Class _:_ Bonk .P^ h Gopyrightlf COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT After leatfj— C..pyri:-:!it by Mi.-hkin MADISON C. PETERS. D.D. After Death- What? A Scholarly Exposition of a Vitally Interesting Question That Has Deeply Agitated Thinking Men and Women from Time Immemorial BY MADISON C. PETERS, D.D. Author of "THE GREAT HEREAFTER," Etc. fa fork THE CHRISTIAN HERALD LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor 92 to 116 BIBLE HOUSE m o\ . ' LIBRARY of CONGRESS J Two Coo'ies Received DEC 3 19G8 Copynent Entry n CLASS Ou KXc. No, ^ COPY 8. Copyright, 1908, by Louis Klopsch And he, shall he, Man, her last work who seem'd so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, "Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer> "Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law— Tho ' Nature, red in tooth and claw "With ravine, shriek 'd against his creed — Who lov'd, who suffer 'd countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or sealed within the iron hills? No more I A monster then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music match 'd with him. — Alfred Tennyson, \ PREFACE The work here presented to the public is the result of many years of thought, reading and preaching upon the subject. Whittier speaks of the grave as "that low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings." Millions have gone through the gate of death, and while we have given the hopes which the poets have woven into a song, and the attempts of the philosophers to penetrate the veil of mystery that lies beyond, we have portrayed the after life as we learned it by the study of God's Eevelation. We have presented reason's strong presumption, not only in favor of immortality, but of heavenly recognition also, in support of which we have sought and found full light in the Gospel. The reader will find interesting things from the wise of the ages, and sit at the feet of the poets, the interpreters of the human heart — the expounders of its mysteries, but in every instance the Bible has been our court of final appeal. We do not share the popular opinion that we are in 9 PREFACE the dark with regard to "The Life Beyond.' ' We have avoided speculation and have earnestly sought to declare the positive teachings of Chris- tianity, to throw God's light on dark clouds, to cheer the desponding, to comfort the bereaved, and inspire the readers with the holy ambition to live here in such a way that they may be sure of the life to come. MADISON C. PETERS. New York, December, 1908. SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I Does Death End All? PAGE Immortality a universal belief. — Found not only among cultured nations, but all the world around, among all peoples from the world's earliest morn- ing — This feeling that there is a hereafter the coun- terpart of reality — Man is the only creature having this religious instinct, therefore immortality must be the end to which it leads — When death comes it brings to all men conscious assurance of immortal- ity — Man's restless spirit, proof of Immortality — Man alone carries with him a heavy heart — Im- mortality the only satisfactory explanation — The soul immaterial, therefore immortal — The future life necessary to vindicate God's character — The inde- structibility of matter — Immortality's influence on conduct — The one nation and only one that ever tried to destroy a belief in God and immortality — A future life needed for the working out of that moral completeness which the present never brings — The love that lightens life acts instinctively on the hypothesis of eternity 21 CHAPTER II What Has the Old Testament to Say Upon the Life Beyond? The Bible finds us as nothing else. — Immortality an everpresent underlying fact which runs like a golden thread from Genesis to Revelation — From the very first page of the Pentateuch immortality of the soul was a principle well known and fully understood — How the Old Testament draws the distinction be- tween the spirit and the flesh — The old Jews who lived together in life, wished to live together in death, as they hoped to rise together on the Resur- rection and to dwell together in everlasting habita- tions — Ancient Hebrews regarded life as a journey, 11 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS PAGE as a pilgrimage — The practice of magical invoca- tions of the dead, positive proof of the popular belief in continued existence of the departed — David's deep convictions of immortality — Job's clear convic- tions — Solomon acknowledged the dualism of man's nature — The distinct utterance of Daniel— The Tal- mud on immortality — Proof positive that knowl- edge of immortality is older than the Gospel — Christ lifted the old conception out of probability into the realm of assurance 55 CHAPTER III A Comforting Belief Belief that death ends all would make the present exist- ence a nightmare of horor — Immortality alone amid life's pains can comfort the soul — The happi- ness derived from our faith in immortality is in proportion to the strength and determination we call forth to live the immortal life here — Faith must ever burn with incandescent glow — Too many hold the solemn verities of the hereafter in a sort of half consciousness — There must be faith in Christ as the Redeemer before we can feel the power of immor- tality — Your light affliction works for you a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory — The night of death, the dawn of a clearer day — Immor- tality essential to every hope inspired by religion — Man too great to be cabined, cribbed and confined by earth's narrow limits — Take away the hope in- spired by faith in immortality and naught would remain to make life worth living — No time when the consoling powers of the truth of immortality come with such comfort as in the time of death . 81 CHAPTER IV Light After Darkness Man's earthly life a checkered scene — What men call death is simply a change — The shower as necessary as the sunshine — Only after storm can we fittingly relish the calm — Affliction no respecter of persons — Your cross no heavier than that of others — Sorrow rounds out and perfects life — Jacob and Paul con- trasted — How the latter's faith took hold of things through the eyes of the Spirit, while Jacob failed to see the Divine Plan, that in the end, seemingly the worst, was for his best — Your trust in God 12 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS PAGE keeps you from sinking — No afflicted believer has ever gone in the dark hour to his Saviour for sup- port and been disappointed — The deepest happiness is not that which has never suffered — The sweetest songs of earth have been sung in sorrow — Keep your hold on God, come what may — Keep toiling on for others' sake 103 CHAPTER V A Symposium on Immortality Best thoughts from the world's greatest thinkers — T. C. Coleridge — Lord-Chancellor Erskine — John Fiske — s Dr. Lionel Beale — Dr. John Bascom — Dr. Mar^ tineau — Dr. N. S. Shaler — Dr. George Gordon^ Dr. Brooke Herford — The Duke of Argyle — Frances Power Cobbe — Victor Hugo — Thomas Carlyle — Ly= man Abbott — Dr. Newman Smythe — Dr. Theodore Munger — R. W. Emerson — Dr. Salmond — Dr. S. Dc McConnell — George Romanes — Prof. Wm. James — Johann W. von Goethe— H. W. Thomas, D.D.— Wil- liam Trail — Seneca — Bishop Randolph S. Foster — Joseph Cook — Henry Ward Beecher — George R. Wendling — Dr. Amory Bradford — Prof. Goldwin Smith — Washington Gladden — Daniel March — Wil- liam Jennings Bryan — Prof. Harnack .... 125 CHAPTER VI The Soul Between Death and Resurrection The Scriptural expressions which strengthen the belief that the souls of men do not in the period which intervenes between their separation from the body and the general resurrection sink into a condition of lifeless torpor, but are conveyed to some abode and retain their active powers, at no distant period, but on the very day of death are conveyed to heaven — No intermediate place but an intermediate state — The full apocalypse of God is not given, but for every believer's soul there is immediate bliss, but in a disembodied state and, therefore, intermediate — No purgatory in the early Christian church — Absent from the body and present with the Lord — The meaning of sleep in all languages — Death the gate of life — There is a judgment when a man dies, but. a still further judgment on the last great day when a public decision shall be made — The balance swings unevenly here, but these inequalities we now behold 13 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS PAGE will then be balanced to an unerring nicety — Then it will appear as it never could have done here that God is both a God of justice and goodness . . . 173 CHAPTER VII Our Children in Heaven To none do our hearts go out in greater longing than to the little ones who have gone before — Every object associated with them is sacred — The future estate of the children a subject of deep anxiety to many — Unreasonable and unscriptural views which have been taught — The little ones gain rest without labor, victory without conquest— The superstitions regarding infant baptism — Baptism does not im- part a new heart — Enlightened Christianity coming to an united belief that baptism does not insure regeneration and, therefore, all infants are saved — The children whom God has taken away are our permanent possessions — The invisible children be- come the dearest children — How the child's death brings new blessings to the home — When Christian faith rules the life, the child, though brief the stay, will not have come in vain 199 CHAPTER VIII Our Heavenly Home Glimpses of the coming world — Descriptions of heaven are figurative, yet they serve to give us some knowl- edge of our heavenly home — All that heaven means is beyond our finite comprehension — The conceal- ment of heaven — A full revelation would unfit us for the duties of the present world — Why a full vision is denied us — Heaven is largely unknown be- cause it transcends and not because it is unreal — Heaven is a place — The glorified must have a local platform for their future habitation — Where is heaven — The four words the Bible uses to describe heaven — a kingdom, a country, a city and a home — No sects in heaven — Heaven an open door — The revelation of immortality satisfies every want . 217 CHAPTER IX What is Heaven and How to Reach It Pagan ideas of heaven, ancient and modern — Apostolic symbols — No pain in heaven — No hunger there; no 14 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS PAGE sighs of farewell — The absence of sickness, no darkness yonder — The mysteries all revealed — How to reach heaven — Heaven a continuity, a develop- ment — Heaven means holiness 247 CHAPTER X What Shall We Do in Heaven; Man never reaches a conclusion here — He dies when he gets ready to live — When the trammels of the body are thrown off, the Spirit unloosed will find full opportunity to realize its aspirations in a better sphere — Yonder we shall round out the life and attain our ambitions — Examples of great intellects who expressed their desire for another life that they might realize their ideals — Heaven is not a place of idleness, and psalm singing merely — What the heavenly rest means — Scripture symbols which signify that heaven will be a place of endless enter- prise and boundless progress — What work can be accomplished in this limitless hereafter — The great Work-giver will assign work commensurately to the degree of qualification it necessitates — An im- portant branch of the occupations of heaven will be the solution of the mysteries of the present life — In the long-forever we shall plan and work eternally, and learn profounder truths than we ever dreamt of here 269 CHAPTER XI Shall We Know Each Other There ? The natural answer, Yes! — A world-wide belief — The heavenly recognition among the Greeks and Ro- mans — Modern heathen beliefs — All Christian creeds believe it — The belief among the primitive Christians — Revelation and recognition — The con- tinuance of memory in the world to come — Individ- ual friendships perpetuated — Love's demand for heavenly recognition — Love indestructible — Richer for having loved altho' we lost — Adoniram Jud- son's romance — The loved of long ago will gather about us and meet us at the landing , 305 CHAPTER XII Poems of Comfort Blessed Are They That Mourn, William Cullen Bryant — Household Voices, John Greenleaf Whittier — Com- 15 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS PAGE pensation, Christopher Pearse Cranch — The Angel of Patience, John Greenleaf Whittier — The Parting Hour, Edward Pollock — How Long? Horatius Bonar — Lights and Shades, Mrs. F. D. Hemans — Thy Way — Daily Strength, Frances Ridley Havergal — ■ The Rift in the Clouds, Laurenstine Yorke — No Cross Borne in Vain, J. G. Whittier — Spin Cheerfully — A Silvery Light for Every Cloud — Trust and Sub- mission, Andrew Norton — Leona, James Allen Clark — Sweet, Sweet Hope! Horatius Bonar — To Myself, Translation of Catherine Winkworth — The Heavenly Sculptor, Thomas C. Upham — God's Sure Help in Sorrow, From the German of Anton Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick, 1667, Translation of Catherine Winkworth, 1855 , , , . 347 CHAPTER XIII The Tearless Land The Tearless Land, John H. Yates — The Undiscovered Country, Edmund Clarence Stedman — The Answer, Anon — Beyond, Mrs. J. E. Akers — The One Glad Day, Frederick D. Huntington — There is Light Be- yond, Anon — What Must it be to be There? Mrs. Elizabeth Mills — The Circle Complete, Edward Henry Bickersteth — I See Thee Still, Charles Sprague , 365 CHAPTER XIV Reunions in Heaven The Family in Heaven, James Edmeston — My Dead, Frederick L. Hosmer — Soon With Thee, From the German of /. Lange — Longing for Reunion, H. K. White — Light at Eventide — Recognition in the Resurrection, Bishop Mant — The Departure of Friends, James Montgomery — The Radiant Shore — Over the River, Nancy Priest 377 Index of Authors, 387 First Lines of Poems or of Poetical Quotations, . 395 Does Death End All? Mark how yon clouds in darkness ride, They do not quench the orb they hide; Still there it wheels, the tempest o'er, In the bright sky to burn once more : So, far above the clouds of time, Faith can behold a world sublime; Then when the storms of life are past, The light beyond shall break at last. — Charles Sprague. If a man die shall he live again? — Job. This world is not conclusion; A sequel stands beyond, Invisible as music, But positive as sound. — Emily Dickinson. We do not believe in immortality because we have proved it, but we forever try to prove it because we believe it. — Martineau. I feel my immortality o'ersweeps All pains, all tears, all time, all fears and peals Like the eternal thunders of the deep, Into my ears this truth, — "Thou liv'st forever." — Byron. The grave itself is but a covered bridge leading from light to light through a brief darkness. — Longfellow. O, may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence, live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, and in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. — George Eliot. For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the Bar. — Tennyson. After Death— What ? CHAPTER I Does Death End All? From the world's earliest morning the thoughts of man linked life to a longer chain of time than that between the cradle and the grave. We find everywhere what Emerson calls " man's andacious belief in a future life. ' ' " In the minds of all men, or wherever man appears," says the sage of Con- cord, "this belief appears with him, — in the sav- age savagely, in the pure purely." John Fiske, in Myths and Myth Makers, says: "The idea of death is something impossible for the primitive mind to entertain. ' ' Let us single out Egypt, the world's early school of the arts and sciences, the first leader of the world. What do we find among this primitive people ? A faith in immortality, which was not a mere hypothesis, but as Schlegel was forced to admit, "a lively certainty like the feelings of one's own being. ' ' The constructive power of the faith 21 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? in immortality originated the Egyptian art of em- balming. The astonishing pyramids are enduring structures which faith has erected to the memory of immortal beings. And, if according to Carlyle, living with hope of immortality is derived from the nobility of man, then must the old tenants of Egypt, the master-minds who did so much thinking for the world for all times, have been a noble race. That the future life is but a shadow of the pres- ent, is the idea that runs through Homer, who lived about nine hundred years before Christ. What noble and elevated conceptions of life in the spirit world Socrates gives us five hundred years before Christ ! What an argument in Plato 's "Phaedon" to demonstrate immortality — the pro- foundest reason ever produced! Pindar, fore- runner of Plato, Pericles, who gave his name to the Golden Age of Athens, the shining splendor of Pythagoras, Sophocles and iEschylus, — all bear witness to the thought of Democritus, who said: "The soul is the house of God." That man lived on somehow or other, were it only in the melancholy shadow of existence, was the general idea ever since there was a Greek people. Marcus Aurelius and Scipio Africanus responded to the dictum of Epictetus; "Every man carries about in him a god. ' ' 22 DOES DEATH END ALL? Not only among the cultured nations do we find this sentiment. It has fonnd its way into the South Sea Islands and those of the Pacific. It has diffused itself over Lapland, Asia and Africa. Livingstone in his travels tells us of old Chin- sunse\s belief: "We live only a few days here, but we live again after death; we do not know where, or in what condition, or with what com- panions, for the dead never return to tell us. Sometimes the dead do come back and appear to us in our dreams ; but they never speak, nor tell us where they have gone, nor how they fare. ' ' The chiefs of the Friendly Islands believed that the soul at death is immediately conveyed in a canoe to a distant country, called Doobludha. The followers of Confucius regard the departed as capable of giving aid to the meritorious of their progeny, and also inflicting vengeance on the unworthy. The Fijians believed that the state of a man after death would be identical in every way with that in which he died. When an Arab died his finest camel was tied to a stake beside his grave, and left to expire on the body of his master, in order that he might be fur- nished with his habitual mountage in the region to which death had introduced him. 23 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Why in that forest grave, around which plumed and painted warriors stand unmoved and immov- able as statues, do they bury with the body of the Indian chief his canoe and bow and arrow? He goes to follow the chase and hunt the deer in the spectre-land, where the Great Spirit lives and the spirits of his fathers have gone before him. Some tribes lighted fires on the grave that the departed might not journey in the dark. Among the Seneca Indians when a maiden died they had a custom of imprisoning a young bird until it first began to try its powers of song. Then loading it with messages and caresses, they loosed its bonds over her grave, in the belief that it would neither fold its wings, nor close its eyes until it had flown to the spirit-land and delivered its precious burden of affection to the loved and lost. In one form or another, however distorted or misshapen, however steeped in savagery or sunk in superstition, the idea of a future life persists universally and outlasts all kinds of vehicles that seemed to contain it. Like some river of water of life flowing cease- lessly through the universal heart of humanity, it seems to say, — Men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. 24 DOES DEATH END ALL? What is this intimation of immortality, this pro- foundest of all intuitions, this most ineradicable of all instincts, which lives ever on, renewing its youth, rising up from the ashes of dead fires, as an angel voice that sings on, above all the din of superstition, the degradations and miseries, the follies and fears of life? What is it, if it is not the testimony of God speaking in the heart of the child, the whisper of heaven, claiming for its own this thing of earth? Cicero long since said: "In everything the consent of all nations is to be accounted the law of nature, and to resist it is to resist the voice of God." An error never perpetuates itself. False- hood has no inherent recuperative energy. Error alone is sectional. Bryant says : ' ' Error wounded writhes in pain and dies amidst its worshipers." Where do we go to find out what is truth, but to concurrent human testimony? All men cannot be deceived, therefore, immortality is a reality. A belief so universal, so entirely agreeable to our feelings, so accordant with our reason, so inde- pendent of education, so uninfluenced by differ- ences of culture, antecedents and surroundings, cannot be false and misleading. This belief is clearly not the result of education. It could not have originated with man, nor have 25 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? come to him from without. It must proceed, therefore, from a supreme moral intelligence. It has its foundation in the inward predisposition of our mental and moral constitution, implanted there by God himself. This feeling that there is a hereafter, this intuitiveness is the counterpart of reality, just as the reflection of a face in the water is sufficient evidence that the face itself is not an illusion. The idea of immortality is inter- woven with the mind, it is a part of the soul's orig- inal furniture; it is God's appointed witness that we shall live again. Man is the only creature that has this religious instinct ; therefore immortality must be the end to which it leads. If man has an instinct looking forward to future life, and there is no future life provided for him, then he is the solitary exception to a rule otherwise universal. There is no example in nature of an organic instinct without its correlate. Where do we see an instance of a creature instinctively craving a certain kind of food in a place where no such food can be found 1 When the swallows' instinct causes them to fly away from clouds and storms to seek a warmer country, do they not actually find a milder climate beyond the sea? Nature never utters false proph- 26 DOES DEATH END ALL? ecies. And if this be true with regard to the impulses of physical life, why should it not be true with regard to the superior instincts of the soul? Want is a prophecy of destiny. As Schiller puts it: "Was der Geist versprecht leistet die Natur;" what the spirit promises Nature performs. Addison clearly portrays the philosophical mind of Cato in the following lines, as sublime in expres- sion as in depth of reasoning : It must be so, Plato, thou reason'st well, Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself and startles at destruction? 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us, 'Tis heaven itself that points out a hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Must we believe that God has raised these hopes to crush them? No! assuredly not! It is not conceivable of a wise and loving Father that when we are ready to burst out into songs of love and wonder, our lips are to be forever sealed. Why are we endowed with this intense clinging to our own conscious personal life if maybe to-morrow or surely in a few years we shall be snuffed out like a candle ? If I believed that I was to behold nothing but the earthly scene of the eternal drama, and when my spirit was wrapt in anxiety I must perish in 27 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? suspense, I should curse the day that gave me birth, I should never smile again, I should go weeping through life. Is immortality a dream? Let me dream on. I am content. Yes, if 'twere only a dream, Better it were to clasp it, Brood on it until it seem Real as the lines that grasp it. With Eichard Henry Stoddard we sing our con- fidence in God as the guardian of man's immor- tality: The life of man Is an arrow's flight, Out of darkness into light, And out of light into darkness again, Perhaps to pleasure — Perhaps to pain. There must be something, Above or below — Somewhere unseen A mighty Bow, A Hand that tires not, A Sleepless Eye That sees the arrows Fly and fly; One who knows Why we live, — and die. Why is it that when death comes it seems to bring with it to all men conscious assurance of immortality? When men go out of life they let go their doubts and sweep into the satisfying faith of a hereafter. On his death-bed a professed atheist requested to be buried by the side of his Christian wife and 28 DOES DEATH END ALL? daughter. When asked why, his response was: "If there be a resurrection of the righteous, they will get me up somehow or other and take me with them. ' ' This little incident reveals the heart of man, tells the story of an immortal soul and voices our common hope. Nothing overwhelms man's soul like the pro- posal, — "lie in dull oblivion and to rot." "All men," says Theodore Parker, "desire to be immortal." They cling to life because they love it. They shrink from death, not on account of the pangs of dying, or of the results that follow, but because they dread the thought of going out of existence — of being dead. "What is this love of life and this fear of death but the natural expres- sion of that conviction of personal immortality which the inspiration of God breathed into the human spirit? The sentiment of the race by its evident longing for another life finds echo in the lines of Tennyson: No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death. Man's Restless Spirit — Proof of Immortality Life is worth living. It is only mean to the man that makes it so. Yet, without being guilty of either ingratitude or pessimism we may assert that it fails to satisfy the deepest cravings of the 29 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? heart. Expectation, and not satisfaction, seems to be all that even the most favored ever find on earth. The world exhausted itself on Solomon ; he was a multi-millionaire; his Empire stretched from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, from the foot of Lebanon bordering on the desert and around to Egypt ; he was the encyclopedia of his age ; he lived in a palace which required fifteen and a-half years to complete; he had forty thousand horses for chariots. The style of grandeur in which he lived almost passed credence, yet he pronounced all vanity. Queen Elizabeth, proud queen of a mighty realm, with three thousand dresses in her ward- robe, had enough, one would think, to make any woman happy, but she was far from happy. From her dying couch comes the cry, — " Millions of money for an inch of time." If that offer had been possible, how it would have revolutionized financial affairs for a time ! Crowns may be set "with diamonds or Indian stones," but the kings and queens seldom enjoy the crown of content which is worn upon the heart. Do you imagine that the great heart of Abraham Lincoln ever found a moment's happi- ness in the White House? 30 DOES DEATH END ALL? Thackeray, one of the most genial and lovable souls, after he had won the applause of all intelli- gent lands by his marvelous genius, sits down in a Paris restaurant, looks at the other end of the room and wonders whose that forlorn and wretched-looking face before him is. Eising he finds that it is Thackeray in a mirror. Man's soul is fluttering within like a caged bird, the noblest creature on the earth, and at the same time the most miserable. He has greater gifts and higher qualities than any other visible being, and yet he, and only he, is lonely and dejected, sad and sorrowful. Man alone carries with him a heavy heart. How merrily sing the birds as they fly along over the fields and forests, or cleave the mountain air, and how perfectly happy are they as they tuck their heads under their wings when the shadows of night fall and the wind cradles them on some swinging bough? The flocks and herds upon a thousand hills, the myriad forms of insect life, every winged fly and tuneful beetle, the fish that gaily sport and gambol in the rivers and seas, all can find the end of their being ; not a thought of future want disturbs their perfect tranquility. But never so with man. He only is never satisfied no matter what his wealth, 31 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? or fame, or knowledge, or power, or earthly- pleasures. From the king to the beggar, "man never is, but always to be blest.' ' What is the explanation! Has God made the beast that perishes, to find its every desire grati- fied, while man is created with immortal longings that shall have no satisfactory response either in time or in eternity 1 "We shall be satisfied when His glory shall appear." It is to this purpose God has given us this insatiable thirst. Man pants after happiness, infinite in duration ; his natural hopes and desires run beyond the bounds of time, his "soul uneasy and confined from home rests and expatiates in a life to come. ' ' Attempt, how monstrous and how surely vain! With things of earthly sort, with aught but God, With aught but moral excellence, truth and love To satisfy and fill the immortal soul. Attempt, vain inconceivable, attempt To satisfy the ocean with a drop, To marry immortality to death, And with the unsubstantial shade of time, To fill the embrace of all eternity. The Soul Immaterial, Therefore Immortal There is a close intimacy between mind and matter, but there is no identity between soul and body. We are accustomed to say that the eye sees, the ear hears, and the fingers feel, but they do not. The eyes and ears are but the instru- 32 DOES DEATH END ALL? ments which become the media of intelligence to absolute mind, which nses them whenever that mind is inclined or obliged to employ them. So of the tongne and the hand, they are all adapted to perform the will of an indwelling and control- ing rational Spirit. To explain mind, it has been suggested that Galvanism or electricity is the source of the nerv- ous influence of the human system. Would all the Galvanism or electricity in the world produce the philosophy of Newton, which sought with all comprehending grasp to encircle the Universe of God? If mere Galvanic influence is the source of thought, then it would follow that if you could impart to a fool a greater quantity of electricity, you might bring him to the height of a Shakes- peare. The very statement of the thing is enough to demonstrate its absurdity. There must be some agent prior to and extraneous to the brain, which acts upon the brain, and thereby upon the physical system of man. Physiologists tell us that our bodies undergo complete changes. They say that every seven years every particle of man's physical structure is changed, or transferred or removed. If that be so. then the man of forty-nine has actually had 33 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? seven bodies. Then if the mind is material, if it is of the body, it mnst have undergone a corre- sponding change, and, therefore, in every seven years a man's consciousness that he is mnst have changed, there would not be any recollection of his past life, nor knowledge of personal identity, nor assurance that at forty-nine years of age he is the same person that he was at twenty-one or thirty-five. You know that you have undergone changes, yet you have the consciousness of personal identity. What is that something that has remained intact, that has not been affected by the perpetual pulling down of the old material, and a perpetual replace- ment by new? In this human microcosm every time the watch ticks there are millions of mole- cules of the old body dissolved and carried away and their places supplied by as many millions of new. Yet you know, notwithstanding this process of destruction going on in every portion of your frame, that throughout the years you have main- tained your personal identity, which forces you to admit the presence of something beside matter, something that is free from the perpetual changes to which matter is subject — that matter flows on, while the spiritual substance called soul, endures distinct from and independent of matter. 34 DOES DEATH END ALL? The soul is endowed with immortality as a part of its very nature. It is an immaterial substance, inaccessible to all violence from matter and, there- fore, cannot perish through its instrumentality. As Addison sings : The soul secure in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger and defies its point. The stars may fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But she shall flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds. The mind never sleeps. Who is not conscious that his mind is frequently in a state of more active and vigorous exercise during sleep than in the waking hours 1 The famous astronomer, Sir John Herschell, declared that the following stanza was composed by him while sleeping and dreaming, November 28, 1841, and written down immediately on waking : Throw thyself on thy God, nor mock him with feeble denial. Sure of his love and oh! sure of his mercy at last; Bitter and deep though its draught, yet shun not the cup of thy trial, But in its healing effect, smile at its bitterness past. Upon the hypothesis that the mind and the body are alike material, how are these things to be accounted for 1 Our very dreams by night instruct us that we have within these changing bodies of ours, a living, active principle, a spirit which dis- 35 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? dains obedience to physical laws — refuses to rest when the body rests, and to die when the body dies, and which mnst, therefore, live on when the body shall crumble back to dust. If the mind grows and dies with the body, why is it that children have thoughts and fears and feelings which they are not able to express by the bodily organs? Children grow up with mental impressions that we cannot account for — the listening look, the riveted attention show that the mind in the child is greater than the body. "We find also that mind is not always wasted by disease. Take the case of George Dana Board- man, for many years minister of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia. Paralysis had unnerved and unstrung his whole body. He was in the most distressed condition imaginable, yet his intellec- tual powers remained to his last moments un- scathed. The subtlety, the wisdom, the skill, the talent and the penetration of his mind remained as vigorous as in the meridian of his life — while he held death at bay he finished his ' ' Ethics of the Body," the crowning victory of his splendid genius. There must be something within man that con- stitutes real self, and which enables him to feel that in spite of all his physical calamities there is 36 DOES DEATH END ALL? that in him which is superior to decay, and when the physical proportions of his being have dis- solved into the primitive elements of dust, his soul unaffected " stands immortal amid ruin'' like the soul of Ianthe described by Shelley: Sudden arose Ianthe's soul; it stood All beautiful in naked purity — The perfect semblance of its bodily frame Twined with inexpressible beauty and grace, Each stain of earthliness Had passed away; it re-assumed Its native dignity and stood Immortal amid ruin. The Future Life a Necessity to Vindicate God's Character All the arguments that go to prove the existence of God — a God endowed with such attributes as are essential to our very conception of His char- acter, point out the moral necessity of a future state of existence beyond the grave, in which the imperfections and inequalities of the present moral government will not only be redressed, but the whole will be shown to be holy and righteous. There is sin and there is punishment for sin, which we daily witness. But there is not for all sins such a reckoning in this world as meets the claims of righteousness and justice. Do we not see evil doings go undetected, and many bad men pass unpunished? 37 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? "When we take a deliberate view we are naturally led to exclaim: ' ' "Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power? Is there no punishment for the workers of iniquity? Is there no God that judge th in the earth?" And indeed, were there no retribution beyond the limits of this present life, we should be necessarily obliged to admit one or the other of the following conclusions : Either that no Moral Governor of the world exists or that "justice and judgment" are not "the habitations of His throne." If the moral government of God, the existence of which our experience avouches, is ever to have its administrations perfected and wrought to a complete actualizing of its own manifest prin- ciples, it can only be in another state of existence, and the double conclusion presses upon us, that there is a future life, and that that life is one of rewards and punishments. Ella Wheeler Wilcox sees in this argument the necessity for a future life : The pain we have to suffer seems so broad Set side by side with this life's narrow span, We need no greater evidence that God Has some diviner destiny for man. He would not deem it worth his while to send Such crushing sorrows as pursue us here, Unless beyond this fleeting journey's end Our chastened spirits found another sphere, 38 DOES DEATH END ALL? So small this world, so vast its agonies, A future life is needed to adjust These ill-proportioned wide discrepancies Between the spirit and its frame of dust. So when my soul writhes with some aching grief, And all my heart-strings tremble at the strain. My reason lends new courage to belief, And all God's hidden purposes seem plain. The Indestructibility of Matter According to the positive teaching of the most advanced science of the day nothing in the whole realm of nature is really destroyed in the sense of being annihilated. We have no power over matter to destroy it. We can only change its form. The mere mote floating in the sunbeam is imperishable. What we caH " death' ' does not involve extinc- tion, only change. When we speak of anything as destroyed, what we really mean is that it has altered its condition. When we affirm that it no longer is, we affirm only that it no longer is what it was. It has become something else. You may freeze a drop of water, or heat it to steam, decompose it into its elementary gases, or explode it ; it still exists, every atom of it ; or dis- pense or change its elements as we may, they will forever defy all efforts at their annihilation. Annihilation is a name for what never yet oc- curred to matter and never can. It is an estab- 39 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? lished law of nature that nothing that is once launched into being shall ever go out of existence. We are told that the race is perpetual, but the individuals are perishable. To the animal the present is everything, while the future is the great fountain of man's happiness. If the present is all to the animal, when extinguished it loses nothing. But if man be annihilated he loses all the past treasures he has accumulated and foregoes all he anticipated for the future, a catastrophe too big for human imagination to conceive, too horrid for the mind to dwell upon. The destruction of the apple-tree is merely a change of form and development, a transmigra- tion of substance. The destruction of the tree is only its preparation for another existence, per- haps more beautiful than its former one; the destruction of my soul must, by necessity of the case, be utter annihilation. It can never be trans- migration, or be transferred to any other. The consciousness of personal identity which consti- tutes me is inalienable from me ; it must be extin- guished altogether or perpetuated in myself. The endless expansion and growth of the tree would be mischievous; there would be no space nor room for other trees just as useful. But the reverse is true of man's soul. The more he 40 DOES DEATH END ALL? masters, the more he expands the powers of those around him Immortality's Influence on Conduct Eenan says one evidence for the truth of immor- tality may be found in the nobility of behavior it inspires. The idea that is but — The pilgrim of a day, Spouse of the worm and brother of the clay, Frail as the leaf in autumn's yellow bower, Dust in the wind or dew upon the flower, A child without a sire, "Whose mortal life and transitory fire, Light to the grave his chance created form, As ocean wrecks illuminate the storm. And then — To-night and silence sink forever more, does not kindle great deeds and strengthen for any sublime endeavor. Cicero said of the Epicu- rean creed that it was utterly to be rejected because it led to nothing worthy or generous. If death ends all, what an imposture is our system of laws on which society is founded. If we must wholly perish, the maxims of charity and justice and the precepts of honor and friendship are empty words. Why should they be binding if in this life only we have hope ? "What duty do we owe to the dead, to the living or to ourselves, if all will be nothing? 41 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? If retribution terminates with the grave, moral- ity is a bugbear of human invention. What are the sweet ties of kindred if we shall not live again? What sanctity is there to the last wish of the dying if death is a wall instead of a door ? What is obedience to laws but an insane servitude? What is justice but an unwarrantable infringe- ment upon liberty? What are the laws of mar- riage but a vain scruple, and what is government but an imposition on credulity, if death ends all? There was one nation and only one that ever tried to destroy belief in God and immortality. France decreed in national convention that there was no God, and death was an eternal sleep. The Sabbath was abolished; churches were turned into temples of reason. The Bible was dragged along the streets in the spirit of derison and contempt. Infidelity then reigned and frightful was its reign. Its crown was terror, its throne the guil- lotine, its sceptre the battle-axe, its palace yard a field of blood, and its royal robes dripped with human gore. Gutters were filled with the torn shreds of human flesh. Property was confiscated. The morning breeze and evening wind bore across the vine-clad hills of France the cries of suffering and the shrieks of terror, and to save the metro- polis and the kingdom from utter desolation, the 42 DOES DEATH END ALL? infidel authorities had to reinstate the Sabbath and public worship. Were the belief in God and immortality to die out in the human heart, the flood-gates of vice would open wide, plunge the world into the grave of despair, and consign humanity to the dungeons of the damned. Man's Unrealized Ideals A future life is needed for the working out of that moral completeness which the present never brings. We are cut off when we begin to be ready to do something in the world. Henry Ward Beecher said: "We are like plants in an inhospitable climate, which bear leaves and blossoms, but no fruit. Nature cannot do her work in vain. There must be some clime where we can bear our fruit. ' ' Victor Hugo expresses the hope that death is not life's close, but rather its beginning: "I feel in myself the future life; I am like a forest that has been more than once cut down ; the new shoots are stronger and livelier than ever ; I am rising I know towards the sky; the sunshine is upon my head; the earth gives me its generous sap, but heaven lights me with reflections of unknown worlds, You say the soul is nothing but the 43 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? resultant of bodily powers, why, then, is my soul the most luminous when my bodily powers begin to fail? Winter is upon my head, and eternal spring is in my heart. I breathe at this hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets and the roses as at twenty years ; the nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal sym- phonies of the worlds which invite me ; it is mar- velous, yet simple. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, phil- osophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, song, I have tried all, but I feel that I have not said the thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say, 'I have finished my life! My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley — it is a thoroughfare ; it closes in the twilight to open with the dawn. My work is only beginning; my monument is hardly above its foundation; I would be glad to see it mounting forever ; the thirst for the infinite proves infinity \" Goethe says his belief in the immortality of the soul springs from the idea of activity, — "for I have the most assured conviction that our soul is of an essence absolute, indestructible, an essence that works on from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our earthly eye, sinks and 44 DOES DEATH END ALL? sets, but in reality never sinks but shines on unceasingly. ' ' Cicero, when his daughter, Tullia, the idol of his heart, died, retired from public life, buried himself in his books, and then wrote his famous sentence: "Man's grand ideals are overtures of immortality, because they require and demand immortality for their realization. ' ' Browning says : I know this earth is not my sphere, For I cannot so narrow me, but that I shall exceed it. This high ideal which is not reached on earth intimates an immortal life, which may afford time and scope for its realization. Lowell nobly says in his elegy on the death of Channing : Thou art not dead; in thy higher sphere Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks, And strength to perfect what is dreamed of here Is all the crown and glory that it asks. Theodore Parker on his death-bed said to a friend, — ' ' I am not afraid to die, but I might wish to carry on my work. I have only half used the powers God gave me." Emmanuel Kant argued from the existence of a moral law unrealized and unrealizable here, the necessity of some after-life. "Perfection is the heritage with which God has endowed me, and 45 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? since this short life does not give completeness, I must have the immortal life in which to find it. ' ' This yearning after perfection and complete- ness is the soul's qualification for and prophecy of its own immortality. I know no view-point from which the grandeur of life is more impres- sive. The high aspirations of the soul are no longer blasting mockeries. The problem of life is solved. The vast strides man has made during the short compass of his present earth-life in his march towards civilization, is a prophecy of the infinite possibilities before him in the future, and death is only a stage in man's evolution upward, only another name for birth, introducing him into another grander sphere of the eternal process moving on. Your past life has been downhill and towards gloom ; your future is uphill towards the glorious sunrise. Dying is throwing open the door that the bird may fly out of his netted cage and be heard sing- ing in higher flights and in diviner realms. The Immortality of Love The love that lightens life acts instinctively on the hypothesis of eternity. In the untimely death 46 DOES DEATH END ALL? of Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson lost his dear- est friend. In his ' ' In Memoriam ' ' the poet 's love seeks an immortal support; in the persistence of love and longing to meet the loved again, the poet argues that death is only a temporary loss : But in my spirit will I dwell, And dream my dreams and hold it true, For though my lips may breathe adieu, I cannot think the thing, farewell. At the foot of the white marble cross which his wife placed upon the grave of Charles Kingsley, are graven these words: "We have loved, we love, we shall love. ' ' In the beautiful drama of Ion the instinct of immortality so eloquently uttered by the death of the devoted Greek finds a deep response in every soul. When about to yield his young existence a sacrifice to his fate, his beloved Clemanthe asks, if they shall meet again, to which he replies: "I asked that dreadful question of the hills that seemed eternal, of the clear streams that flow for- ever, of the stars among whose fields of azure, my spirit has walked. As I look upon thy loving face I feel that there is something in thy love that cannot wholly perish. We shall meet again, Clemanthe !" Love is forever. The marriage contract, "until death do us part," really does not mean a contract 47 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? for this life only. Love's language is forever and she speaks no other tongue. In one of George MacDonald's romances there is a young girl, carefully nurtured, but who had never been touched religiously. She was engaged to marry a man who was a professed unbeliever. But it comes to pass, that this girl is awakened spiritually, that she comes to know herself as a being crowned with the sapphire glow of immor- tality, and she questions George : ' ' Tell me how long you will love me?" And after a little dis- cussion of that sort, she lets the young man go, because says she, ' ' It may be only a whim, but it is my whim to be loved as an immortal woman. ' ' None of us wants to be loved any other way, and if it were that we should not meet and know one another in heaven, then when our dead are laid away in the grave, our love for them ought to die. But we do not cease to love the dead, neither do we love them less, but rather more than we love the living, with a love more unselfish and with less taint of earthliness about it. And if we, with all our restrictions upon us, can love so ardently, how much more can those, who with ever-broaden- ing faculties have entered into the fulness of life, love with a deeper passion and more enduring intensity? 48 DOES DEATH END ALL? The yearning for the eternal life of those we love involves the certainty that the great heart of God will ont-soar, in the eternal order which He has established, our highest desires. When our friends have crossed the river, we are somehow bound to them by the cords of a death- less love. We can somehow never realize that they are gone. The looks, the forms, the voices, the smiles of the dead are still with us. We feel their mysterious nearness. Love still teaches us to love them. In every tear that we shed, in every sigh that we heave, we have so many proofs in the soul itself, that the dead, whose memory we so fondly cherish, still live beyond the grave. We are richer for having loved, although we lost. As Tennyson puts it: This truth came borne with bier and pall, I felt it when I sorrowed most; Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. With Whittier we hopefully cry : Yet love will dream and faith will trust, Since He who knows our need is just, That somewhere, somehow meet we must. Alas! for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress trees; Who hopeless lays his dead away Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play, Who hath not learned in hours of faith — The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever lord of Death. And Love can never lose its own. 49 What Has the Old Testament to Say Upon the Life Beyond? Far o'er yon horizon Rise the city towers, Where our God abideth; That fair home is ours. Flash the streets with Jasper, Shine the gates with gold; Flows the gladdening river Shedding joys untold; Thither, onward thither, In the Spirit's might; Pilgrims to your country, Forward into Light! — Henry Alford. No moaning of the bar; sail forth, strong ship, Into that gloom which has God's face for a far light. Not a dirge, but a proud farewell from each fond lip — And praise, abounding praise, and fame's faint starlight. Lamping thy tuneful soul to that large noon Where thou shalt choir with angels. Words of woe Are for the unfulfilled, not thee, whose noon Of genius sinks full-orbed, glorious, aglow. No moaning of the bar; musical drifting Of Time's waves, turning to the eternal sea, Death's soft wind all thy gallant canvas lifting, And Christ thy Pilot to the peace to be. — Sir Edwin Arnold, on the Death of Tennyson. Still seems it strange that thou shouldst live forever? Is it less strange that thou shouldst live at all? This is a miracle, and that no more, Who gave beginning can exclude an end, Deny thou art — then doubt if thou shalt be, A miracle with miracles enclosed Is man; and starts his faith at what is strange? What less than wonders from the Wonderful? What less than miracles from God can flow? Admit a God (that mystery supreme! That cause uncaused) , all other wonders cease. Nothing is marvelous for him to do! Deny Him . . . All is mystery besides! Millions of mysteries! each darker far Than that they wisdom would unwisely shun, If weak thy faith, why choose the harder side? We know nothing but what is marvelous; Yet what is marvelous we can't believe. — Young. CHAPTER II What Has the Old Testament to Say Upon the Life Beyond? Revelation confirms the teachings of nature, corroborates the wisdom of the philosophers and supplements the songs of the poets. Coleridge said : ' l The Bible finds me as nothing else does. ' ' We do not turn to Plato for comfort in sorrow. The conscience convinced of sin finds no forgive- ness in Goethe. Shakespeare cannot lift us above life's disappointments. Homer cannot impart strength in temptation's hour. And in our gro- ping for immortality, all logic, philosophy and poetry combined cannot give us the unmistakable assurance of a hereafter. The Bible only can inspire that blessed hope. When Sir Walter Scott was dying, he said: "Read to me." "From what book?" was asked. He answered, "Need you ask? There is but one book for a dying man, and that is the Bible. ' ' "This precious Book I'd rather have Than all the golden gems That e'er in monarch's coffers shone, Or on their diadems. 55 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? And were the sea one chrysolite, This earth a golden ball And gems were all the stars of night, This Book were worth them all." The great hereafter is an ever-present underly- ing fact which runs like a golden thread from Genesis to Revelation. Like the existence of God the Bible takes for granted onr immortality, assur- ing those who are in fellowship with God of a blessed life beyond the horizon of death. It is popularly supposed that the glorified union of the soul and the body in the future life is pre- eminently a doctrine of the New Testament, and that in this sense Jesus Christ alone "hath brought life and immortality to light." Indeed many writers strangely pretend to doubt whether the Jews knew anything at all of another life. The Bible starts out with the conception that man sustains relations to God which are never to cease. The creation of man is not explained scientifically, how matter or man were created, there are no theories indulged as to man's origin, except that God created him in His own image. ' ' So God created man in His own image, ' ' (Genesis 1: 26.) The material likeness of God was not here referred to. God has no corporeal image. "And the Lord God spake unto you out of the midst of the fire, ye heard the voice of the words, 56 THE OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING but saw no similitude, only ye heard the voice.' ' (Deut. 4:12.) To the Hebrews "in the image of God" meant that they were created with a soul invisible and undying as the divine Spirit. Thus we are told (Genesis 2: 7), "and the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul." Here emphatic expression is given to man's two-fold nature. Certain Hebrew scholars maintain that this doc- trine of a dual life is disclosed even in the fact that the Hebrew synonym for life has a plural form. Benson translates the phrase "the breath of life," "the soul of lives," and the author of the Literal Translations from the Hebreiv, renders the passage, "and Jehovah Elohim formed a very man of the dust of the ground, and blew into his nostrils the living spirit and man was for a living creature." Thus on the very first page of the Pentateuch the immortality of the soul was a prin- ciple well-known and fully understood. The Old Testament again and again draws a dis- tinction between spirit and flesh. ' ' And they fell on their faces and said, ! God, the God of the spirits of all flesh." Numbers 16: 22. "Behold, He put no trust in His servants ; and His angels 57 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? He charged with folly ; how much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth?" Job. 4: 18, 19. Here the soul is clearly distinguished from the body as the occupant of the house is dis- tinguished from the house. "But his flesh upon him shall have pain. His soul within shall mourn. ' ' Job. 14: 22. " Flesh' ' and "soul" are placed in contradistinction — the flesh is "upon him," the soul is "within him." "But there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding." Job. 32: 8. "The Lord forme th the spirit of man within him." Zech. 12. The original decree of death, Genesis 3 : 19, im- plies only the death of the body — "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." And Ecclesiastes 12: 7, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was ; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it," is only an explanation of the scope and design of the decree that the "dust" or body only is to "return to the earth as it was," while the spirit, "the breath of lives," blown into Adam by his Creator, was not dust, nor "taken out of the ground, ' ' but is to " return unto God who gave it." The spirit, therefore, has no affinity for the material clod, and was not doomed to the dust with the body at death. 58 THE OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING " Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. ' ' Genesis 5 : 24. The Israelites mnst have understood that Enoch was taken away to enjoy a better existence than the earthly life. God took him to Himself to heaven; to be with Him on high with whom he walked below. The sacred writer explains (Hebrews 6:5): "He was translated that he should not see death. ' ' How could Noah have been "a preacher of righteousness ' ' without having some motive to present from another world, or without exhibiting the end of righteousness, which is "quietness and assurance forever ? ' ' The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that what Noah and the patriarchs did they did "by faith." Faith itself implies the knowledge of a future life, for it is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The same writer says that Abraham and a host of others looked for a heav- enly country. (Hebrews 11.) Christ himself declared that Moses knew that the dead are raised. Luke 20 : 37, 38 : "Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For He is not the God of the dead, but of the living : for all live unto him." 59 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? The strong desire which reigned in the hearts of the Old Testament saints to be bnried together with their kindred in the same place is also proof that they believed in a perpetual union with their friends through death in a future life. They had lived together in life ; they wished to lie together in death; to rise together in resurrection and to dwell together in everlasting habitations. The familiar phrase " gathered to his people" or "gathered to his fathers," does not mean simply to die or to be buried in a family tomb, but it meant joining them in the other world. This is the clear decision of the best commentators of the various schools. Says Gerlach on Genesis 15 : 15, "Thou shalt go to thy fathers, or thy people, in peace, is the gracious expression for a life after death. ' ' Says Baumgarten, ' ' A continuance after death is assuredly expressed therein." Knobel remarks on Genesis 25: 8, "Abraham was gath- ered to his fathers, was associated with his ances- tors in sheol." Sheol, like the Greek Hades, is a general term, meaning simply eternity, or the regions of the dead, without designating the par- ticular condition of the dead as happy or miser- able. Their actual condition must be determined by the context. The phrase "to go to his fathers," "to be 60 THE OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING gathered to his fathers, ' ' and the very common one to " sleep with his fathers' ' all have the same meaning. Delitzsch takes the same gronnd on Genesis 25: 8: "That Abraham was buried is first stated further on ; the nnion with his relatives who had gone before thns takes place first, not at his interment, bnt already in the moment of death. The nnion with the fathers is not mere union of corpses, bnt of persons.' ' This view is strongly reinforced by the repeated designation of the whole present life, however protracted, as a pilgrimage. "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years ; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. ' ' (Genesis 47: 9.) "I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were." (Psalm 39: 12.) The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews certainly puts this con- struction on these utterances, for he says that the patriarchs "confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth ; for they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country, — a better country; that is, an heavenly." (Heb. 11: 13, 14, 16.) The Hebrew regarded life as a journey, as a pil- 61 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? grimage on the face of the earth. The traveler, as they supposed, when he arrived at the end of his journey, which happened when he died, was received into the company of his ancestors, who had gone before him. Opinions of this kind (viz., that life is a journey, that death is the end of that journey, and that, when one dies he mingles with the hosts who have gone before) are the origin and ground of such phrases as the following: to be gathered to one's people: to go to one's fathers. This visiting of the fathers has reference to the immortal part, and is clearly distinguished from the mere burial of the body. The closing scenes of the life of Moses, his journey up the peaks of Pisgah and Nebo to die, together with his message that he left with the people assuring them that God would meet him, must all have made very real to the people the truth that there was a life beyond the grave. The body of Moses slept in the valley of the land of Moab, but his spirit, not sleeping or uncon- sciously waiting in the grave for the sound of the last trumpet, had been fourteen hundred years in heaven, and in recognizable form talked with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration. A decisive indication amounting to a positive 62 THE OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING proof of a belief in the continued existence of the departed is the practice of magical invocations of the dead, a practice which Moses was obliged to prohibit by law. In Dent. 18: 10, 11, he com- mands, ' ' There shall not be f onnd among yon any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. ' ' The clear comment on this law, and conclusive proof of the strong hold of the belief and practice upon the nation, is found in the interview of Saul with the Witch of Endor (I. Samuel 28: 7-20). Saul went with the demand, " Bring me him up whom I shall name unto thee." The woman's reply shows that this was a common pretension of the whole class of wizards: " Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut oft those who have familiar spirits, and wizards out of the land; wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life to cause me to die V 9 When Saul had reas- sured her, she inquires in a most sweeping way, "Whom shall I bring up unto thee?" He calls for Samuel. The sequel need not be related. There is no disguising the fact that there were persons in Israel who pretended to summon the 63 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? dead into communication with the living, and the belief in their power was so extended as to require a special exertion of the king's authority to banish them from the kingdom, and the belief in spiritual- ism was so deep-seated that even the king himself was a victim of the delusion. But the prevalent belief in the ability to bring up the dead must have rested on an equally prevalent belief that the dead were still in being.* Balaam, the heathen prophet, saw the light of immortality when he prayed, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his. ,, (Numbers 33: 10.) *If the future life is to be judged by the disclosures made of it by the representatives of modern spiritualism, we are forced to conclude that the inhabitants of that future life are souls in the process of losing their mental powers — souls des- tined soon to become extinct; and under such circumstances eternity is not attractive enough to convince a man that it is worth striving for. The Bible teaches that men may deal with spirits and be entirely under their control, but it also tells us the character of the spirits, "lying wonders," "seducing spirits and doc- trines of devils which will shipwreck our faith," "wicked," "unclean," "familiar spirits," "possessed with devils," and this is how God speaks of this delusion: "I will be a swift witness against the sorcerer." "There shall not be among you a consulter of familiar spirits, or wizard, or necromancer, for they that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord." The Bible speaks of angels appearing unto men. But angels are not the spirits of dead men. They are an entirely dif- ferent order of beings. When angels appeared unto men no medium was used, no admission charged, no circles formed, no turning down of lights, no cabinets, no planchettes. The angels came directly to the persons to whom they were sent, and never in a darkened room. 64 THE OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING Again, take the ascent of Elijah in a chariot of fire (II. Kings 2 : 1-11). Can we believe that Israel had no conception of its meaning? It needed figuration to intimate that, thongh absent from earth, he was present with God. It is clear that the sentence "the soul that sin- neth, it shall die" and the promise that he who "repented and turned to righteousness shall live," must have involved a future beyond the limits of man's earthly existence. Of all the passages of the Old Testament that bear upon the problems of eschatology, few com- pare in their pregnant significance with EzekiePs declaration that ' ' the Lord hath no pleasure in the death of him that dieth," but was evermore seek- ing to bring him back to life. David with no uncertain voice expresses his belief that he would one day be re-united with his beloved child, "And he said, while the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, who can tell whether God will be gracious unto me, and the child may live! But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return unto me. ' ' (Samuel 12: 22, 23.) David's deep convictions of immortality breathe in his Psalms. Psalm 16: 10, "For thou wilt not 65 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? leave my soul in hell (the grave), neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption." Psalm 17: 14, 15, "As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I shall awake with thy likeness." Psalm 49: 15, "But God shall redeem my soul from the power of the grave : for he shall receive me. ' ' Psalm 73 : 24-26, 1 l Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and after- wards receive me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee ? and there is none on earth that I desire beside thee. My heart and my flesh f aileth ; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.' ' Psalm 139 : 7, 12, 23-24. The sacrifices of the temple, the solemn ritual of the day of atonement, the sense of guilt which uttered itself in confessions like the 51st Psalm, the anticipation of deliverance from it — all im- plied the thought that the mischief wrought by sin did not terminate with death, and that there was a restoration from it possible even after death. David could look forward to the journey through the valley of death without fear, for the divine guide would be with him even there. Psalm 23 : 4. David seems sometimes to have taken a dark view of death. For instance, Psalm 6: 5, "For in death there is no remembrance : in the grave who shall give thee thanks?" or again, Psalm 30: 9, 66 THE OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING " What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it declare thy truth ?" These texts read only by themselves apparently justify the assertion that the belief of individual Israelites concerning the future state was doubtful. But examine these verses in their context and you will find them quite consistent with a belief in a life beyond the grave. Rabbi Herrman Alder says : "The Psalms from which the extracts in ques- tion are taken were composed at a season of extreme depression, when the writer was sick unto death, when David felt himself estranged from God in consequence of his great sin. What pros- pect does this after-state offer unto him who has forfeited heaven's favor? He is aware that the earthly life is the season for serving God, and that only by sincere and active repentance can he obtain forgiveness of his trespass. If opportunity be not given him for working out his soul's salva- tion, he has grievous cause to dread divine punish- ment. 1 ' The revealed word of God does not describe the nature of this penalty. It only hints at it by the terrible phrase of ' cutting off the souP. From this annihilation he prays to be delivered, * Return, Lord, deliver my soul: save me for 67 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? thy mercy's sake ! For in death there is no remem- brance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks V (Psalm 6: 4, 5.) He laments in the bitterness of his grief, that if he be cnt off in his sin, he will be unable to serve his God. But how can it be maintained that David had no firm belief in immortality? David, who, when he is at peace with God, declares with unshaken confidence, 'As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness ; I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness \ 1 ' The sublime truth sung by the sweet singer of Israel is echoed with no less fervor and vigor by the other Psalmists. The forty-ninth Psalm pre- sents the doubts as to divine justice which crowd upon the minds of those who are troubled by the apparent glory of the careless and insolent, and the sorrows of the poor and virtuous. The Psalm- ist announces the answer to our questioning and disquietude. The morning comes which follows the night of death, and with it comes the awaken- ing; the beauty and grandeur of the wicked and haughty fall into utter dissolution: 'But God will redeem my soul from the power of the nether world, for he shall receive me'. (Verse 15). He does not expect that his body will be delivered from the universal doom of man, but, fired by real living faith in a living God, he feels assured that 68 THE OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING there is a future state in which the just Ruler of the world will make full amends for the unequal distribution of burdens which He wisely permits in this life of probation. ' ' This thought is dwelt upon with even greater emphasis by Asaph in the seventy-third Psalm, wherein the writer, seeking to solve the problem of the prosperity of the wicked and the adversity of the pious, finds the solution when he went into the sanctuary of God: 'Then understood I their end'. He is sustained by the hope, 'Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel and afterwards receive me into glory'. 'My heart, and my flesh faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever'. What stronger assertion could there be of personal immortality?" Isaiah, with the spirit of the Lord upon him announces, "He shall destroy death forever, and the Lord God shall wipe away tears from off all faces." (25: 8.) And again he addresses his sublime appeal to the house of Israel, ' ' Thy dead men shall live, thy dead bodies will arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust : for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." (Isaiah 24: 19.) Behold Ezekiel preach his splendid vision, the revival of the dead bones (chapter 37), and who dare assert that the 69 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? prophets were ignorant or careless of the doctrine of a future life! Job appeals from his narrow-minded judges on earth to God on high, beseeching him to hear and try his cause, and in the strength of his appeal his eye grows clear and undimmed. His sickness appears mortal, he has no hope in life, but his intense conviction that justice must and will be done to him possesses him more and more: 1 ' For I know that my Eedeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth ; and after my skin has been destroyed, yet out of my flesh shall I see God." (Job 19 : 25, 26.) This is the sum total of all that has been said and written concerning immortality — " After my dissolution I shall see God." The book of Ecclesiastes shows forth the weari- ness which overtakes the man whose chief good and market of his time is sensual gratification, whose mind gloomed by doubt, utters the despair- ing cry : ' ' For that which bef alleth them, as the one dies, so dieth the others." But the book like- wise shows us the process by which men are to fight out and conquer the doubts that spring up in their hearts. At the close the preacher gives utterance to the emphatic declaration, i i Then shall the dust return unto the earth as it was, and the, 70 THE OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING spirit shall return to God who gave it." (7:7.) In these words there is neither doubt nor waver- ing. The dualism of man's nature is fully acknowledged. Entire belief in the soul's immor- tality triumphs over all the gloom and weariness that had tinged his previous meditations, removing at once and forever the thought of death as annihilation. In the same chapter, verses thirteen and four- teen, we find a very distinct assertion of future retribution: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter : Fear God and keep his command- ments ; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." That the judgment here spoken of is a future one, is very clear from verse seven of the same chapter, where the writer speaks of the appearance of the spirit, separated from the body, before God, to receive the compensation for its works. Still more distinct, if possible, is the utterance of Daniel 12 : 2, 3, "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall wake, some to ever- lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that 71 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever. ' ' The Talmud and Immortality A special mansion will be given in heaven to every pious man. This world is like a road-side inn, but the world to come is like a real home. The longest life is insufficient for the fulfilment of half of man's desires. Better one hour's happiness in the next world than a whole life time of pleasure in this. One man may earn immortality by the work of a few short years, while others earn it by the work of a long life. He who lays up no store of good deeds during the working days of life can never enjoy the eternal Sabbath. This world is an antechamber to the next. Prepare thyself in the antechamber that thou mayest worthily enter the throne-room. The just of all nations have a portion in the future reward. For the righteous there is no rest, neither in this world nor in the next, for they go, say the Scriptures, "from strength unto strength, from task to task, until they shall see God in Zion." The grave is like a Melotian (silken) raiment 72 THE OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING for the pious man, who comes fully provided with provisions ; the pious man can look upon the future life without fear, because he comes to the other world well prepared. "Man is born to die, but the dead shall live again. ' ' " Better is the day of death than the day of birth." These sayings are illustrated as fol- lows: Two vessels sail on the ocean at one and the same time ; the one is leaving, the other enter- ing the harbor. For the one which arrived a num- ber of friends had prepared a great feast, and with clapping of hands and great vociferations of joy, they celebrated her arrival, while the other which was leaving received sighs and tears. An intelli- gent man, who was a spectator of what passed, said: "Here quite the reverse appears to take place, as otherwise ought to happen. They rejoice over the one which cometh, and feel sad- dened over the departure of the other. "What a fallacy! Eejoice over the one which has accom- plished its voyage and is returning from many dangers to safety, and bewail rather the vessel which is coming in, for she will have to brave again the storms of an inconstant sea." The same when man is born great rejoicing takes place, while at his death much grief is expressed. One ought to weep at his birth, because no one is certain whether 73 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? he will be able to overcome the dangers and temp- tations of life ; whilst at his death one ought to feel pleased if he only leaves a good name behind him. At his birth man is entered into the book of death ; when he dies he is entered into the book of life. Christ and Immortality Thus we have seen that the knowledge of immor- tality is older than the Gospel. It was at least a vague and dreamy anticipation in all ages. Christ brought "life and immortality to light' ' — He lifted the old conception out of probability into the realm of assurance. He removed the subject from the sphere of speculation into that of a positive truth, founded on experience. He went down into the grave and came forth a glorious Conqueror and said: "I am He that liveth and was dead, and because I live ye shall live also." So surely as Christ rose, so did He guarantee as an absolute certainty the resurrection of our bodies into a glorious life. The life of the soul never pauses even for a moment. He has brought to pass the saying that is written, " Death is swallowed up in victory, Death! where is thy sting? Grave! where is thy victory V 9 The Crucified One appeared to his disciples and showed them his hands and his side and so thor- 74 THE OLD TESTAMENT TEACHING ouglily convinced them that "He who lived and was dead was now alive f orevermore, ' ' that in the strength of this conviction, they rallied from despair and went forth to conquer the world to Christ. There is no other fact of ancient history which is sustained by such an array of evidence, external and internal, as the life, death and resur- rection of Jesus Christ. He died as all must die. He lives and so in him we have evidence that we shall live. He is not the first to live beyond death, as all the sons of Adam before him had risen above the shock of dissolution, but he was the first to gain full per- fection of life, and perfect knowledge of the here- after, and his resurrection is a pledge that all the children of God shall gain full perfection of life, and so the believer may say with the assurance of Paul : " We know that if this earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. ,, Said one of those who ate and drank with him after he arose from the dead: " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again to a lively hope, by the Eesurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance 75 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? incorruptible, undefiled, and that f adeth not away, reserved in heaven." Carlyle speaks of his beloved friend, John Sterling, dying at thirty-eight, as a brave man, "looking steadfastly into the silent continents of Death and Eternity.' ' And Sterling, a few days before his death, writing to Carlyle, shows how, to one who has fonnd the solution of his spiritual problem in Christ, it is possible even in the midst of one's best days, to lay down these beautiful affairs of earth and to feel a human interest in the life to come : "I tread the common road, ' ' he says, "into the great darkness, without any thought of fear, and with very much hope. It is all very strange, but not one hundredth part so sad as it seems to the standers-by." A Comforting Belief Did He not to his followers say, I am the Life, the Light, the Way? Yea, and still from the heavens he saith, The gate of life is the gate of death. — Phoebe Cary. Beyond life's toils and cares, Its hopes and joys, its weariness and sorrow, Its sleepless nights, its days of smiles and tears, Will be a long, sweet life unmarked by years, One bright unending morrow. Beyond time's troubled stream, Beyond the chilling waves of death's dark river, Beyond life's lowering clouds and fitful gleams, Its dark realities and brighter dreams, A beautiful forever. No aching hearts are there, No tear-dimmed eye, no form by sickness wasted, No cheek grown pale through plenary of care, No spirits crushed beneath the woes they bear, No sigh for bliss untasted. No sad farewell is heard, No lonely wail for loving ones departed, No dark remorse is there o'er memories stirred, No smile of scorn, no harsh or cruel word To grieve the broken-hearted. No long, dark night is there, No light from sun or silvery moon is given, But Christ, the Lamb of God all bright and fair, Illumes the city with effulgence rare, The glorious light of heaven. No mortal eye hath seen The glories of that land beyond the river, Its crystal lakes, its fields of living green, Its fadeless flowers and the unchanging sheen Around the throne forever. Ear hath not heard the songs Of rapturous praise within that shining portal, No heart of man hath dreamed what bliss belongs To that redeemed and joyous blood- washed throng, All glorious and immortal. — Mrs. J. E. Akers. CHAPTER III A Comforting Belief Were we to believe that death ends all, that the cessation of the mortal life terminated the career of being, that the sun of hope was never to arise above the eternal horizon of to-morrow, the pres- ent existence wonld be a nightmare of horror, even to those who fall heirs to the enjoyments of the world, for earth's pleasures are but pain, earth's riches but dross. Nothing satisfies here; everything cloys and palls upon the senses. The man of wealth and learning in this respect is no better off than his poorest neighbor. The latter is often envy- ing the wealthy, while the rich man is sigh- ing for an indefinable something to fill up the void in his life, but the void can never be filled by time; its capacity is the measure of eternity. The ever-constant longing in the heart of man is a proof that this world is not his home, that the tomb is not the objective point where the final line is drawn, beyond which none may go — 81 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? . . . time is fleeting, But the grave is not its goal, "Dust thou art to dust returnest," Was not spoken of the soul. It is the soul within that whispers words of hope to our consciousness and gives us faith in the immortality of a future life, and this beautiful faith yields to the thoughtful mind a happiness which nothing else can confer, gives a satisfaction even to our present state of unrest, in fact, paradoxically speaking, brings contentment amid the discontentment of our being. Young in his "Night Thoughts " has well said: " 'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone Amid life's pains, abasement, emptiness, The soul can comfort, elevate and fill." We gladly seize upon all that tends to emphasize our belief in the hereafter, cheerfully grasp every fact confirmatory of our faith in the eternal. "We look within and contemplate the soul's nature, and from its power to think, to reason and love, we conclude that it is a spiritual substance that cannot be dissolved by death, that it will sur- vive the passage of time and live through the end- less progression of the infinite. Such conclusion brings us a spiritual comfort which enables us to bear willingly with the trials and sorrows and disappointments of the present transitory state, makes us strong to withstand the 82 A COMFORTING BELIEF shocks and knocks and buffetings of this fleeting world, in the hope that it gives us a reward in the great future that now lies behind the veil of time. We realize that not here will be the fulfilment of our dream, nor the attainment of the soul's desire, nor the consummation of its ambitions, that not here shall we gather the fruition of the harvest, although we must scatter the seeds in the present. We look to the limitless fields of the vast beyond to reap the golden store and hoard it in the granaries of eternity. Our eyes are ever turned to the world unseen where life is love, and love is something infinitely better and higher than we can possibly conceive in our present finite and confined con- dition, circumscribed as we are in knowledge, and barred from the larger enlightenment by the dark- ness of the mortal flesh. The aspirations of the soul, the continual yearn- ings, the insuppressible desires within forcibly impress us that earth is not our abiding home, that the grave is not the final resting place, that life is not a mere bubble arising on the waves of time to float for a moment and then sink into the depths of nothingness, but that being is as boundless as the universe, that it shall go on for ever after sun and moon have paled their light, after the dust of worlds now revolving in their orbits shall have 83 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? mingled itself with new systems to perform their course through the fields of space. Life shall ever go on, — we shall live and know and expand for- ever, endowed with a higher intelligence fitting to the everlasting existence. We have now only imagination to aid us in pic- turing what is to be when that which we call time is snuffed out and the eternal light dawns upon the soul. We can, however, be certain that all faith can grasp and hope can paint will be more than realized in the glory of the immortality. Truly the reward will be exceedingly great, such as no imagination, however fervid, can conceive. Its anticipation, its hope of realization makes us long for the moment when, free forever from this mortal coil, we can " enter into the joy of the Lord." What is earth with its pomps and splendors? Nothing but vanity. Its boasted treasures and pleasures cannot appease, cannot bring a moment of real happiness to kings or emperors. Even the mightiest here are pitiable in their weakness, but in the beyond all shall be strong; the poor, rich; the diseased, whole; the discontented, satisfied; the weary and heavy-laden, refreshed in the bosom of the Father. Sickness shall be turned to health, sorrow to joy, and failure to success. 84 A COMFORTING BELIEF Now time is short and we can do bnt little. There time will have no end and we can accom- plish everything. The old rusty clock of finite years will have ticked away its last seconds, and we shall listen to the morning bells of eternity chiming the beginning of the everlasting hours, calling ns to a ceaseless existence of joy. All of ns have strong intimations of the endless progressiveness of moral development, of qualities that will never cease to enlarge and expand, ever becoming more worthy of Him who gave us being and desires us to be like unto himself. We have prescience of character so fulfilling itself and per- petually rounding out in line with the divine ideal as to approach to the perfection of the Infinite. In our superb moments, when the mind is at its best, we get suggestions of an intellectual enlarge- ment, an assimilation of knowledge, postponed by the present limitations of time, that will bring us to an understanding of heavenly perfections and enable us to grasp the attributes of the Supreme Power. Visions come to us of a service flung open like rifts in an encompassing cloud, where the spirit in unison with the designs of God shall be so adapted and inspired as to apprehend the divine will and conform in worship to all that is required by a divine intelligence and wisdom. 85 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Indeed we can put no limit on the possibilities of the life following the so-called earthly death, on its scope, its freedom from limitations, on the opportunities that will be given for advancing higher and higher in the scale of perfection. The happiness derived from our faith in immor- tality will be in proportion to the strength and determination we call forth to lead such lives of virtue and uprightness and honor on earth as will merit divine acknowledgment in corresponding rewards hereafter. If we defy God's laws, break his commandments, trample on the rights of his children, we cannot expect that he will recom- pense us as he does those who obey him. We must have faith that virtue will receive its due merit, and to enjoy a full and unrestricted hope we must be freed from all doubts concerning our fate in the world to come. "We can have this freedom by leading such lives here as will merit the divine approval hereafter. God will not set his seal on wroug-doing; only the just and worthy can satisfy his standard. When conscious that we are acting in conformity with his laws, as far as in our power, we must be fervent in hope, never doubting or questioning the ultimate fulfilment of an eternal promise. Faith must ever shine brightly, and burn with incandescent glow. 86 A COMFORTING BELIEF Too many indeed hold the solemn verities con- cerning the hereafter in a sort of half conscious- ness, believing in them, yet nevertheless not fully realizing them. They must flame within us, set- ting our whole moral and intellectual nature on fire, sending a life current of energy through every part of our being, arousing us to impetuous action and to sustained effort born of strong conviction. The satisfying sense of immortality must be achieved, must be brought home to us by a con- tinual pursuit after loftier ideals than those of earth. It cannot be read in the pages of a book, whether of nature or revelation. Even gazing on Jesus issuing from the tomb is not a sufficiency to confirm belief and will not give us the faith that yields peace. There must be fellowship with the Christ of the Eesurrection before we can feel the power of Immortality. We must go over to him now on the divine side, before we can be assured of the eternal side. It is when, as Aristotle says, "we think the thoughts of the immortals and live in every act up to the noblest parts of us," that all our uncertainty gives place to a calm and unwavering assurance. A full predication of immortality can only be made through the moral and spiritual faculties. "We must get beyond the body and the ties that 87 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? bind to earth if we would conceive the full force of belief in the hereafter and emphasize it in the inner consciousness of the soul. Milton point- edly says: "He who would write a great poem must himself make his life a poem. ,, To know immortality we must live for it. In the time of trial we have always a comfort in the conviction that we are suffering in accordance with the Divine Will, that not even a hair can fall from our heads without his consent. If we bow in meek submission to the power of an all-loving Father, we may be sure that he will not forget the obedience of his children, but will reward their fidelity and love. Through the Cross we come to the Crown. He himself taught us obedience and resignation to the heavenly decree. He came upon earth in the form of a man, suffered as a man and in the end sacrificed his life that mankind might eternally live. We rest secure in the faith of his promises and his love. Friends may desert us, the world come up and pass over us, trampling upon all that we hold sacred and dear, but the thought that soon we shall be united with him and receive the reward of our actions here, buoys us up with hope to submit cheerfully to all trials and sorrows, in the sub- 88 A COMFORTING BELIEF lime expectation of what is to come, when we shall have finally passed from the cares of earth to where pain of parting from loved ones will never be experienced. A fond mother goes down into the grave of earth with the benediction of her children npon the sainted dust, or it may be an indulgent father is accompanied by the sighs of love to the portals of the tomb, or perhaps a dear sister leaves the per- fume of her memory to scent with its fragrance the weary path of those left behind, or a manly brother on whose strength we could rely when needed most, or a husband is removed in the zenith of his powers, passes away and breaks the tie of a hallowed union. For all these we sorrow, and refuse to be divorced from our grief, but like the beam of the evening sun through a winter's rain- cloud comes the holy consolation that the loved ones have only gone before for a little space, that they still live in a fairer realm, separated from us only by the veil of the flesh. Their faculties are now developed, they have been promoted in the scale of being to a point beyond our highest con- ception. The loss may be that of a little child. We look upon its waxen form, its motionless body so lately full of life. Its prattling tongue has been hushed 89 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? on earth, but we know that God has called it to join its music with the angel choirs, and has stamped the glory of the heavenly immortality upon its stainless brow. Earthly losses of loved ones may for a time make the potion of life bitter, but faith in the ultimate future turns it into a draught of sweet- ness which we would not dash from our lips. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Earth's desolation will soon give place to life and beauty, its loneliness to companionship, its silence to the blended harmony of the spheres, chanting the music of a glorious eternity. Our feet will soon come to the bank of the shadowy river of the Great Divide. We must plunge into its chilly waters to reach the farther shore, but the blessed hope comes to hold us up that when we emerge on the other side we shall enter the flowery land of immortality, the home of ever- lasting youth and beauty, where the dear ones will be waiting to welcome us to the participation of its never-ending joys. With them we shall put on the robes of eternal life to experience the felic- ity of the blest in the mansions of the Master. Then shall we know that our friends were not lost, 90 A COMFORTING BELIEF but translated to the happy state to repose for- ever in the bosom of their God. Let this beautiful faith strengthen and comfort us now and it will draw us to our kindred with the magnet of a holier affection. Well would it be if we could all implant deeply in our souls the faith in an immortality which Tennyson possessed when he so feelingly and con- sciously wrote of the death of his friend, Fitz- gerald : Past, in sleep away By night, into the deeper night. The deeper night? A clearer day. Yes, the night of death is but the dawn of a clearer day, when the visions will become realities in the all-enlightening sunlight of God's presence. Think of the sublime confidence, the spiritual faith of Browning, when he voiced this sentiment : . . . Though I stoop Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for a time. I press God's lamp Close to my breast; its splendors, soon or late, Will pierce the gloom. I shall emerge somewhere. The belief in an immortality beyond the vale of earth furnishes us many sources of consolation and helps us to bear patiently the many trials of our present state. We know that wrongs will be righted, that what is obscure now will then be plain, that imperfections will be remedied into per- 91 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? fection, that there will be no injustice in the king- dom of the just King. But no conception or ideal affords us greater delight than the anticipation that the hereafter will furnish an arena for the full development of intellectual powers curtailed here and closed in by the grossness of matter. If the thought that the mind would go out like an expiring taper could impress itself upon us we should be truly wretched, and our mental capacity be still more narrow and confined, overshadowed by the darkness of such a thought. But faith comes to reason's aid and tells us that beyond the grave the mental powers will be enlarged, that the soul will ever progress upwards to limitless heights, soaring amid the realms of the infinite in the golden light of an all-encompassing knowledge. Here the soul is imprisoned by narrow boundaries, fettered by the clog of the material body, there, freed from the incubus, it can wing its flight to the throne of the Eternal to learn the secrets of all mysteries from the source of all wisdom. Death does not deny our cherished wishes, does not dash all hope to pieces like a frail bark against the rocks, but it opens wide the door to let us into a glorious fulfilment of aspirations, where every hope is realized, every ambition satisfied, where light and power will be given to us to see and to 92 A COMFORTING BELIEF accomplish. With quickened mind we shall be enabled to grasp all difficulties, and solve all prob- lems, and as progress is the condition of happiness, the spiritual growth and development will con- stitute the elemental joy of the celestial state. Immortality is essential to every hope inspired by religion. Faith in the life beyond is the es- sence, the being of religion. Without this faith all beliefs from the cosmogony of the savage to the transcendent worship of the Christian would totter and fall. What is religion but an acknowledgment of a life to come, a form of service to propitiate and intercede with an Unknown Power, in the con- sciousness that there is an existence after death. Every child of man, no matter what the form of his worship, by such form testifies to his belief in an immortality. The Indian prays to the Great Spirit and thinks of the souls of his people wandering in the "happy hunting grounds, ' ' which term is but another name for the Indian heaven. The dusky-browed cannibal of the South Sea Islands, bows down to a block of wood or stone, and in so doing proclaims his faith in a power not of earth. The Chinese with his joss-sticks and incense gives tacit proof of his belief in the immortal. To 93 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? him Confucius dwells in the mansions of the blest whence his spirit rules and guides his people on earth. Buddha is not dead to the Hindu, nor Mohammed to the Arab. They have passed beyond to the great hereafter, and their followers ever long for communion with them in the Spirit land. Thus all religion finds its consummation, the finality of its object in immortality; otherwise there would be no religion in the world. The avowed atheist professes unbelief and the agnostic will tell you that he "does not know," but deep down in the hearts of both is the inner consciousness that death does not end all, that there is an existence beyond the tomb. The heart of man is so constituted that it ever yearns after something which earth cannot give. This ' ' some- thing' ' immortality only can supply. The void in every human breast can only be filled in the life that lies beyond the river of time. The yearning and the void constitute the best testimony, in fact give irrefutable proof that the grave is not the goal of existence. Man is too great to be cribbed, cabined and con- fined by the narrow limits of earth with its finite lines. He must have the boundless infinitude of eternity for his spirit to roam at will ; nothing less 94 A COMFORTING BELIEF can satisfy his capacious desires. He may ascend the thrones of sovereigns, walk the palaces of princes, delve into the mines of science, gather the harvests of wealth, abrogate to himself power over his fellow beings ; nevertheless, he is not con- tent, nothing can satisfy, he ever wants more, and this more eternity only can supply. "What is not eternal is unequal to his boundless desire. There is no contentment on earth, because it is not the true home. It is but a place of pilgrimage or preparation for a higher and purer state. To many indeed the pilgrimage is a penance and not a privilege. About all the comfort they have is the consoling hope of the life to come. Hardshrps, privations and deepest misery are the lot of the vast majority. Even where character is irre- proachable, the aggregate of suffering frequently far transcends the moiety of ephemeral happiness arising from mere physical life or social relations, for often the good are sorely tried in the crucible of suffering. They come forth, however, purged and purified from the corruptions of the flesh. The transitory happiness they enjoy, now and then, and which makes life tolerable, arises chiefly from their strong faith in a final adjustment of the earthly balances in the weighing-place of eter- nity. They bear with fortitude the ills that come, 95 . AFTER DEATH— WHAT? because they feel the day is approaching when God will manifest His justice to all and apportion to every one his reward in the form of compensa- tion for suffering, the medal of victory for a well spent life of virtuous action and honest endeavor. Take away hope inspired by faith in immortal- ity and what would remain to make life desirable or worth living! Where would be the motive in existence at all? There would be nothing worth while, and the grave of oblivion would be wel- comed to end the horrors of such a nightmare life. The hope of immortality is the basis of any little happiness experienced here below and that which gives us patience under trials is the thought that in the better future all will yet be well. It is unbelief in such a future state that impels men to deeds of recklessness and drives them to the insane asylum, and often to the grave of the suicide. They lose faith and consequently cour- age to face their difficulties, and so, foolishly think- ing to end their troubles, they rush to self-destruc- tion. But they will awaken to a terrible reckoning. For them immortality will not have the sweet rewards of those who "fought the good fight and kept the faith"; but the consciousness of that cowardice that led them to "fly from the ills they had and to rush to others that they knew not of. ' ' 96 A COMFORTING BELIEF No doubt it is hard to bear wrongs, calumnies and contumely, hard to stand up under the lashes of a merciless world, and none can do it unless they call faith to their assistance. Shakespeare says : For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make, With a bare bodkin? The brave man never falters in the fight, never loses his faith or his love, but the coward blanches at the thought of what may come and tries every subterfuge to escape. When the latter is cornered he does not hew his way out as a true man should, but gives in and destroys himself rather than face the consequences of his misdeeds. He has neither faith in himself nor faith in God, and in trying to escape wretchedness temporal pre- cipitates himself into a wretchedness eternal. The man who has confidence in himself and faith in God can surmount all obstacles and overcome every difficulty, for God assists him in the struggle, and he can look forward to death not with "pale terror and blanching fear, ' ' but with a courageous heart believing that it will admit him into a sphere of greater usefulness. 97 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? There is no time when the consoling power of the trnth of immortality comes with such comfort as in the hour of death. There is nothing to fear for those of faith. The dark shores of time are being left behind and the soul is flying to the land of never-ending joys, the home of immortality, to dwell forever with God and the loved ones gone before. How triumphantly true it is : The men of grace have found Glory begun below, Celestial fruit on earthly ground From faith and hope may grow. The hill of Zion yields A thousand sacred sweets, Before we reach the heavenly hills Or walk the golden streets. Some years since, at the grave of his brother, an infidel orator paid an eloquent though uncon- scious attestation to a belief in immortality. He said : ' ' Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities ; we strive in vain to look beyond the heights, we cry aloud and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word, but in the night of death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing/' Light After Darkness There is a land immortal, The beautiful of lands; Beside its ancient portal A silent sentry stands; He only can undo it, And open wide the door; And mortals who pass through it Are mortals never more. — Thomas MacKellar. The day is cold, and dark and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering walls, And at every gust a dead leaf falls, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark and dreary, It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart ! and cease repining, Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. CHAPTER IV Light After Darkness Man's earthly life is a checkered scene thrown npon the canvas of time, here the light, there the shade, each alternating to make np the composite picture. Life, indeed, is in keeping with the phenomena which nature unfolds in the revolution of planets, worlds and systems around the orbits of their being. * The light gives way to darkness, the darkness in turn flees before the succeeding beams and thus the eternal round goes on ever merging into the consummation of the ages, without rest, halt or variation from the everlasting order. The spring puts forth the flowers and plants, the summer nurtures them into lusty strength, the autumn garners their fruition and the winter gathers them into the tomb of existence. And yet there is no death. What men call by that name is simply change — change into another form of existence to carry on the scheme of univer- sal wisdom. 103 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Human life is but a part, though the highest part of God's eternal plan, and must fulfil its destiny in common with the rest of creation. The grave is not its goal, there is something beyond and to this great beyond all are hastening. Man must fulfil the end of his being — that end is union with its source. To reach it he must expe- rience many and various vicissitudes. There are days of darkness, days of travail, when the star of hope seems to be surrounded with the gloom of a perpetual night. Yet beyond the black- ness there is light and its beams eventually break through to illumine the path that leads from the vale of sorrow to the shining heights of happiness. Were all darkness, man would be lost in the midnight of gloom; were all light he would be consumed in the effulgence of its glare. Each alternates to enable him to steer clear of destruc- tion and work out the eternal designs of an all- wise Providence. The shower is as necessary as the sunshine to conserve the laws of nature. And the immutable transition from the one to the other is a fitting illustration of life's varied phases. The dark clouds, the heavy, leaden skies, the roaring storms and the fierce tornadoes are typical of physical pains and disorders, of mental depressions and 104 LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS worries, of deep agitations and soul-harrowing trials when the world turns its hardest face towards us and friendship dies, when prosperity takes wings and hope droops its head and faith is stretched to the utmost tension. This is the test in the crucible of suffering, and out of it we must come purified and refined, free from all alloy of unworthiness or else emerge as dross to be thrown on the scrap-heap of useless- ness. It is suffering that purges men's souls and not the ease, comfort and pleasures of a butterfly existence nurtured by the poisonous nectars and sweets of forbidden fruits growing on the branches of the tree of sin. And 'tis only after the suffering we can enjoy the peace. The light can only be appreciated in contrast to the darkness, for were light ever with us it would become monotonous and dull and we could not realize its grandeur as we do when it alternates with gloom. Only after the storm can we fittingly relish the calm. The saccharine tastes of the sweet would vitiate the palate but for the acidity of the sour. By the same analogy hunger is the best sauce, for it gives zest to appetite. The glutton can never have a feast, whereas the abstemious man can relish the coarsest of fare. 105 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? If we were to have eternal sunshine it would « blind our vision to its own splendor. Therefore the shade is necessary as a contrast, to accentuate the glory of the brightness. The sunshine is emblematic of days of prosper- ity when gladness fills the soul and the whole being is attuned to the divine harmony within, when the spirit is as tuneful and as full of melody as the birds warbling their matin hymns at the gates of morn, when peace like a brooding dove spreads its white wings over every tumult of the heart and hushes all to rest beneath its gentle influence. Yet anon storms will sweep up and disturb the universal quiet, the tempests will rage, the winds howl and the billows lash themselves to fury, but their wrath will expend itself in force, their anger will subside and again the sun will burst through the rift of clouds to illumine earth with his beams. So it is with human life. The changes in the aspects of nature are not more variant than those in our everyday existence. There are all the gradations from the peaceful calm to the raging storm, from the sunlight of noonday to the darkness of midnight, and just as in inanimate creation, the storms purify the atmos- phere and hence bring growth and development to the products of the earth, so, by the grace of 106 LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS God, "Our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. ' ' As the tempest sweeps around the palace of the king as well as the hovel of the laborer, so afflic- tions and cares and worries and trials visit rich and poor alike. No one is exempt. Wealth for a time may ward off threatening evils in the way of worldly success, but it is powerless to counteract the visitations of an inscrutable Providence or thwart the signs of an Almighty Power. Afflic- tions will come, both mental and physical, and they must be borne whether in patience or in repining at the decrees of fate. "Who can minister to a mind diseased V 9 asks Macbeth, and the answer is yet to come. There is no balsam, no healing potion in the pharmacopia of experience to apply to a mental wound, neither can gold bribe, nor skill ward off, nor beauty charm physical decay or allay bodily pain. No one is immune, or impervious to the darts and javelins hurled by the gaunt hands of disease. Not a heart is left untouched, not a circle left unbroken, not a barrier left uncrossed, not a sanctuary is too sacred for the entrance of suffering and sorrow. The ermine and cloth of gold of the monarch can no more hide the wounds of humanity than the 107 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? tattered rags of the mendicant. Affliction is no respecter of persons, bnt sooner or later it calls at every door. Yon may fancy that it visits you oftener than yonr neighbor and tarries with yon for a greater space, bnt this is a fallacy on yonr part. Misfortune very often flies on invisible wings, so that you cannot see it enter the homes of your neighbors, nor sting the heart and scourge the souls of its victims. You may think that they are free while you only are suffering, but could you see beneath the mask of the smiling face and instead of the honeyed words that fall from the glib tongue hear the groanings of the inner consciousness, you would realize that your own sorrows are indeed light. Your cross may be rugged and heavy, you may be tottering beneath its weight, about to sink beneath the fearful strain, so that you would hail with joy an interchange with some one else to all appearance less heavily burdened. If necroman- cer's rod or magician's wand could affect such change you would quickly find that the cross of your neighbor which you considered so light was harder to bear than the one with which you parted, and you would be anxious, nay, eager to get the old one back again. The Changed Cross, by Mrs. Charles Hobart, sweetly sings this truth : 108 LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS It was a time of sadness — and my heart, Although it knew and loved the better part, Felt wearied with the conflict and the strife, And all the needful discipline of life. And while I thought on these — as given to me My trial tests of faith and love to be, It seemed as if I never could be sure That faithful to the end I should endure. And thus no longer trusting to His might "Who says, "we walk by faith and not by sight," Doubting, and almost yielding to despair, The thought arose, My cross I cannot bear! Far heavier its weight must surely be, Than those of others which I daily see, Oh, if I might another burden choose, Methinks I should not fear my crown to lose. A solemn silence reigned on all around, E'en nature's voices uttered not a sound, The evening shadows seemed of peace to tell, And sleep upon my weary spirit fell. A moment's pause — and then a heavenly light Beamed full upon my wondering, raptured sight, Angels on silvery wings seemed everywhere, And angels' music thrilPd the balmy air. Then One, more fair than all the rest to see, One — to whom all the others bowed the knee, Came gently to me as I trembling lay, And— "Follow Me," He said; "I am the Way." Then speaking thus, He led me far above, And there, beneath a canopy of love, Crosses of divers shape and size were seen, Larger and smaller than mine own had been. And one there was most beauteous to behold, A little one, with jewels set in gold; Ah, this methought I can with comfort wear. For it will be an easy one to bear. And so the little cross I quickly took, But all at once my frame beneath it shook; The sparkling jewels, fair were they to see, But far too heavy was their weight for me. 109 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? This may not be, I cried — and looked again To see if any there could ease my pain, But one by one I pass'd them slowly by, Till on a lovely one I cast my eye. Fair flowers around its sculptur'd form entwin'd, And grace and beauty in it seem'd combin'd; Wondering I gazed — and still I wonder'd more To think so many should have passed it o'er. But oh, that form, so beautiful to see, Soon made its hidden sorrows known to me; Thorns lay beneath those flowers and colors fair, Sorrowing I said, This cross I may not bear. And so it was with each and all around, Not one to suit my need could there be found; Weeping — I laid each heavy burden down, As my Guide gently said, "No cross — no crown.'* At length to Him I raised my saddened heart; He knew its sorrows, bade its doubts depart; "Be not afraid," he said, "but trust in Me." "My perfect love shall now be shown to thee." And then, with lighten'd eyes, and willing feet, Again I turned my earthly cross to meet, With forward footsteps turning not aside, For fear some hidden evil might betide. And there, in the prepar'd, appointed way, Listening to hear and ready to obey, A cross I quickly found of plainest form, With only words of love inscribed thereon. With thankfulness I raised it from the rest, And joyfully acknowledg'd it the best, The only one of all the many there, That I could feel was good for me to bear. And while I thus my chosen one confess'd, I saw a heavenly brightness on it rest, And as I bent, my burden to sustain, I recognized my own old cross again! But oh, how different did it seem to be, Now I had learned its preciousness to see; No longer could I unbelieving say, Perhaps another is a better way. 110 LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS Ah no! henceforth my one desire shall be, That He who knows me best should choose for me, And so, whate'er His love sees good to send, I'll trust it's best — because He knows the end. Human life is an instrument of many strings, and fate plays npon first one and then another, producing a strange gamut. At one time a music is evoked, sweet as angelic dreams, its sweet diapason enchanting brain and heart and soul. At another the chords give forth a strident, ear- splitting discord which destroys the harmonies of nature. Very often the notes blend in such a way that we are almost unable to detect when harmony ceases and discord takes its place. Life is like a wild iEolian harp of many a joyous strain, Yet under all there runs a wail as if of souls in pain. The brightest day has some cloud to mar the clearness of its horizon. Beneath the smoothest current there is a swirling eddy. There is no landscape so fair as not to be marred by some defect in perspective or coloring, and so there is no life so free, so calm, so peaceful, so happy, that some worry or cross or trial or little affliction, whether mental or bodily, does not enter to temper and tone the whole. The most beautiful colors are not obtained from one pigment, but by a mixture of many, and often it is the composition of the dullest with the bright- Ill AFTER DEATH— WHi.T? est that produces the most pleasing effects. In the same fashion it takes a little sorrow to round out and perfect life, a little darkness to mix with the sunshine to modify its glare. The wise accept suffering willingly, knowing its necessity to enable them to reach higher and better things. They realize that only through the Cross can they hope to wear the Crown ; therefore they receive the trials of life in a Christian spirit, with- out repining or murmuring, consoled by the promise : ' ' My grace is sufficient for thee. ' ' No affliction is too heavy for the Christian to bear, for his faith upholds the burden. He does not estimate his suffering from a worldly view- point, but in spirit he ascends the mountain of sorrow on which Christ suffered and died, and looks upon his trials in the light radiating from the Cross, and then he clearly sees that all is a part of God's great disciplinary plan by which he makes his servants perfect. "When the eyes of the soul are closed to things temporal, but open to things eternal, physical and mental pain work for the highest moral good of the individual. The pain in such cases is not suf- fering. It is but the correction of evil, the polish- ing as it were of life's mirror so that it may reflect more clearly the image of the Master. 112 LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS Jacob sorrowed grievously for his sons, and in his short human sight mournfully ex-claimed, — 81 "All these things are against me," not realizing that God was there working out the salvation of the old patriarch's family in His own inscrutable way. Blessings have come to men and nations in most cases in the guise of sorrow. "Wars have had to devastate the land to bring about the reign of Peace. When Paul looked out over the troubled world, he saw, what many since have seen, Truth forever on the scaffold — Wrong forever on the throne, but with faith that looked beyond the clouds, the great apostle discovered — God within the shadow Keeping watch above his own, and seizing his pen he wrote, — "All things work together for good to them that love God. ' ' Yes, those who love God, who have the divine spirit within, see the wisdom of his works and bow to the justice of his designs, knowing that "He doeth all things well. ' ' How much higher than Jacob was Paul! The faith of Paul took hold of eternal things and he gazed through the eyes of the spirit, while Jacob 113 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? looked only through the corporeal orbs of vision and, therefore, could not see the divine plan in his affliction. Before you can accept suffering in the proper spirit and turn it to your advantage you must bring home to your heart and soul that whatever may be the direct cause, God has knowledge of it, and it is a part of His eternal plan. Behind the agency of suffering there is the throb of tenderness, the pulse-beat of love, the guiding influence of an Infinite Mind which controls the destiny of the soul. Affliction is as necessary for purification as intense heat is for virgin ore. "Without it mortals would forget their mission and their dependence upon a higher power. They would have nothing to restrain them and so would rush on to the precipice of destruction and totter over its banks to be lost forever in the abysses below. Paul looked upon affliction in contrast with the glory that shall be revealed; hence he did not intend to trifle with our pain or insult our grief when he called our affliction "light." Of course, there are times when it is well-nigh impossible for us to look upon our sufferings as light, times when the soul is bowed down so much it seems the load of sorrow is too heavy for mortal 114 LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS strength to bear, when the heart is crushed with woe, when cherished ones desert and friends depart, when the light of home goes out and dark- ness takes its place by the desolate fireside, when hope takes wings and flees away, when faith itself totters and almost falls to earth, in a word there are periods when all the freighted argosies of life seem to lie battered wrecks on the shore of exist- ence, and we stand powerless in the face of im- pending ruin. "lis then we must call to our aid trust in God to keep us from sinking into the blackened abyss of despair. We must fly to the light of his love as the beacon star that shall guide our steps along the rugged way to the haven of peace where, after the storm, broods the eternal calm. In the darkest days before the Civil War, when there seemed no way of deliverance for our broth- ers in black, Fred Douglas, at a crowded meeting, depicted the terrible condition of his race. Every- thing was against his people. One political party had gone down on its knees to slavery, and the other proposed not to abolish it anywhere, but only to restrict it. The Supreme Court had given judgment against the black man as such. Fred Douglas drew a picture of his race writhing under the lash of the overseer, and trampled upon by 115 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? heartless men. As he went on with his despair- ing words, a great horror of darkness seemed to settle down on the audience. The orator even uttered the cry for blood. There was no other relief. And then he showed that there was no relief even in that. Everything, every influence, every event was gathering, not for good, but for evil about the doomed race. It seemed as if they were fated to destruction. Just at the instant when the cloud was most heavy over the audience, there slowly arose in the front seat an old black woman. Her name was "Sojourner Truth.' ' She had given it to herself. Far and wide she was known as an African prophetess. Every eye was on her. The orator paused. Beaching out towards him her long bony fingers, as every eye followed her pointing, she cried out : ' ' Frederick, is God dead?" It was a lightning flash upon that darkness. The clouds began to break, and faith, hope and pa- tience returned with the idea of and trust in an everliving and a patient God. Surely we can bear patiently when we hear the promise: "I will never leave thee, I will never forsake thee." These words of comfort bring balm to the troubled soul, assuage all griefs and enable us to bear up against all trials. 116 LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS A beautiful auecdote is told of Wendell Phil- lips, the famous orator, illustrating his lover-like devotion to his wife. At the close of a lecture engagement in a neighboring town his friends entreated him not to return to Boston. ' 'The last train has left," they said, "and you will be obliged to take a carriage into the city. It is a sleety November night, cold and raw ; and you will have twelve miles of rough riding before you reach home. J ' To which he replied, "But at the other end of them I shall find Anne Phillips." You may be having a hard time. You may find your life journey like that cold midnight ride of the famous orator. But think, as he said, of the One you are to meet at the other end. Jesus said, "I will receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also. ' ' Should not that prom- ise comfort you in the darkest hour? The experience of all believers in all ages bears testimony to the unfailing faithfulness with which Omnipotent, Omniscient Jehovah fulfils his prom- ises to all who put their trust in Him. Not one afflicted believer in any land or age has ever in the dark hour of sorrow and calamity gone to his Saviour for supporting grace and been disap- pointed. It is true that many, through unbelief, 117 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? have at times been ready to call his faithfulness and sustaining grace in question — ' ' The Lord hath forsaken and my Lord hath forgotten,' ' — yet in no instance have these gloomy apprehensions ever been ultimately realized, but in every case the all- faithful Kedeemer has made his timely appear- ance for their relief, and convinced them that their gloomy fears were as groundless as they were unkind to him. As no case of depravity has ever transcended the regenerating and pardoning power of our Saviour, so no instance of affliction has ever occurred among his saints beyond his comforting power. How sad for those to whom all that remain of life are "the worm, the canker and the grief, " and for whom no beacon light shines from beyond the sea ! The deepest happiness is felt not by those who never suffered here, but by those who have passed through the experience of sorrow, and have been comforted. A story is told of a German baron who con- structed a great iEolian harp by stretching wires from tower to tower of his castle. When the harp was in readiness for the winds to move its strings, he listened for the music. But it was in the calm of summer, the still air could not vibrate the wires 118 LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS and they hung silent. Autumn came with its gentle breezes ; then there were faint murmurs of sound from the wires. At length the winter winds swept over the castled turrets and the great harp answered their touch in majestic bursts of music. The human heart may be likened to this harp. It does not yield its grandest music in the summer days of joy, but in the winter time of trial. The sweetest songs of earth have been sung in sorrow, have spontaneously burst forth from breaking hearts, and so in like manner the rich- est, rarest treasures of character come forth through pain and suffering. Even of Jesus we read, — "He was made perfect through suffering." This does not mean, of course, that there were evils in his nature which had to be expelled by the heat of trial or dross in the gold of his being that only the fire of suf- fering could remove. The meaning is, there were elements in his sinless humanity which could be brought to full ripeness only through pain. Nature is refreshed by storms. In May the clouds pour forth their torrents of rain, the lightnings flash, the thunders crash, the trees and plants and foliage bend before the fury of the gale. The flowers try to seek a shelter in the bosom of mother nature to protect their petals 119 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? from the force of the angry tempest which sweeps around them. Anon, however, the winds lessen their fury and settle down to a gentle zephyr, the rains cease, the thunder is no longer heard, nor the lightning seen, and the sun comes forth from his house of clouds and smilingly looks down to earth, the landscape puts on its brightest garments after its bath, the trees and plants and flowers assume their gayest colors and exude a fragrance which perfumes the purified air, everything is bright and fresh and sweet and pleasing to the eye and grateful to the senses. But contrast the May storms with those of November. In November the thunders roll and the rains fall, but instead of brightening and refreshing, they sweep all away and leave nothing behind but bare wastes and stagnant pools. Such too, is the difference when affliction falls on hearts without true faith in God and on those who abide in Christ. Eemember the promise, "When I bring a cloud over the earth, it shall come to pass, that the bow shall be in the cloud.' ' God reserves "a blessing for the eyes that weep. ' ' The darkest night must end at sunrise. The icy barriers of winter will melt in the warm summer sunlight. 120 LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS Keep your hold on God, come what may. When a ship loses her canvas in a gale, she can still be kept ont of the trough of the sea by her rudder ; when the rudder goes she has still her anchor left, but if the cable snaps she is swept hopelessly on the rocks. So when your hold on God is gone, all is gone. The most fatal wreck that can overtake you in times of sorrow is the wreck of faith, but if in the darkest hour you can trust God though he slay, and firmly believe that he ' ' chastens you for profit, ' ' you are anchored to the very throne of Love and will come off more than conqueror. Eelieve your own suffering hearts by turning the flood of grief upon some work of practical use- fulness. Working is better than weeping. Work till the last morning breaks, and in that clear light you will read the meaning of many of your sorrows. When our friends are taken from us, our bereavement is a call, not to bitter weeping, but to new duty. It bids us do the work that they laid down — Take up the song where they broke off the strain ; So journeying till we reach the heavenly town Where are laid up our treasures and our crown And our lost loved ones will be found again. Sitting down to brood over our sorrows, the darkness deepens about us and our little strength 121 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? changes to weakness ; but if we turn away from the gloom and take up the tasks of comforting and helping each other, the light will come again and we shall grow strong. When all our hopes are gone, 'Tis well our hands must still keep toiling on, For others' sake; For strength to bear is found in duty done, And he is blessed indeed who learns to make The joy of others cure his own heartache. A Symposium on Immortality Best Thoughts from the World's Greatest Thinkers CHAPTER V A Symposium on Immortality Best Thoughts from the World's Greatest Thinkers By T. C. Colekidge Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts ; the first and the wisest of beasts, it may be; but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree, and not in kind; just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of all the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts ; and this also we say from our own con- sciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of a soul within us that makes the difference. # # # By Lord-Chancellor Erskine When I reflect that God has given to inferior animals no instincts of faculties that are not imme- diately subservient to the ends and purposes of their beings, I cannot but conclude that the reasons and faculties of man are bestowed upon the same 125 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? principle and are connected with his superior nature. When I find him, therefore, endowed with his powers to carry, as it were, the line and rule to the most distant worlds, I consider it as conclusive evidence of a future and more exalted destination, because I cannot believe that the Creator of the Universe would depart from all the analogies of the lower creation, by gifting him with a capacity not only utterly useless, but destructive of his contentment and happiness, if his existence were to terminate in the grave. By John Fiske The only thing which cerebral physiology tells us, when studied with the aid of molecular physics, is against the materialist, as far as it goes. It tells us, that during the present life, although thought and feeling are always manifested in con- nection with a peculiar form of matter, yet by no possibility can thought and feeling be in any sense the products of matter. Nothing could be more grossly unscientific than the famous remark of Cabanis, that the brain secrets thought as the liver secretes bile. It is not even correct to say that thought goes on in the brain. What goes on in the brain is an amazingly complex series of molecular 126 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY movements, with which thought and feeling are in some unknown way co-related, not as effects or as causes, but as concomitants . . . the material- istic assumption . . . that the life of the soul accordingly ends with the life of the body, is per- haps the most colossal instance of baseless assump- tion that is known to the history of philosophy. * # # By Dr. Lionel Beale After having studied the phenomena of living matter for a length of time, and with all the advan- tages I could obtain, the conviction has been forced on my mind that vital phenomena must be referred to an agency distinct from the physical forces of nature. Life is not a consequence of the organiza- tion of matter, but the cause. The recent attempts to interpret vital phenomena by physics are ter- ribly retrograde. Such interpretation cannot be accepted unless well-established truths which can- not be overthrown are purposely ignored, and old ideas, long since proved false, are received as true. By Dr. John Bascom No man can well accept the moral law as one of spiritual insight, and not feel at once that the 127 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? years of eternity must be given to it in which, to clear itself ; that a long day of fulfilment and peace is to follow and level up the end with the beginning. Men are now called on by this law of dnty to stand on the verge of time, to cast all things behind them, and in the faith of implicit obedience to fling them- selves on the openhanded future. If this future drops them into oblivion, what then? They have played the part, on the highest stage of the world, of a moral maniac. # # # By Dr. Martineau "When I find him endowed with powers to carry, as it were, the line and rule to the most distant words, I consider it as conclusive evidence of a future and more exalted distinction, because I can- not think that the Creator of the Universe would depart from all the analogies of the lower creation in the formation of the highest creatures by gift- ing him with a capacity not only utterly useless, but destructive of his contentment and happiness, if his existence were to terminate in the grave. AVhat need of the mystic realm of Beethoven's music, and Goethe's drama, and Dante's poetry? Of endowment equal to the achievement of these things, and the impulse to achieve them, for a being thus restricted, what need 1 128 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY By Phillips Beooks I linger and yet I mnst not linger. Oh, my friends! Oh, my fellowmen! it is not very long that we shall be here. It is not very long. This life for which we are so careful — it is not very long ; and yet it is so long, because long, long after we have passed away out of men's sight and out of men's memory, the world, with something that we have left within it, will be going on still. It is so long, because long after the city and the world have passed away we shall go on somewhere, some- how, the same beings still, carrying into the depths of eternity something that this world has done for us that no other world could do; something of goodness, to get now, that will be of value to us a million years hence, that we never could get unless we got it in the short years of this earthly life. By Dr. N. S. Shaler To those who hold to the illogical idea that we can observe all that happens in even the simplest natural fact, the process of death may appear as a sufficient basis for denying the possibility of immortality. But the naturalist who has learned to limit his confidence in his discovering powers will not be ready to say that these facts do more 129 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? than raise a certain presumption against the con- tinuance of a mind after death. If he has made a study of those modes of change, occurring at what I have called critical points, he will be likely to sus- pect that much may take place in the revolution that evidently occurs in dissolution which he does not see at all. There is, it is true, nothing in the visible facts which in any way leads to the supposi- tion that the mind lives on after the breaking up of the body by which it is manifested. But no well- trained observer who has carefully remembered his experiences with phenomena, is likely to affirm that he finds in those of death anything that can fitly be termed proof that the mind does not survive. * * # By Dr. George Gordon" The proof of our immortality is not complete; but the evidence for it is so great that it would be an outrage upon life not to honor it with credence. AVhen we ask for trust here, we ask for no more than is demanded in almost all other departments of practical interest. . . . There is no other adequate explanation of the universality of the presence of the belief in immortality in the soul than the confession that it belongs to human faith, and that it is here to stay. . . . Men are not 130 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY allowed to rest in the notion that they are chil- dren of a day. They are pilgrims of eternity, with thoughts that wander through immensity and affections that raven with immortal hunger. They move upon lines that have no end, and when true to their humanity transcend time. They support their enthusiasms out of the Infinite, and their work, well done, belongs to the universe. Thus faith in immortality lives in the better thought, in the nobler purpose, and in the loftier work of the world; lives on intrenched in the structure of man's being, surviving fear and doubt and open denial, and holding its place in human conscious- ness against the philosophies that preach the perishableness of the soul as securely as the great fort at the Pillars of Hercules. By Dr. Brooke Herford We know not how it is to be, or where. But somehow, somewhere, whether we wish for it or not, we know by the dumb craving of the ordered world, as well as by the unuttered hope of holiest souls, that Grod will yet fulfil us into something better than the fragments that we are. And so we wait, and work, and watch, and do the best we may, or bow our heads in sorrow that our doing is 131 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? so much below our best — and as his laws ordain we let life go, or fall asleep, but always for some further greater life beyond the shadow and the sleeping. # # # By the Duke of Akgyle What life begins to need, to feel from within that it must find, shall eventually be supplied from without. And the completed outward conditions will awaken full response from within. The two meet and eventually are matched. The finished eye opens in the perfect light. The process of development through the ages is an evolution of the environment as well as of the life; the end shall be the best possible in the harmony of the two. By Frances Power Cobbe Why should we not thus catch a glimpse of the spiritual world through that half-open portal wherein our dying brother is passing? If the soul of man exists at all after the extinction of the life of the body, what is more probable than that it should begin at the very instant when the evil of the flesh is dropping off to exercise those spiritual powers of perception which we must suppose it to possess (else were it whole after life a blank), and 132 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY to become conscious of other things than those of which our dim senses can take cognizance? If it is not destined to an eternity of solitude (an absurd hypothesis), its future companions may well be recognized at once, even as it goes forth to meet them. It seems almost a thing to be ex- pected, that some of them should be ready waiting to welcome it on the threshold By Victoe Hugo It is the misfortune of our time to place every- thing in this life. In giving to man for his sole end and aim the life of earth, you aggravate all his miseries by the final negation. And that which was only suffering — that is to say, the law of God — is changed to despair, the law of hell. The duty of us all — legislators, bishops, poets — is to help raise all faces toward heaven, to direct all souls toward the future life. Let us say, with high confidence, that no one has suffered unjustly, or in vain. Death is restitution. God appears at the end of all. It would not be worth while to live if we were to die entirely. That which alleviates labor and sanctifies toil is to have before us the vision of a better world through the darkness of this life. That world is to me more real than the chimera which we devour and which we call life. 133 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? It is forever before my eyes. It is the supreme certainty of my reason, as it is the supreme con- solation of my soul. By Thomas Caklyle And seest thou therein any glimpse of immor- tality? heaven! Is the white tomb of our loved one, who died from our arms and must be left behind us there, which rises in the distance like a pale, mournfully receding milestone, to tell how many toilsome, uncheered miles we have jour- neyed on alone, but a pale spectral illusion? Is the lost friend still mysterious here, even as we are mysteriously here with God? Know of a truth that only the time-shadows have perished or are perishable and the real being of whatever was and whatever is and whatever will be, is even now and forever. . "~ * # # By Lyman Abbott I think of death as a glad awakening from this troubled sleep which we call life ; as an emancipa- tion from a world which, beautiful though it be, is still a land of captivity ; as a graduation from this primary department into some higher rank in the hierarchy of learning. I think of the dead as 134 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY possessing a more splendid equipment for a larger life of diviner service than was possible to them on earth — a life in which I shall in due time join them if I am counted worthy of their fellowship in the life eternal. By Dr. Newman Smythe The direction of nature has been towards the coming and reign of the individual. The whole movement has been that way. At the present summit of it the individual man stands out as its supreme form, and with his face uplifted towards some radiant beyond. Life would not be carried out to completion on one of its main lines ; it would stop short and be turned back in one of its progressive and dominant principles, if individuality should be gained only to be lost, if the person should miserably perish and only the species survive, only the life of humanity continue. # * # By Dr. Theodoee Mugger A true and satisfying sense of immortality must be achieved. It cannot be taken second-hand. We cannot read it in the pages of a book, whether of nature or inspiration. We cannot even look upon the man Jesus issuing from the tomb and 135 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? draw thence a faith that yields peace. There must be fellowship with the Christ of the resurrec- tion before we can feel its power. In other words, we must get over upon the divine side of life before we can be assured of eternal life. A full predica- tion of immortality can only be made through the moral and spiritual faculties. By R. W. Emekson I know not whence we draw the assurance of prolonged life, of a life which shoots that gulf we call death, and takes hold of what is real and abiding. Here is the wonderful thought. But whence came it ? Who put it in the mind 1 It was not I ; it was not you. It is elemental, belongs to thought and virtue, and whenever we have either, we see the beams of this light. When the Master of the universe has points to carry in his govern- ment he impresses his will in the structure of minds. # # # By Dk. Salmond The eye of man looks wistfully to the end. Life, like love, believes in its own immortality. Heart and mind cry for light upon what is beyond the grave. Nor do they cry in vain. They have their 136 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY answer in themselves. They have it in the highest measure in those words of the Lord Jesus, into whose clear depths men have never ceased to look since they were first spoken, and from which they have never turned unsatisfied. By Dr. S. D. McConnell An endless human interest attaches to the ques- tion, so strong that however often it be abandoned, it must needs be once again renewed. It beckons while it eludes. There is no reason to believe that men will ever be content to sit down before it or to definitely abandon it as insoluble. By George Romanes Reason is not the only attribute of man, nor is it the only faculty which he habitually employs for the ascertainment of truth. Moral and spiritual faculties are of no less importance in their respect- ive spheres, even of every-day life. Faith, trust, taste, are as needful in ascertaining truth as to character and beauty as is reason. The wise Christian will answer, "I believe in the resurrec- tion of the dead, partly on grounds of reason, partly on those of intuition, but chiefly on both 137 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? combined. So to speak, it is my whole character which accepts the whole system of which the doc- trine of personal immortality forms an essential part." By Prof. Wm. James Immortality is one of the great spiritual needs of man. There are individuals with a real passion for the matter, men and women for whom a life hereafter is a pungent craving, and the thought of it an obsession ; and in whom keenness of interest has bred an insight into the relations of the sub- ject that no one less penetrated with the mystery of it can attain. # # * By Goethe My belief in the immortality of the soul springs from the idea of activity ; for when I persevere to the end in a course of restless activity I have a sort of guarantee from Nature that, when the pres- ent form of my existence proves itself inadequate for the energizing of my spirit, she will provide another form more appropriate. When a man is seventy-five years old he cannot avoid now and then thinking of death. This thought, when it comes, leaves me in a state of perfect peace; for I have the most assured conviction that our soul is 138 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY of an essence absolutely indestructible — an essence that works on from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun, which, to onr earthly eye, sinks and sets, but in reality never sinks, but shines on un- ceasingly. * * # Death Another Form of Birth By H. W. Thomas, D.D It seems to me, if we get a correct view of death, that it is only another form of birth — a kind of upward movement instead of the downward. Be- fore we came into this world we had our life in connection with the life of our mothers. And after reaching a point where it was possible to live independent of our mothers, we came into this world, and found ourselves here in bodies which are only a kind of walking matrix, in which the higher life is being developed. Separated from our maternal life, there is another umbilicus, the air, that seems to bind us to the great life we are now living. We enter upon this wider and higher life by breathing ; we hold it by breathing ; and we live in this walking matrix, receiving strength from our vaster mother, Nature, and we seem to develop until it is severed, and we are born up into a higher life. So it looks to me as I contemplate this strange mystery of life. It seems to me that when 139 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? this life goes out, we are born into some condition of being that is higher. If we take this view of the subject, it relieves what we call dying of much of the unnecessary darkness and gloom that has been thrown around it. It reminds me of a beautiful allegory I have somewhere read. It is related that a tree heard one of its leaves crying, and coming to the leaf asked it what it was crying about. And the leaf said that the wind had told it that the time would come when it must be blown away. Then the tree told the branch and the branch told the leaf to dry its tears ; it should not die, but should continue to sport itself in the sum- mer breeze and the summer sunshine. But after a while the leaf saw a silent change coming over its fellow leaves. They gradually put off their modest green and were decked in hues of purple and gold. It looked upon this dress of beauty, and upon its own familiar green, and it began to cry again. And the branch told the tree that the leaf was cry- ing, and the tree came again to see about what the leaf was crying. And the leaf said : ' ' The other leaves are dressed in garments of beauty, while I keep on my old garment of green, and I cry." Then the tree told the leaf that this change of dress would be put off to-morrow, and that it might now, if it wished, put on these garments. 140 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY And thus the leaf was permitted to put on the golden hues. And the winds of autumn came and it was soon borne away. So, my friends, much as we dread the autumn and the winter of death, we might as well weep if we had forever to stay down in these lower worlds, in these feeble bodily conditions, when the worlds of beauty roll on forever in immensity, and souls are rising and casting off their garments of dust, and passing away. Let us rather rejoice that, having had a birth that brought us into this state, and a development as far as possible, we may wel- come the approach of the hosts of joy, dressed in garments woven by angel fingers; welcome the lines that time brings about our eye ; welcome the weight of years that begins to press us down ; wel- come the weakness of age, the decay of strength, the dimness of sight, the dulness of hearing; and even let the cold winds of winter and the hot suns of summer hasten the process. For it is only the wearing out of the body, the putting on of gar- ments for the evening, the getting ready for the morning ; and then will come the whisper bye and bye, "You have traveled long enough, you have toiled long enough; now lay down the burden, gather up your feet and go to the vaster realm above and beyond. ' ' 141 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Atheism No Argument Against Immortality By William Trail Even on the supposition that there is no God, does it follow that man cannot by possibility sur- vive the stroke of death? We think not. For the power, whatever it may be, which has introduced man on this present scene, endowed with a cor- poreal life, may also, for anything the atheist can show, introduce man on a future scene with a life incorporeal. Be that power what it may — even admit that it is fate, or chance, or natural law, or some nameless energy which has kindled within our bodies the vital spark, — how can the atheist be sure whether this same power, this fate or chance, or law or energy, may not prolong that spark, or even make it burst into a flame, by the very same stroke which is to shiver the present external covering? Till the atheist, then, has discovered what this hidden power is, which he says has pro- duced human life here, and shall have proved that this power could not by possibility prolong that life hereafter, he is plainly not entitled to pro- nounce another world to be impossible. He labors hard, and may perhaps succeed, in extinguishing all hopes or even all fears of a hereafter, in that abysmal darkness where he loses sight of God. But what then? Does his ceasing to hope for, or 142 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY dread it, make it an impossibility? In that dark- ness there is some power. We say it is God, let the atheist call it what he will ; but there is some power even in that abyss of darkness, which with- out the atheist being able to prevent it, has sent him into this world of sorrows and of tears, a creature to suffer and to weep, to be born, and how knows he that it is to stop here I "Were he to entreat it to annihilate him at death, can he tell whether it will hear him ? Or if it heard him, that it can do what he asks of it? Even on the atheist's supposition, then, there is not a God, it would be rash to pronounce another world to be impossible. # * # The Soul's Claim By Seneca The soul of man is great and generous, admitting no other bounds to be set to her than what are com- mon with God. She claims for her country the universe, the whole convex wherein are included the lands and the seas, wherein the air, expending itself between the earth and the heavens conjoins them both. Nor does she suffer herself to be con- fined to any number of years. All years, says she, are mine. No age is locked up from the penetra- 143 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? tion of learned men — no time so distant or dark that it is not previous to thought. When the day shall come that will separate this composition, human and divine, I will leave this body here where I found it, and return to the gods. Not that I am altogether absent from them now, though detained from superior happiness by this heavy earthly clog. This short stay in mortal life is but the prelude to a better and more lasting life above. Look, then, with an intrepid eye upon that deter- mined happy hour. It is not the last to the soul, if it be to the body. Whatever things are spread around thee, look upon them only as the furniture of an inn. We must leave them and go on. Nature throws us out of the world as she threw us into it. We must carry nothing away with us, as we brought with us nothing into it. Nay, even a great part of that which attended us when we came into the world must be thrown ofT. The skin which nature threw over us as a veil must be stripped off; our flesh, our blood that so wonderfully cir- culates through every part of it must be dispersed, as also the solids, the bones and nerves which sup- ported the fluids and weaker parts. That day, which men are apt to dread as their last, is but a birthday of an eternity. 144 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY You will then say yon lived in darkness before when yon shall behold the fnll glories of that light which now thon seest dimly through the narrow circles of the eyes, and yet at so great a distance as to fill the mind with admiration and astonish- ment. How, then, will it amaze yon when I say you shall behold that divine light in its full spread of glory in heaven ! Such a reflection as this can- not but raise the mind above every mean thought, and deter us from every vile and cruel practice. It informs us the gods are witnesses of all our actions ; it commands us to make ourselves accept- able to them, to prepare ourselves for communion with them, and have always eternity in view which whoever hath any conception of he dreads no enemies; he hears the trumpet's sound undis- mayed, nor can all the threats in the world terrify his manly soul ; for why should he be afraid of any- thing? * * # Forms Change, Essences Remain By Bishop Eandolph S. Foster There is not a particle of ground for the imagi- nation that any animal, not even the simply animal part of man, is destined to immortality. But is not this in contradiction of what has been said? Not as we understand it. The thing posited is 145 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? this: Essences or substances of being are per- manent, and so far as we can discern are destined to abide forever. Forms and compositions of things change and pass away, but their essences remain. The change of form is not obliteration of the substance. An animal is but a form of matter peculiarly endowed — a living form. The life which animates it is but a mode of creative activ- ity; its apparent intelligence is purely automatic and not personal ; a form of impulse from without. There is contained in the animal no subject of which these impulses and attributes can be pre- dicted. When the animal dies there is no evidence that any particle of being has been obliterated. The form has disappeared, but the substance which composed it has taken another form or entered into some new complex. The life-force and its cluster of automatic activities, instinctive im- pulses, has been withdrawn; but the being which inspired or posited them, and in whom also they had ground, is God, who abides forever. Thus it does not appear that in any varying forms which come upon the scene and vanish away, there is any more obliteration of being than there is in the cur- sory and vanishing combination of the kaleido- scope ; nor any more loss of essence than there is when the steam-engine is taken to pieces. The 146 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY power which moved it is not annihilated, nor are its elements. Simply a change has occurred in the rela- tion of the parts. But it is said, would not these same facts apply to man, and prove that his case differs nothing from that of the animal ! If death change his form as it does that of the animal, and he disappears as really as the animal, wherein is the difference? How is it that we must conceive that he still exists and the animal does not? We have admitted that to mere sense the cases seem precisely alike. But are they? They are to a certain extent similar, and to the same extent the result of death is similar. But we have shown that man is a spirit. This the animal is not. So far forth as man is a form he vanishes and disap- pears not to return; so far forth as his was an automatic life, the force which played in it and con- stituted it is withdrawn, but so far forth as he is a spirit the destruction of the form and the with- drawment of the automatic life do not necessarily affect the integrity of that, and nothing short of annihilation can ; and that is ever resorted to there is no proof. In every other case decomposition is all that is manifest. We see no reason to suppose anything more in this case. But decomposition does not impair essence ; and decomposition is only possible where there is a complex. The spirit is 147 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? not a complex, but a simple. No agent can take its parts asunder, for it has no parts; nothing can change its form, for it is formless as thought, or feeling, or volition, though it may always dwell in a form. No instrument is keen enough of edge to divide it, no lens has power enough to reveal it. The only effect death can have on it is to take down its house, and spoil the instrument by which now it shows that it is, and where it is. Whether it goes into another house and acquires a better instrument, is the question we are considering. What we claim is, that so far as any facts, exist- ence is guarantee of permanence, and so the spirit, we may believe, survives death — is immortal. # # # The Unity of Consciousness By Joseph Cook Here is an organ, and let us suppose that before its ivory keys there sits a musician who has what we may call Gyge's ring, which made the wearer invisible. Now at our organ there is a musician, but we cannot see him. We come to the edge of the key-board, and notice that the ivory is in motion. We further study the movements of the keys, and we find that there is a perfect harmony between the rising and falling of the ivory and the 148 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY rising and falling of the melody. There stands a materialist on that side of the organ, and yon stand here, and yonr materialist says, "I have fonnd ont the canse of the music; notice every time the anthem rises and falls there is a perfect parallel- ism between the motions of these keys and the motion of the melody. ' ' But yon say, ' ' Parallelism is not identity,' ' and yet he sees these keys in motion, and mnsic falls from the organ. Why not say the ivory in motion is the canse of the mnsic? " Yon mnst distinguish, ' ' yon reply, "between par- allelism and identity. Ivory is inert and cannot move of itself.' ' "Well," says the materialist or Mr. Tyndall, "let ns have a new definition of ivory, let us put into ivory the potency of all music. Plainly, there must be a cause here, and now, as we can see only the ivory, let us say that ivory is to be correctly defined as the mysterious somewhat by which all this music is produced." That is the definition from the most brilliant man of science. When Tyndall is asked to give a definition of mat- ter, he defines it in this way. He puts into matter the promise and potency of all life. He puts into the keys what he wants to get out of them ; he puts into "matter," "mind," and that is not matter. We stand here before the organ and converse with each other, and having no partisan motives, we de- 149 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? sire to obtain clear ideas. Farraday said inert- ness is the only character of matter. When mat- ter is in motion it will stop motion of itself; and when matter is at rest it will never start into motion — something must touch it from without ; in short, we must define inertia as capable of origina- ting force. What do I mean by force? Force is what is expended in producing or resisting motion. It cannot originate force or motion; and we say to Mr. Tyndall that we have a definition of it for two thousand years, and why should we change it? Suppose we try to speak of mind in the terms we speak of matter. When Columbus first saw the New World was his joy triangular or hexangular? If the imagination of an ordinary poet weighs an ounce, does Shakespeare's weigh a pound. Was the joy of Lincoln in signing the Emancipation Act brown or green? Is love red or green? We find when we make the attempts to use the terms we use in discussing matter to mind, there is no possibility of having the same substance at the same time, extension and no extension, coloring and no color- ing, weight and no weight. But there is no union, we are told, except close succession. We deny that succession is union. There must be a musi- cian at our keyboard. We can see him with the lens which is called axiom of sufficient reason. 150 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY Where does the music come from? We have some forms of materialism that not only attempt to blow the music out of the bellows, but blow the musician out also. I do not deny that life stands behind a great number of chemical forces, I am not denying that there is a current under the boat, but I deny that the current lifts the sail or moves the oars. Heaven forbid that I should deny the quali- ties of the water and the boat ! But they do not explain its motion against the wind. So, these chemical forces that will reduce the matter of the body to dust, do not explain how it has been built from the dust and preserved from year to year, and its destructive forces have been curbed while life remains in the flesh. There is a great fact known to us more certainly than the existence of matter ; it is the unity of con- sciousness. I know that I exist, and that I am one. Hermann Lotze's supreme argument against materialism is the unity of consciousness. I know that I am I and not you ; I know this to my very finger tips. That finger is part of my organism, and not of yours. The unity of consciousness is a fact known to us by much better evidence than the existence of matter. I am a natural realist, if I may use a technical term : I believe in the exist- ence of both mind and matter. There are two 151 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? things in the universe ; but I know the existence of mind better than I know the existence of matter. Sometimes in dreams we fall down precipices and awake, and find that the gnarled, savage rocks had no existence. But we touched them ; we felt them ; we were bruised by them. Who knows but that some day we may wake, and find that all matter is merely a dream? Even if we do that, it will yet remain true that I am I. There is more support for idealism than for materialism, but there is no sufficient support for either. If we are to rever- ence all, and not merely a fraction, if the list of axiomatic or self-evident truths, if we are not to play fast and loose with the intuitions which are the eternal tests of verity, we shall believe in the existence of both matter and mind. Hermann Lotze holds that the unity of consciousness is a fact absolutely incontrovertible and absolutely inexplicable on the theory that our bodies are woven by a complex of physical arrangements and physical forces, having no co-ordinating presiding power over them all. I know that there is a co- ordinating presiding power somewhere in me. I am I. I am one. Whence the sense of unity of consciousness, if we are made up, according to Spencer's idea, or Huxley's of infinitely multiplex molecular mechanisms ? 152 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY We have the idea of a presiding power that makes each man one from top to toe. How do we get it? It must have a sufficient cause. To this hour no man has explained the unity of conscious- ness in consistency with the mechanical theory of life. •Jp *A* tP The Mystery of the Silence of Death By Henry Ward Beecher I love to think that what seems the mystery of the silence of death, which envelops so many that we loved on earth, is really not a mystery. Our friends are separated from us because they are lifted higher than our faculties can go. Our child dies. It is the last we see of him here. He is lifted so far above us that we cannot follow him. He was our child ; he was cradled in our arms ; he clambered upon our knees; but instantly, in the twinkling of an eye, God took him and lifted him up into his own sphere. We see him not. It is because we are not yet developed enough. We cannot see things spiritual with carnal eyes. But they who have walked with us here, who have gone beyond us, and whom we cannot see, are still ours. They are more ours than they ever were before. We cannot commune with them as we once could, because they are infinitely lifted above those con- 153 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? ditions in which we are able to commune. We remain here, and are subject to the laws of this realm. They have gone where they speak a higher language, and live in a higher sphere. But this silence is not the silence of vacuity, and this mys- tery is not the mystery of darkness and death. Theirs is the glory; ours is the waiting for it. Theirs is the realization ; ours is the hoping for it. Theirs is the perfection; ours is the immaturity striving to be ripe. And when the day comes that we shall disappear from these earthly scenes, we shall be joined to them again, but not as we were — for we shall not then be as we were — but as they are, with God. We shall be like them and Him. Is Man a Failure? By George R. Wendling Nature succeeds in all her operations. Indi- vidual specimens may fall by the way, but the species accomplishes its end. Now unless man live again, he is an absolute failure. Go set your- self what theory you will concerning the object of man's creation, and if you exclude a life beyond the grave, man is a failure. Remember, however, that throughout all Nature every created object fitly serves some discoverable purpose, and is fully 154 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY capable of performing its mission. .We know what the sheep in the pasture and the cattle on the hills are for; we know the uses of the fruits and the ripening grain; we can tell the purpose for which birds and fishes were made, and from the clouds yonder with their rain and thunderbolts, yea! from the sun, moon and stars behind the clouds, down through the infinite ether to the earth's crust, and down further yet to the great mines of gold and silver, to the great lakes of oil and salt, everywhere throughout every highway and bypath, and into every recess of Nature, may we trace a purpose, discern an object or recognize a mission for every created thing, and find each thing capable of performing that mission. But what is your mission? Whom or what do you serve? What was the purpose of your crea- tion? Where do you belong in the catalogue of the universe? What are you doing here on this planet ? For what are you designed ? Name any purpose you will for man, ascribe to him any mis- sion you will, assign to him any place you will in the economy of Nature, and if you do not include the possibilities of a future life, man is an abso- lute failure. Turn where you will, look up and down every avenue, view life in all its varying phases, and 155 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? there can be but one solemn conclusion — if there is no life beyond the grave, man is an abject fail- ure. A failure! can that be! No! No! Man standing at the summit, the heir of all the ages, destined to ultimate dominion over all the earth, the master of steam and electricity, the autocrat of earth and sea, compelling even the stars to yield their secrets to his spectrum analysis ; man, walk- ing to and fro in the corridors of the universe, naming and weighing the planets, telling when and where the wandering comet shall appear ; man, en- dowed with such wonderful powers as these, and endowed too with a heart that can love and love forever — No ! The Almighty has not written the word failure on the forehead of such a being as that, and somehow and somewhere, man must and will push on and up in a career worthy of a crea- ture thus made in the sublime image of the Infinite One Himself. * * * The Divine Fatherhood and Immortality By Dr. Amoky Bradford The doctrine of Divine Fatherhood shows that God and man are of essentially the same nature. This does not mean that they are identically the same beings. Identity of nature does not imply identity of being. Every child is identical in nature 156 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY with his father, and yet every child has an individ- uality peculiarly his own. The doctrine of the Fatherhood teaches that men and the Father who gave them being are partakers of the same nature. . . . If God and man have identically the same nature, then the inference is inevitable that man will live as long as God. The human body dies ; it is essential to the thought of God that he never dies. If God could die, there would be no God. If his children possess his being, they must also possess his immortality. Either the premise must be denied, or the conclusion must be accepted. Fatherhood necessitates the continuance of the relation between parent and child. If that rela- tion endures, then man must live, not in a dif- fused and impalpable immensity, but as the child of God ; not as a mere personal emanation which is at last to be absorbed into his infinity, but as an eternal person. Childhood means individuality, and individuality must continue as long as the rela- tion between the parent and the child continues. If God is the Everlasting Father, then man is his everlasting child. If man is the everlasting child of the Everlasting Father, then, throughout all the ages that are before him, he will possess the qual- ities of personality, which is all that distinguishes him as in the image of God. 157 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Something Behind the Veil By Professor Goldwin Smith There are phenomena in our nature which, apparently, are not physical, but seem to point to something beyond our physical existence. They constitute, in the aggregate, what we have called our spiritual life, including our sense of moral responsibility, our moral aspirations, our feeling for moral beauty, our power of idealization, our higher and more perfect human affections. Is there anything to which these point? May there not be something behind the veil ? • He sees that stopping the spring does not destroy the source of water, which flows just as merrily in some other direction. If he shuts the sunlight out of his room, it shines just as cheerfully in other places. He sees and hears of a something called electricity, with which man's ingenuity has vitalized inert machinery, so that to-day the machines are talking to him from every quarter of the globe. If he takes a club and demolishes one of these same telegraphic instruments while it is speaking, the voice instantly ceases and is heard no more. What has he done ? He has not annihi- lated electricity, nor crippled it, nor even incom- moded it. It is still at hand, pressing and mount- ing to the very lips that a moment ago gave it 158 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY expression. If he should take the same club and demolish the brain and vocal apparatus of a fellow-man the effect would be very similar, so far as we humans can determine. The instrument, like the other one, would cease action because it was broken. Life leaves the human body when some physical lesion occurs that stops mechanical action ; but not before. Its exodus does not cause the lesion ; the lesion causes the exodus. The spirit does not depart until evicted. The house becomes untenantable, the mask destroyed, the bell un- tongued, the circuit broken, and the tenant flies — whither? The artist's mission is not ended when his brush or chisel is spoiled, nor the writer's when his pen is broken. # # A Philosophic Analogy By John Fiske You can measure heat, you can measure electric- ity, and since the action of nerves in all probability consists of undulatory motions it is to some extent measurable, and doubtless would be completely measurable had we the means. But when you come to thoughts and emotions, I beg to know how you are going to work to give an account of them in footpounds ! It is not simply that we have no means at hand, no calculus equal to the occasion, 159 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? tlie thing is absurd on its face. It is as true to-day as it was in the time of Descartes that thought is devoid of extension and cannot be submitted to mechanical measurement. . . . The natural his- tory of the mass of activities that are perpet- ually being concentrated within our bodies, to be presently once more disintegrated and diffused, shows us a closed circle which is entirely physical, and in which one segment belongs to the nervous system. As for our conscious life, that forms no part of the closed circle, but stands entirely out- side of it, concentric with the segment which belongs to the nervous system. These conclusions are not at all in harmony with the materialistic view of the case. If consciousness is a product of molecular motion, it is a natural inference that it must lapse when the motion ceases. But if con- sciousness is a kind of existence which within our experience accompanies a certain phase of molecu- lar motion, then the case is entirely altered, and the possibility or probability of the continuance of the one without the other becomes a subject for further inquiry. Materialists sometimes declare that the relation of conscious intelligence to the brain is like that of music to the harp, and when the harp is broken there can be no more music. An opposite view, long familiar to us, is that the 160 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY conscious soul is an emanation from the Divine In- telligence that shapes and sustains the world, and during its temporary imprisonment in material forms the brain is its instrument of expression. Thus the soul is not the music, but the harper; and obviously this view is in harmony with the conclusions which I have deduced from the correla- tion of forces. Upon these conclusions we cannot directly base an argument sustaining man's im- mortality, but we certainly remove the only serious objection that has ever been alleged against it. We leave the field clear for those general con- siderations of philosophic analogy and moral prob- ability which are all the guides upon which we can call for help in this arduous inquiry. # * # The Enterprises of the Intellect By Washington Gladden Repeat the question, "0 soul, of what stature art thou? What thinkest thou of thyself ?" and the answer will come again : "I am a denizen not only of the eternities, but of the infinities. Bound- less space, as well as endless duration, is the sphere of my powers. The other creatures are content with a limited habitat. If they migrate, it is in narrow belts of longitude, from colder to 161 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? warmer climates : but I traverse the globe, I scale the mountains, I put a girdle around the earth, and this only to get a footing for my. great career. From this pedestal outreaching I plunge with my spectroscope into the heart of the sun ; I fly from planet to planet, from star to star, reading with my glass the pamplisest of the sky ; making myself at home in worlds that are billions of leagues away. ' ' What is the meaning of this magnificent quest, these enterprises of the intellect, that put the whole universe under contribution? Is it, that, like the traveler before a journey, man likes to study the country whither he is bound, and not be wholly without a key to its contents and laws ? If you found a plowboy taking lessons in naviga- tion and poring over maps of New Zealand and Fiji, you would guess that he was about to take to the sea and become a colonist at last; and if we have but to till our own earth for a season, what can be the fascination of sailing through the skies % Is it not that we have vaster relations than with our immediate surroundings? that the mind's estate is greater than we had conceived ? and that in these excursions we feel the outskirts of a prob- lem that is to engage larger meditation and maturer powers 1 162 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY Life With Immortal Hope By Daniel Makch No man can afford to live without a supreme all- controlling faith in the endless life to come. The things of earth and time are nearest, and just because they are so near they seem so great. The smallest coin that Mammon ever made, held close to the eye, will hide a sun a million times larger than the earth. And just because the petty coin is so near and the mighty sun is so far away. In the dark and dangerous hour of temptation, one short moment of that hour may hide the eternity that lies beyond. A pleasure, a trial, a provocation which comes and goes in a moment, may cause us to act as if our whole existence were only a transient bubble on the sea of time, blown into being by the passing breeze, and as soon blown away. This present world addresses us through every sense of the body and every faculty of the mind and every sensibility of the heart, and it would bind us here with bands of iron and walls of adamant. Nothing can save us from that bondage but faith in the immortal life to come. Children of earth, toiling, struggling, hoping, fearing, as you are, carry that faith with you everywhere, and make it your shield against all temptation to live as if this 163 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? were your only home. In the street and in the market place, in the transactions of trade and in the intercourse of society, in the weary tasks of labor and in the quiet hours of rest, in the joyous days of hope and success, and in the dark days of failure and disappointment, keep this one thought near your conscience and near your heart : There is another and better life than this, and for that life I will hold myself in constant preparation. If the thrones and crowns of all the earth were mine, I should use them best by making them stepping-stones on which to climb the heavenly heights. When pleasure sings with siren voice, when fashion flutters in silken robes, when Mammon tempts with golden store, when labor wearies with heavy burdens, when disappointment smites with stunning stroke, when sickness prostrates with secret wound, when death stands threatening at the door, still let faith in the blessed and endless life to come keep your heart pure and your hope strong. Let no earthly influence entice or terrify you into forgetfulness of your high and glorious destiny. Let no voices from the world ever pre- vent your singing with the understanding and the heart that oldest and newest song of our great im- mortality, "I know that my Eedeemer liveth?" 164 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY The Analogies of Nature By William Jennings Bkyan Christ gave us proof of immortality, and yet it would hardly seem necessary that one should rise from the dead to convince us that the grave is not the end. If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless heart of the buried acorn and to make it burst forth into a new life, will he leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, made in the image of his Creator? If He stoops to give to the rosebush whose withered blossoms float upon the autumn breeze, the sweet assurance of another springtime, will he refuse the words of hope to the sons of men when the frosts of winter come? If matter, mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will the spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has paid a brief visit like a royal guest to this tenement of clay? No, I am as sure that there is another life as I am that I live to-day! I am sure that, as the grain of wheat contains within an invisible germ which can discard its body and build a new one from earth and air, so this body contains a soul which can clothe itself anew when this poor frame crumbles into dust. 165 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? A belief in immortality not only consoles the individual, but it exerts a powerful influence in bringing peace between individuals. If one really thinks that man dies as the brute dies, he may yield to the temptation to do injustice to his neigh- bor when the circumstances are such as to promise security from detection. But if one really expects to meet again, and live eternally with those whom he knows to-day, he is restrained from evil deeds by the fear of endless remorse. We do not know what rewards are in store for us, or what punish- ments may be reserved, but if there were no other punishment it would be enough for one who deliberately and consciously wrongs another to have to live forever in the company of the person wronged and have his littleness and self- ishness laid bare. I repeat, a belief in immor- tality must exert a very powerful influence in establishing justice between men and thus in lay- ing the foundation for peace. There is a Life Eternal By Pkof. Haknack Christ's grave was the birthplace of an inde- structible belief that death is vanquished and there is life eternal. It is useless to cite Plato; it is 166 A SYMPOSIUM ON IMMORTALITY useless to point to the Persian religion and the ideas and literature of later Judaism. All that would have perished; but the certainty of the resurrection and of a life eternal which is bound up with the grave in Joseph's garden has not per- ished; and on the conviction that Jesus lives we still base those hopes of citizenship in an Eternal City which make our earthly life worth living and tolerable. "He delivered them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bond- age,' ' as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrew confesses. That is the point ; and although there be exceptions to its sway, wherever, despite all the weight of nature, there is a strong faith in the infinite value of the soul ; wherever death has lost its terrors ; wherever the sufferings of the present are measured against a future of glory, this feel- ing of life is bound up with conviction that Jesus Christ has passed through death, that God has awakened him and raised him to life and glory. It is not by any speculative ideas of philosophy, but by the vision of Jesus' life and death and by the feeling of his imperishable union with God that mankind, so far as it believes in these things, has attained to that certainty of eternal life for which it was meant, and which it dimly discerns — eternal life in time and beyond time. 167 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Man Greater Than His Concept By William Potts George From whatever source it comes, whether it is a subject of direct divine revelation, or merely a conception of the human mind one fact is incon- trovertible : the idea of Immortality exists and is an essential component part of man's mental equipment. It is a great motive power, if not the greatest motive power, of universal humanity. It exerts its tremendous force in all ages, climes and conditions. It influences the actions of the savage, and serves to mould the characters of the highest intellects. It has spoken in the earliest ages, and continues to speak in this our latest century. Man's belief in God and Immortality are the most precious possessions of the human race. "If in this life only," said St. Paul, "we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable (or pitiable.") Dean Stanley said that all the essen- tials of all the religions of the race can, in their final analysis, be resolved into these two beliefs in God and Immortality. Say that Immortality is merely a conception of the human mind. The con- ception is here, and as the conceiver is always greater than his concept, it follows as an inevitable conclusion that the mind which could conceive of Immortality must be itself Immortal. 168 The Soul Between Death and Resurrection I weary of this endless strife; I weary of this dying life, This living death, this dying chain, This torment of delay, In which her sins my soul detain Ah, when shall it be mine? — ah, when! — With my last breath to say, "No more I weep, no more I sigh!" I'm dying of desire to die. — St. Teresa of Spain. How blest the righteous when he dies! When sinks a weary soul to rest, How mildly beam the closing eyes, How gently heaves the expiring breath! So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o'er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies the wave along the shore. A holy quiet reigns around, A calm which life nor death destroys: Nothing disturbs that peace profound, Which his unfettered soul enjoys. Farewell, conflicting hopes and fears, Where lights and shades alternate dwell; How bright the unchanging morn appears ! Farewell, inconstant world, farewell ! Life's labor done, as sinks the clay, Light from its load the spirit flies; While heaven and earth combine to say, How blest the righteous when he dies ! — Mrs. Barbaidd. CHAPTER VI The Soul Between Death and Resurrection Feom the words "And Jesus said unto him, verily I say unto Thee, to-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23: 43), confirmed by other Scriptural expressions we may be strength- ened in the belief that the souls of men do not in the period which intervenes between their separa- tion from the body and the general resurrection, sink into a condition of dull and lifeless torpor, but that they are conveyed to some abode, where they still retain their active powers, and are still alive to feelings and affections ; where, probably, portions of joy or suffering are assigned to them, such as are suited to the degrees of purity, holi- ness, and perfection, or of sinfulness and corrup- tion, in which they have quitted their earthly tene- ments ; until, at the last, at the great consumma- tion of all things, the day of final retribution, the dead will again rise into life, and every son and daughter of man will receive, by a solemn sentence, a doom of happiness or misery. Of the two malefactors crucified with our 173 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? blessed Lord, one, impelled by depravity the most hardened, railed at Him as He hung exposed to the same common fate; the other, however, endowed with eorrecter feelings, passed on his reprobate fellow-sufferer a just and expressive rebuke: "Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation: and we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds ; but this man hath done nothing amiss.' ' He thus made that outward acknowledgment of the justice of his own condemnation, which flowed from sin- cere contrition and showed a feeling of that harsh injustice under which Jesus was doomed to suffer. But he went further than this. He showed him- self a believer in Jesus as the true Messiah, the Saviour of the world: "Lord remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.' ' It is not to be supposed that he possessed any correct notion of the spiritual kingdom of the Messiah. He probably attached to the kingdom of Christ the gross notions of which even the most enlightened and most favored of His disciples appear at this time not to have divested their minds, namely, that the kingdom of the Messiah was to be a temporal kingdom, and that He was to appear at some future time arrayed in the glory and the majesty of an earthly prince. 174 BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION In one respect this malefactor may be said to have surpassed the apostles themselves, in this, that whereas they saw, in the approaching death of their Master, the extinction of all their hopes, he conceived and expressed a lively hope in Him, in those very circumstances which induced others to despair. For we have the fullest possible proof from the words before us, that he beheld in our Lord, not merely an innocent person expiring by a cruel death under an unjust accusation, but that he looked to Him as one who was to overcome the power of death, and to fulfil the promises which He had made to His disciples ; he acknowledged Him even under His present suffering state, as the true Messiah, as the one whom the voice of prophecy had long foretold, whom the eyes of all devout per- sons had ardently desired to see, and in whom were to be blessed all the families of the earth. Paradise is supposed to be originally of Persian derivation, passing by several commutations and changes into the Hebrew and Greek languages. If we accept its first origin, it undoubtedly implies a sort of pleasure-ground or garden laid out by art and adorned by shrubs and flowers. In its transmutation into the Greek, the latest language in which the word occurs, before its adaptation into our own, we find that it has several significa- 175 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? tions, such as an abode of rest, a place where sor- row is unknown, where joy is the dominant note, and all are happy and contented in the essence of being. If we go beyond the Greek and interpret it in the Hebrew we shall find that it conveys the idea of pleasure, a place where all will be free to pursue their inclinations without restraint and enjoy an everlasting felicity in the belief of everything being done in accordance with a heavenly design. As a Hebrew word it is found only three times in the Scriptures, viz., in the books of Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. From the original sense, of a pleasure garden, it came to be applied in a figurative way, to signify a place of happiness and enjoyment into which the departed on earth could come to reap the reward for their good works here below. There is no intermediate place, but an inter- mediate state. The full Apocalypse of God is not given. The ransomed are round about the throne — living, personal, active but in a disembodied state, disembodied and therefore intermediate. Both literally and figuratively Paradise was taken in the sense of pleasurable sensation and enjoyment, but it must not be confounded in this acceptance with the heaven of perfect enjoyment 176 BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION and progress, the final destination of the true and faithful servants of God after the day of universal judgment when the spirit shall be united with its kindred clay. "To-day" — not at a distant period — imme- diately, on the very day when He came into His kingdom — He would confer on him the signal proof of His favor, in conveying him to Paradise. The meaning is clear as to place, the time is fixed, and the promise is enjoyment of a foretaste of that happiness which was afterwards consummated. Jesus as a Jew, according to the flesh, seems to have believed in the opinion prevailing among the Jews, that while the souls of the good entered into this Paradise immediately on their departure from earth, those of the wicked were at first con- veyed into a sort of purgatory, in which every portion of vice and evil was to be destroyed, every stain of corruption and imperfection to be cleared off, before their admission into a state of happiness. Prayers for the dead were at the time of our Lord's ministry offered in every synagogue — just as they are to this day. Sacrifices were offered in the temple for those who had departed in an imperfect state of preparation, and not one word of protest is recorded as uttered by our Lord 177 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? against their practice or in the belief which it implied.* In this intermediate state of soul-existence, it is but logical to infer that a distinction is made between the condition of the good and the bad. It was in special recompense for a peculiar act of faith that the soul of the repentant malefactor was to be conveyed to Paradise. It is but right to assume that the impenitent soul was conveyed into a state of misery and doubtful anticipation. Whatever may be the nature of the soul- existence in the intermediate state and the wait- ing for the final destiny, it were idle philosophy to speculate upon. Without bodies, but not without heaven — a bodiless state and therefore coming *The first traces of the practice of prayers for the dead began in the Christian Church about two hundred years after Christ. But there was no purgatory. It was never received into the Greek Church, and according to the historian, Otho, of the twelfth century, it was but partially received in the Latin Church in his day. Hildebrand was the first of the Popes to introduce it. It was enacted into a dogma by the Council of Florence and sanctioned by Pope Eugenius in 1438. The one passage generally adduced to support purgatory is I. Peter 3: 19; "By which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison, which were sometime disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah," etc., and the only meaning of this text is that Christ once preached or caused a divine message to be borne to the spirits then in prison, to wit, in the days of Noah. There is not the slightest intimation that their condition can be affected either by our prayers or our purses. "By one offering hath he perfected forever them that are sanctified." "By his own blood he entered in once to the holy place having obtained eternal redemption for us." "Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin." 178 BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION between the present earthly state where the souls are clothed with the natural body, and the future resurrection state where the souls are clothed with the spiritual body. Doubtless the soul is exercising many of the better affections, many of the purer sympathies of its former state and all the while feasting on the happy foretaste of those more perfect joys, which at the great day of resurrection will finally be assigned to it. When the ransomed souls shall take their bodies back again, from corruption to incorruption, from the mortal to immortality, then, the grave robbed of its spoils, shall be fully brought to pass the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory.' ' The parable of Dives and Lazarus can scarcely fail of leading us to the same conclusion. "We can readily infer from it a good general description of that which will take place after death. From its interpretation we are to conclude that the souls of both the good and the bad, the virtuous and the sinful, are carried immediately after death to abodes suited to their respective qualities and natures, and that their conceptions and powers still remain in a state of activity. The soul of Lazarus we are told was carried "into Abraham's bosom.' '_ This is a figurative expression for a 179 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? state of happiness. With Abraham the Jews associated the highest glory conceivable, so that when it is stated that the spirit of the poor man entered "into Abraham's bosom" we must accept the meaning as describing a lofty place in the celestial home. It was different with the soul of Dives. His spirit was condemned to a place of torment com- mensurate with the pleasures and the gluttonies he had indulged during the earthly existence. In the case of both it is plainly represented that they feel the difference of their conditions, retain the affections which they possessed when united to the flesh, and know what is passing amongst their former earthly connections. There can be no misconception whatever in regard to the time of the translation of the souls of Dives and Lazarus. It took place immediately after death. There was no annihilation, no time of waiting, no state of unconscious torpor or for- getfulness. At once the spirits of both went into a state of conscious activity where they fully real- ized what they had done while animating their bodies. The rich man speaks of his brethren as still living on earth and engaged in the very same sinful courses which had brought himself to his post-mortal state of misery and wretchedness. 180 BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION If we are to put any faith at all in this Scriptural revelation, we must be constrained to conclude that the soul after death does not pass into a state of either unconsciousness of subliminal passiveness, but is vitally keen to its surroundings, and anx- iously awaiting the future to join its composite, the body, on the day of the resurrection. If the soul remained as dead as the body in the interval between death and the resurrection, surely Christ would not represent it otherwise, as being in a state of activity and waiting. A passage taken from the writings of St. Paul is here appropriate and important as bearing tes- timony to the active existence of the soul after the mortal separation. The great apostle declares his willingness to be "absent from the body and pres- ent with the Lord. ' ' Here he is sighing for com- munion with his Redeemer, expressing a resigna- tion of spirit to the stroke of death as it would free him to come into the company of the Eternal. But the words "to be present with the Lord" could convey no meaning if the soul on its separa- tion from the body was to fall into a state of torpor or oblivion, a deadness to all feeling whether of sorrow or of joy. When, therefore, we find this chosen apostle expressing his firm conviction that in his own case, to be absent from the body would 181 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? be to enjoy the presence of his Lord and Saviour we have his authority for the belief that the souls of good men will enjoy that same presence when they become ' ' absent from the body. ' ' There are many more texts and allusions in the Sacred Book to bear out, and indeed conclusively make us certain that the soul, when it is separated from its earthly tenement of clay, does not go down into the chambers of f orgetfulness, to be quiescent till called forth again to join the glorified clay, but is in a condition of actual being and consciousness, knowing its own place until the spirit made perfect there, all the exceeding glory shall come to the sons of God. St. John in the Apocalypse also comes forward with a conclusive testimony when he speaks of the vision of "the souls of them that were slain" as crying to the Lord "with a loud voice." In fact there is an accumulation of Scriptural authority for confirming us in the opinion that the soul does not exist in a state of torpor and insensi- bility during the period intervening between death and the resurrection. Only one argument, which, however, when put to the test of logical reasoning falls to the ground, can be produced in substantia- tion of the claim that when the body dies the soul also vanishes into the passiveness of forgetfulness, 182 BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION and that is wherein the Scriptures speak of death as a continual ' ' sleep ' ' and the resurrection as an "awakening from this sleep." We read "many that sleep in the dust shall awake," and again reference is made to "the bodies of the saints which slept. ' * The season, the time of sleep, is an entity of rest, in which the exercise of all the faculties of the body and soul are for a time suspended. As the state of death is to the outward eye and the inner senses one of repose in which a more com- plete suspension of the living powers takes place, the analogy between death and sleep is obvious to every mind. Sleep is considered to be a temporary death, and death is long continued sleep. Hence among all peoples from the beginning the term sleep has been metaphorically used for death. But such a term is merely figurative, and symbolical of the suspension of the bodily functions and in this sense only are we to take it in the Scriptures. In a similar way the term ' ' awakening' ' so often used can be explained, save when applied to the resurrection. Then it is to be understood as the awakening from the repose of death to a state of new life and action. All Scripture tells us that at the day of resur- 183 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? rection the scattered remnants of the body will be brought together and clothed with new glories, the corruptible will become incorruptible, the mortal assume immortality. In the everlasting life every soul will be united to its kindred body both to exist forever as one. The bodies of all will arise to meet the souls that animated them on earth and join them in the new and fuller being of eternity. Independent of the direct light, afforded by the sacred writings, regarding the state of the soul between death and the resurrection, the natural and spontaneous anticipations of our minds con- firm the idea that there is conscious existence. We consciously realize that death does not constitute the obliteration of all being, but that it is a pass- ing beyond to the greater existence. Deep down in our being we feel that there will be no cessation, but rather a direct continuity, that death is but a bridge we have to cross to continue the endless march which life begins. Does not the strong desire of life which reigns within us all, afford something of an internal proof that we shall not pass into the torpor of merely inanimate clay? The idea of falling into so long a sleep as must prevail between the separation of the soul and body until re-united at the resur- 184 BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION rection is repugnant to our senses and we refuse to accept any such conclusion. Even if the belief in the soul's existence in a separate state with powers and perceptions more actively acute, was not attested by Scripture, the appeal of reason would confirm us in its accept- ance, and having accepted it we grow stronger and more hopeful, filled with delightful anticipations of what lies on the other side of the grave. It is a thought pregnant with joy and consolation and comfort to every faithful servant of the Master. It tends to quicken all those busy expectations with which the soul casts its views forward to the hereafter. It animates us with a glorious con- sciousness, strengthens our faith and stimulates our exertions with the prospect of immediate recompense following our departure from the earth. But more than all, it is calculated to soothe our regrets for those who are departed, to lessen our terror of encountering that awful hour when every tie of interest, love and affection here below must be severed. For of all the unavoidable sources of affliction and sorrow incident to our earthly condi- tion the most paramount is the parting with those to whom we have been united by the bonds of friendship and of love, whose interests are ours, 185 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? and whose very being seems to be a part of our own. The regret is assuaged that we are only going on before for a little time, and that soon they will meet us in the larger and fuller life on the other side of the tomb. Where can be found a more availing lenitive for the sorrows of separation than the considera- tion that the change will be better for ourselves, and that those who remain will be comforted by the thought that they will soon join us in the hereafter? Death is robbed of its terrors, every sting is extracted, every pain dissolved. The virtuous and the good will be entering into a purer, higher, holier realm, a paradise of enjoyment where they will be soothed by pleasing recollec- tions of time well spent, where they will be filled with brightest hopes and become alive to every feeling and affection that exalts and comforts. On the other hand, if we should incline to the belief that death is the bridge beyond which activity ceases and torpor reigns, how miserable and comfortless should we feel! What gloomy thoughts would arise in us at the prospect of sink- ing into a lethargy of being dead, in truth, to everything, oblivious of all surroundings. Truly gratifying is the assurance that dissolu- tion does not mean the end, but the beginning of a 186 BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION fuller and larger life, where the soul passes on to present enjoyment and to future hope. Surely there is reason sufficient to rejoice and no cause whatever for sorrow. We shall not be dead to the friends we leave behind, but alive to their love in a better, riper condition of being, and we shall feast on the expectation of meeting them soon and welcoming them to the more perfect state. If the belief in the future is availing to lessen the grief of those we leave, still more must it tend to animate their virtues and stimulate their hopes, to wean them from all excessive attachments to the world, and to diminish all undue reluctance to the inevitable severance. Of course the soul of man will ever experience somewhat of awe at the thought of the approach of death. Such is only natural, but terror will fade to the vanishing point in the light of the faith which penetrates the vast beyond. That light will disperse all alarms and its genial beams will show the way to the golden gates of hope which open to the home of immortality, whose beauties no earthly eye can see, whose everlasting songs no mortal ear can comprehend. Death is the gate of life — and through its portals all must pass to enter into the promised land. But the journey is only commenced when the flesh 187 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? is cast aside, and the full realization will not be reached until glorious and immortal the body arises from the dust on the last day to join the spirit and complete the human personality. This day is called the general judgment, (*) when all will be brought together to receive the deserts of their work here on earth. Is this day of general judgment inconsistent with the doctrine of consciousness of being be- tween death and the resurrection? By no means. A necessity for this judgment can be admitted without the slightest interference with the truth of this consciousness. It may be said that the ends of justice are con- served when individuals are treated in accordance with their merits and since this is done imme- diately after death, wherefore the necessity for further procedure? Justice as it respects private persons, consists in regulating their conduct by its dictates, as far *The word judgment has lost its root signification. The Greek is xrisis, of which our word "crisis" is a mere trans- literation, meaning the turning point. Its primary meaning is to separate, and determine, then in a judicial sense to be put on trial. The judgment that takes place at death is separation. "It is appointed unto all men once to die, but after this the judgment." There is a judgment, a "crisis" a turning point. When a man dies, separation is quick and eternal, but the secondary meaning is a judgment judicial, declarative — a last great day when public decision will be made and awards rendered. — Herrick Johnson. 188 BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION as their transactions with friends, neighbors and mankind in general are concerned. If they uni- formly preserve inviolate the rights of others, all demands of justice are fulfilled. But the justice of a governor belongs to the public who claim that not only should he impartially execute the laws, but that he should exercise his power in such a manner as is most conducive to general interests and the general welfare. The rewards to which deserving individuals are entitled ought not to be conferred, nor the punishments which trans- gressors have incurred, to be inflicted in silence and secrecy, but both should be openly dispensed for the honor of the governor's character and the advantage which will redound to the community from the salutary influence of example. As God is the Governor of the world it is not sufficient that He be just in accordance with his own divine wisdom, but he must show himself to be just in the eyes of all onlookers. He must let one see how another is rewarded or punished, in degrees commensurate to their varied virtues or imperfections. The particular judgment, as it is called, which takes place immediately after death is known to God and the individual. "We cannot follow others into another world, so we here are ignorant of 189 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? their fate. We see men of different characters pass on, bnt we cannot trace the flight of their souls into the unknown, nor hear the sentence pro- nounced on them from the tribunal, and if we attempt to surmise, our conjectures may be far indeed from the truth. Hence it follows as a resultant of both logic and reason that there is a necessity for a general judg- ment at which all the children of men must be present to exemplify God's justice and vindicate his wisdom, which will show that his government was impartial, will allay all doubts and prove to all created beings that he was right in all his ways and holy in all his works. It is expedient that at the winding up of the scheme, all its parts should be seen to be worthy of Him, by whom it was arranged and conducted. In this way those who have witnessed, with many dis- quieting thoughts, the inequalities and seeming irregularities of the present system, will have full evidence that there was never the slightest devia- tion from the principles of equity, and that the cause of perplexity was the delay of their full operation. They will see the good and the bad no longer mingled together and apparently treated alike, but divided into two classes, the one on the right hand and the other on the left of the Judge, 190 BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION distinguished as much at least by their respective sentences, as by the places which they occupy. Then will the secrets of all hearts be made plain. There can be no longer simulation, hypocrisy or deceit. The pharisee will not be able to shout to the multitude from the housetops, — "Behold how holy am I?" He will stand exposed in all the nakedness of his sinful character. The white sepulchre who went around in purple and fine linen at the expense of his poor and helpless vic- tims will shrink in affright when confronted with his enormities. The oppressor of the widow and the orphan, who built his gorgeous mansions with their blood and bone and cemented them with tears shall be also confronted with his iniquities. No more can he hide beneath the cloak of his ill-gotten wealth and laugh at the sufferings of those he has robbed and plundered. The sins of the sinner will be revealed in all their disgusting hideousness and the dread sentence shall go forth that will ever separate him from the ranks of the virtuous. What a day of days will be that great general judgment when a just God metes out to every one according to his works ! The Lord shall come, the earth shall quake, And mountains to their centre shake, The Lord shall come a dreadful form, In wreathes of cloud and robes of storm, 191 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? On cherub wings and wings of wind Appointed Judge of all mankind. All withering from the vaults of night The stars shall pale their feeble light, In wild despair shall sinners call Rocks hide us! Mountains on us fall! But saints ascending from the tomb Shall joyful sing — The Lord is come. Can this be He who wont, to stray A pilgrim on the world's highway Oppressed by power and mocked by pride The Nazarene, — the Crucified? Yes, the Judge shall be the Nazarene, the Cruci- fied who walked the earth in poverty and suffer- ing neglected, despised and persecuted by men, but who gave Himself up to the ignominious death of Calvary that men eternally might live. He is still being contemned and persecuted by sinners in the infringement of his commandments and in the transgression of his laws. The tyrant and oppressor, the usurer, the robber of inno- cence are insulting Him now and trampling upon his rules, scorning him, defying him by their lives of wickedness and shame, never thinking of that dread day when surrounded by the majesty of heaven He shall come to judge them and pass the irrevocable sentence of eternity. The seeming inequalities of earth will then be balanced to an unerring nicety. They who have looked upon wrong and seen innocence crouching before power, goodness bleeding and dying in the 192 BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION street, guilt pampering itself on the spoils of oppression, pompous pride and haughty arro- gance overriding the weak and helpless and filling the world with woe, while all the time he that sat on the throne of the mighty in heaven said not a word, nor put forth a finger to stop the wrong- doing, and, so far as appeared, cared nothing about it, will now find that he was but waiting for the final day of last account, to judge with eternal jus- tice the souls of men and render to them according to their works. Then all will know that He was ever on the side of right and, from the beginning, the utter, uncompromising foe of wrong. There it will be made manifest, as elsewhere it could never have been, that God is both a God of justice and goodness, that while " mercy and truth go before his face, justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne. ' ' Psalm 89 : 14. Our Children in Heaven And the mother gave, in tears and pain, The flowers she most did love; She knew she would find them all again In the fields of light above. not in cruelty and wrath, The reaper came that day; 'Twas an angel visited the green earth, And took the flowers away. — H. W. Longfellow. There Is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there; There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair. The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mourning for the dead; The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, Will not be comforted! Let us be patient! these severe afflictions Not from the ground arise; And oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise. We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; Amid these earthly damps What seem to us but sad funereal tapers, May be heaven's distant lamps. There is no death! what seems so is transition: This life of mortal breath Is but the suburb of the life Elysian Whose portals we call death. She is not dead — the child of our affection — But gone into that school Where she no longer needs our poor protection, And Christ himself doth rule. In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion. By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom we call dead. r— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. CHAPTER VII Our Children in Heaven "They are not dead but gone before," we pathetically say of the loved ones who have passed beyond the horizon of our vision, whose footsteps are hnshed on the corridors of time, and of whose voices nonght remains but cold words, once warm, on lips now stilled in the silence of death. We lovingly gaze after them into the vistas of the shadow land, but we cannot penetrate beyond the mystic veil that hangs between time and eternity. The dear ones have gone forward; they are on the other side of the curtain and only imagination can follow them into that great hereafter to which we ourselves are hastening. Faith whispers there will be a happy reunion, and hope inspires us with a calm confidence that again we shall meet and dwell forever in an eternal brotherhood where parting shall be no more, where the links of love shall be adamantinely welded never to be broken, where all shall pass down the seons of an endless eternity, happy and 199 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? contented in the indissoluble bonds of a holy and perfected state of being, chanting the praises of him who called us forth from nothingness to the fulness and glory of a participation in his own divine essence, making us one with himself in the dignity of his majesty and the eternity of his existence. These twin stars of faith and hope light the way to the confines of the unknown. They never set on this side of the hills of time, and so bright is their effulgence, that we can catch their gleams shimmering in the misty vastness of the great beyond. And in their pale glow coming from the other side we feel we can see and recognize those who have left us within the boundary limit of time to await our summons to cross the great divide. And of all those who have gone before to none do our hearts go out in greater love and longing than to the little children, whose infant voices have been hushed on earth ere their treble notes could ascend to the mighty symphony of the music of maturer years. The echoes of their childish prattle ring through the chambers of memory and refuse to be deadened amid the sounds and turmoils of this busy, every- day life. 200 OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN We hear their footsteps pattering adown the aisles of remembrance, their little handclasps are still warm and we feel their soft breath upon our withered cheeks fanning anew into life the slug- gish currents of our heart and brain. From their memory we refuse to be divorced. Everything recalls to us their life and presence, and the influence they wielded over us while the breath of incipient being animated their frail tenements of clay. We fondly recall their words, their looks, their gestures, every little peculiarity of ways and actions until the flood-gates of sorrow for their departure can be no longer stemmed and we burst forth in unavailing anguish for their loss. We clasp to our breasts the inanimate playthings they have used as if they could impart to us some- what of the light of love ruthlessly extinguished before the flame could glow with the full beauty and glory of a rounded life. Every object asso- ciated with them becomes sacred to the touch, a shred of garment, a lock of hair, anything that con- jures up their beloved and lost presence, but noth- ing gives our bleeding hearts surcease from the mourning of their absence, and the only comfort offered us lies in the thought that again we shall clasp them to our breast, hear again their joyous 201 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? prattle and, again bask in the sunshine of their infant smiles. Did we believe that their opening light had gone out forever in the darkness of oblivion, that the folded petals of their rosebuds would never reopen to the caresses of love, the thought would indeed be terrible and would plunge our souls into unut- terable anguish. Death truly would be unnatural were it to wipe out forever every trace of the little dimpled dar- lings whose rosy tendrils have twined around our hearts with such infinite love. But reason will not allow us to entertain such a gloomy and revolting theory. Such would not be in keeping with the designs, nor with the mercy and love of the good Father to whom we are all "as little children," looking to him for subsistence here and for reward in the heavenly hereafter. Our consolation is that death is not a final sever- ance, but only a parting for awhile, till the meet- ing takes place upon the farther shore. But why the parting so early, or as Shake- speare says, "Why should men perish in advance as if the sun should set ere noon?" It is reckoned that fully one-half of the race die before the age of ten years. Why should life end so soon for so great a number? Why are they 202 OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN sent into the world at all when their sojourn therein is to be of such short duration! Why are the rose-buds not allowed to come to full flower and exhale their fragrance amid their earthly surroundings ? These truly are hard questions to answer, and to give any kind of a solution we must fall back on the inscrutability of the ways of Providence. To us they are mysterious, and the mystery is not for mortal ken. We do not understand the law of being, just as we do not understand the law of death. Much is hidden from our finite knowledge which will not be revealed until our eyes open to the grand secret of God's eternal wisdom. Why the plant is cut down before it has time to bourgeon and blossom into the fruitage of matur- ity the naturalist is at a loss to know. He cannot understand it. It is beyond his researches into the intricacies of natural being. The philosopher as well as the theologian stands baffled in the face of death. They are both as powerless as the most ignorant to interpret its mystery, and only faith can enable them to come to any kind of conclusion. Without it all their hypotheses and theories are so much conjecture. The future estate of children who pass beyond the vale of time ere reaching the noonday maturity 203 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? of years, has engrossed the attention of the most earnest investigators in the realm of metaphysics and applied theology. It has become a subject of deep anxiety to many, and of intense interest to all. Those bereft are ever craving light to show them whether the promising buds nipped by life's early frost will appear in full-bloom in a more congenial clime, or wither into the nothingness of non-existence. The only satisfactory information which can throw light upon the question or solve the myste- rious problem is obtained from the Bible, yet in face of this fact many erroneous views have been held and are still put forward, even by those sub- scribing to an explicit belief in the teachings of the sacred Scriptures. Some have asserted that infants at death cease to exist, in other words are annihilated out of being altogether. This view is as unreasonable as it is unscrip- tural, being at variance with the dictates of faith and the conceptions of a true religion. Every argument, drawn from nature, expe- rience, reason and revelation for the immortality of the soul utterly and absolutely fails and has neither force nor logic if infants cease to exist after the death of the material body. 204 OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN If Adam had breathed into his inanimate frame "the breath of life," whereby he became a "living soul," then every being sprung from his loins shares his nature and partakes of the immortality conferred upon him as the progenitor of the race. The Bible takes for granted that infants are invested with endless existence, that death is but a separation of parent and child for a short interval ; that the one will join the other and both dwell for- ever in each other's companionship; the child going back, after a short space, to the bosom of the Father as it came into the arms of the earthly parents. The little ones die in the Lord, gain rest without labor, victory without conquest and are saved without probation. The Bible representing little children as especial objects of divine interest, assures us they are immortal beings, and as such are spirits and a part of God's life, and, therefore, can never die. Jesus himself made children the especial objects of his care and the proteges of his love. He was ever solicitous for them and gathered them around him on all possible occasions. "Suffer little chil- dren to come unto Me," said he, "for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," by which it is unmis- takably proven that the abode of the blessed is for 205 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? those who conform to the Father's will and purify themselves free from stain as the little ones who know not sin. Throughout all its aspects Christianity takes especial interest in the children, and its Gospel tells us quite plainly that they pass into ineffable glory, at the same time imparting the consolations to sorrowing hearts, of the bright and beautiful hope of restoration in a heavenly re-union. In times past the gloomy theory was held by many that all who die unbaptized are eternally lost, a doctrine infinitely more execrable than that which believed in utter extinction for those who had not come through years to the use of reason, or in other words, the infants whom death claimed before reaching the knowledge of maturity. Infant baptism was regarded by many, and through ignorance is still regarded by some, as communicating regeneration to the soul, and con- sequently has led to a wide belief that it is neces- sary to salvation. Fortunately, however, Christians of all denom- inations are breaking away from such an extrava- gant and foolish error of belief. As the mists, which for ages have gathered around the ceremony of infant baptism, are being dispersed by the clear light of Gospel knowledge. 206 OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN and the Bible is being better studied and inter- preted, a truer view as to the salvation of infants is being taken by thinkers and theologians of every religious school. Now, happily, the great majority of Christians believe that baptism does not impart a new heart and is no longer essential as a passport to eternal salvation. The Bible teaches that a man, like Simon Magus, who was baptized, yet declared to be, ' ' in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity, " requires something more than immersion or the sprinkling of water to gain a place among the elect. Many baptized persons are infidels, nay, even worse — profligates, renegades to all religion and contemners of every belief. Baptism does not make an individual a Chris- tian any more than a mere formula of words makes an alien a subject of another power, loyal to its government and institutions. The penitent thief was not baptized, yet the Saviour said to him, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," meaning thereby that his salva- tion was assured. The sins of Paul were forgiven him and he came into God's friendship and grace before he had been baptized. 207 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Though parents may believe their children to be dedicated to God in baptism, no sane person should have ever believed that the neglect of such a ceremony would be visited on unconscious and irresponsible infants. It is now generally accepted by most evangelical churches that all infants without exception or limitation as to character of parents are saved. And it is safe to say that whatever different expressions of dogma and doctrine may be in some of the churches, that not alone Protestantism, but the most enlightened Roman Catholicism has come to a united belief that baptism is not essential to salvation, nor does it insure regeneration and, therefore, all infants are saved. As an heir to the fallen nature of humanity sin is in the child as fire is in the flint. But water will not wash away the defection. It takes something more, — something, the efficacy of which prevails with God to appease wrath and offended majesty on account of the transgressions against his laws by sin. This something is the atoning blood of Jesus, the Sacrifice of Calvary which avails unto salvation for every child before the years of responsibility. Christ met the full penalty of the law as incurred by man's transgression, and wrought a righteous- 208 OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN ness which stands over against Adam's sin so that where sin once abounded, grace now more abounds. This grace is assured to children without effort on their part, and without acceptance of Christ, inasmuch as they are incapable of faith or any conscious act. Children form the largest part of that multitude "whom no man can number.' ' God is forever stocking his heavenly gardens with these buds of promise taken from the nurseries of earth. The thought that the little ones who have passed on are in the loving Father's care is the sweetest comfort to the hearts of bereaved parents. How many fathers and mothers, grimed and blackened with the world's sin are led back to contemplation and repentance by the silken cords of childish love and are brought into unity again by faith in the heavenly hereafter where all shall dwell together in the joys of a happy eternity. The small voices call to hardened consciences and the most abandoned hearken to their sounds. Sorrow for their loss is turned into joy in the hope- ful expectation of the heavenly meeting. David comforted himself in the thought that while he could not bring back his child, he could go to him. It is not when your children are with you that they are most to you, not when they are playing 209 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? around your feet and climbing your knees for your kisses and caresses, but it is when tliey are gone, and flood-gates of memory. burst over you, when you look on the daisies springing above the grassy mounds where their little forms have been laid, when you come home at night and find the vacant places silent and deserted, when all the days of summer and winter are full of touches and suggestions of them, when you cannot look up to God or look down to yourself without thinking of them ; in short, when it is only by the power of imagination you can have them with you again — ah, 'tis then you think most of them. The invisible children become the most real chil- dren, the sweetest, the truest, the dearest ; the chil- dren that touch our hearts as no hands of flesh can do. This truth that the children whom God has taken away are our permanent possessions is thus happily phrased by Tennyson : . . . God gives us love; Something to love he lends us; But when love is grown To ripeness, that on which it throve Falls off and love is left alone. A child's death always brings new blessings to the home — it connects as it were with heaven. Many examples could be given of the changes 210 OUR CHILDREN IN HEAVEN brought about in worldly-minded men and women through the passing away of one of their children, how it brings them to a realization of their depend- ence on a higher Power. To Lowell the death of his child was like a new marriage : ... I felt instantly Deep in my soul another bond to thee Thrill with that life we saw depart from here — 0, mother your angel child! twice dear — Death knits as well as parts. Tennyson was a man not given to sentiment ; his was a serious strong nature, but at times it could be moved when the passions would play over his soul like the winds o'er the strings of an .ZEolian harp. Here is one of the most beautiful senti- ments that ever fell from his lips. The lines sound like a dirge, every word is like a requiem : As thro' the land at eve we went, And plucked the ripened ears, We fell out, my wife and I, O, we fell out, — I know not why, And kissed again with tears. For when we came where lies the child We lost in other years, There above the little grave, We kissed again with tears. When Christian faith rules our life the child shall surely not have come in vain, though brief may be the stay. And with Lowell again we can see — 211 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? 'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up Whose golden rounds are our calamities, Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God, The spirit climbs and hath its eyes unsealed. Through the clouded glass Our old bitter tears we learn to look Undazzled on the kindness of God's face; Earth is too dark and Heaven shines through. Our Heavenly Home Surely yon heaven, where angels see God's face, Is not so distant as we deem From this low earth! Tis but a little space, The narrow crossing of a slender stream; 'Tis but a mist which winds might blow aside, Yes, these are all that us of earth divide From the bright dwellings of the glorified; The land of which I dream. — Horatius Bonar. There is a land where beauty will not fade, Nor sorrow dim the eye; Where true hearts will not shrink nor be dismayed And love will never die. Tell me — I fain would go, For I am burdened with a heavy woe; The beautiful have left me all alone; The true, the tender from my path are gone; And I am weak and fainting with despair; Where is it? Tell me, where! Friend, thou must trust in Him who trod before The desolate paths of life; Must bear in meekness, as He meekly bore, Sorrow and toil and strife. Think how the Son of God These thorny paths hath trod; Think how he longed to go, Yet tarried out for thee the appointed woe; Think of His loneliness in places dim, When no man comforted nor cared for Him; Think how He prayed, unaided and alone, In that dread agony, "Thy will be done!" Friend, do not thou despair, Christ, in His heaven of heavens, will hear thy prayer.. — From the German of Uhland. CHAPTER VIII Our Heavenly Home A futuee state has been man's chief concern since the gray morning of primeval time when he was first ushered into the world as its lord and master, the crowning work of an Almighty Hand. He looked around and with wondering gaze observed the face of nature, earth and sky and sea, the sun, the moon and the stars, tree and plant and flower, the rest of animal creation, and he marveled at his own being. Whence was he and whither was he drifting? The inner voice of conscience, the divine voice, whispered to him that there was a power respon- sible for his presence and that there was, "A rock higher than he, ' ' and that the power and the rock were God, the Omnipotent, the Almighty who had drawn him out of nothing and placed him here as overseer of the rest of his wonderful creation. The first man walked with God, but after a time, becoming conscious of his power and arro- gant of his sway, be became vain, and in his vanity sought to cast off the yoke of a master. He was 217 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? encouraged in his pride and arrogance by the woman and she tempted him to transgress the command of his Superior, to throw off his alle- giance and commit the sin of disobedience. It was this sin that brought death and woe into the world. Death! what was it? It was a phenomenon these early ancestors of the race could not under- stand, and to us, their descendants, the mystery is as deep as ever, the riddle is still unsolved. They, like us, saw their fellows passing away, saw the cessation of life in the living, breathing bodies, and to this cessation they gave the name of Death, which means a passing away beyond the mortal ken of earth. All animate nature died as well as man, the beasts of the field, the trees of the forest, the flowers of the field, and new forms took their places in an ever-recurring succession. It was simply change, change from one life to that of another. But what was the other life of man? That was, and is, the eternal question to which the answer is as yet incomplete. It was felt, realized, borne home from the beginning that death, the decay of the body, was not the end of man, that there was another part, an immortal part, the soul, which should live for- 218 OUR HEAVENLY HOME ever, but in what state — that was the mystery which engrossed them, and which still engrosses the minds of thinkers and philosophers to the present day. In those early ages of the world men were close to nature. The swarthy, black-bearded fathers of the race in Eastern lands daily watched the ever- changing phenomena of night and day, the recur- rence of the seasons, the birth, growth and decay of life. At night they came out on the hills and in wondering admiration gazed upon the starry firmament, with its myriads of glittering bodies. Then they began to take notice of the revolutions of the sun and the moon and the planets until they evolved an astronomy of their own, but though the effect was apparent to their senses, the cause was wholly unknown. They knew there was a motive power beyond, but they could not remove the veil and take a glance within. Death the Gate of Life The veil is still there and we may not penetrate it with mortal eyes. Only the vision of faith can look on the other side. What is on that other side must be largely con- jecture until the gates of death open for us, and 219 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? we are ushered into the full revelation of all mystery. Death is the gate of life, and once we cross its portals we know that what is now dark shall be made clear ; what is now the unknowable shall be the known. That death is not the end of all we are convinced even without revelation. There is something on the other side of the boundary line. There is a future existence, but whether of happiness or mis- ery, depends upon our actions in this mortal life. The future state of happiness we call by the name of heaven. That heaven is not apocryphal, but a real state of bliss. It is not a matter of simple belief or faith, but of revelation, though such revelation is not as clear as we would wish, the future abode of bliss being but partly made known through the sacred writings. Glimpses of the Coming World True, in the Bible, especially the New Testa- ment, we have many allusions, yet these lift only a corner of the curtain and give us but a glimpse of the hereafter. Even the apostle John, who more than any other authority, is regarded not merely as the most authentic, but the clearest, has this to 220 OUR HEAVENLY HOME say: "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." However, since the days of the apostles, not only physical, but metaphysical science has been advancing and man has progressed so far that we are beginning to see a faint ray of the light that lies beyond. As yet we can only gaze as ' ' through a glass darkly," bnt the vision is becoming plainer, especially when onr spiritual sight is quickened by a firm faith. Of course, for any kind of definiteness we have to depend upon the inspired writers of the New Testament. In spirit these men walked with God, and they have conveyed to us some idea of the grandeur, the glory, the magnificence and the hap- piness of heaven. While their descriptions are figurative, and not to be literally interpreted, yet they serve the pur- pose of giving us some knowledge, however inade- quate, of our heavenly home, its occupations and delights. But all that heaven means is beyond our finite limits to comprehend here and now. For example it is said, — "God will be the temple in the midst of it. ' ' How can our feeble imaginations conceive such a temple, built of the God-head, its walls his attributes, its roof his majesty, its gates his eter- nity, and his redeemed people dwelling therein and 221 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? offering their devotion and adoration at its altars? John, describing his ecstatic vision, spoke sym- bolically of the glories of the hereafter — its foundations of amethyst, its streets of gold and its gates of pearl, but in the Apocalypse when he soared to the full height of his theme, he dis- carded all the trappings of the material world, abandoned all comparisons with earthly grandeur and of nature's magnificence, and speaking from a purely spiritual illumination, he tells us that, i 'The city had no need of the sun to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it and the Lamb is the light thereof." The Concealment of Heaven But what idea can we have of an immeasurable vault converted into one brilliant manifestation of divinity, the splendid corruscations of righteous- ness, of truth, of justice and loving kindness weaving themselves together to form the arch, and the burning brightness of him who cannot "look on iniquity," shining as the lightning, not to scathe, but to illumine and glorify the surround- ings with his presence. What idea can we, who have seen only the scin- tillating orbs of a material firmament, conjure up of the great Luminary of Heaven whose light 222 OUR HEAVENLY HOME penetrates beyond suns and systems where there is no beginning nor shall ever be an end ! God in His own inscrutable wisdom may have good reason for giving us but a partial glimpse of heaven's beauties and delights. The obscuration of its glories while we are in the mortal life may be an arrangement of the divine designs to make us worthy of such a blessed home and eager to work and serve him to attain it A full revelation of heaven would wholly unfit us for the present world; the contrast would be too great for mortal mind to bear. A story is recorded of a crew returning to their native coun- try, France, after many years' absence in the Dutch East Indies. As the men approached the shores of their native land, so eager were they to catch a glimpse of its beloved landscape, that some of them mounted the rigging, some clung to the spars, while others adjusted their glasses to get a first view. Suddenly one of their number, eagerly on the lookout, exclaimed, " Yonder it is!" and when all eyes were cast in the direction indicated, and they began to discover the tops of the hills and then the towers and houses, reminding them of beloved scenes in which they had been brought up, they could scarcely contain themselves for joy. They dressed themselves in their best apparel and 223 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? seized the presents they had brought for their friends. Many of these friends had assembled on the quay to greet the returning ones, and so eager were the wanderers to embrace their kindred that they leaped from the ship to the shore, so that the vessel had to be brought to her moorings by other hands. If we could gaze on the magnificent scenery of the heavenly land, if we could look upon the eter- nal city with its pearly gates and golden streets, and could actually behold our glorified friends and relatives, neighbors and companions, ready to receive us into their holy and happy fellowship, how eager we should be to embrace them, and what an overwhelming effect would such a glorious reunion have upon us! We should be wrapped in an ecstasy of delight and our souls would thrill with a heavenly joy. No earthly concerns could have the power of engaging our attention for a transitory moment ; every consideration would be sunk to the all-absorbing interest of again meet- ing the loved ones in the eternal home. l & Why Full Vision Denied Could we gain such a vision of the blessed coun- try, but were denied the privilege of entering and sent back to earth, how we should languish in our 224 OUR HEAVENLY HOME tabernacle of dust and long for the day when we conld go forth from its confines, free for the glori- ous translation that would make us heirs forever of the immortal kingdom. Until that hour, we should wander the earth as melancholy exiles, pining for the home above. Therefore, it is well that we do not get a full revelation of heaven and its joys, for we should not be content to abide our time, and earth would become so dreary that we should lose all interest in its affairs and so neglect to do our part as we should while occupying the tenements of clay. Overpowering Scenes "When Moses said, "0, Lord, I beseech Thee, show me thy glory,' ' God heard his petition as far as it was proper, but reminded him beforehand, ' 'Thou canst not see my face and live." There- fore, when he was passing, the Lord hid his face in clouds of storm, the thunders burst forth and the lightnings flashed and his servant, Moses, was placed in a cleft of the rock lest he might be over- powered and destroyed. When John, in his exile in the iEgean Sea, saw Jesus, though he had been familiar with him, and had leaned upon his bosom, "he fell at the Master's feet as dead." 225 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Again, the disciples on the Monnt of the Trans- figuration "fell asleep," and this sleep was not the result of natural infirmity, but came from the reverential awe with which their Lord and Master inspired them. Their poor human nature was overpowered with the glory of the scene and had to succumb. The concealment of the bliss and splendors of heaven more deeply impresses us with a sense of its surpassing glory. That which is the object of our hope and the realization of our faith is beyond the power of the finite understanding and baffles imagination itself. It is unknown, not because it is unreal, bat because it transcends. Heaven Indescribable The indescribableness of the home of the blessed, the fact that it is too dazzling for us at present to behold, is shown by the statement of St. John that "it doth not yet appear what we shall be, ,, and by that of St. Paul, who, after his rap- ture into the third heaven, said he was ' ' caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter" (II. Cor. 12 : 4). "The loftiness of the towering mountain causes its head to be hidden in the clouds." There is a grand and animating power in the 226 OUR HEAVENLY HOME reflection that thought itself cannot measure our everlasting portion, and faith and hope may be both strengthened by this very impossibility. Yet there are certain general ideas that under- lie and permeate the figurative language of the Scriptures and without doing injustice to this language, we can obtain certain definite concep- tions of what the heavenly home may be like. Though we can catch but a glimpse, enough is still revealed to cheer us in its contemplation, to exalt our highest hopes and to stimulate us to ever- increasing diligence to appropriate it. Earth with its petty pomps and pageantries, is but evanescent and hollow at the best and can only serve as a place of exile, where by a little suffer- ing and a little service we can prepare for the higher life which will burst with all its splendors upon us when free from the body of death we shall enter the pearly portals of life everlasting. Heaven is the prize My soul shall strive to gain — One glimpse of Paradise Repays a life of pain. Heaven a Place If heaven is a real place it must have location. There can be no home without a site, no citadel without a foundation. Not to speak of biblical revelation, reason and 227 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? common sense could not entertain the conception of an abode where so many dwell as having no material position in the realms of reality. If such a view could be taken so contrary to the conceptions of the physical senses, heaven would be but a figment of the imagination and all our beautiful dreams concerning it would pass away like a reflection of sunlight on a mirror with no hope whatever of their realization. The glory and magnificence we love to picture would be nought but a magic loveliness, a fairy nothingness like the shining strands of fancy which we weave around some of our excited imagination. John's Vision True, heaven may not be and undoubtedly is not literally a gilded city of amethystine buildings and golden streets and pearly gates as given to us in the ecstatic vision of the good St. John. The mind of the favored apostle was brought up to such a degree of spiritual fervor that ordinary language failed him to convey fitting ideas of the glories he beheld with the eyes of faith, and so he uses figurative terms, taking for comparison the grandest and costliest treasures of earth, in order, in some measure, to give us a conception of the riches and splendors of the hereafter. 228 OUR HEAVENLY HOME There are some, who, forgetting, or rather ignor- ing, the inspired writings, look npon the heaven of John as merely the excited conjuration of a man whose zeal had gotten the better of his judg- ment, that he was simply in a trance brought about by his own enthusiasm. These are the disputers of a material heaven, and their claim is that it is not a place, but a state of soul without reference to locality. Their belief is that man at death is but lifted out of his earthly and perishable abode and translated into a spirit- ual condition where his soul is etherialized, filling all space and happy in its universal being. But this view is neither more nor less than pantheism, which takes from God the attribute of individuality and represents him as a constitu- tion of the whole material universe and the soul of man a part of this supreme whole. Yet if heaven were but a state of being, that state would imply existence somewhere. The ex- pressions, "in heaven," "to heaven," "from heaven," "out of heaven," etc., used from man's first conception of a hereafter, indicate that the belief that heaven is a place, has always been universal. A human being consists of soul and body, these two united make the man, and they must therefore be united again in the future world 229 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? if man is to retain his nature, and the glorified must have a local platform for his future habi- tation. But we have the testimony of One greater than any apostle, the testimony of Jesus himself as to the actual reality of heaven as the abode of the righteous after death. "I go to prepare a place for you," said the Saviour to his disciples, "and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." These words should surely place the answer to the question as to a material heaven beyond doubt or cavil. Where is Heaven ? Where the location of the home of the blessed is, we know not and all speculations concerning it are more ingenious than satisfactory. Eevelation does not tell its location and human knowledge is even powerless to conjecture. Although the physical sciences have advanced with mighty strides, and numberless secrets have been wrested from Nature's bosom, though the riddle of the stars has been read and the revolutions of worlds foretold, not a single ray of light has yet been shed upon the great mystery of the hereafter. Our only information depends solely on the 230 OUR HEAVENLY HOME inspired words of sacred Scripture and these give us no inkling at all of the location of heaven, or where it may be within the limits of space. The general idea is that it must be somewhere above, but this conception mostly arises from the literal interpretation of the word. Heaven comes from the verb to heave, something heaved up, that is, elevated, as the top of a hill or the roof of a temple, and in all languages it has a similar sig- nificance. Though the Scriptures shed no light on the position of the heavenly hereafter, there can be no mistaken idea as to their meaning in regard to its reality as an actual place. In referring to it the Bible uses four words of explicit meaning, easily understood by all. It speaks of heaven as a kingdom, a country, a city and a home. Heaven a Kingdom We are told by Christ that heaven is a king- dom, a glorious realm where happy millions live in obedience to him who sits upon the throne. It has mighty armies, but no wars. Among the multi- tudes there is no tumult, and though the voices are as loud as the roar of the sea breaking upon a rocky shore, the sound is a melodious harmony with no note of discord to jar its mighty music. 231 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? The enthroned King sends forth his messengers, making them ministers of good wherever they go. The subjects are all loyal, for it is a kingdom of righteousness, of peace, of love, where stormy con- flicts never come, where the conntless millions live in closest union and never think or do one another wrong or injustice, where the greatest deem them- selves the least in self-esteem, and the least are elevated to greatness by the power of love, where truth and knowledge prevail and the darkness of ignorance and error never enters to cast a shadow, where light shines eternal and a full happiness basks in its genial glow, where boundless riches abide and endless activity is a pleasure, a kingdom where all allegiance to its ruler is the highest law, and where his service confers infinite delight. Heaven a Country The second biblical simile of heaven is that of a Country, with landscapes as various as the hills and valleys of earth, a land of beautiful and fertile pastures, where the loving Shepherd leads his flock to the living fountains of sparkling waters, where the trees and plants bring forth luscious fruits for the nourishment of all, where the flowers and where parting is unknown, the great family, cover the fields in rainbow colors and exhale a per- 232 OUR HEAVENLY HOME fume that entrances the soul, where the seas and lakes are as clear as the polished crystal, where the rivers wind like silver threads beneath the shaded banks, where countless millions walk in the cool glow under iridescent stars — a country with all the reality that belongs to the various features of earth, with all the diversity of changing scene and charm of physical loveliness, with a climate congenial to its inhabitants, where toil is rest, and rest is joy, and where the soul is ever progressing to higher and yet higher conditions of happiness and bliss. This heavenly country is not an abstract crea- tion of feeling or of faith, but a country as real and definite as anything we touch with our hands or see with our eyes. It is a land of pleasures and delights free from the grime of guilt and the shade of sorrow and the slime of sin. No pestilence comes there to blight and wither with pestiferous breath, no lightnings smite, nor storms destroy, nor panics impoverish, nor tyrants trample on others ' right; where there is no fear to blight the heart or palsy the limbs, but where all are strong and valiant and powerful in the love and service of the Master, and where there is per- petual development to larger and broader prin- ciples of being. 233 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Heaven a City The third conception which the Bible gives of heaven is that of a City, with golden streets and gates of pearl and walls of precious stones. But this description, as we have considered, is but metaphysical, the spiritual ecstasy of one who was transfused with joy, whose soul melted in wonder and admiration at the celestial vision. Yet as a city we may consider the architecture of the shining towers and temples built by divine hands, a city whose streets are illumined with the sun- broods the white spirit of peace, where no violence or disturbance ever mars the serenity, where no voice of anger is raised, no tone of discord is heard, where the music of the harps floats out on the perfumed, ambient air, swept by fingers that will never feel the touch of pain, the chords vibra- ting an angelic music that ravishes the soul, a city whose grandeur shall not decay because built on the adamantine rocks of eternity, whose popula- tion will not diminish, a city of many mansions where there is room enough for all. Heaven a Home The remaining reference to heaven makes it a Home where the weary and heavy laden can rest from their toils, where sorrowing will cease and 234 OUR HEAVENLY HOME sighing and weeping shall be heard no more, where sympathy and fraternity are in every look, and sonl answers sonl in the glance of love, where one dwells with another in the satisfying bond of immortal union, where sorrow shall never obtrude, and where parting is unknown, the great family, Grod's family, living from age to age and flourish- ing in immortal youth. Of all the figures of heaven, perhaps it is this one representing it as a home which appeals to us most. The word dwells in our affections and con- veys to us a meaning which no other term can give. Home is the best beloved of all places, for it is the center of all love, the focus of every yearn- ing that draws the heart and soul to its blessed sanctuary. No other spot has such a hold upon us. It is the magnet that draws us to itself, and from which we refuse to be torn away. The doors of the heavenly home are ever open, and there is a welcome for all. Friend will meet friend, neighbor will be joined to neighbor in the heavenly reunion, never again to part but to mingle and love eternally in a blessed com- panionship. The doors of this heavenly home were flung open by the sacrifice of the God-man, Jesus, on the Cross of Calvary, and all who will may enter, 385 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? after passing the boundary line of mortal death, if only they have been purified by the atoning blood of Christ, and have lived as far as possible the Christly life. All sin and stain of the flesh and spirit must be washed away, for nothing nnclean can enter heaven, but if we walk in the light — as he is in the light — the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin, and by him our entrance into paradise is assured. When you come to the gates you must tender your credentials that you have been a true servant of the Master, and have done his will on earth to the best of your ability. No Sect in Heaven You will not be asked what denominational re- ligion you espoused, at what altar you knelt in life, whether you are an Episcopalian or a Catho- lic, a Baptist or a Presbyterian or a Methodist, whether you believed in the "Thirty-nine Arti- cles" or rejected the doctrine of infant baptism. All such differences of belief are but mere earthly trifles which will not be taken cognizance of in the issue of your admittance into the home of glory. All that will be required will be a clean balance sheet. That will be the only letter of marque required to admit your craft into the eternal port. 236 OUR HEAVENLY HOME Heaven is real, heaven is earnest, and it is not a chimera of the imagination. Let us then keep the eye of faith and the heart of hope on the eternal city and so conduct our lives that each one of us may be worthy to enter its gates after we shall have shed the mask of mortality and be hailed with the welcome, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord." Heaven's Open Door The doors of the heavenly home are never locked ; the bolts are never fastened on those who seek admission with the requisite depositions of pure spirits and contrite hearts for the sins com- mitted in the earthly life. The souls that long for the love and satiety of God's presence are never made to stand outside or to be turned away with refusal, but words of welcome, comfort and cheer await all who approach with the confidence that arises from work well performed, service well done for the cause of the Master. With the eyes of hope you have been gazing on the celestial resting place through the years of earthly existence, but still you may have a fear that you have not so borne your part in the con- flict as to merit the reward of admittance. You must not be cast down at this retrospection; you 237 After death— what? must take heart of grace and rely wholly on divine promise and divine love. The great Father- heart of God wishes yon to come there, and he places at your disposal the means to gain the end. It will not be his fault if you do not obtain it, but your own. No matter how far you have wandered on the wrong path and strayed in the blind alley-ways of sin, there is always an opening through which you can pass into the right road and so reach the cov- eted destination of your hopes, the home for which the heart has been sighing, from the first dawn of reason, until reason ceases to illuminate your earthly life. Heaven is the lodestone, the magnet that ever attracts the soul of man, and though other forces of sin and evil try hard to draw it away, it never- theless always turns in the one direction, toward the Creator who gave it being. The house where God dwells is the goal of your pilgrimage. You want to go there, for there you hope to meet the friends who have gone before and welcome those who shall come after. You want to be there when the sounds of mighty joy arise to welcome the wanderer home and the choruses of praise go up for the erring who have been gathered into the bosom of the Father. 238 OUR HEAVENLY HOME The Will and the Way You can be there if you will, to join your voice with the angelic bands in the commingled music of the spheres, the melody of which reverberates through the unending aisles of eternity. You, my aged brother, upon whose head the silvery frost of time has fallen thickly, on whose brow the passing years have furrowed deep the lines of worldly cares, whose step is tottering feebly down the incline of earthly life, and whose feet are blistered with the tedious journey. Do you not long for the heavenly rest, when you can lay your burden down at the feet of your God, when your bowed and broken frame will again stand erect in immortal manhood, when the wrinkles shall be pressed from your corrugated brow and your withered face shall be clothed again with the freshness of eternal youth? Oh, yes, you long for the hour of deliverance when the soul unfettered shall wing her flight to the door of the eternal home. That door is open and there you will find a strong hand to guide your steps within and set your feet on the shining floor, the talismanic touch of which shall waken them to everlasting elasticity in the eternal life. ! ye weary and heavy laden toilers in the work- shops of the world, where blood and bone and 239 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? brain are exhausted in the ceaseless competition, yon pitifnl creatures in the cares and anxieties of trade which sap your strength and deaden your energies, you in the haps and hazards of business which ruthlessly grind you beneath their merci- less wheels, you in the factory and sweatshops, at the loom and in the mill, in the drudgery of the household and amid the clank and clangor, stress and strain of earth's crushing rush and bustle, do you not long for the hour of mortal dissolution when you shall be emancipated and free to enter your Father's house where there will be no cares, nor sorrows, nor sighing and weeping, where you will engage in occupations that bring no weari- ness, work that will be a pleasure and not a pain, where you can walk the streets and see no anxious faces, mingle in society where none complains and join the happy bands on whose shining faces is reflected the smile of God's approval and the glory of his love. Do you not want to be there — a mem- ber of that household where no strife can enter nor cares annoy? The Struggle for a Home You struggle hard to buy or build an earthly house, which will be your home for a time. By every means in your power you strive to improve 240 OUR HEAVENLY HOME your condition, yet withal yon are never satisfied. Where yon expect peace yon find unrest, where you had hoped to find happiness you discover only misery. Do what you will, life is but a round of pain and sorrow, a nightmare of horror from which you unceasingly pray to awaken. The house you build, be its grandeur what it may, fails to satisfy the heart and the yearnings of the soul which become more intense as time passes within its walls. Do you not then wish for the heavenly house built by God, where everything is pleasant and agreeable, exactly what you want, and where no change could make it better or more to your liking? You can have this house, if you will. The hand that drew the universe out of nothing has fashioned it for you, for your eternal use and hap- piness, and made it so perfect that the experience of ages shall never find defect in its structure or stain upon its beauty. You can have it if you will. Revelation Satisfies The revelation of immortality that sets heaven before us as a country, a city, a kingdom and a home, satisfies every want. There are possessions in that country for everyone, mansions in that city for the poor and the friendless, riches in that 241 AFTER DEATH—WHAT? kingdom to supply every want, and a seat in that home to give rest to all the weary and heavy laden. When you think of heaven as a. home does it not fill your soul with joy, the thought that some- body is waiting for you there, waiting to welcome you when you first come, to greet you with the handclasp of eternal brotherhood and introduce you to others who wish to know you too and tell them that you have come to stay with them for- ever. Oh, does it not make you eager to reach that happy home of the blessed where the sun ever shines and all is radiated by the warmth of God's presence and his all overshadowing love? How you must wish to join the circle of friends already there, the families of your own kindred, the members of your own fireside where you can redeem the promise made them, when with the last farewell sigh of earth they said to you, "Meet me there, I shall wait for your coming. ' ' What is Heaven and How to Reach It The saints of God, their wanderings done, No more their weary course they run; No more they faint, no more they fall; No foes oppress, no fears appall. O, happy saints forever blest In that dear home, how sweet you rest ! — William D. Maclagen. No shadows yonder! All light and song; Each day I wonder, And say, How long Shall time me sunder From that dear throng? No weeping yonder! All fled away; While here I wander Each weary day, And sigh as I ponder My long, long stay. No partings yonder! Time and space never Again shall sunder; Hearts cannot sever; Dearer and fonder Hands clasp forever. None wanting yonder, Bought by the Lamb! All gathered under The evergreen palm; Loud as night's thunder Ascends the glad psalm. ■ — Her alius Bonar. CHAPTER IX What is Heaven and How to Reach It The heaven idea is implanted in the breasts of all human kind, and no force or circumstance, or change can eradicate it, because it is the divine spark that kindles a belief in an immortality and enables man to see his dependence on a power higher than himself. The savage with all his uncultured wildness feels it burning within the innermost depths of his consciousness and realizes that it is his guide to some higher state of being. The pagan of an ancient time looked beyond the prospective of earth and knew that the grave was not the goal of life, but there was another bank to the river that bounded his finite existence. The Greek had his Elysian fields wherein his fancy conjured up the forms of the dead heroes of his race the same as they appeared while in life. Often the eidolon of some one with whom he had been intimately associated appeared so real to him that he would address it and talk to it as a thing of life, though, of course, he received no answer. These eidola of the Greeks, that is, 247 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? images of the dead, played an important part in the mythology of that mighty empire and formed a theme for the pens of many of her illustrious bards. The ancient Hellenes also had their "Islands of the Blest/ ' to which the spirits of the departed were supposed to be wafted by unseen hands. Byron refers to this belief in one of his most beautiful poems, entitled, The Isles of Greece. Pindar, the father of lyric poetry, gives confirma- tion of this faith in the existence of his compa- triots in a future state. The following ode was written about 400 B.C. : The islands of the blest they say, The islands of the blest Are peaceful and happy by night and day Far away in the glorious west. They need not the moon in that land of delight, They need not the pale, pale star; The sun he is bright by day and by night Where the souls of the blessed are. They till not the ground, they plough not the wave, They labor not — never! oh, never! Not a tear do they shed, not a sigh do they heave, They are happy for ever and ever. Soft is the breeze, like the evening one, When the sun hath gone to rest ; And the sky is pure, and of clouds there are none In the islands of the blest. The deep, clear sea, in its mazy bed, Doth garlands of gems unfold; Not a tree but it blazes with crowns for the dead Even flowers of living gold. 248 WHAT IS HEAVEN AND HOW TO REACH IT In this early morning of history we find many other examples of illustrious nations of the pagan world believing in a state of immortality. The old Eomans believed that the spirits of the dead were translated to Mount Olympus to mingle and live forever with the deities that presided over their destinies. Some of them were strong in the belief that the souls of their heroes did not pass on, but took the places of less valiant ones to animate their bodies to mighty deeds. This metempsychosis or transmigration of souls is different from the doctrine taught by Pythagoras which was that the souls of men entered into ani- mal bodies, yet it is as old as the world, and is still held by some of the savage tribes, notably by the aborigines of Australia, though in a somewhat different conception. The black men of the Southern Continent look upon the white men as their own dead brought back to life for deeds of bravery performed in the anterior existence. And this is all the more strange when it is taken into consideration that the native Australians are said to have no affinity with any other race of mankind — that they stand alone and unique by themselves in the ethnology of the species. How comes it then that this de- graded, savage people, but little elevated above the 249 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? brute creation, should have views about the future state almost identical with the polished, refined and highly cultivated, though pagan Eomans and after such a great lapse of time ! It is a question in psychology and can be based only on that yearn- ing in the human heart which ever craves a higher state of existence. Of course, in the early stages of the world, God revealed himself to man, but after a time, sin so clouded the lives of men that they wandered away in the darkness and were brought back only by the pure light of the Gospel, dawning like an aurora over the blackened hills of earth. But until that time they had many beliefs. Still they never totally disregarded the idea of some govern- ing force to regulate their lives and destiny. We have seen that the Greeks and Eomans believed in the immortality of the soul and 'tis said some of them had conceptions of the true God. The other European nations too, when steeped in barbarism, did not ignore, but had im- plicit faith in another state of being. Ancient European Notions The Scandinavians dreamt of a green paradise awaiting them beyond the gates of earth with fields of waving flowers, singing birds and murmuring 250 WHAT IS HEAVEN AND HOW TO REACH IT streams flashing in a sunlight that would never set. The cold, sanguinary Vikings of the Northland believed that here their warriors would gain the rest so well earned by lives of daring deeds. The Teutonic heaven was a land of pleasure, fulness and fruitage where every want could be satisfied to the soul's- contentment. The old Iberians saw castles and chateaux of gold and ivory, where music ever filled the air with its delicious strains. There has been no nation, in which a belief of a future state has not obtained, none that has not imagined that there remains for holy souls beyond the grave some . . . Island valley of Avilion Where fall not hail or rain or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly. When the star of Christianity rose above the horizon, all darkness that surrounded a belief in a hereafter was swept away, and through the pure light of the Gospel of Christ men were enabled to catch a glimpse of the celestial paradise which Christ came to open for an erring race. Christ came into the world to be the " light of the world, the light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world.' ' He came to point and lead the way to the heavenly home. 251 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? What the glories of that home shall be no pen can write, no tongue describe, but in order that Christians may give soul form to that which can- not be uttered, they have dwelt with rapture on the glowing symbols of the poet of the Apocalypse, when he ecstatically refers to the New Jerusalem descending out of heaven, having the glory of God, and her light like unto a stone most precious, even unto a jasper stone; and the gates of pearl and the foundations of precious stones, and the pure river of the water of life, clear as a crystal, and the Tree of Life with its leaves for the healing of the nations. Apostolic Symbols Though the language of the apostle is symbol- ical, we can overlook its extravagance of hyperbole in the exquisite ideas it conveys to our minds which ever appeal to us with the same freshness and sweetness as in the days of childhood when we lisped the hymns so dear to the Christian worship, "Jerusalem the Golden, " " There is a land of pure delight, ' ' " There is a green hill far away. ' ' These symbolic passages thrill the soul and quicken every impulse of religion. They trans- late us in spirit to the home above, where we, too, like John, can see the ecstatic vision. Yet after all they do not take such a deep hold upon us, or 252 WHAT IS HEAVEN AND HOW TO REACH IT claim such consideration from us as the less lofty allusions, bare of all figurative rhetoric, which tell us in simple words of the higher life which is free from the pains and agonies of this mortal life, and which describe to us the vision of God undarkened by the mists of sin. How exalted, however, was that vision of John in Patmos, and how blessed is the consolation of the words — " Neither shall there be any more pain ! ' ' No Pain in Heaven No, there shall be no more pain ; no pain of body or of mind ; no pain of homesickness ; no pain of exile ; no pain of exposure ; no pain of disappoint- ment. In the past you have planned and worried and persisted, until your hands were worn, your body bent and your brain racked, but all in vain. De- spite every effort you were defeated. You tugged and you tussled, but your strength was overborne by greater odds and you had to give in to superior force. When you thought you had breasted the waves, they swept you down to greater depths, and when your feet were almost on the shore you slipped and fell back again more helpless than ever. Instead of gains you had losses. What you would save one day would have to be spent the 253 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? next, and yon never conld make ends meet, strive how yon wonld. All these yon had to bear nntil yonr heart cried ont that yon conld suffer no more. Now, all these evils are past, and are bnried in the oblivion of time never to be resurrected. There will be no more trials nor troubles, nor sighs nor sorrows; no waiting nor weariness — everything will be to yonr desires, every thought will be an- ticipated, and every wish gratified. In heaven yon never again will have a blasted hope ; the fairest yearnings shall be realized to the full, the wildest ambition satisfied, the most san- guine hopes attained. Your robe shall be richer and your crown brighter than any of which yon have dreamed on earth. No Hunger in Heaven Here it is hard to have the flour barrel empty and your children crying for bread, hard to see them droop and pine and wither away beneath the gaunt clutch of hunger, with neither food nor doctor to relieve their 'wants or keep the body whole. It saddens the heart to see the bright boy and girl in whom you have placed your highest hopes, unable to get a chance to make good in the battle of life, because you have nothing wherewith to give them a start. Poverty grinds yon at every turn; yon cannot 254 WHAT IS HEAVEN AND HOW TO REACH IT escape it, no matter how you try to dodge its pres- ence. You will never meet this grim spectre above, for he can never enter the gates of the shining land. You will get free from him there as did Lazarus, who waked up out of his rags, his miseries and disease to be clothed in the glo- rious raiment of the blessed, to enjoy happiness forever free from pain. All of Christ's poor can wake up at the last without any more of their disadvantages. There will be no rents to pay, for the heavenly mansions have been prepared for your coming since our Lord ascended into heaven. You will have no clothes to purchase, for divine hands have fash- ioned immortal robes for you that shall wear for- ever. There you will have no more food to pur- chase, for the granaries of the blessed are full to overflowing, and ' ' God shall supply all your need according to his riches of glory in Christ Jesus." Here on earth because you are poor, you may have to take a back seat in the church and you are almost afraid to lift your voice in the praise and worship of God, lest the sound might disturb some of your fashionable brethren, but in heaven all will worship in the temple of equality and the beggar and the millionaire unite in harmony in chanting the divine glory of their common Lord. 255 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? No Sighs of Farewell There will be no pain of parting in the land above, no sorrow of leave-taking, no sighs of fare- well. Here we walk and talk and eat together, but after a while we must separate to go our different ways. The home circle is broken and our dear ones pass away. Death may claim a member, and how hard is it then for us to close those eyes into which we have gazed with the depths of love, a love which was reciprocated, to clasp the cold hand that now gives back no warm, answering pressure, to look for the last time on the beloved features ere they are shut off by the coffin lid. At such a time the heart overflows with woe, and you feel as though every nerve and fibre were being torn by red hot pincers, while the brain reels and you almost collapse under the load of anguish. At such a time even religion often fails to give consolation, but soon the agony passes and the blessed hope comes to comfort us that the one who has vanished from mortal vision is not lost, but gone before, to wait for and welcome you to the heavenly home, where the circle of love and kin- dred shall never be broken, where no death chill shall be felt, where no farewells shall be taken, but each shall live for each throughout the ages of eternity. 256 WHAT IS HEAVEN AND HOW TO REACH IT No Sickness Yonder There will be no pain of body there, as there is here. This world is but a hospital, a lazaretto for the groans and weepings and diseases of humanity. Pain has gone through every street, up every lad- der, down every shaft, visited every home, has left no one immune from its touch, but with God it shall be felt no longer. There will be no malaria in the air, no contagion on the wayside. There will be no bruised feet treading the burning streets, no weary arms nor aching limbs, no painful respira- tion, no hectic flush on the cheek to tell of the rav- ages within. No, there shall be no more pain, and neither shall there be any more darkness. No Darkness There John tells us, "There shall be no night there." It will be an everlasting day, yet without the garish glare that wearies eye and brain. A soft glow shall encompass us with its mellow grandeur, the light proceeding from the throne, the holy of holies, the place of God himself. By informing us what we shall not find in heaven, the Bible opens for us a conception of the reality, "No curse, no pain, no tears, no sea, no night, no death." In heaven all mystery will be cleared away like mists before the sunbeams. Here we grope our 257 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? way along like moles in the darkness nnable to penetrate the thick veil of mysteries which con- front ns on all sides. Here life is an enigma, a source of happiness at times, yet an arena of con- flict ; often a path of peace, still a road of difficulties from the cradle to the grave. Mysteries Revealed Yonder There are mysteries everywhere. The righteous are afflicted, the wicked prosper, innocence is blasted and vice is triumphant, purity is trampled in the dust, lust is put upon the throne, hon- esty is spurned and dishonesty taken by the hand, integrity fails and fraud wins, vice often reaches the top while virtue is thrust down to the bottom. Why this should be is all inexplicable to our poor finite understanding and limited capacity, but on the other side all will be made clear and we shall rejoice that it was as it was. There God will show us the "Why" and the "Wherefore" of his now inscrutable ways. In the eternal day all mys- teries will be made clear. We are now in the night of earth's ignorance; but when heaven's morning breaks, then shall earth's shadows flee away. And there shall be no night there. Night is a symbol of sorrow. During the silent 258 WHAT IS HEAVEN AND HOW TO REACH IT watches of the night the memory of our deceased loved ones comes most vividly to ns. It is then we miss the grasp of the hand, the warm kiss and fond embrace. It is then the heart aches most in the angnish of sore bereavement, when we think of the past, and all it meant to ns ; the past when those we loved were around to comfort us by their pres- ence, cheer us with hopeful words, to encourage us with their smiles and lend a helping hand to assist - us up life's rugged way. No Tears in Heaven Night is the time to weep. Then no one can see the tears which fall upon our pillow, the bitter, sad tears of memory for those who are gone. Perhaps we have been unkind to them in erring moments, and caused them sorrows and worries and annoy- ances from which they would have been free but for our thoughtless words and hasty actions. Per- haps we made their burdens heavier instead of lighter ; took away whatever little sunshine was in their lives and cast gloom in its place. It may be a fond parent we have lost and wronged by our wayward courses by disobedience, by refusing to hearken to advice well meant. We may have caused the heart now stilled to grieve for our ingratitude and lack of honor and respect and love ; or it may be a fond brother or a clinging sister that suffered 259 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? from our neglect and coldness, who, with their last dying* glance, looked us the forgiveness we did not deserve. All these memories now come rushing over the soul, flooding it with unavailing regrets ; now when it is too late to make recompense or remedy our blindness and folly. Yes, many a pil- low is moistened when the world cannot look on to see the repentance which comes too late to make atonement for the past. Let us think of this in time while those are with us whom we should love, and who are entitled to our respect and consideration. Let us so treat them that we may have no regrets in regard to them when they have passed from our earthly ken forever. It is at night in sweet dreams we are restored to the delightful companionship of our dead, but on awakening, the disillusion brings with it the heart- ache because the beloved ones are not present to speak to us in the old familiar tones, or turn to us with the genial smile and embrace us in the clasp of love. There will be no night of sorrow or sighing or weeping in heaven; no night of un- availing regret and impotent longings for the days and deeds that are past and done. Surely this gives us a blessed hope of a glorious future await- ing us in the nightless land of eternal day. 260 WHAT IS HEAVEN AND HOW TO REACH IT No Night in Heaven No night shall be in heaven! No gathering gloom Shall o'er that glorious landscape ever come; No tears shall fall in sadness o'er those flowers That breathe their fragrance through celestial bowers. No night shall be in heaven! No dreadful hour Of mental darkness, or the tempter's power: Across those skies no envious cloud shall roll, To dim the sunlight of the raptured soul. No night shall be in heaven! No sorrow reign, No secret anguish, no corporeal pain, No shivering limbs, no burning fever there, No soul's eclipse, no winter of despair. No night shall be in heaven! but endless noon; No fast-declining sun, nor waning moon; But there the Lamb shall yield perpetual light, 'Mid pastures green, and waters ever bright. No night shall be in heaven! No darkened room, No bed of death, nor silence of the tomb ; But breezes ever fresh with love and truth, Shall brace the frame with an immortal youth. No night shall be in heaven! But night is here! The night of sorrow and the night of fear; I mourn the ills that now my steps attend, And shrink from others that may yet impend. No night shall be in heaven! Oh, had I faith To rest in what the Faithful Witness saith, That faith should make these hideous phantoms flee, And leave no night, henceforth, on earth to me. How to Reach Heaven Men are accustomed to talk glibly of going to heaven in face of the fact that they lead such shameless lives of sin and fraud as to disgrace and embitter the earth. It seems that such people think it is easy to gain a passport to heaven, that a little death-bed repentance or a few thousand ill- 261 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? gained dollars given to the canse of charity, will be all that is necessary to gain admission to the mansions above. Heaven, no doubt, is easy to gain, but the right course must be taken to make it easy. It is easy for a strong man to lift two hundred pounds, but if through dissipation and vile living the same man so abuses his body that his muscles become flaccid and his limbs weak, he will find the task an extremely difficult, if not an impossible one. If you want to go to heaven you must put your- self in condition. You must seek it here and go about the proper means. 0, mean, greedy, avaricious, money-loving souls, you whose gaze, were you in heaven, would be ever on the trodden gold of its pavements; you base usurers and grinders of the poor, who defraud innocence of its birthright, whose path through life is wet with the tears of widows and orphans, what claim have you to heaven? Where are your credentials to its court? And you, slandering whisperers whose souls are murderous with hate and envy, why do you talk of heaven? What have such as you to do with the home where sin cannot enter or nothing defiled be seen? Apples of Sodom and clusters of Gomorrah cannot grow in the same soil with the Tree of Life, 262 WHAT IS HEAVEN AND HOW TO REACH IT Were it possible for you to enter heaven with yonr hard hearts unchanged, it would not be a heaven to you, but a hell, for every virtue there would be a burning reproach to you ; every rapture would be a burden ; every nobleness a shame ; you would fly within yourself and tremble at your own sordidness and meanness and soullessness and sin. You self-seeking men, whose only consideration is your own worldly advancement, who, to satisfy your unlawful ambitions, would drive the Jugger- naut of your greed over the bleeding, writhing bodies of your victims, don't talk of heaven until you have turned your hard hearts from the worship of the Moloch of Mammon to the worship of God, until you learn how to keep his laws and obey his commandments . But you can become what you are not, and be all that God meant you to be. ' ' Wash you, make you clean, put away the evils of your doings from before God's eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do well." Then you will begin to know what heaven is, and how it is gained, and this will give you a foretaste of its happiness, even amid the sorrows of earth. You will not need the aid of symbols, for you will think of heaven, not as some meadow of asphodel or plain of gold, but as a country of rest 263 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? from the turmoils of life, surcease from the wick- edness and wretchedness of the world, a prepared place for a prepared people. Heaven a Continuity — A Development Heaven, so far as it is a place at all, must be a place where sin is not ; where purity and truth and honor reign triumphantly forever. To be honest, true, noble, sincere, genuine, pure, holy to the heart's innermost core, to have Christ in you, the hope of glory — this is heaven in the soul and the foretaste of the heaven hereafter. Heaven is not merely a reward, but a continuity ; not a change only, but a development. It is more than crystal waters and a golden city in the far- off blue. It is an extension, an undisturbed con- tinuance of the Christian life commenced on earth to be continued in the more congenial surroundings of the land beyond the river. Heaven means holiness, and holiness means wholeness, the wholeness of a life rounded out by the virtues which adorn humanity, by the service which is ever employed in the love of man and praise of God. Heaven is union with God, and with- out such union here on earth we cannot expect it in the hereafter ; but with such union here there must in the nature of the case be both union and God communion in the world to come. 264 What Shall We Do in Heaven? What is left for us, save in growth of soul to rise: From the gift looking to the Giver, And from the cistern to the river, And from the finite to Infinity, And from man's dust to God's Divinity? — Browning. Have we not all, and earth's petty strife, Some pure ideal of a noble life, That once seemed possible? did we not hear The flutter of its wings, and feel it near, And just within our reach? it was! — and yet We lost it in this daily jar and fret, And now live idle in a vain regret, But still our place is kept, and it will wait Ready for us to fill it, soon or late; No star is ever lost we once have seen, — We always may be what we might have been; Since good, though only thought has life and breath. God's life can always be redeemed from death; And evil, in its nature, is decay, And any hour can blot it all away; The hopes that lost in some far distance seem, May be the truer life — and this the dream. — Adelaide Procter. CHAPTER X What Shall We Do in Heaven ? Man's hopes and desires cross the boundary of time and penetrate into the illimitable fields of an infinite eternity — that which was, is, and ever shall be. Life is a part of this mysterious whole, and as such can have no end in itself. There is no death — all is but change. Longfellow cheerily sings : There is no death — what seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian Whose portals we call Death. In the midst of death we can take up our harps and sing with Lytton : There is no death! The stars go down To rise upon some fairer shore; And bright in heaven's jeweled crown They shine forever more. There is no death! The dust we tread Shall change beneath the Summer showers To golden grain, or mellow fruit, Or rainbow tinted flowers. The granite rocks disorganize To feed the hungry moss they bear; The forest leaves drink daily life From out the viewless air. 269 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? There is no death! The leaves may fall, And flowers fade and pass away; They only wait through wintry hours The coming of the May. There is no death! An angel form Walks o'er the earth with silent tread; We bear our best loved things away, And then we call them "dead." He leaves our hearts all desolate, He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers; Transplanted into bliss, they now Adorn immortal bowers. The bird-like voice, whose joyous tones Made glad these scenes of sin and strife, Sings now an everlasting song Amid the trees of life. And where he sees a smile too bright, Or heart too pure for taint and vice, He bears it to that world of light, To dwell in Paradise. Born into that undying life, They leave us but to come again; With joy we welcome them, the same, Except in sin and pain. And ever near us, though unseen, The dear immortal spirits tread; For all the boundless Universe Is life — there is no death! God placed man here to give him opportunity for attaining expression and acquiring develop- ment in preparing for the life hereafter. Bishop Eandolph S. Foster, in his argument on the philosophy of the mind shows that: " Capac- ity implies an end equal to its measure. The princi- ple involved is, God does nothing needless. When he bestows a power it is that it may be improved. 270 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? This is proved to be a fact throughout the entire circle of nature in every case, man excepted. No seed of any vegetable contains a latent force which may not find full expression in the condition of its earthly existence. Its bloom and fruit and stature may reach completeness. There remains in it no potentiality undeveloped. The same is true of every animal. Its earthly life furnishes it the full opportunity for perfect expression. There was the opportunity for their attaining their end. Were it to live to eternity it could become no more than it is in the hours or years, as the case may be, of its life. The evolution is perfect. Nature fur- nishes no instance of a power which is useless or thwarted. Blasted germs and premature decays are no contradiction of this principle. The earth furnishes to them the conditions for perfect ex- pression. That they were cut short does not imply the creation of capacity in vain, or to no end, since in many cases they reach the end, and the object of their creation is answered. Nor is their failure to come to complete development in any sense a calamity. There is no real waste in the case. Man furnishes the solitary exception of this law. He is the only argosy that, freighted with vastest wealth, is sent out upon the ocean of existence at most lavish expenditure, that it may be stranded 271 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? upon the nearest reef, and its splendid jewelry be sunk in the infinite abyss. Why such expensive folly? To what end such waste? Why create such wealth of possibility and dash it to atoms in the instant of its creation? It is inconceivable that the Infinite should be guilty of such unthrift. The madness of such a deed is even greater than we have supposed. He does not even finish the work, but destroys it in the process of making — spoils the harvest in the bloom. He creates powers which expand as they age, which gain wealth as they are used, every exercise of which becomes a history, every forthputting an eternal psalm; — powers that retain all they ever gain, and advance toward the Infinite, a great soul of powers ; which at some time would pass angelic stature in wealth of wisdom and knowledge, and would become a universe of grandeur and happiness in itself; a soul which, with all its glory of being and felicity, would pour forth all its wealth in adoring worship of its author ; a soul whose bliss would almost rival his own ! Is it possible to imagine that the Infinite did create such a being, and open before himself and before it such a prospect and nourish it with the idea only that he might dash the beautiful vase and scatter all its incense in one mad moment ? ' 9 272 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? If the sculptor should dash to pieces the finished conception of his genius; if the painter should rend the canvas on which he has almost duplicated life ; if the architect should tear down the dome he had erected with infinite pains, would we not look upon them as madmen incapable of realizing the insanity of their actions ? Since God is the expres- sion of all wisdom, he cannot do a foolish thing, and to make man to perish would indeed be the worst of all folly. If there is no future state for the working out of that moral completeness which the present never brings, then there can be but one solemn conclusion — that man is an absolute failure. But such an implication is an insult to Divine Intelli- gence, and the supposition falls to the ground. If God never wrote failure on any of his works, not even the least or the lowliest, can it be as- sumed that he will stamp it on the forehead of the most sublime creation of his Almighty wisdom, on man the noblest of all his handiwork, him whom he had made in his own image and likeness, on whom he had conferred a part of his own divine perfection, whom he had made master over the rest of created beings, in whose brain he has kindled the fires of intelligence and reason to guide his course to a fulfilment of the law, — man, who 273 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? sits on the seats of the mighty and regulates mat- ter to his will, who proudly marches down the cor- ridors of time commanding the obedience of the rest of created life, who, in thought, wanders through the fields of space, with his God-given intelligence, naming and weighing the planets, telling when and where the wandering comets will appear, measuring the depths of the universe as with rule and line and forecasting the future movements of worlds with unerring accuracy? No! God has not written failure on the brow of man. Instead he has eternally stamped success. From the earliest dawn of the world, humanity has dwelt on the eternal and endeavored to pene- trate the veil of mystery that hangs between the finite and the infinite, between that which is known as time, and that which we call eternity. The ancient philosophers tried to solve the riddle of existence and peer into the future that lies beyond. Though chained down to earth by the ignorance of their primitive time and groping in the darkness of barbarism, some flashes of light now and again illumined their paths to point the way to an unseen world beyond. That grand old pagan, Socrates, caught fleeting glimpses of the great hereafter. He had a daemon by his side whispering into his ears the 274 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? solution of the mystery of life. This was but his own sub-consciousness manifesting itself, assert- ing its attributes in a longing after the immortal and the unknown. That Socrates had a conception of the true Grod there can be little doubt, else why did he inculcate a godly course of living? He well knew that death does not end all, and when he drained the hemlock juice in his prison cell, the spirit within told him he was but shuffling off the mortal coil to enter upon a new existence. Plato, greatest of the old master's pupils, felt that earth was not the goal, nor time the boundary of the present life. He realized there was some- thing else to come, something to follow after, and he, too, manifested a belief in the being of a Su- preme Intelligence, governing the laws of matter. Aristotle, "father of philosophy, " embodies in his works perceptions and concepts which une- quivocally show that to him earth was but the step- ping stone to another sphere of existence, some other place of shadowy outlines enveloped in the mists of mystery. Indeed all the classic pagans of Greece and Eome, not to mention the seers of Oriental his- tory, subscribed to a belief in the immortality of man. 275 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Cicero said: "When I consider the wonder- ful activity of the mind, so great a memory of what is past and such a capacity of penetrating into the future, when I behold such a number of arts and sciences and such a multitude of discoveries thence arising, I believe and am firmly persuaded that a nature which contains so many things within itself cannot be mortal." If man were mortal, if his goal were the inertia of clay, his heart would never throb with the desires of ambition, the fires of genius would never be kindled in his impassioned brain, to light the way to future achievements. Man's intellect alone establishes his claim to immortality. Who will say that the burning brain of Gladstone — the brain that directed the destinies of empires and kingdoms is now but a piece of matter, that the resounding voice, once heard around the world, is forever hushed, that his use- fulness is no more; that he is not as if he had never been, or rather that he has gone back into material elements which will never unite again to constitute the grand whole known as Gladstone? No ! a thousand times no ! Gladstone has but left the stage of existence to play a part on another. He has passed on to a higher and more useful place to take up his uncompleted course on earth 276 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? and advance to the perfection of the Eternal. Shakespeare's words have swayed the souls of men for three hundred years — is he now but the memory of a name clinging to mortal minds, or has he gone forward to perfect the work he began on earth, not merely the work of writing dramas, but that of advancing to the moral perfection unrealizable on earth! That above all is the occu- pation hereafter, the realization of our ideals, an endless progress towards the essence of the divine. The body material confines the aspirations of the spirit and fetters them down to earth. It is only when these trammels can be thrown off by the loosening of the spirit that opportunity is afforded to realize them in a better sphere. Em- bodiment shuts in the grandest emotions of the soul, the noblest workings of the mind. Beethoven tells us that his sublime symphonies were but echoes of the heavenly music he heard in his dreams. Eaphael left his Sistine Madonna with disap- pointed heart. His work was merely an attempt to reproduce the vision of his mind ; its full glory he could not transfer to canvas. The spirit was fettered by the flesh. What poet ever fully uttered all his dreams, or set down his inspirations in the coldness of words ! 277 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Did Homer, Virgil, Dante or Milton leave behind them, materialized in song, all the thoughts that surcharged their teeming brains and moved their impassioned souls 1 Surely they did not, for great as they were, the body clogged their faculties and kept them from expressing all. Does the philanthropist realize all his reforms ; does the statesman encompass all his schemes; does the inventor open every gate of discovery to unsuspected possibilities? No, one and all go down to the grave disappointed with hopes un- realized, ambitions unattained, desires unfulfilled, with something lacking, something missing to round out life and make it worth while to have lived. That is just it ; that is what thunderously proves the reality of an eternity, as a place to rectify the wrongs of earth, to supply its omis- sions, to bring its work to perfection and show that the earthly life was worth living in order to gain an entrance to the fulness of the' life ever- lasting. There can be no completeness here below. The present existence is but a preliminary to that which is to come. No man can encompass the work he would desire, not to speak of perfecting it. Humboldt, dying at ninety, feeling that he had just begun to study, exclaimed — "Oh, for another 278 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? hundred years. ' ' Again lie said — ' ' I need a thou- sand years to do that which I now have in my mind. ' ' The greatest of seers and sages, no matter how long their time on earth, are taken away in the infancy of knowledge whose maturity can be de- veloped only in another state of existence. Sir Isaac Newton at the end of his sublime earthly career, said: "I feel like a child playing upon the seashore, picking up a pebble here and there, while the great ocean of truth lies unex- plored before me." Tennyson after giving the years of his compara- tively long life to poetry, expressed the wish that he might have one hundred more years for the study of music, then another hundred for art and similar periods to devote to the different sciences. Could his wish have been granted, he would have been dissatisfied with a thousand years, for his ambitions would still have been unrealized, and he would have passed on just as discontented. Without realizing it Tennyson was doing what every child of humanity has done from the begin- ning — he was longing for a realization, in another life, of the unattainable ideals of earth. Southey, dying, asked to be carried into his library, where he fondly handled his books, like 279 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? a loving parent a dear child, and then sighed as he thought he mnst bid them farewell. The incompleteness of the earthly life calls for the immortality of the eternal to carry it on, not indeed in the same manner as on earth, but on a higher plane, where the soul united to the glorified body will form a union not shackled by the fetters of the flesh, but awake to divine influence, ever progressing onwards and upwards in the beauty of morality and the perfection of achievement. There will be time enough on the other side, and the years there will not overtake us and bring decrepitude of body or feebleness of mind. There will be no old age, no pain, no sickness, no cares, no worry, no struggle to carry on the func- tions. It will be a land of eternal youth, of ever- lasting sunshine, of never-ending joys and of end- less progress, and not a paradise of inactivity, a heaven of laziness where all will lie down and bask in the golden glory of burnished thrones and em- purpled canopies. The eye of reason and the ear of faith dispel the common notions regarding the home of the blessed as the ideal of the idler. It is time that the in- credulous, though popular, conceptions of heaven were corrected; the conceptions which picture it as a place of harp-tuning and mystical musical 280 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? harmony, where the strings are being constantly swept by angel hands. How wonld the unmnsical fare in snch a place! What would the workers do who sighed for more to accomplish on earth f For the vast majority there would be no work to do. Idleness is the dread of the progressive. In such a state there can be no happiness ; therefore, the picture of the hereafter as an abode of sheer repose, of musing, dreaming ecstasy, wherein one falls into a coma of pleasing meditation from which he fain would not arouse to action, is repug- nant to the ideas and desires of all who would advance in the direction of increased knowledge and absolute perfection. The river comes from the ocean by the action of the sun's rays. To the ocean again it returns, but when it reaches there it does not remain a stag- nant mass of water, but keeps in motion, contribut- ing its share to the usefulness of the whole body. In the ocean of eternity there is no still water. All is ever in circulation, each drop performing its part and doing its share for the entire mass. There is perpetual motion, not an ebb and flood, but a constant flow, ever onwards in the direction of accomplishment. Though the Bible is not explicit as to the 281 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? employments and enjoyments of heaven, enough is revealed to show that the common notions of never-ending rest and everlasting inactivity are but distorted views based on a false interpreta- tion of God's designs in regard to the destiny of his creatures. He created man for action on earth, to do something, to accomplish results. Why then should this activity be limited to earth where there is time for so little and be restricted in heaven where there is endless time for everything? The popular misconception of the hereafter as unending song probably arises from the frequency with which worship is introduced into the account which the Scriptures give of the celestial temple. There is, of course, something congenial to the imagination in the idea of an unbroken melody, one continuous Psalm rolling its wave-notes of song till silence in her farthest solitudes, listening, finds a voice and sends back the repeating echoes. But the conception of perpetual song, though most pleasing to the imagination, cannot satisfy the reason. Who does not enjoy a proficient choir, the sonorous notes of which rouse the soul on the wings of prayer to soar to the great white throne of the Eternal? But who wants to hear a choir all the time? Too much of anything becomes monotonous and clogs the senses with satiety. 282 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? The Hallelujah chorus sounding in our ears all the time would become discordant to the tym- panum and wear upon the nerves. There must be both a variation and a recess. Praise and song must not be confounded. We can offer praise without the song, in active obe- dience, in faculties consecrated to the Creator's service, in conforming to his will in our actions. When we are admonished to pray always, it is not meant that we should constantly engage in a perpetual round of worship and adoration to the neglect of other duties. If "he prayeth best who loveth best," then we can best pray by attending to our business, doing the things required of us, and performing our parts faithfully in relation to ourselves and our Creator. The man digging a sewer may be giving more homage to God than the recluse in his cloister. Indeed he often is, for the digger is working for his kind, contributing his share to the sum total of human progress, while the recluse is only attending to his individual self. The idea that the redeemed are ever gazing on the face of the glorified Christ, arises from the prominence the New Testament gives to the God- man as the central figure of worship. It also owes much of its conception to our social nature. We are all given to what moderns call hero-worship. 283 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? If an individual has occupied our thoughts and engaged our affections we are apt to become so absorbed with his personality, that when he is in our presence the eye is constantly fixed upon his features, studying every movement and taking in every outline of his figure. We treasure his words, and the accent of his speech is constantly in our ears. But does Christ elect to sit upon his throne as a mere object to be gazed at? Does he demand a constant adoration to the suppression of all other pursuits and desires! Is the Eedeemer so selfish as to abrogate to himself the universal homage of all, to the shutting out of every hope, the suppression of every emotion, the confinement of every aspiration of the soul? Is it not more reasonable to suppose that after the first trans- ports of the redeemed, he will give opportunity for gratitude to exert itself by some show of action, some employment of love that will mani- fest itself in service, by the doing of something that will meet with the approval and encourage- ment of him who, when upon earth, "went about doing good." A mere look will not satisfy. It must be accom- panied by a more tangible effort to reciprocate favors shown. Opportunity will be given to such 284 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? effort. On earth Christ exemplified the dignity of labor. He did not ask his followers to cast all their interests to the winds by neglecting their other duties for his sake. He preached to them of heavenly subjects after they had done their duty by earthly concerns. He did not believe in idleness. He never idled himself, but used every moment to advantage. He closed the door in the face of the indolent virgins who preferred sleep to duty. In heaven will he be different from that which he was on earth? Will he encourage sloth and laziness by doing nothing himself, while the redeemed loll on sapphire thrones and gaze upon his countenance? That heaven has been described as a place of rest arises also from a biblical misconception. Eest does not always imply inactivity. The rest spoken of in the Bible is based on the idea of that Sabbatic rest which, while excusing from the manual labor of the working day, did not exon- erate the people from performing their duties toward God and one another. The rest of heaven is not sheer repose, not an indolent reverie, not a slothful inactivity. It is a rest which means the absence of the weariness, sorrows, passions and pains of this world. In heaven there will be no mental, moral or 285 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? spiritual infirmity. The glorified body will corre- spond to the perfect soul. Eesurrection means rejuvenation. In heaven "we shall be made equal to the angels," and the Bible picture of an angel is radiant youth. Our transfigured body shall be made unto Christ's resurrection and ascension body: "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." Christ entered heaven at the age of thirty-three. Our perfect bodies shall have eternal youth, the great equipment for occupation there. The Significance of Scripture Symbols That heaven will be a place of endless enter- prise and eternal endeavor can be inferred from the symbols under which the Bible sets forth its activity and life. We have Isaiah's symbol of the temple. To the old prophet the temple was a fitting conception for a hive of activity. It took a whole tribe of his nation to make efficient the temple service, the choir alone requiring three thousand trained sing- ers. Therefore, the illustration stands for a busy throng, where all are engaged in active service. Though there will be continual employment and never-ceasing effort, there will be no weariness in heaven, for the body will be relieved from the 286 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? weight of flesh that burdens it on earth, and the years will not be measured by the standard of time. Eternal youth shall set its seal on the brow of all with the stamp of a vigorous immortality. No pains, no sorrows, no worrying, no nerve- wrecking dread of evils to come shall crush the spirit down, but ever buoyant and free from all care and anxiety it shall soar to higher and higher efforts in eternal progression. What work can be accomplished in this limitless hereafter! There will be time enough for every- thing, for the attainment of every desire, the ful- filment of every ambition, the pursuit of every calling. There the heart will realize its fondest hopes. There the disappointments of earth shall be made good. There all shall be given opportu- nity to reach the highest development. Who can measure the results this endless expe- rience will bring forth; what masterpieces, what perfections, when the trammels of earth no longer bind the soul and confine the noblest instincts of expression? There the great ones of earth will have every chance to continue the life-work begun below and improve upon it through the countless ages. Without weariness of spirit and fatigue of body, nor hampered by limitations and hindrances, 287 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Raphael can improve upon his Sistine Madonna. He has now seen the Christ mother, as she was and is, and can go on transferring her divine expression to his glowing canvas. Michel Angelo, now that he has looked on the majesty of God the Father and passed through the thunderings and lightnings of the great day that rends the veil of time, will be better able to picture the ' ' Last Judgment. ' ' He will find other fitting subjects for his chisel and his brush in the tremendous mysteries, now fully revealed, which surround him. Titian, Rembrandt, Turner and Hunt will have loftier faculties to portray the transfigured Christ, since instead of a conception they will have the reality as their model. Who will doubt that the old masters of music will still be engaged on their divine symphonies, creating harmonies of sound to blend with "the music of the spheres" in one grand diapason of celestial melody? Haydn can produce a better oratorio than "Creation," now that his eyes and ears have opened to the secrets of worlds. His earthly in- spiration came from heaven, so now that he has reached its source, he can drink deep draughts to refresh his soul and enable him to pour forth 288 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? sublime strains of ravishing sweetness. Haydn himself said that music had its highest throne in heaven. This was before earth had passed away, but now that the harmony of worlds and the voices of millions have been added to the orchestra of cherubim and seraphim, to the choir of thrones, to the band of principalities and powers, the whole produces a symphony of sound rolling down the aisles of infinity, entrancing all with the gorgeous beauty of its notes. Mozart and Beethoven, Gounod and Liszt, Handel and Mendelssohn, Wagner and the other giants in the field of melody will have amplitude for boundless enthusiasm in their beloved art. Soldiers, sailors, statesmen, professional men of all kinds can follow the bent of earth to higher ideals. There will be other worlds to be saved, and there will be armies, but no blood-stained con- querors to trample over the defeated. All will be fighting on the side of right under the banner of the Supreme Commander. St. John in his Apoca- lyptic vision says: "The armies which are in heaven followed him on white horses. " Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon and Grant will conquer rebellious worlds throughout, some part of God's dominions. They will again lead armies, and bloodlessly, painlessly demon- 289 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? strate the triumphs of their splendid military genius. The illustrious navigators and admirals will sail celestial seas, the explorers finding new- lands of delight on every voyage. Magellan and 1 Cook, Livingstone and Stanley will discover islands and continents of happiness where all bask in the sunshine of the Eternal. Mathematicians can figure to their soul's delight and no problem too difficult to solve will arise. The solution will be found in the exactitude of permutations and combinations in which there shall be no variant, no shifting cypher to baffle and to puzzle. Squares and angles shall fit with geometric precision into their complements. The circle shall at last be squared. Fluxions and the conic sections, the differential and integral cal- culus will lay bare their secrets with logarithmic accuracy to the last decimal. The infinity of numbers will be measured and the location of the vanishing point be determined. Space will no longer have any more terrors for the astronomer, for planets, worlds and systems shall be merged in the mighty whole called heaven, the boundary of which is infinity, and the end but the beginning — the beginning of eternity. The mind will no longer be hedged in by the grossness of matter, but will be able to penetrate 290 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? to tlie "uttermost depths and fathom the abysses of all knowledge. Plato wrote above his door, "Let none enter here who is not acquainted with geometry." He will have no canse to complain in his new abode, for around him he will find all have explored the fields of geometrical science. Euclid will be able to demonstrate higher problems and put forward sublimer theories; Pythagoras will no longer have to sacrifice his oxen to the muses at the joy of discovering new solutions, for the key that unlocks all solutions shall be ready to his hand to unlock the gates of knowledge and let him roam wherever he listeth in its boundless domain. Phidias and Praxiteles will think lightly of their boasted sculptures of earth when they shall have for models the columns and statuary of angelic hands. How crude and insignificant will a Venus de Milo, or a Venus de Medici be in com- parison with the perfection of carving according to divine designs'? What will be the dimensions of a Colossus of Ehodes in magnitude to the gorge- ous temples and massive columns formed from porphyry and onyx and hammered gold ! The works of man on earth are trivial, puny, infinitesimal almost, because they are of time, per- 291 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? ishable and mortal, while those of heaven are majestic, sublime, immense, since they are imper- ishable, immortal, fashioned for time everlasting, for the eternity that shall have no end. Christ's symbol of heaven is a home. There are "many mansions there.' ' Home is indicative of work and progress, a place where the inmates unite for a common cause and share one another's pleasures, exult in one another's success. Thrift is taught as a virtue, idleness condemned as a vice. All are trying to go up, not down, constantly seeking the knowledge that will help them in the ascents of life. In the heavenly home all will be brethren, partakers of the universal happiness, glorying in mutual triumphs and assisting one another upward and onward in the scale of divine perfection. As there "are many mansions," there are also many stages and degrees of merit in the heavenly hereafter. "God giveth to each seed a body of its own." Those who have not deserved high places here by their course of action cannot hope to receive or win them hereafter, nor can it be expected that the careless and the indolent will be put on a plane with the painstaking and active. Here below we see many steps in the social ladder. One man surpasses his fellows in the ascent by his 292 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? agility. Some, however, never get within reason- able distance of the top, they being too slow, or too careless rather, to exert themselves. We often see one brother of the same family far outdistancing his kindred in the life-race and coming to the goal a winner, taken by the hand by the mightiest ones of earth and greeted with the plandits of the multitude, while his shiftless kins- man goes down to the grave almost unknown, of no benefit to himself or to the world through which he has aimlessly passed. There will be disparity in the celestial state as in the earthly. Of course it sometimes, indeed often, happens on earth that merit is not rewarded, that all do not get their just deserts, but there will be no undeserved rewards, no crowns for those not entitled to them by love and service. Heaven is the hall of eternal justice, where each one is treated according to his deserts ; where is meted out to him that to which he is entitled. Of course the lowliest in heaven will progress, but such progression will not be in ratio to that of the more deserving who have entered higher spheres. On earth an abject state of misery, of want, of sinfulness, is apt to excite our pity and cause us sorrow ; but in heaven it will be different, for it will be felt that each one is in his proper 293 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? place, put there by a Divine Intelligence, im- mutable in his justice. So there will be no com- plaining, no sighs, no tears, no regrets, but every- one will dwell in a society where envy does not enter, where jealousy has no place, where a uni- versal bond unites all, no matter how different the degree of position, into an indissoluble compan- ionship. John in his Apocalypse symbolizes heaven as a great city. What does a great city imply! A crowded hive of industry, of ceaseless activity, composed of all kinds and classes of people, a mul- titude working together for a common welfare. A city betokens bustling, active life with no shirk- ing of duty, a continual endeavor with no cessa- tion, for there is ever a demand for service, ever a requirement of necessities. Work engrosses every- thing, and claims every attention. Work will also be the order of heaven, but it will not entail the same servitude as on earth, for there will be infinitely more capacity for its performance. There the great Work-giver will assign it commensurately to the degrees of quali- fication it necessitates. A weakling cannot ac- complish as much as a robust man, neither can a weak soul consummate the labors of one who has attained to a high perfection. And the work will 294 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? be measured not only by capacity, but will be of the kind congenial to the worker. All will carry on the earthly labors towards an eternal fulfil- ment. Homer will not be put to carrying bricks, nor will Dante be asked to wield a pick and shovel. Both will be given a golden stylus to jot down the impressions of the realm of thought. Milton will cull the flowers from the sides of the heavenly Par- nassus and weave them into garlands and bouquets of the richest intellectual beauty. Old John Bunyan, with his youth renewed, will write alle- gories of celestial wisdom whispered into his ears by angelic tongues. Luther and Calvin, Knox and Wesley will no longer wrangle about warring creeds, but will unite with Thomas a Kempis and Ignatius Loyola in singing the praises of the divine Master. The object of the work of all will be an expres- sion of love and worship and adoration of the great Creator. Each will have his apportioned place no matter what his eternal work may be. Some will act as ministers to carry out God's command- ments through his universal kingdom; others will be chosen as minstrels to everlastingly sound his praise, and many will be employed as messengers to go on his behests. "His servants shall serve him." 295 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Abraham was commissioned to embosom Lazarus and exercise a fatherly care over the new-comer. Moses and Elijah came all the way from heaven to earth on the Lord's errand. The angels work. They blow the trumpets of judgment and hurl the thunderbolts. Gabriel brought God's word to Daniel and Zacharias and Mary. What a full and broad, grand and stirring life awaits us beyond! No wonder Paul said, "For me to die is gain." We shall not only live with, but for our friends who have passed on. Little wonder that with such a view of heaven, Paul, when in middle life, with all his faculties at their best, and his vitality at high tide, saidi "I have a desire to depart and be with Christ which is far better.' ' The work in heaven will be accompanied by worship. This worship will partake of praise and have expression in the psalmody of the voice and the harmony evoked from sounding instruments. Though the music will be choral, a unison from the tongues of all, we may suppose that sometimes an individual minstrel will raise his single voice in a solo of song, some David among the gifted ones, to whose ravishing melody angel ears will be glad to listen. Prayer, at least in some of its forms will con- 296 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? stitute a part of the heavenly worship. There will be an adoration finding vent in oral expres- sion of thanksgiving. There will be no confes- sion, since there will be no sins to confess. The stains of earth have been washed away leaving the soul immaculate to reunite with the glorified body. The transgressions shall all be forgiven in the universal absolution for the penitent believer. There may be occasion for petition, for though each will be satisfied with his state, inasmuch as it is God-assigned, nevertheless the longing after loftier perfection will impel an asking of favors, and we may be sure that the loving Father will be pleased to hearken to the requests of his children, and even anticipate their wishes. If only for the luxury of asking there will doubtless be many requests, and whether the desire be expressed in audible words, or by look or sign exhibited to the eye of God alone it matters not; in either case it will be prayer. An important branch of the occupations of the redeemed will be the study of Providence. In heaven the mysteries of the present life will be solved, and the darkness will be dissipated. "That dark and freezing cloud, which now casts its shadow on our heart, and which we can- not understand, will then be seen to have had its 297 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? mission. That stroke which smote down our first- born and fairest will then be seen to have had a meaning, and that blow which we cannot now think of without shedding tears of bitterness, will then be seen to have been but the touch of a Father who loved — a stroke inflicted by the hand that was nailed to the cross for us. That labyrinth, now inexplicable to us, that mystery now unfathom- able, those dealings of Providence which we can- not now comprehend, will then be seen distinctly by us to have an aim and a bearing which shall awaken in us new songs of gratitude, and inspire us with deeper thankfulness to him, who led us all the way through the wilderness, and placed us in the heavenly Canaan. Then shall we see that 'all things have been working together for our good'; that the darkest cloud had ever a smiling face behind it, and that the bitterest cup had in it a secret sweet. The great chain of mystery will then be lifted above the stream ; every link will be luminous, and we shall be convinced in glory of what we so much doubted and disbelieved on earth — viz., that we received not one stripe too many, endured not one pang too severe, were sub- jected to not one visitation that was not as essen- tial to our ultimate happiness, as that Christ should have died on the cross, and washed and 298 WHAT SHALL WE DO IN HEAVEN? sealed us with his own most precious blood.' ' God grant this future in the long hereafter may be ours — where we shall begin to plan and work forever; where we shall listen to sweeter music than we have heard here, know deeper joys than we have ever experienced, learn profounder truths than we ever dreamed of, live in a holier love and in the clear light of endless glory see God not "though a glass darkly," not by reflected rays from his works and word, but "face to face," by open vision, standing in his presence and gazing on his countenance, the mind possessing the pow- ers of the eye, so that the understanding shall gather in the magnificence of truth with the same facility as the organ of sense gathers the beauties of the landscape. Then "shall we know even as also we are known. ' ' Shall We Know Each Other There ? We are quite sure That He will give them back, Bright, pure and beautiful; We know that He will but keep Our own and His until we fall asleep; We know that He does not mean To break the strands reaching between The here and there; He does not mean, though heaven be fair, To change the spirits entering there, That they forget. — Anon, If yon bright stars which gem the night, Be each a blissful dwelling sphere, Where kindred spirits reunite, Whom death has torn asunder here, How sweet it were at once to die, To leave this blighted orb afar; 'Twixt soul and soul to cleave the sky And soar away from star to star. But oh ! how dark, and drear and lone, Would seem the brightest world of bliss, If wandering through each radiant one, We fail to find the loved of this! If there no more, the ties shall twine Which death's cold hand alone could sever, Alas, those tears in mockery shine, More hateful as they shine forever! It cannot be — each hope — each fear, That lights the eyes or clouds the brow, Proclaims there is a happier sphere, Than this cold world that holds us now. There is a voice which sorrow hears, When heaviest weighs life's galling chain, 'Tis Heaven that whispers — dry your tears, The pure in heart shall meet again. — William Leggett. CHAPTER XI Shall We Know Each Other There ? You naturally want me to answer Yes ! and your heart's cry for that answer is a strong presump- tion in its favor. Immortality as believed by Christians demands the heavenly recognition to make it of any real comfort. Now, what are the arguments in its favor? It is a doctrine which has been the object of almost universal faith. All kindreds of the earth have held it in both the ancient and modern world, and a universally received tenet is generally acknowl- edged to be an unquestionable truth, for the utter- ances of our common natures are not wont to deceive, and those feelings which are universally experienced are not false. To suppose that universal intelligence can al- ways and everywhere be hoodwinked by any cun- ningly devised fable is to destroy the value of intelligence itself. It is a fundamental dictate of reason and common sense, that all men cannot be deceived; therefore, heavenly recognition is a reality. 305 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Heavenly Recognition Among the Greeks and Romans In the eleventh book of Odyssey, Homer repre- sents Ulysses as visiting the shades of death. He sees his mother and hastens to embrace her, but she vanishes as a dream before him — he being still in the flesh — while he exclaims in true tenderness and affection : Fliest thou, loved shade, while I thus fondly mourn! Turn to my arms; to my embraces turn! Is it, ye powers, that smile at human harms, Too great a bliss to weep within her arms! We are told that many of the lower orders among the ancients committed suicide, in the fit of sorrow caused by the death of their friends, in order the sooner to be with them again upon immortal shores. Socrates refers to this fact. "Are there not numbers," says he, "who upon the death of their lovers, wives, children, have chosen of their own accord to enter Hades, induced by the hope of seeing there those they loved, and of living with them again V 9 This custom, and the intention of it, are hinted at by Homer in his Iliad, Book XXIII, line 211, where Achilles is said to sacrifice four horses, two dogs and twelve human beings, in connection with the funeral honors of Patroclus, "selected to attend their lord:" 306 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? Four sprightly coursers, with a deadly groan, Pour forth their lives, and on the pyre are thrown: Of nine large dogs, domestic at his board, Fall two, selected to attend their lord; When last of all, and horrible to tell, Sad sacrifice! twelve Trojan captives fell! What does this custom teach if not the belief that earthly attachments are perpetual beyond the grave? • So, also, we find Sophocles, in his Antigone, rep- resenting that ill-fated woman, when about to endure a cruel death, exclaiming : Oh, my deep dungeon! my eternal home! Whither I go to join my kindred dead; But still I have great hopes I shall not go Unwelcomed to my father, nor to thee, My mother! Dear to thee, Eteocles, Still shall I ever be. ^Eschylus, in his Persea, represents the soul of Darius as still possessing the thoughts and feel- ings of his former life, and, in the address which he delivers, this departed spirit is exhibited as retaining a perfect recollection of his earthly history. We find Socrates, in his apology before the judges, thus bearing testimony to the doctrine of mutual recognition and companionship in the life to come : "Who would not part with a great deal to pur- chase a meeting with Orpheus, Hesiod and Homer? If it be true that this is to be the consequence of 307 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? death, I would even be glad to die often. What pleasure will it give to live with Palmedes and others, who suffered unjustly, and to compare my fate with theirs? What an inconceivable happi- ness will it be to converse, in another world, with Sisyphus, Ulysses, etc., especially as those who inhabit that world shall die no more." Not only do we find this doctrine among the refined philosophers and poets of Greece, but like- wise among the polite and polished Komans. Cicero has left us his hopes in these touching words : "For my own part, I feel myself transported with the most ardent impatience to join the society of my two departed friends, your illustrious fathers, whose characters I greatly respected, and whose persons I sincerely loved. Nor is this, my earnest desire, confined alone to those excellent persons with whom I was formerly connected. I ardently wish to visit also those celebrated worthies, of whose honorable conduct I have heard and read much, whose virtues I have myself commemorated in some of my writings. To this glorious assembly I am speedily advan- cing; and I would not be turned back in my jour- ney, even on the assured condition that my youth, like that of Pelias, should again be restored." 308 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? "0 glorious day! when I shall retire from this low and sordid scene, to associate with the divine assembly of departed spirits; and not only with those whom I have just now mentioned, but with my dear Cato, that best of sons and most valuable of men ! It was my sad fate to lay his body on the funeral pile, when by the course of nature I had reason to hope he would have performed the same last office to mine. His soul, however, did not desert me, but still looked back on me in its flight to those happy mansions, to which he was assured I should one day follow him. If I seemed to bear his death with fortitude, it was by no means that I did not most sensibly feel the loss I had sus- tained; it was because I supported myself with the consoling reflection that we should not long be separated." Virgil, in the sixth book of his great Epic, describes iEneas as visiting the realms of the departed and there recognizing and being recog- nized by the spirits he met. The various persons he had known on earth are seen by the Trojan hero. He represents the Sibyl as conducting iEneas through the shades below. As he passed along among them He saw friends, who, whelmed beneath the waves, Their funeral honors claimed, and asked their graves, The lost Leneaspis in the crowd he knew, 309 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Whom, on the Tyrrhne seas, the tempest met, The sailors mastered and the ship o'erset, Amid the spirits Palinurus pressed, Yet fresh from life, a new admitted guest, Who, while he steering viewed the stars, and bore His course from Afric to the Latian shore', Fell headlong down. The Trojan fixed his view, And scarcely through the gloom the sullen shadows kneW» He saw also others, whom he had known on earth. Passing on, he came to the "mournful fields/ ' a place so called because it was the seques- tered and quiet abode of those who were crossed in love, and who had pined away and died under the blight of unrequited affection. In all his representations he speaks of those whom he meets in the shades after their station and manner of life here upon earth. Even the kind of death they died is often alluded to. Dido is not only addressed as a queen, but is also pictured as standing before him, fresh from her wounds, her snowy bosom bathed in blood. In like manner, Deiphobus, the son of Priam, is seen covered with wounds, and despoiled of his lamb. The following quotation affords a fine specimen of the ready manner in which he recognized his friends, and how similar their intercourse was to what they had been accustomed to in this world : 310 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? He with his guide, the farther fields attained, Where, severed from the rest, the warriors' souls remained, Fidens he met, with Meleager's race, The pride of armies, and the soldier's grace; The pale Adrastus, with his ghastly face. Of Trojan chiefs he viewed a numerous train, All much lamented, all in battle slain — Glaucus and Mendon, high above the rest, Atenor's sons, and Ceres' sacred priest, The proud Idaeus, Priam's charioteer, Who shakes his empty reins, and aims his airy spear. The gladsome ghosts in circling troupes attend, . And with unwearied eyes behold their friend: Delight to hover near, and long to know What business brought him to the realms below. Virgil also represents immediate recognition as taking place with eqnal ease in the highest heaven, as in the lower and more sober Hades. Passing on through gloomy and cheerless shades, the region of those who are only partially blest, they enter at length the "verdant fields" of the higher and higher regions. Here, too, he recognizes those he knew upon earth : Here found they Teucer's old heroic race, Born better times, and happier years of grace Assaracus and Ilus here enjoy Perpetual fame, with him who founded Troy. Still he is not satisfied. There are ties of kin- dred, too, and he feels himself pressed in heart to seek his relatives. He longs especially to see his father Anchesis! The Sibyl makes inquiry of sacred priests and poets for the venerable hero. Kindly directed by these, they go through "bliss- ful meadows," and find him at last in a flowery 311 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? vale, viewing, with a kind of holy pride, his race of illustrious descendants, as they pass in review before him. At once old Anchesis discovers his son ! The scene is tender and moving ! The sire sees ^Eneas coming, and Meets him with open arms and falling tears. Welcome, he said, the gods' undoubted race, Oh long expected to my dear embrace! Tis true, computing time, I now believed The happy day approached — nor are my hopes deceived. This rapture of meeting is warmly and affec- tionately reciprocated by his son. Is it not exactly what we feel to be natural, when, after a long separation we meet our friends in realms of bliss? .iEneas exclaims with holy joy: Reach forth your hand, oh parent shade, not shun The dear embraces of your loving son! He said; and falling tears his face bedew: Then thrice around his neck his arms he threw! Thus we find that the poets and philosophers of both Greece and Kome comforted themselves with the hope of recognition and reunion after death. They endured the short separation from their friends in the patience of hope. They suffered not death to break the ties which joined them to their friends. They loved the dead even as the living ; yea, sometimes more — even to deification. They cherished their memories, praised their virtues, forgot their failings and waited in the holy long- 312 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? ing of warm affection to meet them again in the vale of Tempe, in the Hesperian Gardens, the Elysian Fields, or in the peaceful Islands of the Blest, in far-off and quiet seas. Modern Heathen Beliefs But a belief in future recognition has not been confined to the ancient pagans. The Heathen in modern times hold the same doctrine. Thus Dr. Robertson, in his history of America, informs us that, in some places, "upon the death of a Cazique, or American chief, a certain number of his wives, of his favorites and of his slaves were put to death, and interred with him, that he might appear with the same dignity in his future station, and be waited upon by the same attendants as formerly, and that many of the deceased person's retainers offered themselves as voluntary victims, and courted the privilege of accompanying their deceased master as a high distinction. ' ' The burning of Hindu widows was founded on a similar belief. We are told that "the officiating Brahmin causes the widow to repeat the formulas in which she prays that, as long as fourteen Indrus ' reign, or as many years as there are hairs on her head, she may abide in heaven with her husband." 313 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Porphyry tells us that the Indian Gymnoso- phists, or barefooted philosophers, were wont to send messages to their departed friends with those who were about to commit snicide. The natives of Dahomey, too, entertained the same belief; and it was a common practice of the king of that country to send to his forefathers an account of any remarkable event. He did this by delivering the message to the person who was nearest to him at the time, and then ordered his head chopped off immediately, so that he might serve as a courier to convey the intelligence to his friends in the land of spirits. In Guinea when a king died many were slain, that they might again live with him in another world. In 1710, when the prince of Morava, on the coast of Coromandel, died, forty-seven of his wives were burned with his corpse so that they might associate with their husband in the next life. Similar customs have been found among other nations and tribes, all which, though defiled by superstition and sunk in cruelty, betoken the aspirations of the human spirit, and prove that humanity, even in its most degraded phases, still retains the purest of its social affections and longs for everlasting fellowship with the loved ones who have gone before. 314 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? Pope has clothed the American Indian's hope in its most attractive garb : Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind : His soul proud science never taught to stray- Far as the solar walk, or milky way; Yet simple nature to his hope has given, Behind the cloud topp'd hill, an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold; To be, content his natural desire, He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; But thinks admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company. No Distinction of Creed Cardinal Newman, the Eoman Catholic, in his Lead Kindly Light, talks abont the time when The night is gone And in the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. John Fawcett, the Baptist, in his Blest he the tie that binds, sings for ns — When we asunder part, It gives us inward pain; But we shall still be joined in heart And hope to meet again. From sorrow, toil and pain, And sin shall be free, And perfect love and friendship reign Through all eternity. Bonar, the Presbyterian, sings of the land — Where none shall beckon us away, Nor bid our festival be done; Our meeting time the eternal day, Our meeting place the eternal throne. 315 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Then hand in hand firm linked at last And heart enfolded all, We'll smile upon the troubled past And wonder why we wept at all. Muhlenberg, the Episcopal, lifting his gaze to that heavenly country, exultantly sings : There the saints of all ages in harmony meet, Their Saviour and kindred transported to greet, Where anthems of rapture unceasingly roll, And the smile of the Lord is the feast of the soul. And Charles Wesley, the Methodist, sings for us and with us : Come, let us join our friends above That have obtained the prize, And on the eagle wings of love To joys celestial rise. One family we dwell in Him, One church above, beneath, Though now divided by the stream, The narrow stream of death. One army of the living God, To His command we bow. Part of his host have crossed the flood, And part are crossing now. O, that we now might grasp our Guide! O, that the word were given! Come, Lord of hosts, the waves divide, And land us all in heaven! The Heavenly Recognition Among the Primitive Christians To bury their dead decently the early Christians considered a religious duty. In the early church, the Christians often exposed themselves to the greatest danger to get the bodies of the martyrs out of the hands of their persecutors, that they 316 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? might be decently buried. According to the testi- mony of Tertullian, collections, which were de- voted to the bnrial of the poor, were held in the church. To bnry the poor and strangers, was regarded as the last and greatest duty of love. This was a peculiarity, which was so strikingly prominent as to attract the attention of Julian the Apostate; and it was even by him much admired and commended. Even at night they repaired to the places where the bodies of their departed were interred. They thus tried to realize a secret and invisible communion with the beloved dead. They not only cherished the hope of being restored to them, but this continued communion with the loved ones gone before often generated a strong desire for death. The early Christians had a holy horror of the practice of burning the bodies of the dead, which was the custom prevailing at the time in the Eoman Empire. Beyond all reasonable doubt it was the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and the belief in the perpetuation of its identity in another life, where it might again be recognized and known, which inspired them with disgust for a practice which seemed to indicate the belief that hope ought in no way to cling to those lifeless remains. Their tender and hopeful affection is 317 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? beautifully seen in the conduct of the congrega- tion of Smyrna in reference to the body of Poly- carp, their bishop, after he had suffered martyr- dom. "We gathered up his bones,' ' was their affecting language, "which are more precious than gold and jewels, and deposited them in a suitable place ; and God will grant us to assemble there in joy and festivity, and celebrate the birth- day of his martyrdom, in remembrance of the departed champion, and for the purpose of excit- ing and arming those whom the conflict is still awaiting. ' ' — Neander. Hence they loved to have their burying places around their churches, so that it might be seen that the congregation of the dead was still united to the congregation of the living. Neander, too, informs us that the anniversary of the death of their friends was observed as a birthday to a nobler existence; that on this day "it was usual to partake of the supper of the Lord, in the con- sciousness of an inseparable communion of those who died in Christ;" and, he adds, "a gift was laid on the altar in their name, as if they were still living members of the church. ' ' The same eminent historian tells us, that, when multitudes were swept away at Carthage by a desolating pestilence, Cyprian said to his church 318 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? "We ought not to mourn for those who, by the summons of the Lord, are delivered from the world, since we know they are not lost, but sent before us, that they have only taken their leave of us, in order to precede us. We may long for them as we do for those who are on a distant voyage, but not lament them. Why do we not ourselves wish to depart out of the world, or why do we mourn our departed ones as lost! Why do we not hasten to see our country, to greet our par- ents? There awaits us a vast multitude of dear ones — fathers, mothers and children — who are already secure of their own salvation, and anxious only for ours. What a mutual joy to them and us when we shall come into their presence and embrace. ' ' WTien in the third century a similar catas- trophe occurred — Cyprian said to his church: "Ye ought not to mourn for those who are deliv- ered from the world by the call of the Lord, since we know that they are not lost, but sent before us ; that they have taken their leave of us in order to precede us. We may long after them as we do after those who have sailed on a long voyage, but not lament them. We may not here below put on dark robes of mourning, when they above have already put on white robes of glory ; we may 319 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? not give the heathen any just occasion to accuse us of weeping for those as lost and extinct, of whom we say that they live in God, and of failing to prove by the witness of our hearts the faith we confess with our lips. We who live in hope, who believe in God, and trust that Christ has suffered for us and risen again; we, who abide in Christ, who through him and in him rise again — why do we not ourselves wish to depart out of the world? — or why do we lament for the friends who have been separated from us, as if they were lost?" Neander's History of the Church, vol. i., pages 333, 334. At the close of his sermon on immortality, Cyprian breaks out in a touchingly beautiful pas- sage, directly on the subject of the heavenly recognition : ' ' Precious to us will be the day that shall assign to each of us our place of abode, that shall remove us hence and shall release us from the snares of earth, and bring us to Paradise in the heavenly kingdom. Who, finding himself in a strange country, does not earnestly desire to return to his Fatherland? Who, about to sail in haste for his home and his friends across the sea, does not long for a friendly wind, that he may the sooner throw his arms around his beloved ones? We 320 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? believe Paradise to be our Fatherland; our par- ents are the patriarchs ; why should we not hasten and see our home and greet our parents 1 A great host of beloved friends awaits us there ; a numer- ous and varied crowd of parents, brethren, chil- dren, who are secure in a blessed immortality, and only still concerned for us, are looking for our arrival. To see and embrace these — what a mutual joy will this be to us and them ! What bliss, with- out the fear of death, to live eternally in the heavenly kingdom! How vast, and of eternal duration, is our celestial blessedness ! There is the glorious choir of the apostles — there the host of joyful prophets — there the innumerable com- pany of the martyrs, crowned on account of their victory in the conflict of suffering. There in triumph are the pure virgins. There the merciful, who have fed and blessed the poor, and, according to their Lord's directions, have exchanged earthly for heavenly treasures, now receive their glorious reward. To these, dearly beloved brethren, let us hasten with strong desire, and ardently wish soon to be with them, and with Christ. ' ' St. Ambrose, who flourished in the third cen- tury, in a funeral oration, in reference to the death of the Emperor Yalentinian, says : ' * Let us believe that Valentinian is ascended from the desert, that 321 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? is to say, from this dry and unmanured (inculco) place, into those flowery delights, where being conjoined with his brother (Gratian) he enjoyeth the pleasures of everlasting life." St. Jerome comforts a good lady on this account, that we shall see our friends and know them. St. Augustine endeavors to mitigate the sorrow of an Italian widow with this consideration, that she will be restored to her husband, and behold and know him. Thus did the primitive Christians believe, while they sat at the graves of those they had loved in life and still loved in death, "with child-like resig- nation to that eternal love which takes in order to restore what it has taken under a more glorious form, which separates for a moment in order to reunite the separated in a glorious state through eternity. ' ' Revelation and Recognition In the evidences given in another chapter on the Old Testament and Immortality it is clearly shown that the Jews had precious and beautiful ideas, not only of immortality, but of heavenly recognition. The clearest testimony in all the Old Testament is that of David. When his child died, he said, "But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? 322 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? Can I bring him back again! I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. ' ' The source of his consolation was the belief that he should find his child again. Surely David did not think of his child as just among the dead and comfort himself with the hope he too should soon die, and be, like him, in the grave and free from trouble. Instead of yielding to despair, he was cheerfully resigned at the thought of going to his child. The rich con- solation this doctrine affords at such a time none but a parent can fully feel. How many parents would have been drawn after their sainted chil- dren into the grave by a cord of unrelenting grief, were it not that they drew consolation and hope from the same source wherewith this royal parent was comforted: "I shall go to him." In the New Testament the heavenly recognition is everywhere taught by implication. Suppose you were invited to a dinner. Do you not sup- pose the dinner would be a failure if you did not learn to know those who are seated with you at the table? Well, Christ promises that we shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God, and if we shall know Abraham, Isaac and Jacob why not our loved ones that have gone long since! Heaven is the Father's house, "a family in heaven." It would be a strange 323 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? family in which the members did not know each other. Paul in all his epistles speaks of the souls of the departed as forming a society above. He speaks of the congregated body of saints in heaven as « 'the family of God/' as "the household of God," and repeatedly refers to the fact that it was the purpose of Christ to bring together in one place all his believing people, where they would constitute one glorified society. Scattered families shall be reunited, suspended friendships shall be re- established and "we shall know even as also we are known." Glorious family reunion! Those who have preceded us to glory are still ours to be restored to us in fairer bloom when we have crossed the bar. That this is so will be abundantly evident from the following declarations of the Apostle Paul. Thus (II. Thess. 2 : 1), we read, "Now we beseech you brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him. ' ' Yes, when Jesus comes again, he will indeed (John 11 : 52) "gather together in one all the chil- dren of God that had been scattered abroad" over the surface of the earth during the successive generations of time. But, further, Paul not only speaks of this "gathering together" of the saints, 324 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? but also of their being at length presented together by Christ unto the Father. Thus in II. Cor. 4 : 14, he says, "Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus, shall raise us up also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. ' ' He declares that they shall not merely be "presented together, ' ' but that they shall also have "rest" along with each other, when, after the struggles and tribulations of this life are overcome, they shall be made to "sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph. 2:6.) For, in II. Thess. 1 : 7, after having declared that God shall "recompense tribulation" to them that troubled the saints, he adds that, to those troubled saints, the Lord will then give "rest with us." — that is, rest in company with us — "when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his almighty angels." But a still more interesting passage, as bearing upon the subject before us, will be found in Thess. 4: 13-18, where we read: "But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the 325 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Lord shall not precede them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first : then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.' ' The apostle here sets himself to comfort those who have been deprived by death of their Chris- tian friends, and who were still sorrowing under their crushing bereavements. And what is the consolation wherewith he comforts them? He says unto them, ' ' Sorrow not as others which have no hope; ,, but what was this "hope" which he speaks of as belonging peculiarly to them? Why it was that when God should bring their departed friends who were " asleep" in Jesus with him, that then they also which should be alive and remain would be ' t caught up together with them, ' ' or in company with them, "in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air ; and so, ' ' he adds, l i shall we, ' ' even all of us, ' ' ever be with the Lord. ' ' " Where- fore," says he, "seeing that God shall thus event- ually bring our beloved dead with him, and that they and we shall be caught up together, or in 326 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? each other's company, to meet the Lord, and that so we all, — that is, both onr deceased friends and ourselves, — shall be together and forever, with the Lord — comfort one another with these words, ' ' or with this, "blessed hope" of reunion and of a restored and perpetual communion which these words make known. The same truth is taught in Col. 3: 4, where Paul declares, "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear then shall ye also appear with him in glory. " Yes, the saints shall then know, better than they ever knew before, that they are not only "members of Christ," but also, "everyone mem- bers one of another." (Rom. 12: 5, and Eph. 4: 21.) And so far from suffering any curtail- ment of privilege by their transference to the heavenly world, they will, throughout eternity, in a far higher and closer degree than ever they were in time, be permitted not merely to enjoy "fellow- ship with the Father, and with the Son Jesus Christ, ' ' but also to have the ' l fellowship one with another." For then, as "brethren" of the same Lord, and "joint heirs" of the same inheritance, and "children" of the same divine family, they will enjoy a closeness of intercourse to which they were comparative strangers whilst traveling through this desert wilderness of earth, 327 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? The Continuance of Memory in the World to Come Memory will continue to be exercised after dentil and throughout eternity. If this were not so, we could not fully know either what we once were or what through grace we had become. Its exercise throughout eternity will promote our gratitude and joy, and its continuance will be necessary that we may fully feel our obligations to the Saviour and adequately praise him. How can we sing the new song of the redeemed unless we remember what great things have been done for us? The perpetuation of memory is necessary for the preservation of our very identity. Memory is an essential constituent of our mental nature, and deprived of it we should not be essentially ourselves. We should be no longer ourselves, but a new order of creatures. Christ came not to destroy humanity, but to redeem and purify it. There will be no essential change in either our mental or moral condition, and the faculties and feelings of our mortal state will be more fully developed in eternity than they were in time. Frequently, in the Scriptures, we find memory throughout eternity is assumed. Thus the father 328 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? of the faithful in reasoning with Dives says, ' ' Son,* remember that thon in thy life time receivedst thy good things, and thou art tormented. " Dives is reminded of his former life and its good things, and Lazarus of his former state and its evil things, and from his request of Abraham, it is evident that Dives remembered his "five brethren" and "his father's house." Now, if memory will be retained by the lost, vdiy not more so by the glori- fied believer ? The continued exercise of memory is implied in all the descriptions of the judgment, in all those passages which teach our future accountability to God. Thus Paul says: "So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." If memory be destroyed by death, vce should, when called before the "great white throne" have for- gotten all, and could not, therefore, give account of any. And so also that each one may be con- vinced of the righteousness of the award made for the things done in this body he must remember the things done by him, when in this body, — whether they had been good or bad. Individual Friendship Perpetuated It has been supposed that particular friend- ships will, in heaven, be swallowed up in universal 329 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? * charity, but we do not find on earth that Christians, in proportion as they improve in charity toward all mankind, become less capable of personal friendship — less affectionate to their relatives and connections, but on the contrary those who are fullest of brotherly love toward all their fel- low creatures are also the warmest and steadiest in their nearer friendships. Why should it be otherwise in heaven? Can we suppose that a Christian in his glorified state will be more exalted than his great Master here on earth? He certainly was not incapable of friendship. Jesus Christ loved all mankind; he loved espe- cially the disciples who constantly followed him, but even among the apostles he distinguished one as more peculiarly and privately his friend. John was "the disciple whom Jesus loved.' ' Can we then, be ever too highly exalted to be incapable of friendship ? The extension and perfection of friendship will constitute a great part of the future happiness of the blest. I can see no reason why those who have been dearest friends on earth could not when admitted to that happy state continue to be so, with full knowledge and recollection of their for- mer friendship. 330 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? Love's Demand for Heavenly Recognition Paul says, "Love never faileth." It will con- tinue in the future life. We love the departed and they still love us. Though we may not converse with them or enter into actual physical communi- cation with them, there is a mystical communion of saints in which souls above and souls below enter into fellowship with each other. The little waif in Lady Somerset's orphanage understood this when upon finishing his usual prayer, he added: "And God would you mind giving my mother a kiss for me!" Theodore T. Munger says: "If death ends life, what is the world but an ever-yawning grave in which the loving Grod buries his children with hopeless sorrow, mocking at once their love, and hope and every attribute of his own nature?" There is a longing in man's heart to "mingle his conscious life with the life of all conscious beings in a blessed reciprocity of perfect and unending love." Shakespeare makes Hamlet say to his father's ghost : Remember thee? Aye thou poor ghost, While memory holds her seat in this distracted globe. Emerson, pouring out his heart in grief for his dead son, hears the deep Heart answering him: 331 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Think'st beauty vanished from the coast Of matter, and thy darling lost? To be alone wilt thou begin When worlds of lovers hem thee in? When lie hears as the final word the Verdict which accumulates From lengthening scroll of human fates, Saying, What is excellent, As God lives, is permanent; Hearts are dust, heart's loves remain; Heart's love will meet thee again. To Tennyson it is morally inconceivable that love is perishable : If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, I heard a voice, "believe no more," And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the Godless deep ; A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered "I have felt." Do not those wistfnl yearnings and nnsated loves that strain beyond the limits of this life, truly tell ns : 'Bright in that happy land Beams every eye; Kept by a Father's hand Love cannot die. Christina Eosetti sings : 'There no more parting, no more pain; The distant ones brought near; The lost so long are found again — Long lost, but longer dear. Tennyson, pouring out his heart full of im- mortal love for his dead friend Arthur Hallam, cries : 332 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? Dear friend far-off, my lost desire, So far, so near in woe and weal ; loved the most when most I feel There is a lower and a higher. 'Known and unknown; human, divine; Sweet human hand and lip and eye, Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, Mine, mine, forever, ever mine; 'Far-off thou art, but ever nigh; 1 have thee still, and I rejoice; I prosper, circled with thy voice; I shall not lose thee tho' I die. Browning, anticipating his last hour and his reunion with the sweet spirit who had been his wife for many years, exclaims : The element's rage, the fiend voices that rave Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest! Love Indestructible If the power to maintain our loved ones beyond the grave were ours we should assuredly exercise it. Our great yearning for the eternal life of those we love involves the certainty that the great heart of God will outsoar, in the eternal order which he has established, our highest desires. Southey sings : Love is indestructible, Its holy frame forever burnetii; From heaven it came, to heaven returneth; Too oft on earth a troubled guest — At times deceived, at times oppressed — 333 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? It here is tried and purified, Then hath in heaven its perfect rest. It soweth here in toil and care, But the harvest time of love is there. When our friends have crossed the river, we are somehow still bound to them by the cords of a deathless love. "We can somehow never realize that they are gone. In every tear that we shed, and sigh that we heave we have so many proofs, in the soul itself, that the dead, whose memory we so fondly cherish, still live immortal beyond the grave. Henry Ward Beecher thus eloquently and forcefully tells what all of us have felt : ' ' I never saw a man that did not believe in the immortality of love when following the body of a loved one to the grave. I have seen men in other circumstances that did not believe in it; but I never saw a man that, when he looked upon the form of one whom he really loved stretched out for burial, did not revolt from saying, 'It has all come to that : the hours of sweet companionship ; the wondrous interfacings of tropical souls, the joys, the hopes, the trusts, the unutterable yearn- ings, there they all lie\ No man can stand and look in a coffin upon the body of a fellow creature, and remember the flaming intelligence, the blos- soming love, the whole range of divine faculties which so lately animated that cold clay, and say, 334 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? 1 These have all collapsed and gone'. No person can witness the last ceremonials which are per- formed over the remains of a hnman being — the sealing down of the unopenable lid, the following of the rumbling procession to the place of burial, the letting of the dust down into dnst, the falling of the earth upon the hollow coffin, with those sounds that are worse than thunder, and the placing of the green sod over the grave — no per- son, unless he be a beast, can witness these things, and then turn away, and say, 'I have buried my wife; I have buried my child; I have buried my sister, my brother, my love'." We are richer for having loved, although we have lost. To quote Tennyson again : 1 This truth came borne with bier and pall — I felt it when I sorrowed most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all. We are richer because our dead are not lost to us. They have only passed into a higher, fuller, safer life, where they are secure from every danger and trial, and secure also for us. Whit- tier writes : 'And yet, dear heart, remembering thee, Am I not richer than of old? Safe in thy immortality. What change can reach the wealth I hold? What change can mar the pearl and gold Thy love hath left in trust for me? And while in life's late afternoon, Where cool and long the shadows grow, 335 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? I walk to meet the night that soon, Shall darkness and shadow overflow, I cannot feel that thou art far, Since near at need the angels are; And when the sunset gates unbar, Shall I not see thee waiting stand, And, white against the evening star, The welcome of thy beckoning hand? A poor helpless girl, a cripple, who was doomed from childhood to pain and deformity, but who, nevertheless, felt all the warm impulses of an immortal nature, thus wrote and sung of the " loved and lost" who had gone before: Our buried friends can we forget, Although they've passed death's gloomy river? They live within our memory yet, And in our love must live forever. And though they've gone awhile before, To join the ransomed host in heaven, Our hearts will love them more and more, Till earthly chains at last be riven. I heard them bid the world adieu; I saw them on the rolling billow; The far-off home appeared in view, While yet they pressed a dying pillow. I heard the parting pilgrim tell, While passing Jordan's lonely river, Adieu to earth, — now all is well — Now all is well with me forever. Oh! how I long to join their wing, And range their fields of blooming flowers; Come holy watchers, come and bring A mourner to your blissful bowers. I'd speed with rapture on my way, Nor would I pause at Jordan's river; With songs I'd enter endless day, And live with my loved friends forever. Adoniram Judson's Romance There was romance as well as Christian beauty in the life of Dr. Adoniram Judson, the great mis- 336 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? sionary. In 1845, in the forty-fifth year of Mrs. Judson's age, and in the twenty-first year of her missionary life this excellent lady's health failed. It was seen that if she remained in the field she mnst soon sink into the grave. At last a voyage to America was named as presenting the only pros- pect of life. It was finally decided that she, with her hnsband and children, shonld enter npon this voyage. The thought of it was both pleasant and mournful. "To America! the land of her birth, and the home of many a loved one ; where parents, brothers and sisters still trod the soil, and where her darling, her orphan boy (the son of her former husband, the late Eev. George Dana Boardman, D.D.,) might once again be folded to her bosom." Oh, should she visit dear, Christian America once more? Yet she could not leave without sadness those for whom she had toiled and prayed during twenty years of her exile. Had it been right she would have preferred to die quietly in Burmah, rather than interrupt her husband's labors; and her heart sank at parting for years, if not for life, with the most helpless of her babes — the eldest of the three being only four years of age. But duty demanded the sacrifice, and she had been too long obedient to this voice to think of opposing it now. They bore her to the ship, while both fair 337 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? and dusky faces circled round; and long did the sound of those loved, farewell voices, half smoth- ered in grief and choked with tears, dwell upon her ear and heart. Near the Isle of France hope of final recovery grew so strong that it became almost certainty, and now a voice from poor, per- ishable Burmah seemed calling on the invalid for one more sacrifice. She dared not go back herself, but there seemed no longer a necessity for calling her husband from his missionary labor. He should now return to his lonely home in Burmah, and she, with her children, would pursue a way as lonely toward the ' ' setting sun. ' ' It was after this resolution that the following lines, the last words ever traced by her fingers, were penciled on a scrap of paper. Let the reader observe how naturally and how touchingly, under the feeling of uncertainty whether they should ever meet again on earth, her heart dwells on the prospect of a heavenly meeting : We part on this green islet, Love, Thou for the Eastern main, I for the setting sun, Love — Oh, when to meet again? - My heart is sad for thee, Love, For lone thy way will be; And oft thy tears will fall, Love, For thy children and for me. The music of thy daughter's voice Thou'lt miss for many a year; 338 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? And the merry shout of thine elder boys, Thou'lt listen in vain to hear. And when we knelt to see our Henry die, And heard his last faint moan, Each wiped away the other's tears — Now each must weep alone. v My tears fall fast for thee, Love, How can I say farewell? But go ! Thy God be with thee, Love, Thy heart's deep grief to quell! v Yet my spirit clings to thine, Love, Thy soul remains with me, And oft we'll hold communion sweet, O'er the dark and distant sea. And who can paint our mutual joy, When, all our wanderings o'er, We both shall clasp our infants three, At home on Burmah's shore! But higher shall our raptures glow, On yon celestial plain, When the loved and parted here below Meet, ne'er to part again. Then gird thine armor on, Love, Nor faint thou by the way, Till Booddha shall fall, and Burmah's sons Shall own Messiah's sway. She folded that manuscript, a relapse of her disease came on, and she died. Dr. Judson said he put her away on the island of St. Helena await- ing the resurrection. They had thought to part for a year or two ; now they parted forever, so far as this world is concerned. And he hastened on board after the funeral with his little children to start for Burmah, for the vessel had already lifted her sails ; and he says, "I sat down for some 339 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? time in my cabin, my little children aronnd me crying 'mother, mother!' and I abandoned myself to heart-breaking grief. But one day the thought came over me as my faith stretched her wing that we should meet again in heaven, and I was com- forted.' ' Was it delusion? Lord, my God, what a delusion, what a glorious delusion! When he died did she meet him at the landing? I believe she did. Holy affections as well as glorious bodies shall come forth from the tomb. Suspended ties of love, which, like plants, whose life retired during winter into the bosom of the earth, will revive in vernal loveliness and blossom in an eternal spring. This is the immortality which Christ brought to light through the Gospel, this agreeable hope that we shall surely rise again in a new beauty when the eternal morning shall dawn upon the grave, this pleasurable anticipation which rises like a May sun over the world of social life, cheering, warm- ing and making it beautiful, subdues the keenness of grief and brightens up the short interval of sorrow between the death of our loved ones and our own, and sends back the light of comfort from the distant heavens upon the bleak shores of this mortal life. A man returning from a whaling voyage 340 SHALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER THERE? entered port at New Bedford. He had been three years on the cruise and had left his wife and little boy behind. The whaler had been reported as nearing land and the wife and little boy had gone down on the point that juts out a mile or more into the bay to keep a watch for the loved one. They had brought with them a sea-glass so that they might catch a glimpse of the familiar form at the earliest moment possible. Yonder, just off Cutty- hunk, the boat comes into sight with all canvas spread spanking along beneath a stiff breeze. See the woman now as she levels her glass — the throbbing breast, the flashing eye, the intense eagerness in every attitude and gesture, the flush of face, the cry of laughter, the tears of joy. She waves her handkerchief, as a welcome, on the breeze, while the boy dances for gladness, swing- ing and shouting over the water ; they see the hus- band and father, and he sees them and waves his tarpaulin as a sign of recognition. Ah! who can tell the joy of these loving hearts when husband clasps wife in his strong arms and the boy weeps for gladness on his neck? When we reach the land unswept by storm; when we enter the city and temple of our God, fresh from the clasp of death and our victory over death, we shall not feel alone in that multitude. The 341 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? loved of long ago will gather about us and give us welcome. We shall be met at the landing. Those who loved us will greet us, speak our name and embrace us and Jesus will confess us before the angels. Those we have loved, and who have gone before, we shall find waiting for us at the portals and a band of beautiful immortals will surround us on that radiant shore, and with a holy rapture to which only the redeemed can give utterance, lead us to the exalted Saviour, and with us bow at His feet and from him receive the conqueror's crown. Poems of Comfort Why do we mourn when another star Shines out from the glittering sky? Do we weep when the voice of war, And the rage of conflict die? And why do our tears roll down, And our hearts be sorely riven, For another gem in the Saviour's crown, — Another soul in heaven? — Anon. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so I would have told you. . . . And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. St. John 14 : 2, 3. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the say- ing that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. I. Corinthians 15: 53, 54. Having a desire to depart and to be with Christ; which is far better. Philippians 1 : 23. CHAPTER XII Poems of Comfort Blessed Are They That Mourn Oh, deem not they are blest alone Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep; The power who pities man, has shown A blessing for the eyes that weep. The light of smiles shall fill again The lids that overflow with tears ; And weary hours of woe and pain Are promises of happier years. There is a day of sunny rest For every dark and troubled night; And grief may bid an evening guest, But joy shall come with early light. And thou who o'er thy friend's low bier Dost shed the bitter drops like rain, Hope that a brighter, happier sphere Will give him to thy arms again. Nor let the good man's trust depart, Though life its common gifts deny, — Though with a pierced and bleeding heart; And spurned of men, he goes to die. For God hath marked each sorrowing day And numbered every secret tear, And heaven's long age of bliss shall pay For all his children suffer here. — William Cullen Bryant. Household Voices I long for household voices gone, For vanished smiles I long, But God hath led my dear ones on, And he can do no wrong. 347 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? I know not what the future hath Of marvel or surprise, Assured alone that life and death His mercy underlies. And if my heart and flesh are weak To bear an untried pain, The bruised reed he will not break, But strengthen and sustain. And so beside the Silent Sea I wait the muffled oar; No harm from him can come to me On ocean and on shore. I know not where his islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond his love and care. — John Grcenleaf Whittier. Compensation Tears wash away the atoms in the eye That smarted for a day; Rain-clouds that spoiled the splendors of the sky The fields with flowers array. No chamber of pain but has some hidden door That promises release; No solitude so drear but yields its store Of thought and inward peace. No night so wild but brings the constant sun With love and power untold ; No time so dark but through its woof there run Some blessed threads of gold. And through the long and storm-tost centuries burn In changing calm and strife The Pharos-lights of truth, where'er we turn, — The unquenched lamps of life. O Love supreme! O Providence divine! What self-adjusting springs Of law and life, what even scales, are thine, What sure-returning wings. Of hopes and joys, that flit like birds away, When chilling autumn blows, 348 POEMS OF COMFORT But come again, long ere the buds of May Their rosy lips unclose! What wondrous play of mood and accident Through shifting days and years; What fresh returns of vigor overspent In feverish dreams and fears! What wholesome air of conscience and of thought When doubts and forms oppress; What vistas opening to the gates we sought Beyond the wilderness. Beyond the narrow cells, where self -involved, Like chrysalids, we wait The unknown births, the mysteries unsolved Of death and change and fate ! O Light divine ! we need no fuller test That all is ordered well ; We know enough to trust that all is best Where love and wisdom dwell. — Christopher Pearse Cranch. The Angel of Patience A Free Paraphrase op the German To weary hearts, to mourning homes, God's meekest Angel gently comes: No power has he to banish pain, Or give us back our lost again; And yet in tenderest love our dear And Heavenly Father sends him here. There's quiet in that Angel's glance There's rest in his still countenance! He mocks no grief with idle cheer, Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear; But ills and woes he may not cure He kindly trains us to endure. Angel of Patience ! sent to calm Our feverish brows with cooling palm; To lay the storms of hope and fear, And reconcile life's smile and tear; The throbs of wounded pride to still, And make our own our Father's will ! 349 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? O thou who mournest on the way, With longings for the close of day; He walks with thee, that Angel kind, And gently whispers, "Be resigned: Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell The dear Lord ordereth all things well!" — John Greenleaf Whittier. The Parting Hour There's something in "the parting hour" Will chill the warmest heart — Yet kindred, comrades, lovers, friends, Are fated all to part; But this I've seen — and many a pang Has pressed it on my mind — The one who goes is happier Than those he leaves behind. No matter what the journey be — Adventurous, dangerous, far To the wild deep, or black frontier, To solitude, or war — Still something cheers the heart that dares, In all of human kind; And they who go are happier Than those they leave behind. The bride goes to the bridegroom's home With doubtings and with tears, But does not Hope her rainbow spread Across her cloudy fears? Alas! the mother who remains, What comfort can she find But this — the gone is happier Than the one she leaves behind. Have you a trusty comrade dear — An old and valued friend? Be sure your term of sweet concourse At length will have an end. And when you part — as part you will — Oh take it not unkind, If he who goes is happier Than you he leaves behind. God wills it so, and so it is; The pilgrims on their way, Though weak and worn, more cheerful are Than all the rest who stay. 350 POEMS OF COMFORT And when, at last, poor man, subdued, Lies down to death resigned, May he not still be happier far Than those he leaves behind? — Edward Pollock. How Long? My God, it is not f retfulness That makes me say, "How long?" It is not heaviness of heart That hinders me in song; 'Tis not despair of truth and right, Nor coward dread of wrong. But how can I, with such hope Of glory and of home, With such a joy before my eyes, Not wish the time were come, Of years the jubilee, of days The Sabbath and the sun? These years, what ages they have been ! This life, how long it seems! And how, can I, in evil days, 'Mid unknown hills and streams, But sigh for those of home and heart, And visit them in dreams? Yet peace, my heart; and hush, my tongue; Be calm, my troubled breast; Each restless hour is hastening on The everlasting rest; Thou knowest that the time thy God Appoints for thee is best. Let faith, not fear, nor fretfulness Awake the cry, "How long?" Let no faint-heartedness of soul Damp thy aspiring song; Eight comes, truth dawns, the night departs Of error and of wrong. — Horatius Bonar. Lights and Shades The gloomiest day hath gleams of light, The darkest wave hath bright foam near it; And twinkles through the cloudiest night Some solitary star to cheer it. 351 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? The gloomiest soul is not all gloom, The saddest hour is not all sadness; And sweetly o'er the darkest doom There shines some lingering beam of gladness. Despair is never quite despair, Nor life, nor death the future closes; And round the shadowy brow of care Will hope and fancy twine thy roses. — Mrs. F. D. Hemans. Thy Way Thy way, not mine, Lord! However dark it be ; Lead me by Thine own hand, Choose out the path for me. Smooth let it be, or rough, It will be still the best; Winding or straight, it leads Right onward to Thy rest. I dare not choose my let; I would not if I might; Choose then for me, my God; So shall I walk aright. Daily Strength As thy day thy strength shall be, This should be enough for thee; He who knows thy frame will spare Burdens more than thou canst bear. When the days are veiled in night Christ shall give thee heavenly light; Seem they wearisome and long, Yet in Him thou shall be strong. Cold and wintry though they prove, Thine the sunshine of His love; Or with fervid heat oppressed, In His shadow thou shalt rest. When thy days on earth are past, Christ shall call thee home at last, His redeeming love to praise, Who has strengthened all thy days. — Frances Ridley Havergal. 352 POEMS OF COMFORT The Rift in the Clouds There comes a time in the lives of men, And women, too, I ween, When the sum of our strivings is reckoned up, And the total product seen. When the joy and triumph that is ours to-day, Atones for the failure of yesterday. When the rift in the clouds shows the shining sun, Which illumes the record of victories won, And the tears that are shed in the midnight gloom, Having v/atered the roses now in bloom, Shall be by the great Assayer weighed, And the justly accounted tribute paid. The merit is thine, perhaps, or mine, The awarder of merit, the Giver Divine. Then onward press, though the way is long, The applause of the audience follows the song, And the goal may be near or far away, Or the final triumph may come to-day. Not a sparrow falleth, the promise reads, Should our hairs be numbered and not our deeds? Was the Man of sorrows chosen king By those of his nation ; or sent to bring "Peace on earth" in God's own way? A gift we accept and reject each day. The promise fulfilled, the debt is paid, And by this measure shall each be weighed, By a balance which held in a Mighty hand, The recording angel shall understand, And success and failure, adjusted right, By the Spirit which strengthens the arm to fight. And my commission may come to-day, Or withheld till the stone shall be rolled away. — Laurenstine Yorke. No Cross Borne in Vain A picture memory brings to me : I look across the years and see Myself beside my mother's knee. I feel her gentle hand restrain My selfish moods, and know again A child's blind sense of wrong and pain. 353 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? But wiser now, a man gray grown, My childhood's needs are better known, My mother's chastening love I own. Gray grown, but in our Father's sight A child still groping for the light To read His works and ways aright. I wait, in his good time to see That as my mother dealt with me So with His children dealeth He. I bow myself beneath His hand; That pain itself was wisely planned I feel and partly understand. The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, I would not have them otherwise. And what were life and death, if sin Knew not the dread rebuke within, The pang of merciful discipline? Not with any proud despair of old, Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest mould! Pleasure and pain alike I hold. I suffer with no pain pretence Of triumph over flesh and sense; Yet trust the grievous Providence. How dark soe'er it seems, may tend, By ways I cannot comprehend, To some unguessed, benignant end. That every loss and lapse may gain, The clear-aired heights by step of pain, And never cross is borne in vain. —J. G. Whittier. Spin Cheerfully Spin cheerfully, Not tearfully, Though wearily you plod. Spin carefully, Spin prayerfully, But leave the thread to God. 354 POEMS OF COMFORT The shuttles of His purpose move To carry out His own design, Seek not too soon to disapprove His work, nor yet assign Dark motives, when with silent dread You view each sombre fold, For lo ! within each darker thread There shines a thread of gold. Spin cheerfully, Not tearfully, He knows the way you plod; Spin carefully, Spin prayerfully, But leave the thread with God. A Silvery Light for Every Cloud For every cloud, a silvery light, God wills it so. For every vale a shining height, A glorious morn for every night, And birth for labor's throe. For snow's white wing, a verdant field; A gain for loss, For buried seed the harvest yield; For pain, a strength, a joy revealed, A crown for every cross. Trust and Submission My God, I thank Thee : may no thought E'er deem Thy chastisement severe; But may this heart by sorrow taught, Calm each wild wish, each idle fear. Thy mercy bids all nature bloom ; The sun shines bright, and man is gay, Thy equal mercy spreads the gloom That darkens o'er this little day. Full many a throb of grief and pain Thy frail and erring child must know; But not one prayer is breathed in vain, Nor does one tear unheeded flow. The various messengers employ, Thy purposes of love fulfil; And mid the wreck of human joy, Let kneeling faith adorn Thy will. — Andrew Norton. 355 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Leona Leona, the hour draws nigh, The hour we've awaited so long For the angel to open a door through the sky, That my spirit may break through the prison and try Its voice in an infinite song. Just now, as the slumbers of night Come o'er me with peace-giving breath, The curtain, half-lifted, revealed to my sight Tho?e windows which look on the kingdom of light That borders the river of death. And a vision fell, solemn and sweet, Bringing gleams of a morning-lit land; I saw the white shore which the pale waters beat, And I heard the low lull as they broke on their feet Who walked on the beautiful strand. And I wondered why spirits should cling To their clay with a struggle and sigh, When life's purple autumn is better than spring, And the soul flies away, like a sparrow to sing In a climate where leaves never die. Leona, come close to my bed, And lay your dear hand on my brow The same touch that thrilled me in days that are fled, And raised the lost roses of youth from the dead, Can brighten the brief moments now. I thank the Great Father for this, That our love is not lavished in rain; Each germ, in the future, will blossom to bliss, And the forms that we love, and the lips that we kiss, Never shrink at the shadow of pain. By the light of this faith am I taught That my labor is only begun; In the strength of this hope have I struggled and fought With the legions of wrong, till my armor has caught The gleam of Eternity's sun. Leona, look forth and behold, From headland, from hillside and deep, The day-king surrenders his banners of gold; The twilight advances through woodland and wold, And the dews are beginning to weep. POEMS OF COMFORT The moon's silver hair lies uncurled, Down the broad-breasted mountains away; Ere sunset's red glories again shall be furled, On the walls of the West, o'er the plains of the world I shall rise in a limitless day. O ! come not in tears to my tomb, Nor plant with frail flowers the sod ; There is rest among roses too sweet for its gloom, And life where the lilies eternally bloom In the balm-breathing gardens of God. Yet deeply those memories burn, Which bind me to you and to earth; And I sometimes have thought that my being would yearn In the bowers of its beautiful home, to return, And visit the place of its birth. 'Twould be pleasant to stay, And walk by your side to the last; But the land-breeze of heaven is beginning to play — Life's shadows are meeting Eternity's day And its tumult is hushed in the past. Leona, good-bye. Should the grief Which is gathering now, ever be Too dark for your faith, you will long for relief, And remember, the journey tho' lonesome, is brief Over lowland and river to me. — James Allen Clark. < Sweet, Sweet Hope! Beyond the smiling and the weeping I shall be soon; Beyond the waking and the sleeping, Beyond the sowing and the reaping, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come. Beyond the blooming and the fading I shall be soon; Beyond the shining and the shading, Beyond the hoping and the dreading, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! 357 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Beyond the rising and the setting I shall be soon; Beyond the calming and the fretting, Beyond remembering and forgetting, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Beyond the gathering and the strowing I shall be soon; Beyond the ebbing and the flowing, Beyond the coming and the going, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Beyond the parting and the meeting I shall be soon; Beyond the farewell and the greeting, Beyond this pulse's fever beating, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Beyond the frost chain and the fever I shall be soon; Beyond the rock-waste and the river, Beyond the ever and the never, I shall be soon. Love, rest, and home! Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come. — Horatius Bonar. To Myself Let nothing make thee sad or fretful, Or too regretful; Be still; What God hath ordered must be right; Then find it in thine own delight, My will. Why shouldst thou fill to-day with sorrow About to-morrow, My heart? One watches all with care most true; Doubt not that he will give thee too Thy part. Only be steadfast; never waver, Nor seek earth's favor, But rest: 358 POEMS OP COMFORT Thou knowest what God wills must be For all his creatures, so for thee, The best. From the German of PAUL FLEMING. — Translation of Catherine Winkworth. The Heavenly Sculptor Shrink not from sufferings. Each dear blow From which thy smitten spirit bleeds Is but a messenger to show The renovation which it needs. The earthly sculptor smites the rock; Loud the relentless hammer rings; And from the rude unshapen block At length imprisoned beauty brings. Thou art the rude unshapen stone, And waitest till the arm of strife Shall make its crucifixion known And smite and carve them into life. The heavenly Sculptor works on thee; Be patient. Soon his arm of might Shall from thy prison's darkness free, And change thee to a form of light. — Thomas C. Upham. God's Sure Help in Sorrow (Leave all to God, Forsaken one, and stay thy tears ; For the Highest knows thy pain, Sees thy sufferings and thy fears; Thou shalt not wait his help in vain; Leave all to God. Be still and trust! For Ms strokes are strokes of love, Thou must for thy profit bear; He thy filial fear would move, Trust thy Father's loving care, Be still and trust! f Know, God is near! Though thou think'st him far away, Though his mercy long hath slept, He will come and not delay, When his child enough hath wept, For God is near! 359 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Oh, teach him not When and how to hear thy prayers; Never doth our God forget; He the cross who longest bears Finds his sorrows' bounds are set; Then teach him not! If thou love him, Walking truly in his ways, Then no trouble, cross or death E'er shall silence faith and praise; All things serve thee here beneath, If thou love God. From the German of ANTON ULRICH, Duke of Brunswick, 1667. — Translation of Catherine Winkworth, 1855. The Tearless Land We're going home, we've had visions bright Of that holy land, that world of light, Where the long dark night of time is past, And the morn of eternity dawns at last; Where the weary saints no more shall roam, But dwell in a happy, peaceful home : Where the brow with sparkling gems is crown'd, And the waves of bliss are flowing round. Oh! that beautiful world! Oh, that beautiful world! — Anon. Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold a far-stretching land. Isa. 33: 17. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city. Heb. 11 : 16. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun strike upon them, nor any heat: for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. Rev. 7: 16, 17. CHAPTER XIII The Tearless Land Our floral forget-me-nots blossom and die When the winds of the autumn sweep chillingly by; But the heart's bright forget-me-nots never shall fade When under the white drifts our loved ones are laid; And the days, as they fly o'er the dial of time, Are bringing us nearer to that brighter clime Where we shall again our best loved ones embrace, And the glories of home shall earth's sorrows efface. We weave from fair blossoms a cross and a crown, And on the cold coffin we lay them both down; Tis all we can do; we'll adorn the fair clay Ere under the white drifts we lay it away. But the days, as they fly o'er the dial of time, Are bringing us nearer to that brighter clime Where the crowns are not leaves that must wither and mould, But they sparkle with jewels and glisten with gold. We sing our sweet hymns round the slumbering clay Ere under the white drifts we lay it away; And we lift our dim eyes to the kingdom above, Unto Him who chastises us only in love. O ! the days, as they fly o'er the dial of time, Are bringing us nearer to that brighter clime Where the songs of the blest with the sainted we'll sing At the feet of our Prophet, our Priest, and our King. W 7 e bury the dead we so love, from our sight, While a star beameth forth from the depth of our night; It comforts the heart and dispelleth the gloom, As we follow the dead to the rest of the tomb. O ! the days, as they fly o'er the dial of time, Are bringing us nearer to that brighter clime Where "the King in His beauty," the Bethlehem Star, Shall cheer us forever in kingdoms afar. — John II. Yates. 365 Co AFTER DEATH— WHAT? The Undiscovered Country THE QUESTION Could we but know The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel, Where lie those happier hills and meadows low; Ah! if beyond the spirit's inmost cavil Aught of that country could we surely know, Who would not go? Might we but hear The hovering angel's high imagined chorus, Or catch, betimes, with wakeful eyes and clear One radiant vista of the realm before us, — With one rapt moment given to see and hear, Ah, who would fear? Were we quite sure To find the peerless friend who left us lonely, Or there, by some celestial stream as pure, To gaze in eyes that here were lovelit only, — This weary mortal coil, were we quite sure, Who would endure? — Edmund Clarence Stedman. THE ANSWER "Who would not go" With buoyant steps, to gain that blessed portal, Which opens to the land we long to know? Where shall be satisfied the souls immortal, Where we shall drop the wearying and the woe In resting so? "Ah, who would fear?" Since, sometimes through the distant pearly portal, Unclosing to some happy soul a-near, We catch a gleam of glorious light immortal, And strains of heavenly music faintly hear, Breathing good cheer! "Who would endure" To walk in doubt and darkness with misgiving, When he whose tender promises are sure — The Crucified, the Lord, the Ever-living — Keeps us those "mansions" evermore secure By waters pure? 366 THE TEARLESS LAND wondrous land! Fairer than all our spirit's fairest dreaming: "Eye hath not seen," no heart can understand The things prepared, the cloudless radiance streaming. ^ How longingly we wait our Lord's command — His opening hand! O dear ones there ! Whose voices, hushed, have left our pathway lonely, We come, erelong, your blessed home to share; We take the guiding hand, we trust it only — Seeing, by faith, beyond this clouded air, That land so fair! — Anon. Beyond Beyond life's toils and cares, Its hopes and joys, its weariness and sorrow, Its sleepless nights, its days of smiles and tears, Will be a long, sweet life unmarked by years, One bright unending morrow. Beyond time's troubled stream, Beyond the chilling waves of death's dark river, Beyond life's lowering clouds and fitful gleams, Its dark realities and brighter dreams, A'beautiful forever. No aching hearts are there, No tear-dimmed eye, no form by sickness wasted, No cheek grown pale through penury or care, No spirits crushed beneath the woes they bear, No sigh for bliss untasted. No sad farewell is heard, No lonely wail for loving ones departed, No dark remorse is there o'er memories stirred, No smile of scorn, no harsh or cruel word To grieve the broken hearted. No long, dark night is there, No light from sun or silvery moon is given, But Christ, the Lamb of God all bright and fair, Illumes the city with effulgence rare, The glorious light of heaven. No mortal eye hath seen The glories of that land beyond the river, Its crystal lakes, its fields of living green, Its fadeless flowers and the unchanging sheen Around the throne forever. 367 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Ear hath not heard the songs Of rapturous praise within that shining portal, No heart of man hath dreamed what bliss belongs To that redeemed and joyous blood-washed throng, All glorious and immortal. — Mrs. J. E. Akers. The One Glad Day There is no night in heaven; In that blest world above Work never can bring weariness, For work itself is love. There is no night in heaven; Yet nightly round the bed Of every Christian wanderer Faith hears an angel tread. There is no grief in heaven; For life is one glad day, And tears are of those former things Which all have passed away. There is no grief in heaven; Yet angels from on high On golden pinions earthward glide, The Christian's tears to dry. There is no sin in heaven; Behold that blessed throng, All holy in their spotless robes, All holy in their song! There is no sin in heaven, Here, who from sin is free? Yet angels aid us in our strife For Christ's true liberty. There is no death in heaven, For they who gain that shore Have won their immortality, And they can die no more. There is no death in heaven, But when the Christian dies, The angels 'wait his parted soul, And waft it to the skies. — Frederick D. Huntington. There is Light Beyond Beyond the stars that shine in golden glory, Beyond the calm, sweet moon, Up the bright ladder, saints have trod before thee, Soul, thou shalt venture soon. 368 THE TEARLESS LAND Secure with Him who sees thy heartsick yearning, Safe in His arms of love, Thou shalt exchange the midnight for the morning And thy fair home above. Oh! it is sweet to watch the world's night wearing, The Sabbath morn come on, And sweet it were the vineyard labor sharing — Sweeter the labor done. All finished ! all the conflict and the sorrow, Earth's dream of anguish o'er; Deathless there dawns for thee a nightless morrow On Eden's blissful shore. Patience ! then, patience ! soon the pangs of dying Shall all forgotten be, And thou, through rolling spheres rejoicing, flying Beyond the waveless sea, Shalt know hereafter where thy Lord doth lead thee, His darkest dealings trace, And by those fountains where His love will feed thee, Behold Him face to face. Then bow thine head, and God shall give thee meekness Bravely to do His will; So shall arise His glory in thy weakness — Oh, struggling soul, be still! Dark clouds are His pavilion shining o'er thee; Thine heart must recognize The veiled Shekinah moving on before thee, Too bright to meet thine eyes. Behold the wheels that straightly moves, and fleetly ^ — Performs the sovereign word; Thou know'st His suffering love! then suffering meekly> Follow thy loving Lord ! Watch on the tower, and listen by the gateway, Nor weep to wait alone; Take thou thy spices, and some angel straightway Shall roll away the stone. Then shalt thou tell thy living Lord hath risen, And risen but to save; Tell of the might that breaks the captive's prison, And life beyond the grave! Tell how He met thee, all His radiance shrouded; How in thy deep sorrow came His pitying voice breathing, when faith was clouded, Thine own familiar name. 369 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? So at the grave's last portal thou may'st linger, And hymn some happy strain; The passing world may mock the feeble singer — Heed not, but sing again. Thus wait, thus watch, till He the last link sever, And changeless rest be won; Then in His glory thou shall bask forever, Fear not the clouds — press on! — Anon. What Must It Be To Be There ? We speak of the realms of the blest Of that country so bright and so fair, And oft are its glories contest, But what must it be to be there? We speak of its pathways of gold, Of its walls decked with jewels so rare, Of its wonders and pleasures untold, — But what must it be to be there? We speak of its freedom from sin, From sorrow, temptation and care, From trials without and within, But what must it be to be there? We speak of its service of love, Of the robes which the glorified wear, Of the Church of the first-born above, But what must it be to be there? Do Thou, Lord, 'midst sorrow and woe, For heaven, my spirit prepare, And shortly I also shall know, And feel what it is to be there! — Mrs. Elizabeth Mills. The Circle Complete Ours is the grief, who still are left in this far wilderness Which will at times, now they are gone, seem blank and com- fortless. For moments spent with loving hearts are breezes from the hills, And the balm of Christian brotherhood like Eden's dew distils : And we whose footsteps and whose hearts so often fail and faint, Seem ill to spare the cheering voice of one departed saint. 370 THE TEARLESS LAND But oh, we sorrow not like those who no bright hopes sustain, For them who sleep in Jesus, God will bring with him again, Love craves the presence and the sight of all its well-beloved, And therefore weep we in the homes whence they are far removed, Love craves the presence and the sight of each beloved one, And therefore Jesus spake the word which caught them to his throne: "Father, I will that all my own, that thou hast granted me, Be with me where I am to share my glory's bliss with thee." Thus heaven is gathering, one by one, in its capacious breast, All that is pure and permanent, and beautiful and blest, The family is scatter'd yet, though of one home and heart, Part militant in earthly gloom, in heavenly glory part. But who can speak the rapture, when the circle is complete, And all the children sunder 'd now around one Father meet? One fold, one Shepherd, one employ, one everlasting home: "Lo ! I come quickly." "Even so, Amen : Lord Jesus, come." — Edivard Henry Bickersteth. I See Thee Still I see thee still ! Remembrance, faithful to her trust, Calls thee in beauty from the dust. Thou comest in the morning light, Thou'rt with me in the gloomy night, In dreams I meet thee as of old, Then thy soft arms my neck enfold, And thy sweet voice is in mine ear, In every scene to memory dear I see thee still ! I see thee still ! In every hallowed token round; This little ring thy finger bound, This lock of hair thy forehead shaded, This silken chain by thee was braided; These flowers, now withered just like thee, Sweet sister, thou didst cull for me; This book was thine, here didst thou read. This picture — ah, yes ! here, indeed, I see thee still ! I see thee still ! Here was thy summer's noon retreat; Here was thy favorite fireside seat, This was thy chamber, — here each day, I sat and watched thy sad decay, 371 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Here on this bed thou last didst lie, Here on this pillow thou didst die : Dark hour! Once more its hours unfold! As then I saw thee pale and cold, I see thee still ! I see thee still! Thou art not in the grave confined — Death cannot claim the immortal mind, Let earth close o'er its sacred trust, But goodness dies not in the dust. Thee, my sister! 'tis not thee Beneath the coffin's lid I see; Thou to a fairer land art gone! Then let me hope, my journey done, To see thee still! — Charles Sprague. Reunions in Heaven Death, with his healing hand, Shall once more knit the band Which needs but that one link which none may sever; Till, through the only Good, Heard, felt and understood, Our life in God shall make us one forever. — Anon. But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concern- ing them which are asleep ; that ye sorrow not, even as others, which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. I. Thess. 4 : 13, 14. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we, which are alive and remain, shall together, with them, be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. I. Thess. 4: 16-18. CHAPTER XIV Reunions in Heaven The Family in Heaven 'Tis but one family — the sound is balm, A seraph- whisper to the wounded heart, It lulls the storm of sorrow to a calm, And draws the venom from the avenger's dart. 'Tis but one family — the accents come Like light from heaven to break the night of woe, The banner-cry, to call the spirit home, The shout of victory o'er a fallen foe. Death cannot separate — is memory dead? Has thought, too, vanished, and has love grown chill? Has every relic and memento fled, And are the living only with us still. No ! in our hearts the lost we mourn remain, Objects of love and ever-fresh delight; And fancy leads them in her fairy train, In half-seen transports past the mourner's sight. Yes ! in ten thousand ways, or far or near, The called by love, by meditation brought, In heavenly visions yet they haunt us here, The glad companions of our sweetest thought. Death never separates, the golden wires That ever trembled to their names before, Will vibrate still, though every form expires, And those we love, we look upon no more. No more indeed in sorrow and in pain, But even memory's need erelong will cease, For we shall join the lost of love again, In endless bonds, and in eternal peace. — James Edmeston. 377 I AFTER DEATH— WHAT? My Dead cannot think of them as dead Who walk with me no more; Along the path of life I tread They have but gone before. The Father's house is mansioned fair Beyond my vision dim; All souls are his, and here or there Are living unto him. And still their silent ministry Within my heart hath place, As when on earth they walked with me And met me face to face. Their lives are made forever mine; What they to me have been Hath left henceforth its seal and sign Engraven deep within. Mine are they by an ownership Nor time nor death can free; For God hath given to Love to keep Its own eternally. — Frederick L. Hosmer. Soon With Thee Our beloved have departed, While we tarry, broken-hearted, In the dreary, empty house; They have ended life's brief story; They have reached the home of glory, Over death victorious ! Hush that sobbing; weep more lightly; On we travel, daily, nightly, To the rest that they have found; Are we not upon the river, Sailing fast to meet forever On more holy, happy ground? Whilst with bitter tears we're mourning, Thought to buried loves returning, Time is hasting us along, Downward to the grave's dark dwelling, Upward to the fountain welling With eternal life and song! 378 REUNIONS IN HEAVEN See ye not the breezes hying, Clouds along in hurry flying? But we haste more swiftly on, Ever changing our position, Ever tossed in strange transition, Here to-day, to-morrow gone. Every hour that passes o'er us Speaks of comfort yet before us, Of our journey's rapid rate; And, like passing vesper bells, The clock of time its chiming tells At eternity's broad gate. On we haste to home invited, There with friends to be united In a surer bond than here, Meeting soon, and met forever; Glorious hope forsake us never, For thy glimmering light is dear. Ah, the way is shining clearer, As we journey, ever nearer To the everlasting home, Friends who there await our landing, Comrades round the throne now standing, We salute you, and we come! — From the German of J. Lange. Longing for Reunion Away with death — away With all her sluggish sleep and chilling damps. Impervious to the day, Where Nature sinks into inanity. How can the soul desire Such hateful nothingness to crave, And yield with joy the vital fire To moulder in the grave! Yet mortal life is sad, Eternal storms molest its sullen sky; And sorrow ever rife Drain the sacred fountain dry Away with mortal life! But hail the calm reality, The seraph immortality! Hail the heavenly bowers of peace Where all the storms of passion cease. Life's dismaying struggle o'er, The wearied weeps no more; 379 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? But wears the eternal smile of joy, Tasting bliss without alloy. Welcome, welcome happy bowers, Where no passing tempest lowers. But the azure heavens display The everlasting smile of day; Where the choral seraph choir Strike the harmonious lyre; And the spirit sinks to ease, Lulled by distant symphonies. Oh, to think of meeting there, The friends whose graves received our tear, The daughter loved, the wife adored, To our widowed arms restored; And all the joys which death did sever, Given to us again forever! Who would cling to wretched life, And hug the poisoned thorn of strife; Who would not long from earth to fly, A sluggish senseless lump to lie, When the glorious prospect lies Full before his raptured eyes? — H. K. White. Light at Eventide At evening time let there be light: Life's little day draws near its close; Around me fall the shades of night, The night of death, the grave's repose; To crown my joys, to end my woes, At evening time let there be light. At evening time let there be light : Stormy and dark hath been my day; Yet rose the morn divinely bright, Dew, birds, and blossoms cheered the way; Oh, for one sweet, one parting ray ! At evening time let there be light. At evening time there shall be light, For God hath spoke — it must be; Fear, doubt, and anguish take their flight — His glory now is risen on me, Mine eyes shall His salvation see, 'Tis evening time, and there is light. Recognition in the Resurrection And shall I e'er again thy features trace, Beloved friend; thy lineaments review? Yes; though the sunken eye and the livid hue, 380 REUNIONS IN HEAVEN And lips compressed, have quenched each lively grace, Death's triumph; still I recognize the face Which thine for many a year affection knew; And what forbids, that, clothed with life anew, It still on memory's tablet holds its place? — Tho' then thy cheek with deathless bloom be sheen, And rays of splendor wreathe thy sun-like brow, That change I deem shall sever not between Thee and thy former self; nor disallow That love's tried eye discern thee through the screen Of glory then, as of corruption now. — Bishop Mant. The Departure of Friends Friend after friend departs : (_...-- Who hath not lost a friend? There is no union here of hearts, That finds not here an end. Were this frail world only rest, Living or dying, none were blest. Beyond the flight of time, Beyond this vale of death, There surely is some blessed clime Where life is not a breath. Nor life's affection transient fire, Whose sparks fly upward to expire. There is a world above, Where parting is unknown; A whole eternity of love, Formed for the good alone; And faith beholds the dying here, Translated to that happier shore. Thus star by star declines, Till all are passed away, As morning high and higher shines, To pure and perfect day; Nor sink those stars in empty night, They hide themselves in heaven's own light. — James Montgomery. The Radiant Shore Will they meet us, cheer and greet us, Those we've loved, who've gone before? Shall we find them at the portals, Find our beautiful immortals, When we reach the radiant shore? 381 AFTER DEATH— WHAT? Hearts are broken, for some token That they live and love us yet! And we ask, can those who left us, Of love's look and tone bereft us, Though in heaven, can they forget? And we often, as days soften, • And comes out the evening star, Looking westward, sit and wonder Whether, when so far asunder They still think how dear they are! Past yon portals, our immortals, Those who walk with him in white, Do they, 'raid their bliss, recall us? Know they what events befall us? Will our coming wake delight? They will meet us, cheer and greet us, Those we've loved, who've gone before; We shall find them at the portals, Find our beautiful immortals, When we reach that radiant shore! Over the River Over the river they beckon to me, Loved ones who've crossed to the further side; The gleams of their snowy robes I see. But, their voices are lost in the rushing tide. There's one with ringlets of sunny gold, And eyes, the reflection of heaven's own blue; He crossed in the twilight gray and cold, And the pale mist hid him from mortal view: We saw not the angel that met him there, The gates of the city we could not see — Over the river, over the river, My brother stands waiting to welcome me. Over the river the boatman pale, Carried another, the household pet; Her brown curls wave in the gentle gale, Darling Minnie! I see her yet. She crossed on her bosom her dimpled hands, And fearlessly entered the phantom bark ; We felt it glide from the silver sands, And all our sunshine grew strangely dark; We know she is safe on the other side, Where all the ransomed and angels be — Over the river, the mystic river, My childhood's idol is waiting for me. 382 REUNIONS IN HEAVEN For none return from those quiet shores, Who cross with the boatman cold and pale, We hear the dip of their golden oars, And catch a glimpse of their snowy sail ; And lo, they have passed from our yearning hearts, They cross the stream and are lost for aye. We may not sunder the veil apart, That hides from our vision the gates of day. We only know that the barks no more May sail with us o'er life's stormy sea; Yet, somewhere I know, on the unseen shore, They watch, and beckon, and wait for me. And I sit and think where the sunset's gold, Is flushing river, and hill, and shore, I shall one day stand by the waters cold, And list for the sound of the boatman's oar; I shall watch for the gleam of the flapping sail, I shall hear the boat as it gains the strand, I shall pass from sight with the boatman pale, To the better shore of the spirit land; I shall know the loved that have gone before, And joyfully sweet will the meeting be, When over the river, the peaceful river, The angel of death shall carry me. — Nancy Priest, Index of Authors INDEX OF AUTHORS PAGE Abbott, Lyman, 134, 135 Addison, Joseph, 27, 35 iEschylus, 307 Akers, Mrs. J. E., 80, 367, 368 Alder, Rabbi Herman, 67 Alford, Henry, 53 Argyle, Duke of 132 Aristotle, 275 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 54 Barbauld, Mrs., 172 Bascom, Dr. John, 127 Baumgarten, Siegmund Jacob, 60 Beale, Dr. Lionel, 127 Beecher, Henry Ward, 153, 154, 334, 335 Bickersteth, Edward Henry, 370, 371 Bonar, Horatius, . . . 215, 246, 315, 316, 351, 357, 358 Bradford, Dr. Amory, 156, 157 Brooks, Phillips, 129 Browning, Robert, 45, 91, 267, 333 Bryan, William Jennings, 165, 166 Bryant, William Cullen, 25, 347 Byron, Lord, 20, 248 Cary,Phcebe, 79 Carlyle, Thomas, 22, 76, 134 Cicero, 25, 41, 45, 276, 308, 309 Clark, James Allen, 356, 357 Cobbe, Frances Power, 132, 133 Coleridge, T. C, 55, 125 Cooke, Joseph, ..... 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153 Cranch, Christopher Pearse, 348, 349 Cyprian, . . . 320 387 INDEX OF AUTHORS PAGE Daniel, 71 David, 68, 322, 323 Delitzsch, Adolf Franz, 61 Democritus, 22 Dickinson, Emily, 20 Douglas, Fred, 115 Edmeston, James, 377 Eliot, George, 20 Elizabeth, Queen, 30 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 21, 136, 331, 332 Epictetus, 22 Erskine, Lord-Chancellor, 125, 126 Ezekiel, 65 Fawcett, John, 315 Fiske,John, 21, 126, 127, 159, 160, 161 Fleming, Paul, 358, 359 Foster, Bishop Randolph S., . . 145, 146, 147, 148, 270 George, William Potts, 168 Gerlach, Otto von 60 Gladden, Washington, 161, 162 Goethe, Johann W. von 44, 138 Gordon, Dr. George, 130, 131 Harnack, Prof., 166 Havergal, Frances Ridley, 352 Hemans, Mrs. F. D., 351, 352 Herford, Dr. Brooke, 131, 132 Herschell, Sir John, 35 Hobart, Mrs. Charles, 108 Homer, 306, 307 Hosmer, Frederick L., 378 Hugo, Victor, 43, 44, 133, 134 Humboldt, 278, 279 Huntington, Frederick D., 368 Isaiah, 69 Jacob, 113 James, Prof. William, 138 383 INDEX OF AUTHORS PAGE Job, 58, 70 Johnson, Herrick, ........ ... 188 Judson, Dr. Adoniram, .... 336, 337, 338, 339, 340 Kant, Emmanuel 45 Knobel, Karl August, 60 Lange, J., 378, 379 Leggett, William, 30& Livingston, David, 23 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, . . 20, 102, 197, 198, 269 Lowell, James Russell, 45, 211, 212 Luke, 59 Lytton, Bulwer, 269, 270 McConnell, Dr. S. D., 137 MacDonald, George, 48 MacKellan, Thomas, 101 Maclagen, William D., . 245 Mant, Bishop, 330, 381 March, Daniel, , 163, 164 Martineau, 20, 128 Mills, Mrs. Elizabeth, 370 Milton, John, 88 Montgomery, James, 381 Moses, 225 Muhlenberg, William Augustus, 316 Munger, Dr. Theodore T., 135, 136, 331 Neander, J. August Wilhelm, . . . . . 318, 319, 320 Newman, Cardinal, 315 Norton, Andrew, 355 Newton, Sir Isaac, 279 Parker, Theodore, 29, 45 Paul, .... 75, 113, 181, 226, 296, 324, 325, 326, 327 Phillips, Wendell, 117 Plato, 275, 291 Pollock, Edward, 350, 351 Pope, Alexander, 315 Porphyry, 314 Priest, Nancy, 383 389 INDEX OF AUTHORS PAGE Procter, Adelaide, 268 Pythagoras, 249 Robertson, Dr., 313 Renan, Joseph Ernest, 41 Romanes, George, 137 Rosetti, Christina, 332 St. Ambrose, 321, 322 St. Augustine 322 St. Jerome, 322 St. John, . 182, 220, 221, 222, 226, 253, 257, 289, 294, 324 St. Teresa of Spain, 171 Salmond, Dr., 136, 137 Samuel, 63, 65 Schiller, Johann, C. F., 27 Schlegel, Friederich, 21 Scott, Sir Walter, 55 Seneca, 143, 144, 145 Shakespeare, William, 97, 331 Shaler, Dr. N. S., 129 Shelley, Percy B., 37 Smith, Prof. Goldwin, . 158, 159 Smythe, Dr. Newman 135 Socrates, 274, 275, 307, 308 Sophocles, 307 Southey, Robert, 279, 280, 333, 334 Sprague, Charles, 19, 371, 372 Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 366 Sterling, John, 76 Stoddard, Richard Henry, 28 Tennyson, Alfred, . 20, 29, 47, 49, 91, 210, 211, 279, 332 [333, 335 Thomas, Dr. H. W., 139, 140, 141 Trail, William, 142, 143 Ulrich, Anton, (Duke of Brunswick,) .... 359,360 Upham, Thomas C, 359 Virgil, 309, 310, 311, 312 390 INDEX OF AUTHORS PAGE Wendling, Geo., 154, 155, 156 Wesley, John, 316 White, H. K., 380 Whittier, John Greenleaf , . 49, 335, 336, 348, 349, 350, 354 Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 38 Winkworth, Catherine, 358, 359, 360 Yates, John H., 365 Yorke, Laurenstine, 353 Young, Edward, 54, 82 First Lines of Poems or of Poetical Quotations FIRST LINES OF POEMS OR OF POETICAL QUOTATIONS PAGE And shall I e'er again thy features trace, .... 380 And the mother gone; in tears and pain, .... 197 And yet, dear heart remembering thee, 335 A picture memory brings to me, 353 As thro' the land at eve we went, 211 As thy day thy strength shall be, 352 At evening time let there be light, 380 Attempt, how monstrous and how surely vain, ... 32 Away with death — away, 379 Beyond the stars that shine in golden glory, . . . 368 Beyond life's toils and cares, 367 Bright in that happy land, . 332 But in my spirit will I dwell, 47 Come, let us join our friends above, 316 Could we but know, 366 Dear friend far-off, my lost desire, 333 Death with his healing hand, 375 Did He not to his followers say, 79 Far o'er yon horizon, 53 Fliest thou, loved shade while I thus fondly mourn, . 306 For every cloud, a silvery light, 355 For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place, . . 20 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, . . 97 Four sprightly coursers, with a deadly groan, . . . 307 Friend after friend departs, 381 God gives us love, . . 210 God within the shadow, 113 Have we not all, amid earth's petty strife, .... 268 Heaven is the prize, ,«,... 227 395 FIRST LINES OF POEMS PAGE Here found they Teucer's, old heroic race, . . . . 311 He saw friends, who, whelmed beneath the waves, . . 309 He, with his guide, the farther fields attain, . . . 311 How blest the righteous when he dies, 172 How long? 351 I cannot think of them as dead, 378 If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, 332 If yon bright stars which gem the night, .... 304 I long for household voices gone, 347 It bids us do the work that they laid down, . . . . 121 I feel my immortality o'ersweeps, 20 I felt instantly, 211 I know this earth is not my sphere, 45 I see thee still, 371 Island valley of Avilion 251 It must be so, Plato, thou reason'st well, .... 27 It was a time of sadness — and my heart, .... 109 I weary of this endless strife, ........ 171 Leave all to God, 359 Leona, the hour draws nigh, 356 Let nothing make thee sad or fretful, 358 Life is like a wild iEolian harp of many a joyous strain, 111 Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind, . . . 315 Mark how yon clouds in darkness rise, 19 Meets him with open arms and falling tear, . . . 312 Men may come and men may go, 24 My God, I thank Thee: may no thought, .... 355 My God, it is not fretfulness, 351 No life that breathes with human breath, .... 29 No moaning of the bar; sail forth, strong ship, . . 54 No night shall be in heaven, no gathering gloom, . . 261 No shadows yonder, 246 Oh, deem not they are blest alone, 347 Oh, my deep dungeon ! my eternal home, 307 O, may I join the choir invisible, 20 Our beloved have departed, 378 Our buried friends can we forget, 336 Ours is the grief, who still are left in this far wilderness, 370 Over the river they beckon to me, 382 Part, in sleep away, 91 396 FIRST LINES OF POEMS PAGE Reach forth your hand, oh parent shade, nor shun, . 312 Shrink not from sufferings. Each dear blow, . . . . 359 Spin cheerfully, 354 Still seems it strange that thou should'st live forever, . 54 Sudden arose, . 37 Surely you heaven, where angels see God's face, . . 215 Tears wash away the atoms in the eye, 348 The day is cold, and dark and dreary, 102 The element's rage, the fiend voices that rave, . . . 333 The gloomiest day hath gleams of light, 351 The islands of the blest they say, 248 The life of man, 28 The Lord shall come, the earth shall quake, . . . 191 The men of grace have found, 98 The night is gone, . 315 The pain we have to suffer seems so broad, .... 38 The pilgrim of a day, 41 The saints of God their wanderings done, .... 245 The soul secure in her existence, smiles, 35 There comes a time in the lives of men, 353 There is a land immortal, 101 There is a land where beauty will not fade, . . . 216 There is no death ! The stars go down, 269 There is no death — what seems so is transition, . . 269 There is no flock, however watched and tended, . . 198 There is no night in heaven, 368 There no parting, no more pain, 332 There the saints of all ages in harmony meet, . . . 316 There's something in the parting hour, 350 Think'st beauty vanished from the coast, .... 332 This may not be, I cried — and looked again, . . . 110 This precious Book, I'd rather have, 55 This truth came borne with bier and pall, . 49 This world is not conclusion, 20 Tho' I stoop, 91 Thou art not dead; in thy higher sphere, .... 45 Throw thyself on thy God, 35 Thy way, not mine, O Lord! 352 Time is fleeting, 82 'Tis but one family — the sound is balm, 377 'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone, 82 'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, .... 212 Truth forever on the scaffold, 113 Two weary hearts, two mourning homes, .... 349 397 FIRST LINES OP POEMS PAGE Verdict which accumulates, 332 We are quite sure, 303 We part on this green islet, Love, 338 We're going home, we've had visions bright, .... 363 We speak of the realms of the blest, . . . . . . 370 What is left for us, save in growth of soul to rise, . . 267 When all our hopes are gone, 122 When we asunder part, 315 Where none shall beckon us away, 315 Who would not go, .366 Why do we mourn, when another star, 345 Will they meet us, cheer and greet us, 381 Yes, if it 'twere only a dream, 28 Yet love will dream and faith will trust, 49 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 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