The gospel of the hereafter

ilMmlmi' • ' ImllillH

E HEREAFTER

•'ii'

i !

1 PATERSON-SMWH

BIBLM

. TTRKELL & Co.

The Gospel of the Hereafter

The !
Gospel of the Hereafter

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

Rector of St. Georges, Montreal, Late Professor

of Pastoral Theology, University of Dublin

Author of « How We Got Our Bible," « The <?' y

Old Documents and the New Bible," etc., etc.t etc. & \

msvrr
BIBL MAI

SEMINARY

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO

Fleming H. Revell Company

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

4819?

Copyright, 1910, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

Other Works by Same Author

How We Got Our Bible. (Illustrated. )
2Oth edition (125,000) cloth.

How God Inspired the Bible.
I2th thousand, cloth.

^e Old Documents and the New Bible.
$th edition, II illustrations, cloth.

The Divine Library.
lOth thousand, cloth.

The Bible for the Young. {A series for home
teaching.) Cloth.

The Preacher and his Sermon. Cloth.
Social Service Ideals. 2nd edition.

The Church : Its Divisions and Prospects of
Reunion.

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 123 North Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

To My Wife

Contents

PART I
THE NEAR HEREAFTER

I. "I" i .11

II. THE THREE STAGES OF EXISTENCE . . 30

III. WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT THE NEAR

HEREAFTER 41

IV. WHAT THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH SAY

ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER . . 55

V. THE CRISIS OF DEATH .... 70

VI. " I " " MYSELF " AFTER DEATH . . 80

VII. RECOGNITION 98

VIII. THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS . . .no

IX. GROWTH AND PURIFICATION . . .127

X. PROBATION IN THIS LIFE . . .136

XI. MINISTRY IN THE UNSEEN LIFE . .149

XII. CONCLUSION 157

PART II
THE FAR HEREAFTER

I. THE JUDGMENT 163

II. HELL .164

III. HEAVEN 199

PARTI
The Near Hereafter

CORRI^
'SV, PROF, DAVID SMITH, D,D.

"ASLEEP IN JESUS"

3Ln Anxious Inquirer.—"'! was talk-
Minstian friend who believes
we leave this world, thf
1f as the body, ar '

T

CHAPTER I

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

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

Perhaps you will say, " Oh, there is noth-
11

12 The Near Hereafter

ing mysterious about it — I know very well
what I mean by it. I

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

§1

Is IT MY BODY ? Nay, surely not. I know
that my body is only my outward garment
woven by "me" out of certain chemical sub
stances. In a scientific museum I can stand
before a glass case and see neatly labelled the
exact portions of lime and silica and iron and
water and other elements which compose my
body. I know that this body is continually r\
changing its substance like the rainbow in the
sky, like the eddy round a stone in the river. /
The body I have to-day is no more the body
of last year than the fire on my hearth to-night

" I " 13

is the fire that was there this morning. I have
had a dozen different bodies since I was born,
but I am the same still. Every thinking man
knows that the " I," the real self, stands behind
the body looking out through the windows of
the eyes, receiving messages through the portals
of the ears. It rules the body, it possesses the
body. It says, " I have a body." " This body
is a thing belonging to me."

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

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

§2

Let us go on. What is this I, this self ? Is
IT^MY_BRAIX ? Physiologists tell us wonder
ful things of that brain ; how its size and shape,

14 The Near Hereafter

and the amount of gray matter modify my
character ; how it excites itself when I am
thinking ; how it has different departments for
different functions ; how it rules and directs
everything I do. And men impressed by these
wonders have sometimes asserted that there is
nothing more to be found. It is the brain which
originates all, thought is only certain activities
of the brain — memory is only impressions on
the substance of the brain — when the brain de
cays there is no self remaining. What I call
" I " is merely a function of my brain.

But immediately the question arises, Which
brain ? The particles of my brain are always
changing. I have had a dozen different brains
in my lifetime, with not a particle remaining )
the same. Which of these brains is it that " I "
am only a function of ? And how does it happen
that I remember what I thought and did and said
with the old vanished brains of twenty and thirty
years ago ? Memory insists that I am still the
same " I " in spite of all those changes of brain.
If memory be but a series of impressions regis
tered on the brain these could no more survive
the dissolution of the brain than impressions on
wax could survive the melting of the wax.

" I " 15

Surely my memory, my irresistible conviction
of personal identity with my past makes it
abundantly clear that " I " am a mysterious un
changing spiritual being behind this ever
changing brain.

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

To say, then, that the brain is the seat of
thought is not at all to say that it is the source
of thought. Everything involved in my con
scious personality is related to the brain, but it
is not originated by the brain. The mysterious N,
spiritual " I " is behind the brain, using the brainy
— nay further — actually educating and fitting
the brain for its work. The brain of a little

16 The Near Hereafter

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

"I" 17

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

§3

We have not yet gone deep enough to dis
cover this " I." It is hardly necessary to ask
the next question which some foolish people are
speculating about to-day. Am I merely the

TRAIN OF THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AND

EMOTIONS ? Am " I " but like an Eolian harp^
played on by the wind of sensations from with- (
out?

Surely not. This mysterious "I" is con
stantly and persistently claiming to be a real
conscious person behind all these — greater than

l8 The Near Hereafter

all these — possessing all these. Listen to the
voice down deep in your consciousness — COGITO,
ERGO SUM. " I " think — therefore " I " exist.
I am not the thoughts and feelings and emo
tions — I am greater than them all. I am the
possessor of them all. They are mine. They
are not Me. They are only passing phases of
my being. They are always changing. Every
thing around is changing. I remain the same
being always. Nothing else in the universe re
mains the same being — except God. God^andJ.
God and these selves that are in every one of us.

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

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

" I " 19

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

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

Every man on earth, when he thinks about
it, has this conviction of himself as an " I " — as a
person separate from all other persons, as a
self separate from all other selves, as remaining
always the same being, whatever changes may
take place around him. That is what consti
tutes man — a self conscious of itself. As far as
we can discover, the lower animals have no such
idea. Children, at first, have not. Did you
ever notice how a little child never says " I "
till he is about three years old ? He always
speaks in the third person. It is always " Baby
does this," " Baby likes that," until the Divine
revelation of his personality gradually grows

2O The Near Hereafter

and he recognizes himself as a person. Then,
without any teaching on your part, the child, of
his own accord, will begin to say " I."

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

§5

Look in again upon this " I " within you and
answer this question. Why does it assert so
positively that it is impossible to doubt it : u I

"I" 21

ought to do certain things, I ought not to do""j
certain other things " ? All over the earth this /
day — from the St. Lawrence to the Ganges, )
from the North Pole to the South — there is no
man outside of a lunatic asylum without that
conviction. No race, not even the lowest, has
been found without it. Where did that convic
tion come from ? From the Bible, do you say ?
From the teachings of Christ? Nay, surely
not. Long before the Bible, long before the
incarnation of Christ, the old pagan had the
thought clear and distinct, though not by any
means so clear and distinct as Christianity has
made it. Did you ever think of the mystery of
this authoritative utterance of the self within
you : " I ought " f In the very lowest savages it
asserts this. St. Paul calls this sense of " ought "
— the law of God written in our hearts (Eom.
ii. 15). St. John calls it the light of Christ uOj
us, " the light which lighteth every man com- /
ing into the world " (St. John i. 9). Longfel
low sings of it in " Hiawatha " :

That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not ;
That the feeble hands and helpless,

22 The Near Hereafter

Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in the darkness.

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

And this suggests a further question. Why
is there in us this sense of imperfection, of in
completeness — of ideals always away in the
front that we can never even approximately
reach on earth ? Look at this conscience which
we have just been thinking about. It is always
holding high above us an ideal of perfect
goodness and insisting that we must strive
after it. But we can never get even near it on

" I " 23

earth. The very best man at the close of life ]
sees his ideal still high above him and feels how
much better he might be and ought to be and
then he dies feeling the incompleteness of this
life. Does not this unfinished life thus broken
off, with its aim still far in the future, demand
something further ? The great German philos
opher Kant founded on this fact his famous ar
gument for Immortality.

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

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

24 The Near Hereafter

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

§7

No w, I put a closer question still. Is not this
mysterious " I " behind the brain the being that
God is especially concerned with ? What He
sometimes calls your soul.1 The ceiling of the
Sistine chapel at Rome has a fine paint
ing by Michael Angelo from the text, "Man

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

" I " 25

became a living soul." It represents the Su
preme Spirit floating in the ether and touching
with His finger the body of Adam. As He
touches it an electric spark flashes into the body
and Adam becomes a living soul. Is not this
the centre of the awful mystery that I call " I,"
myself — the same of which our Lord asks His
tremendous question : " What shall it profit a
man if he gain the whole world and lose his own
self?"

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

Is not this " I " looking out from behind your
eyes this moment — the real man, of whom the
body that you see is only the outward covering,
of whom the brain is only the outward tele
graphic instrument ? Should not we adapt our
thoughts to that tremendous fact ? Instead of
thinking " I have a soul," should we not rather
think " I am a soul " ? Instead of thinking,
that beautiful girl has an ugly soul, that insig
nificant looking man has a noble soul, should

26 The Near Hereafter

we not rather think, that ugly soul has a beau-
if ul girl body, that splendid soul is in a mean
looking body ? Would not some such manner
of thinking help to bring home the reality, that
"I" am the invisible immortal being which
clothes itself in a material body during this first
stage of its life. Should not we be more likely
to become acquainted with our own soul, to be
come impressed with its existence, to think
about its character ? Should we not thus learn
more easily that wealth and clothes and out
ward appearance are not so important, that the
character, the relation to God is the one su
preme thing ?

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

§8

Now, have I helped, even in a little way, to
introduce you to yourself — that " self " that is

" I " 27

going out into the great adventure of the Here- <*
after? If I have, I have done a very good
thing for you. With so many the soul is but a
vague abstraction, belonging to the pulpit and
the sick-bed and the life of the hereafter. But
amid the busy daily life, the real work and
pleasure, the real streets and houses, it is hard,
to think of it except as something shadowy and
unreal. My effort here is to take it out of the
region of the vague and unreal and bring it into
the region of every-day, practical life.

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

Then realize that whether you exalt or de-

28 The Near Hereafter

grade it, it is with you for ever. You CAN

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

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

Let the soul within you feel its dignity, its
priceless importance in the eyes of its Maker.

" I " 29

Measure the value of it by what God has done
for it.

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

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

CHAPTER II
THE THEEE STAGES OF EXISTENCE

§1

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

There is nothing which so touches some of us
as a thing with "makings" in it, a thing with
untold potentialities in it, a thing which may
come in the future to God only knows what.
Talk of the caterpillar which is to develop into
the butterfly or the acorn which shall one day '. '••
30

The Three Stages of Existence 31

be a mighty oak. Why, these miracles are but
child's play compared with the miracles poten
tially wrapped up in this poor little self. No
wildest fairy tale can suggest the wonder of its
possibilities as it passes out into the new adven
ture of the life beyond.

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

Perhaps he was thinking of his dead wife or
his brave boy killed in battle. The old earl's

32 The Near Hereafter

question is the question of humanity in all ages
gazing out into the darkness after its dead.
The full answer can only be had by dying.
But a partial answer can be had now.

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

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

2nd. The intermediate life BEFORE THE JUDG
MENT, THE "NEAR HEREAFTER " WHEN "I"

LAY ASIDE THE BODY AT DEATH. THIS IS THE
STAGE BEFORE THE EESURRECTION WHICH IN

OUR LORD'S TIME THE JEWS CALLED HADES,
AND IN WHICH THEY CALLED THE SPECIAL
STATE OF THE BLEST PARADISE, ABRAM7S BOSOM,
UNDER THE THRONE, ETC.

3rd. And away after this the final stage the
" Far Hereafter " in the "end of the age," as

The Three Stages of Existence 33

our Lord says, where come the General Resur-
rection, the Judgment of Men, the final stages
of Heaven and Hell. That stage has not yet
arrived in the history of humanity.

§3

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

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

The Jews in our Lord's time believed in a
waiting life of departed souls before the Judg
ment. Owing to vagueness and contradictions
in the Rabbinical teaching it is impossible to
state their notions about it with definiteness.
But in the main it may be said that when they

34 The Near Hereafter

speak of that life as a whole without distin
guishing between the states of the good and
the evil they call this whole by the general
name of HADES, i. e., " the Unseen " (the Hebrew
word was Sheol), but they also distinguished in
it the abode or state of the Blest as PARADISE,
or the "Garden of Eden," or "ABRAHAM'S
BOSOM," or " UNDER THE THRONE," e. g.9
" Abraham whom God planted in the Garden of
Paradise," "our master Moses departed into
the Garden of Eden." The holy Judah rests
this day in " Abraham's Bosom."

Their teaching is of course not authoritative
for us. Doubtless many of their notions on the
subject needed much correction. But our Lord
gives His sanction in the main to their belief
and uses their very phrases in speaking of
the new life, e. g., Dives "in HADES (not Hell,
see R. V.), lift up his eyes being in torment " —
Lazarus " was carried by the angels into ABRA
HAM'S BOSOM." " To-day thou shalt be with
Me in PARADISE " is His promise to the dying
thief. And it is clear that He did not mean the
final Heaven for He says, " No man hath as
cended into Heaven only the Son of Man who
is in Heaven." Even He Himself did not go to

The Three Stages of Existence 35

Heaven when He died, for this is His statement
after the Resurrection, " I have not yet as
cended unto My Father." "Where, then, did His
Spirit go ? The whole Church throughout the
world repeats every Sunday, in the creed, " He
was dead and buried, and descended in to HADES "
—the life of the waiting souls. St. Peter tells us
in his first Epistle that in those three days Christ's
living Spirit went and preached to the spirits in
safe keeping who had been disobedient in the
old world. For which cause he says, " was the
Gospel preached to them that are dead." The
same thought was evidently in his mind in his
first sermon (Acts ii. 31). " David," he says,
" prophesied of the resurrection of Christ that
His soul was not left in Hades."

§*

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

The great crisis of expectation set before men
is not death, but " the Day when the Lord shall
appear," e. g., " That ye may be saved in the

36 The Near Hereafter

Day of the Lord," "The Day of the Lord is
as a thief in the night," "Looking for and
hasting to the coming of the Day of God,"
" Keep the commandment till the appearing of
our Lord," "To be found with praise at the ap
pearing of Jesus," etc., etc. "Warning, reproof,
exhortation, encouragement are all directed to
that great day at the end of the Waiting Life
— the Judgment at the second coming of the
Son of Man.

Naturally this belief passed into the thought
of the early church. " The souls of the godly
abide in some better place and the souls of the
unrighteous in a worse place expecting the time
of judgment. . . . These who hold that
when men die their souls are at once taken to
heaven are not to be accounted Christians or
even Jews " (Justin Martyr, A. D. 150, Dialogue
with Trypho). " The souls of Christ's disciples
go to the invisible place determined for them by
God and there dwell awaiting the Eesurrection "
(Irenaeus, Against Heretics, A. D. 180). "All
souls are sequestered in Hades till the Day of
the Lord " (Tertullian, De Anima, A. D. 200).
" Let no man think that souls are judged im
mediately after death ; all are detained in one

The Three Stages of Existence 37

common place of safe keeping till the time when
the Supreme Judge makes His scrutiny " (Lac-
tantius, Div. Institutes). " During the interval
between death and resurrection men's souls are
kept in hidden receptacles according as they
severally deserve rest or punishment" (Au
gustine).

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

This whole teaching about the Intermediate
Life has been obscured in our day by the fact
that most people read the Authorized Version
of the Bible where the word Hades has been
unfortunately translated " Hell," just the same
as the darker word Gehenna. At the time of
the translation of the Authorized Version the
old English word hell — the hole — the unseen,
had not yet stiffened into the awful meaning
that it has attained in our day. It was not then
a word set apart to designate the abode of the
lost. It simply meant the " unseen place," " the !
covered place." In the south of England still a ,
thatcher who covers in a house is called a
" hellier." Even in games it was used. In the
old English games of forfeits, on the village

38 The Near Hereafter

green, the " hell " is the hidden place where the
girls ran away to escape being kissed. You
can see it had no awful meaning necessarily
connected with it. Therefore it did not seem
repulsive to translate the Greek word " Hades,"
the Unseen, by the English " Hell." But it has
become very misleading in later days, and our
own conservative instincts which prevent our
altering the word in the creed has helped to
perpetuate the error.

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

§5

The Bible, then, teaches to every careful
student that there is the Intermediate Life be
yond the grave, a vivid conscious life. That all
men go there when they depart this life. No
man has ever yet gone to Heaven. No man it
would seem has ever yet gone to Hell. No

The Three Stages of Existence 39

man has ever yet been finally judged. J^o man
has ever yet been finally damned. Thank God
for that at any rate. The Bible teaches that all
who have ever left this earth are waiting yet —
from King Alfred to King Edward ; from St.
Paul to Bishop Westcott ; from the poor strag
gler of the ancient days in the morning of his
tory to the other poor struggler who died last
night.

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

The Bible does not reveal very much about it
as was to be expected. The Bible is intended
to guide our conduct and prepare us for a final
Heaven. Therefore it busies itself with the
responsibilities of this present life and the glories
of the final prospect — touching very lightly the
intermediate stages, just as we press on a boy
the importance of his school days and the high

40 The Near Hereafter

prospects for his manhood, touching very little
the stages between. But there is much more
to be learned from Scripture about this Inter
mediate Life than most people think.

CHAPTER III

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT THE
NEAR HEEEAFTEE

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

Many of them say, " No, we cannot know
anything ; all is vague, shadowy, unreal. It is
vain to torment our hearts by thinking." So
they lock away his photographs and letters, and
they gradually, reluctantly let him drop out of
their conversation and their prayers, and, as far
as possible, out of their thoughts, trusting sadly
41

42 The Near Hereafter

in the healing influence of time and forgetful-
ness to quiet the aching questions in their
hearts. Ah ! it is a poor comfort !

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

I wish I could comfort those sorrowing ques
tioners, as I have comforted myself,, by thus
searching for what God has revealed. I do not
want to offer mere sentimental guesses. I want
to find for them the " things that God has re
vealed," and if I draw some conclusions which
I cannot definitely prove from Scripture, they
are only such as seem to me reasonable and

The Bible and the Near Hereafter 43

probable from a fair consideration of the evi
dence, and I shall draw a clear distinction be
tween the authoritative teaching of Scripture,
which you are bound to accept, and any con
clusions which I draw from Scripture, which
you are free to reject.

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

As in all our troubles, we had best go first
to our Lord, As He is the only one who

44 The Near Hereafter

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

He does not speak much about it. As I have
already shown you, this was to be expected.
In the first place, in our present imperfect,
limited condition, with senses fitted only for
this poor earthly life, it would probably be im
possible to teach us anything definitely about
the higher life of the spirit world. How can
you teach a blind, deaf man about this world of
beautiful sights and sounds in which you are
living ? How could God teach us definite de
tails about a life which no experience of ours
can help us to imagine ? And, besides that,
Scripture is intended to guide our conduct in

The Bible and the Near Hereafter 45

this world, not to gratify our speculations about
another world. At any rate, there is a marked
reticence and reserve all through the Bible in
speaking of the Hereafter, which reticence and
reserve we shall do well to imitate.

§1

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

46 The Near Hereafter

Christ was telling of what happens just after
death, when the "I," the self, has laid aside the
body and gone out into the Unseen.

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

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

The Bible and the Near Hereafter 47

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

§3

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

48 The Near Hereafter

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

§4

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

§5

Next I read on His authority that there is
no break in memory. Of course there could
not be if I am still " I." But our Lord con
firms this. Lazarus remembers Dives. Dives
remembers Lazarus so well that he wants him
to go back to convert his brothers. Aye, he
remembers the brothers in the old Jerusalem
home, the five boys that grew up beside him.

The Bible and the Near Hereafter 49

He remembers sorrowfully that they have
grown to be selfish men like himself, perhaps
through his fault. He is thinking about them
and troubling about them. And Abraham as
sumes this memory as a matter of course. " My
son, remember that thou in thy lifetime, etc."

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

§6

I read on, " Now he is comforted and thou
art tormented." That again is just what I
should expect. It is all quite natural. If " I "
am still the same " I " in full vivid conscious
life, in full memory of the past — if I have
passed out of the mists of earth into the full
light of the Eternal, where everything is seen
at its full value, where money counts for noth
ing and love counts for everything, it is of
course natural that the good man should feel
comforted and the bad man should feel tor
mented.

50 The Near Hereafter

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

And I read that Dives " is tormented." Here
again all is natural and as we should expect.
The godless man is in some degree tormented
in this life — at his best moments, when he stops
to think, when he lies awake in the lonely night
and conscience speaks to him. But there are
many distractions to ease his pain— the pleasures
and amusements of life, the company of friends,
the pursuit of business, the excitements of ambi
tion. So he can manage a good deal to forget
God, to acquire a distaste for God, and yet to
dull the still small voice that hurts him. But
these distractions are gone now. He has gone
out into the new life, naked, alone. All the
money and business excitement are gone. All

The Bible and the Near Hereafter 51

the things of sense and appetite are gone.
That poor soul of his, dwarfed and degraded,
stands in the dread loneliness before God, full
of the sense of loss and misery — of shame for
the past — of dread of what is to come — of
wretched discord between himself and all that
is good. In Hades, says Christ, not in Hell (the
Revised Yersion puts that right), in that life
just after death, he lifted up his eyes, being in
torment. The Judgment has not come yet.
He is not in Hell. Hell has not yet come.
Those things are in the final stage of being.
But already, just after death, Christ says, he is
in torment of soul.

§fa
I

I do not think we should pass over the ex
pression "carried by the angels into Abra
ham's bosom." Notice that our Lord makes it
simple and intelligible for the Jews by using
their own phrase, " Abraham's Bosom," their
name for the state of the faithful departed im
mediately after death. And He says, Lazarus
" was carried by the angels." If anybody else
but Jesus had said it, we might pass this over
as a piece of poetic imagery. But it was Jesus

52 The Near Hereafter

who said it. He says so much about the angels.
He says that there are guardian angels of the
children. He says that the angels rejoice over
one sinner that repenteth. He would not say
this about Lazarus carried by the angels unless
it meant something real. If so I think we have
here our Lord's authority for the ministry of
angels at death, an indication that the poor soul
does not go out solitary into a great lone land
— that there are loving watchers around the
death-bed " sent forth to minister to the heirs of
salvation."

§8
I do not know how much weight we should

attach to the suggestion that Dives seems the
better for the discipline of the new life. His
selfishness on earth bulks largely in the story.
Now in all his trouble he is thinking of his five
brothers " lest they also come to this place of
torment."

§9

The next words suggest a very serious and
awful question. Is the destiny and the con
dition of every soul fixed forever at death?

The Bible and the Near Hereafter 53

What is the meaning of the phrase : " Between
us and you there is a great gulf fixed " ? That
is too large a question to deal with here. I
postpone it to a later chapter. I have al
ready reminded you of the tremendous impor
tance of this life in its bearing on our final
destiny.

Ill

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

54 The Near Hereafter

news to the dead (1 Peter iv. 18) ; to unfurl His
banner and set up His Cross in the great world
of the departed ?

IV

Our next hint conies when the Lord is dying
on the Cross. The penitent thief is hanging
beside Him. Death is drawing near. The poor
sinner is about to take the leap off into the dark.
He does not know what is before him : Dark
ness — unconsciousness — nothingness — what ?
He does not know. The only one on earth who
does know is on a cross beside him. " LORD,

REMEMBER ME WHEN THOU COMEST IN THY

KINGDOM." And Jesus said : " TO-DAY THOU
SHALT BE WITH ME IN PARADISE." Not in
Heaven, but in Paradise — the Jews' word for
the resting place of good men after death.
Now, when one man says to another at such a
time, " To-day you shall be with me," surely it
suggests, " You and I will be living a full, con
scious life, and you will remember our acquaint
ance here upon the earth ; we shall know each
other as the two who hung together this morn
ing on calvary." Does it not, at least suggest,
recognition in the Unseen Land ?

CHAPTER IY

WHAT THE BIBLE AND THE CHUECH
SAY ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER

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

That journey of the Lord into the world of
the dead has been made a great article of the
Christian faith. We all repeat it regularly in
the Apostles' Creed, " He descended into Hell."
I need not translate that clause. Every well
taught Sunday-school child knows its meaning.
" He descended into Hades," into the world of
the departed in the great waiting life before the
65

56 The Near Hereafter

Judgment. But there is a great deal more than
this to be said about it.

Now, let us consider this statement. Clearly
it deals with the three days between our Lord's
death and resurrection. Where did His spirit
go ? " To heaven, of course," somebody says.
" No," says the Lord Himself after the resur
rection, " I have not yet ascended to My
Father." Where, then, did His spirit go?
" Nobody can tell," you say. Yes, one person
could tell, and only one- — the Lord Himself.
He only could have told of His solitary tempta
tion in the wilderness, and He evidently told
it. He only could have told of the solitary
scene in Gethsemane, it would seem that He
told it. He only could have told of His visit
to the world of the dead, and I think that He
told it. You remember that after the resur
rection He was with them " forty days teach
ing the things concerning the Kingdom." I
think He must have told them then of those
three days. Why? Because the knowledge
of it was so wide-spread in the early Church, and
there was no one else to tell it. Some people
seem to think that there are only some obscure
verses of St. Peter and a few references of St.

The Church and the Near Hereafter 57

Paul in favour of such teaching. Not at all.
It was the belief of the whole Church. St.
Peter and St. Paul were only two in a crowd
of teachers of early days who proclaimed
triumphantly the visit of the Lord into the
world of the dead. St. Peter seems to be think
ing of it in his first sermon when he quotes :
" His soul was not left in Hades " (Acts ii. 31).
Therefore St. Peter knew that it was into that
intermediate life — not into that final Heaven —
that our Lord went at death. This statement
by itself would not prove much, but when I
find the same St. Peter long afterwards telling
so circumstantially in his first epistle (iii. 18)
that when his Master was put to death in the
flesh He was made more alive in the spirit, in
which spirit He went and preached to the spirits
in prison who had been disobedient at the flood.
" For which cause (chap. iv. 6) was the gospel —
the glad news — preached to them that are dead,"
I think it is a fair inference that St. Peter had
some definite information. And then I find
St. Paul, in Eph. iv. 9, when he is writing of
the gifts bestowed on the Church by her as
cended Lord. The word "ascended" causes
him to pause abruptly. Men must not think

58 The Near Hereafter

that His work in the unseen was limited to that
work for us in Heaven after His ascension.
"Now that He ascended, what is it but that
He descended first into the lower parts of the
earth (i. e., the world of the departed) that He
might fill all things." Hades and Heaven had
alike felt the glory of His presence.

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

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

Irena3us, the great Bishop of Lyons in France,
a little while later tells how the Lord descended

The Church and the Near Hereafter 59

into the world of the dead, preaching to the
departed, and all who had hopes in Him, and
submitted to His dispensations, received remis
sion of sins.

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

St. Clement's great disciple, Origen, comes
next. His evidence comes in curiously. A
famous infidel named Celsus, knowing of this
wide-spread creed of the Church about the
preaching in Hades, laughs at the Christians.
" I suppose your Master when He failed to
persuade the living had to try and persuada
the dead?" Origen meets the question

60 The Near Hereafter

straight out : " Whether it please Celsus or
no, we of the Church assert that the soul
of our Lord, stript of its body, held converse
with other souls that He might convert those
capable of instruction."

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

I cannot go on to tell of St. Athanasius and
the rest. I have said enough to show you that
in the early ages of the Church — the pure lov
ing ages — nearest to the Lord and to the
Apostles, the Church rejoiced in the glad

The Church and the Near Hereafter 61

belief that Christ went and visited the spirits
in the Unseen who had never seen His face on
earth.1

This was one of the gladdest notes in the
whole Gospel harmony of the early Church for
five hundred years, in the purest and most lov
ing days, the days nearest our Lord and His
Apostles. It was a note of triumph. It told
of the tender, thoughtful love of Christ for the
faithful souls who had never seen Hun. It
told of the universality of His Atonement. It
told of victory, far beyond this life. It told
that Christ, who came to seek and save men's
souls on earth, had continued that work in the
world of the dead while His body lay in the
grave. That He passed into the unseen world
as a saviour and conqueror. That His banner
was unfurled there and His cross set up there
in the world of the departed. That the souls
of all the ancient world who had never known
Him, and WHO WEKE CAPABLE OF TURNING
TO HIM (i. e., who in their earthly probation,

1 See Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison.

62 The Near Hereafter

in spite of all their ignorance and sin, had not
irrevocably turned away from God and good),
might turn to Him and live. That the spirits of
the old-world saints and prophets had welcomed
Him with rejoicing. That even men of much
lower place had yet found mercy. That even
such men as those who had perished in the
flood in God's great judgment, BUT HAD NOT

HAEDENED THEMSELVES AGAINST HlS RIGHT
EOUSNESS AND LOVE, were not shut out from
hope. In the " many mansions " was a place
even for such as they. To the teachers of the
early Church, I repeat, it was one of the most
triumphant notes in their gospel — the wideness
of Christ's Atonement.

§4

That is what we mean, then, by the descent
into Hades. Does it not give a vivid reality
to that world that we think of so vaguely ?
Think of it. Was there ever before or since
such a scene, such a preaching, such a preacher,
such a congregation ? Could the wildest flights
of imagination go further ? Yet it is all sober
fact. Try to picture it for yourselves for
a moment. The Lord hanging on the cross,

The Church and the Near Hereafter 63

with His heart full of pain for that humanity
that He was redeeming ; and yet surely full
of triumph, too, and glad anticipation. He
was going to show Himself to the poor souls
who in the dark old world days had loved God
and Right. He had finished the work that was
given Him to do. He was leaving His Church
with that blessed gospel of salvation to preach
through the centuries to all souls on earth.
But what of the souls who had gone out
of earth from the beginning of the world
without knowing Him ? The Church replies,
through her Bible and through her Creed and
through her early teachers, that the Lord was
not forgetting them. He was about to go
forth in a few moments, "quickened in His
spirit," to bring His glad gospel to the waiting
souls. That was the first great missionary
work of the Church. May we not reverently
see His own anticipation of it in His departing
words as He started on His mission, " Father,
into Thy hands do I commend My spirit " (in
the journey on which it is going). May we not
read it in that " au revoir," not " good-bye," to
the thief beside Him, " To-day you shall be with
Me in Paradise " ? May we not dwell on the

64 The Near Hereafter

wonder and joy and gratitude and love which
must have shaken that world within the veil,
as the loving conqueror came in amongst them ?
And may we not reverently follow Him still in
thought when He returned to earth and, as we
conjecture, somewhere in the Forty Days after
the Eesurrection, told His disciples of His mar
vellous experience ? I am not laying down this
as a statement of Scripture, but I think it is
a fair conjecture, for how else could they have
learned it ? And if we are right ; think how
the knowledge of it would swell the glad con
fidence of St. Paul. " For I am persuaded that
neither DEATH, nor LIFE, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor
depth, nor any other creature, is able to
separate us from the love of God which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord."

§5

I think we must see that this teaching of
the Apostles and apostolic men of the whole
early Church is true. People sometimes ask,
" Why, then, is it new in our day ? " The an
swer is easy. At the Reformation time there
were terrible abuses connected with the

The Church and the Near Hereafter 65

Church's doctrine of the Intermediate Life.
The practice of purchased Masses, and Pardons,
and Indulgences, and all the absurdities con
nected with the Koman purgatory, so ex
emplified in Tetzel's cry, " When money clinks
at the bottom of my box a soul is released from
purgatory." With such provocation one does
not wonder — though one may greatly regret —
that the indignant reformers, in sweeping away
the falsehood, sometimes swept away also the un
derlying truth. The teaching about the Inter
mediate Life, and the old practice of the Church
in remembering her faithful departed in prayer,
were all put in the background as leading to
dangerous abuse ; and so the people, getting no
real teaching about it, got the sad habit of try
ing to forget about the state of their dear ones
departed. In their ignorance, they could only
guess blindly what the Creed here means. So
for centuries this has been the " lost article of
the Creed." But this teaching of the Creed is
none the less true, because it has been neglected
in later days. And if it be true, it is well worth
our attention, for it confirms what we have al
ready learned from the previous teaching of
the Lord, that the life of the departed is a

66 The Near Hereafter

clear, vivid, conscious life, since Christ could
teach them and they could learn.

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

§/•
Q

Estimate fairly the value of this evidence for
our Lord's visit to the Unseen Life. Do not

The Church and the Near Hereafter 67

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

But this message comes to us to comfort the
hearts and strengthen the faith of thinking
men and women who are puzzled and perplexed
and estranged from Christ by the terrible per
plexities of life and of God's judgments as they
understand or misunderstand them. You have
often thought of the difficulty of reconciling the
righteous justice of God with His Fatherly love.
You have often thought, in wondering doubt,
" Why did Christ come so late in the world's

68 The Near Hereafter

history ? What of all the old-world souls who
could not have known Him here on earth ? For
you know that there is no salvation save by
Jesus Christ. You have read in the Old Testa
ment of whole nations, men, women and little
children, swept away in one dread destruction.
What of them ? You have wondered about the
vast heathen world passing in thousands every
day into the Unseen, with no knowledge of
Him. You have sometimes read the Registrar-
General's return of deaths in your city, and
thought of all the little dead children, brought
up in evil homes ; of sullen prisoners hardened
in the jails ; of grown men and women in the
city's slums who, through the hardening in
fluence of circumstances, had little real chance
of ever being touched by that tenderness of
God's love which leads men to love Him in re
turn. You know they have not died in Christ.
What of them ? " If you had to stand at some
death-beds at which some of us have to
stand you would feel as we do the insistent
pressure of that question for all in the ancient
or modern world — the vast countless world of the
dead — who had no real chance of knowing Christ
or being touched by His love here on earth.

The Church and the Near Hereafter 69

Oh, the generations old
Over whom no church bell tolled
Christless lifting up blind eyes
To the silence of the skies.

For the innumerable dead

Is my soul disquieted !

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

Trust Him, though thy sight be dim,
Doubt for them is doubt of Him.

Still Thy love, O Christ, arisen
Yearns to reach those souls in prison,
Through all depths of sin and loss
Sinks the plummet of Thy Cross.
Never yet abyss was found
Deeper than that Cross could sound.

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

CHAPTER V
THE CEISIS OF DEATH

I 1ST an earlier chapter I placed you in imagi
nation in the darkened death chamber,
looking on the face of your dead and feel
ing the keen pressure of the inevitable ques
tions : What has happened to him ? Where is
he ? What is he seeing ? What is he knowing
in that mysterious world into which he has
gone?

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

So I lifted you away into a clearer atmos-
70

The Crisis of Death 71

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

§1

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

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

Naturally we all shrink from death — the
seeming shock of sundering soul and body—
the launching out against our will into the re
gions of the Unexplored — the " land of far dis
tances " as Isaiah calls it. We are afraid of
that unknown death, for our dear ones — like
children afraid of a bogey on the dark stairs.

72 The Near Hereafter

We can't help being afraid of it. But ought
we to be so MUCH afraid of it ? Has not our
Lord taught us that there is no bogey on that
dark stairs, that he who has just now closed
his eyes in death is opening them already into a
larger life ?

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

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

Do you say that you do not know what is be
fore your friend — that it is a " leap off into the
dark " ? Have we not learned from Scripture
already that it is much less of " dark " than
some of us thought ? And may it not be much

The Crisis of Death 73

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

Pliny, from much clinical observations, de- •
clares his opinion that death itself is pleasure
rather than pain. Dr. Solander was delighted
at the sensation of dying in the snow. The
late Archbishop of Canterbury remarked as he

74 The Near Hereafter

died: "It is really nothing much after all."
Dying itself may be pleasure rather than pain.

We have all noticed that expression of com
posed calm which comes on the faces of the
newly dead. Some say it is only due to mus
cular relaxation. Perhaps so. But perhaps
not. One likes to think that it may be some
thing more. Who knows that it may not be a
last message of content and acquiescence from
those departing souls who at the moment of
departure know perhaps a little more than our
selves — a message of good cheer and pleasant
promise by no means to be disregarded.1

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

1 1 have here freely adapted some thoughts and phrases
from Edwin Arnold's Death and Afterwards.

The Crisis of Death 75

§2

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

Hesperus, with the host of heaven came
And lo ! Creation widened on man's view
Who could have thought such marvels lay con
cealed
Behind thy beams, O Sun ? Or who could find

76 The Near Hereafter

Whilst flower and leaf and insect stood revealed
That to such countless orbs thou raadest us blind f
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ?

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

§O
o

And may not this act of dying be much less
lonely than we think? God sent each of us
into this first stage of existence with mother
and home and loved friends about us. No one
comes into this world to loneliness. Should not
that stir some hope at least that the Father
may take similar care for us in our entry on the
second stage at death ? I hate sentimentalizing
about it. But this is not sentimentalizing. I
have already called attention to our Lord's only
account of a good man's entrance into the Un-

The Crisis of Death 77

seen. " He was carried by the angels," He
said, and I have shown you some reason to
think that He meant literally what He said —
that the angels who are presented in Scripture
as so interested in our life here are equally in
terested in our transition to a larger life — that
loving watchers are around a soul as it passes
into the Unseen.

I sometimes wonder, too, how much signifi
cance should be attached to the fairly frequent
phenomenon of dying people seeming in some
rapt vision to see or feel as if meeting them the
presence of loved ones gone before. Sometimes
these phenomena are very striking. I once
thought of asking a religious journal to open
its columns to testimony from thoughtful, cool-
headed clergy and laity of such experiences at
death-beds. It might enable us to judge crit
ically if it could be explained away as mere
sentimental fancy or if the evidence were
strong enough to suggest an underlying reality.
It would need to be very keenly criticized. All
allowance should be made, especially in the
case of women, for the deceitfulness of pious
fancies. But there are some cases which, if
their number were large enough, would point

78 The Near Hereafter

much deeper, where there could be no case of
sentimental fancies. For instance a young stu
dent in one of our city hospitals told me a curi
ous experience lately. A little child under two
years old had been rescued out of a fire and
was dying badly burned. " I took the little
chap on a pillow in my arms," he said, " to let
him die more easily. Suddenly he stiffened
himself and reached out his little hands and his
face beamed with the sort of gladness that a
child has in reaching to something very pleas
ant and in a very short time he died." My in
formant was by no manner of means a senti
mental youth, and he was much struck with
the incident. I don't know if there is much
evidence of this kind. If so it would count for
a good deal in forming our judgment. Our
Lord speaks of those whom we have made
friends on earth receiving us when we die into
the everlasting habitations (Luke xvi. 9). Is it
too good to believe that He might have meant
some pleasant welcoming on the other side —
that perhaps that little child in the hospital
that night was really reaching out his little
hands to some one invisible to the young stu
dent ? Let us have no weak sentimentalizing,

The Crisis of Death 79

but on the other hand — is anything too
good to believe as to what God might do for
poor frightened souls at such a dread crisis of
being?

CHAPTER YI
"I," " MYSELF" AFTER DEATH

§-|
J^

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

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

Oh ! the wonder of it 'to him at first ! Years
ago I met with a story in a sermon by Canon
Liddon. An old Indian officer was telling of
his battles — of the Indian Mutiny, of the most
striking events in his professional career ; and
80

"I" "Myself" After Death 81

as he vividly described the skirmishes, and bat- x\
ties, and sieges, and hair-breadth escapes, his au
dience hung breathless in sympathy and excite
ment. At last he paused ; and to their expres
sions of wonderment he quietly replied, "I
expect to see something much more wonderful
than that." As he was over seventy, and re
tired from the service, his listeners looked up
into his face with surprise. There was a pause ;
and then he said, in a solemn undertone, "I
mean in the first five minutes after death."

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

Not long ago in the early morning I stood
by a poor old man as he was going through
into the Unseen. He was, as it were, fumbling
with the veil of that silent land — wishing to get
through ; and we were talking together of the
unutterable wonder and mystery that was only
an hour or two ahead. I always talk to dying
people of the wonders of that world just ahead

82 The Near Hereafter

of them. I left him and returned to see him
in a couple of hours ; but I was too late, he had
just got through — got through into that wonder
and mystery that I had been stupidly guessing
about, and the poor old worn body was flung
dishevelled on the bed, as one might fling an
old coat, to be ready for the journey. He was
gone. Just got through — and I felt, with al
most a gasp, that he had solved the riddle of
life ; that I would give anything, risk anything,
for one little glimpse through ; but I could not
get it. I could only guess the stupendous thing
that had come to him. For all the stupendous
changes that have ever happened here are
surely but trifles when compared with that
first few minutes in the marvellous life beyond,
when our friends pass from us within the
veil, and our hearts follow them with eager
questioning — "What are they doing? What
are they seeing? What are they knowing
now?"

More and more of late years I keep asking
those questions at death-beds. I seem to myself
constantly as if trying to hold back the curtain

"I" "Myself" After Death 83

and look through. But the look through is all
blurred and indistinct.

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

And this brings me to point out WHAT SOBT

OF KNOWLEDGE WE CAN HAVE AND WHAT
SOKT OF KNOWLEDGE WE CANNOT HAVE about

that life. It may help you not to expect the
impossible.

You desire to know two things about the
Unseen World.

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

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

84 The Near Hereafter

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

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

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

But the knowledge of the outward environ

" I " " Myself " After Death 85

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

Kealize your position then with regard to
the spiritual world. Imagine a population of
blind, deaf men inhabiting this earth. One of "
them suddenly gets his sight and hearing, and
lo ! in a moment an unutterable glory, a whole
world of beautiful colours and forms and
music has flowed into his life. But he cannot
convey any notion of it to his former com
panions. He cannot convey to them the slight
est idea of the lovely sunset or the music of
the birds. We, shut up in these human bodies,

86 The Near Hereafter

are the blind, deaf men in God's glorious
universe. Some of our comrades have moved
into the new life beyond, where the eyes of the
blind are opened and the ears of the deaf are
unstopped. But we have no power of even
imagining what their wondrous experience is
like.

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

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

I suppose it was all unintelligible to mortal
ken when the spirit had come back to the body

" I " " Myself " After Death 87

it bad left. If, in a crowd of blind deaf men,
one got his sight and hearing for a few minutes,
and then relapsed, what could he tell to his
comrades or even fully realize to himself ?

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

II

What have you learned ?

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

There are several passages in Scripture which
speak of Death as sleep and which taken alone
might suggest a long unconsciousness, a sort of
Rip Yan Winkle life, sleeping for thousands of
years and waking up in a moment at the Judg-

88 The Near Hereafter

ment Day, feeling as if there had been no in
terval between. But a little thought will show
it is a mere figure of speech taken from the
sleeping appearance of the body. "The sleep
of Death " is a very natural expression to use
as one looks on the calm, peaceful face after
life's fitful fever and the long pain and sick
ness of the death-bed. But no one can study
the Bible references to the life beyond without
seeing that it cannot be a life of sleep or un
consciousness. " Shall we sleep between Death
and the Judgment ? " asks Tertullian. " Why
souls do not sleep even when men are alive.
It is the province of bodies to sleep." This
sleep theory has always been condemned when
ever the Church has pronounced on it. Even
the Keformers declare it at variance with Holy
Scripture in spite of the strong feeling in its
favour in their day.1

The reader who has followed thus far will
need no proof as to the teaching of Scripture
that the "Waiting Life before the Judgment into

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

" I " " Myself " After Death 89

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

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

Do you want further proof? Look at our
Lord and the thief on the cross. The two men
had been hanging together dying on the cross,
just about to get through the veil to the world
beyond. The poor thief did not know what

90 The Near Hereafter

was beyond that veil — darkness, insensibility,
stupor, oblivion. The only one on earth who
did know hung there beside him. And when
the poor dying one turned with the words,
"Lord, remember me when Thou conaest in
Thy kingdom," He promptly replied, " To-day
thou shalt be with Me." If any one knew,
surely He knew. If it meant anything, it
meant, " There shall be no oblivion, no uncon
scious sleeping. To-night, when our dead
bodies lie here upon the cross, you and I shall
live and know each other as the two men who
hung dying together on Calvary." Ah ! the
wonder to him as he went in beyond the veil,
as though the Lord would lead him, lest he
should be afraid.

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

What follows ? This. If I am fully con
scious what am I conscious of? Surely, first
of all I must be conscious of myself, conscious
of the continuity of my personal identity, con-

"I" " Myself " After Death 91

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

92 The Near Hereafter

Lord said from the other side of the .grave.
" Handle Me and see it is I MYSELF."

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

" I " " Myself " After Death 93

§3

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

So you may be quite sure that your dear

94 The Near Hereafter

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

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

"I" "Myself" After Death 95

§5

And he is " WITH CHRIST."

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

" With Christ." One has to write carefully
here. The full vision of the Divine Glory and
Goodness and Love is reserved for the final
stage of existence in Heaven where nothing
that defileth shall enter in, whereas this Inter
mediate Life is one with many imperfections
and faults, quite unready for that vision of
glory. But for all that St. Paul believed that

96 The Near Hereafter

the presence of Christ was vouchsafed in that
waiting land, in some such way we may sup
pose as on earth long ago. Only an imperfect
revelation of the Son of God. And yet — and
yet — oh, how one longs for it ! Think of being
near Him, even in some such relation as were
the disciples long ago.

" I think when I read that sweet story of old,

When Jesus was here amongst men,
How He called little children as lambs to Hi*

fold,
How I long to have been with Him then."

'/es, St. Paul seems to say you shall be with
Him, you shall have that longing gratified in
some measure even before you go to Heaven.
So that Paradise, poor and imperfect as it is
compared with the Heaven beyond, is surely a
state to be greatly desired. Some pages back
I wrote with a certain shrinking " No man has
ever yet gone to Heaven." It is quite true,
and yet I could feel some poor mourner shrink
ing back from it as he thought of that beloved
one gone. Nay, shrink not. Paradise means
the " Park " of God, the " Garden " of God, the
place of rest and peace and refreshing shade.

"I" "Myself" After Death 97

The Park is not the Palace but it is the pre
cincts of the Palace. Paradise is not Heaven,
but it is the Courtyard of Heaven. And (the
dearest, tenderest assurance of all) they are with
Christ. Is not that sufficient answer to many
questions? At any rate the Bible definitely
teaches that

CHAPTEE YII

EECOGNITION

§1

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

This is a perfectly apt retort, and not at all
flippant as it may seem at first. It is based on
the belief suggested by common sense and con
firmed by Scripture that our life there will be
the natural continuous development of our life
here and not some utterly unconnected exist
ence. If consciousness, personal identity, char
acter, love, memory, fellowship, intercourse go
on in that life why should there be a question
raised about recognition ? True, there are mor
bid times with most of us when we are inclined
to doubt all desirable things, and there are some
gloomy Christians who are always suspicious of
anything especially bright and hopeful in the
Gospel of Christ. But to the normal Christian
98

Recognition 99

man who knows what is revealed and who be
lieves in the love of God, there should never be
any serious doubt about recognition in that
life.

§2

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

loo The Near Hereafter

" I " THERE seems a very natural continuation
of his life HERE.

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

§3

Why, even if the Bible were to give you no
hint of it, do you not see that the deepest, no

Recognition 101

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

AND FEIENDSHIP for SOME ONE. If W6 don't

102 The Near Hereafter

know any one, then we cannot love, and human
love must die without an object. But the Bible
makes it a main essential of the religious life
that "He that loveth God love his brother also."
If we shall not know one another, why then
this undying memory of departed ones, this
aching void that is never filled on earth ? Alas
for us ! For we are worse off than the lower
animals. The calf is taken from the cow, the
kittens are taken from their mother and in a
few days they are forgotten. But the poor
human mother never forgets. When her head
is bowed with age, when she has forgotten
nearly all else on earth you can bring the tears
into her eyes by speaking of the child that died
in her arms forty years ago. Will God disap
point that tender love, that one supreme thing
which is " the most like God within the soul " ?

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

Recognition 1 03

Kotice first the curiously persistent formula
in which Old Testament chroniclers speak of
death. " He died in a good old age and WAS
GATHERED UNTO HIS PEOPLE and they buried
him." " Gathered unto his people " can hardly
mean burial with his people, for the burial is
mentioned after it. It comes between the dying
and the burial. And I note that even at Moses'
burial on the lone mountain top this phrase is
solemnly used. " The Lord said unto him get
thee up into the mount and die in the mount

AND BE GATHERED TO THY PEOPLE." Miriam

was buried in the distant desert, Aaron's body
lay on the slopes of Mount Hor, and the wise
little mother who made the ark of bulrushes
long ago had found a grave, I suppose, in the
brick-fields of Egypt. Did it mean that he
came back to them all in the life unseen when
he was " gathered to his people " ?

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

Our Lord assumes that Dives and Lazarus
knew each other. And in another passage He
uses a very homely illustration of a friendly
gathering when He speaks of those who shall

104 The Near Hereafter

" sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
in the Kingdom." And again in His advice
about the right use of riches. " Make to your
selves friends by the means of the mammon of
unrighteousness that when ye die they may re
ceive you into the everlasting habitations"
(Luke xvi. 9). Surely, that at least suggests
recognition and a pleasant welcoming on the
other side.

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

Recognition 105

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

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

§5

Sometimes one vaguely wonders, How can
there be spiritual recognition ? How shall we

106 The Near Hereafter

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

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

But when a mother asks, how then should
she know her child who died twenty years ago,
one feels that recognition must be something
spiritual and not depending on visible shape.
Even here on earth much of our recognition is
spiritual. Soul recognizes soul. We recognize
in some degree good and evil character of souls

Recognition 107

even through the coarse covering of the body.
We instinctively, as we say, trust or distrust
people on first appearance. Or again, a slight
young stripling goes away to India and returns
in twenty years a big, bearded, broad-shoul
dered man, with practically no outward resem
blance to the boy that went away. But even
though he strive to conceal his identity he can
not hide it long from his mother. She looks
into his eyes and her soul leaps out to him.
Call it instinct, insight, intuition, sympathy,
what you please, it is the spiritual vision, soul
recognizing soul. If that spiritual vision apart
from bodily shape plays so great a part in rec
ognition here, may it not be all-sufficient there ?
In that life where there is consciousness, char
acter, memory, love, longing for our dear ones,
and power of communication, is it conceivable
that we should have intercourse with our loved
and longed for, without any thrill of recogni
tion? Surely not. Instinctively we shall
know.

It was not mother that I knew thy face,
It was iny heart that cried out Mother ! l

1 Momerie. Immortality.

lo8 The Near Hereafter

Nay, shall we not know one another there
far more thoroughly than we do here?
" Now," says St. Paul, " we see in a mirror,
darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in
part, then shall I know even as also I have been
known." St. Paul's thought is of our fuller
knowledge of things hereafter. Does it not in
clude also our fuller knowledge of one another ?
I met this passage lately in a letter of Phillips
Brooks: "I wonder what sort of knowledge
we shall have of our friends in the Hereafter
and what we shall do to keep up our intimacy
with one another. There will be one good
thing about it. I suppose we shall see through
one another to begin with and start off on quite
a new basis of mutual understanding. I should
think it would be awful at first, but afterwards
it must be nice to feel that your friends knew
the worst of you and you need not be contin
ually in fear that they will find out what you
really are."

I think a simple natural thought such as that
seems to bring the idea of spiritual recognition
more within our ken. But we must remember
that our conjectures about the MODE of recogni
tion .have very little basis. The FACT of rec-

Recognition 109

ognition we may practically assume. The
" how " we must leave with God.

" Soul of my soul I shall meet thee again.
With God be the rest.77

CHAPTEE VIII
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

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

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

The Church says yes, and calls it in her creed,
the Communion of Saints. The Communion of

Saints — a very grand name, but it means only
110

The Communion of Saints 1 1 1

a very simple thing — just loving sympathy be
tween us and these elder brothers and sisters
beyond the grave.

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

§2

You see that it is a prominent doctrine of
the Church's creed, and rightly understood, it
is a very beautiful and touching doctrine — not
only because of the union of fellowship with
our departed — but especially because the bond

112 The Near Hereafter

of that union and fellowship is our dear Lord
Himself, whom we and they alike love and
thank and praise and pray to and worship, and
from whom we and they alike derive the Divine
sustenance of our souls.

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

Here on earth, there in Paradise, is His pres
ence. Here on earth, there in Paradise, is the
love and prayer and praise going forth to Him,
and the strength and power of God coming
back from Him. You know His own simile, " I
am the Yine, ye are the branches." fYom the
central Yine the life rises and flows to every
farthest branch and twig and leaf, connecting
them all in the one life. He the Sacred Yine is
on earth with us and in Paradise with them.
Some of the branches are in the shadow here,,
some of them are in the sunlight there, but we
are all united through the Lord Himself. He
is the Yine, we are the branches. Because He
is with us here, prayer and praise and all the

The Communion of Saints 1 13

functions of the Church are here. Because He ]
is with them in Paradise prayer and praise and /
all the functions of the Church go on in Para- >
dise. Every Sunday as we in our poor way
love Him and worship Him and pray to Him
and praise Him, our dear ones beyond are doing
the very same. Notice how in the CommunionN
Service we remind ourselves of the fact.
" Therefore with angels and archangels and all
the company of Heaven we laud and magnify
Thy holy name," etc. It is not we alone who
feed on His divine life, it is not the altar on
earth alone that communciates the all-prevail
ing virtues of the atoning Blood, for the same
"Victim is the central object of adoration beyond,
as saints and angels and all redeemed crea
tion are with us taking up together the chorus
of that everlasting hymn.

If we on this side were living closer to our
Lord and closer to our departed, how close
might that comradeship become ! We should
tell our Lord so much about each other. We
should think of each other and remember each
other and sympathize with each other and pray
for each other. Why, we could do everything
for each other that we can do on earth when

J14 The Near Hereafter

separated by the Atlantic — except just write
home. (Ah, how one wishes that they could
" write home " ! ) We are very close if we
would but realize it.

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

II

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

§-f
^

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

Since they are with Christ of course they
pray. The world to come is the very atmos
phere of prayer. St. John in his vision tells of
" the offering of the golden vials full of odours

The Communion of Saints 115

which are the prayers of the saints " (Rev.
v. 8). And again three chapters later the
angel stood to offer the prayers of all saints upon
the golden altar.

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

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

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

§2

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

1 16 The Near Hereafter

you are doing anything now that you would not
wish her to know, I should advise you to stop
doing it.

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

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

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

The Communion of Saints 117

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

Ill

And the hope which Scripture thus suggests
and never contradicts commends itself to

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

li8 The Near Hereafter

reason and to the deepest instincts in our
hearts.

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

But, somebody says, she might not be quite
happy if she knew all that they had to go
through. Seeing that at any rate she remem
bers them, do you think she would be more happy
if she knew that they might have to go through
troubles of which she could not learn anything ?
Put yourself in the place of any mother on
earth that you know and ask if it would make
her any happier to stop all letters about her
children whom she felt might be in danger or
trouble. Are you quite sure that in that spirit
life a peaceful contentment like that of the
cow who forgets her calf is the highest
thing to be desired ? The higher any soul

The Communion of Saints 119

grows on earth the less can it escape unselfish
sorrow for the sake of others. Must it not be
so in that land also ? Surely the Highest
Himself must have more sorrow than any one I l
else for the sins and troubles of men. Have
you ever thought of that " eternal pain " of
God ? If there be joy in His presence over one
sinner that repenteth must there not be pain in
His presence over one that repenteth not ?

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

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

12O The Near Hereafter

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

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

St. Cyprian the martyr bishop of Carthage
who was born in the century after St. John's
death (A. D. 200) made an agreement with
his friend Cornelius that whichever of them
died first should in the Unseen Land remember
in prayer him who was left behind. " Let us
mutually be mindful of each other. . . .
On both sides let us always pray for each other,
let us relieve our afflictions and distresses by a
reciprocity of love and whichever of us goes
hence before the other by the speed of the
Divine favour, let our affection continue before
the Lord, let not prayer for our brothers and

The Communion of Saints 121

sisters cease before the mercy of the Father "
(Ep. Ivii. ad Cornel.). And in the days of the
plague at Carthage, A. D. 252, he comforts his
fellow citizens reminding them of " the large
number of dear ones, parents, brothers, children,
a goodly and numerous crowd longing for us
and while their own immortality is assured still
longing for our salvation."

Origen, who was a contemporary of Cyprian,
says, " All the souls who have departed this life
still retaining their love for those who are in
the world concern themselves for their salvation
and aid them by their prayers and mediation
with God. For it is written in the Book of
the Maccabees, 'This is Jeremiah the prophet
who always prays for the people ' " (in Cant.
Horn. iii.). And in another work he says,
"It is my opinion that all those fathers who
have fallen asleep before us fight on our side
and aid us by their prayers " (in Jesu Nave
Horn. xvi. ch. 19). And again " They (in that
unseen life) understand who are worthy of
Divine approval and are not only well disposed
to these themselves, but cooperate with them
in their endeavours to please God, they seek
His favour on their behalf and with their

122 The Near Hereafter

prayers and intercessions they join their own."
And again, " These (in the Unseen Life) pray
for us and bring help to our perishable race,
and if I may so speak, take up arms alongside
of it " (Contra Celsum viii. 64).

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

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

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

The Communion of Saints 123

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

§o
&

But sympathy and prayer must not be on one
side only. It must be mutual in the Commu
nion of Saints. They remembering and loving,

1 Luckock, After Death.

124 The Near Hereafter

and thinking about us. We remembering and
loving, and thinking about them. They asking
from their Lord blessing for us. We asking
from Him blessing for them. For surely they
are not above wanting His blessings still — not
even the best of them though safe with Him,
though forgiven their sins, they are still im
perfect, still needing to grow in grace, in purifi
cation, in fitness for the final heaven by and by.
And we can help their growth as they can help
ours.

Some of the most deeply religious people that
I know shrink from the thought of prayer for
the departed. There has been reason for it.
This beautiful old custom, the custom of the
Jews, the custom of the whole Christian Church
till the Eeformation ' had grown at that time
into great corruption. And one danger of
great corruption is that indignant reformers
are likely to tear away more than the corrup
tion, " hating even the garment spotted by the
flesh." So it was here. Because of the abuse
men feared even the use. In their hatred of

1 The evidence for this can be seen in full in any standard
work on the subject, e. g., Luckock, After Death; or Lee,
Christian Doctrine of Prayer for the Departed.

The Communion of Saints 125

the sordid traffic in masses for the dead they
looked with suspicion on any prayer for the
departed. And at length men began to think
that such prayers were even wrong.

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

I think we should be happier and better, I
think the Unseen World would come back
more clearly on our horizon if we kept our
dear ones in our prayers as we used to do be
fore they died. Do not keep any hidden
chambers in your hearts shut out from Christ.
Bring your dear departed ones to Him as you

126 The Near Hereafter

bring all else to Him. He knows what is best
for them. Pray only for that. Pray " Lord
help them to grow closer to Thee. Help them
if it may be to help others and make them
happy in Thy great Kingdom until we meet
again." Pray something like that. Oh, how
can you help doing it if you love them and
believe in prayer ?

How can I cease to pray for thee ? Somewhere
In God's wide universe thou art to-day.
Can He not reach thee with His tender care I
Can He not hear nie when for thee I pray ?
Somewhere thou livest and hast need of Him,
Somewhere thy soul sees higher heights to climb,
And somewhere, too, there may be valleys dim
Which thou must pass to reach the heights

sublime.

Then all the more because thou canst not hear
Poor human words of blessing will I pray.
O, true brave heart, God bless thee wheresoever
In God7 s wide universe thou art to-day !

CHAPTEE IX
GEOWTH AND PUEIFICATION

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

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

§1

"We have already seen that Scripture inti
mates that that life is not one of sleep or
unconsciousness, ft is a clear conscious life.
It is therefore natural to ask what happens in
it ? What is the use of it ? Science and ex
perience teach that growth is the law of all the
life which we know anything about. Even if
we had no further light of revelation we should
find it difficult to believe that imperfect beings
dying in the grace of God pass into that life

127

i 28 The Near Hereafter

and live in it for years or for ages without any
growth or development.

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

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

Think that the great majority of those who

Growth and Purification 129

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

And this belief and hope for all these poor
faulty souls in whom the good work of God has
begun on earth, St. Paul confirms. " Being
confident of this very thing, that He who hath
begun a good work in you will perfect it UNTIL

THE DAY OF JESUS CHEIST " — i. 6., right

through the earth life, right through the In
termediate Life, until the last great scene in the
drama of our history opens at the Judgment
Day.

How this shall take place God has not
definitely revealed to us. But God has given

130 The Near Hereafter

us reason and common sense to enable us to
draw conclusions from what He has revealed.
Since in that life I am the same conscious "I,"
with the same consciously continuous person
ality, with the same conscience and memory,
I may surely expect that the Holy Spirit " who
hath begun a good work in me and will con
tinue it until the day of Jesus Christ" —
will continue it in much the same natural
way as here, through Conscience and Memory
and the Sense of His Presence. Only that
these will be all more keen and effective
and free from the disturbance of the bodily
senses and the distractions of this life on
earth.

CONSCIENCE here is the throne of the Holy
Ghost, from which He rules and directs my life.
Therefore my body is " the temple of the Holy
Ghost." But Conscience here is greatly weak
ened by fears and hopes and ambitions and
distractions of various kinds. At times, when
I lie awake at night and think about my life,
or when I enter into my closet to prepare by
special concentration of spirit for my Holy
Communion, I get some dim notions of what
Conscience might effect in me if it had a free

Growth and Purification 131

hand. In THAT life of close spiritual concen
tration, when the outer world is shut off and
the soul enters into its own deepest recesses,
contemplating itself, contemplating its past and
its future, contemplating the deep tender love
of Him who is there present as in Palestine
long ago, and feeling that in spite of all my
shameful ingratitude He is loving me and
blessing me and watching tenderly over me —
surely I may expect great things of the opera
tion of Conscience in me.

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

132 The Near Hereafter

§3

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

We have often heard of drowning people on
the verge of death having the forgotten mem
ories of half a lifetime flashed back in a mo
ment. An old friend once told me a curious
experience. " I was crossing a railway line

Growth and Purification 133

hurriedly on a wet day. As I rushed over the
rails the Express came in view. I slipped and
fell— fortunately into a hollow where men had
been working, and swift as a flash the Express
swept over me. The experience of that half
minute I shall never forget. It seemed that
my whole life was blazoned before me in
thirty seconds. Things that I had not re
membered for forty years past flashed back
in a moment as if they had happened yes
terday."

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

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

134 The Near Hereafter

I sat alone with my Conscience

In the place where time had ceased.
We discoursed of my former living

In the laud where the years increased.
And I felt I should have to answer

The questions it put to me,
And to face those questions and answers

In that dim eternity.

And the ghosts of forgotten actions

Came floating before my sight,
And things that I thought were dead things

Were alive with a terrible might.
And the vision of all my past life

Was an awful thing to face
Alone, alone with my Conscience,

In that strange and lonely place.

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

Every memory will be more keen and poig
nant and yet more peaceful and touching in
the presence of that dear loving Lord who I
feel knows all and yet has loved and received
and forgiven me in spite of all, and who is
watching over me with deep tenderness like
the refiner of silver over His furnace as the

Growth and Purification 135

dross is cleared away and I grow steadily in
fitness for the glorious life of unselfish joy
and service in Heaven.

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

" The shame of self and pity for thy Lord
That One so sweet should e'er have placed

Himself

At disadvantage such, as to be used
So vilely by a being vile as thee."

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

CHAPTER X
PEOBATION IN THIS LIFE

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

They must form the majority of those to-day

in the Unseen Land. Therefore one cannot

help wondering about them. One day death

overtook them. The thought of them comes

136

Probation in This Life 137

forcibly when some morning the newspapers
startle us with the story of a great earthquake
or railway smash or shipwreck or conflagration
in which hundreds have passed out of life in a
moment and the horror of the catastrophe is
deepened by the thought that they have been
called away suddenly unprepared.

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

I have already pointed out the solemn re
sponsibility of this earth life in which acts
make habits and habits make character and
character makes destiny. I am about to point
out the grave probability, to say the least of it,
that in a very real sense this life may be the
sole probation time for man. But this does not

138 The Near Hereafter

shut out the question of the poor bereaved
mother by the side of her dead son. " If any
soul has not in penitence and faith definitely ac
cepted Jesus Christ in this life is it forever im
possible that he may do so in any other life ? "
I answer unhesitatingly, God forbid ! Else
what of all the dead children down through
the ages and all the dead idiots and all the mil
lions of dead heathen and all the poor strag
glers in Christian lands who in their dreary,
dingy lives had never any fair chance of know
ing their Lord in a way that would lead them to
love Him, and who have never even thought
about accepting or rejecting Him ? " Shall not
the Judge of all the earth do right ? " Shall not
the loving Father do His best for all ? Our
Lord knew " that if the mighty works done in
Capernaum had been done in Tyre and Sidon
they would have repented." Does He not
there suggest that He would take thought for
those men of Tyre and Sidon in the Unseen
Land ? Does He not know the same of many
gone unto that Unseen from heathen lands and
Christian lands, who would have loved Him if
they knew Him as He really is and who have
but begun to know Him truly in the world

Probation in This Life 139

of the dead — of many who in their ignorance
have tried to respond to the dim light of Con
science within and only learned within the
veil really to know Him the Lord of the Con
science, "the light which lighteth every man
coming into the world " (St. John i. 9).

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

The possibility in this life of putting oneself
outside the pale of salvation is quite awful

140 The Near Hereafter

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

II

But this hope must not ignore the solemn
thought that in a very real sense the probation
of this life seems the determining factor in
human destiny — even for the unthinking — even
for the ignorant — nay even for the heathen who
could never have heard of Christ here. Eightly
understood all that we have said does not con
flict with this. It may seem strange at first
sight to think of the heathen as having any
real probation here. Yet, mark it well, it is of
this heathen man who could not consciously
have accepted Christ in this life that St. Paul

Probation in This Life 141

implies that his attitude in the Unseen Life
towards Him who is the Light of the "World is
determined by his attitude in this life towards
the imperfect light of Conscience that he has.
" If the Gentiles who have not the Law do by
nature the things contained in the Law, these
having not the Law are a law unto themselves,
which show the works of the Law written in
their hearts, their Conscience bearing witness "
(Eom. ii. 14).

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

"We may assume the same of men in similar
conditions in Christian lands, men brought up
amid ignorance and crime, men brought up in
infidel homes, men to whom Christ has been
so unattractively presented that they saw no

142 The Near Hereafter

beauty in Him or even instinctively turned
away from Him impelled by their conscience.
They all have the light of God in some degree
and by their attitude towards the right that
they know are determining on earth their atti
tude towards God in the Hereafter. They are
forming character and character tends to perma
nence.

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

If then it be possible even for a heathen to
have in this life sufficient probation to deter
mine his attitude towards God for ever, how
much more for a man in the full light of Chris
tianity. In view of this the great law of life

that CHARACTER TENDS TO PERMANENCE may

it not be awfully true that a man who with full

Probation in This Life 143

Knowledge of Christ wilfully and deliberately
turns from Him all through this life, should
thus render himself incapable of turning to
Him in any other lif e ? With full knowledge
of Christ I say, not with knowledge of some
repulsive misrepresentation of Christ.

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

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

Eejected still He pursues each one :

"My child, what more could thy God have

done?

Thy sin hid the light of heaven from Me,
When alone in the darkness I died for thee.
Thy sin of to-day in its shadow lay
Between My face and One turned away."
And we stop and turn for a moment's space
To fling back that love in the Saviour's face,

144 The Near Hereafter

To give His heart yet another grief,

And glory in the wrong.

And still Christ keeps on loving us} loving all along.

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

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

Character tends to permanence. Free will is

Probation in This Life 145

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

Though the Bible does not give an absolutely
definite pronouncement on this question, yet the
general trend of its teaching leads to the belief
that this life is our probation time. It every
where calls for immediate repentance. And
St. Paul says that the Judgment is for deeds
" done in the body" and there are such hints as
" the door was shut " and " there is a sin unto
death," and " it were better for a man not to
have known the way of righteousness than after
he has known it to turn from it." ! And this

1 1 have not quoted such texts as " Where the tree falleth
there it shall lie," which no sensible student now uses in this
connection, nor even the well-known text, ' ' Behold now is the
acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation," for the

146 The Near Hereafter

has been the general belief of the Church in all
ages. Even in all the hopeful words of the
ancient Fathers about Christ preaching to the
spirits in prison who in the dark old world days
" had sometime been disobedient," we have seen
that they add some such significant phrase as
" that He might convert those who were capable
of turning to Him. (See Chapter IY, p. 60.)
And human experience of character tending to
permanence makes this fact of human proba
tion awfully probable. There is nothing in
Scripture nor in its interpretation by the Church,
nor in human experience, to conflict with the
statement that in this life Acts make habits and
Habits make Character and character makes
Destiny.

What new discoveries of God's power and
mercy may await us in eternity we cannot know,
but from all we do know we are justified in
thinking that (in the sense which I have stated)
a man's life in this world determines his des
tiny — at any rate that a man who presumes

"acceptable time " and "the day of salvation " mean here
not the present life of each man but the present Christian
dispensation. St. Paul is quoting Isaiah's prophecy of Christ
of the acceptable time and the day of salvation, and he says
this time has come now in this Christian dispensation.

Probation in This Life 147

recklessly on chances in the future is taking
terrible risks. The Bible gives no encourage
ment to hope that one who with full knowledge
of Christ keeps on wilfully rejecting Him all
through this life will be able to turn to Him in
any other life.

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

We dare not minimize what the love and
pain of God may do, but we dare not presume

148 The Near Hereafter

in the face of Scripture to lighten the awful
responsibility which this life brings.

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

CHAPTER XI
MINISTBY IN THE UNSEEN LIFE

§1

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

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

Our path has broken off — knowledge can go

no further. May we speculate with faith on

something we cannot prove? I am thinking

of a speculation very dear to myself, about that

149

150 The Near Hereafter

progress of our dear ones in the presence of
Christ. Will not much of that progress in the
life beyond come through unselfish ministry to
others? Let us see what reason there is to
hope it.

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

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

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

Think, how shall His command be fulfilled
by His Church, " Go preach the good news to
every creature " — EVERY creature. What a
mockery it seems with the heathen dying half
a million every week if no work for Christ goes
on in the Unseen! If millions of those Hin-

Ministry in the Unseen Life 151

doos who have died without the Gospel would
have accepted it, do you think it is not being
taught to any of them now ? If the men of
ancient Tyre and Sidon would have repented at
the teaching and work of Christ, if the mighty
works had been done in them, do you not think
He has taken care since that the men of Tyre
and Sidon should have their chance ? If
the heathen Socrates, and Plato, and Marcus
Aurelius, and Epictetus would have fallen at
His feet as their Master and Friend — and you
know they would — do you think they have not
learned to know Him by now ? If honest
hearts in our own land who have died repelled
from Him through their ignorance and through
stupid misrepresentations would have loved
Him if they knew Him as He really is, do you
think that no one is helping them to understand
Him now ? Can we doubt that somehow within
the Veil they will learn more fully of His tender
love? And judging from what we know of
God's methods on earth, is it unreasonable to
think that they will learn it from their brethren ?
True, God might help them by means of the
angels. But in God's dealings with men's souls
on earth not angels but men were the helpers

152 The Near Hereafter

He gave them. Even in the stupendous miracle
of the conversion of St. Paul it was a man
(Ananias) whom God sent to help him.

§2

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

"We saw reason to believe that Abraham's
case was a type of all other elect — elect for the
service of others. We found that the Bible con
sistently and throughout affirms that when
" God calls or separates one man to Himself it
is for the good of other men ; that when He
selects one family it is that all families should
be blessed ; that when He chooses one nation it
is for the welfare of all nations ; that when He

Ministry in the Unseen Life 153

elects and establishes a church it is for the
spiritual benefit of the world. No man, no
family, no nation, no church possesses any gift
or privilege or superior capacity or power for
its own use and welfare alone but for the gen
eral good." So we learned that God's word is
true in spite of our stupid misunderstanding of
it and that this doctrine of Election rightly
understood is one of the noblest things in the
whole Bible.

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

" You have preached your last sermon," said
one to Frederick Denison Maurice as he was

154 The Near Hereafter

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

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

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

If it be true, ah ! think of it, you who are
trying to forget yourselves, and live for others
— think of the blessedness of your life in the
waiting land. With the weak and the ignorant

Ministry in the Unseen Life 155

needing to be helped ; with the little children
needing to be mothered and loved ; with the
great heathen world, who have gone within the
veil, never yet having heard of Christ.

§4

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

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

And think especially how it deepens the im
portance of our life on earth to feel that it has
a bearing on our usefulness for ever. The more
we increase our talents here, the more we shall
be able to help our Saviour there. He Himself
suggests this in the parables of the Talents and
the Pounds. " Thy pound has gained five, I

156 The Near Hereafter

will set thee over five cities. Thy pound has
gained ten, I will set thee over ten cities. I
will give thee a larger and nobler work here
after." Is not that an incentive to stir one's
blood ? The more I grow in love, in unselfish
ness, in knowledge of God, in righteousness of
life, the more use I shall be to my dear Lord
and to my brethren for ever.

CHAPTER XII
CONCLUSION

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

Ah! that wonderful Paradise land — that
wonderful Church of God in the Unseen — with
its vast numbers, with its enthusiastic love, with
all its grand leaders who have been trained on
earth. WE AND THEY together form the great
continuous Church of God. "We are all ONE
LONG PEOCESSION ; they at the head in the
Unseen. What a life it is 1 What a work it
has!

Said I not well it was a Gospel of the Here
after, a good news of God ! It will make you
solemn as you feel that character passes on un-
157

158 The Near Hereafter

changed. That is good ; but it will do more. It
will take away the sting and the horror of death.
It is not the pain of dying that makes that
horror when I come to die. After all, men
bear far more pain without flinching. It is not
merely the parting for the present with those I
love. We have constantly to do that when they
go to other lands without breaking our hearts
about it. It is not even any doubt about a
future Eesurrection at the Second Advent. I
may believe that, and yet get little comfort
from it. That Advent seems so far away. It
may be next week ; but it may be 5,000 years
hence, and meantime what of my life ? Sleep,
unconsciousness, darkness ? What ? JSTo won
der I should shrink from that mysterious un
known.

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

In the awful days of bereavement it will
bring God's peace, and it will bring elevation

Conclusion 159

of character. " Where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also."

" He is not dead, the child of your affection,

But gone into that school
Where he no longer needs your poor protection,
And Christ Himself doth rule."

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

When your death comes, he will be waiting
for you. He has been praying and watching
over you. He will tell you of all that has been

160 The Near Hereafter

happening. And together in Christ's loving
presence, side by side, you will work and wait,
and help your brethren ; and look forward to
the glory of the heaven that is still in the fu
ture. Is not that a Gospel worth the preaching
— a Gospel to stir our souls and to comfort our
hearts for those " whom we have loved long
since and lost a while " ?

Thank God for the blessed doctrine of the
Paradise life !

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

PART II
The Far Hereafter

I

THE JUDGMENT

WE touch lightly on the subject of the
FAK Hereafter which is still away
in the future for all humanity.
One day the Intermediate Life will close.
The end of this age will come at the Second
Advent. And at this crisis our Lord places
the great drama of the Judgment and the
final decision of each man's destiny. Whether
it will be a great spectacular event such as
His picture suggests, with all humanity as
sembled and the Judge on the great White
Throne, or whether His picture is figurative, we
cannot affirm. We can only gather that it will
be a final judgment and that it will be a judg
ment according to finally developed character,
when men shall be clearly seen to belong to the
right hand or the left, the sheep or the goats,
to the wheat or the tares, to the good fish to bo
gathered up or the bad fish to be thrown away.
Then come the final stages in the history of
humanity, Hell and Heaven.
163

n

HELL

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

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

And this is all that would have needed to be
164

Hell 165

said if men had kept to that reticence and re
serve of Scripture, and to all further question
ings contented themselves with the answer that
the Judge of all the earth will do right. But
they have not so contented themselves. It is
hard to blame them. For beyond the main
facts about the doom of the impenitent there
are here and there through the Bible many tan
talizing hints perplexing and difficult to recon
cile with each other, but very tempting to fol
low out. By emphasizing certain of these and ig
noring or dwelling more lightly on certain others
which seem to contradict them, men have for
mulated definite doctrines about Hell, differing
widely from each other but each with apparently
strong Scriptural support. This is only what
may happen in any department of study. The
strict rule of evidence in any enquiry is that
all the facts must be studied and that no
theory shall be accepted as entirely trust
worthy while any of the evidence remains
unaccounted for.

There are three theories which hold the
ground to-day, each of them seemingly with
much evidence in its favour, but each of them

166 The Far Hereafter

seriously unsatisfactory as conflicting with other
evidence.

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

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

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

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

The main trend of all Scripture teaching is
that it shall be well, gloriously well, with the
good, and that it shall be evil, unutterably evil,

Hell 167

with the wicked. That there is a mysterious
and awful malignity attaching to sin — that to
be in sin means to be in misery and ruin in this
life or any other life — and that sin persisted in
tends to utter and irretrievable ruin. No argu
ments about the love and power of God to save
to the uttermost can cancel the fact of the free
will of man or the plain statements of Scripture
confirmed beyond question by the loving Lord
Himself as to the awful fate of the finally im
penitent.

But running through all this dark back
ground of Scripture is a curious golden thread
of prophecy that evil shall not be eternal in
God's universe. One turns to it perplexed
with wondering hope. For however fully Con
science recognizes the righteousness of a terrible
retribution for sin, there is in all thoughtful
minds a shrinking from the thought that Evil
shall be as permanent as Good in the universe
of the All-holy God — that any evil power can
exist unendingly side by side with Him and un
endingly resist Him ; that Hell and Heaven,
Satan and God shall co-exist for all eternity.
This is almost unthinkable to thoughtful men.
It is a Dualism repugnant to all our ideals

l68 The Far Hereafter

of God. And this golden thread, running
through the Old and New Testaments alike,
confirms this thought, in its dim vision of a
golden age somewhere away in the far future —
away it would seem beyond the dark vision of
Hell — when evil shall have vanished out of the
Universe for ever and " God shall be all in all "
(1 Cor. xv. 28) — when there shall come " the
times of the Restoration of all things which
God hath promised by the mouth of all His
holy prophets since the world began" (Acts
iii. 21).

Naturally there is danger of people empha
sizing strongly either one of these trends of
Scripture and gathering certain proof texts ac
cording to their own prejudices and preconcep
tions of what ought to be. " The way in which
some people read their Bibles," says Mr. Ruskin,
" is like the way in which the old monks thought
that hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled them
selves over the grapes as they lay on the ground
and whatever first stuck to their spikes they
carried off and ate." If the grapes are of vari
ous kinds as are the passages of Scripture we
cannot judge thus of the taste of the vintage.

Hell 169

To get the true taste of the grapes we must
press them in cluster. To get the true mean
ing of Scripture we must study the whole trend
of Scripture. Before we can accept any doc
trine from separate passages of Scripture we
must assure ourselves that it is in harmony, not
only with other passages but also with the
ruling thoughts which run through all Scripture,
God's unutterable holiness, God's awful hatred
of sin and stern denunciations of doom against
the impenitent, God's love, God's unchangeable-
ness, God's reasonableness and fairness, and the
mysterious golden thread of hope which runs
through all.

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

I

The theory of Everlasting Torment and Ever
lasting Sin.

This theory keeps with Scripture in assert
ing the fatal and irrevocable result of unre-
pented sin — but it goes beyond the reserve of
Scripture in defining that result and so defin
ing it as to impugn the character of God. It
teaches that all who are condemned in the

170 The Far Hereafter

Judgment are doomed to a life of endless tor
ment, in the company of devils — forsaken of
God. Millions of millions of ages shall see this
punishment no whit nearer to its end. It must
go on for ever and ever and ever.

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

Hell 171

night and crying as I thought of the lost souls
in Hell as my poor little brain reeled at the
thought of the journeys of that wretched insect
and of those whom God kept alive to suffer for
ever and ever and ever.

Then as one grew older came the further
horror that these " lost " are kept alive not only
to suffer but to sin everlastingly. They are to
go on increasing in sin for ever and ever and
ever in the universe of the All-holy God.
One tests this by the ruling thoughts of Scrip
ture. One thinks of God's holiness. One
thinks of the golden thread of hope. One
wonders what it means that Christ came to
" destroy the works of the devil " 1 and to des
troy the devil (bruise the serpent's head 2) and
how one day "God shall be all in all" if
straight opposite for all eternity shall be Sa
tan's Kingdom of misery and sin. Surely
Christ has not failed ! And yet — and yet —
what shall we say? And what shall we say
of God's fatherhood ? Shall we say as some
do that as Judge He must do cruel things
which as Father He would shrink from ? God
forbid ! The Judge and the Father are one.
*1 Johniii. 8. 2Gen. iii. 15.

172 The Far Hereafter

Men would never use such sophistry about the
character of God if it were put into plain
words. " Ye must ken," said a godly old Scotch
man, " that the Almighty may often have to do
in His offeeshial capacity what He would scorn
to do as a private individual ! " I quote this
not with flippancy but with stern indignation.
That is baldly what such sophistry means.

Clearly one who insists on this doctrine ought
at least to be absolutely certain that Scripture
leaves him no escape from it. Now the con
clusion which a thorough study of the question
leads to is this : — that Scripture nowhere defi
nitely affirms that the sufferings of the lost
shall not be everlasting, and nowhere defi
nitely affirms that they shall le everlasting.

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

Let me explain.

Hell 173

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

In the first the chief word is DAMN or

DAMNATION.

In the second the chief word is HELL.

In the third the chief word is EVERLASTING.

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

§1

Take first the words Damn, Damnation
which convey to us the idea of doom to a Hell
of never ending torment and never-ending sin.

174 The Far Hereafter

The original word conveyed no such idea to
our Lord or the Apostles. It conveyed no
such idea to the translators of the Authorized
Yersion. When they translated it Damn and
Damnation they did not at all mean what we
now mean.

There are two Greek words, »plvu> which
means simply to judge, and Rara-Kplva> which
means to judge adversely, to condemn, and it is
sometimes the first and sometimes the second
of these words which is translated "Damn."
"Why is it so translated ? Surely the transla
tors did not think so evil of God as to believe
that He could never judge a man without con
demning him and that He could never condemn
him except to everlasting torment. JSTot at all.
They had no thought of this. The English
word " damn " at that time had no such awful
meaning as has grown into it in our day
through the wide-spread influence of the theory
which I am criticizing. It simply meant what
the Greek word meant. I find an interesting
illustration of this in the Wycliffe Bible in the
passage about the woman taken in adultery.
Jesus saith, "Woman, hath no man damned
thee?" "No man, Lord." "Neither do I

Hell 175

damn thee." That is to say the English word
Damn at that time only meant "condemn"
But words are dangerous things if not care
fully watched, owing to their tendency to
change their meaning as a language grows.
A new, darker meaning has grown on to the
English word since. Once an innocent word,
it has now become dangerous and mislead
ing. Therefore, the Eevisers have swept it
away, and the words damn and damnation have
now vanished entirely and for ever out of the
pages of the English Bible. Unfortunately the
public do not read the Revised Version.

"With this explanation I ask the reader to
turn back to his Bible. In our sense of the
word did our Lord say, " He that believeth not
shall be damned"? Most certainly not. He
said that he should be condemned for wilfully
disbelieving, but He did not say to what he
should be condemned, nor for how long. I
should condemn you for doing a selfish act, but
that would hardly mean sending you to endless
torment. Did He say that those who had done
evil should rise to the resurrection of damna
tion? (1 J ohn v. 29). ]STo. He said, " to the

176 The Far Hereafter

resurrection of judgment." (See R. Y.) Did
St. Paul say, " He that doubteth (about eating
certain meats) is damned if he eat " ? (Rom.
xiv. 23). Did he say that a church widow
should have damnation for marrying again?
(1 Tim. v. 12). Of course not ; the word only
means judgment or condemnation. There is no
thought at all in it of this endless Hell as the
Revised Version has plainly shown. So we
see that at any rate all these texts about
"damnation" can no longer be used in proof
of everlasting torment and everlasting sin.

Something similar is true about the texts
whose chief word is " Hell." The word " hell "
occurs eighteen times in the Authorized Ver-
sion. Once it is a translation of a Greek word
Tartarus (2 Peter ii. 4) cast down to Hell to
be reserved " unto the Day of Judgment"
That certainly was not everlasting. Five
times it is a translation of the word Hades
whose meaning we already know, and which
certainly did not mean everlasting. The other
twelve times it is a translation of the word
Gehenna used by our Lord, and no scholar

Hell 177

with the least regard for his reputation would
dream of stating that our Lord certainly meant
it to convey the idea of endlessness. It was
the name of a horrible valley outside Jerusalem
where things were cast out to be burnt, to keep
the city pure. The Jewish prophets took the
word as a metaphor to express the fate of
wicked men. From it they drew their images
used by our Lord of " the worm that dieth not
and the fire that is not quenched " (Markx. 46).
To be in danger of Gehenna was to be in
danger of a hereafter doom suggested by this
dread place.

Our Lord simply took up the vague Jewish
word and did not define it. What exactly had
He in His mind when He used this word?
This is a question of terrible importance. He
certainly meant something very stern and
awful. He seems to indicate also something
final and irrevocable. But there is absolutely
no reason to believe that He meant to convey
the idea in our minds of a vast prison, in
which the souls of the lost are pierced through
with agony for ever and ever. You ask, How
can I know what He meant ? How could I
know what Shakespeare meant by a certain

178 The Far Hereafter

word? I should read up all the books and
letters of Shakespeare's times in which the
word occurs, and whatever it commonly meant
to the people of Shakespeare's time I should ac
cept as being what Shakespeare meant. That
looks sensible, does it not? Well, a very
interesting investigation has been made by
various scholars. They have examined all the
existing Jewish writings where the word
Gehenna was used from 300 B. c. to 300 A. D.
Then they have examined the Jewish Tal-
muds which run on to the fourth and fifth
century. A modern English scholar, Dr. Dewes,
says (Plea for a New Translation, p. 23) :
"Every passage has been carefully examined
which is quoted in the works of Lightfoot,
Schoetgen, Buxtorf, Castell, Schindler, Glass,
Bartoloccius, Ugalino and Nork, and the result
of the whole examination is this : there are
only two passages which even a superficial
reader could consider to be corroborative of the
assertion that the Jews understood Gehenna to
be a place of everlasting torment"

I give a few specimens from the Talmuds.
" Gehenna is ordained of old because of sins."
'*The ungodly will be judged in Gehenna

Hell 179

against the day of judgment" " The ungodly
shall be judged in Gehenna until the righteous
shall say of them, We have seen enough" " The
judgment of the ungodly is for twelve months."
" Gehenna is nothing but a day in which the
impious will be burned." "The sinners . . .
shall descend into Gehenna ; at the end of
twelve months the body shall be consumed
and the soul burned up and the wind shall
scatter it under the feet of the just."

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

i8o The Far Hereafter

Talmud which supports the damnable dogma
of endless torment " (Conversation with Mr.
Cox, Salvator Mundi, p. 72).

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

§3

Now take the group of texts with the word
" everlasting." It is surely significant that the
Revisers have completely removed this word

Hell 181

also in every case and substituted for it the
word " eternal," a less definite word and which
in scholarly usage means rather the opposite of
temporal — that which is above the sphere of
time and space — that which belongs to the
other world. At any rate the fact that they
have removed it in every case shows that the
word "everlasting" did not seem to them a
correct translation.

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

182 The Far Hereafter

(Eph. i. 21). " That in the ages (aeons) to come
He might shew," etc.

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

It is worth notice too that in the Septuagint
Greek Bible, the version usually quoted in the
Gospels and Epistles, this word alwvtos is fre
quently applied to things that have ended, e. g.,
the gift of the land of Canaan, the priesthood of
Aaron, the kingdom of David, the temple at Je
rusalem, the daily offerings, etc. When the noun
always means a finite period and the adjective is
applied both to that which is ended and to that
which is endless it would surely be poor scholar
ship if the Eevisers allowed the word " ever-

Hell 183

lasting " to remain as its translation, or if stu
dents of theology should argue from it the end
lessness of anything. To which we may add
that there are Greek adjectives and phrases
which do definitely mean " endless " and which
are never used in the Bible of men's fate in the
Hereafter.

Be it observed that all this does not prove
that the punishment of the future ages may not
be everlasting. It only proves that Scripture
nowhere asserts unmistakably that it must "be
so. It simply asserts that it is asonian.

The thoughtful advocates of Everlasting Tor
ment are of course aware of all this. But they
honestly feel that in spite of the indefiniteness
of the adjective, our Lord has fixed His mean
ing beyond question in the one passage that
has become so famous as the great proof text in
this controversy, "These shall go away into
&onian punishment, but the righteous into
ceonian life " (Matt. xxv. 46). Yery reasonably
they say, " If the word asserts everlastingness
in the one case it must also in the other." The
answer is that the word of itself cannot assert
everlastingness in either case. If this word
were our only proof of everlasting life then

184 The Far Hereafter

everlasting life would be a doubtful matter.
But the everlastingness of that life like the ever-
lastingness of God is evident all over the Bible
quite apart from this. The words here simply
tell that the one shall go into the seonian life
and the other into seonian punishment, i. e.,
that the one shall go into the life of the future
age and the other into the punishment of the
future age without exactly specifying the dura
tion of either.

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

Hell 185

command of the (seonian) eternal God. But
the age " before the world began " is ended.

At any rate I must leave the matter here.
I have no space for fuller statement. If any
man feels that a world of increasing sin and
awful torment growing no nearer to its end
after millions and millions of ages does not dis
turb his conscience or the thoughts of God
which he has learned from the whole trend of
Scripture this text will probably weigh strongly
with him in spite of all that I have said. But
to him who is tortured by such a thought of God
and yet feels that Scripture binds him to it, it
must surely be some relief to feel that even in
this great bulwark text of Everlasting Torment
our Lord only asserts that these shall go away
into the aeonian punishment or chastisement1
whatever that may mean.

Keluctantly, impelled by a sense of duty, I
have dealt with this theory more fully than
with the others. Should any godly people fear
that I am lightening an awful deterrent to

1 K6Xaat$ — chastisement, correction, punishment (see
Greek Lexicon).

186 The Far Hereafter

sin let me say what long experience has
taught me of the danger of this common
theory.

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

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

Hell 187

they do not, and so we are very unconvincing
about both doctrines.

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

And this false notion of Hell tends to
shake men's belief in the reality of Heaven.
For if the redeemed could enjoy their bliss
in Heaven, knowing that myriads are ex
isting for ever and ever in endless suffering
and still worse in endless sin, one feels that

i88 The Far Hereafter

they have grown so selfish and opposite to
Christ thai they have no business in any
heaven.

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

Whatever reconciliation we find here or here
after it must have at bottom God's unutter
able hatred of sin but also God's unutter
able love and pain over every sinful soul which
He has made. This theory of Endless Tor
ment and Endless Sin certainly does not ap
pear to satisfy this test, and it has in addition
to face the stern revolt of Keason and Con
science.

Hell 189

II

Tlie theory of Universalism, i. £., that all
men shall at length be saved.

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

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

" God who wills that all men should be saved "

igo The Far Hereafter

(1 Tim. ii. 4), and " who wills that all men
should come to repentance " (2 Peter iii. 9).
And this will or determination of God is " im
mutable" (Heb. vi. 7). Again, "Now is the
judgment of this world, now shall the Prince
of this world be cast out, AND I, if I be lifted up,
will draw all men unto Myself " (John xii. 31, 32).
"All flesh shall see the salvation of God"
(Luke iii. 6). " His grace bringing salvation to
all men " (Titus ii. 11). " "We trust in the living
God who is the Saviour of all men, especially
of those who believe " (1 Tim. iv. 10). " He is
the propitiation not for our sins only, ~but also
for the sins of the whole world " (1 John ii. 2).
" He was manifested that He might destroy the
works of the devil " (1 John iii. 8) [and destroy
the devil (bruise the serpent's head) Gen.
iii. 15]. "He shall overcome the strongman
armed (the devil) and take away his armour
and divide his spoils " (Luke xi. 21, 22). " He
was manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice
of Himself " (Heb. ix. 26). " God hath not cast
away His people whom He foreknew . . .
and so all Israel shall be saved " (Eom. xii. 25-33 ).
" The times of the Restoration of all things
which God hath promised by the mouth of all

Hell 191

His holy prophets since the world began "
(Acts iii. 21). " As in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive. But every man
in his own order : Christ the first-fruits ; after
wards they that are Christ's at His coming.
Then corneth the end . . . when all things
have been subjected unto Him1 . . . then
shall the Son also be subjected unto Him that
put all things under Him that God may be all
in all" (1 Cor. xv. 22-29).

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

But with deep reluctance one is bound to as
sert that the advocates of Universal Salvation
to a great degree ignore or explain away unsat
isfactorily much of the sterner side of the

1 The same Greek words are used of His enemies' subjec
tion to Christ as of Christ's subjection to the Father sug
gesting that it would be of the same kind.

192 The Far Hereafter

Bible. For amid all its hopefulness there is a
steadily persistent note in Scripture, stern, aw
ful, sorrowful, which seems impossible to rec
oncile with Uniyersalisni. There are clear and
repeated assertions that some men at any rate
will not be saved. It is St. Paul, the author of
so many of those hopeful Scriptures quoted,
who tells us " even weeping " of men " whose
end is destruction " (Phil. iii. 19), and of those
whose fate shall be "eternal destruction
from the presence of God" (2 Thess. i. 9).
It is the loving Christ Himself who said
of one of His apostles, "It were good for
that man if he had not been born " (St. Matt,
xxvi. 24).

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

Hell 193

should be true, but to believe it we must ignore
much of the evidence of Scripture.

Ill

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

This is another conjecture framed to escape
the difficulties of the former two. It would be
consistent both with retribution for evil and also
with the final victory of good. That in the
mysterious nature of things when the malignity
of sin becomes incurable, a soul rotted through
with sin might ultimately die out of existence ;
this opinion is at least allowable as a conjecture
to escape from the theory of Endless Torment
and Sin. It would in a real sense be an ever
lasting punishment, being an everlasting loss of
Heaven and God. But it too is founded only
on part of the evidence, on such texts as " The
gift of God is eternal life," " He that hath the
Son hath life," implying that immortality is a
conditional thing granted only to those who
are saved, and such texts as " eternal destruo-

194 The Far Hereafter

tion from the presence of God," and the idea
of utter annihilation in such passages as " burn
up the chaif with unquenchable fire." It has
no solid support in Scripture. There is much
in Scripture which makes it difficult to accept
it. And it contradicts straight out the wide
spread Christian belief in the essential immor
tality of the soul (though that belief also needs
to be examined). At any rate it cannot claim
authority as a theory of future punishment.

IV

These are the only conjectures offered us to
solve the difficulties connected with Final Ret
ribution. We find them all unsatisfactory.
We have reached no definite doctrine of Hell.
With the evidence at our disposal it seems im
possible to do so. The failure of all attempts
at reconciling the seeming contradictions of
Scripture must suggest to us that the solution
of this problem is beyond the range of our
present powers. At any rate it is beyond the
range of our present knowledge. Surely it is
wise and reverent to think that this points to
gome dealing of God beyond our human ken
which will one day reconcile all the difficul-

Hell 195

ties.1 Our little guesses do not exhaust God's
possibilities. Some day we shall find the an
swer in that land where we shall know even as
we are known. And when we find it we know
it will be consistent with our highest thoughts
of God. I like to think that it is those who
have grown closest to Christ in sympathy for
sorrow and pain and who unlike us, know all
the facts of the case, who are represented aa
joining in that glad shout hereafter, " Halle
lujah ! salvation and glory and power belong to

Our God, FOR TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS ARE Hl3

JUDGMENTS." Leave the manifestation of this
to God. A wise old man once said, " God has a
good deal of time to do things between this
and the other side of eternity."

This then is the conclusion of the whole mat
ter. A return to the reserve and reticence of
Scripture. But with this result of our study,
that we feel no longer forced to believe of God
that which Conscience declares to be unworthy
of Him. We are set free to believe that the
Judge of all the earth will do right — that

1In other antinomiee of Scripture, e. g., Man's free will
and God's foreknowledge, we have to take refuge in a similai
Belief.

96 The Far. Hereafter

Hell as well as Heaven is within the confines
of His dominion — that evil shall not last for
ever; that in spite of all its conflicting evi
dence the trend of Scripture moves towards the
golden age, the final victory of good.

Thus we leave it.

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

But as we watch the awful shadows of that
outer darkness, there comes beyond it on the
far horizon the quivering of a coming dawn.
For that age of God's Gehenna is to have its
end, and far away the day will dawn for which
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth. to
gether ; when evil shall have vanished out of
the universe for ever ; when death and Hell,
the evil and the Evil One shall be cast into the

Hell 197

lake of fire ; when " at the name of Jesus
every knee shall bow of things in Heaven and
earth, and under the earth " (in the world of the
dead). " And every tongue shall confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the
Father." " Then cometh the end," says St. Paul,
" when Christ shall deliver up the Kingdom to
God, even the Father, when all His enemies
shall be subjected unto Him. And when all
His enemies have been subjected unto Him,
then shall the Son also Himself be subjected
unto Him that put all things under Him, that
God may be all in all."

That is what shall be. One day, somewhere
in the far mysterious future the " purpose of the
ages " shall be accomplished. Evil shall have
vanished out of the universe for ever and
God shall be all in all. One day again it
shall be as at the creation when " God looked
on everything that He had made and behold it
was very good." How ? We know not and
we need not know. We need not be able to
assert dogmatically how He will accomplish
His purpose. We need not be able to assert
that all men shall be saved or that all who are
not will be annihilated. But we must be able

198 he Far Hereafter

with trustful hearts to assert God's love and
God's power and the final abolishing of evil,
even though we can only do it with the poet's
vagueness :

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

m

HEAVEN

AT last " I " has reached the goal. In
that far future comes the glad finale
of human history, the realization of
the eternal thought in the mind of God from
the beginning. As the unwritten play of a
great dramatist lies in his mind before it is
uttered or acted, with every problem solved
and every contingency provided for — so we be
lieve the whole extended drama lay in the
Eternal Mind— the path of struggle and pain
— the cross-currents of human will — the glorious
conclusion of it all. Nothing was an after
thought. Now at last Christ " shall see of the
travail of His soul and shall be satisfied." Aye
— satisfied. It was worth the cost. Worth
the Incarnation of the Eternal Son — worth the
sorrow and the pain — worth being misunder
stood and shamed and mocked and scourged
and spitted on and crucified — this final satis
faction of His tender love. " Eye hath not seen
nor ear heard nor hath it entered into the
heart of man to conceive the things that God
199

200 The Far Hereafter

hath prepared. They shall hunger no more
nor thirst any more, neither shall the sun light
on them nor any burning heat, for the Lamb
which is in the midst of the Throne shall
shepherd them and lead them to eternal foun
tains of waters, and God shall wipe away every
tear from their eyes. There shall be no more
death — no mourning nor crying nor pain any
more, for the former things — the old bad things
— have passed away." That is the end of God's
purpose for men. Surely it will be the won
dering cry of the angels for ever, " Behold how
He loved them ! "

I. WHAT is MEANT BY HEAVEN?

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

The only clear thought we have about

Heaven 201

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

But as we saw in the earlier chapters on the
Intermediate Life I am still "I," the same
conscious self through the whole life of Earth
and Hades and Heaven, and therefore the real
life, the inner life can still be understood. So
when we enquire what can be known about the

202 The Far Hereafter

meaning of Heaven — at the very start I
strike the key-note of the thoughts that follow,
in the words of Christ Himself, " The Kingdom
of God is within you." Heaven is a something
within you rather than without you. Heaven
means character rather than possessions. The
Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but
Righteousness and Peace and Joy in the Holy
Ghost.

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

I have known men who were in Hell here—
they told me so — men of brutal character, men

Heaven 203

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

Do you see, then, the mistake that people
have been making in discussing what is meant
by Heaven? In all ages — in all races — men
have speculated about it, and their speculations
have been largely coloured by their characters

204 The Far Hereafter

and temperaments. The Indian placed it in
the Happy Hunting Ground. The Greeks
placed it in the Islands of the Blest, where
warriors rested after the battle. The North
man and the Mussulman had his equally sensual
Heaven. And many Christians have as foolish
notions as any one else. Some think that they
win Heaven by believing something with their
minds about our Lord's atonement. Some
think they go to Heaven by soaring up through
the air. Some of them, taking in its literal
meaning the glorious imagery of the Apoc
alypse, picture to themselves streets of beaten
gold and walls of flashing emerald and jasper,
and the wearing of crowns and the singing of
Psalms over and over again through all the
ages of eternity.

What is the fault in aU such ? That they do
not understand what Heaven really means.
They think of it as a something outside them
which anybody could enjoy if he could only
get there. They do not understand that Heaven
means the joy of being in union with God — that
the outward Heaven has no meaning till the in
ward Heaven has begun in ourselves. I need
not point out to you that our immortal spirits

Heaven 205

would find little happiness in golden pave
ments and gates of pearl. People on this
earth, who have their fill of gold and pearl, do
not always gain much happiness from them.
They are mere external things — they cannot
give eternal joy, because that comes from
within, not from without. It depends not on
what we have, but on what we are, not on the
riches of our possessions, but on the beauty of
our lives.

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

206 The Far Hereafter

acter • ike joy of goodness ; the joy of likeness
to the Nature of God. That is the highest
joy of all — the only joy worthy of making
Heaven for men who are made in the image
of God.

§3

It is not difficult to show this to any true
man or woman who is humbly trying to do
beautiful deeds on earth. Of course, if a man
be very selfish and worldly ; a man who never
tries to help another; a man who smiles at
these things as unreal sentiment ; who tells
you that hard cash and success in life, and " to
mind number one," as they say, are the chief
things ; a man who never feels his pulses beat
faster at the story of noble deeds — you cannot
absolutely prove to him that the joy of char
acter is the highest happiness. You cannot
prove to a blind man the beauty of the sunset
sky ; you cannot arouse a deaf man to enthu
siasm about sweet music ; and you cannot
prove to an utterly selfish, earthly man that
self-sacrifice and purity and heroism and love
are the loveliest and the most desirable pos
sessions — the sources of the highest and most

Heaven 207

lasting joy. But I feel sure that most of us,
with all our faults, have in our better mo
ments the desire and the admiration — aye, and
the effort, too, after nobleness of life, and there
fore we can understand this highest joy of
Heaven. We have had experience sometimes,
however rarely, of lovely deeds, and the sweet,
pure joy that follows in their train. Well,
whenever you have conquered some craving
temptation or borne trouble for another's sake ;
when you have helped and brightened some
poor life, and kept quiet in the shade that no
one should know of it ; when you have tried
to do the right at heavy cost to yourself ; when
the old father or mother at home has thanked
God for the comfort you have been in their
declining years ; whenever in the midst of all
your sins you have done anything for the love
of God or man, do you not know what a sweet,
pure happiness has welled up in your heart,
entirely different in kind, infinitely higher in
degree than any pleasure that ever came to
you from riches or amusement or the applause
of men. Of this kind surely must be the pure
joy of Heaven. Call up the recollection of
some of those cherished moments of your life,

2o8 The Far Hereafter

and multiply by infinity the pleasure that you
felt, and you will have some faint notion of
what is meant by Heaven, the Heaven that
God designs for man.

II. WHAT is HEAVEN'S SUPEEME JOY?
Thus, then, we answer the first of our ques
tions — What is meant by Heaven ? Heaven
means a state of character rather than a place
of residence. Heaven means to be something
rather than to go somewhere. But though
Heaven means a state of character rather than
a place of residence, yet it means a place of
residence, too. And though Heaven means to
be something rather than to go somewhere, yet
it means to go somewhere, too. And from this
the second question easily follows. What can
be known about that life in Heaven ?

" Oh, for a nearer insight into Heaven,

More knowledge of the glory and the joy,
Which there unto the happy souls is given,
Their intercourse, their worship, their em
ploy."

We do not know a great deal about it.

The Bible is given to help us to live rightly

Heaven 209

in this world, not to satisfy curiosity about
the other world. But yet some glimpses
of the blessed life have come to us, for our
teaching.

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

Wise theologians of old divided the happi
ness of Heaven into " Essential " and " Acci
dental" By essential they meant the happi
ness which the soul derives immediately from
God's presence, from the Beatific Vision. By
accidental they meant the additional happiness
which comes from creatures, from meeting with
friends, from the joyous occupations and all the
delights of ever- widening knowledge.

But the Presence of God, the Vision of God,
is the essential thing which gives light and joy
to all the others. Without that Vision of God
all would be dark as this beautiful world would
be without the sun. Without that joy of God's

21O The Far Hereafter

presence all other joys would be spoiled, just as
the gifts of this life would be without the
central gift of health.

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

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

Heaven 211

III. THE LIFE IN HEAVEN
What can we know further about the life in
Heaven, about what the old theologians called
the secondary or accidental joys as compared
with the supreme joy of the Beatific Vision ?

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

212 The Far Hereafter

what we have only seemed or wished to be
here — honest, true, noble, sincere, genuine to
the very centre of our being.
No sin there.

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

But let us not degrade this thought or make
it selfish or unreal. One often hears the sneer
or the doubt about the happiness of Heaven
while any exist who have lost their Heaven.
We do not know the answer now. But we shall
know it then. And we must be absolutely cer
tain that the answer lies not in the direction of
selfish indifference. The higher any soul on

Heaven 2 1 3

earth grows 'in love the less can it escape un
selfish sorrow for others. Must it not be so in
that land too ? Surely the Highest Himself
must have more pain than any one else for the
self-caused misery of men. If there be joy in
His presence over one that repenteth must there
not be pain over one that repenteth not ? We
can only say in our deep ignorance that until
the day when all evil shall have vanished there
are surely higher things in God's plan for His
redeemed than selfish happiness and content.
There is the blessedness that comes of sympathy
with Him in the pain which is the underside of
the Eternal Love.

§3

!No sin in Heaven. No sorrow in Heaven.
What else do we certainly know? That the
essence of the Heaven life will be love. The giv
ing of oneself for the service of others. The
going out of oneself in sympathy with others.
There at last will be realized St. Paul's glorious
ideal. There it can be said of every man, He
suff ereth long and is kind ; envieth not ; vaunteth
not himself ; is not puffed up ; seeketh not his
own ; behaveth not uncourteously. He is like

214 The Far Hereafter

the eternal God Himself, who beareth all
things, hopeth all things, endureth all things
(1 Cor. xiii. 4-T).

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

And so surely we may believe, too, will there
be varieties of character and temperament. We
shall not lose our identity and our peculiar
characteristics by going to Heaven, by being
lifted to a higher spiritual condition. Just as
a careless man does not lose his identity by

Heaven 215

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

§5

"What else ? There shall be work in Heaven.
The gift of God is eternal life and that life
surely means activity. We are told " His serv
ants shall serve Him." We are told of the man
who increased the talents or the pounds to five
or ten that he was to be used for glorious work
according as he had fitted himself — " Lord, thy
talent hath gained five talents, ten talents."

216 The Far Hereafter

What was the reply ? " You are now to go
and rest for all eternity." Not a bit of it. "Be
thou ruler over five cities, over ten cities ; enter
thou into the joy of thy Lord." I know some
men who are now retired after a very busy
active life of work, and they hate the idleness,
they are sick of it. No wonder the conven
tional Heaven does not appeal to them. Ah,
that is not God's Heaven. "They rest from
their labours." Yes ; but that word " labours "
means painful strain. In eternal, untiring
youth and strength we shall be occupied in
doing His blessed will in helping and blessing
the wide universe that He has made. Who can
tell what glorious ministrations, what infinite
activities, what endless growth and progress,
and lifting up of brethren, God has in store for
us through all eternity. Thank God for the
thought of that joyous work of never-tiring
youth and vigour; work of men proudly re
joicing in their strength, helping the weak ones,
teaching the ignorant aye ! perhaps for the very
best of us going out with Christ into the outer
darkness to seek that which is lost until He find
it. For even that is not shut out beyond the
bounds of possibility in the impenetrable mys-

Heaven 217

tery of the Hereafter. Do you know "WTiittier's
beautiful poem of the old monk who had spent
his whole life in hard and menial work for the
rescue and help of others ? And when he is
dying his confessor tells him work is over,
" Thou shalt sit down and have endless prayers,
and wear a golden crown for ever and ever in
Heaven." " Ah," he says, " I'm a stupid old
man. I'm dull at prayers. I can't keep awake,
but I love my fellow men. I could be good to
the worst of them. I could not bear to sit
amongst the lazy saints and turn a deaf ear to
the sore complaints of those that suffer. I
don't want your idle Heaven. I want still to
work for others." The confessor in anger left
him, and in the night came the voice of his
Lord-

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

Be sure that the repose of Heaven will be no
idling in flowery meadows or sitting for ever in
a big temple at worship, as the poor, weary

1 Whittier, " The Brother of Mercy."

218 The Far Hereafter

little children are sometimes told after a long
sermon in church. No, " there is no temple in
Heaven," we are told — no Church. Because all
life is such a glad serving and rejoicing in God
that men need no special tunes and places for
doing it.

IY. SHALL WE KNOW ONE ANOTHER IN
HEAVEN ?

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

Heaven 219

direct answers about the mysteries of the future
life is because God thought that no such an
swer should be necessary — that His love, if one
would only believe in it, is a sufficient answer
to them all.

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

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

220 The Far Hereafter

could it mean except they should know each
other within ?

But surely the Bible does not need to say it.
It is one of those things that we may assume
with certainty. We know that Heaven would
scarce be Heaven at all if we were to be but
solitary isolated spirits amongst a crowd of
others whom we did not know or love. We
Joiow that the next world and this world come
from the same God who is the same always.
We know that in this world He has bound us
up in groups, knowing and loving and sympa
thizing with each other. Unless His method
utterly changes He must do the same hereafter.
And we have seen what a prophecy of recogni
tion lies deep in the very fibres of that nature
which God has implanted in us. If we shall
not know one another, why is there this undy
ing memory of departed ones, the aching void
that is never filled on earth ? The lower ani
mals lose their young and in a few days forget
them. But the poor, human mother never for
gets. When her head is bowed with age, when
she has forgotten nearly all else on earth, you
can bring the tears into her eyes by mention
ing the child that died in her arms forty years

Heaven 221

ago. Did God implant that divine love in her
only to disappoint it ? God forbid ! A thou
sand times, no. In that world the mother shall
meet her child, and the lonely widow shall
meet her husband, and they shall learn fully
the love of God in that rapturous meeting with
Christ's benediction resting on them.

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

Y. How DO MEN ENTER HEAVEN?

We have asked, What is meant by Heaven ?

What can be known of the details of life in

Heaven ? And now I close this book with the

solemn question for us all : How shall we enter

222 The Far Hereafter

Heaven ? If you have followed me thus far
the answer is easy. Though there is a special
place which shall be Heaven, yet, if Heaven
means a state of mind rather than a place of
residence, if Heaven means to be something
rather than to go somewhere, though it means
to go somewhere, too, then the answer is easy.
We enter Heaven by a spiritual, not by a nat
ural act. We begin Heaven here on earth,
not by taking a journey to the sun or the
planets, not by taking a journey from this
world up through the air, but by taking a jour
ney from a bad state of mind to a good state
of mind ; from that state of mind which is en
mity against God, to that of humble, loyal,
loving obedience to Christ. It is not so much
that we have to go to Heaven. We have to do
that, too. But Heaven has to come to us first.
Heaven has to begin in ourselves. "The be
ginning of Heaven is not at that hour when
the eye grows dim and the sound of friendly
voices becomes silent in death, but at that hour
when God draws near and the eyes of the spir
itual understanding are opened, and the soul
sees how beautiful Christ is, how hateful sin
is; the hour when self-will is crucified, and

Heaven 223

the God- will is born in the resolutions of a new
heart." Then Heaven has begun, the Heaven
that will continue after our death.

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

224 I*16 Far Hereafter

whose Heaven has begun before. They who
may hope to do the work of God hereafter are
those who are humbly trying to do that will
on earth. These shall inherit the everlasting
Kingdom. Unto which blessed Kingdom may
He vouchsafe to bring us all ! Amen.

48197