 |
It is worth notice too that in the Septuagint Greek Bible, the version usually quoted in the Gospels and Epistles, this word aionios is frequently applied to things that have ended, e. g., the gift of the land of Canaan, the priesthood of Aaron, the kingdom of David, the temple at Jerusalem, the daily offerings, etc. When the noun always means a finite period and the adjective is applied both to that which is ended and to that which is endless it would surely be poor scholarship if the Revisers allowed the word "everlasting" to remain as its translation, or if students of theology should argue from it the endlessness of anything. To which we may add that there are Greek adjectives and phrases which do definitely mean "endless" and which are never used in the Bible of men's fate in the Hereafter.
Be it observed that all this does not prove that the punishment of the future ages may not be everlasting. It only proves that Scripture nowhere asserts unmistakably that it must be so. It simply asserts that it is aeonian.
The thoughtful advocates of Everlasting Torment are of course aware of all this. But they honestly feel that in spite of the indefiniteness of the adjective, our Lord has fixed His meaning beyond question in the one passage that has become so famous as the great proof text in this controversy, "These shall go away into aeonian punishment, but the righteous into aeonian life" (Matt. xxv. 46). Very reasonably they say, "If the word asserts everlastingness in the one case it must also in the other." The answer is that the word of itself cannot assert everlastingness in either case. If this word were our only proof of everlasting life then everlasting life would be a doubtful matter. But the everlastingness of that life like the everlastingness of God is evident all over the Bible quite apart from this. The words here simply tell that the one shall go into the aeonian life and the other into aeonian punishment, i. e., that the one shall go into the life of the future age and the other into the punishment of the future age without exactly specifying the duration of either.
I quite feel that the close connection of the words suggests at least the probability that one is as lasting as the other. Yet even that consideration is weakened by asking if people are willing to apply it to St. Paul's statement, "As in Adam all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive" (the context suggests eternal life). I would point out, too, that a somewhat similar verse is in the Septuagint Bible of our Lord's day in Hab. iii. 6, where the (aeonian) everlasting mountains were scattered before God, whose ways are (aeonian) everlasting. Yet it does not prove that the one is as endless as the other. And in Rom. xvi. 25-26 the mystery hid in the (aeonian) times "before the world began" is now manifested according to the command of the (aeonian) eternal God. But the age "before the world began" is ended.
At any rate I must leave the matter here. I have no space for fuller statement. If any man feels that a world of increasing sin and awful torment growing no nearer to its end after millions and millions of ages does not disturb his conscience or the thoughts of God which he has learned from the whole trend of Scripture this text will probably weigh strongly with him in spite of all that I have said. But to him who is tortured by such a thought of God and yet feels that Scripture binds him to it, it must surely be some relief to feel that even in this great bulwark text of Everlasting Torment our Lord only asserts that these shall go away into the aeonian punishment or chastisement[3] whatever that may mean.
Reluctantly, impelled by a sense of duty, I have dealt with this theory more fully than with the others. Should any godly people fear that I am lightening an awful deterrent to sin let me say what long experience has taught me of the danger of this common theory.
It is making sad loving hearts whom God has not made sad and making earnest Christians, who feel forced to believe it, perplexed about the love and justice of God and the prophecies of the final victory of good.
It is forcing into the background the true and awfully solemn teaching about Hell which ought to be prominent in all our pulpits. When men cannot see any possible reconciliation between the doctrine of God's love and their doctrine of Hell they are very apt to find an easy way out. "We cannot reconcile them," said a young layman to me one day, "therefore we drop out one of them—Hell." Do not be shocked at it. Many besides my young layman are unconsciously doing it. Nowadays more than ever we, clergy, are teaching much about the love of God. But nowadays more than ever we are holding our tongues about Hell. We know the horrible idea which Hell commonly conveys. Therefore we keep it in the background trusting that our hearers will leave it there during the sermon on God's love. But they do not, and so we are very unconvincing about both doctrines.
Again, this common theory of Hell is so unreasonable that it has lost its power as a deterrent. No teaching from which Conscience revolts can long hold its power over men. The rough common sense, the rough moral sense of careless men makes them reject it and treat it as a subject of jest. When men can stupidly laugh together over jests about hell-fire, when the devil is presented as a clown in the pantomime it indicates something very wrong in the teaching. No doctrine has any real hold on the crowd when they can lightly jest about it. And because of their unbelief in this false notion of Hell they are ceasing to believe in any Hell at all—ceasing to believe in that awful real Hell which is taught in the Bible and of which God is giving some men foretastes even in this life.
And this false notion of Hell tends to shake men's belief in the reality of Heaven. For if the redeemed could enjoy their bliss in Heaven, knowing that myriads are existing for ever and ever in endless suffering and still worse in endless sin, one feels that they have grown so selfish and opposite to Christ that they have no business in any heaven.
We dare not leave out the love of God and we dare not leave out the doctrine of Hell. Both are certainly true. Therefore they must be capable of reconciliation. The reconciliation must not come in ignoring Hell or believing in a kindly, good-natured God who does not judge severely about moral character and who only cares that His child should stop crying and be happy. We are having too much of this sentimentalism nowadays. It is a miserable misconception of that awful holiness which is "of purer eyes than to behold iniquity." It would never explain the need of Christ dying on the cross to put away sin.
Whatever reconciliation we find here or hereafter it must have at bottom God's unutterable hatred of sin but also God's unutterable love and pain over every sinful soul which He has made. This theory of Endless Torment and Endless Sin certainly does not appear to satisfy this test, and it has in addition to face the stern revolt of Reason and Conscience.
II
The theory of Universalism, i. e., that all men shall at length be saved.
This opinion is based on the more hopeful side of Scripture that we have referred to, but it ignores or explains away what contradicts it in the darker and sterner side. If one could forget that, it would be the most inspiring of all the guesses that have been made. As presented by its best exponents, such men as Allen and Jukes and Cox, it is wonderfully attractive and at first sight seems to satisfy many of the conditions of the problem. It takes account of a just and awful retribution for every sin, and takes account also of the mysterious hope in the Hereafter which runs through the Bible. It believes that the power of God has infinite resources and that the love of God has unwearying persistence and that no soul can ultimately resist such resources and such love. Even Hell itself it deems God's final effort when all other means have failed.
The reader who thinks there can be no possible excuse for such a theory should glance at a few of the passages quoted in its favour:
"God who wills that all men should be saved" (1 Tim. ii. 4), and "who wills that all men should come to repentance" (2 Peter iii. 9). And this will or determination of God is "immutable" (Heb. vi. 7). Again, "Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the Prince of this world be cast out, AND I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Myself" (John xii. 31, 32). "All flesh shall see the salvation of God" (Luke iii. 6). "His grace bringing salvation to all men" (Titus ii. 11). "We trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those who believe" (1 Tim. iv. 10). "He is the propitiation not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John ii. 2). "He was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John iii. 8) [and destroy the devil (bruise the serpent's head) Gen. iii. 15]. "He shall overcome the strong man armed (the devil) and take away his armour and divide his spoils" (Luke xi. 21, 22). "He was manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Heb. ix. 26). "God hath not cast away His people whom He foreknew ... and so all Israel shall be saved" (Rom. xii. 25-33). "The times of the Restoration of all things which God hath promised by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began" (Acts iii. 21). "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; afterwards they that are Christ's at His coming. Then cometh the end ... when all things have been subjected unto Him[4] ... then shall the Son also be subjected unto Him that put all things under Him that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 22-29).
One can see how the constant study of such passages should lead men to an enthusiastic hope and lead them to study less carefully the stream of darker teaching that seemed to conflict with these. Whatever may be said against the advocates of Universalism we at least owe to them a clearer emphasizing of the mysterious hopefulness of Scripture as to the final triumph of good.
But with deep reluctance one is bound to assert that the advocates of Universal Salvation to a great degree ignore or explain away unsatisfactorily much of the sterner side of the Bible. For amid all its hopefulness there is a steadily persistent note in Scripture, stern, awful, sorrowful, which seems impossible to reconcile with Universalism. There are clear and repeated assertions that some men at any rate will not be saved. It is St. Paul, the author of so many of those hopeful Scriptures quoted, who tells us "even weeping" of men "whose end is destruction" (Phil. iii. 19), and of those whose fate shall be "eternal destruction from the presence of God" (2 Thess. i. 9). It is the loving Christ Himself who said of one of His apostles, "It were good for that man if he had not been born" (St. Matt. xxvi. 24).
We are warned back too by the tendency of character to grow permanent. And when we are told that God "willeth all men to be saved," and that God can do everything, we are forced to ask, Can God do contradictory things? Can God make a door to be open and shut at the same time? Can God make a thing to be and not to be at the same time? Can God make a man's will free to choose good or evil and yet secure that he shall certainly choose good at the last? One longs to believe that Universalism should be true, but to believe it we must ignore much of the evidence of Scripture.
III
The theory of Conditional Immortality, i. e., that all souls who fail of Eternal Life shall be punished not by Endless Torment, but by Annihilation and the loss of God and Heaven for ever and ever.
This is another conjecture framed to escape the difficulties of the former two. It would be consistent both with retribution for evil and also with the final victory of good. That in the mysterious nature of things when the malignity of sin becomes incurable, a soul rotted through with sin might ultimately die out of existence; this opinion is at least allowable as a conjecture to escape from the theory of Endless Torment and Sin. It would in a real sense be an everlasting punishment, being an everlasting loss of Heaven and God. But it too is founded only on part of the evidence, on such texts as "The gift of God is eternal life," "He that hath the Son hath life," implying that immortality is a conditional thing granted only to those who are saved, and such texts as "eternal destruction from the presence of God," and the idea of utter annihilation in such passages as "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." There is much in favor of it but there is much in Scripture which makes it difficult to accept it. And it contradicts straight out the wide-spread Christian belief in the essential immortality of the soul (though that belief also needs to be examined). At any rate it cannot claim authority as a theory of future punishment.
IV
These are the only conjectures offered us to solve the difficulties connected with Final Retribution. We find them all unsatisfactory. We have reached no definite doctrine of Hell. With the evidence at our disposal it seems impossible to do so. The failure of all attempts at reconciling the seeming contradictions of Scripture must suggest to us that the solution of this problem is beyond the range of our present powers. At any rate it is beyond the range of our present knowledge. Surely it is wise and reverent to think that this points to some dealing of God beyond our human ken which will one day reconcile all the difficulties.[5] Our little guesses do not exhaust God's possibilities. Some day we shall find the answer in that land where we shall know even as we are known. And when we find it we know it will be consistent with our highest thoughts of God. I like to think that it is those who have grown closest to Christ in sympathy for sorrow and pain and who unlike us, know all the facts of the case, who are represented as joining in that glad shout hereafter, "Hallelujah! salvation and glory and power belong to our God, FOR TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS ARE HIS JUDGMENTS." Leave the manifestation of this to God. A wise old man once said, "God has a good deal of time to do things between this and the other side of eternity."
This then is the conclusion of the whole matter. A return to the reserve and reticence of Scripture. But with this result of our study, that we feel no longer forced to believe of God that which Conscience declares to be unworthy of Him. We are set free to believe that the Judge of all the earth will do right—that Hell as well as Heaven is within the confines of His dominion—that evil shall not last for ever; that in spite of all its conflicting evidence the trend of Scripture moves towards the golden age, the final victory of good.
Thus we leave it.
In our final vision of humanity in Christ's great drama of the Judgment, those on the left are passing into the outer darkness and as they pass the curtain falls behind them and we see them no more. We know not what is passing in that outer darkness where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth." We have no grounds to believe that any soul there is being born again through sorrow and shame, that any spoiled and deformed life is being remoulded in that awful crucible of God.
But as we watch the awful shadows of that outer darkness, there comes beyond it on the far horizon the quivering of a coming dawn. For that age of God's Gehenna is to have its end, and far away the day will dawn for which the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together; when evil shall have vanished out of the universe for ever; when death and Hell, the evil and the Evil One shall be cast into the lake of fire; when "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow of things in Heaven and earth, and under the earth" (in the world of the dead). "And every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." "Then cometh the end," says St. Paul, "when Christ shall deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, when all His enemies shall be subjected unto Him. And when all His enemies have been subjected unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subjected unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all."
That is what shall be. One day, somewhere in the far mysterious future the "purpose of the ages" shall be accomplished. Evil shall have vanished out of the universe for ever and God shall be all in all. One day again it shall be as at the creation when "God looked on everything that He had made and behold it was very good." How? We know not and we need not know. We need not be able to assert dogmatically how He will accomplish His purpose. We need not be able to assert that all men shall be saved or that all who are not will be annihilated. But we must be able with trustful hearts to assert God's love and God's power and the final abolishing of evil, even though we can only do it with the poet's vagueness:
At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?" To which an answer pealed from that high land, But in a tongue no man could understand, And on the glimmering summit far withdrawn God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.
[1] 1 John iii. 8.
[2] Gen. iii. 15.
[3] kolasis—chastisement, correction, punishment (see Greek Lexicon).
[4] The same Greek words are used of His enemies' subjection to Christ as of Christ's subjection to the Father suggesting that it would be of the same kind.
[5] In other antinomies of Scripture, e. g., Man's free will and God's foreknowledge, we have to take refuge in a similar belief.
III
HEAVEN
At last "I" has reached the goal. In that far future comes the glad finale of human history, the realization of the eternal thought in the mind of God from the beginning. As the unwritten play of a great dramatist lies in his mind before it is uttered or acted, with every problem solved and every contingency provided for—so we believe the whole extended drama lay in the Eternal Mind—the path of struggle and pain—the cross-currents of human will—the glorious conclusion of it all. Nothing was an after-thought. Now at last Christ "shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied." Aye—satisfied. It was worth the cost. Worth the Incarnation of the Eternal Son—worth the sorrow and the pain—worth being misunderstood and shamed and mocked and scourged and spitted on and crucified—this final satisfaction of His tender love. "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things that God hath prepared. They shall hunger no more nor thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them nor any burning heat, for the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall shepherd them and lead them to eternal fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death—no mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things—the old bad things—have passed away." That is the end of God's purpose for men. Surely it will be the wondering cry of the angels for ever, "Behold how He loved them!"
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY HEAVEN?
To us with our limited faculties Heaven is practically inconceivable. We have no experience that would help us to realize it. Even the inspired writers can but touch the thought vaguely in allegory and gorgeous vision, piling up images of earthly things precious and beautiful—thrones and crowns and gates of pearl and golden streets in the heavenly city "coming down from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."
The only clear thought we have about external things in Heaven is that "I" who lived here in an earthly body and in the Near Hereafter lived a spirit life "absent from the body"—shall in that Far Hereafter have a spiritual body analogous we suppose to the body "I" had on earth. Not the poor body, certainly, which rotted in the grave, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" but a "glorified body," and yet it would seem having some strange mysterious connection with the earthly body. As the oak is the resurrection body of the acorn, and the lily of the ugly little bulb that decayed in the ground, "so also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." That gives very little information but it gives some tangible idea to grasp. Beyond this there is no hold for imagination.
But as we saw in the earlier chapters on the Intermediate Life I am still "I," the same conscious self through the whole life of Earth. and Hades and Heaven, and therefore the real life, the inner life can still be understood. So when we enquire what can be known about the meaning of Heaven—at the very start I strike the key-note of the thoughts that follow, in the words of Christ Himself, "The Kingdom of God is within you." Heaven is a something within you rather than without you. Heaven means character rather than possessions. The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but Righteousness and Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost.
That is the thought which I am trying to keep prominent all through this book. Hades life is dependent on character. Judgment is a sorting according to character. Heaven and Hell are tempers or conditions of character within us. They are not merely places to which God sends us arbitrarily. They are conditions which we make for ourselves. If God could send all men to Heaven, all men would be there. If God could keep all men from Hell, no one would be there. It is character that makes Heaven. It is character that makes Hell. They are states of mind that begin here, and are continued and developed there.
I have known men who were in Hell here—they told me so—men of brutal character, men in delirium tremens, who saw devils grinning at them from the bed. That if continued and developed would mean Hell there. I have known sweet, unselfish lives who are in Heaven here. That continued and developed would mean Heaven there. You know how one could be in Heaven here. Do you remember these wonderful words of our Lord, "No man hath ascended into Heaven, only the Son of Man who is in Heaven"? Not was, not shall be, but is always in Heaven, because always in unselfish love—always in accord and in communion with God. So, you see, a man carries the beginning of Heaven and Hell within him, according to the state of his own heart. A selfish, godless man cannot have any Heaven so long as he remains selfish and godless. For Heaven consists in forgetting self, and loving God and man with heart and soul.
Section 2
Do you see, then, the mistake that people have been making in discussing what is meant by Heaven? In all ages—in all races—men have speculated about it, and their speculations have been largely coloured by their characters and temperaments. The Indian placed it in the Happy Hunting Ground. The Greeks placed it in the Islands of the Blest, where warriors rested after the battle. The Northman and the Mussulman had his equally sensual Heaven. And many Christians have as foolish notions as any one else. Some think that they win Heaven by believing something with their minds about our Lord's atonement. Some think they go to Heaven by soaring up through the air. Some of them, taking in its literal meaning the glorious imagery of the Apocalypse, picture to themselves streets of beaten gold and walls of flashing emerald and jasper, and the wearing of crowns and the singing of Psalms over and over again through all the ages of eternity.
What is the fault in all such? That they do not understand what Heaven really means. They think of it as a something outside them which anybody could enjoy if he could only get there. They do not understand that Heaven means the joy of being in union with God—that the outward Heaven has no meaning till the inward Heaven has begun in ourselves. I need not point out to you that our immortal spirits would find little happiness in golden pavements and gates of pearl. People on this earth, who have their fill of gold and pearl, do not always gain much happiness from them. They are mere external things—they cannot give eternal joy, because that comes from within, not from without. It depends not on what we have, but on what we are, not on the riches of our possessions, but on the beauty of our lives.
The gorgeous vision of the Apocalypse has its meaning, but it is not the carnal, literal meaning of foolish men. It tells of the bright river of the water of life; of glorified cities, where nothing foul, or mean, or ignoble shall dwell; of the white robes of our stainless purity; of the crowns and palms, the emblems of victory over temptation, of the throne which indicates calm mastery over sin; of the song and music and gladsome feasting to image faintly the abounding happiness and the fervent thanksgiving for the goodness of God. They are all mere symbols—mere earthly pictures with a heavenly meaning, and the meaning which lies behind them all is this: The joy of Heaven means the inward joy; the joy of character; the joy of goodness; the joy of likeness to the Nature of God. That is the highest joy of all—the only joy worthy of making Heaven for men who are made in the image of God.
Section 3
It is not difficult to show this to any true man or woman who is humbly trying to do beautiful deeds on earth. Of course, if a man be very selfish and worldly; a man who never tries to help another; a man who smiles at these things as unreal sentiment; who tells you that hard cash and success in life, and "to mind number one," as they say, are the chief things; a man who never feels his pulses beat faster at the story of noble deeds—you cannot absolutely prove to him that the joy of character is the highest happiness. You cannot prove to a blind man the beauty of the sunset sky; you cannot arouse a deaf man to enthusiasm about sweet music; and you cannot prove to an utterly selfish, earthly man that self-sacrifice and purity and heroism and love are the loveliest and the most desirable possessions—the sources of the highest and most lasting joy. But I feel sure that most of us, with all our faults, have in our better moments the desire and the admiration—aye, and the effort, too, after nobleness of life, and therefore we can understand this highest joy of Heaven. We have had experience sometimes, however rarely, of lovely deeds, and the sweet, pure joy that follows in their train. Well, whenever you have conquered some craving temptation or borne trouble for another's sake; when you have helped and brightened some poor life, and kept quiet in the shade that no one should know of it; when you have tried to do the right at heavy cost to yourself; when the old father or mother at home has thanked God for the comfort you have been in their declining years; whenever in the midst of all your sins you have done anything for the love of God or man, do you not know what a sweet, pure happiness has welled up in your heart, entirely different in kind, infinitely higher in degree than any pleasure that ever came to you from riches or amusement or the applause of men. Of this kind surely must be the pure joy of Heaven. Call up the recollection of some of those cherished moments of your life, and multiply by infinity the pleasure that you felt, and you will have some faint notion of what is meant by Heaven, the Heaven that God designs for man.
II. WHAT IS HEAVEN'S SUPREME JOY?
Thus, then, we answer the first of our questions—What is meant by Heaven? Heaven means a state of character rather than a place of residence. Heaven means to be something rather than to go somewhere. But though Heaven means a state of character rather than a place of residence, yet it means a place of residence, too. And though Heaven means to be something rather than to go somewhere, yet it means to go somewhere, too. And from this the second question easily follows. What can be known about that life in Heaven?
"Oh, for a nearer insight into Heaven, More knowledge of the glory and the joy, Which there unto the happy souls is given, Their intercourse, their worship, their employ."
We do not know a great deal about it.
The Bible is given to help us to live rightly in this world, not to satisfy curiosity about the other world. But yet some glimpses of the blessed life have come to us, for our teaching.
The first thing to learn is that the chief joy of Heaven shall consist in that of which we can only dream in this life, of which we can have but a partial glimpse even in the Hades or Paradise Life—the Beatific Vision, the clear vision and knowledge of God. All this life and all the Paradise life are fitting and training and preparing us for this consummation.
Wise theologians of old divided the happiness of Heaven into "Essential" and "Accidental." By essential they meant the happiness which the soul derives immediately from God's presence, from the Beatific Vision. By accidental they meant the additional happiness which comes from creatures, from meeting with friends, from the joyous occupations and all the delights of ever-widening knowledge.
But the Presence of God, the Vision of God, is the essential thing which gives light and joy to all the others. Without that Vision of God all would be dark as this beautiful world would be without the sun. Without that joy of God's presence all other joys would be spoiled, just as the gifts of this life would be without the central gift of health.
That is the central thought about Heaven in the Bible, the central thought of God's noblest saints of old, aye, and the central thought of some of the noblest amongst ourselves to-day.
Does it seem unreal, unnatural, to some of us? I can well believe it. Few of us love God well enough yet to desire Him above all things. Most of us, I fear, if we would honestly confess it, think more of the joy of meeting our dear ones than of the joy of being with God. But God is very gentle with us. "He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are but dust." He will gradually train us here and hereafter, and one day we, too, shall love Him above all things. Oh! I do think that to know the tender patience of Christ's love as we shall know it then, to know God as He is, with all the false notions about Him swept away, will make it impossible to withhold our love from Him. And if even our poor love for each other on earth is such a happiness think what joy may come from dwelling in that unutterable Love of God.
III. THE LIFE IN HEAVEN
What can we know further about the life in Heaven, about what the old theologians called the secondary or accidental joys as compared with the supreme joy of the Beatific Vision?
We know, first, There shall be no sin there. It shall be a pure and innocent life. All who on earth have been loving, and pure, and noble, and brave, and self-sacrificing, shall be there. All who have been cleansed by the blood of Christ from the defilements of sin, and strengthened by the power of Christ against the enticements of sin, shall be there. There shall be no drunkenness nor impurity there, nor hatred, nor emulation, nor ill temper, nor selfishness, nor meanness. Ah! it is worth hoping for. We poor strugglers who hate ourselves and are so dissatisfied with ourselves, who look from afar at the lovely ideals rising within us, who think sorrowfully of all which we might have been and have not been—let us keep up heart. One day the ideal shall become the real. One day we shall have all these things for which God has put the craving in our hearts to-day. We shall have no sin there. We shall desire only and do only what is good. We shall be there what we have only seemed or wished to be here—honest, true, noble, sincere, genuine to the very centre of our being.
No sin there.
Section 2
And that will make it easier to understand the second fact revealed to us. No sorrow there. "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more. There shall be no more curse ... no pain, nor sorrow, nor crying, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." That is not hard to believe. Sin is the chief cause of our sorrow on earth. If there be no sin there; if all are pure and unselfish and generous and true, and if God wipes away all tears that come from causes other than sin, it is easily understood.
But let us not degrade this thought or make it selfish or unreal. One often hears the sneer or the doubt about the happiness of Heaven while any exist who have lost their Heaven. We do not know the answer now. But we shall know it then. And we must be absolutely certain that the answer lies not in the direction of selfish indifference. The higher any soul on earth grows in love the less can it escape unselfish sorrow for others. Must it not be so in that land too? Surely the Highest Himself must have more pain than any one else for the self-caused misery of men. If there be joy in His presence over one that repenteth must there not be pain over one that repenteth not? We can only say in our deep ignorance that until the day when all evil shall have vanished there are surely higher things in God's plan for His redeemed than selfish happiness and content. There is the blessedness that comes of sympathy with Him in the pain which is the underside of the Eternal Love.
Section 3
No sin in Heaven. No sorrow in Heaven. What else do we certainly know? That the essence of the Heaven life will be love. The giving of oneself for the service of others. The going out of oneself in sympathy with others. There at last will be realized St. Paul's glorious ideal. There it can be said of every man, He suffereth long and is kind; envieth not; vaunteth not himself; is not puffed up; seeketh not his own; behaveth not uncourteously. He is like the eternal God Himself, who beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things (1 Cor. xiii. 4-7).
Section 4
We may well believe that there will be no dead level of attainment, no dead level of perfection and joy. That would seem to us very uninteresting. If we may judge from God's dealings here and from the many texts of Scripture, there will be an infinite variety of attainment, of positions, of character. "In the Father's house there are many mansions." Our Lord assumes that we would expect that from our experience here. "If it were not so, I would have told you." I suppose there will be little ones there needing to be taught and weak ones needing to be helped; strong leaders sitting at His right hand in His Kingdom, and poor backward ones who never expected to get into it at all.
And so surely we may believe, too, will there be varieties of character and temperament. We shall not lose our identity and our peculiar characteristics by going to Heaven, by being lifted to a higher spiritual condition. Just as a careless man does not lose his identity by conversion, by rising to a higher spiritual state on earth, so we may well believe when we die and pass into the life of the waiting souls, and again when at Christ's coming we pass into the higher Heaven we shall remain the same men and women as we were before and yet become very different men and women. Our lives will not be broken in two, but transfigured. We shall not lose our identity; we shall still be ourselves; we shall preserve the traits of character that individualize us; but all these personal traits and characteristics will be suffused and glorified by the lifting up of our motive and aim. As far as we can judge, there will be a delightful, infinite variety in the Heaven-life.
What else? There shall be work in Heaven. The gift of God is eternal life and that life surely means activity. We are told "His servants shall serve Him." We are told of the man who increased the talents or the pounds to five or ten that he was to be used for glorious work according as he had fitted himself—"Lord, thy talent hath gained five talents, ten talents." What was the reply? "You are now to go and rest for all eternity." Not a bit of it. "Be thou ruler over five cities, over ten cities; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." I know some men who are now retired after a very busy active life of work, and they hate the idleness, they are sick of it. No wonder the conventional Heaven does not appeal to them. Ah, that is not God's Heaven. "They rest from their labours." Yes; but that word "labours" means painful strain. In eternal, untiring youth and strength we shall be occupied in doing His blessed will in helping and blessing the wide universe that He has made. Who can tell what glorious ministrations, what infinite activities, what endless growth and progress, and lifting up of brethren, God has in store for us through all eternity. Thank God for the thought of that joyous work of never-tiring youth and vigour; work of men proudly rejoicing in their strength, helping the weak ones, teaching the ignorant aye! perhaps for the very best of us going out with Christ into the outer darkness to seek that which is lost until He find it. For even that is not shut out beyond the bounds of possibility in the impenetrable mystery of the Hereafter. Do you know Whittier's beautiful poem of the old monk who had spent his whole life in hard and menial work for the rescue and help of others? And when he is dying his confessor tells him work is over, "Thou shalt sit down and have endless prayers, and wear a golden crown for ever and ever in Heaven." "Ah," he says, "I'm a stupid old man. I'm dull at prayers. I can't keep awake, but I love my fellow men. I could be good to the worst of them. I could not bear to sit amongst the lazy saints and turn a deaf ear to the sore complaints of those that suffer. I don't want your idle Heaven. I want still to work for others." The confessor in anger left him, and in the night came the voice of his Lord—
"Tender and most compassionate. Never fear, For Heaven is love, as God Himself is love; Thy work below shall be thy work above." [1]
Be sure that the repose of Heaven will be no idling in flowery meadows or sitting for ever in a big temple at worship, as the poor, weary little children are sometimes told after a long sermon in church. No, "there is no temple in Heaven," we are told—no Church. Because all life is such a glad serving and rejoicing in God that men need no special times and places for doing it.
IV. SHALL WE KNOW ONE ANOTHER IN HEAVEN?
What else can we learn? Shall we know one another? Does any one really doubt it who believes in God at all? What sort of Heaven would it be otherwise? What sort of comfort would there be if we did not know one another? Oh, this beggarly faith, that God has to put up with, that treats the Father above as it would treat a man of doubtful character. "I must have His definite texts. I must have His written pledges, else I will not believe any good thing in His dealing." That is our way. We talk very piously about our belief in God's love, but we are afraid to infer anything, to argue anything from the infinitude of that love. No, we must have God's bond signed and sealed. I do believe that one reason why we have not more of direct answers about the mysteries of the future life is because God thought that no such answer should be necessary—that His love, if one would only believe in it, is a sufficient answer to them all.
There is less need of discussing the subject here, since we have already dealt with the question of Recognition in the Intermediate Life (Part I, Chapter VII). If even in that imperfect state "absent from the body" we saw reason to hope for recognition, think how that hope rises to certainty in the great perfect life of Heaven where "I" shall be again "in the body" the glorious perfect spiritual body.
As I have pointed out the Bible gives only passing hints on the subject. But it comforts the mourners with the thought of meeting those whom Christ will bring with Him. What would be the good of meeting if they should not know them? St. Paul expects to meet his converts and present them before Christ. How could he do so if he did not know them? Our Lord depicts Dives and Lazarus even in the lower Hades life as knowing each other. He says to the dying thief as they went within the veil, "To-day shalt thou be with Me." What could it mean except they should know each other within?
But surely the Bible does not need to say it. It is one of those things that we may assume with certainty. We know that Heaven would scarce be Heaven at all if we were to be but solitary isolated spirits amongst a crowd of others whom we did not know or love. We know that the next world and this world come from the same God who is the same always. We know that in this world He has bound us up in groups, knowing and loving and sympathizing with each other. Unless His method utterly changes He must do the same hereafter. And we have seen what a prophecy of recognition lies deep in the very fibres of that nature which God has implanted in us. If we shall not know one another, why is there this undying memory of departed ones, the aching void that is never filled on earth? The lower animals lose their young and in a few days forget them. But the poor, human mother never forgets. When her head is bowed with age, when she has forgotten nearly all else on earth, you can bring the tears into her eyes by mentioning the child that died in her arms forty years ago. Did God implant that divine love in her only to disappoint it? God forbid! A thousand times, no. In that world the mother shall meet her child, and the lonely widow shall meet her husband, and they shall learn fully the love of God in that rapturous meeting with Christ's benediction resting on them.
I know there are further questions rising in our hearts. Will our dear ones remember us? Will they, in all the years of progress, have grown too good and great for fellowship with us? There is no specific answer save what we can infer from the boundless goodness and kindness of God. Since He does not forget us we may be sure they will not forget us. Since His superior greatness and holiness does not put Him beyond our reach, we may be sure that theirs will not—their growth will be mainly a growth of love which will only bring them closer to us for ever and ever.
V. HOW DO MEN ENTER HEAVEN?
We have asked, What is meant by Heaven? What can be known of the details of life in Heaven? And now I close this book with the solemn question for us all: How shall we enter Heaven? If you have followed me thus far the answer is easy. Though there is a special place which shall be Heaven, yet, if Heaven means a state of mind rather than a place of residence, if Heaven means to be something rather than to go somewhere, though it means to go somewhere, too, then the answer is easy. We enter Heaven by a spiritual, not by a natural act. We begin Heaven here on earth, not by taking a journey to the sun or the planets, not by taking a journey from this world up through the air, but by taking a journey from a bad state of mind to a good state of mind; from that state of mind which is enmity against God, to that of humble, loyal, loving obedience to Christ. It is not so much that we have to go to Heaven. We have to do that, too. But Heaven has to come to us first. Heaven has to begin in ourselves. "The beginning of Heaven is not at that hour when the eye grows dim and the sound of friendly voices becomes silent in death, but at that hour when God draws near and the eyes of the spiritual understanding are opened, and the soul sees how beautiful Christ is, how hateful sin is; the hour when self-will is crucified, and the God-will is born in the resolutions of a new heart." Then Heaven has begun, the Heaven that will continue after our death.
Do we believe that this is the right way to think of Heaven? For if so it is a serious question for us all. What about my hopes of entering Heaven? If Heaven consists of character rather than possessions, of a state of mind rather than a place of residence, if, in fine, Heaven has to begin on earth, what of our hopes of entering Heaven? Is it not pitiful to hear people talk lightly about going to Heaven, whose lives on earth have not any trace of the love and purity and nobleness and self-sacrifice of which Heaven shall entirely consist hereafter? To see men with the carnal notions about Heaven as a place of external glory and beauty and jasper and emerald, where, after they have misused their time on earth, they shall fly away like swallows to an eternal summer. Why, what should they do in Heaven? They would be miserable there even if they could get there. They would be entirely out of their element, like a fish sent to live on the grass of a lovely meadow. Those who shall enjoy the Heaven hereafter are they whose Heaven has begun before. They who may hope to do the work of God hereafter are those who are humbly trying to do that will on earth. These shall inherit the everlasting Kingdom. Unto which blessed Kingdom may He vouchsafe to bring us all! Amen.
[1] Whittier, "The Brother of Mercy."
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