The Gospel of the Hereafter Part 2

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Now, have I helped, even in a little way, to introduce you to yourself--that "self" that is going out into the great adventure of the Hereafter? If I have, I have done a very good thing for you. With so many the soul is but a vague abstraction, belonging to the pulpit and the sick-bed and the life of the hereafter. But amid the busy daily life, the real work and pleasure, the real streets and houses, it is hard to think of it except as something shadowy and unreal. My effort here is to take it out of the region of the vague and unreal and bring it into the region of every-day, practical life.

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

Then realize that whether you exalt or degrade it, it is with you for ever. You CAN NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GET AWAY FROM YOURSELF. You will be the very same self after death as before. I read some time since of the sinking of a s.h.i.+p and how the captain dived through the cabin door, and keeping the light above in view, swam up through the hatchway and escaped out of the wreck. There is a deceitful expectation in human nature that when we go down in the sea of death and eternity we shall in some way escape out of ourselves, swim away from our own personalities, and thus leave the s.h.i.+p at the bottom of the sea. If the "I" meant only the body, that would be true. But this "I" is where character exists, where love and desire and will exist. This "I" is the captain himself. The captain cannot swim away from the captain.

Myself cannot swim away from "myself." "I" must be "I" to all eternity. I cannot shake off my character, be it good or bad.

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

Let the soul within you feel its dignity, its priceless importance in the eyes of its Maker. Measure the value of it by what G.o.d has done for it.

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

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

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

CHAPTER II

THE THREE STAGES OF EXISTENCE

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

There is nothing which so touches some of us as a thing with "makings"

in it, a thing with untold potentialities in it, a thing which may come in the future to G.o.d only knows what. Talk of the caterpillar which is to develop into the b.u.t.terfly or the acorn which shall one day be a mighty oak. Why, these miracles are but child's play compared with the miracles potentially wrapped up in this poor little self. No wildest fairy tale can suggest the wonder of its possibilities as it pa.s.ses out into the new adventure of the life beyond.

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

Perhaps he was thinking of his dead wife or his brave boy killed in battle. The old earl's question is the question of humanity in all ages gazing out into the darkness after its dead. The full answer can only be had by dying. But a partial answer can be had now.

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

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

2nd. _The intermediate life_ BEFORE THE JUDGMENT, THE "NEAR HEREAFTER"

WHEN "I" LAY ASIDE THE BODY AT DEATH. THIS IS THE STAGE BEFORE THE RESURRECTION WHICH IN OUR LORD'S TIME THE JEWS CALLED HADES, AND IN WHICH THEY CALLED THE SPECIAL STATE OF THE BLEST PARADISE, ABRAM'S BOSOM, UNDER THE THRONE, ETC.

3rd. And away after this _final stage_ the "Far Hereafter" in the "end of the age," as our Lord says, where come the General Resurrection, the Judgment of Men, the final stages of Heaven and h.e.l.l. _That stage has not yet arrived in the history of humanity_.

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

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

The Jews in our Lord's time believed in a waiting life of departed souls before the Judgment. Owing to vagueness and contradictions in the Rabbinical teaching it is impossible to state their notions about it with definiteness. But in the main it may be said that when they speak of that life as a whole without distinguis.h.i.+ng between the states of the good and the evil they call this whole by the general name of HADES, _i. e._, "the Unseen" (the Hebrew word was Sheol), but they also distinguished in it the abode or state of the Blest as PARADISE, or the "Garden of Eden," or "ABRAHAM'S BOSOM," or "UNDER THE THRONE," _e. g._, "Abraham whom G.o.d planted in the Garden of Paradise," "our master Moses departed into the Garden of Eden." The holy Judah rests this day in "Abraham's Bosom."

Their teaching is of course not authoritative for us. Doubtless many of their notions on the subject needed much correction. But our Lord gives His sanction in the main to their belief and uses their very phrases in speaking of the new life, _e. g._, Dives "in HADES (not h.e.l.l, see R. V.), lift up his eyes being in torment"--Lazarus "was carried by the angels into ABRAHAM'S BOSOM." "To-day thou shalt be with Me in PARADISE" is His promise to the dying thief. And it is clear that He did not mean the final Heaven for He says, "No man hath ascended into Heaven only the Son of Man who is in Heaven." Even He Himself did not go to Heaven when He died, for this is His statement after the Resurrection, "I have not yet ascended unto My Father."

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

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And this is the point of view of all the New Testament Scriptures.

Heaven and h.e.l.l are always spoken of as states _after the Judgment_ and the Judgment is to be in the "end of the world" or the "end of this age."

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

"Looking for and hasting to the coming of the Day of G.o.d," "Keep the commandment till the appearing of our Lord," "To be found with praise at the appearing of Jesus," etc., etc. Warning, reproof, exhortation, encouragement are all directed to that great day at the end of the Waiting Life--the Judgment at the second coming of the Son of Man.

Naturally this belief pa.s.sed into the thought of the early church.

"The souls of the G.o.dly abide in some better place and the souls of the unrighteous in a worse place expecting the time of judgment.... These who hold that when men die their souls are at once taken to heaven are not to be accounted Christians or even Jews" (Justin Martyr, A. D. 150, _Dialogue with Trypho_). "The souls of Christ's disciples go to the invisible place determined for them by G.o.d and there dwell awaiting the Resurrection" (Irenaeus, _Against Heretics_, A. D. 180). "All souls are sequestered in Hades till the Day of the Lord" (Tertullian, _De Anima_, A. D. 200). "Let no man think that souls are judged immediately after death; all are detained in one common place of safe keeping till the time when the Supreme Judge makes His scrutiny"

(Lactantius, _Div. Inst.i.tutes_). "During the interval between death and resurrection men's souls are kept in hidden receptacles according as they severally deserve rest or punishment" (Augustine).

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

This whole teaching about the Intermediate Life has been obscured in our day by the fact that most people read the Authorized Version of the Bible where the word Hades has been unfortunately translated "h.e.l.l,"

just the same as the darker word Gehenna. At the time of the translation of the Authorized Version the old English word _h.e.l.l_--the hole--the unseen, had not yet stiffened into the awful meaning that it has attained in our day. It was not then a word set apart to designate the abode of the lost. It simply meant the "unseen place," "the covered place." In the south of England still a thatcher who _covers in_ a house is called a "h.e.l.lier." Even in games it was used. In the old English games of forfeits, on the village green, the "h.e.l.l" is the hidden place where the girls ran away to escape being kissed. You can see it had no awful meaning necessarily connected with it. Therefore it did not seem repulsive to translate the Greek word "Hades," the Unseen, by the English "h.e.l.l." But it has become very misleading in later days, and our own conservative instincts which prevent our altering the word in the creed has helped to perpetuate the error.

The revised version has put all this right, _e. g._, "His soul was not left in Hades (not h.e.l.l), nor did His flesh see corruption" (Acts ii.

31). "I have the keys of death and of Hades" (Rev. i. 18). At the end of the world "death and Hades gave up the dead" (Rev. xx. 13). In Hades (not h.e.l.l) "the rich man lifts up his eyes, being in torment"

(St. Luke xvi. 23).

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The Bible, then, teaches to every careful student that there is the Intermediate Life beyond the grave, a vivid conscious life. That all men go there when they depart this life. No man has ever yet gone to Heaven. No man it would seem has ever yet gone to h.e.l.l. No man has ever yet been finally judged. No man has ever yet been finally d.a.m.ned.

Thank G.o.d for that at any rate. The Bible teaches that all who have ever left this earth are waiting yet--from King Alfred to King Edward; from St. Paul to Bishop Westcott; from the poor struggler of the ancient days in the morning of history to the other poor struggler who died last night.

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

The Bible does not reveal very much about it as was to be expected.

The Bible is intended to guide our conduct and prepare us for a final Heaven. Therefore it busies itself with the responsibilities of this present life and the glories of the final prospect--touching very lightly the intermediate stages, just as we press on a boy the importance of his school days and the high prospects for his manhood, touching very little the stages between.[1] But there is much more to be learned from Scripture about this Intermediate Life than most people think.

[1] There is a further reason as regards St. Paul's epistles, which form one-third of the whole New Testament. The reason is that St. Paul and his people were not greatly interested in the Intermediate Life.

They looked for the Lord's coming in glory during their own lifetime.

Even if some died before, the intermediate waiting time would be so short that it excited no absorbing interest. They did not dwell on it.

It could not concern them as it concerns us.