Class _
i /''. A
Copyright N^
COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.
The Hereafter and Heaven
THE HEREAFTER AND HEAVEN
LEVI GILBERT
Author of " Visions of the Christ,"
"Incense," "Sidelights on
Immorality," etc.
CINCINNATI : JENNINGS AND GRAHAM NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS
UBEARY of CONGRESS Two Copies Recelvec?
MAR n 1907
A_ Copyright Entry GLASS A XXc, No,
Copyright, 1907, by Jennings & Graham
xiV*
^thxtntxan
SI0 all mlj0 Biiuvt tl|^ "O5l0ri0U0 ^ttpt*' nvin utttutpat^ mitlj txttthin^ fog tlji? 0%r imrilmg-plari^s in % Iinusi? nf % 3Ta%r*0
for ^iB hxBtxftltB; t0 all mtj0 ar^ r0tt0rt0«0 0f % m0rbittg mitljtn tijrm 0f ** tl|^ p0m^r0 0f tlj? ag^ I0 tttmt,** unh ar^ amar^ 0f tifi? b^- 5ttttting0 in ti^tm xxf Ilf^ Itfo rt^rnal in tiftiv bn0ml^J>g^ 0f ^txh ait& 0f 3^000 Gll|n0t mli0m ^t Ifattj 0j?ttt; 10 all mlj0 htBivt a brt- t^r r0U0trg, t0lj0 100k for tlj^ rttg mlftrlf Ifatlj tlj]^ founiiatt0n0, mtf0 r0ttfe00 tl|at tl|^g ar^ 0trang^r0 unh pttgrim0 00 tl|^ rartlf, wxh grM tlj^ pr0mt0]?0 fr0m afar; I0 all mlj0 ar^ &atlg trging t0 figljt % g00ii figljt, 10 MiBlii tlfrtr wnvBt, tn k^tp tt|^ fatttj, an& for mlf0m i0 latin ttp tlfie rr0mtt ttf rtglftMU0«f 00 ; tn all mlj0 lab0r anft ar^ tj^a^g laJn^n— mlj0 gr0att, bnng buri^n^Jn — but ml|0 ar^ a00ttr^& tlfat 5
Dedication
mtjat fe mtittul 0lfaU bt ^mnllttm^h up of life — ^tlfut ttj^tr liglft affltrtwtt, tulftrlj ta for tlj^ mcm^ttt, fe mnrking for ttj:em morie an& mnr^ exr^jf&mglg an rt^rnal m:etgljt nf gforg; ta all mlf0 ar^ b^r^^au^ii anii Bnrrnmtttg, but ml|0 ar^ p^rauaiK^Ji ttjat all tlfat ar^ in tlj^ tomba aljall ifmr %m untr^ an& aljall ttxvx^ fortlf, atiintljat **2l0tt^ratt n^u:erfo0]e tta nmnr ta all tlj^ ag^Jn tutja ar^ n^armg ttj]^ bnutib of Ufo, mlji^r^ tlj^g lag tlfrtr bur&ws htm\x% ta all mtjo g^arn ani prag for ttf^ ttmi^ \xA\txx i^atlf atjall b^ nn vxixxt^ — ttntlj:er mourtttng, nor rrgtttg, nnr pain ang mnri^; ta all m\\n Ijau^ b:rw ratsieh mitlj QIIjrtBt, anjK ar^ mt)^- tng tlf^ tljtttga ttjat ar^ abnu^, mljrr^ ffltfrtat i0, aratab on llj^ rigljt tjani rxt CS0J1 ; ta all mlj0 rnttfib^tttlg b^lfeu^ tljat
**(5Iy^ morttutg aljaU awak^tt.
3Jtt fxxihxtm 0f Iftja grarie, Knh W0rfll|ip fane ta fv^tt**
CONTENTS
|
Chapter |
Page |
|
|
I. |
The Faith of the Ages, - |
9 |
|
II. |
"Risen Indeed!" |
39 |
|
III. |
"With You Alway," |
• 60 |
|
IV. |
"Not Born to Die," - |
80 |
|
V. |
Waiting for the Oarsman, |
97 |
|
VI. |
"The Unforgotten Faces," |
121 |
|
VII. |
The Communion of Saints, |
■ 134 |
|
VIII. |
"For the Faithful De- |
|
|
parted," ... |
146 |
|
|
IX. |
Heaven : Here and Beyond, ■ |
- 161 |
|
Invocation, |
187 |
CHAPTER I The Faith of the Ages
In our youth we take life for granted. We reflect little, if at all, upon its signifi- cance and ultimate conclusions. We are happy in the mere fact of living, absorbed in the details of each day. But there are few men of intelligence and thoughtfulness who do not awake, at some time, to the wonder and mystery of existence, and be- gin to ponder and speculate upon the mean- ing of it all. We are driven in upon our- selves and the old, old questions which have perplexed man from the beginning weigh heavily upon our minds. We begin to ask over and over: Who am I? What am I? Whence came I? Whither am I going? Who are these around me — men 9
The Hereafter and Heaven
like myself — mortals or immortals? What does all this earth-life signify, and in what will it end? What is that strange thing we call death? Does life go on forever, or does it end with the six feet of earth? Is there a Beyond and an infinite and eternal life? What value is to be assigned this mystical but strong testimony of my inner consciousness that I am not one in destiny with the beasts, but have my origin, nature, and issue intimately involved in the being of an Ever-living One who stands to me as Creator, Father, and Savior?
We say that that man must be singularly careless and unreflecting upon whom some such meditations and persistent queries do not at times press. They come upon us frequently while we walk the streets in the midst of the hurrying throngs. They brood over our souls as we look up into the sky, as we listen to the voices of earth and winds and stars. They are started by the
lO
The Faith of the Ages
miracles of growth in tree and flower and grass-blade in the spring-time. They in- vade our inmost thoughts as the accents of the preacher fall upon our ears. They compel our attention in the solemn stillness of the night before sleep overtakes us. They visit us on our beds of illness, and alike introduce themselves suddenly and uninvited in our hours of merriment and freest unconcern. The enigma of the uni- verse— ^how all these things, we included, came to be? — why there is something in- stead of nothing? — whether it is everlast- ing or not? — whether what we call matter and spirit are separate essences? — when was the beginning and what was the method of creation, and how will it all wind up? — who and what and where is God? — what is the soul, if there be a soul, what its proper life and what its prospects for the future? — these are the world-old questions that keep propounding themselves while we II
The Hereafter and Heaven
can not refuse a hearing, and demand that we shall try to formulate some answer.
In one of his earliest and now suppressed poems, Tennyson expresses these everlast- ing interrogations :
"Whether we wake or whether we sleep? Whether we sleep or whether we die? How you are you? Why I am I? Who will riddle me the how and why? The world is somewhat; it goes on somehow; But what is the meaning of then and now? I feel there is something; but how and what? I know there is somewhat; but what and why? I can not tell if that somewhat be I."
It is only in the light of immortality that any satisfactory answers can be given to these insistent questionings. If man be in- deed only dust of the ground, if the grave swallows him up forever, then there is no solution to the mysteries of life, time, earth, the universe. Only by postulating an ex- istence beyond the tomb and limitless in duration and capacity, can any adequate
12
The Faith of the Ages
meaning be at all discerned in the creation of such a being as man with all his hopes, yearnings, mental, moral, and spiritual powers. But there is a satisfactory answer which comes out of the riven and empty tomb of Christ. We hear the voice which says, "Because I live ye shall live also,'' and we are comforted. We may not be able to solve all the deep problems which burden us with their seeming inscrutability ; but, given eternity, we can be content to wait and wonder in expectation of the larger and clearer light. And our human lives which, on the supposition of death being an endless sleep, become so incapable of explanation, comprehension, or rational j ustification — so fragmentary, unsatisfac- tory, unmeaning, mocking, "a tale told by an idiot," — on the basis of faith in the Easter message, in the argument of the de- serted sepulcher in the garden, in the words of Him who said, ''I was dead, and, behold,
13
The Hereafter and Heaven
I am alive for evermore/' become pro- foundly meaningful, reasonable, self-justi- fying, and worthy of themselves and of the God in whom they have their underlying being. Only upon the assumption of heaven, everlasting life, a spiritual exist- ence in companionship with Christ in Para- dise throughout the eternities, can we find any clue to the labyrinth, any key that will unlock the inner wards of the mysteries. They alone give meaning to man and life. If we grow skeptical and unbelieving as to these fundamental verities of the Chris- tian revelation, and at last close our mind to them and sit in the darkness of negation, what shall it profit us? William Dean Howells has put this unanswerable ques- tion into lines of rarest grace:
'If I lay waste and wither up with doubt,
The blessed fields of heaven where once my
faith Possessed itself serenely safe from death; If I deny the things past finding out;
The Faith of the Ages
Or if I orphan my own soul of One That seemed a Father, and make void the
place Within me where He dwelt in power and grace, What do I gain by that I have undone?'*
Dr. William Osier, Regius professor of medicine in Oxford University, has ex- pressed the thought that the majority of men have consciously thrust the thought of the future life out of their lives. We must dissent from this view, judging from our own experience, and agree with an- other, who says: "That the thought of the after-life is not spoken of does not by any means argue indifference, and there are many things that indicate that that thought is still a mighty force in the lives of the great multitude." Dr. Osier takes his stand with those who instinctively believe in im- mortality even in the absence of scientific demonstration, rather than with the materi- alists who think they can ''prove" their po- 15
The Hereafter and Heaven
sition experimentally. He praises the humble and saintly believers "who have preserved in the past and still keep for us to-day the faith that looks through death."
A Unitarian writer, commenting on Dr. Osier's position, says: "We are not in the least troubled by the assertion that there is no scientific proof of the doctrine of im- mortality, because the statement must be made in the same sense in which it will be asserted that we have no scientific proof of the existence of God. But he who is cer- tain of immortality as any one is or can be of the existence of God will not miss the scientific certainty which Dr. Osier says does not exist."
Science did not make the belief in im- mortality and heaven, and it can not un- make it. The unquenchable hopes, which have been the support and inspiration of the race, rise instinctively in the heart of man and constitute a veritable revelation i6
The Faith of the Ages
from the God who has created him with longings not to be mocked. These primal and unaging truths — coming to us from remote antiquities and renewed in freshness day by day — are not affected by any mod- ern advances in the arts of civilization.
It is frequently asked, in a tone of un- answerable triumph, by certain agnostics and rationalists, of whom the late Mr. In- gersoll was a type, why, in this age of rapid progress, we twentieth century advanced mortals should hark back some three or four thousand years and take our religious ideas and inspiration from the people who lived in those unscientific ages before Co- pernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, or Spencer — before modern universities, news- papers, democracies, railways, steam and electric power, telegraphs, telephones, and all the rest. But this challenge ignores the fact that our inner human life — the prob- lems of man, the mind, the soul, the hopes
2 17
The Hereafter and Heaven
and fears, the joys and sorrows, the strug- gles and aspirations of the race — have very small connection with the movements of the physical universe, the law of gravita- tion, the hypothesis of evolution, theories of government, discoveries in the realm of nature, or our mechanical inventions.
The grandeur of Job is not affected by the fact that the man of Uz never inspected a skyscraper or rode in an automobile. Homer never submitted the Iliad in type- written pages to a publisher, and Vergil never saw his ^neid set up on a linotype machine; but, for all that, they sway the centuries intellectually. We read Plato to- day and learn from Socrates, and do not stop to discount their immortal reasonings by reflecting that neither of them ever trav- eled a mile a minute on a "limited,'' or sent a message from Athens to Thebes by ''wire- less." Dante never crossed the ocean in a five-day-trip "greyhound." Shakespeare i8
The Faith of the Ages
never saw the streets of London or Strat- ford illuminated with arc lights. Milton never talked over the "long distance/' Even Goethe, and, more lately, Tennyson, were never acquainted with the mysteries of radium. What shall it matter to us, therefore, if Moses, David, Isaiah, St. Luke, St. John, St. Paul, never looked through a telescope, never circumnavigated the globe, never dreamed of X-rays, never trod an ironclad, never read a mammoth daily? What they have to say to us about God and duty and eternal life is not affected by these accidentals — nay, more, in their less complex and distracted times they may have had more leisure than have we hurried and harried moderns for meditation over the questions of the here and the hereafter. Agnes Repplier has given fine expres- sion to our thought. She writes: ''There are few things more curious in the study of literature than the long journey of an 19
The Hereafter and Heaven
isolated thought through century after cen- tury of eager, combative, and ever-altering existence. The 'secret thinking of human- ity' is the link that binds us to the past. 'AH things,' said Marcus Aurelius, 'are both familiar and short-lived;' and we, repeat- ing his words half carelessly to-day, forget, in their familiarity, the length of years that has been accorded them. What remains to us now of the world of Epictetus save the unchanging sea, and mountain-tops, and the thoughts of men? Yet if the poor slave had spoken yesterday, the sound of his voice could be no clearer than are its undying echoes, the message he gives could be no more personal or insistent. We need be neither stoics nor philosophers of milder sort to give him heed. We take no back- ward step, we lessen no inch of the distance that has been trodden so painfully since his share of pain was over. We only listen to his words, and know that years make no 20
The Faith of the Ages
barrier between the souls of men, and that, while all else changes, wisdom, gently spoken, can never change nor lose its spir- itual significance."
It is over a half-century since Charles Kingsley wrote "Yeast," but his message to prevent the faith of the fathers crum- bling away ''beneath the combined influ- ence of new truths which are fancied to be incompatible with it, and new mistakes as to its real essence" — his belief "that the ancient Creed, the eternal Gospel, will stand, and conquer, and prove its might in this age as it has in every other" — ^his protest against "sheer materialism," "an unchris- tian and unphilosophic spiritualism," "epi- curism, the worst evil of the three" — his alarm since men seemed "to be losing most fearfully and rapidly the living spirit of Christianity," and "sinking out of real liv- ing belief, into that dead self-deceiving be-
21
The Hereafter and Heaven
lief-in-believing" — these sound their warn- ings for us in our own era as well as in his. The years have accumulated since Emer- son wrote his deep-thoughted essays, but it is difficult to imagine a time when men will not delight in their profound truths. And he himself corroborates what we are striv- ing too imperfectly to say. In ''The Over- Soul/' he writes: ''See how the deep, Di- vine thought reduces centuries, and millen- niums, and makes itself present through all ages. Is the teaching of Christ less effect- ive now than it was when first His mouth was opened? . . . Before the revelations of the soul, Time, Space, and Nature shrink away. . . . She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties, nor men. . . . With each Divine impulse the mind rends the thin rind of the visible and infinite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world,
22
The Faith of the Ages
and becomes conscious of a closer sym- pathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with per- sons in the house/'
Is not this a basis reasonable enough for treasuring the unaltering, undying truths of our Scriptures when they speak to us of God, the imperishable soul, immortality and heaven? We need not deny the worth of the best thinking of to-day. We need not, in its largest sense, confine inspiration to a remote antiquity — the God of Jacob is our refuge, too, and for us, as for the olden time, ''there is a spirit in men, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding." But the men of the past and the men of the present are bound to- gether indissolubly by the possession of the same inspiring, perennial, unaging truths about the secret soul-life within them and us and all humanity, and the incalculable destinies which, for every child of God, lie beyond the verge of this short time- 23
The Hereafter and Heaven
period on earth, across the hills in the land unseen but infinitely more real than this realm o£ shadows.
St. Peter speaks of an inheritance "in- corruptible, undefiled, and amaranthine," or, as it is translated, "that fadeth not away/' The allusion is to the mythical amaranth flower that was fabled to be fade- less. We are told by many that Christian- ity is obsolete, moribund; that the age has outgrown its swaddling-clothes. As men no longer float in rude dug-outs, but sail in palatial steamers; as they no longer journey on the donkey's back, but travel by lightning-express, so the religion which might have been good enough for the an- cient and musty Hebrews thousands of years ago, ought by this time to be re- placed by something more modern. But if religion be primarily an affair of the heart, and not a belief of the head ; if faith be an unalterable disposition of the soul, 24
The Faith of the Ages
this whole subject may seem different. Joy is the same to-day as it was with Miriam. Affection has not altered since Jacob kissed Rachel. Grief has not changed since David cried, "O, Absalom, my son!" or since Job moaned, "My soul is weary of my Hfe!" Faith, Hope, and Love were the same in Abraham and Isaac as in us, and it is on these fundamental activities of the human heart that Christianity with its revelation that death does not end all, but that life is continuous and cumulative, is based.
Professor Masson says: "We read the old poets now, the old historians, the old moralists, with no acquired sense that they or their themes or their teachings are ap- preciably removed from us because they lived before Copernicus. What does it mat- ter in respect to the power over our hearts and spirits as we read what astronomical system we may fancy we detect in the Book of Job?'' The Hebrews of four thousand 25
The Hereafter and Heaven
years ago were indeed a simple-minded peo- ple, but they told not what they knew scien- tifically, but what they felt.
"Consider," says Ruskin, "how we regard a schoolboy, fresh from his term's labor. If he begins to display his newly acquired small knowledge, how soon do we silence him with contempt; but it is not so if the schoolboy begins to feel or see anything. In the strivings of his soul within him he is our equal ; in his power of sight and thought he stands separate from us, and may be a greater than we. We are ready to hear him forthwith: 'You saw that? You felt that? No matter for your being a child; let us hear.' Consider that every generation of men stands in this relation to its successor. It is as the schoolboy: the knowledge of which it is the proudest will be as the alphabet to those who follow. It had better make no noise about its knowl- edge ; a time will come when its utmost, in 26
The Faith of the Ages
that kind, will be food for scorn. 'Poor fools! was that all they knew? and behold how proud they were!' But that we see and feel will never be mocked at. 'In- deed/ they will say, 'they felt that in their day? saw that? Would God we may be like them before we go to the home where sight and thought are not.' "
And George Eliot writes likewise: "The great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors."
And since Christianity is based upon these needs and loves, and furnishes a suffi- cient answer to them all, until life and death, joy and sorrow, earth and heaven, man and God are explained away, it must remain the ultimate and final religion. An- cient as humanity, it will survive till the 27
The Hereafter and Heaven
heavens wax old as a garment and are folded as a scroll. The function and power of the preacher who lifts up before the vision of wearied and dying men the glori- ous hopes of blissful and never-ending life at God's right hand, will never pass away. "While man sins and suffers, while there is blood-tinged sweat upon his brow, while there is weeping in his home and anguish in his heart, that voice can never lose its music which brings forth the comfort and inspiration of the gospel; which tells the sin-tormented spirit the tale of the Infinite Pity, and bids it lay its sobbing wretched- ness to rest on the bosom of Infinite Love." Richard Henry Dana gives utterance to this ingrained faith of man through the cen- turies in such ringing lines as these:
"O, listen, man! A voice within us speaks the startling word, *Man, thou shalt never die!' Celestial voices Hymn it around our souls: according harps, By angel fingers touched when the mild stars
28
The Faith of the Ages
Of morning sang together, sound forth still The song of our great immortality: Thick clustering orbs, and this our fair domain. The tall, dark mountains, and the deep-toned
seas Join in this solemn, universal song."
This belief in immortality and heaven assumes, we are compelled to believe, too sober, if not an almost depressed, aspect in our minds. We are not thrilled by the great message as we should be. We do not often enough "greet the unseen with a cheer.'' We associate too much our thoughts of heaven with the pains of sick- ness and death, the natural pangs of part- ing with our loved ones, the darkness and coldness of the grave. If we do not con- sciously put the two sets of images to- gether, we frequently allow the earth-side of the parting of soul and body to make a forbidding background for the brighter joys of heaven. And even when we put the two views into contrast — ^the mourning 29
The Hereafter and Heaven
of earth and the ecstasy of heaven-— we do not always reaUze the rapture that should be our portion. We do not forget the ex- ultant hymns of the Church as Christians look forward to their heavenly rest. But we do not allow these exultant sentiments and strains to enter into our lives and affect them as they should and might. If we would but open wide our natures to the in- fluences from the unseen, to the inspirations from the infinite and eternal, and endeavor to experience the reality of all the glorious prospects, what lofty joys might indeed be ours!
For our chief joys must forever lie, not in the abundance of things that we possess, but in the unquenchable hopes and loves of the soul. Epictetus represents Socrates as speaking: ''O men, whither are ye borne away ? What do ye ? Miserable as ye are ! Like the blind men, ye wander up and down. Ye have left the true road, and are 30
The Faith of the Ages
going by a false. Ye are seeking peace and happiness where they are not, and if an- other show you where they are, ye beheve him not. Wherefore will ye seek it in out- ward things ? In the hodyf It is not there ; and if ye beheve me not, lo, Myro! lo, Ophellius ! In possessions? It is not there ; and if ye believe me not, lo, Croesus ! lo, the wealthy of our day, how full of mourning is their life! In authority? It is not there, else should those be happy who have been twice or thrice consul; yet they are not. Whom shall we believe in this matter? You, who look but on these men from with- out, and are dazzled by the appearance, or the men themselves? And what say they? Hearken to them when they groan, when by reason of those consulships and their glory and renown, they hold their state the more full of misery and danger! In roy- alty? It is not there ; else were Nero happy, and Sardanapalus !"
31
The Hereafter and Heaven
He also represents Diogenes, the Cynic, as saying : *^And how is it possible that one can live prosperously who hath nothing — a naked, homeless, hearthless, beggarly man, without servants, without a country? Lo, God hath sent you a man to show you in very deed that it is possible. Behold me, that I have neither country, nor house, nor possessions, nor servants ; I sleep on the ground; nor is a wife mine, nor children, nor domicile, but only earth and heaven, and a single cloak. And what is lacking to me? Do I ever grieve? Do I fear? Am I not free? When did I blame God or man? When did any of you ever see me of a sullen countenance?"
These old philosophers were right, and their words are quite as applicable to-day as they were in their remote age. All men desire happiness, and are discontented if they do not find it. God intended they should have it. His universe ministers to .32
The Faith of the Ages
it. Heaven and happiness are inevitably associated. While it is true that holiness is a higher aim than happiness, duty more imperative than pleasure; while it is true that neither the epicurean nor the utilitarian theories can furnish a basis for morals, we still believe that joy is a necessary and in- variable attendant of the loftiest ideals and performances. It is the obligation as well as the privilege of all men both to seek happiness and to make their contributions of it to the world.
We falsely imagine that the sources of joy are far to seek. Of the commandment of the Lord, it was said that it was not ^'far off;'' "It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we 3 33
The Hereafter and Heaven
may do it? But the Word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it/' In Hke manner, joy is never remote, but always near at hand.
We think that if we possessed great wealth we would get happiness; but "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth." Ecclesiastes, the preacher, has a good deal to say on that subject. We think by travel to find it, but return as disappointed as King Arthur's knights from their quest of the Holy Grail. Jesus and his Galilean band and St. Francis of Assisi show how men may be happy on little. Burns sang with a true note :
"It's no in titles nor in rank; It 's no in wealth like Lon'on bank,
To purchase peace and rest. It 's no in makin' muckle mair ; It's no in books, it's no in lear.
To make us truly blest.
34
The Faith of the Ages
If happiness hae not her seat
And center in the breast, We may be wise, or rich, or great.
But never can be blest Nae treasures, nor pleasures,
Could make us happy lang; The heart ay's the part ay
That makes us right or wrang."
It is those things that belong exclusively to nobody, and are for everybody, that hold the secret of joy: to be alive — to see, hear, feel, smell, taste — to use the mind — ^to be human and know one's self a child of God ; to cultivate manliness and womanliness, to have a steady and limitless flow of sym- pathy; to rejoice in one's youth, to be the ruler and not the slave of one's powers, to realize individuality, personality, to experi- ence the delight of struggle, the bitter-sweet in suffering, the heroic mind in persecution, the victory in death — these will bring truest joy.
To love Nature and commune with her 35
The Hereafter and Heaven
in healthy outdoor life; to breathe the air, to have an appreciative eye for the glory of sun, moon, flying clouds, mountain, sea, flower, and forest; to look out into space and up into the midnight sky; to exercise in all simple, healthful recreations — these will furnish the real satisfactions.
To have the love-light of home, to meet about the table, to engage in cheerful talk ; to know the love of father and mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters ; to possess true friends and give friendship, to mingle in elevating and pure society, to have com- panionship with the best — these will foster abiding enjoyments.
To revel in thought, to sit pensively in memory, to converse on high themes, to wander through choicest literature, to listen to poetry and music, to gaze on painting or marble — these have in them sweetest de- lights.
36
The Faith of the Ages
To give one's self to his daily labor, to serve the needy, to glow with pride because of citizenship in a great country, to be moved by a mighty past and go forward with a mightier present and future — these will constitute the loftiest pleasures.
To be a sincere Christian and have the benediction of a pure life ; to be in touch with the spirits of all the good; to hear the Master say, "My joy give I unto you;" to be conscious of redemption, to thrill at the spreading of God's kingdom, the salva- tion of humanity, and the glorious prospect of a regenerated earth; to be sensitive to the powers of the age to come — the uplift- ing thoughts of eternity and immortality— th^se contain the secret of a noble rapture.
So let us sing our Jubilate. "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality," and "Death is swallowed up in victory" 37
The Hereafter and Heaven
''Sing to thyself, O heart, my heart !
Through light and shade as the days go on, What though the glory of dawn depart? Stars arise with the waning sun/
Sing to thyself, as the bird on the bough Rocks, and is trustful with perfect faith,
'There 's much of blessing and sweetness now, And the future is His — as His message saith/"
38
CHAPTER II "Risen Indeed!"
A Ri:cENT writer on immortality has de- clared it to be a mistake to stake the whole question of a future life upon the corporeal resurrection of Christ. He says: /'When one hears modern rationalistic thought re- jecting that resurrection on the ground of insufficiency and unreliability of testimony for such a stupendous event, he feels all hope of his personal immortality trembles with this one discussion of the historic ac- curacy of an occurrence said to have trans- pired nineteen centuries ago; whereas all Christ's resurrection does is to bring im- mortality to light, not to create it. 'Man is not immortal because Christ rose, but Christ rose because man is immortal.' If He did
39
The Hereafter and Heaven
not rise, man is immortal just the same, providing it is the souFs nature, as immor- taHty depends on the nature of God's cre- ation and will."
We are unable to see, however, any par- ticular need for such reflections. Other arguments may come out of science and philosophy to the support of the faith cre- ated by Christ's resurrection, but that tre- mendous fact still remains the Gibraltar of the Christian's faith in the future. De- spite all the elaborate and ingenious efforts of rationalists to discredit its historical char- acter, it still stands. Man might not cease to hope for immortality were Christ's resur- rection plainly disproved. He did so hope before Christ came. But the great ground of his present confidence and believing trust would be removed. But there is ab- solutely no need of our looking around for coverts and refuges on the supposition that our faith of to-day may perhaps be torn 40
^^Risen Indeed!"
away from us. In the minds of all sober- minded scholars there is no such even re- mote probability. President Harper was set down by some as among the "advanced'' Biblical critics. And yet he conclusively showed that interpretation of the New Tes- tament must never disconnect itself from the facts upon which the narrative is based. It must not run into pure subjective recon- struction of the evangelist's story, based on nothing but guesses and suppositions. *'We may not forget/' says he, ''that, after all, the events were the principal thing. For example, the suffering and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are history; that is, they are facts. Is it not true, then, that the historical fact back of the record is the thing on which we must build our faith, the solid rock on which we may take our stand?"
It is undeniable that to certain scientific minds miracles present great difficulties for 41
The Hereafter and Heaven
thought. But nothing is gained by critics of the Christian system in trying to dodge the evidence for miracles by seeking to ex- plain them away in some superficial fashion. A recent volume on ''Miracles and Super- natural Religion'' seems to us to insult the intelligence by suggesting that each case of raising from the dead in the Bible might be only a resuscitation from a deathlike trance. This might possibly have happened once in the history of Jesus ; but to assert that there was this singular coincidence in each of several cases — including that of Lazarus — is to violate all the laws of prob- ability and to evoke more doubt than it al- lays. We are told that Christ meant what He said when He said, "Lazarus sleepeth," and did not mean what He said when He said, 'Xazarus is dead."
But to refuse to accept the literal resur- rection of Jesus ; to admit that ''no halluci- nation theory, no gradual rise and growth 42
^^Risen Indeed!"
of hope in the minds of a reflective few," can account for the belief in the resurrec- tion with its memorials in the Christian Church; and then to take refuge in some such vague and unsatisfactory generaliza- tion as that something happened that first Easter morning in Joseph's garden — ^but ''zvhat occurred; the reality in distinctness from any legendary accretions" we may not be able to know — this must be regarded as truly a *'most lame and impotent conclu- sion." Harnack would have us partake of the Easter faith while discrediting the Easter message; but the two are insepa- rable. Others would resolve all the mir- acles of healing into something like the mind-cures of to-day. Well does Dr. James Orr say: ''The presence of One who is a moral miracle in history is certainly a seri- ous difficulty for a non-miraculous theory of the world." ''In no sense can the Chris- tianity of Jesus fit in with a theory of the 43
The Hereafter and Heaven
world which excludes miracles; for it is itself a miracle — a miracle of grace from first to last." "J^sus is represented throughout the Gospels as performing works of a truly miraculous character: healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, rais- ing the dead — works which can not be re- solved into 'moral therapeutics' without sur- rendering the credibility of the entire Gos- pel narrative/'
Therefore we say to the critics of the Bible: Face the issue clearly, frankly, and positively, and do not try to juggle, raise false issues, or fill the air with dust. Flimsy rationalizings are certainly not to be pre- ferred to an old-fashioned, stalwart belief, which at least has the merit of some respect- able argument on its side.
Theologians of the present day sum up the effects of Christ's resurrection upon the thought of the early time, which has per- 44
^^Risen Indeed!"
petuated itself to our own century. First, it assured men of what till then had been a hope imperfectly supported by Scriptural warrant, and therefore contested by an in- fluential school of thought — the Sadducees. Second, it raised and enlarged that hope. It is probable that the people generally had interpreted resurrection as a renewal of this present life under its previous condi- tions. Christ's resurrection showed that it meant entry into an entirely new phase of existence. Third, it brought the doctrine of resurrection from the background of re- ligious thought to the very front. The Gospel of Jesus Christ demanded accept- ance on the ground of His resurrection. It was that which declared Him to be the Son of God, and set the final seal of Divine ap- proval on His teaching and life. The Gos- pel which the apostles preached was the Gospel of the resurrection. Confession of 45
The Hereafter and Heaven
Jesus as Lord and belief in His resurrec- tion, they declared, are the only things nec- essary to salvation.
Paul writes to the Romans concerning Jesus Christ, our Lord, that He was *'de- clared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." "Remove the resurrection of Christ," says Dr. Marcus Dods; "prove it to be unhistorical, the de- lusive fancy of the disciples, and the entire Christian creed crumbles, and we lose our strongest evidence of the supernatural in the life of our Lord." He then quotes from another: "If it be proved that no living Christ ever issued from the tomb of Joseph, then that tomb becomes the grave not of a man, but of a religion, with all the hopes built on it and all the splendid enthusiasms it has inspired;" and he continues in these words, "If belief in the resurrection is base- less, if the body of Jesus rotted away in 46
^^Risen Indeed!''
the grave like all others, if he was held fast in the grim silence of death, then, although His ideal life remains, yet materialists may urge, with a force that is not easily resisted, that material laws are supreme, that Na- ture is God, and that beyond the limits Na- ture imposes we have no outlook at all." Neither will Dr. Dods have anything to do with any of the recent or former substi- tute theories for the literal resurrection, such as Harnack's, that Christ lay in His grave, and the elements of His body passed into nature as with other men, but that His Spirit was not inclosed in the grave, but is living; that His teachings and life and His dedication even unto death to the interests of humanity are what survive. Or the older theory that the vision of the risen Christ grew out of the overwhelming yearn- ing on the part of His disciples for His idolized form and the conviction that such a soul could not possibly become extinct; 47
The Hereafter and Heaven
or that it arose out of the fervor and ecstasy of a Mary Magdalene ; or from a strong im- pression, directly and miraculously im- printed by God upon the disciples' minds that their Master was still alive; or from mistaking, in their strained mood, some one else in the dim dawn for Him ; or from the appearance of some materialization of Him- self by Christ from the world of spirits — a materialization which could assume mo- mentarily the old familiar shape, even as modern spiritualists claim the dead have shown themselves capable of accomplish- ing.
As Dr. Dods clearly shows, all of .these views miss the point. The disciples be- lieved, as a matter of course, that Christ was alive and that His spirit was in para- dise. They needed no persuasion or assur- ance that Jesus was immortal. Not one of them had any doubt about it. That He ex- isted somewhere in the spiritual realm no
48
^^Risen Indeed!"
one of them would have questioned for a moment. They demanded no evidence that Jesus had shared the lot of all good men, and that somewhere in God's universe He was alive and happy.
But it was another problem entirely that proposed itself to them : Whether, after all, He was the Messiah ? And, if so, how was it that He could suffer rejection by the authorities and death at their hands? ''How could the Messiah, the great King who was to have all power and authority, have been so helpless, and have actually been crucified as an impostor?"
It was this crucial question which was answered by the resurrection. That sub- lime and awful event was the reversal of the judgment of the Sanhedrin, and as such was immediately hailed by the disciples. In that nullification of death, God owned His Son and accepted His sacrifice and set Him above all powers. The hope of 4 49
The Hereafter and Heaven
Christ's followers, which had been dis- mayed and blighted, was suddenly, com- pletely, and forever re-established. The empty grave, and the Master reappearing after manifest death and burial, proclaimed Jesus clearly the eternal Christ, the Son of God, with power. ''The Messiah must not be left under any bondage to the world. He must be victorious over man's last enemy and must enter on His reign in the complete manhood of a perfected body and spirit."
''The rulers congratulated themselves that one more crazy delusion had been stamped out. And but for the resurrection it would have been stamped out. But for this Divine reversal of human judgment the disciples would not have known what to make of His death. The beauty and promise of His words, which had so attracted them, would now have seemed delusive and unbearable. But in the light of the resurrection they 50
"Risen Indeed!"
saw that Christ 'ought to have suffered these things and so to enter His glory/ It was only in the light of the resurrection that the death of Christ becomes intel- ligible."
We must never dissociate the resurrec- tion from the Christ of the resurrection. It is not a fair test of our belief in the greatest miracle of the ages to ask if we would believe easily the testimony of wit- nesses who might come and tell us that some ordinary mortal like ourselves, whom we might know died some days since, had been seen alive and had been conversed with. We have to do with a unique per- sonality. He was different from all other men. ''No one is likely to believe in the resurrection who has not been so impressed by the personality presented in the Gospels as to be persuaded that somehow life dwells in Him for all men." It is not the reported rising again of some man, sinful like his 51
The Hereafter and Heaven
fellows, who might be named Indiscrimi- nately that is before us. A totally different situation confronts us : ''It is the rising again of the Christ, of Him who had- founded God's Kingdom and been put to death because He had claimed to be the Representative of God ; it was impossible that His earthly career should close with His death, that the curtain should fall in the darkness of Calvary ; that His followers should be left in doubt whether, after all, God owned Him as the Christ." And so, while the disciples believed in Jesus's Mes- siahship because of His resurrection, we are helped in accepting the resurrection because of His unique, solitary, and Divine person- ality and character.
It is to those who have embraced this Christ by faith — who have learned to love Him with passion and devotion, and to ap- preciate what manner of person He is — that the tremendous miracle of the resurrection 52
^^Risen Indeed P'
becomes not a stumbling-block, but a fact easily believed and to be joyfully received. Those who have experienced in themselves the spiritual resurrection through Christ have no difficulty with this physical resur- rection from Joseph's tomb. As a writer in the Hibbert Journal says: ''It was not the will of God to force proof of the fact of the resurrection upon the minds of un- believers, but, on the contrary, only to re- veal the risen Savior to those who trusted and loved Him before the crucifixion. . . . The fact that the history reports only ap- pearances of Jesus to His disciples is cer- tain ; and it is equally a historical fact that in every generation since, only those who have sincerely believed in Him as their Teacher and Savior have had a genuine faith in Him as their risen Lord. . . . The real believers have been the men and women who loved Him and kept His command- ments and attained to spiritual union with 53
The Hereafter and Heaven
Him — these have had no doubt that He is their Hving Savior ; and we have no reason to think that it is the will of God, or the natural law of the spiritual life, that any others should have the certainty of His resurrection. . . . When the human soul has accepted the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, has followed the Master to Gethsemane and Calvary, has entered into the meaning of the crucifixion, and closed with it as his own death to sin and rising again into the new life of the children of God, then the resurrection of the Lord is to him the natural and necessary sequence of His death. There is no difficulty in be- lieving it: on the contrary, it seems to him that he could and would believe the resur- rection, though there were no historical evi- dence for it. The Son of God could not be annihilated by the death of His body. The Eternal Life which was with the Father, and manifested the Father to us, 54
^^Risen Indeed!"
could not possibly be holden in the grasp of death." It is in regard to this great miracle and mystery, as with all the glori- ous truths of the gospel : ''If any man will- eth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching/'
Ther^ is no book which has appeared re- cently which has attracted much wider or more favorable comment than one by a prominent Methodist author, William North Rice, professor of geology in Wesleyan University. His volume on "Christian Faith in an Age of Science,'' is most signifi- cant as giving the conclusions of an open- minded, unfearing, thoroughly competent scientist — one who by eminence in his chosen department for a third of a century has earned the right to speak from the sci- entific standpoint with recognized authority upon the doctrines and dogmas of our Christian faith. The fact that he is him- self a Christian can not invalidate what he 55
The Hereafter and Heaven
has to say unless it is admitted that one who is a Materialist is similarly invalidated in his conclusions on the other side through prejudice.
We wish now to present what this geol- ogist has to affirm about the resurrection, but must content ourselves with brief ex- cerpts from his full and conclusive argu- ment. He writes : ''When we consider that, but for the faith in the resurrection, Chris- tianity would have been buried forever in the rock-hewn tomb in which the Master lay, and when we try to measure v/hat Christianity, with its revelation of Divine Fatherhood, and human brotherhood, and redemption from sin, and life immortal, has been to mankind in these centuries of Chris- tendom and Christian civilization, and what it promises to be in the glory of a millen- nial future, we can not deem it 'a thing incredible' that, in that transcendent crisis of man's moral history, 'God should raise 56
"Risen Indeed!"
the dead/ ... It is unnecessary to com- ment on the air of perfeot simpHcity and guilelessness pervading the Gospels. A candid reader is continually impressed with the conviction that the writers of these books fully believed what they wrote. . . . There is an air of photographic fidelity rather than of artistic selection of details. . . . When I think of the alternatives to belief in the resurrection, they all seem so much more improbable that I find it easier to accept the one mystery that explains all mysteries. To believe that the faith in the resurrection was a delusion, so contradict- ing all psychological laws, or a myth which was fully developed in a single day, or a falsehood perpetrated by the disciples to bring upon themselves imprisonment and death — ^to believe that the system of relig- ious faith which has created a new and nobler civilization had its origin in fraud or self-deception — taxes credulity more 57
The Hereafter and Heaven
than to believe that Jesus rose from the dead."
Dr. Rice says this in full acknowledg- ment of the difficulties which he must feel, in common with the thought of the present scientific age, in accepting the faith in the resurrection. He sees the solemn proces- sion forever marching into the ''undiscov- ered country'' — he realizes the improbabil- ity of an exception to the generalization that the dead do not return to life, sus- tained by so immense a mass of accordant experience, and yet he is absolutely con- strained, as an honest man, in view of all the facts, to repeat the clause in the creed, ''On the third day He rose from the dead." And what is final and conclusive for him will doubtless have similar weight for the great majority of thoughtful and candid men who admit the difficulties, but confess that they can do no other than believe in the supreme fact and miracle of all time. 58
"Risen Indeed!"
And this Jesus, who burst the bars of death, is our Forerunner who has entered into that which is within the veil ; is the firstfruits of the great ingathering of hu- manity— the specimen sheaf of all the sheaves to be garnered in the Eternal Store-houses when the Father shall at last sound the sweet strain of heaven's Harvest Home.
"O Prince of Life ! I know That when I too lie low, Thou wilt at last my soul from death awaken; And thus I will not shrink From the grave's awful brink; The heart that trusts in Thee shall ne'er be shaken.
To me the darksome tomb
Is but a narrow room, Where I may rest in peace from sorrow free;
Thy death shall give me power
To cry in that dark hour, O Death, O Grave, where is your victory?"
59
((
CHAPTER III With You Alway"
This risen and ascended Jesus is — ac- cording to His own promise — Himself with us, personally and always — all the days — unto the close of the age, the end of the world. The Apostles' Creed declares in- deed that Christ has ''ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty." But there is danger lest our imaginations, uncontrolled by our reasons, shall lead us into error when re- peating this phrase. It is, perhaps, inevi- table for us to think of heaven as the land that is 'Very far off,'' as separated from us by the distance of the fixed stars; we al- 60
"With You Alway"
ways speak of it as ''up/' although we know well that, in infinite space and on a round, revolving planet, there can be no real distinctions such as up or down.
If we keep in mind a regal throne, like that of an earthly monarch, only more mag- nificent as befits the Deity — a celestial pal- ace, a train of angelic courtiers — and then place Christ on a far-away throne at the right hand of such a God, sitting in regal majesty, we not only remove Him from us in distance and in sympathy and commun- ion, but we externalize and materialize the entire character and functions both of Him and His Father. But if we think of the Omnipresent God, everywhere revealing Himself — the Immanent Deity resident as the Holy Spirit in His worlds and in the hearts of His creatures; and if we think of His throne as being the center of His manifestations to whosoever beholds Him, we shall be saved from many an erroneous 6i
The Hereafter and Heaven
view which separates us from Him and His Son.
The right hand of a God of love must be, not in some distant sphere where He is enshrined in indescribable glories, but precisely where He is needed most — down amidst the wretchedness of the poverty, sin, vice, sorrow, and suffering of His crea- tures. If God focalizes Himself anywhere, it must be there. It was there that Jesus was found when on the earth. His nature has not changed. We can not imagine Him, when there is any human woe to be alle- viated, being content to sit eternally on any throne, no matter how glorious, and receive through the countless ages the ado- ration of saints and angels. Such an ex- istence would be as vain as it would be insufferable to Him.
He has infinitely better ways of spend- ing His eternities than that. He is the 62
"With You Alway"
Redeemer evermore. His Ascension must be interpreted, not in terms of space, but in terms of the spirit. If we speak of His Second Advent, it must not be on the basis of a conception that for twenty centuries He has been absent, far removed from a world that He is some time going to visit again. He has never gone away. He is with us now and shall be always and to the end of the world. God's glory does not consist in any outward glittering pageantry and pomp. It is the glory of a love that sympathizes and succors and gets down close beside His child. That place is the right hand of His throne, and there Jesus is peculiarly manifested. Even when the hymns of the Church, in burning imagery, have spoken of "the highest place that heaven affords ;'' of the royal diadem that "adorns the mighty Victor's brow ;" of "the Lamb upon His throne," still they have not 63
The Hereafter and Heaven
lost sight of the great truth we are trying to express. They say:
''From His high throne in bliss He deigns Our every prayer to heed; Bears with our folly, soothes our pains, Supplies our every need."
But we must not suppose that that ''throne in bliss" is a thousand million leagues away, and that He emanates His help from afar.
''The healing of the seamless dress
Is by our beds of pain; We touch Him in life's throng and press, And we are whole again.''
Certainly this thought of the nearness of the Father and the Son ought to be a very welcome one to us. The question of what God and Christ are to us — a fear or a joy, a depression or an inspiration, a con- demnation or a reward, a nightmare or a beatific vision, a comfort and a rest or a disturbance and an annoyance — is obviously a very practical one for our religious lives.
64
^With You Alway"
Frequently have we seen in prisons and penitentiaries the placard hung up in the corridors, "Thou God, Seest Me/' The obvious suggestion was that God was watching the prisoners like one of the turnkeys or guards. He was the Warden of a World Prison. He was an Infinite Detective, from whose scrutiny none could escape. Men might wish to run away from His unwelcome oversight, but it was utterly impossible.
To the wicked some such thought of the Deity is perhaps inevitable. It repre- sents some part of the truth. It has re- straining power over evil. Even if God be conceived by wrong-doers in no higher light than an Almighty Police Judge, It is better so than not to be thought of at all.
Some imperfect Christians sometimes
appear to think and speak too erroneously
of their Father. He is to them, seemingly,
more of a Dread than an Ecstasy — One
5 63
The Hereafter and Heaven
who has put His children on a probation, dangerous and difficult, and then watches to detect their slips and rate them with their errors. To such there is no happi- ness, but only torture, in the thought that God sees them.
But the truly good man rejoices in the thought that God sees him, that He is coun- seling him with His eye upon him. He would not have it otherwise. He is glad that the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear Him, upon them that hope in His mercy. He does not look forward to stand- ing before Him with fear on any Judgment- day. In his joyous anticipations of what the Righteous Judge shall do on that day, and on all judgment-days, he calls on the heavens to be glad, and on the earth to re- joice, and the sea and the fields and the trees to exult and sing for joy. For God shall judge the world with righteousness and the people with His truth. 66
^With You Alway"
When the Psalmist speaks of how the Lord had searched him and known him, understanding his thoughts afar off, win- nowing his path, besetting him behind and before, and laying his hand upon him ; when he asks, —
"Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?"
is it because he wants to flee from God, or because he finds it irksome and disagree- able to be forever under the sight of the Eternal? Ah, no! But it was his highest consolation that, whether in heaven or in Sheol, or in the uttermost parts of the sea, the right hand of God should lead him and hold him. God would not lose him in the darkness; for, for Him — blessed fact — the night shines as the day. His sweet reas- surance it is to say:
"When I awake, I am still with thee."
67
The Hereafter and Heaven
Instead of seeking to evade it, and shrink- ing away in sulkiness or terror from the gaze of God, he enthusiastically invites it and strongly desires it, crying :
''Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my thoughts; And see if there be any way of wickedness in me, And lead me in the way everlasting."
And this same feeling of peace and rest- fulness comes to the devout Christian when he is conscious that his Christ is not far ofif somewhere, on some outer rim of this or some other universe, but close beside him in the thick of life with all its strug- gles and temptations.
Particularly is the consciousness of this blessed nearness of the Unseen One borne in upon us as the mystic influences of Nature — ^permeated and saturated with the Spirit of God — manifesting an Indwell- ing Deity speaking to us in still clearer 68
^With You Alway"
tones in the Incarnate Word — impress us on some perfect June day.
That must be a strangely unsusceptible mind that is not singularly touched. Every- where overflowing life, everywhere the apocalypse of beauty ! Flower and leaf and grass-blade, stretches of woods and green- sward and quiet waters, fleecy cloud-forms and the clear, blue canopy — all invite the soul.
The joy that our spirits have in com- munion with nature, at this culmination- time of her loveliness, is not, as some would have it, a return to barbarism. It repre- sents a primary instinct of humanity. Man comes again into contact with the most ancient founts of inspiration. It is testi- mony to the fact that man is natural as well as, supernatural in his origin, and that the roots of his being strike down through the good, brown soil. If God is our Father, the Earth is our mother. To 69
The Hereafter and Heaven
be of the earth earthy is not to be base. We come from the dust, and to the dust shall return; but the dust is not "vile," as old theologies affirmed. It, too, is filled with the fullness of God, and shows forth His presence and power. To own broth- erhood to the clod, the tree, the bird, the beast, is not to confess ourselves less men, but more. Our evolution has carried us up until we have taken on the image of God« and are made but "little lower" than the Eternal. But we carry in us the lineage and heritage of our development through all the stages of our progress upward, and must needs feel intensely a kindly sympathy with the universal life of Nature. We have one Creator and Father. We, too, are a part of the Cosmos. Deep answers unto deep — the profundities without us calling to the profundities within us. The Soul of the world and our souls meet and claim kinship.
70
^With You Alway"
The one life of the All-Giver flows and throbs in us and all things, and makes a fundamental unity. The Oversoul floods all existence — all things human, animate, inanimate. Indeed, nothing is inanimate. God's working and life are everywhere — the All-in-all — and we, with all else, are included in a common bond of relationship. Nature is not given to us mainly for the material ends of life, but for her holy min- istrations to our highest life. She speaks to us with the voice of God.
There are those who never recognize miracle except in so-called infractions or reversals of Nature's laws. If the moon should stand still, or the sun roll backward or be extinguished, they would be aston- ished, and point to the evidence of the supernatural. But let us have that broader faith which sees the Perpetual Miracle all about us — in the midnight sky, in every sunrise. Wordsworth never rose higher 71
The Hereafter and Heaven
than in those lines composed near Tin- tern Abbey:
"And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things."
We are convinced that too fev^ Chris- tian people get the help they might for their spiritual parts from this intimate com- munion with nature. Certainly during rare October days, when "earth 's crammed with heaven and every common bush on fire with God;" when the golden-rod is in bloom; when the leaves are burning with such passionate colors; when the sky out- rivals that of Italy in its intense and pellucid blueness; when the stars at night and the planets shine with a peculiar radiance; 72
^With You Always
when there is a tenderness over the pass- ing of summer and a vague premonition of the chills of winter ; when the heart is filled with thankfulness over the bounty of the harvested fields — then, seemingly, the All- Father ought to come very near to His children through the myriad voices of the earth and the worlds.
To Bryant they came often and often. As he watched the flight of the waterfowl, while the heavens were glowing with the last steps of day, this comforting thought took possession of him:
"He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright."
There has been too strong a reaction
against what used to be called '^natural
religion." The religion of Christ and the
Bible and the religion of the Creator and
73
. The Hereafter and Heaven
of nature are not distinct and contrary. Evangelical Christianity and the proclama- tions of the earth and sky harmonize. Few of us will be carried over into Pantheism as we sit and brood on an autumn day over the mystery in the shimmering light, the fleecy clouds, the falling leaves, the sun- sets defying the brush of a Rubens or a Turner. And are there not other still small voices which come at night-time when one is listening to the monotonous song of the tree-toads and the chirping of the crickets? What conceptions of the illim- itable, of eternity, of omniscience come flooding solemnly yet restfully in upon the soul as, for an hour, one may look upon the stars and think of the millions of miles their light has traveled and speculate on what may be in those far-oif spaces of the universe !
This reverent spirit in the presence of nature must be something more than a fad 74
"With You Alway"
or a piece of sentimentality. It must be a true worship. And, where the impulse to it does not come spontaneously, it must, for the good of the soul, be definitely cultivated like a love for the reading of the Bible itself.
Nature is our oldest Bible, and the read- ing of her sacred truth is too much neg- lected by us all in these days of nervous overstrain when men have no time for even a hurried glance at the marvelous pictures, beyond the possibilities of the most famous art-galleries of earth, that God is painting for them hourly. They do not notice the stars once a year, if even so often. It might be a distinct gain for our complex and feverish age to be taken back for a time to shepherd the flocks with Abraham and the Bethlehemites, if, thereby, men might get a little closer to nature and na- ture's God. For some who have dropped God out of their lives altogether, in their 75
The Hereafter and Heaven
mad race after material goods, it would
even be an advantage to be a pagan suckled
in an outworn creed, if thereby they might
have glimpses that would make them less
forlorn —
"Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
For God did certainly speak to the ear- liest men through the days that uttered speech to days and the nights that showed knowledge to nights. In the most remote annals of historic man there is the evidence that he was sensible of the presence and power of a Creator, Ruler, and Father in and through all the wondrous frame of things that surrounded him. In the ab- sence of an experimental science, which demonstrates the unity of the universe, the prevalence of the same laws everywhere, it was, perhaps, inevitable that humanity lost itself in polytheism — in gods many and lords many — but underneath even that 76
"With You Alway"
system of idolatry — back of emblems of calves, bulls, fish, winged lions — there lay the thought of the Mysterious One — ^the in- visible Maker whom men in their ignorance and sinfulness were reaching out blindly to implore. And who can doubt that the All Merciful, pitying their lack of knowledge, and looking only on their need, interpreted their prayers as really meant for Him?
And we who have such clearer teaching ; we who know the immanence, the indwell- ing of the Almighty in all of His works; we who also understand the transcendence of the Infinite One beyond the limits of all universes, shall we not feel that we ought to bring ourselves into loving and intimate converse with this God through the work of His fingers? Shall we not acknowledge gratefully that there are Holy Scriptures written in rock, flower, tree, moon, stars, and sunrises, as well as in the pages we call the Bible? Let us not forget how that 77
The Hereafter and Heaven
Bible itself speaks of the Jehovah who had made His name excellent in the earth and set His glory in the heavens. Let us read again that noble hymn of creation in Gen- esis; such nature-Psalms as the 8th, the 1 8th, and the 104th; the exhortations of Amos pleading with men to seek Him who ''made the Seven Stars and Orion — ^the Lord is His name ;" the magnificent de- scriptions of the works of the Creator in Job and Proverbs. Let us follow rever- ently in the footsteps of our scientists, who eagerly explore the secrets of nature, read- ing therein the mind, thought, and revela- tion of their God, and showing a passion in the quest like that the Christian has when poring over the sacred page. Let us remember how Jesus Himself loved the lilies, the birds, the sea, the fields, the hills. And, taking with us into our communion with nature the conception of the love of the Father which Jesus has given us, our 78
"With You Alway"
hearts will grow tender with the memory of His untold compassion, while they are awed by reflecting prayerfully on his in- conceivable wisdom and power, and broad- ened by thoughts of such vastness of space and immensity of time, symbols of His greatness. Thus shall we hear with the inner ear those earth-whisperings — those intimations of Him who is ever by our side, and of that Place he went to prepare for us, and of that unending life of im- m.ortality and bliss in our Inheritance in the city that hath foundations.
79
CHAPTER IV "Not Born to Die"
"Not only cunning casts in clay:
Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men, At least to me? I would not stay."
In that matchless Ode on Immortality, Wordsworth speaks of the child as ''haunted forever by the eternal mind," as one over whom ''immortality broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, a presence which is not to be put by." But this is true not only for the boy, but for the man also. Our inextinguishable hopes possess and control us. We needs must recognize the imperativeness and divineness of their call, and follow where they lead. The fundamental intuitions and convictions of the soul are our foundation-stones upon So
^^Not Born to Die"
which to erect the fabric of our lives. They issue their unimpeachable warrants for our beliefs. We can not deny that which is innermost to ourselves.
That eminent psychologist and philoso- pher, Dr. William James, of Harvard, speaks of the loquacity with which ration- alism may challenge our beliefs for proofs, and chop logic, and try to put us down with words. ''But,'' he says, ''it will fail to convince or convert you, all the same, if your dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions. If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which ra- tionalism inhabits. Your whole subcon- scious life, your impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the result; and something in you absolutely knows that the result must be truer than any logic-chopping rational- 6 8i
The Hereafter and Heaven
ivStic talk, however clever, that may con- tradict it."
This is admirably said, and will find a response in the utterances of the Spirit, which are heard in the Holy of Holies of our souls. Our dominant and irrepressi- ble hopes, which grapple anchor-like with that which is behind the veil, are not to be read out of court by any petty attorney logic. It is in our best hours, our hours of vision and inspiration, that we know the truth by direct sight. It is then that, in the language of Browning,
"Earth breaks up, time drops away, In flows heaven with its new day Of endless life.''
The Rev. William Chester, in 'Immor- tality a Reasonable Faith," has well stated the conclusions to which our deep-seated, ineradicable convictions must conduct us. These are his words: ''Were this life all, everything would be so adjusted as to sat- 82
'^Not Born to Die"
isfy the spirit. We would be as contented as the cow chewing her cud, or the sheep grazing on hillside without a thought or care for past or future. . . . What is the explanation of those subtle, mysterious moods of the spirit that, under deep ex- periences of joy or of sorrow, lift us out of this world and waft us toward eternity? Whence come those true, deep moments of the divination of some transcendent world, of some Presence above the human, and of a reality of contact of the human spirit with the Divine? ... If we trust a feeling in regard to the reality of the universe and build life upon it, why not trust these deep- est surgings of the human spirit that bear the great flood-tide toward the Infinite?"
But the doctrine of materialism is no more absurd to faith than it is to a pro- found and rational philosophy. A late writer says: "A famous scientific lecturer, being desirous to answer the question, 83
The Hereafter and Heaven
'What is man ?' took his retort, and reduced a human body, by chemical analysis, to its component parts. He then presented to his audience twenty-three pounds of car- bon, two pounds of lime, twenty-two ounces of phosphorus, about one ounce each of sodium, iron, potassium, magnesium, and silicon, and apologized for not exhibiting some five thousand cubic feet of oxygen, and one hundred thousand cubic feet of hydrogen, and fifty-two cubic feet of ni- trogen."
We have ourselves seen man thus re- duced to his physical elements, put up in various jars properly labeled, and displayed on shelves of museums. But the thought never occurred to us that it was the con- tents of these jars that thought, imagined, reasoned, loved, sacrificed, prayed, wor- shiped, and dreamed of immortality. The expression of an ancient writing seemed to us to state the case according to the dictum
84
'^Not Born to Die"
of the highest reason : "The dust returneth to the earth as it was, and the spirit return- eth unto God who gave it." And, if we are asked to believe that the body and its functions are all of a man, and that there is no evidence of an immortal spirit, we reply in the terms of the profoundest think- ers of our times : Brain and phosphorus are only instruments for the expression of thought. The soul is the Thinker. The soul is the Harper ; it is not the instrument nor the music. It is the Player, and makes the music. You can have all the chemical properties that go to make a man, and you can hold these in your hands, and yet not have a man. There is a Something More — a Plus — a Something which eludes micro- scope, scalpel, and test-tubes, but which, though intangible and invisible, is yet very real. We call it the Soul. It is the Man himself.
85
The Hereafter and Heaven
"Myriads of motley molecules through space Move round triumphant. By their whirling pace
Shall we be shaken? All in earth's vast span, Our very bodies, veer to other shapes; 'Mid the mad dance one stubborn power escapes,
Looks on and marvels, — 't is the soul of man."
Lord Kelvin, England's foremost man of science, contends that science positively affirms creative power, and makes every one feel a miracle in himself. It is not in dead matter, he asserts, that men live, move, and have their being, but in a crea- tive and directive pov^er, which science compels them to accept as an article of be- lief. Biologists, he said, w^ere coming once more to a firm acceptance of something, and that was a vital principle. Agnostics they might be in science, but they only knew the Creator in his works, and were abso- lutely forced by science to admit and to believe with absolute confidence in a di- rective power. Because biologists could not escape from the conclusion that there 86
"Not Born to Die"
was original creative power when they studied the physics and dynamics of Hving and dead matter, science was not antago- nistic to religion, but a help to it. *'A mil- lion of millions of millions of years would not give them a beautiful world like ours." "Forty years ago," said he, "I asked Liebig, walking somewhere in the country, if he believed that the grass and flowers which we saw around us grew by mere chemical force. He answered : 'No ! no more than I could believe that a book of botany, de- scribing them could grow by mere chem- ical forces.' Every action of a human free will is a miracle to physical and chemical and mathematical science."
Recently we came across an illustration used to answer those who asserted that the mind of man was so related to his brain that when the brain was destroyed in death the mind and all thought and conscious 87
The Hereafter and Heaven
existence was destroyed also. The author admitted, of course, the close relationship of body and spirit, of brain and mind. He then said: ''Things may be in one kind of relation to each other so that if you take away the one you end the other; or they may be — equally closely and minutely — re- lated to one another with no such conse- quence. A couple of illustrations will make this plain. Steam is related to, say, a loco- motive engine. Take away the engine and there is an end to the steam. But why? Because of the kind of relation between the engine and the steam, because it is a causal relationship. But take, say, a ray of light in a prism. The refraction and colorization of the light are in manifest relation to the prism. But take away the prism, and do you destroy the light? Cer- tainly not. And why not? Because the kind of relationship here fs not that of a 88
^^Not Bom to Die"
cause — the prism does not cause the Hght, but is rather that of a medium supplying opportunit}' for one particular form of its manifestation. I hope this is clear, and if it is clear,, the application of it will be clear, too. The whole question of the pos- sibility of the continuance of conscious life after the dissolution of the body is simply this — is the relationship of matter to mind that of a cause, as an engine's is to steam, or merely that of a medium, as a prism is to light? If it be the former, then phys- ical death ends spiritual existence also ; but if it be the latter, then physical death ends merely one particular form, the bodily, of spiritual existence, but that existence itself may continue just as light continues to be, even though, by the breaking of the prism, one particular form of its manifestation is destroyed.''
There is, in relation to this whole ques- 89
The Hereafter and Heaven
tion of materialism, a question urged by Tennyson that still awaits an answer:
*'Why should we bear with an hour of torture,
a moment of pain, If every man dies forever, if all his griefs are
in vain; And the homeless planet at length will be
wheeled thro' the silence of space, Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race, When the worm shall have writhed its last, and
its last brother-worm will have fled From the dead fossil skull that is left in the
rocks of an earth that is dead?'*
Says Charles Fletcher Dole : ''Can we be- lieve that the march of all the generations of mankind has been the way of death only ? Can we believe that the noblest and holiest, the grand men of genius, the leaders and helpers of mankind, have perished like so many cattle? Then must we translate all life into the terms of final death. 'The Choir Invisible/ and everything else, disappears and 'leaves not a wrack behind/ The more we contemplate this 90
^^Not Born to Die"
negative interpretation of the universe, the more tremendous is the strain on our intelHgence. Skepticism becomes at least as difficult as faith seemed to be. . . . The preposterous will not be suffered to happen. We could not respect a God much less worship or love any being, who brought ranks of creatures into existence, shared the mightiest thoughts with them, inspired infi- nite hopes in them, lifted the noblest of them into rapturous communion with Himself, continually unfolded their minds and hearts and disclosed the unexhausted capacities of their being, only to drop them into noth- ingness, as children blow their soap-bubbles and drop them out of the window to burst and vanish. Is this all that God can do? . . . Who could feel the slightest enthu- siasm in efforts to crowd the land with millions of people, all furnished with model houses and a living wage, but believing nothing and hoping nothing beyond their 91
The Hereafter and Heaven
brief span of years, more than the com- fortable cattle on which they fed? Better, we say, to have been thrown to the lions in the Coliseum, better to have marched to death with Joan of Arc, better to have been mobbed with Garrison and Love joy, than to live in a world where the eternal visions had perished."
The doctrine of the conservation of en- ergy is familiar to all students of science. If we seek in the encyclopaedias for some exact definition of the term we are told that it signifies the preservation of the exact amount of energy which a force pos- sesses, even though, losing its original char- acter, it appears in other forms. Thus power may be transformed into velocity, so that what is lost in the former is gained in the latter, or vice versa; or it may be transformed, on the same principle, into heat. Thus there is the correlation of all the physical forces. It is demonstrated 92
^^Not Born to Die"
that all the forces of nature — heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and motion — are convertible into each other. No force, therefore, is destroyed; it is only transformed into some equivalent capable of doing exactly the same amount of work which it, unchanged, could have done. Energy communicated to a body or system of bodies is never lost; it is merely distributed, and continues to exist as po- tential energy, as motion or as heat.
It is not wonderful that this marvelous indestructibility in the natural realm should furnish a strong hint or suggestion of a parallel permanence and indestructibility in the mental or spiritual field. If it does not furnish an argument, it at least supplies us with a striking illustration of the im- perishability of the soul. Thus Carlyle ex- claims: "Is the lost friend still mysteriously here, even as we are here mysteriously, with God ? Know of a truth that only the Time- 93
The Hereafter and Heaven
shadows have perished, or are perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and forever." And Whittier, speak- ing of the ''last low swan-song'' of his friend Longfellow, writes:
"His last ! And ours, dear friend, is near ; As clouds that rake the mountains here, We too shall pass and disappear.
Yet howsoever changed or tost, ' Not even a wreath of mist is lost, No atom can itself exhaust.
So shall the soul's superior force Live on and run its endless course In God's unlimited universe.
And we, whose brief reflections seem To fade like clouds from lake and stream Shall brighten in a holier beam."
Long, long before these recent centuries was the voice of the materialist and the agnostic heard in the world. There is a chapter of the Old Testament Apocrypha — it is to be found in the Wisdom of Sol-
94
^^Not Bom to Die"
omon — which ought to be more familiar
to Bible readers. Its description is almost
modern and to the life, as it represents the
infidel denier of that day speaking:
''Our life is short and tedious, And in the death of man there is no remedy : Neither was there any man known to have
returned from the grave. For we are born at all adventure: And we shall be hereafter as though we had
never been : For the breath in our nostrih is as smoke. And a little spark in the moving of our heart: Which, being extinguished, our body shall be
turned into ashes. And our spirit shall vanish as the soft air, And our name shall be forgotten in time. And no man shall have our works in remem- brance. And our life shall pass away as the trace of a
cloud. And shall be dispersed as a mist That is driven away with the beams of the sun, And overcome with the heat thereof. For our time is a very shadow that passeth
away; And after our end there is no returning: For it is fast sealed, so that no man cometh
again.
95
'^Not Born to Die"
Come on, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present:
And let us speedily use the creatures like as in youth.
Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and oint- ments :
And let no flower of the Spring pass by us:
Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds, before they be withered:
Let none of us go without his part of our volup- tuousness ;
Let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place :
For this is our portion, and our lot is this."
"Such things they did imagine, and were de- ceived :
For their own wickedness hath blinded them.
As for the mysteries of God, they knew them not:
Neither hoped they for the wages of righteous- ness.
Nor discerned a reward for blameless souls.
For God created man to be immortal,
And made him to be an image of his own eternity."
96
CHAPTER V
Waiting for the Oarsman
As ONI) nears the boundary line of this mortal life it is instinctive that his eyes should strain to catch the light in the win- dows from the home beyond. He becomes possessed of a reverent curiosity — an in- tense but chastened expectancy — as to what awaits him a few miles further on in his life's roadway. Well for him if he can have that calm faith in the Eternal Good- ness which enabled Whittier to sing in the familiar but immortal words:
"And so, beside the Silent Sea, I wait the muffled oar; No harm from Him can come to me, On ocean or on shore."
The mystery of the river of time, forever flowing into the ocean of eternity, is as old 7 97
Waiting for the Oarsman
as the race, but its solemn impressiveness is as fresh and strong to-day as ever. To us as individuals the passage of years, in our ephemeral earthly lives, is of momentous, almost tragic, significance. Youth can hardly abide the slow progress of the months which seem to crawl by with pro- voking laggardness. Young men strain like hounds at the leash, impatient for the active doings of mature life. Tennyson, in 'Xocksley Hall," speaks of the *'wild pulsa- tion" that he felt when he heard his days before him, and the tumult of his life — when he yearned for "the large excitement that the coming years would yield." So, to-day, looking out upon the world's ac- tivities— as Tennyson's boy, leaving his father's farm, eager-hearted, looked at the flaring lights of London — ^the young man of our times longs to be mixing with the turb- ulent whirl of living and acting.
98
Waiting for the Oarsman
"And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before
him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men."
But it is far different with those who have passed the meridian of life and come to the philosophic period of reflectiveness. For them the years hurry by like express trains. Hardly is one accustomed to writ- ing the figures of the new year before it is gone. Something like awe creeps over one as he thinks that, at the longest esti- mate, three-fourths of life is used up, and perhaps another decade — or at most two — will write finis to the story. He counts his years like a miser his gold. Not very long, and he knows he shall almost
*'have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, . . . And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."
He ponders, at times, upon the life of the hereafter. As Charles Cuthbert Hall says, 99
LOFC.
The Hereafter and Heaven
he is like a man who has read about India all his life, but now, at last, finds himself on board a steamer headed for that land, knowing that not many days off, its palms and strange cities will actually greet his eyesight. And he does not fear, but he is filled with the most intense kind of reverent curiosity. He has no gloomy and depre- ciatory view of life. It is Macbeth, the murderer and tyrant — ^the man with his conscience morbid and torturing him to sickness and utter weariness, who, on being told of the death of Lady Macbeth, takes it fatalistically — ''She should have died hereafter," — and he then falls into this pessimistic soliloquy:
*'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
lOO
Waiting for the Oarsman
And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
Thank God, there has come to us, through Christ, a grander, more satisfac- tory interpretation of our existence, tran- sitory and troubled as it is, than that. While we hold to immortality and the larger life of Eternity, we still confess that our hearts are strangely wedded to these sweet, endeared scenes of earth, and that there comes a natural and painful reluc- tance with the thought of looking for the last time upon the familiar landscapes and faces. The future doubtless is far better; but we know nothing of it, while we do know this earthly life so well and so lov- ingly !
A recent writer, discoursing on 'Xife's Present Tense,'' speaks of the rich char- acter of the moment in which we live : ''The 'now' of the actual life is never only the
lOI
The Hereafter and Heaven
present moment. It is a compound, a dis- tillation. Its essence is an extract of all that has gone before ;" and he quotes other writers who say: "Can this hour be sordid when it is a piece of God's eternity? If God is not Love at this moment, He never was or will be ;" ''My body weeps and sighs, but a something in me, which is above me, rejoices at everything;" "everything infe- rior is a higher in the making, everything hateful a coming beautiful, everything evil a coming good, and we see it, all incom- plete as it is, and laugh and love it/'
And if, with Phoebe Gary, the Christian reflects —
"Closer and closer my steps
Come to the dread abysm; Closer Death to my lips Presses the awful chrism.''
he still can trustfully hope and sing, in confidence that he is
I02
Waiting for the Oarsman
"Nearer the bound of life,
Where we lay our burdens down; Nearer leaving the cross, Nearer gaining the crown."
Let us therefore go with God unafraid into the new future that He is making. Just as we should estimate each new day, on awakening, in the light of the opportuni- ties it may afford, not only of enjoyment, but of self-improvement and benefaction, so should we regard the dawn of every added year with strange curiosity and spec- ulation. No one knows what a day may bring forth — what a year may yield. Our days and years come to us freighted with all the riches of the past — all the accumu- lated quintessence of the centuries of wis- dom and experience. There is with us, with each recurring birthday anniversary, all the momentum of the past and all the vast hopefulness and inspiration of futurity. 103
The Hereafter and Heaven
Each day will be throbbing with thrilling life and pulsating with the destinies it car- ries in embryo. We should greet every day-dawn and year-dawn with a prayer and commence it with a thought of self- consecration.
Life is not sufficiently regarded as mainly opportunity for character-building and testing. But we are to use life as essen- tially designed, not for getting and hold- ing, but for acquiring soul-worth in which lies salvation. By faith and love and prayer— by labor, by philanthropy, by self- culture, mental and spiritual — we are to seek unguessed treasures of wisdom and strength. We shall travel this way but once, and if we fail to get out of life what it was meant to yield us, we fail miserably. What largeness of salvation; what bound- lessness of God's love ; what sense of sacred nearness in His presence; what ineffable beauty in Jesus, what sublime victories for 104
Waiting for the Oarsman
His kingdom ; what length and breadth and depth and height of spiritual privilege may come to us all if we cultivate the expectant and receptive mood and are willing in the day of His power! Not sitting down to chronic and useless bewailing, let each, learning wisdom from past defeats, and gathering new incentive and stronger de- termination from sad experiences, plunge into the fight again. Here is time, fresh as from creation, for use, for redemption of the past. If every hour of it is taken possession of in the name of the King, is made to yield some high return, the story when all told will make a noble volume.
In such a faith and holy zeal we can fare on our way, softly saying as we go:
"Father, the shadows fall
Along my way:
'Tis past the noon of day, My westering sun tells that the eve is near; I know, but feel no fear. And loved ones have gone home, —
A holy band;
105
The Hereafter and Heaven
I hear them call me from the spirit-land,
A gentle call; Yes, dear ones, I shall come."
It is natural that, when old age comes creeping on, and all the conduits of the blood seem like to freeze up, there should be some mental protest. Shakespeare de- picts one of the characters in these words :
" Xet me not live,* quoth he, 'After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses All but new things disdain/ "
Despite all the husbanding of powers, after the meridian is past, at last there comes the time, as Emerson wrote, ^'to be old; to take in sail." It is not to be won- dered at that men who have been inten- sively active dislike to withdraw from the great world's activities. It takes some self- denial. They see that it ought to be done — that they have not the strength for the con- flict ; that the pace is too hot ; but still they io6
Waiting for the Oarsman
are reluctant. Let them hear the word of the Concord poet and philosopher :
"Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime;
Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right forward drive unharmed;
The port well worth the cruise is near, And every wave is charmed/'
Old age, unless broken by disease, need not be inactive and pass its time in idle- ness and vacancy. Age may be "a lusty winter, frostly but kindly." Men may re- tire from active business ; but there is much that remains. They can engage themselves in some philanthropic work; they can brighten other lives, encouraging and ad- vising those carrying on the work; they can keep an open eye for some who can help in highest enterprises. It was because Paul, the aged, felt that the time of his departure was come that he so earnestly exhorted Timothy, the young man, to suf- fer hardship, to do the work of an evan- gelist and fulfill his ministry. I07
The Hereafter and Heaven
Every old man should maintain an active interest in life. The action of our times is so large and splendid — such a glorious spectacle, so full and rich — that it is in- conceivable that it should ever grow tame, even to the nonagenarian. Simply because one is old is no excuse for being splenetic and morose. Others may try to be patient under constant complainings, but no one has the right to put them to such strain. The querulous old person may be pardoned if suffering physically. He may be excused for some bit of sentiment, such as Jacob indulged in, saying, ''Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life ;" but if he has lived a virtuous and happy life there ought never to draw nigh any years wherein he shall say, ''I have no pleasure in them.''
It has been well said that the devil has no happy old people. Retribution for a life of sin is peculiarly experienced in old age, io8
Waiting for the Oarsman
and whatsoever a man has sowed he cer- tainly reaps then. Respect for old age must be based on character. Men must have that which shall call for veneration. If they have lived selfish or animal lives, if they add foolishness and wickedness to senility, they will inspire disgust more than reverence. It is only to the righteous that the promise is made, ''Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in" — ripened, perfected, the fit- ting close of a well-ordered life.
There is necessity of constantly inform- ing the mind in early and midlife, in order to store up a fund for the reflection of age, and not to be left to vacant garrulousness. And who of us have not known many old people, bright, sunny, enthusiastic, keeping pace with every advance in thought, the warm gulf-stream of youth sweeping far up around the arctic zones of life? They do not know how to become dull and vege- 109
The Hereafter and Heaven
tative, or to relapse into monotony and in- anity. They cease at once to labor and to live. They say with Longfellow:
*'Ah! nothing is too late, Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. The night hath not yet come, we are not quite Cut off from labor by the failing light; Something remains for us to do or dare, Even the oldest trees some fruit may bear; For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, tho' in another dress."
Old people should endeavor, as much as in them lies, to adjust themselves to the changing circumstances of the advancing times. In society, the State and Church, the old order forever changes, yielding place to new. There is much good in con- servatism. It is a check to rashness and impulsiveness. But there may be an undue laudation of the past, and there should be an eager welcome to the new truths of the new age, which, as much as any in the past, may bear the sign-manual of God. God's no
Waiting for the Oarsman
new Messiahs should evermore receive the blessing of the aged Simeons and Annas in the temple. The faith of Whittier should belong to all :
"Others shall sing the song, Others shall right the wrong — Finish what I begin, And all I fail of win.
Hail to the coming singers ! Hail to the brave light-bringers ! Forward I reach and share All that they sing and dare."
How beautiful is old age in the life of the home ! What would our homes be with- out the little children on the one hand and the white-haired grandfathers and grand- mothers on the other? Despite the per- sonal quaintness and the old-fashioned ways, over which we may smile in good humor, no loss would be greater than the absence of those who, like the last leaf upon the tree, are clinging to old, forsaken
XII
The Hereafter and Heaven
boughs, and who are only waiting till the shadows are a little longer grown.
How beautiful is it to see the husband and wife growing old together, assimilating each other's virtues, becoming more and more alike in every characteristic, and pathetically holding to each other! Earth has few more lovely and touching sights than that which Burns celebrates:
"John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither; And mony a canty day, John, We've had wi' ane anither:
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand we'll go; And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo."
Old age can claim, too, many compensa- tions. There is the beautiful affection of children and grandchildren. This side of heaven there is nothing more picturesque and lovely than little four-year in the lap of eighty, whispering, ''Grandpa, I '11 take
112
Waiting for the Oarsman
care of you!" There are the picture-gal- leries of memory — recollections which bring serenest happiness. There are the re- membrances of the ways of God with his servant, and the never-ceasing supplies of His grace. These minister to his soul sac- ramentally. Increasingly he finds the truths of these Scriptures verified in his experience: 'It shall come to pass, that at evening time there shall be light;'' ''Even to old age I am he, and even to hoar hairs will I carry you;" and he exclaims with the Psalmist:
"O God, thou hast taught me from my youth; And hitherto have I declared thy wondrous
works. Yea, even when I am old and grayheaded, O
God, forsake me not, Until I have declared thy strength unto the next
generation, Thy might to every one that is to come.''
It is the natural result of advancing years that there should be a subsidence of pas- 8 113
The Hereafter and Heaven
sion. Some of the battles that belonged to youth need not be longer fought. There has come to be a habitude in virtue. One can feel — not in any boastful sense that fails to attribute it to Christ's help — that he has entered into some sort of permanent victory — that he has fought the good fight, finished his course, and kept the faith.
By long service and contemplation, by prayer, faith, obedience, and the society of the good, the aged saint has grown more and more into likeness to Christ, being changed into the same image from glory to glory. Like fruit hanging in a southern exposure, he ripens and mellows continu- ally. His face seems to reflect the light of heaven, and the inner glory breaks through in transfiguration. His soul has built it- self more stately mansions. His prayers are now mostly of praise and communion, and he delights always in his Father's pres- ence.
114
Waiting for the Oarsman
His Bible has his own biography in it, which he can read between the lines. It is his thumb-worn diary, saturated with his experiences. He has marked the preachers' texts, and he knows the chapters read in his hours of sorrow, when the dear wife or child lay in the coffin.
His hearing may have failed so that he can not catch what the minister says, and it may be he can not read the hymns. But he sits in the house of God with joy, and worships with his brethren, his heart blend- ing with theirs. Memory brings up pic- tures of former worshipers.
"Part of His host have crossed the flood, And part are crossing now."
His voice may be thin and quavering in songs, but he never had such impulses to praise as now.
Young people find his experience, when they are perplexed and discouraged, most
115
The Hereafter and Heaven
helpful. It Is heartening to see one who has been sixty years in the way. Listening to his testimony concerning the wonderful way by which God has led him, one feels that he, too, may be supported unto the end. It is refreshing to hear the old man say that he is still advancing in the knowledge of the Christian mysteries, even as Paul, in age, confessed that he had not already attained nor was already made perfect, but that he was reaching forth to the things before, and pressing toward the mark.
Age has opportunity for reflection, for calmer meditation, denied in active life. All the goodness of God passes before the mind in retrospect. The truth of the Psalmist is felt, ''His mercy endureth for- ever." There is but one glad answer to the question, "Have the mercies of God been small unto thee?"
It is not to be wondered at that the thoughts of the old man should dwell much ii6
Waiting for the Oarsman
on the hereafter. More whom he has known are over there than here, and his thoughts are much with them.
With calm trust he approaches the verge of the other Hfe. He hears the surge of the infinite sea. The Hfe beyond is almost more real to him than "this chimera which we devour and call life." He is full of reverent curiosity and speculation concern- ing what it is like.
Meanwhile, with Browning, he can say:
**Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made; Our times are in His hand Who saith, *A whole I planned. Youth shows but half ; trust God : see all, nor be afraid/ "
The claim is sometimes made that old people are comparatively indifferent about immortality — that they have had enough of life, and are simply tired of living. Harriet Martineau gave expression to something 117
The Hereafter and Heaven
like this. But we have failed to meet one or many such among true Christian believ- ers. Rather are they so enamored of life that they claim it in the future in larger and richer draughts. Having lived with God in time, they desire to live with him throughout eternity. If the vision here, seen in a mirror darkly, be so rapturous, what will it be when the sight is face to face? And so the old Christian is confi- dent of immortality. He has no such pen- sive and depressed mood as that of Whit- man, who wrote in old age of his pros- pects :
^'The soft, voluptuous, opiate shades, The sun gone down, the eager light dispelled — (I, too, will soon be gone, dispelled) — A haze, nirvana, rest and night, oblivion."
No ; he has his life in God, and he needs no other argument for his future existence with God. With joy he hears the Watch- ii8
Waiting for the Oarsman
man calling, "The night cometh — also the morning !'
He sees his body perishing, but he is not appalled. He knows that he is not dying — his ego, soul, personality. It is only the outward man decaying, while the inward man is being renewed, day by day. It is only the taking down of the tent, in order that the permanent home may be put up. He knows that if the earthly house of his tabernacle be dissolved he has a building of God — a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.
"Decay then tenements of dust,
Pillars of earthly pride decay; A nobler mansion waits the just, And Jesus has prepared the way."
Thus his life is widened and deepened,
flowing in full, strong current. He takes
hold of existence in all of its dimensions —
past, present, and future. He believes that
119
The Hereafter and Heaven
for him there shall be no moaning of the bar when he puts out to sea, but that he shall see his Pilot face to face. He dies peacefully and blissfully, saying with Charles Wesley:
*'In age and feebleness extreme, Who shall a helpless worm redeem? Jesus, my only hope Thou art. Strength of my failing flesh and heart; O could I catch one smile from Thee, And drop into eternity!"
1 20
CHAPTER VI
''The Unforgotten Faces"
We) must not think of the Christ simply in relation to His historical past, but as the Ever-living One; not as One who was raised and who ascended to some remote heaven nineteen hundred years ago, but as One who appears to us on any Easter morn- ing, just as He appeared to the women and His disciples on the first Lord's-day, the day of resurrection. Margaret Sangster voices this thought very sweetly in these lines :
*'The morning springs exultant! Christ is risen! No bars for life in death's swift-shattered prison. Lo ! the day breaks, the shadows flee away ; Lo! Christ is with us, even as we pray. Lord, come. Lord Jesus. He is with us here, Forever present and forever dear."
121
The Hereafter and Heaven
And she expresses the same faith beau- tifully with reference to those who have faded from our vision ; who have been swallowed up in the light which is too in- tense for our mortal gaze, but who, never- theless, need not necessarily be imagined as far removed and entirely disconnected from us. Rather is it natural and rational to conceive the opposite as the better prob- ability. And Mrs. Sangster speaks in her poem ''To One Gone Home" in such touch- ing words as these:
*'And often it is clear to me
That here and there are not apart, That somehow God's whole family
Have scarce the throbbing of one heart To separate them; just a breath — The shadowy, thin, soft veil of death.
To you, dear one, whose very tones Still vibrate in your empty room,
To you, athwart whatever zones
For you are bright with fadeless bloom,
I send my whole heart's love to-day,
The day my darling went away."
122
^The Unforgotten Faces^'
Dr. Hugo Mlinsterberg, Professor of Psychology in Harvard, has presented the pubHc with a dreary essay on "Eternal Life/' He puts his argument in the form of a colloquy with another, presumably a Christian believer, as the two have just returned from the burial of a dear and mutual friend. In order to console his Christian comrade in his grief he pours out on him some seven close pages of ab- stract metaphysics, hard to comprehend, and arid as Sahara. It is difficult to under- stand how the bored and doubly afflicted companion could resist the impulse to stop his ears or run away. Surely, when his heart was laden with sorrow, he was in no mood to listen to a dry-as-dust, scholastic, class-room lecture with spider-web distinc- tions and deductions.
The only eternal life that is offered is such contribution as we may have made to absolute truth which is final and abides 123
The Hereafter and Heaven
while all else is transitory. "The complete perfection of the beautiful, the moral deed, the intellectual achievement, the work of civilization, the religious faith, the repose of philosophical conviction" — these are finalities into which our lives may be wrought in an essential immortality, as it is styled. We ourselves perish, but they continue. ''In eternity," says Professor Miinsterberg, "lies the reality of our friend, who will never sit with us again here at the fireplace. I do not think that I should love him better if I hoped that he might be somewhere waiting through space and time to meet us again. . . . He lived his life in realizing absolute values through his devotion to truth and beauty, to morality and religion; as such an irreplaceable part of the eternal world he is eternal himself." The immortality of the individual life which has passed from sight is simply ''its perfect belonging to that whole timeless reality." 124
^^The Unforgotten Faces"
Its personality ''belongs eternally to our world aims."
We have called such doctrine dreary, and so it is. It is the quintessence of despair. George Eliot gave the faith or unfaith of Positivism eloquent poetical expression in ''The Choir Invisible/' in which she prayed to live again "in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars," and that she might be "the sweet presence of a good dif- fused." But exalted as are the strains of that poetry, there is the undertone of that unutterable sadness in them which pervades all of George Eliot's later works, and which came to her with the eclipse of her girlhood faith. Philosophy may strive to put this pantheistic creed of the extinction of the individual and the perpetuation of his in- fluence, if he had haply labored for the true and right, into some appearance of profound reasoning, but the human heart, finding the proffered fruit — Dead Sea ap- 125
The Hereafter and Heaven
pies — turning to ashes in the mouth, in- stinctively repudiates it and turns away almost indignantly at the hollow mockery offered as a substitute for its insatiable, ineradicable, and pathetic longings. To live again without individuality, personality, name, form, being, consciousness, intelli- gence, love, or will — simply as an imaginary abstraction, as a constituent part of Abso- lute Truth, or as a minute portion of the Abiding Reality in the Eternal Idea — this has in it small inspiration and less solace. The Christian believes truly in an im- mortality of influence, but not as an alterna- tive or substitute for personal immortality. The dead who die in the Lord are blessed, for their works do follow them. But they also follow their works and continue their working. And the Christian, no more than the Positivist, conceives of his immortality simply as everlastingness, a mere expan- sion, a mere extension in time that can not 126
'^The Unforgotten Faces"
add any new value or dignity to his soul. While he lives on he believes he will live deeply. The quality of his life will equal its quantity, its intensiveness its extensive- ness. There as here for him to live will be Christ, and eternal life will be to know God and Him He sent.
The faith of the New Testament; the faith of Jesus and His disciples; the faith of the multitudes of Christian believers in all the centuries since that first Easter morn is this: we shall live on beyond death and the grave as conscious personalities, know- ing ourselves, knowing our friends, and being known by them. Tennyson in ''In Memoriam" expresses that undying con- viction of the human soul, with which it will not part, in these memorable words:
"My own dim life should teach me this, That life shall live for evermore, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is."
127
The Hereafter and Heaven
And he turns away from all cold general- izations and unsatisfying intimations of a merely abstract immortality of influence in the future with this protest :
''That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet: Eternal form shall still divide The eternal soul from all beside.
And I shall know him when we meet;
And we shall sit at endless feast, Enjoying each the other's good. What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth?"
How pathetically and inevitably do our thoughts, at each recurrence of the Easter festival, go out to those whom "we have loved long since and lost awhile!'' The deepest, tenderest chords of memory are struck again while we wonder and specu-
128
"The Unforgotten Faces"
late concerning their habitation, state, and occupation. They lie in our recollections, stripped of their earthly imperfections, and with only the holiest and best in them sur- viving. Their lives and deaths have made immortality reasonable and actual to us. They have brought the other world very nigh. They woo us upward toward them- selves, and fasten our reflections upon things in the heavenly places. We are fond of speculating upon how it fares with them, and of wondering whether, even at the time we are thinking of them, they may not be also thinking of us. We can never doubt that they continue to love us still. And how we long to see them again, to call their names, to hear them speak our own! Na- ture and the world of business go on the same as before they left us.
"But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!"
9 129
The Hereafter and Heaven
And how strong grows the conviction within us that the separation of their lives from ours is but temporary ! It shall be but for *'a little while." Whittier again and again sounds for us that sweet note of re- union :
''No voice is heard, no sign is made, No step is on the conscious floor! Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust (Since He who knows our need is just) That somehow, somewhere meet we must."
In his latest, as well as his earliest writ- ings, he is ever recurring to the same dear theme. In ''Burning Driftwood" he refers gravely and affectionately to the
"Dear souls who left us lonely here.
Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom We, day by day, are drawing near. Where every bark ha^ sailing room."
Some of his most touching verses are called "At Last." As the final moment of the beloved "Quaker Poet" approached, 130
^^The Unforgotten Faces"
they were recited by one of the Httle group of relatives who stood by his bedside. Blending a humihty which is almost self- effacement wath an infinite yearning, it em- bodies a confession that is variously and beautifully expressed by him in several other places:
''No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, Nor street of shining gold.
Suffice it if — my good and ill unreckoned, And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace —
I find myself by hands familiar beckoned Unto my fitting place."
In another companion poem, "What the Traveler Said at Sunset/' he comes back again to the same conception which took such a hold upon his heart :
"I go to find my lost and longed for
Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still, And all that hope and faith foreshadow Made perfect in Thy holy will."
The Hereafter and Heaven
We think many will share our conviction that "Andrew Rykman's Prayer" is one of the rarest productions in our literature — broad in scope, tender in feeling, and choice in diction. How reverently does Rykman breathe forth his trust that in
"Some sweet morning yet in God's Dim seonian periods, Joyful I shall wake to see Those I love who rest in Thee, And to them in Thee allied. Shall my soul be satisfied."
And let Whittier's lines, addressed to his departed friend and fellow-author, James T. Fields, express our prayer and hope in connection with those from our home cir- cles and groups of friends who have gone before us into some one of the many rooms of the ''Father's house," but who will never be forgotten while memory holds her seat:
"Keep for us, O friend, where'er Thou art waiting, all that here Made thy earthly presence dear.
132
'^The Unforgotten Faces"
And when fall our feet as fell
Thine upon the asphodel,
Let thy old smile greet us well ;
Proving in a world of bliss What we fondly dream in this — Love is one with holiness !"
133
CHAPTER VII
The Communion of Saints
This phrase, which occurs in the Apos- tles' Creed, and which forms a part of the Confession of Faith — the Credo, the "I be- Heve'' — of so many thousands in our own Church and other Churches, has had its real significance long and earnestly debated. The question may be said to be somewhat undecided even yet. The phrase first ap- pears as a part of the Creed in a Gallic text of the Fifth Century. The interpretation which commonly attaches to the words to- day is that of communion or fellowship of believers with each other. And this cer- tainly is something so high and worthy that it deserves a place in a universal confession,
134
The Communion of Saints
such as is the Apostles' Creed. This is the interpretation which the Reformers gave it, and which has been generally accepted by Protestants. In their view the Church itself is ''a communion of saints."
But the weight of critical opinion to-day is, that this is not the significance that the phrase had when it was first admitted to the Creed.
The Church is indeed a communion of saints ; but, it is contended, this was not the thought that was in the mind of those who inserted the phrase in close connection with the mention of the resurrection and the life everlasting. The Church, rather, has ''a communion of saints.'' Professor McGif- fert, one of the lastest authorities, contends that the word ''Communio'' is an abstract noun, and not equivalent to ''congregation' It rather is to be taken in the sense of par- ticipation in, or fellowship or converse with. In this view, he says, it signifies communion 135
The Hereafter and Heaven
with the believers of all ages, more particu- larly with the saints and angels in heaven. The reference is primarily to the commun- ion to be enjoyed in heaven after death. Possibly two meanings have insensibly blended; for whoever enjoys real partici- pation in the sacraments enjoys also com- munion with the saints and vice versa.
And the faith of the Church is receiving corroboration to-day from the leaders of scientific thought. Sir Oliver J. Lodge, LL. D., F. R. S.— Principal of the Univer- sity of Birmingham and one of the fore- most scientists and review-writers of our day — has issued the text of a Catechism, written from the standpoint of his own pro- fessional thought, and designed for the use of teachers in the religious education of the young. In it he defines the significance of the ''Communion of saints'' in these terms : ''Higher and holier beings must pos- 136
The Communion of Saints
sess in fuller fruition those privileges of communion which already are foreshad- owed by our own faculties, the language, and sympathy, and mutual aid, and just as we find our power of friendly help not alto- gether limited to our own order of being, so I conceive an existence of mighty fellow- ship of love and service."
Thus the phrase ''Communion of saints'' is seen to be an elastic and expansive one, and we are not forbidden to read into it all of the grand meanings to which we have referred. We can confess our belief in a communion — a common unity — of the faith- ful believers bound together in delightful fellowship here within beloved local Church folds, while still feeling themselves a part of the vast body of Christians of whatever name in all lands, and rejoicing in the pos- session of common aims, joys, and graces. We can confess our gratitude in being al- 137
The Hereafter and Heaven
lowed to participate in common in the sac- raments which draw our souls so wonder- fully together. We can exult as we declare ourselves indissolubly linked to all the gen- erations— saints, confessors, martyrs — who have gone before us throughout the Chris- tian centuries.
The inspiration of all that ancient and heroic past enters into and aggrandizes our lives as we "apprehend with all saints what is the breath and length and height and depth'' of the love of Christ.
And we can confess joyously that we think of ourselves, not dissevered from, but in life-giving touch and uplifting mystical communion with, the saints who are in heaven; that we can at least in thought if not in ways more real, enjoy this commun- ion now and do not have to wait for it until after death ; that, without any approach to the worship of saints or their relics, with- out consenting to any of the vagaries of
138
The Communion of Saints
spiritualism, we still conceive that the Church triumphant and the Church militant are not separated nor separable. And so we sing with Charles Wesley :
"Come, let us join our friends above
That have obtained the prize, And on the eagle wings of love
To joys celestial rise. Let all the saints terrestrial sing,
With those to glory gone; For all the servants of our King,
In earth and heaven are one.
One family we dwell in Him,
One Church above, beneath, Though now divided by the stream,
The narrow stream of death. One army of the living God,
To His command we bow ; Part o± His host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now."
The reference of Wesley is to that most remarkable phrase which St. Paul uses in his letter to the Ephesians when he repre- sents himself in prayer for them, bowing
139
The Hereafter and Heaven
his knees "unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named." It clearly indicates that family life is perpetuated in the future. The bonds that unite those, who have departed into the bliss of the Beyond, with us who yet remain in this life have not been severed at all. They and we may maintain most vital and sympathetic relationships. It may very rea- sonably be as Harriet Beecher Stowe sings :
"Sweet hearts around us throb and beat,
Sweet helping hands are stirred, And palpitates the veil between, With breathings almost heard."
There may certainly exist, then, the inter- communion of saints in heaven with those on earth. We ought never to deny our- selves the solace of this high truth, at the same time that we repudiate decisively its burlesque and caricature in the farce and fraud of modern spiritualism. Let us hold to the "Communion of saints." 140
The Communion of Saints
In the Apostles' Creed, as printed in our Discipline, the words "The Communion of Saints" are joined — separated by a comma — in one phrase to the words "The Holy Catholic Church" as if the one were a fuller definition of the other. But, as a matter of fact, in repeating the Creed in our Churches we follow a right instinct and hit the truth by making the comma as it should be, a semi-colon. "The Communion of Saints" should stand in f_ie Creed by itself as a separate item and enumeration of things believed. As the most recent and scholarly commentator on the Creed says: "It was used sometimes to denote participation in sacred things; that is, the sacraments — sometimes to denote communion with de- parted saints. And one or the other of these meanings probably attaches to the article in the Creed. There is no sign that the article was intended to express the com- munion or fellowship of believers with each 141
The Hereafter and Heaven
other, or that it was meant as a closer defi- nition of the word 'Church/ as we com- monly interpret it to-day."
The possibility of our communion in the spirit with the sainted dead is certainly one of the most elevating and sanctifying thoughts that one can entertain. The very conception of it is purifying and uplifting. Tennyson, thinking of his dead friend Ar- thur Hallam, says :
"How pure at heart and sound in head, With what divine affections bold Should be the man whose thought would hold An hour's communion with the dead.'*
And again:
"Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side? Is there no baseness we would hide? No inner vileness that we dread?"
But nevertheless he invokes passionately the spirit of his friend gone from him : 142
The Communion of Saints
"Descend, and touch, and enter; hear
The wish too strong for words to name. That in this blindness of the frame My ghost may feel that thine is near."
Is it not true that, influenced by tra- ditional but surely erroneous notions, we put our dead away from thoughts of any possible converse in the spirit? We hold them dear and sacred in our memories, but rarely treasure the hope or conviction that "spirits from their golden day" may, per- haps, ''haunt the silence of the breast" and, coming from "unconjectured bliss," mingle • their minds with ours, and silently speak,- "spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost."
James Buckham in his recent book of beautiful verse, rebukes reverently the atti- tude of mind which, as soon as our dead are under the sod, puts them far away as though they were snatched to some farthest star. He does not conceive that they dwell in some far and foreign land. We must
143
The Hereafter and Heaven
draw closer to them, through Hfe and death walking, as of old, hand in hand. Of the loved ones ''on the other side of the stream" he says:
"They carry us in their thoughts ;
They speak of us when they meet, And ever and ever the troth of old Bides with them, warm and sweet.
O, patient and constant dead,
Whom so easily we put by, Who fade away from our inmost thoughts,
A& the stars fade out of the sky.
Ah, me ! it is pitiful so, Dear lovers, so leal and near,
Aye, pressing their faces against the gates Of our hearts, and we will not hear !"
In a re^cent article on ''The Humanity of the Blessed Dead" the contributor — a uni- versity professor — writes most suggestively and, to our minds, most comfortingly, in these words : "If the soul still lives, its social sympathies survive, and the future life will be a community life. Thus the Scriptures represent it. It is the life of 'a great multi- 144
The Communion of Saints
tude/ a great communal life. Its social harmonies are among the chief character- istics and glories of that high estate. If the blessed dead are human still, they have not lost the old love of earth, and the old longing for fellowship and the old aspiring and the old striving for holy achievement. And what mean ^the prayers of all the saints,' and the lofty, accordant praises and jubilations of the 'great multitude,' if they be not a perpetuation of the old fellowship instincts of earth?"
And this beautiful and consoling faith appeals strongly to our poets. Thus John Banister Tabb voices his own comforting conviction :
"They can not wholly pass away,
How far soe'er above; Nor we, the lingerers, wholly stay
Apart from those we love : For spirits in eternity.
As shadows in the sun. Reach backward into Time, as we.
Like lifted clouds, reach on.''
lO 145
CHAPTER VIII '^For the Faithful Departed"
Is it our privilege to do more than simply remember our dead? Or, if we go further and believe that we may indeed commune with them in the spirit, do we reach the limit there? Is there any bar put upon the promptings of our hearts to breathe out loving, trustful supplication for them as of old? Do the Scriptures, ration- ally interpreted, place any prohibition on such petition? Some people may even re- gard the bare suggestion as a heresy and a profanation. But surely the subject is not one closed to all reverent speculation.
In nothing that we write here are we dogmatizing. The Scriptures are so silent about the conditions of the other life that 146
"For the Faithful Departed"
it IS foolish to dogmatize on one side or the other of such a proposition. When it comes to definite knowledge about the conditions of existence beyond the grave we all know so little — almost absolutely nothing — that dogmatic assertion is ruled out altogether. All that the most learned theologian can do is to offer reverent and tentative sugges- tions. And we do not conceive that we are restrained from doing that — nothing more — in this writing.
We are as far as possible from commit- ting ourselves to the Roman Catholic prac- tice of paying priests for masses for the repose of the souls of the dead. Around that practice a vast amount of superstition has gathered, and not a little ecclesiastical avarice and extortion. Protestants are ac- customed to doing their own praying. They do not hire ministers to present by proxy their holiest aspirations to the Almighty. If they shall speak to the Lord concerning 147
The Hereafter and Heaven
their dead it will be the utterance of their own hearts and not a formal and mechan- ical ritual-mass by another only remotely concerned.
Is it claimed that definite supplication for the dead is ruled out by the theology which teaches that it is utterly useless and unavail- ing since it could effect nothing — since the dead are in a fixed condition of joy and have all consummation of blessings? We may well pause to question it. Is it not reasonable to believe that in heaven itself there are gradations of happiness, possible growth into larger and fuller bliss, ever- advancing progress toward the perfection which is in God? Is it rational to suppose that our dead are to maintain a flat, sta- tionary condition of dead-level in that Land of Vast Opportunity? Was not Tennyson right in describing the life of the future as
^'Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks ?"
148
^Tor the Faithful Departed"
And, if so, can we repress our profoundest wish that our departed ones may advance by sure steps through the circuits of their orbits, unto "a higher height, a deeper deep?'' And is not that wish truly a prayer ? Yea, does there not He, latent and unexpressed, a real prayer at the heart of all love? And as we love the holy dead must not our love breathe out a petition for their constant and increasing advancement in the happiness and holiness of heaven? Mrs Julia C. Dorr has expressed our meaning in a beautiful little poem called ''Somewhere :"
*'How can I cease to pray for thee? Somewhere
In God's great 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 clim^b ; And somewhere still, there may be valleys dim That thou must pass to reach the hills sub- lime.
149
The Hereafter and Heaven
Then all the more, because thou canst not hear Poor, human words of blessing, will I pray,
O, true, brave heart, God bless thee, wheresoever In His great universe thou art to-day."
At the root of every ancient error and superstition may be found some truth v^hich has been distorted and perverted. We Prot- estants do not believe in the worship of saints, much less in the v^orship of their relics. But we do believe in reverencing and cherishing their memories and so gath- ering inspiration for duty. We do not be- lieve in invocation of the saints, since we can not conceive of them as omnipresent and capable of listening to prayers offered from opposite sides of the earth. But we need not deny ourselves the consolation of thinking that, of their own motion and love, they pray for us. We do not believe in a Purgatory as offered in a formal, artificial, mechanical scheme of theology, but we may rationally conceive that, over there as here, 150
'Tor the Faithful Departed"
advancement in holiness is effected by a constant disciplining of the will in higher and higher virtue, and our hope that our friends may thus secure this larger spiritual profit may be essentially a prayer for them. When Bishop Lavington in his ''Enthusi- asm of Methodists and Papists Compared" accused Mr. Wesley of having no small tendency to Popery in his writings, and es- pecially in his praying for the dead, Mr. Wesley replied: ''Your fourth argument is that in a collection of Prayers I cite the words of an ancient Liturgy, 'For the Faith- ful Departed.' Sir, whenever I use those words in the Burial Service, I pray to the same eifect, — 'That we, with all who are departed in Thy faith and fear, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul ;' yea, and whenever I say 'Thy kingdom come,' for I mean both the kingdom of grace and glory. In this kind of prayer therefore 'for the faithful de- 151
The Hereafter and Heaven
parted/ I conceive myself to be clearly jus- tified, both by the earliest antiquity, by the Church of England, and by the Lord's Prayer."
In his Letter to Rev. Dr. Conyers Mid- dleton, occasioned by the Doctor's "Free Inquiry," Mr. Wesley says: ''It is certain 'praying for the dead was common in the second century.' You might have said, 'And in the first also,' seeing that the pe- tition 'Thy kingdom come' manifestly con- cerns the saints in paradise as well as those on earth."
In the "Forms of Prayer for Every Day in the Week," as alluded to by Bishop Lav- ington, Mr. Wesley uses the following pe- titions :
"Let Thy Fatherly hand be over them, and Thy Holy Spirit be ever with them; that submitting themselves entirely to Thy will, and directing their thoughts, words, and works to Thy glory, they and those 152
"For the Faithful Departed"
that are already dead in the Lord may at length enjoy Thee in the glories of Thy kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord/'
"Forgive all who are mine enemies, and so reconcile them to me and Thyself that we all, together with those who now sleep in Thee, may awake to life everlasting."
''Grant that we, with those who are al- ready dead in Thy faith and fear, may to- gether partake of a joyful resurrection."
"Bring us, with all those who have pleased Thee from the beginning of the world, into the glories of Thy Son's king- dom."
"I commend to Thy mercy the souls of all that are departed this life in Thy true faith and fear."
"Vouchsafe to bring us, with those who are dead in Thee, to rejoice together before Thee, through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ."
And with Wesley agrees a present-day 153
The Hereafter and Heaven
thinker, Professor Lewis O. Brastow, D. D., of Yale University :
''The Church on earth and in heaven are one. The saints are human. They remem- ber, they love, they desire, they aspire, they pray, they worship, they achieve. If they pray and remember, surely they must pray for us, and we, too, should remember them.
"The power of the Roman Church is in some large measure in its grip upon the continuity of human life. Prayer with the sainted dead was at an early period one of the forms in which fellowship was realized. When on earth the Church prayed, whether in the common worship of the sanctuary or in the holy eucharist, or in the burial of the dead, it entered into fellowship with the saints above.
"We Protestants need our saints'-days, our memorial-days, commemorative of our own dead. In all the highest and holiest services we may well remember that the
154
^Tor the Faithful Departed"
saints have never died to God and are not dead to us and are still a part of God's great Church. We need to remember ourselves as in relation with them. And if we may hope that they remember us and pray for us, why may we not remember them and pray for them? Prayer for the dead may be no function committed to the Church, but it is no function of Protestantism to repress the instincts of the Christian heart. The saints in heaven are human. Shall saints on earth be less human?"
The following, entitled ''A Prayer for a Friend Out of Sight,'' is attributed, we know not on what competent authority, to William Ewart Gladstone. Its remarkable beauty, simplicity, pathos, and human feel- ing has affected many and many a reader:
"O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, in whose embrace all creatures live, in what- soever world or condition they be; I be- seech Thee for him whose name and dwell- 155
The Hereafter and Heaven
ing-place and every need Thou knowest: Lord, vouchsafe him light and rest, peace and refreshment, joy and consolation iij the companionship of saints, in the presence of Christ, in the ample folds of Thy great love,
''Grant that his life (so troubled here) may unfold itself in Thy sight, and find a sweet employment in the spacious fields of eternity. If he hath ever been hurt or maimed by any unhappy word or deed of mine, I pray Thee of Thy great pity to heal and restore him, that he may serve Thee without hindrance.
"Tell him, O gracious Lord, if it may be, how much I love him and miss him and long to see him again ; and if there be ways in which he may come, vouchsafe him to me as a guide and guard, and grant me a sense of his nearness in such degree as Thy laws permit.
"If in aught I can minister to his peace, be pleased of Thy love to let this be, and 156
^Tor the Faithful Departed"
mercifully keep me from every act which may deprive me of the sight of him as soon as our trial-time is over, or mar the fullness of our joy when the end of the days hath come.
"Pardon, O gracious Lord and Father, whatsoever is amiss in this my prayer, and let Thy will be done; for my will is blind and erring, but Thine is able to do exceed- ing abundantly above all that we ask or think, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen/'
Dr. Samuel W. Williams — a prominent thinker and theologian of the Methodist Episcopal Church — writes: ''Our Lord has not left the throne where 'He ever liveth to make intercession for us/ All souls, whether of the quick or dead, are alive in His presence. He beholds and knows all that are on earth and in the unseen realm of Hades. The doctrine of prayers in be- half of the dead is older than Christianity; 157
The Hereafter and Heaven
it existed in Judaism. Neither Christ nor His apostles seem to have condemned it, though they did not enjoin and scarcely mentioned it. The early Christian Church perpetuated the practice already established, and up to the time of the Lutheran Refor- mation it was almost universal. Luther re- jected it because of its abuse in the sale of indulgences and of mortuary masses; for there are no supererogatory works. It is believed in by both the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches, and by some other sects. Even where creeds are silent on the subject, private Christians accord to it a passive or active belief. Many accept it who have never uttered prayers for their deceased friends, and yet all quietly commit them to the mercies of Almighty God. There are traces of it in the Book of Com- mon Prayer. In our Burial Service the efficacy of prayers for the dead is implied. Dr. Samuel Johnson prayed for his de- 158
^Tor the Faithful Departed"
ceased wife. On All Souls' Day masses are said in Roman Catholic Churches for the repose of the dead; and on our memorial tablets we inscribe the words, 'May they rest in peace !' "
It is the poet who is most frequently our best theologian. He is God's truth-revealer. He follows a native instinct, instead of the trend of any hard and formal philosophy or theology, and looks straight into the heart of things. He trusts the primal emotions of the race and of his own soul, unfettered by sectarian dogmatisms. He interprets the universal feelings and latent, ineradi- cable beliefs of humanity, putting himself into sympathy with the yearnings and prayers of his brothers everywhere and through all time. He reads the unuttered longings of souls — longings too often re- pressed by cramping creeds — and his pas- sionate and red-blooded words are a tran- script of that ineffaceable writing by the 159
The Hereafter and Heaven
finger of God on the tablets of man's funda- mental being. It is such a poet who writes lines like these :
"Pray for the dead! Who bids thee not? Do all our human loves grow pale, Or are the old needs all forgot When men have passed within the veil?
Shall prayer's strong pleadings pierce the skies For those we still keep with us here,
And not a single wish arise
For loved ones in a happier sphere?
Pray for the dead, nor dare repress Thy longings at the throne of grace ;^
Our dead ones are more dear, not less, In the pure presence of God's face.
Love well and pray for all thy dead : God gives thee such sweet liberty;
He means where'er their souls are sped. That they shall be in touch with thee/'
i6o
CHAPTER IX
Heaven: Here and Beyond
Too i^irrtt do we accustom ourselves to the thought that heavenly existence is not conditioned by time or place — does not nec- essarily wait upon death and the opening of life without these mortal bodies — does not depend upon any ultramundane situ- ation or the site of any Celestial City. Es- sentially it is an experience in the souls of men who have lifted up the doors of their spirits to the coming in of the Lord of Hosts, who is the King of Glory. In this chapter we wish to consider, first, the nature of the eiernal life as it manifests itself while we are still in the flesh, and to answer the question. What and where is the ^'Treasure in Heaven" of which the Scriptures speak? " i6i
The Hereafter and Heaven
and, after that, to notice some ckanged con- ceptions as to the nature of the heavenly Hfe beyond the grave.
Once, during a period of illness, Hoff- man's picture of the scene between the two young men — ^Jesus of Nazareth and the nameless Ruler — hung on the walls before us and we used to gaze at it every day. There was the Christ with the intense yearning look in His eyes and His face, the gesture of His hands and the whole at- titude of His body being one of earnest, passionate entreaty and longing love; and there was the finely-appareled young Pa- trician, with his beautifully classic and pensive face half lowered in hesitation and inner debate — engaged in a struggle of the soul which terminated so unfortunately; and, through the open porches and corri- dors were to be seen the poor and wretched people, the lame, blind, paralytic, poverty- stricken, whom Jesus would have the man 162
Heaven: Here and Beyond
of affluence notice and let his compassion and benefactions flow out spontaneously for their help and his own blessing. The picture took a strange hold upon us and grew in its fascination with every day. It seemed pre-eminently a picture for our times when men are so tempted to be wed to wealth for wealth's sake only, and when, like him of old who ''had great posses- sions," they have succumbed, perhaps with- out their own clear consciousness of it, to the fatal and withering sin of avarice. Cer- tainly this Biblical incident, with all the sig- nificant and searching lessons that it con- tains, is one that men ought particularly to hear, ponder profoundly, and heed atten- tively in an age when mammon is seeking to enslave so many hearts.
But what was the thought of Jesus when,
demanding a surrender of wealth for the
sake of the poor and needy. He offered a
compensation for the sacrifice— ''thou shalt
163
The Hereafter and Heaven
have treasure in heaven?" We know the usual answer — treasure laid up in the su- persensual world, ''the land that is fairer than day;" the delights of Paradise; the raptures to be realized after death in the bliss of the Celestial City. And we would not entirely leave this familiar conception out of the count. For, doubtless, the joys of the hereafter will be made up largely from the reflex action of humane deeds done on earth and reappearing in blessed memories and reflections — not in an ego- tistic and self-congratulatory way, but so as to stir a keen thankfulness for the oppor- tunity of service — in the minds of the saved ones. And this is a treasure which is found within — in the secretest recesses of the re- joicing soul. It is not external but internal. For we must beware of materializing the thought of Christ. To Him, evermore, the Kingdom of Heaven and its treasures and rewards were within. We must not im- 164
Heaven: Here and Beyond
agine that the treasure in heaven which He offered in the place of earthly riches, freely- parted with for the relief of human suffer- ing, were simply outward gratifications to the spirit organism in the future, answer- ing to the stimulations to our mortal senses in ravishing beauty for the eyes or intoxi- cating sounds for the ear. This "treasure" can never consist in palatial surroundings, glorious landscapes, seraphic orchestras and choirs, rare and subtle perfumes, or such fare as angels feast upon. We must find our answer elsewhere. Our resurrection life must mean the ''standing up'' of the soul within us in the full proportions of a spiritual manhood — of the full-grown man, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
"Out of the sordid, the base, the untrue. Into the noble, the pure, and the new; Out of all darkness and sadness and sin Spiritual harmonies to win, This is our resurrection.
165
The Hereafter and Heaven
Out of the narrow and cramping creeds Into a service of loving deeds; Out of a separate, limited plan Into a brotherhood of man, This is our resurrection."
And may we not see clearly that earthly goods, consecrated to God, and given into His hands when given to His needy ones, earn more than their equivalent in the soul even before death and the entrance into the unseen world? Is there not in the very act of giving, when done with true broth- erly sympathy and genuine human interest and pity, something which enlarges the heart — warms it, upraises it in intercourse with God, unites it in bonds of rich com- munion with the race, fills it with a joy which is unspeakable and abundantly sat- isfying? He who has ever once known this supreme experience of spiritual delight will never forget its indescribable thrill. No sensuous pleasures on earth or in the skies can ever compare with that deepest and i66
Heaven: Here and Beyond
sweetest soul-sensation. It not only brings a precious and delicious ecstasy into one's life, but it also ennobles the whole being — it adds to the stature of the grander self — it makes altogether loftier specimens of men and women. And this applies not simply to the bestowing of money, but to all giving. Many of the world's greatest benefactors have not had money to part with, but they gave of themselves — their labors, time, comforts, sympathies, practical helpfulness. And that which they got in return, in the rapturous experiences of their deepest lives, was truly a treasure in heaven. They did not have to wait for it for years and in the Beyond. It was imme- diate and here.
More than this: What higher gratifica- tion can come to any one than to follow even partially the efifect of one's self-denial and generosity? To behold the gratitude of the suffering ones, to note rejoicingly 167
The Hereafter and Heaven
the Ignorance, poverty, sickness, disease, in- firmities, distress, immorality, and spiritual destitution a little mitigated — to have the sweet consciousness of identifying one's self with the larger life of humanity, of los- ing one's little selfishness in the greater concerns of the race and so broadening to the measure of its breadth, of living again in lives made better by one's presence — is not this essentially and substantially to have treasure in heaven? George Eliot unfor- tunately lost faith in a personal immor- tality beyond death. But her yearning to "live again" '4n scorn for miserable aims that end in self" was unquenchable. She would "make undying music in the world." She would dissolve life's discords by let- ting them "die in the large and charitable air." She is inspired by a noble vision of a "better self" that
". . . shall live till human Time Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky- Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, Unread forever." i68
Heaven: Here and Beyond
And in this very prospect she was en- joying a "treasure in heaven." She may not have reaHzed it, but the impulse to which she gave such eloquent poetic ex- pression was an answer to the appeal of Jesus : ''Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, follow^ Me V' For, in the largest meaning of it, to follow Jesus and to have treasure in heaven are one and the same. For every day that He lived He must have been conscious of the possession within Him of the heavenly treasure as the result of His Divine benefi- cence. And, in following Him, we shall also possess ourselves in the present of that treasure — the treasure of
*\ . . our rarer, better, truer self, That sobbed religiously in yearning song, That watched to ease the burden of the world/*
and that voiced itself in the concluding
lines of "The Choir Invisible" in this pas-
169
The Hereafter and Heaven
sionate prayer, the answer to which brings with it, in its attainment, as real treasure in heaven here and now as poets have ever sung concerning the "J^^^^alem, the Golden'" of the future, ''with milk and honey blest" and with "pastures" that are "decked in glorious sheen."
"May I reach That purest heaven; be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony; Enkindle generous ardor; feed pure love; Beget the smiles that have no cruelty — Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense."
Let us turn our thoughts now to the change which has been gradually taking place as to the real character of the exist- ence of the saints after mortality has been swallowed up of life. No one who has kept touch with the religious thought and feeling of our times can be unaware that a silent modification of view, which amounts in the end almost to a revolution, 170
Heaven: Here and Beyond
has been going on in regard to men's an- ticipations of the hereafter. The external and spectacular representations of the land of our dreams have given way to soberer but much more reasonable constructions. It is our impression that certain old-time hymns about the future life are not being sung as much as they once were. It is true that we still use songs descriptive of heaven — such as ''My heavenly home is bright and fair/' "There is a land of pure delight," ''Jtvussltm, the Golden," and "The Sweet Bye and Bye." But the par- ticular strain of longing for heaven seems to us to have almost fallen into disuse. We formerly loved to sing:
**0 heaven, sweet heaven, Home of the blest; How I long to be there.
All its glories to share,
And to lean upon Jesus' breast"
If we ask why the change has come, we must assign various reasons : It is felt that 171
The Hereafter and Heaven
this longing for the other world represents an isolated mood in the individual soul, suitable to be voiced only on particular oc- casions, and not a common sentiment in which a congregation can join in public worship. Hence **I would not live alway" is not as popular as it once was. It is felt that the rewards for confessing Christ must be put in character, and not in promises of bliss. Hence the decline of such refrains as:
*'0, you must be a lover of the Lord, Or you can't go to heaven when you die."
And
"O come and go along with me.
Where pleasures never die, And you shall have a starry crown, And dwell above the sky."
It is felt that there is a certain morbid- ness in singing that the pilgrim can ''tarry but a night'' in this earth-home of his. It is felt that it is an utterly unreal form of 172
Heaven: Here and Beyond
religion to put certain sentimental Sunday- school songs into the hands of children, such as:
"I long, O I long to be there; I long to cross over the river to-night; For, O, how I long to be there."
Paul the aged might possibly say some- thing of the sort, but not a bright eight- year-old. And it is absurd to keep them singing:
"'T will not be long, our journey here, Each broken sigh, each falling tear."
And who could fail to perceive the false sentiment and the altogether inadequate and perverted conception of life and its meaning in such lines as these? —
*'Then tempt me not to linger long Amid the gay and thoughtless throng; For I am only waiting here To hear the summons, 'Child, come home!'"
Then again, this world, with its joys and loves, is a fairly good place to live in for 173
The Hereafter and Heaven
most, in these times, and hence we can not conscientiously sing, *'The world is very evil, the times are waxing late/' as did those who were in the midst of persecu- tions. More and more the thought obtains that God is in His world, and very near at hand, so that the soul is satisfied with His presence here, without overmuch yearning to seek it in the beyond until the summons comes. More and more heaven is con- ceived as a spiritual kingdom, whose foun- dation walls may be laid on earth, as well as in "the land that is very far off," and whose realities may be experienced in time, as in eternity.
Neither the Scriptures in general nor specifically Jesus Himself has given us any positive and detailed information as to the life beyond the Veil. Evidently the in- spired writers and the Master were most concerned with the consecrated use of this present life, and feared to draw off the 174
Heaven: Here and Beyond
thoughts of men to any form of other- worldness. But the human imagination has busied itself with constructing an ideal of heavenly existence. Most of us in mid- life can remember when, in the pious fancy of most Christians, heaven was described as the place
"Where congregations ne'er break up, And Sabbaths have no end" —
a place where the saved shall walk the golden streets, wear crowns, stand before the Almighty's rainbow-circled throne to wave palms, play on harps, and sing never- ending praises throughout all eternity. We do not write in any spirit of ridicule and have only tried to describe the idea with fairness.
It needs no demonstration to prove that that conception has largely lost its attract- iveness, and, with the reflecting, has al- most passed out of view. That there may
175
The Hereafter and Heaven
be and will be formal worship and praise we need not doubt or deny. They will take their place, as they do here, among the necessary and welcome activities of the soul. We gladly concede this while enter- taining reasonable doubts that even such high exercises will exclusively absorb all our time or our powers. Even if we should admit that worship is the sole occupation of heaven, have we not learned that sing- ing hymns does not constitute the whole round and sum of worship, but that *'la- borare est orare" — to labor is to pray — work is worship? And can we conceive that the Eternal so delights even in the encomiums of His saved ones as to be as well-pleased with unceasing musical eulo- gies as with doing His will in some active labors? Let us say it reverently, but God must be better employed than in forever sitting upon a throne listening to saintly ascriptions to His perfections. He can not 176
Heaven: Here and Beyond
be rationally represented as an infinite com- placency, nor yet as spending His time thus vainly. ''My Father works," said Jesus, and it is a poor conception of the All- Perfect to represent Him as requiring per- ennial and formal laudations before His face. To imagine the angels engaged in nothing but this is to do them injustice. ''x\re they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?''
Among the most sensible and reflecting, too, there has arisen in their spirits a de- mand for a simpler and sweeter life in the future, free from the complexity and gar- ishness of this. They do not care for pomp and splendor, show and ceremonial, palaces and multitudes. Rather they say with Whittier :
"No fitting ear is mine to listen An endless anthem's rise and fall; No curious eye is mine to measure The pearl gate and the jasper wall,
12 177
The Hereafter and Heaven
I shrink from unaccustomed glory;
I dread the myriad- voiced strain; Give me the unforgotten faces,
And let my lost ones speak again."
And with him all that they crave is
''Some humble door among Thy many mansions. Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease, And flows forever through heaven's green ex- pansions The river of Thy peace."
Again, the conviction of the continuity of all life has forced itself increasingly upon us. It is like the seamless robe. We no longer picture the other life as a sharp and absolute break with this life, but as a continuation of it on a higher plane. And we no longer describe this earth as "a desert drear" and paint the "heavenly home" as ''bright and fair" by violent con- trast. We have awakened to the beauty and nobility of our earth-existence, and look forward to the expansion and fruition 178
Heaven: Here and Beyond
in the future of every glorious beginning here. As a recent writer has said: "The prevailing idea of Life Beyond is that it corresponds to nothing of which we have experience in this life. Some have a vague idea of the realm of spirit as a vast, misty space, without form, without beauty and color, and without objects, save but for those bodiless and unattractive souls who are supposed to flit about there until the time shall come for God to restore them to the right to be human once more. That which constitutes the real horror of dying on the part of many, even Christians, is the thought that our conscious, sensitive self will then pass into a condition devoid of all which characterizes existence here. Let a dying one be convinced that Death will not transport him to a distant Realm of which no knowledge is possessed, but will only adapt him more perfectly for a spir- itual environment in which he has all along 179
The Hereafter and Heaven
been living; let him but realize that sight and sound and mind are intenser realities on the other side of the Veil than on this side, and the dread of death will vanish. There we shall still love; but more exalt- edly and purely. There we shall still seek after knowledge ; but the horizon of knowl- edge will be infinitely expanded. There we shall still mingle with our fellows in so- cial intercourse; but the class-distinctions, the insipidness, the conventionality, and the souUessness of much of the social life on earth will have disappeared."
There have come into the thoughts of men, too, broader estimates of the true uses of life. 'Xife is real, life is earnest." They read the Revelation of St. John now, not to accept its Oriental imagery literally, but to interpret it, as it was meant to be inter- preted, in terms of the spirit. They there- fore imagine something better for them- selves, on emerging into the Unseen, than 1 80
Heaven: Here and Beyond
the conventional ideas of the past have presented. Such sameness of set devotions would breed in them, they feel, surfeit, sa- tiety, and a wearisome sense of monotony. They rightly imagine that there will be some larger use in definite opportunities and duties for the expanded powers of mind and soul in study and discovery among the secrets of God's world. And with whatever organism the soul may be equipped, there will be something, too, to exercise it. While we shall be happily free from the over-intense, wearying, nerve- racking strain of our present life, still Heaven will doubtless furnish us some- thing to work at. It will not be a celestial lubberland — a paradise of tramps. Who could think for a moment that, in any sphere, such an energetic personality as our President would be content with unending days without definite and absorbing labors? i8i
The Hereafter and Heaven
"Just to lie down and rest —
And that is all? Or, better still, and best,
To hear a call Which none but souls set free
May understand; 'The greatest tasks that be
Await thy hand !' "
And, in the boundless universe of God, will there not be somewhere those whom we may help ? Will there not be some call for our philanthropic impulses — some satisfy- ing joy from self-sacrifice for others — some outlet for our sympathies and helpfulness? Can we at all fancy that the earth-life of Jesus, spent in giving Himself as a ransom for others, was but an episode in His eter- nal being and that He is not now and for- ever engaged in the great work of saving His brethren ? And we — is there not a sub- lime meaning for us in those words, "And His servants shall serve Him?"
Upon this subject, most tempting to the 182
Heaven: Here and Beyond
imagination, a very thoughtful writer, the Rev. John C. Jackson, Jr., expresses him- self in these words :
"It is safe to allow people to draw on their fancy to any extent they please in picturing the future life, for however dif- ferent heaven may be from our conceptions, we shall find that the half had not been told. The problem resolves itself, then, into an effort to gain the most reasonable and satisfactory conceptions of heaven pos- sible to us. In the nature of things, these conceptions will change as we ourselves change, — as our ideas enlarge, and as spir- ituality deepens. Naturally, people's con- ceptions will also differ widely, and what satisfies one will not satisfy another; and as no one knows the absolute truth, we shall all have to wait for the everlasting, joyous surprise. If heaven's supposed 'per- fection' excluded effort and achievement, it 183
The Hereafter and Heaveti
would rob us of one of the purest joys now known. That there must be endless pro- gression of the finite toward the forever unattainable perfections of the Infinite seems almost axiomatic. Fixation in even ecstasy would be intolerable. Stagnation IS not rest. Enforced idleness is one of the worst forms of punishment known. If im- provement means dissatisfaction with pres- ent conditions, it also means pleasure in producing better things. Is not this God's great law of progression for His creatures everywhere ? It would seem that some peo- ple's ideas of heaven's perfection is that it means geometrical completeness, — like the perfection of a circle or a triangle. Moral character does not share in such mechan- ical existence. I can conceive that even Deity Himself experiences increasing joy over increasing goodness, and increasing love over increasing numbers of creatures 184
Heaven: Here and Beyond
to love. I can not conceive that our per- sonality can be preserved without free will remaining, or that we can have the power to enjoy heaven without corresponding ca- pacity to sympathize, which means the power to suffer with others. God Himself is such a Being. "Like as a father pities his children so the Lord pitieth those that fear Him." No one would wish ever to lose the power of sympathy, but to sympathize is to suffer lovingly. If there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth, there must be regret when they do not repent. In other words, the people of heaven must be interested in those in this world. If heaven meant a mechan- ical completeness of artificial ecstasy and inactivity, some of us would prefer to stay in this world forever, where we can have the supreme joy of suffering and serving for the good of others." 185
The Hereafter and Heaven
It was with this sublime conception in her mind that Lucy Larcom sang:
"Not asking rest from toil; — Sweet toil that draws us nearer to Thy side; Ever to tend Thy planting satisfied,
Though in ungenial soil.
But, oh for tireless strength! A life untainted by the curse of sin, That spreads no vile contagion from within; —
Found without spot at length!
For power, and stronger will To pour out love from the heart's inmost springs ; A constant freshness for all needy things;
In blessing, blessed still!"
1 86
Almighty and Immortal God, the Aid of all that need, the Helper of all that flee to Thee for Succor, the Life of them that be* lieve :
We intreat Thee, confirm and strengthen in us the mighty Hopes and Faiths that clus- ter about the Resurrection of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, the First and the Last, the Living One, who in Truth was dead, but, behold, is alive unto the Ages of Ages, and holds the Keys of Death and the Underworld; in whom whosoever believeth shall live, though he die, and whosoever liv- eth and believeth in Him shall not die eter- nally.
Make us, we beseech Thee, sensitively aware of the ever-present Closeness to us of this risen Savior in our Perplexity and Sinfulness, and cause His Strength and Purity to be our Upholding and Sanctiflca- tion. May we know, by an inner Conviction,
187
Invocation
that our Redeemer liveth. May we no longer live unto ourselves but unto Him who for our sakes died and rose again ; and, at last, may we attain unto the Resurrection from the Dead, and be clothed upon with our Habi- tation zvhich is from Heaven. Azvaken us, we pray, to an endless Existence in Thy Like- ness, and so satisfy us. Let the sublime Ex- pectation of Life Everlasting zvith Thee and with Christ in Paradise be as an Anchor to our souls — a Comfort and Stay in our Hours of Depression and Temptation, while in this Tabernacle zvherein we groan, being burdened.
Fill us, we implore, with a sacred, in- tense, abounding and perennial Joy as we look forward zvistfully to an Immortality of inexhaustible Blessedness in holy Activities and loving Ministrations. Being trans- formed daily into the Image of our Lord, may zve evermore grow in Grace as zve grow in Years, and thus be made meet to be Partakers of the Inheritance with the Saints in Light.
As in old Age, zve near the mysterious Boundary-line that separates the Seen from the Unseen, we pray Thee that our Trust in Thy eternal Goodness— the Pledge that Thou wilt call and that we shall anszver Thee — may become ever more sure, implicit and perfect
i88
Invocation
We give Thee hearty Thanks for the good Examples of all those Thy Servants, who, having finished their Course in Faith, do nozv rest from their Labors. Sanctify to us, ive humbly ask, the Memories of all the be- loved Dead, zvho, having left behind them a precious Legacy of noble Characters and lofty Deeds, have gone before us into the City that hath Foundations — into a better Country, that is, a heavenly. Through the Mediation of Thy Spirit, may our Remem- brance of them incite us to emulate their Pietv and Services, and purge us from all the Dross of Selfishness and Sin. At times may we awake to the vivid Consciousness of their Nearness to us to guide, console, and cheer; and, in the blending of the old Heart- loves, and the mingling of Spirit with Spirit in a divine Ecstasy, may we realize the sweet Communion of Saints in all its Depth and Rapture. And as our departed Friends still think dear Thoughts of us, and as we must surely believe— pray for us who are yet in the Struggles and Sorrows of Earth, so do Thou hear our sincere Prayers for them, that they may increasingly attain. World without End, to fuller Experiences of Holi- ness and Happiness, and have their perfect Consummation and Bliss, both in Body and Soul in Thy eternal and everlasting Glory, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. 189
MAR 11 1907
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: August 2005
PreservationTechnologies
A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION
111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066