stretching away into the far future, age after
age, aeon after aeon, whose prospect should stir the very blood within
us.

There is nothing which so touches some of us as a thing with "makings"
in it, a thing with untold potentialities in it, a thing which may come
in the future to God only knows what.  Talk of the caterpillar which is
to develop into the butterfly or the acorn which shall one day be a
mighty oak.  Why, these miracles are but child's play compared with the
miracles potentially wrapped up in this poor little self.  No wildest
fairy tale can suggest the wonder of its possibilities as it passes out
into the new adventure of the life beyond.


§ 2

Thirteen hundred years ago there was an eager discussion in the court
of King Edward of Northumbria.  The old wattled hall was blazing with
torches and a crowd of eager listeners hung intent on the teaching of
the Christian missionaries who had just arrived.  At last a grim
bearded old earl rose in his place.  "Can this new religion," he asked,
"tell us of what happens after death?  The life of man is like a
swallow flying through this lighted hall.  It enters in at one door
from the darkness outside, and flitting through the light and warmth
passes through the farther door into the dark unknown beyond.  Can this
new religion solve for us the mystery?  What comes to men in the dark,
dim unknown?"

Perhaps he was thinking of his dead wife or his brave boy killed in
battle.  The old earl's question is the question of humanity in all
ages gazing out into the darkness after its dead.  The full answer can
only be had by dying.  But a partial answer can be had now.

The Bible reveals to us that there are three stages of human existence:

1st.  _The earthly stage_, where "I," the mysterious "I," live with a
body woven around me.  The Bible hints that this stage is of untold
importance.  In fact, all the future stages depend largely on how it is
lived.  That is what makes this first stage so awfully important.  It
is the formative time whose influence spreads out into eternity.  In
this stage Acts make habits.  Habits make character.  Character makes
Destiny.

2nd.  _The intermediate life_ BEFORE THE JUDGMENT, THE "NEAR HEREAFTER"
WHEN "I" LAY ASIDE THE BODY AT DEATH.  THIS IS THE STAGE BEFORE THE
RESURRECTION WHICH IN OUR LORD'S TIME THE JEWS CALLED HADES, AND IN
WHICH THEY CALLED THE SPECIAL STATE OF THE BLEST PARADISE, ABRAM'S
BOSOM, UNDER THE THRONE, ETC.

3rd.  And away after this _final stage_ the "Far Hereafter" in the "end
of the age," as our Lord says, where come the General Resurrection, the
Judgment of Men, the final stages of Heaven and Hell.  _That stage has
not yet arrived in the history of humanity_.

In Part I of this book we are only concerned with the Intermediate
Life, the life of the near Hereafter which comes after Death and before
the Judgment.  We are to study what can be known about it.

With educated people it should not be necessary to combat the foolish
popular notion that at death men pass into their final destiny--Heaven
or Hell--and then perhaps thousands of years afterwards come back to be
judged as to that final destiny!  To state such a belief should be
enough to refute it.  Those who hold it "do err not knowing the
Scriptures."  For the Scriptures have no such teaching.

The Jews in our Lord's time believed in a waiting life of departed
souls before the Judgment.  Owing to vagueness and contradictions in
the Rabbinical teaching it is impossible to state their notions about
it with definiteness.  But in the main it may be said that when they
speak of that life as a whole without distinguishing between the states
of the good and the evil they call this whole by the general name of
HADES, _i. e._, "the Unseen" (the Hebrew word was Sheol), but they also
distinguished in it the abode or state of the Blest as PARADISE, or the
"Garden of Eden," or "ABRAHAM'S BOSOM," or "UNDER THE THRONE," _e. g._,
"Abraham whom God planted in the Garden of Paradise," "our master Moses
departed into the Garden of Eden."  The holy Judah rests this day in
"Abraham's Bosom."

Their teaching is of course not authoritative for us.  Doubtless many
of their notions on the subject needed much correction.  But our Lord
gives His sanction in the main to their belief and uses their very
phrases in speaking of the new life, _e. g._, Dives "in HADES (not
Hell, see R. V.), lift up his eyes being in torment"--Lazarus "was
carried by the angels into ABRAHAM'S BOSOM."  "To-day thou shalt be
with Me in PARADISE" is His promise to the dying thief.  And it is
clear that He did not mean the final Heaven for He says, "No man hath
ascended into Heaven only the Son of Man who is in Heaven."  Even He
Himself did not go to Heaven when He died, for this is His statement
after the Resurrection, "I have not yet ascended unto My Father."
Where, then, did His Spirit go?  The whole Church throughout the world
repeats every Sunday, in the creed, "He was dead and buried, and
descended into HADES"--the life of the waiting souls.  St. Peter tells
us in his first Epistle that in those three days Christ's living Spirit
went and preached to the spirits in safe keeping who had been
disobedient in the old world.  For which cause he says, "was the Gospel
preached to them that are dead."  The same thought was evidently in his
mind in his first sermon (Acts ii. 31).  "David," he says, "prophesied
of the resurrection of Christ that His soul was not left in Hades."


§ 4

And this is the point of view of all the New Testament Scriptures.
Heaven and Hell are always spoken of as states _after the Judgment_ and
the Judgment is to be in the "end of the world" or the "end of this
age."

The great crisis of expectation set before men is not death, but "the
Day when the Lord shall appear," _e. g._, "That ye may be saved in the
Day of the Lord," "The Day of the Lord is as a thief in the night,"
"Looking for and hasting to the coming of the Day of God," "Keep the
commandment till the appearing of our Lord," "To be found with praise
at the appearing of Jesus," etc., etc.  Warning, reproof, exhortation,
encouragement are all directed to that great day at the end of the
Waiting Life--the Judgment at the second coming of the Son of Man.

Naturally this belief passed into the thought of the early church.
"The souls of the godly abide in some better place and the souls of the
unrighteous in a worse place expecting the time of judgment....  These
who hold that when men die their souls are at once taken to heaven are
not to be accounted Christians or even Jews" (Justin Martyr, A. D. 150,
_Dialogue with Trypho_).  "The souls of Christ's disciples go to the
invisible place determined for them by God and there dwell awaiting the
Resurrection" (Irenaeus, _Against Heretics_, A. D. 180).  "All souls
are sequestered in Hades till the Day of the Lord" (Tertullian, _De
Anima_, A. D. 200).  "Let no man think that souls are judged
immediately after death; all are detained in one common place of safe
keeping till the time when the Supreme Judge makes His scrutiny"
(Lactantius, _Div. Institutes_).  "During the interval between death
and resurrection men's souls are kept in hidden receptacles according
as they severally deserve rest or punishment" (Augustine).

Does it not all give a fuller meaning for us to the words of our Lord,
"In My Father's house are many mansions" (or abiding places).

This whole teaching about the Intermediate Life has been obscured in
our day by the fact that most people read the Authorized Version of the
Bible where the word Hades has been unfortunately translated "Hell,"
just the same as the darker word Gehenna.  At the time of the
translation of the Authorized Version the old English word _hell_--the
hole--the unseen, had not yet stiffened into the awful meaning that it
has attained in our day.  It was not then a word set apart to designate
the abode of the lost.  It simply meant the "unseen place," "the
covered place."  In the south of England still a thatcher who _covers
in_ a house is called a "hellier."  Even in games it was used.  In the
old English games of forfeits, on the village green, the "hell" is the
hidden place where the girls ran away to escape being kissed.  You can
see it had no awful meaning necessarily connected with it.  Therefore
it did not seem repulsive to translate the Greek word "Hades," the
Unseen, by the English "Hell."  But it has become very misleading in
later days, and our own conservative instincts which prevent our
altering the word in the creed has helped to perpetuate the error.

The revised version has put all this right, _e. g._, "His soul was not
left in Hades (not hell), nor did His flesh see corruption" (Acts ii.
31).  "I have the keys of death and of Hades" (Rev. i. 18).  At the end
of the world "death and Hades gave up the dead" (Rev. xx. 13).  In
Hades (not hell) "the rich man lifts up his eyes, being in torment"
(St. Luke xvi. 23).


§ 5

The Bible, then, teaches to every careful student that there is the
Intermediate Life beyond the grave, a vivid conscious life.  That all
men go there when they depart this life.  No man has ever yet gone to
Heaven.  No man it would seem has ever yet gone to Hell.  No man has
ever yet been finally judged.  No man has ever yet been finally damned.
Thank God for that at any rate.  The Bible teaches that all who have
ever left this earth are waiting yet--from King Alfred to King Edward;
from St. Paul to Bishop Westcott; from the poor struggler of the
ancient days in the morning of history to the other poor struggler who
died last night.

We are now to study this next stage of our history, beginning at what
we call death which is really birth into the next stage of life, just
as the death of the caterpillar is the birth of the butterfly.  In this
next stage are living to-day our dear children and brothers and sisters
and wives and husbands within the veil.  In a very few years we shall
all have gone through--each of us just the same "I."

The Bible does not reveal very much about it as was to be expected.
The Bible is intended to guide our conduct and prepare us for a final
Heaven.  Therefore it busies itself with the responsibilities of this
present life and the glories of the final prospect--touching very
lightly the intermediate stages, just as we press on a boy the
importance of his school days and the high prospects for his manhood,
touching very little the stages between.[1]  But there is much more to
be learned from Scripture about this Intermediate Life than most people
think.



[1] There is a further reason as regards St. Paul's epistles, which
form one-third of the whole New Testament.  The reason is that St. Paul
and his people were not greatly interested in the Intermediate Life.
They looked for the Lord's coming in glory during their own lifetime.
Even if some died before, the intermediate waiting time would be so
short that it excited no absorbing interest.  They did not dwell on it.
It could not concern them as it concerns us.




CHAPTER III

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER

We are now to enquire about that life into which our departed ones have
gone from us.  "I" has gone on his mysterious journey into the strange,
new land.  We are standing in the darkened death chamber, where the
dead body lies, with close shut eyes, like an empty house whence the
tenant has gone out, closing the windows after him, and the sobbing
friends are feeling the inevitable pressure of the questions, "Where is
he?  What is he doing?  What is he seeing?  Can we know anything at all
about his condition now?"

Many of them say, "No, we cannot know anything; all is vague, shadowy,
unreal.  It is vain to torment our hearts by thinking."  So they lock
away his photographs and letters, and they gradually, reluctantly let
him drop out of their conversation and their prayers, and, as far as
possible, out of their thoughts, trusting sadly in the healing
influence of time and forgetfulness to quiet the aching questions in
their hearts.  Ah! it is a poor comfort!

Some of them even think that there is something presumptuous in
intruding into mysteries which they say God has not revealed.  "Do not
the secret things belong unto the Lord our God?"  What a pity they do
not complete that text, "But the things that are revealed belong to
us;" and then go on to find out whether, after all, God has not
revealed a great deal more than they think about that mysterious
journey on which the beloved one has gone.  A reverent curiosity
concerning the life of our departed is surely not displeasing to God.
"I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren," says St. Paul,
"concerning them that are asleep."

I wish I could comfort those sorrowing questioners, as I have comforted
myself, by thus searching for what God has revealed.  I do not want to
offer mere sentimental guesses.  I want to find for them the "things
that God has revealed," and if I draw some conclusions which I cannot
definitely prove from Scripture, they are only such as seem to me
reasonable and probable from a fair consideration of the evidence, and
I shall draw a clear distinction between the authoritative teaching of
Scripture, which you are bound to accept, and any conclusions which I
draw from Scripture, which you are free to reject.

Let me first put your questionings into clear, definite shape, as you
look upon the face of your dead.  Is it a life of sleep and
unconsciousness into which he has gone, or is he as fully alive and
conscious as he was an hour ago?  Is there further probation in that
life?  Is there growth and progress?  Does he still remember?  Does he
still love?  Does he still know or care anything about the old home and
about us who are left behind?  Can he help us?  Can we help him?  Are
we to think of him as one gone absolutely into the unknown, or may we
think of him as we do of our other absent one who went to India last
year, only with the difference that one writes home and the other does
not?



II

As in all our troubles, we had best go first to our Lord.  As He is the
only one who really knows all the questions of our hearts, so He is the
only one who really knows the secrets of the invisible world.  He is
the only one on earth who has ever gone away into that strange land and
then came back to tell us anything about it.  In all things He is our
great forerunner.  He, the Son of Man, has gone before us poor sons of
man in all the experiences of life,--childhood, youth, manhood,
temptation, struggle, sorrow, disappointment, victory, joy.  And He has
gone before us, too, into the Unseen Land, as if to lead us and say to
us "Be not afraid."

He does not speak much about it.  As I have already shown you, this was
to be expected.  In the first place, in our present imperfect, limited
condition, with senses fitted only for this poor earthly life, it would
probably be impossible to teach us anything definitely about the higher
life of the spirit world.  How can you teach a blind, deaf man about
this world of beautiful sights and sounds in which you are living?  How
could God teach us definite details about a life which no experience of
ours can help us to imagine?  And, besides that, Scripture is intended
to guide our conduct in this world, not to gratify our speculations
about another world.  At any rate, there is a marked reticence and
reserve all through the Bible in speaking of the Hereafter, which
reticence and reserve we shall do well to imitate.


§ 1

First, watch our Lord draw the curtain a little in His story of the
Rich Man and Lazarus.  The "story" I say, not the "parable."  It is no
parable.  A parable is the statement of an analogy between visible
things and invisible.  This is a direct statement about the invisible
things themselves.  Jesus is telling what happens after death.  Indeed,
many in the early Church thought, and many to-day think, that this is a
direct historical account by Christ of the life of a certain selfish
rich man in Jerusalem whom He knew and of a certain beggar that lay at
his gate.  They died and were buried, and those who followed them to
the grave could see no further.  But the Lord is watching them still as
they pass into the land which He knew so well.  Whether this was the
story of a certain man, or only a general statement about all such men,
does not matter.  Christ was telling of what happens just after death,
when the "I," the self, has laid aside the body and gone out into the
Unseen.

I do not mean that this story is intended as a revelation of that life.
If it were it would doubtless have been more complete.  It is simply a
passing reference to it in warning against the danger of a selfish
life.  But it lifts the curtain a little bit.


§ 2

Be quite clear about this--that our Lord is not speaking of the FAR
Hereafter--of the final stage of human life at the end of the world, in
which after the Final Judgment come Heaven and Hell.  He is speaking of
the near Hereafter, the life immediately after death.  We have seen
that there are three stages in our history: 1st.  This Earth life,
where the "I," the self, has a body woven around it.  2nd.  The
Intermediate Life before the Judgment, into which I go at death without
my body into my second stage of being.  3rd.  The final stage at the
end of the age in which come the Final Judgment and Heaven and Hell,
which stage is still in the future for all humanity.

Clearly our Lord is speaking of the Intermediate Life, of the unseen
life existing to-day, running on side by side with the earthly life.
For you see the men He speaks of are not long dead.  Dives' brothers
are still living here.  Dives is quite conscious that the ordinary life
of men is still going on on earth side by side with that other life.
Clearly Jesus is telling of the present stage in the life of the
departed--that life in which all our dear departed ones are living at
this moment.


§ 3

Next I notice that that life in its inmost experiences seems very like
this life, and follows from it quite naturally.  He depicts it as a
clear, conscious life.  They are not dead nor asleep nor unconscious.
They are very much alive.  He represents them as thinking and speaking
and feeling.  Lazarus is feeling "comforted."  Dives is feeling
"tormented," and thinking keenly of his own misery and of his brothers'
danger on earth at that moment.  So actively alive are they all to him
that he wants one of them to go back to earth to tell his brothers
about it.

Be quite clear about this.  Challenge every statement as I go on.  Is
this a mere speculation of mine or have we Christ's authority for
saying that in the new environment men are living a life as clear and
vivid and conscious as on this earth--that death makes no break?


§ 4

Next I learn that each feels himself the same continuous "I" that he
was on earth.  Lazarus feels himself the same Lazarus, Dives feels
himself the same Dives, the brother of those five boys.  I shall still
keep on saying "I."  I am not somebody else over there.  That is what
Jesus said from the other side of the grave--"Handle Me and see--it is
I, Myself."


§ 5

Next I read on His authority that there is no break in memory.  Of
course there could not be if I am still "I."  But our Lord confirms
this.  Lazarus remembers Dives.  Dives remembers Lazarus so well that
he wants him to go back to convert his brothers.  Aye, he remembers the
brothers in the old Jerusalem home, the five boys that grew up beside
him.  He remembers sorrowfully that they have grown to be selfish men
like himself, perhaps through his fault.  He is thinking about them and
troubling about them.  And Abraham assumes this memory as a matter of
course.  "My son, remember that thou in thy lifetime, etc."

Does not all this confirm our statement in Chapter I, that memory is
something more than impressions on the gray matter of the brain; that
memory is in the man himself who is behind the brain and, therefore,
must go on with him.


§ 6

I read on, "Now he is comforted and thou art tormented."  That again is
just what I should expect.  It is all quite natural.  If "I" am still
the same "I" in full vivid conscious life, in full memory of the
past--if I have passed out of the mists of earth into the full light of
the Eternal, where everything is seen at its full value, where money
counts for nothing and love counts for everything, it is of course
natural that the good man should feel comforted and the bad man should
feel tormented.

Only more so.  Only more so.  That is the difference.  The poor humble
follower of Christ, even on earth, is in the main happy--at his best
moments.  But he is not always very happy.  He has the inner comfort of
the peace of God.  But there is much worry and distraction, about his
business and his sickness and his troubles of many kinds to spoil his
peace.  All these earthly troubles are gone now.  He sees Christ.  He
knows of the boundless joy before him by and by.  He is comforted.

And I read that Dives "is tormented."  Here again all is natural and as
we should expect.  The godless man is in some degree tormented in this
life--at his best moments, when he stops to think, when he lies awake
in the lonely night and conscience speaks to him.  But there are many
distractions to ease his pain--the pleasures and amusements of life,
the company of friends, the pursuit of business, the excitements of
ambition.  So he can manage a good deal to forget God, to acquire a
distaste for God, and yet to dull the still small voice that hurts him.
But these distractions are gone now.  He has gone out into the new
life, naked, alone.  All the money and business excitement are gone.
All the things of sense and appetite are gone.  That poor soul of his,
dwarfed and degraded, stands in the dread loneliness before God, full
of the sense of loss and misery--of shame for the past--of dread of
what is to come--of wretched discord between himself and all that is
good.  In Hades, says Christ, not in Hell (the Revised Version puts
that right), in that life just after death, he lifted up his eyes,
being in torment.  The Judgment has not come yet.  He is not in Hell.
Hell has not yet come.  Those things are in the final stage of being.
But already, just after death, Christ says, he is in torment of soul.


§ 7

I do not think we should pass over the expression "carried by the
angels into Abraham's bosom."  Notice that our Lord makes it simple and
intelligible for the Jews by using their own phrase, "Abraham's Bosom,"
their name for the state of the faithful departed immediately after
death.  And He says, Lazarus "was carried by the angels."  If anybody
else but Jesus had said it, we might pass this over as a piece of
poetic imagery.  But it was Jesus who said it.  He says so much about
the angels.  He says that there are guardian angels of the children.
He says that the angels rejoice over one sinner that repenteth.  He
would not say this about Lazarus carried by the angels unless it meant
something real.  If so I think we have here our Lord's authority for
the ministry of angels at death, an indication that the poor soul does
not go out solitary into a great lone land--that there are loving
watchers around the death-bed "sent forth to minister to the heirs of
salvation."

I do not know how much weight we should attach to the suggestion that
Dives seems the better for the discipline of the new life.  His
selfishness on earth bulks largely in the story.  Now in all his
trouble he is thinking of his five brothers "lest they also come to
this place of torment."


§ 9

The next words suggest a very serious and awful question.  Is the
destiny and the condition of every soul fixed forever at death?  What
is the meaning of the phrase: "Between us and you there is a great gulf
fixed"?  That is too large a question to deal with here.  I postpone it
to a later chapter.  I have already reminded you of the tremendous
importance of this life in its bearing on our final destiny.



III

We get another hint of the Unseen Life in the story of the
Transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah, two of the greatest souls of
the old world days in the wondrous Waiting Life, come out from that
life to meet the Lord and to speak with Him "of His decease, which He
should accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke ix. 31).  Does it not suggest at
once the deep interest which they and their comrades, the great souls
within the Veil, were taking in the mighty scheme of Redemption that
was being worked out on earth?  Does it not suggest that in the spirit
land they are watching our doings here?  Does it not help us to
anticipate the joy in that wondrous life when, straight from the Cross,
Christ the triumphant victor "descended into Hades" (Apostles' Creed)
to proclaim the glad news to the dead (1 Peter iv. 18); to unfurl His
banner and set up His Cross in the great world of the departed?



IV

Our next hint comes when the Lord is dying on the Cross.  The penitent
thief is hanging beside Him.  Death is drawing near.  The poor sinner
is about to take the leap off into the dark.  He does not know what is
before him: Darkness--unconsciousness--nothingness--what?  He does not
know.  The only one on earth who does know is on a cross beside him.
"LORD, REMEMBER ME WHEN THOU COMEST IN THY KINGDOM."  And Jesus said:
"TO-DAY THOU SHALT BE WITH ME IN PARADISE."  Not in Heaven, but in
Paradise--the Jews' word for the resting place of good men after death.
Now, when one man says to another at such a tune, "To-day you shall be
with me," surely it suggests, "You and I will be living a full,
conscious life, and you will remember our acquaintance here upon the
earth; we shall know each other as the two who hung together this
morning on calvary."  Does it not, at least suggest, recognition in the
Unseen Land?




CHAPTER IV

WHAT THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH SAY ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER

Only three hours later the Lord passed through into that Unseen Land.
"Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit, and having said this He
gave up the ghost," and departed on the mysterious journey.  If we
could know anything about what He saw and did on that mysterious
journey surely it would give some hints about our dear ones departed.


§ 1

That journey of the Lord into the world of the dead has been made a
great article of the Christian faith.  We all repeat it regularly in
the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into Hell."  I need not translate
that clause.  Every well taught Sunday-school child knows its meaning.
"He descended into Hades," into the world of the departed in the great
waiting life before the Judgment.  But there is a great deal more than
this to be said about it.

Now, let us consider this statement.  Clearly it deals with the three
days between our Lord's death and resurrection.  Where did His spirit
go?  "To heaven, of course," somebody says.  "No," says the Lord
Himself after the resurrection, "I have not yet ascended to My Father."
Where, then, did His spirit go?  "Nobody can tell," you say.  Yes, one
person could tell, and only one--the Lord Himself.  He only could have
told of His solitary temptation in the wilderness, and He evidently
told it.  He only could have told of the solitary scene in Gethsemane,
it would seem that He told it.  He only could have told of His visit to
the world of the dead, and I think that He told it.  You remember that
after the resurrection He was with them "forty days teaching the things
concerning the Kingdom."  I think He must have told them then of those
three days.  Why?  Because the knowledge of it was so wide-spread in
the early Church, and there was no one else to tell it.  Some people
seem to think that there are only some obscure verses of St. Peter and
a few references of St. Paul in favour of such teaching.  Not at all.
It was the belief of the whole Church.  St. Peter and St. Paul were
only two in a crowd of teachers of early days who proclaimed
triumphantly the visit of the Lord into the world of the dead.  St.
Peter seems to be thinking of it in his first sermon when he quotes:
"His soul was not left in Hades" (Acts ii. 31).  Therefore St. Peter
knew that it was into that intermediate life--not into that final
Heaven--that our Lord went at death.  This statement by itself would
not prove much, but when I find the same St. Peter long afterwards
telling so circumstantially in his first epistle (iii. 18) that when
his Master was put to death in the flesh He was made more alive in the
spirit, in which spirit He went and preached to the spirits in prison
who had been disobedient at the flood.  "For which cause (chap. iv. 6)
was the gospel--the glad news--preached to them that are dead," I think
it is a fair inference that St. Peter had some definite information.
And then I find St. Paul, in Eph. iv. 9, when he is writing of the
gifts bestowed on the Church by her ascended Lord.  The word "ascended"
causes him to pause abruptly.  Men must not think that His work in the
unseen was limited to that work for us in Heaven after His ascension.
"Now that He ascended, what is it but that He descended first into the
lower parts of the earth (_i. e._, the world of the departed) that He
might fill all things."  Hades and Heaven had alike felt the glory of
His presence.

And then immediately after the Apostles' days I find the knowledge
wide-spread in the Church.  I read the writings of the ancient bishops
and teachers of the Church, beginning at the death of St. John, the
very men to whom we refer for information as to the Baptism and Holy
Communion and the authenticity of the four Gospels, and there I find
prominently in their preaching the gospel of our Lord's visit to the
world of the departed.


§ 2

The earliest is known as Justin Martyr.  He was born about the time of
St. John's death, and he feels so strongly about the Descent into Hades
that he actually charges the Jews with mutilating a prophecy of
Jeremiah foretelling it.

Irenaeus, the great Bishop of Lyons in France, a little while later
tells how the Lord descended {59} into the world of the dead, preaching
to the departed, and all who had hopes in Him, and submitted to His
dispensations, received remission of sins.

Then away in Egypt comes St. Clement of Alexandria, born about fifty
years after St. John's death.  I have been greatly interested in some
little touches in his chapter on the descent into the world of the
dead.  He asserts as the direct teaching of Scripture that our Lord
preached the Gospel to the dead, but he thinks that the souls of the
Apostles must have taken up the same task when they died, and that it
was not merely to Jews and saints, but to heathen as well--as was only
fair, he says, since they had no chance of knowing.  Don't you like
that honest appeal of his "as was only fair"?

St. Clement's great disciple, Origen, comes next.  His evidence comes
in curiously.  A famous infidel named Celsus, knowing of this
wide-spread creed of the Church about the preaching in Hades, laughs at
the Christians.  "I suppose your Master when He failed to persuade the
living had to try and persuade the dead?"  Origen meets the question
{60} straight out: "Whether it please Celsus or no, we of the Church
assert that the soul of our Lord, stript of its body, held converse
with other souls that He might convert those capable of instruction."

Then away in Western Africa, the Church's belief is represented by
another great teacher, Tertullian.  In Jerusalem, Cyril the Bishop,
teaches the people in his catechetical lectures this faith of the
Church with a ring of gladness and triumph.  He sees Christ not only
amid the souls who had once been disobedient, but also in blessed
intercourse with the strugglers after right who had never seen His face
on earth.  He pictures how the holy prophets ran to our Lord, how
Moses, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and David, and Samuel, and
John the Baptist, ran to Him with the cry, "Oh, Death, where is thy
sting?  Oh, Grave, where is thy victory, for the Conqueror has redeemed
us."

I cannot go on to tell of St. Athanasius and the rest.  I have said
enough to show you that in the early ages of the Church--the pure
loving ages--nearest to the Lord and to the Apostles, the Church
rejoiced in the glad belief that Christ went and visited the spirits in
the Unseen who had never seen His face on earth.[1]


§ 3

This was one of the gladdest notes in the whole Gospel harmony of the
early Church for five hundred years, in the purest and most loving
days, the days nearest our Lord and His Apostles.  It was a note of
triumph.  It told of the tender, thoughtful love of Christ for the
faithful souls who had never seen Hun.  It told of the universality of
His Atonement.  It told of victory, far beyond this life.  It told that
Christ, who came to seek and save men's souls on earth, had continued
that work in the world of the dead while His body lay in the grave.
That He passed into the unseen world as a saviour and conqueror.  That
His banner was unfurled there and His cross set up there in the world
of the departed.  That the souls of all the ancient world who had never
known Him, and WHO WERE CAPABLE OF TURNING TO HIM (_i. e._, who in
their earthly probation, in spite of all their ignorance and sin, had
not irrevocably turned away from God and good), might turn to Him and
live.  That the spirits of the old-world saints and prophets had
welcomed Him with rejoicing.  That even men of much lower place had yet
found mercy.  That even such men as those who had perished in the flood
in God's great judgment, BUT HAD NOT HARDENED THEMSELVES AGAINST HIS
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND LOVE, were not shut out from hope.  In the "many
mansions" was a place even for such as they.  To the teachers of the
early Church, I repeat, it was one of the most triumphant notes in
their gospel--the wideness of Christ's Atonement.


§ 4

That is what we mean, then, by the descent into Hades.  Does it not
give a vivid reality to that world that we think of so vaguely?  Think
of it.  Was there ever before or since such a scene, such a preaching,
such a preacher, such a congregation?  Could the wildest flights of
imagination go further?  Yet it is all sober fact.  Try to picture it
for yourselves for a moment.  The Lord hanging on the cross, with His
heart full of pain for that humanity that He was redeeming; and yet
surely full of triumph, too, and glad anticipation.  He was going to
show Himself to the poor souls who in the dark old world days had loved
God and Right.  He had finished the work that was given Him to do.  He
was leaving His Church with that blessed gospel of salvation to preach
through the centuries to all souls on earth.  But what of the souls who
had gone out of earth from the beginning of the world without knowing
Him?  The Church replies, through her Bible and through her Creed and
through her early teachers, that the Lord was not forgetting them.  He
was about to go forth in a few moments, "quickened in His spirit," to
bring His glad gospel to the waiting souls.  That was the first great
missionary work of the Church.  May we not reverently see His own
anticipation of it in His departing words as He started on His mission,
"Father, into Thy hands do I commend My spirit" (in the journey on
which it is going).  May we not read it in that "au revoir," not
"good-bye," to the thief beside Him, "To-day you shall be with Me in
Paradise"?  May we not dwell on the wonder and joy and gratitude and
love which must have shaken that world within the veil, as the loving
conqueror came in amongst them?  And may we not reverently follow Him
still in thought when He returned to earth and, as we conjecture,
somewhere in the Forty Days after the Resurrection, told His disciples
of His marvellous experience?  I am not laying down this as a statement
of Scripture, but I think it is a fair conjecture, for how else could
they have learned it?  And if we are right; think how the knowledge of
it would swell the glad confidence of St. Paul.  "For I am persuaded
that neither DEATH, nor LIFE, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, is able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

I think we must see that this teaching of the Apostles and apostolic
men of the whole early Church is true.  People sometimes ask, "Why,
then, is it new in our day?"  The answer is easy.  At the Reformation
time there were terrible abuses connected with the Church's doctrine of
the Intermediate life.  The practice of purchased Masses, and Pardons,
and Indulgences, and all the absurdities connected with the Roman
purgatory, so exemplified in Tetzel's cry, "When money clinks at the
bottom of my box a soul is released from purgatory."  With such
provocation one does not wonder--though one may greatly regret--that
the indignant reformers, in sweeping away the falsehood, sometimes
swept away also the underlying truth.  The teaching about the
Intermediate Life, and the old practice of the Church in remembering
her faithful departed in prayer, were all put in the background as
leading to dangerous abuse; and so the people, getting no real teaching
about it, got the sad habit of trying to forget about the state of
their dear ones departed.  In their ignorance, they could only guess
blindly what the Creed here means.  So for centuries this has been the
"lost article of the Creed."  But this teaching of the Creed is none
the less true, because it has been neglected in later days.  And if it
be true, it is well worth our attention, for it confirms what we have
already learned from the previous teaching of the Lord, that the life
of the departed is a clear, vivid, conscious life, since Christ could
teach them and they could learn.

And it suggests that the departed souls of the old world who had no
chance of knowing Him have not by death lost all capacity for repenting
and receiving Christ.  Those men that St. Peter thinks of had perished
in God's great judgment, but it would seem in their terrible fate they
had not hardened themselves irrevocably against God.  Those who do that
on earth seem to close the door for ever.  That is the sin against the
Holy Ghost--the only sin which our Lord says hath never forgiveness
either in this world or in the world to come.  These evidently had
still their capacity for repentance.  And this gives one stirrings of
hope in the perplexities of God's awful judgments.  Don't be afraid to
think this.  There is not one word in Scripture to forbid our thinking
it.  It merely means that in the terrible fate which they had brought
on themselves they had not utterly hardened their hearts--and Christ
had not forgotten them in their misery.


§ 6

Estimate fairly the value of this evidence for our Lord's visit to the
Unseen Life.  Do not overestimate it.  It is not all Scripture.  But
all that is not Scripture is the wide-spread belief of the primitive
Church which was afterwards crystallized into an article of the Creed.
Surely it is enough to deepen our sense of the reality of that Unseen
Life.  It strongly confirms what we have learned already--that that
life is a vivid, conscious life into which "I" go my "self," with my
full memory of the past.  And do not misread it.  It is not offering
any hope to wicked men who, with full knowledge of Christ, wilfully
reject Him.  It tells of men who had never known Him, and has hope only
of those "who were capable of receiving Him."  There is nothing here to
make light of the responsibility of this life.

But this message comes to us to comfort the hearts and strengthen the
faith of thinking men and women who are puzzled and perplexed and
estranged from Christ by the terrible perplexities of life and of God's
judgments as they understand or misunderstand them.  You have often
thought of the difficulty of reconciling the righteous justice of God
with His Fatherly love.  You have often thought, in wondering doubt,
"Why did Christ come so late in the world's history?  What of all the
old-world souls who could not have known Him here on earth?  For you
know that there is no salvation save by Jesus Christ.  You have read in
the Old Testament of whole nations, men, women and little children,
swept away in one dread destruction.  What of them?  You have wondered
about the vast heathen world passing in thousands every day into the
Unseen, with no knowledge of Him.  You have sometimes read the
Registrar-General's return of deaths in your city, and thought of all
the little dead children, brought up in evil homes; of sullen prisoners
hardened in the jails; of grown men and women in the city's slums who,
through the hardening influence of circumstances, had little real
chance of ever being touched by that tenderness of God's love which
leads men to love Him in return.  You know they have not died in
Christ.  What of them?"  If you had to stand at some death-beds at
which some of us have to stand you would feel as we do the insistent
pressure of that question for all in the ancient or modern world--the
vast countless world of the dead--who had no real chance of knowing
Christ or being touched by His love here on earth.

  Oh, the generations old
  Over whom no church bell tolled
  Christless lifting up blind eyes
  To the silence of the skies.
    For the innumerable dead
    Is my soul disquieted!


Trust them with God, says this teaching of the Creed.  Christ will do
right by them.  Christ does not forget them.

  Trust Him, though thy sight be dim,
  Doubt for them is doubt of Him.
      *    *    *    *    *
  Still Thy love, O Christ, arisen
  Yearns to reach those souls in prison,
  Through all depths of sin and loss
  Sinks the plummet of Thy Cross.
  Never yet abyss was found
  Deeper than that Cross could sound.


In these two chapters we have touched on the chief statements in the
New Testament and in the beliefs of the primitive Church as to the near
Hereafter.  There are others of less importance to be referred to as we
go on.  It seemed well to lay down some basis to proceed on.



[1] See Plumptre, _The Spirits in Prison_.




CHAPTER V

THE CRISIS OF DEATH

In an earlier chapter I placed you in imagination in the darkened death
chamber, looking on the face of your dead and feeling the keen pressure
of the inevitable questions: What has happened to him?  Where is he?
What is he seeing?  What is he knowing in that mysterious world into
which he has gone?

That death chamber is the best place on earth for solemn thought about
the Hereafter.  But when you are thinking only of your own dead and
your heart is all quivering in pain and longing you are not in the best
condition for cool, clear searching after truth.  Imagination and
sentiment are apt to run away with reason.  The tender tortured woman
is apt to believe too easily what the heart longs to believe.  The
stricken man in his deep numb pain is in danger of yielding to hopeless
doubt about it all.

So I lifted you away into a clearer atmosphere and sent you searching
for definite revelations of God about other people's dead thousands of
years ago, where your heart and affections were not involved, and where
cool, clear reason had a chance to be heard.  We tried to study
impartially what Scripture reveals about the World of the Departed and
how the primitive Church interpreted that revelation.  This gives us a
solid basis to proceed on.


§ 1

With that preparation we come back into the darkened room again looking
into the face of our dead, trying in perplexity of heart to follow him
on the great journey.  To avoid confusion we assume here that he died a
penitent man in Christ's faith and fear.

Let me try to enter into your thoughts.  Let me begin at the
beginning--Death.

Naturally we all shrink from death--the seeming shock of sundering soul
and body--the launching out against our will into the regions of the
Unexplored--the "land of far distances" as Isaiah calls it.  We are
afraid of that unknown death, for our dear ones--like children afraid
of a bogey on the dark stairs.  We can't help being afraid of it.  But
ought we to be so MUCH afraid of it?  Has not our Lord taught us that
there is no bogey on that dark stairs, that he who has just now closed
his eyes in death is opening them already into a larger life?

  "There is no death, what seems so is transition."


Now think of this "unknown death."  Has not Christ revealed to you that
this terrible thing that you so fear for him who is gone really only
means that at the close of this poor limited kindergarten stage of his
history Death has come--God's beneficent angel to lead him into the
next stage of being.  Why should you be afraid?  Birth gave him much,
Death will give much more.  FOR DEATH MEANS BIRTH INTO A FULLER LIFE.
What a fright he gives us, this good angel of God!  We do not trust his
Master much.

Do you say that you do not know what is before your friend--that it is
a "leap off into the dark"?  Have we not learned from Scripture already
that it is much less of "dark" than come of us thought?  And may it not
be much less of a "leap off" than we think--only a closing of the eyes
here and an opening of them there?  May not the birth into that life be
as simple as the birth into this?  May not our fright be like that of
Don Quixote when blind-folded he hung by his wrist from the stable
window and they told him that a tremendous abyss yawned beneath him.
He is in terror of the awful fall.  Maritornes cuts the thong with
gladsome laughter and the gallant gentleman falls--just four inches!
May we not believe that God reserves just as blithesome a surprise for
us when our time comes to discover the simplicity, the agreeableness,
the absence of any serious change in what we call dying.  I am not
ignoring the pain and sickness of the usual death-bed.  But these are
not dying?  The act of dying comes after these.  These are but the
birth pangs before the new life begins, the rough, hard bit of road
that leads to "the wicket gate out of the city."

Pliny, from much clinical observations, declares his opinion that death
itself is pleasure rather than pain.  Dr. Solander was delighted at the
sensation of dying in the snow.  The late Archbishop of Canterbury
remarked as he died: "It is really nothing much after all."  Dying
itself may be pleasure rather than pain.

We have all noticed that expression of composed calm which comes on the
faces of the newly dead.  Some say it is only due to muscular
relaxation.  Perhaps so.  But perhaps not.  One likes to think that it
may be something more.  Who knows that it may not be a last message of
content and acquiescence from those departing souls who at the moment
of departure know perhaps a little more than ourselves--a message of
good cheer and pleasant promise by no means to be disregarded.[1]

At any rate does not Scripture suggest to us in the story of
Lazarus--of Moses and Elias at the Transfiguration--of the dying
thief--of the spirits in the Unseen Life whom Christ visited at His
death--that Death comes not as an executioner to cut off our departed
one from life and love, but rather as God's good angel bringing him
more than life has ever brought, and leading him by a path as full of
miracles of soft arrangement as was his birth to heights of ever
advancing existence.

God reveals to us too that the closing of the eyes in the darkness of
Death is but the opening them to the light of a larger life, to the
vision of the new mysterious real world which the glare of this world
obscured.  It is just what happens every day when the glare of the
sunlight, revealing to us every little flower and leaf and insect,
shuts out from us the great universe of God which stands forth in the
midnight sky.  Do you know Blanco White's famous sonnet?  He is
imagining what Adam must have felt as the first night fell on the
earth.  All the beautiful world that he had known for but a day was
vanishing from him into darkness.  Was the end of all things come
already?  But lo, a stupendous unexpected miracle!  Lo, as the darkness
deepened a new and more wonderful world was revealed in the sky, a
world which the sunlight had kept absolutely concealed:

  Hesperus, with the host of heaven came
  And lo!  Creation widened on man's view
  Who could have thought such marvels lay concealed
  Behind thy beams, O Sun?  Or who could find
  Whilst flower and leaf and insect stood revealed
  That to such countless orbs thou madest us blind?
  Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife
  If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?


Yes, life shuts out greater things than light does.  God teaches us
that Death is birth, that what the earth life conceals Death will
reveal; that as the babe's eyes opened from the darkness of the womb to
sunlight on this earth, so will the eyes that close in the darkness of
death open on "a light that never was on sea or land."


§ 2

And may not this act of dying be much less lonely than we think?  God
sent each of us into this first stage of existence with mother and home
and loved friends about us.  No one comes into this world to
loneliness.  Should not that stir some hope at least that the Father
may take similar care for us in our entry on the second stage at death?
I hate sentimentalizing about it.  But this is not sentimentalizing.  I
have already called attention to our Lord's only account of a good
man's entrance into the Unseen.  "He was carried by the angels," He
said, and I have shown you some reason to think that He meant literally
what He said--that the angels who are presented in Scripture as so
interested in our life here are equally interested in our transition to
a larger life--that loving watchers are around a soul as it passes into
the Unseen.

I sometimes wonder, too, how much significance should be attached to
the fairly frequent phenomenon of dying people seeming in some rapt
vision to see or feel as if meeting them the presence of loved ones
gone before.  Sometimes these phenomena are very striking.  I once
thought of asking a religious journal to open its columns to testimony
from thoughtful, cool-headed clergy and laity of such experiences at
death-beds.  It might enable us to judge critically if it could be
explained away as mere sentimental fancy or if the evidence were strong
enough to suggest an underlying reality.  It would need to be very
keenly criticized.  All allowance should be made, especially in the
case of women, for the deceitfulness of pious fancies.  But there are
some cases which, if their number were large enough, would point much
deeper, where there could be no case of sentimental fancies.  For
instance a young student in one of our city hospitals told me a curious
experience lately.  A little child under two years old had been rescued
out of a fire and was dying badly burned.  "I took the little chap on a
pillow in my arms," he said, "to let him die more easily.  Suddenly he
stiffened himself and reached out his little hands and his face beamed
with the sort of gladness that a child has in reaching to something
very pleasant and in a very short time he died."  My informant was by
no manner of means a sentimental youth, and he was much struck with the
incident.  I don't know if there is much evidence of this kind.  If so
it would count for a good deal in forming our judgment.  Our Lord
speaks of those whom we have made friends on earth receiving us when we
die into the everlasting habitations (Luke xvi. 9).  Is it too good to
believe that He might have meant some pleasant welcoming on the other
side--that perhaps that little child in the hospital that night was
really reaching out his little hands to some one invisible to the young
student?  Let us have no weak sentimentalizing, but on the other
hand--is anything too good to believe as to what God might do for poor
frightened souls at such a dread crisis of being?



[1] I have here freely adapted some thoughts and phrases from Edwin
Arnold's _Death and Afterwards_.




CHAPTER VI

"I," "MYSELF" AFTER DEATH

§ 1

But we must not delay at Death.  Death is a very small thing in
comparison with what comes after it--that wonderful, wonderful,
wonderful world into which Death ushers us.  Turn away from the face of
your dead.  Turn away from the house of clay which held him an hour
ago.  The house is empty, the tenant is gone.  He is away already,
gasping in the unutterable wonder of the new experience.

  O change! stupendous change!
  There lies the soulless clod.
  The light eternal breaks,
  The new immortal wakes,
  Wakes with his God!


Oh! the wonder of it to him at first!  Years ago I met with a story in
a sermon by Canon Liddon.  An old Indian officer was telling of his
battles--of the Indian Mutiny, of the most striking events in his
professional career; and as he vividly described the skirmishes, and
battles, and sieges, and hair-breadth escapes, his audience hung
breathless in sympathy and excitement.  At last he paused; and to their
expressions of wonderment he quietly replied, "I expect to see
something much more wonderful than that."  As he was over seventy, and
retired from the service, his listeners looked up into his face with
surprise.  There was a pause; and then he said, in a solemn undertone,
"I mean in the first five minutes after death."

That story caught on to me instantly.  That has been for years my
closest feeling.  I feel it at every death-bed as the soul passes
through.  I believe it will be my strongest feeling when my own
death-hour comes--eager, intense, glad curiosity about the new, strange
world opening before me.

Not long ago in the early morning I stood by a poor old man as he was
going through into the Unseen.  He was, as it were, fumbling with the
veil of that silent land--wishing to get through; and we were talking
together of the unutterable wonder and mystery that was only an hour or
two ahead.  I always talk to dying people of the wonders of that world
just ahead of them.  I left him and returned to see him in a couple of
hours; but I was too late, he had just got through--got through into
that wonder and mystery that I had been stupidly guessing about, and
the poor old worn body was flung dishevelled on the bed, as one might
fling an old coat, to be ready for the journey.  He was gone.  Just got
through--and I felt, with almost a gasp, that he had solved the riddle
of life; that I would give anything, risk anything, for one little
glimpse through; but I could not get it.  I could only guess the
stupendous thing that had come to him.  For all the stupendous changes
that have ever happened here are surely but trifles when compared with
that first few minutes in the marvellous life beyond, when our friends
pass from us within the veil, and our hearts follow them with eager
questioning--"What are they doing?  What are they seeing?  What are
they knowing now?"


§ 2

More and more of late years I keep asking those questions at
death-beds.  I seem to myself constantly as if trying to hold back the
curtain and look through.  But the look through is all blurred and
indistinct.

It must always be so while we are here, with our limited faculties,
shut up in this little earth body.  I know certain facts about the "I,"
the "self" in the Unseen Life, but I have no knowledge and no
experience that would help me to picture his surroundings.  I cannot
form any image, any, even the vaguest, conception of what that life
appears like.  That is why my outlook is so blurred and indistinct.

And this brings me to point out WHAT SORT OF KNOWLEDGE WE CAN HAVE AND
WHAT SORT OF KNOWLEDGE WE CANNOT HAVE about that life.  It may help you
not to expect the impossible.

You desire to know two things about the Unseen World.

1st.  You desire to know the real life of the "I"
himself--consciousness, thought, memory, love, happiness, penitence and
such like.

2nd.  You desire to know his outward surrounding, so that you can
picture to yourself his life in that world.  That is what gives the
interesting touch to your knowledge of your friend's life in a foreign
land on earth.

Now the first of these is the really important knowledge, and such
knowledge you can have and you can understand because it is of the same
kind as the knowledge you already have of him on earth.

The second would be an interesting knowledge, but this knowledge you
cannot have, because you have no faculties for it and no similar
experience to help you to realize it.  It is a law of all human
knowledge that you cannot know and cannot depict to yourself anything
of which you have had no corresponding experience before.

"I," "myself" which goes into the Unseen is the really important
matter, not my surroundings.  And the essential knowledge, I say, about
that self, about his inner real life in the Unseen you can have and you
can understand because the inner life there is of the very same kind as
the inner life here.  If I am told of full consciousness there, of
memory there, of love or hatred there, of happiness or pain there, of
joy or sorrow there, I can easily understand it.  I have had experience
of the like here.  There is no difficulty.

But the knowledge of the outward environment there--what we shall be
like, how that world will appear, how we shall live and move and have
our being in a spiritual existence--all that deeply interesting
knowledge which imagination could use to picture that life and bring it
before us--THAT we cannot have.  It is not possible with our limited
faculties and limited experience.  We could not be taught it.  We have
no faculties to take it in and no experience to aid us in realizing it.
A blind man cannot picture colours to himself, a deaf man cannot
imagine music.  It is not that we are unwilling to teach him, but that
his limited faculties prevent him from taking in the idea.

Realize your position then with regard to the spiritual world.  Imagine
a population of blind, deaf men inhabiting this earth.  One of them
suddenly gets his sight and hearing, and lo! in a moment an unutterable
glory, a whole world of beautiful colours and forms and music has
flowed into his life.  But he cannot convey any notion of it to his
former companions.  He cannot convey to them the slightest idea of the
lovely sunset or the music of the birds.  We, shut up in these human
bodies, are the blind, deaf men in God's glorious universe.  Some of
our comrades have moved into the new life beyond, where the eyes of the
blind are opened and the ears of the deaf are unstopped.  But we have
no power of even imagining what their wondrous experience is like.

I suppose that is the reason why we have no description of Paradise or
Heaven except in earthly imagery of golden streets and gates of pearl.
I suppose that is why St. Paul could not utter what he saw when in some
tranced condition he was caught up into Paradise and that life was
shown to him--"whether in the body or out of the body," he could not
tell (2 Cor. xii. 4).  I suppose that was why Lazarus could tell
nothing of these marvellous four days in which his disembodied spirit
mingled with the spirits of the departed.

  "'Where wert thou, brother, those four days?'
    There lives no record of reply,
    Which, telling what it is to die,
  Had surely added praise to praise."


I suppose it was all unintelligible to mortal ken when the spirit had
come back to the body it had left.  If, in a crowd of blind deaf men,
one got his sight and hearing for a few minutes, and then relapsed,
what could he tell to his comrades or even fully realize to himself?

Thus you see the knowledge that you can have and the knowledge you
cannot have of that spirit life.  Be content.  God has given you a
great deal of knowledge of that real life of the self in the hereafter.
If He has so made you that the other knowledge that would help you to
picture the surroundings is impossible to you it is best that you
should know it.  Be content.  Don't cry for the moon.  Follow your
departed in thought into that life and realize what you have learned
from Scripture about him.



II

What have you learned?

First that IT IS A VIVID CONSCIOUS life into which he has gone.

There are several passages in Scripture which speak of Death as sleep
and which taken alone might suggest a long unconsciousness, a sort of
Rip Van Winkle life, sleeping for thousands of years and waking up in a
moment at the Judgment Day, feeling as if there had been no interval
between.  But a little thought will show it is a mere figure of speech
taken from the sleeping appearance of the body.  "The sleep of Death"
is a very natural expression to use as one looks on the calm, peaceful
face after life's fitful fever and the long pain and sickness of the
death-bed.  But no one can study the Bible references to the life
beyond without seeing that it cannot be a life of sleep or
unconsciousness.  "Shall we sleep between Death and the Judgment?" asks
Tertullian.  "Why souls do not sleep even when men are alive.  It is
the province of bodies to sleep."  This sleep theory has always been
condemned whenever the Church has pronounced on it.  Even the Reformers
declare it at variance with Holy Scripture in spite of the strong
feeling in its favour in their day.[1]

The reader who has followed thus far will need no proof as to the
teaching of Scripture that the Waiting Life before the Judgment into
which our dear ones have gone is no unconscious sleep but a real vivid
conscious life.  So vivid that our Lord's spirit is said to have been
quickened, made more alive, as He passed in.  So vivid that the men of
the old world could listen to His preaching.  So vivid that Moses and
Elias--those eager, impetuous leaders--in that wondrous life could not
be held by its bonds, but broke through to stand on the mountain with
Christ a thousand years after their death.  So vivid that Lazarus (whom
our Lord describes as in Abraham's bosom) is depicted as living a full,
clear, intelligent life; and Dives as thinking anxiously about his five
brothers on earth.

That was surely no unconscious life which St. Paul saw when he was
caught up into Paradise and heard unspeakable things, nor was it a
blank unconsciousness that he looked for in his desire "to depart and
be with Christ which is far better" (Phil. i. 23).

Do you want further proof?  Look at our Lord and the thief on the
cross.  The two men had been hanging together dying on the cross, just
about to get through the veil to the world beyond.  The poor thief did
not know what was beyond that veil--darkness, insensibility, stupor,
oblivion.  The only one on earth who did know hung there beside him.
And when the poor dying one turned with the words, "Lord, remember me
when Thou comest in Thy kingdom," He promptly replied, "To-day thou
shalt be with Me."  If any one knew, surely He knew.  If it meant
anything, it meant, "There shall be no oblivion, no unconscious
sleeping.  To-night, when our dead bodies lie here upon the cross, you
and I shall live and know each other as the two men who hung dying
together on Calvary."  Ah! the wonder to him as he went in beyond the
veil, as though the Lord would lead him, lest he should be afraid.

Beyond all question God has revealed to you plainly enough that your
beloved has gone into a full, vivid, conscious life.  He is more alive
to-day than he ever was on earth.

What follows?  This.  If I am fully conscious what am I conscious of?
Surely, first of all I must be conscious of myself, conscious of the
continuity of my personal identity, conscious of the continuity of my
personal character.  I must feel that I am the same "I," I am still
"myself."  Death which removes only the outer covering leaves the Ego
just where it was.  No better.  No worse.  The Bible lays no emphasis
at all on death as making any change in character.  Our Lord assumes
the characters as remaining the same.  The mere act of dying does not
alter character.  I am the same I.  I have entered into a new
environment more favourable for the exercise of my faculties, more
adaptable to the acquisition of knowledge, more helpful, I trust, to
growth in good.  But I am the same "I."  As I leave off here I begin
there.  I take into that world just myself as I have made it.  If I
have made the best of myself what more should I desire to take?
Consciousness, Memory, Thought, Love, Character.  If I have not made
the best of myself, if I have acquired a distaste for God, for
holiness, still I take in myself just as I stand.  Think how
tremendously solemn that makes the life here.  It is the place of
character making for the life there.  I can never, never, never get
away from myself.  I shall always be myself.  You remember what our
Lord said from the other side of the grave.  "Handle Me and see it is I
MYSELF."

It is I myself, the very same self.  It is they themselves, the very
same selves whom I loved and who loved me so dearly.  In that solemn
hour after death, believe it, your boy, your wife, your husband, who is
experiencing the startling revelations of the new life is feeling that
life as an unbroken continuance of the life begun on earth.  Only the
environment is changed.  He feels himself the same boy or man that he
was an hour ago, with the same character, aspirations, desires, the
same love and courage and hope.  But oh, what a different view of all
things!  How clearly he recognizes God's love and holiness.  How
clearly he sees himself--his whole past life.  If ever he cared for
Christ and His will, how longingly, wonderingly, he is reaching out to
Him.  If ever he loved you tenderly on earth, how deeply and tenderly
he is loving you to-day.  In all the whirl of awe and wonder and
curiosity and hope, love must stand supreme.  For "love never faileth."
"And now," says St. Paul, "abideth Faith, Hope and Love (these three
that abide for ever), but the greatest of these is love."


§ 3

What else have you learned?  That HE REMEMBERS CLEARLY the old life and
the old home and the old comrades and the old scenes on earth.  There
is no conjecturing about that.  That goes without saying if "I" am the
same "I" in that world.  Personal identity of course postulates memory
which binds into one the old life and the new.  And the Bible takes
that for granted.  We saw that Lazarus remembered Dives and Dives
remembered Lazarus and remembered his old home and the five young
brothers who grew up with him.  He remembers that they have grown to be
selfish men like himself and is troubled for them.  And Abraham assumes
it as a matter of course.  "My son, remember that thou in thy
lifetime," etc.  Our Lord comes back from Death remembering all the
past as if Death made no chasm at all in His memory.  "Go and meet Me
in Galilee," He says; "Lo I have told you" (before I died).  And the
redeemed in the future life are represented as remembering and praising
God who had redeemed them from their sins on earth.

So you may be quite sure that your dear one is remembering you and
storing up in his memory all your love in the past.  Did your wife ever
tell you on earth how happy you had made her?  Did the old father and
mother now in the Unseen ever thank God for the comfort you had been to
them during their declining years?  Be sure that in that land of love
these will be amongst the most precious pictures in their storehouse of
memory.


§ 4

And he has taken with him all the treasures of mind and soul which by
God's grace he has won for himself on earth.  A man can take nothing of
the external things--of gold or lands.  Nothing of what he HAS but all
of what he is--all that he has gained IN HIMSELF.  The treasures of
memory, of disciplined powers, of enlarged capacities, of a pure and
loving heart.  All the enrichment of the mind by study, all the love of
man, all the love of God, all the ennobling of character which has come
through the struggle after right and duty.  These are the true
treasures which go on with us into that land where neither rust nor
moth doth corrupt.


§ 5

And he is "WITH CHRIST."

The Bible teaches that the faithful who have died in Christ are happy
and blest in Paradise even though the Final Heaven and the Beatific
Vision is still but a thing to be longed for far off in the future.
Lazarus is "comforted" after his hard life on earth.  "The souls of the
righteous are in the hands of God, there shall no torment touch them."
"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord ... they rest from their
labours."  But best of all it assures us that they are WITH CHRIST.
"Lord Jesus receive my spirit" the dying Stephen prayed as he passed
into the Unseen.  They are "absent from the body at home with the
Lord."  They "depart to be with Christ which is far better."

"With Christ."  One has to write carefully here.  The full vision of
the Divine Glory and Goodness and Love is reserved for the final stage
of existence in Heaven where nothing that defileth shall enter in,
whereas this Intermediate Life is one with many imperfections and
faults, quite unready for that vision of glory.  But for all that St.
Paul believed that the presence of Christ was vouchsafed in that
waiting land, in some such way we may suppose as on earth long ago.
Only an imperfect revelation of the Son of God.  And yet--and yet--oh,
how one longs for it!  Think of being near Him, even in some such
relation as were the disciples long ago.

  "I think when I read that sweet story of old,
    When Jesus was here amongst men,
  How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
    How I long to have been with Him then."

Yes, St. Paul seems to say you shall be with Him, you shall have that
longing gratified in some measure even before you go to Heaven.  So
that Paradise, poor and imperfect as it is compared with the Heaven
beyond, is surely a state to be greatly desired.  Some pages back I
wrote with a certain shrinking "No man has ever yet gone to Heaven."
It is quite true, and yet I could feel some poor mourner shrinking back
from it as he thought of that beloved one gone.  Nay, shrink not.
Paradise means the "Park" of God, the "Garden" of God, the place of
rest and peace and refreshing shade.  The Park is not the Palace but it
is the precincts of the Palace.  Paradise is not Heaven, but it is the
Courtyard of Heaven.  And (the dearest, tenderest assurance of all)
they are with Christ.  Is not that sufficient answer to many questions?
At any rate the Bible definitely teaches that.



[1] Our "39 Articles" were originally 42, and the 40th says, "They
which say that the souls of those who depart hence do sleep being
without all sense, feeling or perceiving till the Day of Judgment ...
do utterly dissent from the right belief declared to us in Holy
Scripture."




CHAPTER VII

RECOGNITION

§ 1

SHALL WE KNOW ONE ANOTHER IN THAT LIFE?  Why not?  As George Macdonald
somewhere pertinently asks, "Shall we be greater fools in Paradise than
we are here?"

This is a perfectly apt retort, and not at all flippant as it may seem
at first.  It is based on the belief suggested by common sense and
confirmed by Scripture that our life there will be the natural
continuous development of our life here and not some utterly
unconnected existence.  If consciousness, personal identity, character,
love, memory, fellowship, intercourse go on in that life why should
there be a question raised about recognition?  True, there are morbid
times with most of us when we are inclined to doubt all desirable
things, and there are some gloomy Christians who are always suspicious
of anything especially bright and hopeful in the Gospel of Christ.  But
to the normal Christian man who knows what is revealed and who believes
in the love of God, there should never be any serious doubt about
recognition in that life.


§ 2

Before saying anything about Scripture evidence let me point out that
there are some things that are always assumed by legitimate inference
even without any definite proofs.  If I knew that the inhabitants of
Mars were alive, and in full consciousness, and with souls like mine,
and capable of intercourse with each other--whether they have bodies or
not, I should assume that they knew one another.  I should not wait for
that fact to be definitely stated by a visitor to Mars who should
return to earth.  I should assume it without his stating it.  Nay, I
should require very strong evidence to make me believe the contrary.
Now, the Bible says that our dear ones in Paradise are alive,--that
their life is a full conscious life, with full consciousness of
personal identity, that they remember the things of the old earth life,
that they love one another, that they can have intercourse together as
in the story of Dives and Lazarus.

So far as we can judge, the inner life of the "I" THERE seems a very
natural continuation of his life HERE.

If then, "I" am the same "I," the same person, still alive, still
conscious, still thinking, still remembering, still loving, still
longing for my dear ones, still capable of intercourse with others, why
may I not without definite proof assume the fact of recognition?
Surely it should require strong evidence to make me believe the
contrary.  It is one thing to avoid reckless assertions without any
foundation--it is quite another thing to have so little trust in God
that we are afraid to make a fair inference such as we would
unhesitatingly make in like conditions here--just because it seems to
us "too good to be true."  Nothing is too good to be true where God is
concerned.  I do believe that one reason why we have not definite
answers to such questions as this is because such answers ought not to
be necessary for people who trusted fully in the tenderness of the love
of God.


§ 3

Why, even if the Bible were to give you no hint of it, do you not see
that the deepest, noblest instincts that God has implanted in us cry
out for recognition of our departed; and where God is concerned it is
not too much to say that the deepest, noblest instincts are, in a
sense, prophecies.  This passionate affection, the noblest thing that
God has implanted in us, makes it impossible to believe that we should
be but solitary isolated spirits amongst a crowd of others whom we did
not know, that we should live in the society of happy souls hereafter
and never know that the spirit next us was that of a mother or husband
or friend or child.  We know that the Paradise and earth lives come
from the same God who is the same always.  Into this life He never
sends us alone.  There is the mother love waiting and the family
affection around us, and as we grow older love and friendship and
association with others is one of the great needs and pleasures of life
and one of the chief means of training the higher side of us.  Unless
His method changes we may surely hope that He will do something similar
hereafter, for love is the plant that must overtop all others in the
whole Kingdom of God.

Again, love and friendship must be LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP for SOME ONE.
If we don't know any one, then we cannot love, and human love must die
without an object.  But the Bible makes it a main essential of the
religious life that "He that loveth God love his brother also."

If we shall not know one another, why then this undying memory of
departed ones, this aching void that is never filled on earth?  Alas
for us!  For we are worse off than the lower animals.  The calf is
taken from the cow, the kittens are taken from their mother and in a
few days they are forgotten.  But the poor human mother never forgets.
When her head is bowed with age, when she has forgotten nearly all else
on earth you can bring the tears into her eyes by speaking of the child
that died in her arms forty years ago.  Will God disappoint that tender
love, that one supreme thing which is "the most like God within the
soul"?


§ 4

There can be no real reason, I repeat, for doubting the fact of
recognition unless the Bible should distinctly state the contrary.  And
so far from doing this the Bible, in its very few references to the
Hereafter life, always assumes the fact and never in any way
contradicts it.

Notice first the curiously persistent formula in which Old Testament
chroniclers speak of death.  "He died in a good old age and WAS
GATHERED UNTO HIS PEOPLE and they buried him."  "Gathered unto his
people" can hardly mean burial with his people, for the burial is
mentioned after it.  It comes between the dying and the burial.  And I
note that even at Moses' burial on the lone mountain top this phrase is
solemnly used.  "The Lord said unto him get thee up into the mount and
die in the mount AND BE GATHERED TO THY PEOPLE."  Miriam was buried in
the distant desert, Aaron's body lay on the slopes of Mount Hor, and
the wise little mother who made the ark of bulrushes long ago had found
a grave, I suppose, in the brick-fields of Egypt.  Did it mean that he
came back to them all in the life unseen when he was "gathered to his
people"?

David seemed to think that he would know his dead child.  "I shall go
to him but he shall not return to me."

Our Lord assumes that Dives and Lazarus knew each other.  And in
another passage He uses a very homely illustration of a friendly
gathering when He speaks of those who shall "sit down with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom."  And again in His advice about the
right use of riches.  "Make to yourselves friends by the means of the
mammon of unrighteousness that when ye die they may receive you into
the everlasting habitations" (Luke xvi. 9).  Surely, that at least
suggests recognition and a pleasant welcoming on the other side.

I remember well, how in the pain of a great bereavement, His words to
the penitent thief came into my life like a message from the Beyond.
"To-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise."  I put myself in the place
of that poor friendless man taking his lonely leap off into the dark
and felt what a joy and comfort it must have been.  "To-day we shall be
together again at the other side."  Not, "I will remember thee," but,
"Thou shalt be with Me."  Not, by and by when I come in My Kingdom, but
"To-day."  If anybody knew, surely Jesus knew.  If His words meant
anything surely they meant we shall be conscious of each other, we
shall know each other as the two friendless ones who hung on the cross
together.

Then I see St. Paul (though he is referring to the later stage of
existence) comforting bereaved mourners with the thought of meeting
those whom Christ shall bring with Him.  Where would be the comfort of
it if they should not know them?  He expects to meet his converts and
present them to Christ.  How could he say this if he thought He would
not know them?

I wonder if anybody really doubts it after all.  Just think of it!
With Christ in Paradise and not knowing or loving any comrade soul!  Is
that possible in the land of love?  With our dear ones in Paradise and
never a thrill of recognition as we touch in spiritual intercourse the
mother, or wife, or husband, or child for whose presence we are
longing!  Cannot you imagine our wondering joy when our questionings
are set at rest?  Cannot you imagine the Lord in His tender reproach,
"Oh, thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?"


§ 5

Sometimes one vaguely wonders, How can there be spiritual recognition?
How shall we recognize each other without this accustomed bodily shape?
And in the effort to realize the fact of recognition men have made many
guesses.  But really we know nothing about the "How."  We know that the
self in that life can think and remember and love.  We know that we can
still communicate thoughts to each other.  Can we not leave with God
the "how" of recognition?

In several places Scripture seems to suggest that the souls of the
departed are clothed in some kind of visible spirit shape.  They are
spoken of as not only recognized but in some way seen as in the case of
Samuel and of Dives and Lazarus and of Moses and Elias at the
Transfiguration and of our Lord Himself in the spiritual body after the
Resurrection.  They seem to be visible when they please and as they
please.

But when a mother asks, how then should she know her child who died
twenty years ago, one feels that recognition must be something
spiritual and not depending on visible shape.  Even here on earth much
of our recognition is spiritual.  Soul recognizes soul.  We recognize
in some degree good and evil character of souls even through the coarse
covering of the body.  We instinctively, as we say, trust or distrust
people on first appearance.  Or again, a slight young stripling goes
away to India and returns in twenty years a big, bearded,
broad-shouldered man, with practically no outward resemblance to the
boy that went away.  But even though he strive to conceal his identity
he cannot hide it long from his mother.  She looks into his eyes and
her soul leaps out to him.  Call it instinct, insight, intuition,
sympathy, what you please, it is the spiritual vision, soul recognizing
soul.  If that spiritual vision apart from bodily shape plays so great
a part in recognition here, may it not be all-sufficient there?  In
that life where there is consciousness, character, memory, love,
longing for our dear ones, and power of communication, is it
conceivable that we should have intercourse with our loved and longed
for, without any thrill of recognition?  Surely not.  Instinctively we
shall know.

  It was not mother that I knew thy face,
  It was my heart that cried out Mother![1]


{108}

§ 6

P.S.--I let these words stand as they appear in the earlier editions of
this book.  For they are true.  But to my mind now there is a far more
probable answer.  It is this: That it is not you who will have to do
the recognizing; at any rate that you will not be first with it.

If it be true, as we have reason to believe (see next chapter), that
your dear one there is watching your life on earth, of course he would
know you at once.  While, year by year, you have been changing from
youth to old age he has been near you all the time.  He knows you as
familiarly as if he had been on earth beside you.  Probably he has been
waiting and watching as you came through.

And whatever change has passed on him in his new life, surely he too
will be easier to recognize when he has claimed you first.

Whether this suggestion appeals or no, at any rate we need have no
doubt that we shall know one another there.  Nay, shall we not know
each other there far more thoroughly than we do here?  "Now," says St.
Paul, "we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face.  Now I know
in part, then shall I know even as also I have been known."  St. Paul's
thought is of our fuller knowledge of things hereafter.  Does it not
include also our fuller knowledge of one another?  I met this passage
lately in a letter of Phillips Brooks: "I wonder what sort of knowledge
we shall have of our friends in the Hereafter and what we shall do to
keep up our intimacy with one another.  There will be one good thing
about it.  I suppose we shall see through one another to begin with and
start off on quite a new basis of mutual understanding.  I should think
it would be awful at first, but afterwards it must be nice to feel that
your friends knew the worst of you and you need not be continually in
fear that they will find out what you really are."

I think a simple natural thought such as that seems to bring the idea
of spiritual recognition more within our ken.  But we must remember
that our conjectures about the MODE of recognition have very little
basis.  The FACT of recognition we may practically assume.  The "how"
we must leave with God.

  "Soul of my soul I shall meet thee again.
    With God be the rest."



[1] Momerie.  Immortality.




CHAPTER VIII

THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

We have already seen that the evidence of Scriptures leads us to the
assurance that our dear ones departed are living a vivid, conscious
life; that there is continuance of personal identity.  "I" am still
"I," and that there is memory still, clear and distinct, of the old
friends and the old scenes on earth.


§ 1

We pass on to consider the relations between ourselves and them.  Do
they know now of our life on earth?  Can there be between us
comradeship in any sense?  Can there be love and care and sympathy and
prayer between us on these two sides of the grave, as there is between
friends on earth on the two sides of the Atlantic?

The Church says yes, and calls it in her creed, the Communion of
Saints.  The Communion of Saints--a very grand name, but it means only
a very simple thing--just loving sympathy between us and these elder
brothers and sisters beyond the grave.

The term "saint" in the New Testament only means any poor humble
servant of Christ "set apart" to Him, baptized into His name.
Communion means Fellowship, Comradeship.  Therefore the Communion of
Saints simply means fellowship between Christians, and in church
language has come chiefly to mean fellowship between Christians at this
side and at the other side of death.  Knowledge and comradeship and
sympathy and love and prayer between the church MILITANT on earth and
the church EXPECTANT in Paradise, as they both look forward to the
final joy of the church TRIUMPHANT in Heaven, and meantime coöperate
one with the other to bring the whole world within the Kingdom of
Christ.

You see that it is a prominent doctrine of the Church's creed, and
rightly understood, it is a very beautiful and touching doctrine--not
only because of the union of fellowship with our departed--but
especially because the bond of that union and fellowship is our dear
Lord Himself, whom we and they alike love and thank and praise and pray
to and worship, and from whom we and they alike derive the Divine
sustenance of our souls.

You know what a bond of union it is between two men even to find that
they both deeply honour and admire and love the same friend and
benefactor.  They become one in him.  The Bible means that, but a great
deal more, when it says we are "one in Christ Jesus."

Here on earth, there in Paradise, is His presence.  Here on earth,
there in Paradise, is the love and prayer and praise going forth to
Him, and the strength and power of God coming back from Him.  You know
His own simile, "I am the Vine, ye are the branches."  From the central
Vine the life rises and flows to every farthest branch and twig and
leaf, connecting them all in the one life.  He the Sacred Vine is on
earth with us and in Paradise with them.  Some of the branches are in
the shadow here, some of them are in the sunlight there, but we are all
united through the Lord Himself.  He is the Vine, we are the branches.
Because He is with us here, prayer and praise and all the functions of
the Church are here.  Because He is with them in Paradise prayer and
praise and all the functions of the Church go on in Paradise.  Every
Sunday as we in our poor way love Him and worship Him and pray to Him
and praise Him, our dear ones beyond are doing the very same.  Notice
how in the Communion Service we remind ourselves of the fact.
"Therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of Heaven we
laud and magnify Thy holy name," etc.  It is not we alone who feed on
His divine life, it is not the altar on earth alone that communicates
the all-prevailing virtues of the atoning Blood, for the same Victim is
the central object of adoration beyond, as saints and angels and all
redeemed creation are with us taking up together the chorus of that
everlasting hymn.

If we on this side were living closer to our Lord and closer to our
departed, how close might that comradeship become!  We should tell our
Lord so much about each other.  We should think of each other and
remember each other and sympathize with each other and pray for each
other.  Why, we could do everything for each other that we can do on
earth when separated by the Atlantic--except just write home.  (Ah, how
one wishes that they could "write home"!)  We are very close if we
would but realize it.

  "Death hides but it does not divide
  Thou art but on Christ's other side,
  Thou art with Christ and Christ with me
  In Him I still am close to thee."



II

Yes, you say, that is a beautiful thought.  But is that all?  My poor
heart is craving for more communion than that.  Do they know or care
about my love and sorrow to-day?  And are they helping me?  Are they
praying for me to that dear Lord whom we both love--in whose presence
we both stand to-day?  And can I do anything for them on my side in
this "Communion of Saints"?


§ 1

Do they pray for us or help us in any way?  Does any one need to ask
that question?

Since they are with Christ of course they pray.  The world to come is
the very atmosphere of prayer.  St. John in his vision tells of "the
offering of the golden vials full of odours which are the prayers of
the saints" (Rev. v. 8).  And again three chapters later the angel
stood to offer the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar.

Can you imagine your mother who never went to bed here without earnest
prayer for her boy going into that life with full consciousness and
full memory of the dear old home on earth, and never a prayer for her
boy rising to the altar of God?

Why, even the selfish Dives, after death, could not help praying for
his brothers.

Aye, she is praying for you.  I think amongst the most precious prayers
before the golden altar are the mother's prayers for her boy who is
left behind on earth.


§ 2

But, you say, she does not know anything about my life or my needs on
earth.  Even if she did not know she would surely pray for you.  But I
am not so sure that she does not know.  There are several hints in
Scripture to suggest that she does know--hints so strong that if you
are doing anything now that she would like I should advise you to keep
on doing it and if you are doing anything now that you would not wish
her to know, I should advise you to stop doing it.

Our Lord represents Abraham as knowing all about Moses and the prophets
who came one thousand years after his time (St. Luke xvi. 29).

Our Lord distinctly tells the Jews that Abraham in that life knew all
about His mission on earth.  "Your Father Abraham rejoiced to see My
day and he saw it and was glad" (St. John viii. 56).

At the Transfiguration, too, Moses and Elias came out from that waiting
life to speak with Christ of His decease which He should accomplish at
Jerusalem.  Does it not suggest at once that they and their great
comrades within the veil were watching eagerly and knowing all about
the life of Christ and the great crisis of man's redemption towards
which they had been working on earth long years ago.  Can any one
believe that the whole Waiting Church within the veil, living, and
conscious, and thinking, and remembering were absolutely ignorant and
unconcerned about the greatest event that ever came in the history of
their race?

The writer in the Epistle to the Hebrews apparently believed that our
departed ones were watching our course, for after a long list of the
great departed heroes of faith in olden time he writes to encourage us
in the race on earth.  "Seeing that we are encompassed about with so
great a cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight and run with
patience the race that is set before us" (Heb. xii. 1).  The picture
suggested is that of the runners in the amphitheatre on earth and the
galleries of Creation crowded with sympathetic watchers like the "old
boys" of a great English school coming back at the annual school games
to cheer on the lads and remember how they had run themselves long ago
in the very same fields.[1]



III

And the hope which Scripture thus suggests and never contradicts
commends itself to reason and to the deepest instincts in our hearts.

I think of a mother leaving her children and going into a full
conscious life, where, mark you, she can still think and remember and
love.  I see that her love for them was probably the most powerful
influence in ennobling her life here.  And she has gone into a life
where that ennobling is God's chief aim for her.  Since she can
remember them, I feel quite sure that if she had the choice she would
want to watch over them always.

But, somebody says, she might not be quite happy if she knew all that
they had to go through.  Seeing that at any rate she remembers them, do
you think she would be more happy if she knew that they might have to
go through troubles of which she could not learn anything?  Put
yourself in the place of any mother on earth that you know and ask if
it would make her any happier to stop all letters about her children
whom she felt might be in danger or trouble.  Are you quite sure that
in that spirit life a peaceful contentment like that of the cow who
forgets her calf is the highest thing to be desired?  The higher any
soul grows on earth the less can it escape unselfish sorrow for the
sake of others.  Must it not be so in that land also?  Surely the
Highest Himself must have more sorrow than any one else for the sins
and troubles of men.  Have you ever thought of that "eternal pain" of
God?  If there be joy in His presence over one sinner that repenteth
must there not be pain in His presence over one that repenteth not?

There are surely higher things in God's plans for His saints than mere
selfish happiness and content.  There is the blessedness that comes of
sympathy with Him over human sorrow and pain.  We but degrade the
thought of the blessedness of the redeemed when we desire that they
should escape that.

And since in that life she is "with Christ" and able doubtless to win
for her children more than she could ever win on earth, and since she
knows that Christ is more solicitous for them than she is herself and
that she can trust Him utterly to do for them more than she can ask or
think, does it not seem far more probable that she should still know
and care and love and pray and share in the care and sympathy of Christ
for them?

Yes, I think probably she does know about them.  I know certainly she
prays about them.  I myself hope and believe that some of the best
helps in my life have been won for me by those on the other side who
love me and who are so near to their Lord.


§ 2

And it is a strong confirmation of that belief when I find it the
belief of the great bishops and teachers of the early Church in its
purest and most loving days, the days nearest to those of Christ and
His apostles.

St. Cyprian the martyr bishop of Carthage who was born in the century
after St. John's death (A. D. 200) made an agreement with his friend
Cornelius that whichever of them died first should in the Unseen Land
remember in prayer him who was left behind.  "Let us mutually be
mindful of each other....  On both sides let us always pray for each
other, let us relieve our afflictions and distresses by a reciprocity
of love and whichever of us goes hence before the other by the speed of
the Divine favour, let our affection continue before the Lord, let not
prayer for our brothers and sisters cease before the mercy of the
Father" (Ep. lvii. ad Cornel.).  And in the days of the plague at
Carthage, A. D. 252, he comforts his fellow citizens reminding them of
"the large number of dear ones, parents, brothers, children, a goodly
and numerous crowd longing for us and while their own immortality is
assured still longing for our salvation."

Origen, who was a contemporary of Cyprian, says, "All the souls who
have departed this life still retaining their love for those who are in
the world concern themselves for their salvation and aid them by their
prayers and mediation with God.  For it is written in the Book of the
Maccabees, 'This is Jeremiah the prophet who always prays for the
people'" (in Cant. Hom. iii.).  And in another work he says, "It is my
opinion that all those fathers who have fallen asleep before us fight
on our side and aid us by their prayers" (in Jesu Nave Hom. xvi. ch.
19).  And again "They (in that unseen life) understand who are worthy
of Divine approval and are not only well disposed to these themselves,
but coöperate with them in their endeavours to please God, they seek
His favour on their behalf and with their prayers and intercessions
they join their own."  And again, "These (in the Unseen Life) pray for
us and bring help to our perishable race, and if I may so speak, take
up arms alongside of it" (Contra Celsum viii. 64).

St. Gregory Nazianzen is preaching the funeral sermon of St. Basil.
"He still prays for the people," he says, "for he did not so leave us
as to have left us altogether."  And in his funeral sermon over his own
father, "I am satisfied that he accomplishes there now by his prayers
more than he ever did by his teaching just in proportion as he
approaches nearer to God after having shaken off the fetters of his
body."

St. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, in his Catechetical lectures, and St.
Chrysostom in several of his homilies speak of the help we get through
the prayers of departed holy men.

St. Ambrose in his great grief at his brother's death, says: "What
other consolation is left me but this that I hope to come to thee my
brother speedily, that thy departure will not entail a long separation
between us, and that power may be granted me by thy intercessions that
thou mayest summon me who long to join thee more speedily."

St. Jerome, who gave us the Vulgate, the great Revised Bible of the
Western Church, is comforting a mother who has lost a daughter.  "She
entreats the Lord for thee and begs for me the pardon of my sins."
Again to another friend, Heliodorus, he speaks of the life after death.
"There you will be made a fellow burgher with St. Paul.  There also you
will seek for your parents the rights of the same citizenship.  There
too you will pray for me who spurred you on to victory."  Again he
vigorously disputes with Vigilantius who asserts that prayers and
intercessions must cease after death.  "If the apostles and martyrs
while still in the body are able to pray for others ... how much more
may they do so now....  One man, Moses, obtains from God pardon for
600,000 men in arms; and Stephen, the imitator of his Lord, begs
forgiveness for his persecutors; shall their power be less after they
have begun to be with Christ?"[2]


§ 3

But sympathy and prayer must not be on one side only.  It must be
mutual in the Communion of Saints.  They remembering and loving, and
thinking about us.  We remembering and loving, and thinking about them.
They asking from their Lord blessing for us.  We asking from Him
blessing for them.  For surely they are not above wanting His blessings
still--not even the best of them though safe with Him, though forgiven
their sins, they are still imperfect, still needing to grow in grace,
in purification, in fitness for the final heaven by and by.  And we can
help their growth as they can help ours.

Some of the most deeply religious people that I know shrink from the
thought of prayer for the departed.  There has been reason for it.
This beautiful old custom, the custom of the Jews, the custom of the
whole Christian Church till the Reformation[3] had grown at that time
into great corruption.  And one danger of great corruption is that
indignant reformers are likely to tear away more than the corruption,
"hating even the garment spotted by the flesh."  So it was here.
Because of the abuse men feared even the use.  In their hatred of the
sordid traffic in masses for the dead they looked with suspicion on any
prayer for the departed.  And at length men began to think that such
prayers were even wrong.

Ah, it was a pity!  Our departed ones have more quickly passed into
oblivion.  The great Paradise life has almost faded from our view.  We
are the more lonely in our desolate bereavement.  Perhaps our dear ones
beyond are the more lonely, too, if they know about our life and our
prayers on earth.  A friend said to me lately, "I was a little child
when the news came of father's death far away.  That night in my
prayers I prayed for father as usual.  But my aunt stopped me.
'Darling,' she said, 'you must not pray for father now; it is wrong.'
And I can remember still how I shrank back feeling as if some one had
slammed the door and shut him outside."

I think we should be happier and better, I think the Unseen World would
come back more clearly on our horizon if we kept our dear ones in our
prayers as we used to do before they died.  Do not keep any hidden
chambers in your hearts shut out from Christ.  Bring your dear departed
ones to Him as you bring all else to Him.  He knows what is best for
them.  Pray only for that.  Pray "Lord help them to grow closer to
Thee.  Help them if it may be to help others and make them happy in Thy
great Kingdom until we meet again."  Pray something like that.  Oh, how
can you help doing it if you love them and believe in prayer?

  How can I cease to pray for thee?  Somewhere
  In God's wide universe thou art to-day.
  Can He not reach thee with His tender care?
  Can He not hear me when for thee I pray?
  Somewhere thou livest and hast need of Him,
  Somewhere thy soul sees higher heights to climb,
  And somewhere, too, there may be valleys dim
  Which thou must pass to reach the heights sublime.
  Then all the more because thou canst not hear
  Poor human words of blessing will I pray.
  O, true brave heart, God bless thee wheresoe'er
  In God's wide universe thou art to-day!



[1] It is true that the Greek word translated "witnesses" is not the
word meaning "spectators" but rather "witnesses for the faith," but as
most good commentators (including Bishop Westcott) say--it is
impossible to exclude the thought of spectators in an amphitheatre
watching a race.  The Revised Version, too, seems to accept this view
for it prints the word "witnesses" without any marginal remark.

[2] Luckock, _After Death_.

[3] The evidence for this can be seen in full in any standard work on
the subject, e. g., Luckock, _After Death_; or Lee, _Christian Doctrine
of Prayer for the Departed_.




CHAPTER IX

GROWTH AND PURIFICATION

What is the main purpose of the Intermediate Life?  Is there something
to be done there which cannot be fully done at any other time?

Let us still try to keep to the firm ground of Scripture, and to avoid
confusion let us confine ourselves still to the case of those who have
died, in some degree at least, in penitence and faith.


§ 1

We have already seen that Scripture intimates that that life is not one
of sleep or unconsciousness.  It is a clear conscious life.  It is
therefore natural to ask what happens in it?  What is the use of it?
Science and experience teach that growth is the law of all the life
which we know anything about.  Even if we had no further light of
revelation we should find it difficult to believe that imperfect beings
dying in the grace of God pass into that life and live in it for years
or for ages without any growth or development.

Scripture also teaches that God's aim for us is not merely that we
should escape hell or just creep into heaven.  Our goal is to grow into
the likeness of God, to "rise to the stature of the perfect man, even
to the stature of the fullness of Christ."  How many of us are ever
even in sight of that goal when we die?

But Scripture goes further still.  It points us forward to the final
stage of being, to the Beatific Vision of God in the far future and
tells us with awe that that God "is of purer eyes than to behold
iniquity," that "even the heavens are not clean in His sight;" that
into that final abode of bliss "nothing that defileth shall enter in."
Which of us, the greatest soul of us all, can look forward to such a
prospect without bowing himself in dread like Isaiah of old, "Woe is me
for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, that mine eyes should
see the King of the Lord of Hosts!"  If there be no growth or
purification in the Waiting Life what hope is there ever for any one of
us of fitness for the presence of the all holy God?

Think that the great majority of those who die, even though penitent
and striving after right, have much of evil clinging to them; that many
after a whole life of ingraining their characters with evil have
brought sorrowfully to Christ at last their poor defiled souls; that
even the best is not without many faults and stains.  If nothing that
defileth shall enter Heaven, if growth is a law of all life as far as
we know it, are we not practically compelled to believe that much of
the growth and purification needed to fit us for God's presence shall
take place in the great Waiting Life?

And this belief and hope for all these poor faulty souls in whom the
good work of God has begun on earth, St. Paul confirms.  "Being
confident of this very thing, that He who hath begun a good work in you
will perfect it UNTIL THE DAY OF JESUS CHRIST"--_i. e._, right through
the earth life, right through the Intermediate Life, until the last
great scene in the drama of our history opens at the Judgment Day.


§ 2

How this shall take place God has not definitely revealed to us.  But
God has given us reason and common sense to enable us to draw
conclusions from what He has revealed.  Since in that life I am the
same conscious "I," with the same consciously continuous personality,
with the same conscience and memory, I may surely expect that the Holy
Spirit "who hath begun a good work in me and will continue it until the
day of Jesus Christ"--will continue it in much the same natural way as
here, through Conscience and Memory and the Sense of His Presence.
Only that these will be all more keen and effective and free from the
disturbance of the bodily senses and the distractions of this life on
earth.

CONSCIENCE here is the throne of the Holy Ghost, from which He rules
and directs my life.  Therefore my body is "the temple of the Holy
Ghost."  But Conscience here is greatly weakened by fears and hopes and
ambitions and distractions of various kinds.  At times, when I lie
awake at night and think about my life, or when I enter into my closet
to prepare by special concentration of spirit for my Holy Communion, I
get some dim notions of what Conscience might effect in me if it had a
free hand.  In THAT life of close spiritual concentration, when the
outer world is shut off and the soul enters into its own deepest
recesses, contemplating itself, contemplating its past and its future,
contemplating the deep tender love of Him who is there present as in
Palestine long ago, and feeling that in spite of all my shameful
ingratitude He is loving me and blessing me and watching tenderly over
me--surely I may expect great things of the operation of Conscience in
me.

MEMORY in this life is a very wonderful thing.  It can call up in a
moment, for Conscience to work on, pictures of half a century ago.  But
in the fast crowding impressions on the senses Memory is overtaxed and
has to lay away in its storehouse of subconsciousness whole tracts of
the past which never rise up before my conscious thought at all.
Psychological science has much to say in late years about this
storehouse of subconscious memory and the power that, unknown to me, it
is exerting on my life.  It is there all the time, "under the
threshold."  These buried memories are alive, ready to spring up, but
asleep--in abeyance.


§ 3

Now think what this means for Conscience and for Memory as the handmaid
of Conscience in the great contemplative life after Death.  There is no
good or evil thing that I have ever done but Conscience has pronounced
on.  Some of these judgments I remember.  Some of them I forget.  In
the many distractions of life and the desire to escape painful
thoughts, there has dropped down under the threshold of my conscious
thought a vast store of memories of which I am oblivious, but of which
one and another and another springs up at times unexpectedly with a
startling reminder of the great hidden store behind.  I meet by chance
an old friend of my boyhood, and as he talks about the old times,
picture after picture springs up into the light, memories which had
long gone from me and which would never have sprung up from "under the
threshold" but for the chance stimulation of his talk.

We have often heard of drowning people on the verge of death having the
forgotten memories of half a lifetime flashed back in a moment.  An old
friend once told me a curious experience.  "I was crossing a railway
line hurriedly on a wet day.  As I rushed over the rails the Express
came in view.  I slipped and fell--fortunately into a hollow where men
had been working, and swift as a flash the Express swept over me.  The
experience of that half minute I shall never forget.  It seemed that my
whole life was blazoned before me in thirty seconds.  Things that I had
not remembered for forty years past flashed back in a moment as if they
had happened yesterday."

That is what Memory can do even in this life under strong excitation,
calling up its forgotten stores.  Think what its power may be in that
life as a handmaid to Conscience.  With all its old lumber rooms of
forgotten deeds thrown open--with all the forgotten feelings of my
life--boyhood, youth, manhood--open for my contemplation.  My
impatience and God's patience, my sorrows and why God sent them, my
mercies, all the kindly providences of God working unknown to me all my
days.

And my sins--some sins that I hate to think of, some that I had almost
succeeded in forgetting, all standing out clearly before me in the
unsparing light of that mysterious life.

  I sat alone with my Conscience
    In the place where time had ceased.
  We discoursed of my former living
    In the land where the years increased.
  And I felt I should have to answer
    The questions it put to me,
  And to face those questions and answers
    In that dim eternity.

  And the ghosts of forgotten actions
    Came floating before my sight,
  And things that I thought were dead things
    Were alive with a terrible might.
  And the vision of all my past life
    Was an awful thing to face
  Alone, alone with my Conscience,
    In that strange and lonely place.


Aye, my Conscience must do its work some day if I keep it from doing it
now.  But all this will be in the presence of my Saviour.  They are
"with Christ."

Every memory will be more keen and poignant and yet more peaceful and
touching in the presence of that dear loving Lord who I feel knows all
and yet has loved and received and forgiven me in spite of all, and who
is watching over me with deep tenderness like the refiner of silver
over His furnace as the dross is cleared away and I grow steadily in
fitness for the glorious life of unselfish joy and service in Heaven.

But pain!  You do not like any thought of pain in connection with that
life.  Yes surely, more or less, according to one's state, and dying
gradually into perfect peace.  Growth of holiness does not come to
sinful man here or there but through pain, the tender blessed pain of
God's purification, the pain of self-reproach, the pain that thou hast
sinned,

  "The shame of self and pity for thy Lord
  That One so sweet should e'er have placed Himself
  At disadvantage such, as to be used
  So vilely by a being vile as thee."


But what a sweet and wholesome pain, mingled with the sense of safety
and peace and hope--mingled with deep joy and boundless adoring
gratitude and love as we see the stain of the old sins steadily being
effaced and look forward to the sure bliss of Heaven in the future!
Surely by means of such pain and gratitude and adoring love God makes
sinful souls fit for Heaven.




CHAPTER X

PROBATION IN THIS LIFE

Up to this we have been ignoring a large proportion of the inhabitants
of the Unseen Land.  To avoid misunderstanding we have kept in view
those only of whom we had hope that they died in the fear and love of
God.  But there is no evading the thought that between these and the
utterly reprobate, there are multitudes of Christian and heathen in
that Unseen Life today who belong to neither class, mixed characters in
all varying degrees of good or evil.  Of many of them it could be said
that those who knew them best saw much that was good and lovable in
them.  But it could not be said that they had consciously and
definitely chosen for Christ.

They must form the majority of those to-day in the Unseen Land.
Therefore one cannot help wondering about them.  One day death overtook
them.  The thought of them comes forcibly when some morning the
newspapers startle us with the story of a terrible battle or railway
smash or shipwreck or conflagration in which hundreds have passed out
of life in a moment and the horror of the catastrophe is deepened by
the thought that they have been called away suddenly unprepared.

What of their position in the Intermediate Life?  Our Christian charity
prompts us to hope the best for them.  But are we justified in hoping?
It is impossible for thoughtful, sympathetic men to evade that
question.  It is cowardly to evade it.  At any rate a treatise on the
Intermediate Life can hardly pass over altogether the thought of the
majority of its inhabitants and it cannot be wrong for us humbly and
reverently to think about them.


§ 2

I have already pointed out the solemn responsibility of this earth life
in which acts make habits and habits make character and character makes
destiny.  I am about to point out the grave probability, to say the
least of it, that in a very real sense this life may be the sole
probation time for man.  But this does not shut out the question of the
poor bereaved mother by the side of her dead son.  "If any soul has not
in penitence and faith definitely accepted Jesus Christ in this life is
it forever impossible that he may do so in any other life?"

I answer unhesitatingly, God forbid!  Else what of all the dead
children down through the ages and all the dead idiots and all the
millions of dead heathen and all the poor stragglers in Christian lands
who in their dreary, dingy lives had never any fair chance of knowing
their Lord in a way that would lead them to love Him, and who have
never even thought about accepting or rejecting Him?  "Shall not the
Judge of all the earth do right?"  Shall not the loving Father do His
best for all?  Our Lord knew "that if the mighty works done in
Capernaum had been done in Tyre and Sidon they would have repented."
Does He not there suggest that He would take thought for those men of
Tyre and Sidon in the Unseen Land?  Does He not know the same of many
gone unto that Unseen from heathen lands and Christian lands, who would
have loved Him if they knew Him as He really is and who have but begun
to know Him truly in the world of the dead--of many who in their
ignorance have tried to respond to the dim light of Conscience within
and only learned within the veil really to know Him the Lord of the
Conscience, "the light which lighteth every man coming into the world"
(St. John i. 9).

Here is no question of encouraging careless, godless men with the hope
of a new probation.  Here is no question of men wilfully rejecting
Christ.  The merry, thoughtless child--the imbecile--the heathen--had
no thought of rejecting Christ.  The poor struggler in Christian lands,
brought up in evil surroundings, who though he had heard of Christ yet
saw no trace of Christ's love in his dreary life--he cannot be said to
have rejected Christ.  The honest sceptic who in the last generation
had been taught as a prominent truth of Christianity that God decrees
certain men to eternal Heaven and certain men to eternal Hell not for
any good or evil they had done but to show His power and glory, and who
has therefore in obedience to conscience frankly rejected
Christianity--can he be said to have rejected Christ?

The possibility in this life of putting oneself outside the pale of
salvation is quite awful enough without our making it worse.  It is not
for us to judge who is outside the pale of salvation nor to limit the
love of God by our little shibboleths.  It is on a man's WILL, not on
his knowledge or ignorance that destiny depends.  God only can judge
that.  All the subtle influences which go to make character are known
to Him alone.  He alone can weigh the responsibility of the will in any
particular case.  And surely we know Him well enough humbly to trust
His love to the uttermost for every poor soul whom He has created.



II

But this hope must not ignore the solemn thought that in a very real
sense the probation of this life seems the determining factor in human
destiny--even for the unthinking--even for the ignorant--nay even for
the heathen who could never have heard of Christ here.  Rightly
understood all that we have said does not conflict with this.  It may
seem strange at first sight to think of the heathen as having any real
probation here.  Yet, mark it well, it is of this heathen man who could
not consciously have accepted Christ in this life that St. Paul implies
that his attitude in the Unseen Life towards Him who is the Light of
the World is determined by his attitude in this life towards the
imperfect light of Conscience that he has.  "If the Gentiles who have
not the Law do by nature the things contained in the Law, these having
not the Law are a law unto themselves, which show the works of the Law
written in their hearts, their Conscience bearing witness" (Rom. ii.
14).

We may assume that St. Paul means that the heathen man who in this life
followed the dim light of his conscience is the man who will rejoice in
the full light when it comes and that the man who has been wilfully
shutting out that dim light of conscience here is thereby rendering
himself less capable of accepting the fuller light when he meets it
hereafter.  In other words this life is his probation, he is forming on
earth the moral bent of his future life.

We may assume the same of men in similar conditions in Christian lands,
men brought up amid ignorance and crime, men brought up in infidel
homes, men to whom Christ has been so unattractively presented that
they saw no beauty in Him or even instinctively turned away from Him
impelled by their conscience.  They all have the light of God in some
degree and by their attitude towards the right that they know are
determining on earth their attitude towards God in the Hereafter.  They
are forming character and _character tends to permanence_.

The "outer darkness" it would seem comes not from absence of light but
from blindness of sight.  The joy of Heaven is impossible to the unholy
just as the joy of beautiful scenery to the blind or the joy of
exquisite music to the deaf.  Probation in this life--simply means that
in this first stage of his being a man either is or is not blinding his
eyes and dulling his ears and hardening his heart so as to make himself
incapable of higher things in the life to come.

If then it be possible even for a heathen to have in this life
sufficient probation to determine his attitude towards God for ever,
how much more for a man in the full light of Christianity.  In view of
this the great law of life that CHARACTER TENDS TO PERMANENCE may it
not be awfully true that a man who with full knowledge of Christ
wilfully and deliberately turns from Him all through this life, should
thus render himself incapable of turning to Him in any other life?
With _full knowledge of Christ_ I say, not with knowledge of some
repulsive misrepresentation of Christ.

For think what it means to reject Christ wilfully with full knowledge
of Him.

  His voice still comes as we tramp on,
  With a sorrowful fall in its pleading tone:
  "Thou wilt tire in the dreary ways of sin;
  I left My home to bring thee in.
    In its golden street are no weary feet,
    Its rest is pleasant, its songs are sweet."
  And we shout back angrily hurrying on
  To a terrible home where rest is none:
  "We want not your city's golden street,
  Nor to hear its constant song!"
  _And still Christ keeps on loving us, loving all along_.

  Rejected still He pursues each one:
  "My child, what more could thy God have done?
  Thy sin hid the light of heaven from Me,
  When alone in the darkness I died for thee.
  Thy sin of to-day in its shadow lay
  Between My face and One turned away."
    And we stop and turn for a moment's space
    To fling back that love in the Saviour's face,
  To give His heart yet another grief,
  And glory in the wrong.
  _And still Christ keeps on loving us, loving all along_.


Is it hard to believe that a man thus knowing Christ and wilfully
rejecting Him should thereby risk the ruin of his soul?  Can we not
recognize this awful law of life that wilful sin against light tends to
darkening of the light--that every rejection of God and good draws
blood as it were on the spiritual retina, that a life of such
rejections of the light tends to make one incapable of receiving the
light for ever.

If this be so it is not at all fair to misrepresent it by saying that
God cruelly stereotypes a man's soul at death and will refuse him
permission to repent after death however much he may want to.  The
voice of the Holy Ghost within tells us that this could never be true
of the Father.  We must believe that through all Eternity, if the worst
sinner felt touched by the love of God and wanted to turn to Him, that
man would be saved.  What we dread is that the man may not want to do
so, may have rendered himself incapable of doing so.  We dread not
God's will, but the man's own will.

Character tends to permanence.  Free will is a glorious but a dangerous
prerogative.  All experience leads towards the belief that a human will
may so distort itself as to grow incapable of good.  Even a character
not hardened into permanent evil may grow incapable of the highest
good.  A soul even forgiven through the mercy of God may "enter into
life halt and maimed" like a consumptive patient cured of his disease
but going through life with only one lung.


Though the Bible does not give an absolutely definite pronouncement on
this question, yet the general trend of its teaching leads to the
belief that this life is our probation time.  It everywhere calls for
immediate repentance.  And St. Paul says that the Judgment is for deeds
"done _in the body_," and there are such hints as "the door was shut"
and "there is a sin unto death," and "it were better for a man not to
have known the way of righteousness than after he has known it to turn
from it."[1]  And this has been the general belief of the Church in all
ages.  Even in all the hopeful words of the ancient Fathers about
Christ preaching to the spirits in prison who in the dark old world
days "had sometime been disobedient," we have seen that they add some
such significant phrase as "that He might convert those _who were
capable_ of turning to Him."  (See Chapter IV, p. 60.)  And human
experience of character tending to permanence makes this fact of human
probation awfully probable.  There is nothing in Scripture nor in its
interpretation by the Church, nor in human experience, to conflict with
the statement that in this life Acts make habits and Habits make
Character and character makes Destiny.

What new discoveries of God's power and mercy may await us in eternity
we cannot know, but from all we do know we are justified in thinking
that (in the sense which I have stated) a man's life in this world
determines his destiny--at any rate that a man who presumes recklessly
on chances in the future is taking terrible risks.  The Bible gives no
encouragement to hope that one who with full knowledge of Christ keeps
on wilfully rejecting Him all through this life will be able to turn to
Him in any other life.

The only comfort we dare offer to anxious mourners grieving over sinful
friends departed is that God only is the judge of what constitutes
irrevocable rejection of good, that we cannot tell who has irrevocably
"done despite to the Spirit of grace," and that the deep love and pain
of Christ for sinful men remains for ever and ever.  We may tell the
poor mother that her deep love and pain for her dead son is but a faint
shadow of the deep love and pain of God--that no one will be surprised
or trapped in his ignorance--that no one will be lost whom it is
possible for God to save--that no one will be lost until "the Heavenly
Father has as it were thrown His arms around him and looked him full in
the face with the bright eyes of His love, and that of his own
deliberate will he would not have Him" (Faber).

We dare not minimize what the love and pain of God may do, but we dare
not presume in the face of Scripture to lighten the awful
responsibility which this life brings.

Thus we reach larger thoughts of God's dealings with man and deeper
interest in the infinite variety that must be in the "many mansions" of
the boundless life hereafter.  And this sets us wondering about another
thought as to ministry in that life.



[1] I have not quoted such texts as "Where the tree falleth there it
shall lie," which no sensible student now uses in this connection, nor
even the well-known text, "Behold now is the acceptable time, behold
now is the day of salvation," for the "acceptable time" and "the day of
salvation" mean here not the present life of each man but the present
Christian dispensation.  St. Paul is quoting Isaiah's prophecy of
Christ of the acceptable time and the day of salvation, and he says
this time has come now in this Christian dispensation.




CHAPTER XI

MINISTRY IN THE UNSEEN LIFE

§ 1

Is it allowable here to make a venture of faith and speculate on a
matter of which we cannot give definite proof?  There is a beautiful
old allegory of KNOWLEDGE, the strong mailed knight, tramping over the
great table-land that he surveyed, and testing and making his ground
sure at every step, while beside him, just above the ground, moved the
white-winged angel FAITH.

Side by side they moved, till the path broke short off on the verge of
a vast precipice.  Knowledge could go no further.  There was no footing
for the ponderous knight; but the white-winged angel rose majestically
from the ground and moved across the chasm, where her companion could
not follow.

Our path has broken off--knowledge can go no further.  May we speculate
with faith on something we cannot prove?  I am thinking of a
speculation very dear to myself, about that progress of our dear ones
in the presence of Christ.  Will not much of that progress in the life
beyond come through unselfish ministry to others?  Let us see what
reason there is to hope it.

Think of all the true hearts who have lived on earth the Christ life of
unselfish helpfulness.  Can you imagine them never helping any one
there, where growth in love is God's highest aim for them?

Think of our Lord's mysterious preaching in the Life after Death and
remember that some of the best known teachers of the early Church
believed that the apostles and others had followed His example.  (See
Chapter IV, p. 59.)

Think that there are countless millions in the World of the Departed
born in heathen lands, born in Christian lands, who had no chance on
earth of knowing Christ in a way to win their love for Him.

Think, how shall His command be fulfilled by His Church, "Go preach the
good news to every creature"--EVERY creature.  What a mockery it seems
with the heathen dying half a million every week if no work for Christ
goes on in the Unseen!  If millions of those Hindoos who have died
without the Gospel would have accepted it, do you think it is not being
taught to any of them now?  If the men of ancient Tyre and Sidon would
have repented at the teaching and work of Christ, if the mighty works
had been done in them, do you not think He has taken care since that
the men of Tyre and Sidon should have their chance?  If the heathen
Socrates, and Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus would have
fallen at His feet as their Master and Friend--and you know they
would--do you think they have not learned to know Him by now?  If
honest hearts in our own land who have died repelled from Him through
their ignorance and through stupid misrepresentations would have loved
Him if they knew Him as He really is, do you think that no one is
helping them to understand Him now?  Can we doubt that somehow within
the Veil they will learn more fully of His tender love?  And judging
from what we know of God's methods on earth, is it unreasonable to
think that they will learn it from their brethren?  True, God might
help them by means of the angels.  But in God's dealings with men's
souls on earth not angels but men were the helpers He gave them.  Even
in the stupendous miracle of the conversion of St. Paul it was a man
(Ananias) whom God sent to help him.


§ 2

Here comes an interesting question about the doctrine of Election.  To
the generation before us it was a horrible doctrine clashing with all
sense of fairness or right.  Men said it meant that God decreed certain
men to eternal Heaven and certain others to eternal Hell by His own
arbitrary will.  The stern revolt of Conscience at length sent us back
to study our Bibles more carefully.  We found that in the first
recorded case of election Abraham was called _for the good of others_
"that in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be
blessed."

We saw reason to believe that Abraham's case was a type of all other
elect--_elect for the service of others_.  We found that the Bible
consistently and throughout affirms that when "God calls or separates
one man to Himself it is for the good of other men; that when He
selects one family it is that all families should be blessed; that when
He chooses one nation it is for the welfare of all nations; that when
He elects and establishes a church it is for the spiritual benefit of
the world.  No man, no family, no nation, no church possesses any gift
or privilege or superior capacity or power for its own use and welfare
alone but for the general good."  So we learned that God's word is true
in spite of our stupid misunderstanding of it and that this doctrine of
Election rightly understood is one of the noblest things in the whole
Bible.

Now comes my question.  Are God's elect in the Hereafter life still
"_elect for the service of others_"?  Are those loving souls who are
joyfully accepting Christ's service here,--destined for a still more
glorious service in this ministry in the Unseen--the "first-fruits" of
a great harvest which through them the Lord will reap in the Hereafter?
Will some be just saved, saved so as by fire, saved "by the skin of
their teeth," as we say, missing the noble destiny of the "elect," the
joy of being a blessing to their race?


§ 3

"You have preached your last sermon," said one to Frederick Denison
Maurice as he was dying.  "Aye," he said; "but only my last sermon in
THIS life."  He believed he was going through the veil to preach to
men.  I believe it too, though I cannot prove it, nay, even though
there be difficulties in the way of believing it.  And many men greater
than we are believing it, impelled by the stirring of Divine impulses
within.

Do not think of it as merely a work for preachers and teachers.  Every
brave boy here who is trying to do right, every poor woman who is
learning to love, every one who is blessing the world by kindly
unselfishness, is helping on the Kingdom of God on earth and will be
helping on the Kingdom of God beyond.

Surely there will be scope for them all.  When you think of that great
mingled crowd that is daily passing through the gates of death, all
sorts and conditions--from the strong saints of God to the poor
children brought up in homes of sin--you need have little doubt that
there is room for service.

If it be true, ah! think of it, you who are trying to forget
yourselves, and live for others--think of the blessedness of your life
in the waiting land.  With the weak and the ignorant needing to be
helped; with the little children needing to be mothered and loved; with
the great heathen world, who have gone within the veil, never yet
having heard of Christ.


§ 4

If it be true, think how it takes away the reproach of "glorified
selfishness," which many attribute to the Christians' glad hope.

Think how it helps in the perplexities about God's dealings when young
and useful lives are taken from the earth.  An angry mourner said to me
recently, "I don't believe God has anything to do with it, else why
should He take away a noble life like that and leave all these stupid
useless people in the world?"  I told him of my hope of this ministry
in the Unseen and suggested that perhaps God did not want ONLY the
stupid useless people.

And think especially how it deepens the importance of our life on earth
to feel that it has a bearing on our usefulness for ever.  The more we
increase our talents here, the more we shall be able to help our
Saviour there.  He Himself suggests this in the parables of the Talents
and the Pounds.  "Thy pound has gained five, I will set thee over five
cities.  Thy pound has gained ten, I will set thee over ten cities.  I
will give thee a larger and nobler work hereafter."  Is not that an
incentive to stir one's blood?  The more I grow in love, in
unselfishness, in knowledge of God, in righteousness of life, the more
use I shall be to my dear Lord and to my brethren for ever.




CHAPTER XII

CONCLUSION

So we close our thoughts about the NEAR HEREAFTER, the life immediately
after death.  The FAR Hereafter--the great mystery of Judgment and Hell
and Heaven belongs to a later section.  Here we have been dealing only
with the life going on to-day in the Unseen--side by side with our
present life.

Ah! that wonderful Paradise land--that wonderful Church of God in the
Unseen--with its vast numbers, with its enthusiastic love, with all its
grand leaders who have been trained on earth.  WE AND THEY together
form the great continuous Church of God.  We are all ONE LONG
PROCESSION; they at the head in the Unseen.  What a life it is!  What a
work it has!

Said I not well it was a Gospel of the Hereafter, a good news of God!
It will make you solemn as you feel that character passes on unchanged.
That is good; but it will do more.  It will take away the sting and the
horror of death.  It is not the pain of dying that makes that horror
when I come to die.  After all, men bear far more pain without
flinching.  It is not merely the parting for the present with those I
love.  We have constantly to do that when they go to other lands
without breaking our hearts about it.  It is not even any doubt about a
future Resurrection at the Second Advent.  I may believe that, and yet
get little comfort from it.  That Advent seems so far away.  It may be
next week; but it may be 5,000 years hence, and meantime what of my
life?  Sleep, unconsciousness, darkness?  What?  No wonder I should
shrink from that mysterious unknown.

But teach me the ancient Scriptural doctrine of the PARADISE life as it
appears in the Bible.  Teach me that in the hour after death I shall
pass into the Unseen with myself, with my full life, my feelings, my
character, my individuality, and in that solemn hour death will lose
its horror.  Is not that a Gospel?

In the awful days of bereavement it will bring God's peace, and it will
bring elevation of character.  "Where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also."

  "He is not dead, the child of your affection,
    But gone into that school
  Where he no longer needs your poor protection,
    And Christ Himself doth rule."


You think of your boy as serving at one side of the veil, and you at
the other; each in the presence of Christ.  You think how he is being
lovingly trained and disciplined.  How all his abilities are being used
in self-sacrificing deeds for others.  Not in a glorified selfishness
in thanking God that he is safe, though his brethren be lost.  Ah, no!
but in perfect self-sacrifice, even as his Lord.  You think of him as
learning to fight for righteousness--to help the weak, aye, mayhap, to
go out--God's brave young knight--out into the darkness after some one
who has missed of Christ on earth.  Realize that and your whole life
must perforce grow nobler.  And realize that you will not have to wait
for the Resurrection or the Advent to meet him and learn all.

When your death comes, he will be waiting for you.  He has been praying
and watching over you.  He will tell you of all that has been
happening.  And together in Christ's loving presence, side by side, you
will work and wait, and help your brethren; and look forward to the
glory of the heaven that is still in the future.  Is not that a Gospel
worth the preaching--a Gospel to stir our souls and to comfort our
hearts for those "whom we have loved long since and lost a while"?

Thank God for the blessed doctrine of the Paradise life!

Thank God for all His poor penitent servants departed this life in His
faith and fear!




PART II

The Far Hereafter



I

THE JUDGMENT

We touch lightly on the subject of the FAR Hereafter which is still
away in the future for all humanity.  One day the Intermediate Life
will close.  The end of this age will come at the Second Advent.  And
at this crisis our Lord places the great drama of the Judgment and the
final decision of each man's destiny.  Whether it will be a great
spectacular event such as His picture suggests, with all humanity
assembled and the Judge on the great White Throne, or whether His
picture is figurative, we cannot affirm.  We can only gather that it
will be a final judgment and that it will be a judgment according to
finally developed character, when men shall be clearly seen to belong
to the right hand or the left, the sheep or the goats, to the wheat or
the tares, to the good fish to be gathered up or the bad fish to be
thrown away.

Then come the final stages in the history of humanity, Hell and Heaven.




II

HELL

Here we touch the awful part of our study.  In Christ's great drama of
the Judgment those on the left hand are passing out into the darkness,
and we see them no more.  In that darkness there seems no ray of hope.
So far as we can learn, it means irrevocable ruin and loss.  In spite
of God's love and pain for them on Earth and in Hades, they seem at
last to have destroyed in themselves everything of good, and so placed
themselves beyond possibility of restoration for ever.  The judgment
has clearly the ring of finality.  There seems nothing more to be said.
And so, with pain in our hearts responding to the pain of the Father,
we are forced to leave them in the darkness and mystery in which
Scripture enshrouds them.

This is, I think, all that can justifiably be said.  The reticence and
reserve of Scripture forbids any definite doctrine of Hell.

And this is all that would have needed to be said if men had kept to
that reticence and reserve of Scripture, and to all further
questionings contented themselves with the answer that the Judge of all
the earth will do right.  But they have not so contented themselves.
It is hard to blame them.  For beyond the main facts about the doom of
the impenitent there are here and there through the Bible many
tantalizing hints perplexing and difficult to reconcile with each
other, but very tempting to follow out.  By emphasizing certain of
these and ignoring or dwelling more lightly on certain others which
seem to contradict them, men have formulated definite doctrines about
Hell, differing widely from each other but each with apparently strong
Scriptural support.  This is only what may happen in any department of
study.  The strict rule of evidence in any enquiry is that _all_ the
facts must be studied and that no theory shall be accepted as entirely
trustworthy while any of the evidence remains unaccounted for.


There are three theories which hold the ground to-day, each of them
seemingly with much evidence in its favour, but each of them seriously
unsatisfactory as conflicting with other evidence.

(1) The theory of Everlasting Torment--that every soul which has missed
of Christ shall be plunged into a Hell of torment and sin for ever and
ever, growing worse and worse and lower and lower through all the ages
of Eternity.

(2) The theory of Universalism--that in the ages of the far future
through the stern loving discipline of God all men shall at length be
saved.

(3) The theory of Conditional Immortality--that all souls who fail of
Eternal Life shall be punished not by Everlasting Torment, but by
annihilation and the loss of God and Heaven for ever.


At first sight it seems almost impossible that such conflicting
theories could be formed out of the same Bible.  But a little
consideration of the evidence and of the power of prejudice and
preconceptions in estimating evidence makes it easier to understand.

The main trend of all Scripture teaching is that it shall be well,
gloriously well, with the good, and that it shall be evil, unutterably
evil, with the wicked.  That there is a mysterious and awful malignity
attaching to sin--that to be in sin means to be in misery and ruin in
this life or any other life--and that sin persisted in tends to utter
and irretrievable ruin.  No arguments about the love and power of God
to save to the uttermost can cancel the fact of the free-will of man or
the plain statements of Scripture confirmed beyond question by the
loving Lord Himself as to the awful fate of the finally impenitent.

But running through all this dark background of Scripture is a curious
golden thread of prophecy that evil shall not be eternal in God's
universe.  One turns to it perplexed with wondering hope.  For however
fully Conscience recognizes the righteousness of a terrible retribution
for sin, there is in all thoughtful minds a shrinking from the thought
that Evil shall be as permanent as Good in the universe of the All-holy
God--that any evil power can exist unendingly side by side with Him and
unendingly resist Him; that Hell and Heaven, Satan and God shall
co-exist for all eternity.  This is almost unthinkable to thoughtful
men.  It is a Dualism repugnant to all our ideals of God.  And this
golden thread, running through the Old and New Testaments alike,
confirms this thought, in its dim vision of a golden age somewhere away
in the far future--away it would seem beyond the dark vision of
Hell--when evil shall have vanished out of the Universe for ever and
"God shall be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 28)--when there shall come "the
times of the Restoration of all things which God hath promised by the
mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began" (Acts iii.  21).


Naturally there is danger of people emphasizing strongly either one of
these trends of Scripture and gathering certain proof texts according
to their own prejudices and preconceptions of what ought to be.  "The
way in which some people read their Bibles," says Mr. Ruskin, "is like
the way in which the old monks thought that hedgehogs ate grapes.  They
rolled themselves over the grapes as they lay on the ground and
whatever first stuck to their spikes they carried off and ate."  If the
grapes are of various kinds as are the passages of Scripture we cannot
judge thus of the taste of the vintage.  To get the true taste of the
grapes we must press them in cluster.  To get the true meaning of
Scripture we must study the whole trend of Scripture.  Before we can
accept any doctrine from separate passages of Scripture we must assure
ourselves that it is in harmony, not only with other passages but also
with the ruling thoughts which run through all Scripture, God's
unutterable holiness, God's awful hatred of sin and stern denunciations
of doom against the impenitent, God's love, God's unchangeableness,
God's reasonableness and fairness, and the mysterious golden thread of
hope which runs through all.

Now we glance as briefly as possible at the three theories referred to.



I

_The theory of Everlasting Torment and Everlasting Sin_.

This theory keeps with Scripture in asserting the fatal and irrevocable
result of unrepented sin--but it goes beyond the reserve of Scripture
in defining that result and so defining it as to impugn the character
of God.  It teaches that all who are condemned in the Judgment are
doomed to a life of endless torment, in the company of devils--forsaken
of God.  Millions of millions of ages shall see this punishment no whit
nearer to its end.  It must go on for ever and ever and ever.

It takes perhaps a child's or a woman's heart to realize the horror of
that thought.  I remember as a child reading a Sunday-school book that
helped me to realize the meaning of this "for ever and ever in hell."
I was to imagine a huge forest, and a tiny insect coming from the
farthest planet and biting an atom out of one of the leaves, and
carrying it away to his home, the journey taking one thousand years.
Then I was to imagine the ages that must elapse before that whole leaf
was carried off.  Then the stupendous time before the whole tree would
be gone.  Then, as my brain reeled at the thought, I was to look
forward to the carrying away of the whole forest, and from that to the
carrying away of the whole world.  Then came the awful sentence in
italics, _Even then eternity would but have begun_.  I suppose God will
forgive the people who wrote that book for children if they repent, but
I don't feel much like forgiving them.  I can remember still lying
awake in the night and crying as I thought of the lost souls in Hell as
my poor little brain reeled at the thought of the journeys of that
wretched insect and of those whom God kept alive to suffer for ever and
ever and ever.

Then as one grew older came the further horror that these "lost" are
kept alive not only to suffer but to sin everlastingly.  They are to go
on increasing in sin for ever and ever and ever in the universe of the
All-holy God.  One tests this by the ruling thoughts of Scripture.  One
thinks of God's holiness.  One thinks of the golden thread of hope.
One wonders what it means that Christ came to "destroy the works of the
devil"[1] and to destroy the devil (bruise the serpent's head[2]) and
how one day "God shall be all in all" if straight opposite for all
eternity shall be Satan's Kingdom of misery and sin.  Surely Christ has
not failed!  And yet--and yet--what shall we say?  And what shall we
say of God's fatherhood?  Shall we say as some do that as Judge He must
do cruel things which as Father He would shrink from?  God forbid!  The
Judge and the Father are one.  Men would never use such sophistry about
the character of God if it were put into plain words.  "Ye must ken,"
said a godly old Scotchman, "that the Almighty may often have to do in
His offeeshial capacity what He would scorn to do as a private
individual!"  I quote this not with flippancy but with stern
indignation.  That is baldly what such sophistry means.

Clearly one who insists on this doctrine ought at least to be
absolutely certain that Scripture leaves him no escape from it.  Now
the conclusion which a thorough study of the question leads to is
this;--that Scripture nowhere definitely affirms that the sufferings of
the lost _shall not be_ everlasting, and nowhere definitely affirms
that they _shall be_ everlasting.

Even that if it be true is some relief.  We should no longer be forced
to believe of God what Conscience declares to be unworthy of Him.  But
is it true?  I can already see the Bible turned over for the dark array
of texts beginning with "He that believeth not shall be damned," "How
can ye escape the damnation of Hell?"  "These shall go away into
everlasting punishment," etc.

Let me explain.

If we examine the Bible carefully we shall find that, while there are a
great many clear proofs of the certainty and awfulness of Hell, the
proofs of this theory of Everlasting Torment are not much to be
depended on.  Practically they can all be gathered into three groups.

In the first the chief word is DAMN or DAMNATION.

In the second the chief word is HELL.

In the third the chief word is EVERLASTING.

It is not too much to say that if these three sets of passages were
removed from the Bible nobody would think of believing in everlasting
torment.  Now let me make the assertion straight out--There is no word
in the original language of the Bible that at all justifies the use of
either of these words in the meaning that we have attached to it--and
therefore the Revised Version of the Bible has practically swept them
all away.


§ 1

Take first the words Damn, Damnation which convey to us the idea of
doom to a Hell of never-ending torment and never-ending sin.  The
original word conveyed no such idea to our Lord or the Apostles.  It
conveyed no such idea to the translators of the Authorized Version.
When they translated it Damn and Damnation they did not at all mean
what we now mean.

There are two Greek words, _krinô_ which means simply _to judge_, and
_kata-krinô_ which means to _judge adversely_, to _condemn_, and it is
sometimes the first and sometimes the second of these words which is
translated "Damn."  Why is it so translated?  Surely the translators
did not think so evil of God as to believe that He could never judge a
man without condemning him and that He could never condemn him except
to everlasting torment.  Not at all.  They had no thought of this.  The
English word "damn" at that time had no such awful meaning as has grown
into it in our day through the wide-spread influence of the theory
which I am criticizing.  It simply meant what the Greek word meant.  I
find an interesting illustration of this in the Wycliffe Bible in the
passage about the woman taken in adultery.  Jesus saith, "Woman, hath
no man damned thee?"  "No man, Lord."  "Neither do I damn thee."  That
is to say the English word Damn at that time only meant "_condemn_."
But words are dangerous things if not carefully watched, owing to their
tendency to change their meaning as a language grows.  A new, darker
meaning has grown on to the English word since.  Once an innocent word,
it has now become dangerous and misleading.  Therefore, the Revisers
have swept it away, and _the words damn and damnation have now vanished
entirely and for ever out of the pages of the English Bible_.
Unfortunately the public do not read the Revised Version.


With this explanation I ask the reader to turn back to his Bible.  In
our sense of the word did our Lord say, "He that believeth not shall be
damned"?  Most certainly not.  He said that he should be _condemned_
for wilfully disbelieving, but He did not say to what he should be
condemned, nor for how long.  I should condemn you for doing a selfish
act, but that would hardly mean sending you to endless torment.  Did He
say that those who had done evil should rise to the resurrection of
damnation?  (1 John v. 29).  No.  He said, "to the resurrection of
judgment."  (See R. V.)  Did St. Paul say, "He that doubteth (about
eating certain meats) is damned if he eat"?  (Rom. xiv. 23).  Did he
say that a church widow should have damnation for marrying again?  (1
Tim. v. 12).  Of course not; the word only means judgment or
condemnation.  There is no thought at all in it of this endless Hell as
the Revised Version has plainly shown.  So we see that at any rate all
these texts about "damnation" can no longer be used in proof of
everlasting torment and everlasting sin.


§ 2

Something similar is true about the texts whose chief word is "Hell."
The word "hell" occurs eighteen times in the Authorized Version.  Once
it is a translation of a Greek word Tartarus (2 Peter ii. 4) cast down
to Hell to be reserved "_unto the Day of Judgment_."  That certainly
was not everlasting.  Five times it is a translation of the word Hades
whose meaning we already know, and which certainly did not mean
everlasting.  The other twelve times it is a translation of the word
Gehenna used by our Lord, and no scholar with the least regard for his
reputation would dream of stating that our Lord certainly meant it to
convey the idea of endlessness.  It was the name of a horrible valley
outside Jerusalem where things were cast out to be burnt, to keep the
city pure.  The Jewish prophets took the word as a metaphor to express
the fate of wicked men.  From it they drew their images used by our
Lord of "the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched"
(Mark x. 46).  To be in danger of Gehenna was to be in danger of a
hereafter doom suggested by this dread place.

Our Lord simply took up the vague Jewish word and did not define it.
What exactly had He in His mind when He used this word?  This is a
question of terrible importance.  He certainly meant something very
stern and awful.  He seems to indicate also something final and
irrevocable.  But there is absolutely no reason to believe that He
meant to convey the idea in our minds of a vast prison, in which the
souls of the lost are pierced through with agony for ever and ever.
You ask, How can I know what He meant?  How could I know what
Shakespeare meant by a certain word?  I should read up all the books
and letters of Shakespeare's times in which the word occurs, and
whatever it commonly meant to the people of Shakespeare's time I should
accept as being what Shakespeare meant.  That looks sensible, does it
not?  Well, a very interesting investigation has been made by various
scholars.  They have examined all the existing Jewish writings where
the word Gehenna was used from 300 B. C. to 300 A. D.  Then they have
examined the Jewish Talmuds which run on to the fourth and fifth
century.  A modern English scholar, Dr. Dewes, says (_Plea for a New
Translation_, p. 23): "Every passage has been carefully examined which
is quoted in the works of Lightfoot, Schoetgen, Buxtorf, Castell,
Schindler, Glass, Bartoloccius, Ugalino and Nork, and the result of the
whole examination is this: _there are only two passages which even a
superficial reader could consider to be corroborative of the assertion
that the Jews understood Gehenna to be a place of everlasting torment_."

I give a few specimens from the Talmuds.  "Gehenna is ordained of old
because of sins." "The ungodly will be judged in Gehenna _against the
day of judgment_."  "The ungodly shall be judged in Gehenna _until the
righteous shall say of them, We have seen enough_."  "The judgment of
the ungodly is for twelve months." "Gehenna is nothing but a day in
which the impious will be burned."  "The sinners ... shall descend into
Gehenna; at the end of twelve months the body shall be consumed and the
soul burned up and the wind shall scatter it under the feet of the
just."

The reader sees, of course, that the vague Jewish opinions have no
authority for us except to help us to get at the meaning of our Lord
when speaking to Jews about Gehenna.  We may assume that He used their
familiar word in the sense in which they would naturally understand it.
They certainly would understand Him to proclaim some terrible doom,
probably also an irrevocable doom.  But can any one affirm that they
must have understood Him to mean endless torment, in the face of this
evidence--and its powerful confirmation by the greatest of all modern
Jewish students of the Talmud, Emanuel Deutsch.  "There is no
everlasting damnation in the Talmud" (_Remains_, p. 53), and again,
"There is not a word in the Talmud which supports the damnable dogma of
endless torment" (Conversation with Mr. Cox, _Salvator Mundi_, p. 72).

The American Revised Version has very wisely removed the word Hell
altogether on account of the misleading associations connected with it.
It substitutes the word Gehenna, leaving the reader to ascertain its
meaning.  The English Revisers have retained the word Hell and put the
word Gehenna beside it in the margin.  I think this was a pity, as it
will be hard for the ordinary reader to dissociate the word Hell from
the theory which has unwarrantably grown on to it.  But at any rate I
think we may safely say that no reader who understands the position
will ever again use the texts in which our Lord speaks of Hell to prove
the absolute certainty of the theory of Endless Torment and Endless
Sin.  So vanishes another group of the proof texts for this theory.


§ 3

Now take the group of texts with the word "everlasting."  It is surely
significant that the Revisers have completely removed this word also in
every case and substituted for it the word "eternal," a less definite
word and which in scholarly usage means rather the opposite of
temporal--that which is above the sphere of time and space--that which
belongs to the other world.  At any rate the fact that they have
removed it in every case shows that the word "everlasting" did not seem
to them a correct translation.

There is only space for a brief explanation.  The original word is the
adjective _aiônos_ (aionios) (Eng. aeonian), coming from the noun
_aiôn_ (aion) (Eng. aeon), an age, an epoch, a long period of time.
This noun cannot mean eternity for it is repeatedly used by St. Paul in
the plural "aeons" and "aeons of aeons."  As we speak of great periods
of time, "the Ice Age," "the Stone Age," etc., so the Bible speaks of
"this age" (aeon), "the coming age" (aeon), and "the end of the age,"
etc.  These aeons or ages are thought of in Scripture as vast periods
past, present and future in which the Divine purpose is working itself
out, _e. g._, God's purpose is the purpose of the ages (aeons) (Eph.
iii. 11).  Christ's name is above every name not only in this age
(aeon) but in that which is to come (Eph. i. 21).  "That in the ages
(aeons) to come He might shew," etc.

From this noun, then, conies the adjective _aiônios_ (aionios)--aeonian
which may be defined "age long" or "belonging to the ages," etc.  Any
Greek scholar will assert unhesitatingly that of itself it does not
mean endless or everlasting.  Sometimes, as when applied to God, it may
be thus translated but only because the meaning is inherent in the noun
to which it is applied.  The word _aiônios_ of itself would not
positively prove the endlessness of God.  This adjective when applied
to any thing or any state of being cannot of itself be used to prove
its endlessness.

It is worth notice too that in the Septuagint Greek Bible, the version
usually quoted in the Gospels and Epistles, this word _aiônios_ is
frequently applied to things that have ended, _e. g._, the gift of the
land of Canaan, the priesthood of Aaron, the kingdom of David, the
temple at Jerusalem, the daily offerings, etc.  When the noun always
means a finite period and the adjective is applied both to that which
is ended and to that which is endless it would surely be poor
scholarship if the Revisers allowed the word "everlasting" to remain as
its translation, or if students of theology should argue from it the
endlessness of anything.  To which we may add that there are Greek
adjectives and phrases which _do definitely mean_ "endless" and which
are never used in the Bible of men's fate in the Hereafter.

Be it observed that all this does not prove that the punishment of the
future ages _may not_ be everlasting.  It only proves that Scripture
nowhere asserts unmistakably that _it must be so_.  It simply asserts
that it is aeonian.

The thoughtful advocates of Everlasting Torment are of course aware of
all this.  But they honestly feel that in spite of the indefiniteness
of the adjective, our Lord has fixed His meaning beyond question in the
one passage that has become so famous as the great proof text in this
controversy, "These shall go away into _aeonian_ punishment, but the
righteous into _aeonian_ life" (Matt. xxv. 46).  Very reasonably they
say, "If the word asserts everlastingness in the one case it must also
in the other."  The answer is that the word _of itself_ cannot assert
everlastingness in either case.  If this word were our only proof of
everlasting life then everlasting life would be a doubtful matter.  But
the everlastingness of that life like the everlastingness of God is
evident all over the Bible quite apart from this.  The words here
simply tell that the one shall go into the aeonian life and the other
into aeonian punishment, _i. e._, that the one shall go into the life
of the future age and the other into the punishment of the future age
without exactly specifying the duration of either.

I quite feel that the close connection of the words suggests at least
the probability that one is as lasting as the other.  Yet even that
consideration is weakened by asking if people are willing to apply it
to St. Paul's statement, "As in Adam _all_ die even so in Christ shall
_all_ be made alive" (the context suggests eternal life).  I would
point out, too, that a somewhat similar verse is in the Septuagint
Bible of our Lord's day in Hab. iii. 6, where the (aeonian) everlasting
mountains were scattered before God, whose ways are (aeonian)
everlasting.  Yet it does not prove that the one is as endless as the
other.  And in Rom. xvi. 25-26 the mystery hid in the (aeonian) times
"before the world began" is now manifested according to the command of
the (aeonian) eternal God.  But the age "before the world began" is
ended.

At any rate I must leave the matter here.  I have no space for fuller
statement.  If any man feels that a world of increasing sin and awful
torment growing no nearer to its end after millions and millions of
ages does not disturb his conscience or the thoughts of God which he
has learned from the whole trend of Scripture this text will probably
weigh strongly with him in spite of all that I have said.  But to him
who is tortured by such a thought of God and yet feels that Scripture
binds him to it, it must surely be some relief to feel that even in
this great bulwark text of Everlasting Torment our Lord only asserts
that these shall go away into the aeonian punishment or chastisement[3]
whatever that may mean.

Reluctantly, impelled by a sense of duty, I have dealt with this theory
more fully than with the others.  Should any godly people fear that I
am lightening an awful deterrent to sin let me say what long experience
has taught me of the danger of this common theory.

It is making sad loving hearts whom God has not made sad and making
earnest Christians, who feel forced to believe it, perplexed about the
love and justice of God and the prophecies of the final victory of good.

It is forcing into the background the true and awfully solemn teaching
about Hell which ought to be prominent in all our pulpits.  When men
cannot see any possible reconciliation between the doctrine of God's
love and their doctrine of Hell they are very apt to find an easy way
out.  "We cannot reconcile them," said a young layman to me one day,
"therefore we drop out one of them--Hell."  Do not be shocked at it.
Many besides my young layman are unconsciously doing it.  Nowadays more
than ever we, clergy, are teaching much about the love of God.  But
nowadays more than ever we are holding our tongues about Hell.  We know
the horrible idea which Hell commonly conveys.  Therefore we keep it in
the background trusting that our hearers will leave it there during the
sermon on God's love.  But they do not, and so we are very unconvincing
about both doctrines.

Again, this common theory of Hell is so unreasonable that it has lost
its power as a deterrent.  No teaching from which Conscience revolts
can long hold its power over men.  The rough common sense, the rough
moral sense of careless men makes them reject it and treat it as a
subject of jest.  When men can stupidly laugh together over jests about
hell-fire, when the devil is presented as a clown in the pantomime it
indicates something very wrong in the teaching.  No doctrine has any
real hold on the crowd when they can lightly jest about it.  And
because of their unbelief in this false notion of Hell they are ceasing
to believe in any Hell at all--ceasing to believe in that awful real
Hell which is taught in the Bible and of which God is giving some men
foretastes even in this life.

And this false notion of Hell tends to shake men's belief in the
reality of Heaven.  For if the redeemed could enjoy their bliss in
Heaven, knowing that myriads are existing for ever and ever in endless
suffering and still worse in endless sin, one feels that they have
grown so selfish and opposite to Christ that they have no business in
any heaven.

We dare not leave out the love of God and we dare not leave out the
doctrine of Hell.  Both are certainly true.  Therefore they must be
capable of reconciliation.  The reconciliation must not come in
ignoring Hell or believing in a kindly, good-natured God who does not
judge severely about moral character and who only cares that His child
should stop crying and be happy.  We are having too much of this
sentimentalism nowadays.  It is a miserable misconception of that awful
holiness which is "of purer eyes than to behold iniquity."  It would
never explain the need of Christ dying on the cross to put away sin.

Whatever reconciliation we find here or hereafter it must have at
bottom God's unutterable hatred of sin but also God's unutterable love
and pain over every sinful soul which He has made.  This theory of
Endless Torment and Endless Sin certainly does not appear to satisfy
this test, and it has in addition to face the stern revolt of Reason
and Conscience.



II

_The theory of Universalism, i. e., that all men shall at length be
saved_.

This opinion is based on the more hopeful side of Scripture that we
have referred to, but it ignores or explains away what contradicts it
in the darker and sterner side.  If one could forget that, it would be
the most inspiring of all the guesses that have been made.  As
presented by its best exponents, such men as Allen and Jukes and Cox,
it is wonderfully attractive and at first sight seems to satisfy many
of the conditions of the problem.  It takes account of a just and awful
retribution for every sin, and takes account also of the mysterious
hope in the Hereafter which runs through the Bible.  It believes that
the power of God has infinite resources and that the love of God has
unwearying persistence and that no soul can ultimately resist such
resources and such love.  Even Hell itself it deems God's final effort
when all other means have failed.

The reader who thinks there can be no possible excuse for such a theory
should glance at a few of the passages quoted in its favour:

"God who wills that _all men_ should be saved" (1 Tim. ii. 4), and "who
wills that _all men_ should come to repentance" (2 Peter iii. 9).  And
this will or determination of God is "_immutable_" (Heb. vi. 7).
Again, "Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the Prince of this
world be cast out, AND I, if I be lifted up, will draw _all men_ unto
Myself" (John xii. 31, 32).  "_All flesh_ shall see the salvation of
God" (Luke iii. 6).  "His grace bringing salvation to all men" (Titus
ii. 11).  "We trust in the living God who is the Saviour of _all men,
especially_ of those who believe" (1 Tim. iv. 10).  "He is the
propitiation _not for our sins only, but also_ for the sins of the
_whole world_" (1 John ii. 2).  "He was manifested that He might
_destroy_ the works of the devil" (1 John iii. 8) [and _destroy_ the
devil (bruise the serpent's head) Gen. iii. 15].  "He shall _overcome_
the strong man armed (the devil) and take away his armour and divide
his spoils" (Luke xi. 21, 22).  "He was manifested to _put away_ sin by
the sacrifice of Himself" (Heb. ix. 26).  "God hath not cast away His
people whom He foreknew ... and so _all Israel shall be saved_" (Rom.
xii. 25-33).  "The times of the _Restoration of all things_ which God
hath promised by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world
began" (Acts iii. 21).  "As in Adam _all_ die, even so in Christ shall
_all_ be made alive.  But every man in his own order: Christ the
first-fruits; afterwards they that are Christ's at His coming.  Then
cometh the end ... when all things have been _subjected unto Him_[4]
... then shall the Son also be subjected unto Him that put all things
under Him that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 22-29).

One can see how the constant study of such passages should lead men to
an enthusiastic hope and lead them to study less carefully the stream
of darker teaching that seemed to conflict with these.  Whatever may be
said against the advocates of Universalism we at least owe to them a
clearer emphasizing of the mysterious hopefulness of Scripture as to
the final triumph of good.

But with deep reluctance one is bound to assert that the advocates of
Universal Salvation to a great degree ignore or explain away
unsatisfactorily much of the sterner side of the Bible.  For amid all
its hopefulness there is a steadily persistent note in Scripture,
stern, awful, sorrowful, which seems impossible to reconcile with
Universalism.  There are clear and repeated assertions that some men at
any rate will not be saved.  It is St. Paul, the author of so many of
those hopeful Scriptures quoted, who tells us "even weeping" of men
"whose end is destruction" (Phil. iii. 19), and of those whose fate
shall be "eternal destruction from the presence of God" (2 Thess. i.
9).  It is the loving Christ Himself who said of one of His apostles,
"It were good for that man if he had not been born" (St. Matt. xxvi.
24).

We are warned back too by the tendency of character to grow permanent.
And when we are told that God "willeth all men to be saved," and that
God can do everything, we are forced to ask, Can God do contradictory
things?  Can God make a door to be open and shut at the same time?  Can
God make a thing to be and not to be at the same time?  Can God make a
man's will free to choose good or evil and yet secure that he shall
certainly choose good at the last?  One longs to believe that
Universalism should be true, but to believe it we must ignore much of
the evidence of Scripture.



III

_The theory of Conditional Immortality, i. e._, that all souls who fail
of Eternal Life shall be punished not by Endless Torment, but by
Annihilation and the loss of God and Heaven for ever and ever.

This is another conjecture framed to escape the difficulties of the
former two.  It would be consistent both with retribution for evil and
also with the final victory of good.  That in the mysterious nature of
things when the malignity of sin becomes incurable, a soul rotted
through with sin might ultimately die out of existence; this opinion is
at least allowable as a conjecture to escape from the theory of Endless
Torment and Sin.  It would in a real sense be an everlasting
punishment, being an everlasting loss of Heaven and God.  But it too is
founded only on part of the evidence, on such texts as "The gift of God
is eternal life," "He that hath the Son hath life," implying that
immortality is a conditional thing granted only to those who are saved,
and such texts as "eternal _destruction_ from the presence of God," and
the idea of utter annihilation in such passages as "burn up the chaff
with unquenchable fire."  There is much in favor of it but there is
much in Scripture which makes it difficult to accept it.  And it
contradicts straight out the wide-spread Christian belief in the
essential immortality of the soul (though that belief also needs to be
examined).  At any rate it cannot claim authority as a theory of future
punishment.



IV

These are the only conjectures offered us to solve the difficulties
connected with Final Retribution.  We find them all unsatisfactory.  We
have reached no definite doctrine of Hell.  With the evidence at our
disposal it seems impossible to do so.  The failure of all attempts at
reconciling the seeming contradictions of Scripture must suggest to us
that the solution of this problem is beyond the range of our present
powers.  At any rate it is beyond the range of our present knowledge.
Surely it is wise and reverent to think that this points to _some
dealing of God beyond our human ken_ which will one day reconcile all
the difficulties.[5] Our little guesses do not exhaust God's
possibilities.  Some day we shall find the answer in that land where we
shall know even as we are known.  And when we find it we know it will
be consistent with our highest thoughts of God.  I like to think that
it is those who have grown closest to Christ in sympathy for sorrow and
pain and who unlike us, know all the facts of the case, who are
represented as joining in that glad shout hereafter, "Hallelujah!
salvation and glory and power belong to our God, FOR TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS
ARE HIS JUDGMENTS."  Leave the manifestation of this to God.  A wise
old man once said, "God has a good deal of time to do things between
this and the other side of eternity."

This then is the conclusion of the whole matter.  A return to the
reserve and reticence of Scripture.  But with this result of our study,
that we feel no longer forced to believe of God that which Conscience
declares to be unworthy of Him.  We are set free to believe that the
Judge of all the earth will do right--that Hell as well as Heaven is
within the confines of His dominion--that evil shall not last for ever;
that in spite of all its conflicting evidence the trend of Scripture
moves towards the golden age, the final victory of good.

Thus we leave it.

In our final vision of humanity in Christ's great drama of the
Judgment, those on the left are passing into the outer darkness and as
they pass the curtain falls behind them and we see them no more.  We
know not what is passing in that outer darkness where there is "weeping
and gnashing of teeth."  We have no grounds to believe that any soul
there is being born again through sorrow and shame, that any spoiled
and deformed life is being remoulded in that awful crucible of God.

But as we watch the awful shadows of that outer darkness, there comes
beyond it on the far horizon the quivering of a coming dawn.  For that
age of God's Gehenna is to have its end, and far away the day will dawn
for which the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together; when
evil shall have vanished out of the universe for ever; when death and
Hell, the evil and the Evil One shall be cast into the lake of fire;
when "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow of things in Heaven and
earth, and under the earth" (in the world of the dead).  "And every
tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the
Father."  "Then cometh the end," says St. Paul, "when Christ shall
deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, when all His enemies
shall be subjected unto Him.  And when all His enemies have been
subjected unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subjected unto
Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all."

That is what shall be.  One day, somewhere in the far mysterious future
the "purpose of the ages" shall be accomplished.  Evil shall have
vanished out of the universe for ever and God shall be all in all.  One
day again it shall be as at the creation when "God looked on everything
that He had made and behold it was very good."  How?  We know not and
we need not know.  We need not be able to assert dogmatically how He
will accomplish His purpose.  We need not be able to assert that all
men shall be saved or that all who are not will be annihilated.  But we
must be able with trustful hearts to assert God's love and God's power
and the final abolishing of evil, even though we can only do it with
the poet's vagueness:

  At last I heard a voice upon the slope
  Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"
  To which an answer pealed from that high land,
  But in a tongue no man could understand,
  And on the glimmering summit far withdrawn
  God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.



[1] 1 John iii. 8.

[2] Gen. iii. 15.

[3] _kolasis_--chastisement, correction, punishment (see Greek Lexicon).

[4] The same Greek words are used of His enemies' subjection to Christ
as of Christ's subjection to the Father suggesting that it would be of
the same kind.

[5] In other antinomies of Scripture, _e. g._, Man's free will and
God's foreknowledge, we have to take refuge in a similar belief.




III

HEAVEN

At last "I" has reached the goal.  In that far future comes the glad
finale of human history, the realization of the eternal thought in the
mind of God from the beginning.  As the unwritten play of a great
dramatist lies in his mind before it is uttered or acted, with every
problem solved and every contingency provided for--so we believe the
whole extended drama lay in the Eternal Mind--the path of struggle and
pain--the cross-currents of human will--the glorious conclusion of it
all.  Nothing was an after-thought.  Now at last Christ "shall see of
the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied."  Aye--satisfied.  It
was worth the cost.  Worth the Incarnation of the Eternal Son--worth
the sorrow and the pain--worth being misunderstood and shamed and
mocked and scourged and spitted on and crucified--this final
satisfaction of His tender love.  "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor
hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things that God
hath prepared.  They shall hunger no more nor thirst any more, neither
shall the sun light on them nor any burning heat, for the Lamb which is
in the midst of the Throne shall shepherd them and lead them to eternal
fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away every tear from their
eyes.  There shall be no more death--no mourning nor crying nor pain
any more, for the former things--the old bad things--have passed away."
That is the end of God's purpose for men.  Surely it will be the
wondering cry of the angels for ever, "Behold how He loved them!"



I.  WHAT IS MEANT BY HEAVEN?

To us with our limited faculties Heaven is practically inconceivable.
We have no experience that would help us to realize it.  Even the
inspired writers can but touch the thought vaguely in allegory and
gorgeous vision, piling up images of earthly things precious and
beautiful--thrones and crowns and gates of pearl and golden streets in
the heavenly city "coming down from God prepared as a bride adorned for
her husband."

The only clear thought we have about external things in Heaven is that
"I" who lived here in an earthly body and in the Near Hereafter lived a
spirit life "absent from the body"--shall in that Far Hereafter have a
spiritual body analogous we suppose to the body "I" had on earth.  Not
the poor body, certainly, which rotted in the grave, "ashes to ashes,
dust to dust" but a "glorified body," and yet it would seem having some
strange mysterious connection with the earthly body.  As the oak is the
resurrection body of the acorn, and the lily of the ugly little bulb
that decayed in the ground, "so also is the resurrection of the dead.
It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in
weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is
raised a spiritual body."  That gives very little information but it
gives some tangible idea to grasp.  Beyond this there is no hold for
imagination.

But as we saw in the earlier chapters on the Intermediate Life I am
still "I," the same conscious self through the whole life of Earth.
and Hades and Heaven, and therefore the _real life, the inner life_ can
still be understood.  So when we enquire what can be known about the
meaning of Heaven--at the very start I strike the key-note of the
thoughts that follow, in the words of Christ Himself, "The Kingdom of
God is within you."  Heaven is a something within you rather than
without you.  Heaven means character rather than possessions.  The
Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but Righteousness and Peace and
Joy in the Holy Ghost.

That is the thought which I am trying to keep prominent all through
this book.  Hades life is dependent on character.  Judgment is a
sorting according to character.  Heaven and Hell are tempers or
conditions of character within us.  They are not merely places to which
God sends us arbitrarily.  They are conditions which we make for
ourselves.  If God could send all men to Heaven, all men would be
there.  If God could keep all men from Hell, no one would be there.  It
is character that makes Heaven.  It is character that makes Hell.  They
are states of mind that begin here, and are continued and developed
there.

I have known men who were in Hell here--they told me so--men of brutal
character, men in delirium tremens, who saw devils grinning at them
from the bed.  That if continued and developed would mean Hell there.
I have known sweet, unselfish lives who are in Heaven here.  That
continued and developed would mean Heaven there.  You know how one
could be in Heaven here.  Do you remember these wonderful words of our
Lord, "No man hath ascended into Heaven, only the Son of Man who is in
Heaven"?  Not _was_, not _shall be_, but is always in Heaven, because
always in unselfish love--always in accord and in communion with God.
So, you see, a man carries the beginning of Heaven and Hell within him,
according to the state of his own heart.  A selfish, godless man cannot
have any Heaven so long as he remains selfish and godless.  For Heaven
consists in forgetting self, and loving God and man with heart and soul.


§ 2

Do you see, then, the mistake that people have been making in
discussing what is meant by Heaven?  In all ages--in all races--men
have speculated about it, and their speculations have been largely
coloured by their characters and temperaments.  The Indian placed it in
the Happy Hunting Ground.  The Greeks placed it in the Islands of the
Blest, where warriors rested after the battle.  The Northman and the
Mussulman had his equally sensual Heaven.  And many Christians have as
foolish notions as any one else.  Some think that they win Heaven by
believing something with their minds about our Lord's atonement.  Some
think they go to Heaven by soaring up through the air.  Some of them,
taking in its literal meaning the glorious imagery of the Apocalypse,
picture to themselves streets of beaten gold and walls of flashing
emerald and jasper, and the wearing of crowns and the singing of Psalms
over and over again through all the ages of eternity.

What is the fault in all such?  That they do not understand what Heaven
really means.  They think of it as a something outside them which
anybody could enjoy if he could only get there.  They do not understand
that Heaven means the joy of being in union with God--that the outward
Heaven has no meaning till the inward Heaven has begun in ourselves.  I
need not point out to you that our immortal spirits would find little
happiness in golden pavements and gates of pearl.  People on this
earth, who have their fill of gold and pearl, do not always gain much
happiness from them.  They are mere external things--they cannot give
eternal joy, because that comes from within, not from without.  It
depends not on what we have, but on what we are, not on the riches of
our possessions, but on the beauty of our lives.

The gorgeous vision of the Apocalypse has its meaning, but it is not
the carnal, literal meaning of foolish men.  It tells of the bright
river of the water of life; of glorified cities, where nothing foul, or
mean, or ignoble shall dwell; of the white robes of our stainless
purity; of the crowns and palms, the emblems of victory over
temptation, of the throne which indicates calm mastery over sin; of the
song and music and gladsome feasting to image faintly the abounding
happiness and the fervent thanksgiving for the goodness of God.  They
are all mere symbols--mere earthly pictures with a heavenly meaning,
and the meaning which lies behind them all is this: _The joy of Heaven
means the inward joy; the joy of character; the joy of goodness; the
joy of likeness to the Nature of God_.  That is the highest joy of
all--the only joy worthy of making Heaven for men who are made in the
image of God.


§ 3

It is not difficult to show this to any true man or woman who is humbly
trying to do beautiful deeds on earth.  Of course, if a man be very
selfish and worldly; a man who never tries to help another; a man who
smiles at these things as unreal sentiment; who tells you that hard
cash and success in life, and "to mind number one," as they say, are
the chief things; a man who never feels his pulses beat faster at the
story of noble deeds--you cannot absolutely prove to him that the joy
of character is the highest happiness.  You cannot prove to a blind man
the beauty of the sunset sky; you cannot arouse a deaf man to
enthusiasm about sweet music; and you cannot prove to an utterly
selfish, earthly man that self-sacrifice and purity and heroism and
love are the loveliest and the most desirable possessions--the sources
of the highest and most lasting joy.  But I feel sure that most of us,
with all our faults, have in our better moments the desire and the
admiration--aye, and the effort, too, after nobleness of life, and
therefore we can understand this highest joy of Heaven.  We have had
experience sometimes, however rarely, of lovely deeds, and the sweet,
pure joy that follows in their train.  Well, whenever you have
conquered some craving temptation or borne trouble for another's sake;
when you have helped and brightened some poor life, and kept quiet in
the shade that no one should know of it; when you have tried to do the
right at heavy cost to yourself; when the old father or mother at home
has thanked God for the comfort you have been in their declining years;
whenever in the midst of all your sins you have done anything for the
love of God or man, do you not know what a sweet, pure happiness has
welled up in your heart, entirely different in kind, infinitely higher
in degree than any pleasure that ever came to you from riches or
amusement or the applause of men.  Of this kind surely must be the pure
joy of Heaven.  Call up the recollection of some of those cherished
moments of your life, and multiply by infinity the pleasure that you
felt, and you will have some faint notion of what is meant by Heaven,
the Heaven that God designs for man.



II.  WHAT IS HEAVEN'S SUPREME JOY?

Thus, then, we answer the first of our questions--What is meant by
Heaven?  Heaven means a state of character rather than a place of
residence.  Heaven means to be something rather than to go somewhere.
But though Heaven means a state of character rather than a place of
residence, yet it means a place of residence, too.  And though Heaven
means to be something rather than to go somewhere, yet it means to go
somewhere, too.  And from this the second question easily follows.
What can be known about that life in Heaven?

  "Oh, for a nearer insight into Heaven,
    More knowledge of the glory and the joy,
  Which there unto the happy souls is given,
    Their intercourse, their worship, their employ."


We do not know a great deal about it.

The Bible is given to help us to live rightly in this world, not to
satisfy curiosity about the other world.  But yet some glimpses of the
blessed life have come to us, for our teaching.

The first thing to learn is that the chief joy of Heaven shall consist
in that of which we can only dream in this life, of which we can have
but a partial glimpse even in the Hades or Paradise Life--_the Beatific
Vision_, the clear vision and knowledge of God.  All this life and all
the Paradise life are fitting and training and preparing us for this
consummation.

Wise theologians of old divided the happiness of Heaven into
"_Essential_" and "_Accidental_."  By _essential_ they meant the
happiness which the soul derives immediately from God's presence, from
the Beatific Vision.  By _accidental_ they meant the additional
happiness which comes from creatures, from meeting with friends, from
the joyous occupations and all the delights of ever-widening knowledge.

But the Presence of God, the Vision of God, is the essential thing
which gives light and joy to all the others.  Without that Vision of
God all would be dark as this beautiful world would be without the sun.
Without that joy of God's presence all other joys would be spoiled,
just as the gifts of this life would be without the central gift of
health.

That is the central thought about Heaven in the Bible, the central
thought of God's noblest saints of old, aye, and the central thought of
some of the noblest amongst ourselves to-day.

Does it seem unreal, unnatural, to some of us?  I can well believe it.
Few of us love God well enough yet to desire Him above all things.
Most of us, I fear, if we would honestly confess it, think more of the
joy of meeting our dear ones than of the joy of being with God.  But
God is very gentle with us.  "He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that
we are but dust."  He will gradually train us here and hereafter, and
one day we, too, shall love Him above all things.  Oh!  I do think that
to know the tender patience of Christ's love as we shall know it then,
to know God as He is, with all the false notions about Him swept away,
will make it impossible to withhold our love from Him.  And if even our
poor love for each other on earth is such a happiness think what joy
may come from dwelling in that unutterable Love of God.



III.  THE LIFE IN HEAVEN

What can we know further about the life in Heaven, about what the old
theologians called the _secondary_ or _accidental_ joys as compared
with the supreme joy of the Beatific Vision?

We know, first, _There shall be no sin there_.  It shall be a pure and
innocent life.  All who on earth have been loving, and pure, and noble,
and brave, and self-sacrificing, shall be there.  All who have been
cleansed by the blood of Christ from the defilements of sin, and
strengthened by the power of Christ against the enticements of sin,
shall be there.  There shall be no drunkenness nor impurity there, nor
hatred, nor emulation, nor ill temper, nor selfishness, nor meanness.
Ah! it is worth hoping for.  We poor strugglers who hate ourselves and
are so dissatisfied with ourselves, who look from afar at the lovely
ideals rising within us, who think sorrowfully of all which we might
have been and have not been--let us keep up heart.  One day the ideal
shall become the real.  One day we shall have all these things for
which God has put the craving in our hearts to-day.  We shall have no
sin there.  We shall desire only and do only what is good.  We shall be
there what we have only seemed or wished to be here--honest, true,
noble, sincere, genuine to the very centre of our being.

No sin there.


§ 2

And that will make it easier to understand the second fact revealed to
us.  _No sorrow there_.  "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any
more.  There shall be no more curse ... no pain, nor sorrow, nor
crying, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."  That is
not hard to believe.  Sin is the chief cause of our sorrow on earth.
If there be no sin there; if all are pure and unselfish and generous
and true, and if God wipes away all tears that come from causes other
than sin, it is easily understood.

But let us not degrade this thought or make it selfish or unreal.  One
often hears the sneer or the doubt about the happiness of Heaven while
any exist who have lost their Heaven.  We do not know the answer now.
But we shall know it then.  And we must be absolutely certain that the
answer lies not in the direction of selfish indifference.  The higher
any soul on earth grows in love the less can it escape unselfish sorrow
for others.  Must it not be so in that land too?  Surely the Highest
Himself must have more pain than any one else for the self-caused
misery of men.  If there be joy in His presence over one that repenteth
must there not be pain over one that repenteth not?  We can only say in
our deep ignorance that until the day when all evil shall have vanished
there are surely higher things in God's plan for His redeemed than
selfish happiness and content.  There is the blessedness that comes of
sympathy with Him in the pain which is the underside of the Eternal
Love.


§ 3

No sin in Heaven.  No sorrow in Heaven.  What else do we certainly
know?  _That the essence of the Heaven life will be love_.  The giving
of oneself for the service of others.  The going out of oneself in
sympathy with others.  There at last will be realized St. Paul's
glorious ideal.  There it can be said of every man, He suffereth long
and is kind; envieth not; vaunteth not himself; is not puffed up;
seeketh not his own; behaveth not uncourteously.  He is like the
eternal God Himself, who beareth all things, hopeth all things,
endureth all things (1 Cor. xiii. 4-7).


§ 4

We may well believe _that there will be no dead level of attainment_,
no dead level of perfection and joy.  That would seem to us very
uninteresting.  If we may judge from God's dealings here and from the
many texts of Scripture, there will be an infinite variety of
attainment, of positions, of character.  "In the Father's house there
are many mansions."  Our Lord assumes that we would expect that from
our experience here.  "If it were not so, I would have told you."  I
suppose there will be little ones there needing to be taught and weak
ones needing to be helped; strong leaders sitting at His right hand in
His Kingdom, and poor backward ones who never expected to get into it
at all.

And so surely we may believe, too, will there be _varieties of
character and temperament_.  We shall not lose our identity and our
peculiar characteristics by going to Heaven, by being lifted to a
higher spiritual condition.  Just as a careless man does not lose his
identity by conversion, by rising to a higher spiritual state on earth,
so we may well believe when we die and pass into the life of the
waiting souls, and again when at Christ's coming we pass into the
higher Heaven we shall remain the same men and women as we were before
and yet become very different men and women.  Our lives will not be
broken in two, but transfigured.  We shall not lose our identity; we
shall still be ourselves; we shall preserve the traits of character
that individualize us; but all these personal traits and
characteristics will be suffused and glorified by the lifting up of our
motive and aim.  As far as we can judge, there will be a delightful,
infinite variety in the Heaven-life.

What else?  There shall be _work in Heaven_.  The gift of God is
eternal _life_ and that life surely means activity.  We are told "His
servants shall serve Him."  We are told of the man who increased the
talents or the pounds to five or ten that he was to be used for
glorious work according as he had fitted himself--"Lord, thy talent
hath gained five talents, ten talents." What was the reply?  "You are
now to go and rest for all eternity."  Not a bit of it.  "Be thou ruler
over five cities, over ten cities; enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord."  I know some men who are now retired after a very busy active
life of work, and they hate the idleness, they are sick of it.  No
wonder the conventional Heaven does not appeal to them.  Ah, that is
not God's Heaven.  "They rest from their labours."  Yes; but that word
"labours" means painful strain.  In eternal, untiring youth and
strength we shall be occupied in doing His blessed will in helping and
blessing the wide universe that He has made.  Who can tell what
glorious ministrations, what infinite activities, what endless growth
and progress, and lifting up of brethren, God has in store for us
through all eternity.  Thank God for the thought of that joyous work of
never-tiring youth and vigour; work of men proudly rejoicing in their
strength, helping the weak ones, teaching the ignorant aye! perhaps for
the very best of us going out with Christ into the outer darkness to
seek that which is lost until He find it.  For even that is not shut
out beyond the bounds of possibility in the impenetrable mystery of the
Hereafter.  Do you know Whittier's beautiful poem of the old monk who
had spent his whole life in hard and menial work for the rescue and
help of others?  And when he is dying his confessor tells him work is
over, "Thou shalt sit down and have endless prayers, and wear a golden
crown for ever and ever in Heaven."  "Ah," he says, "I'm a stupid old
man.  I'm dull at prayers.  I can't keep awake, but I love my fellow
men.  I could be good to the worst of them.  I could not bear to sit
amongst the lazy saints and turn a deaf ear to the sore complaints of
those that suffer.  I don't want your idle Heaven.  I want still to
work for others."  The confessor in anger left him, and in the night
came the voice of his Lord--

  "Tender and most compassionate.  Never fear,
  For Heaven is love, as God Himself is love;
  Thy work below shall be thy work above." [1]

Be sure that the repose of Heaven will be no idling in flowery meadows
or sitting for ever in a big temple at worship, as the poor, weary
little children are sometimes told after a long sermon in church.  No,
"there is no temple in Heaven," we are told--no Church.  Because all
life is such a glad serving and rejoicing in God that men need no
special times and places for doing it.



IV.  SHALL WE KNOW ONE ANOTHER IN HEAVEN?

What else can we learn?  Shall we know one another?  Does any one
really doubt it who believes in God at all?  What sort of Heaven would
it be otherwise?  What sort of comfort would there be if we did not
know one another?  Oh, this beggarly faith, that God has to put up
with, that treats the Father above as it would treat a man of doubtful
character.  "I must have His definite texts.  I must have His written
pledges, else I will not believe any good thing in His dealing."  That
is our way.  We talk very piously about our belief in God's love, but
we are afraid to infer anything, to argue anything from the infinitude
of that love.  No, we must have God's bond signed and sealed.  I do
believe that one reason why we have not more of direct answers about
the mysteries of the future life is because God thought that no such
answer should be necessary--that His love, if one would only believe in
it, is a sufficient answer to them all.

There is less need of discussing the subject here, since we have
already dealt with the question of Recognition in the Intermediate Life
(Part I, Chapter VII).  If even in that imperfect state "absent from
the body" we saw reason to hope for recognition, think how that hope
rises to certainty in the great perfect life of Heaven where "I" shall
be again "in the body" the glorious perfect spiritual body.

As I have pointed out the Bible gives only passing hints on the
subject.  But it comforts the mourners with the thought of meeting
those whom Christ will bring with Him.  What would be the good of
meeting if they should not know them?  St. Paul expects to meet his
converts and present them before Christ.  How could he do so if he did
not know them?  Our Lord depicts Dives and Lazarus even in the lower
Hades life as knowing each other.  He says to the dying thief as they
went within the veil, "To-day shalt thou be with Me."  What could it
mean except they should know each other within?

But surely the Bible does not need to say it.  It is one of those
things that we may assume with certainty.  We know that Heaven would
scarce be Heaven at all if we were to be but solitary isolated spirits
amongst a crowd of others whom we did not know or love.  We know that
the next world and this world come from the same God who is the same
always.  We know that in this world He has bound us up in groups,
knowing and loving and sympathizing with each other.  Unless His method
utterly changes He must do the same hereafter.  And we have seen what a
prophecy of recognition lies deep in the very fibres of that nature
which God has implanted in us.  If we shall not know one another, why
is there this undying memory of departed ones, the aching void that is
never filled on earth?  The lower animals lose their young and in a few
days forget them.  But the poor, human mother never forgets.  When her
head is bowed with age, when she has forgotten nearly all else on
earth, you can bring the tears into her eyes by mentioning the child
that died in her arms forty years ago.  Did God implant that divine
love in her only to disappoint it?  God forbid!  A thousand times, no.
In that world the mother shall meet her child, and the lonely widow
shall meet her husband, and they shall learn fully the love of God in
that rapturous meeting with Christ's benediction resting on them.

I know there are further questions rising in our hearts.  Will our dear
ones remember us?  Will they, in all the years of progress, have grown
too good and great for fellowship with us?  There is no specific answer
save what we can infer from the boundless goodness and kindness of God.
Since He does not forget us we may be sure they will not forget us.
Since His superior greatness and holiness does not put Him beyond our
reach, we may be sure that theirs will not--their growth will be mainly
a growth of love which will only bring them closer to us for ever and
ever.



V.  HOW DO MEN ENTER HEAVEN?

We have asked, What is meant by Heaven?  What can be known of the
details of life in Heaven?  And now I close this book with the solemn
question for us all: How shall we enter Heaven?  If you have followed
me thus far the answer is easy.  Though there is a special place which
shall be Heaven, yet, if Heaven means a state of mind rather than a
place of residence, if Heaven means to be something rather than to go
somewhere, though it means to go somewhere, too, then the answer is
easy.  We enter Heaven by a spiritual, not by a natural act.  We begin
Heaven here on earth, not by taking a journey to the sun or the
planets, not by taking a journey from this world up through the air,
but by taking a journey from a bad state of mind to a good state of
mind; from that state of mind which is enmity against God, to that of
humble, loyal, loving obedience to Christ.  It is not so much that we
have to go to Heaven.  We have to do that, too.  But Heaven has to come
to us first.  Heaven has to begin in ourselves.  "The beginning of
Heaven is not at that hour when the eye grows dim and the sound of
friendly voices becomes silent in death, but at that hour when God
draws near and the eyes of the spiritual understanding are opened, and
the soul sees how beautiful Christ is, how hateful sin is; the hour
when self-will is crucified, and the God-will is born in the
resolutions of a new heart."  Then Heaven has begun, the Heaven that
will continue after our death.

Do we believe that this is the right way to think of Heaven?  For if so
it is a serious question for us all.  What about my hopes of entering
Heaven?  If Heaven consists of character rather than possessions, of a
state of mind rather than a place of residence, if, in fine, Heaven has
to begin on earth, what of our hopes of entering Heaven?  Is it not
pitiful to hear people talk lightly about going to Heaven, whose lives
on earth have not any trace of the love and purity and nobleness and
self-sacrifice of which Heaven shall entirely consist hereafter?  To
see men with the carnal notions about Heaven as a place of external
glory and beauty and jasper and emerald, where, after they have misused
their time on earth, they shall fly away like swallows to an eternal
summer.  Why, what should they do in Heaven?  They would be miserable
there even if they could get there.  They would be entirely out of
their element, like a fish sent to live on the grass of a lovely
meadow.  Those who shall enjoy the Heaven hereafter are they whose
Heaven has begun before.  They who may hope to do the work of God
hereafter are those who are humbly trying to do that will on earth.
These shall inherit the everlasting Kingdom.  Unto which blessed
Kingdom may He vouchsafe to bring us all!  Amen.



[1] Whittier, "The Brother of Mercy."