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."

Section 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.

Section 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.

Section 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

Section 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.

Section 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.

Section 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"?

Section 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?"

Section 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}

Section 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.

Section 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 cooeperate 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"?

Section 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.

Section 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.

Section 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 cooeperate 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]

Section 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.

Section 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.

Section 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.

Section 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.

Section 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

Section 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.

Section 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?

Section 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.

Section 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.

Section 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, krino which means simply to judge, and kata-krino 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.

Section 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.

Section 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 aionos (aionios) (Eng. aeonian), coming from the noun aion (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 aionios (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 aionios 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.