CHAPTER VI
"I," "MYSELF" AFTER DEATH
§ 1
But we must not delay at Death. Death is a very small thing in comparison with what comes after it—that wonderful, wonderful, wonderful world into which Death ushers us. Turn away from the face of your dead. Turn away from the house of clay which held him an hour ago. The house is empty, the tenant is gone. He is away already, gasping in the unutterable wonder of the new experience.
O change! stupendous change!
There lies the soulless clod.
The light eternal breaks,
The new immortal wakes,
Wakes with his God!
Oh! the wonder of it to him at first! Years ago I met with a story in a sermon by Canon Liddon. An old Indian officer was telling of his battles—of the Indian Mutiny, of the most striking events in his professional career; and as he vividly described the skirmishes, and battles, and sieges, and hair-breadth escapes, his audience hung breathless in sympathy and excitement. At last he paused; and to their expressions of wonderment he quietly replied, "I expect to see something much more wonderful than that." As he was over seventy, and retired from the service, his listeners looked up into his face with surprise. There was a pause; and then he said, in a solemn undertone, "I mean in the first five minutes after death."
That story caught on to me instantly. That has been for years my closest feeling. I feel it at every death-bed as the soul passes through. I believe it will be my strongest feeling when my own death-hour comes—eager, intense, glad curiosity about the new, strange world opening before me.
Not long ago in the early morning I stood by a poor old man as he was going through into the Unseen. He was, as it were, fumbling with the veil of that silent land—wishing to get through; and we were talking together of the unutterable wonder and mystery that was only an hour or two ahead. I always talk to dying people of the wonders of that world just ahead of them. I left him and returned to see him in a couple of hours; but I was too late, he had just got through—got through into that wonder and mystery that I had been stupidly guessing about, and the poor old worn body was flung dishevelled on the bed, as one might fling an old coat, to be ready for the journey. He was gone. Just got through—and I felt, with almost a gasp, that he had solved the riddle of life; that I would give anything, risk anything, for one little glimpse through; but I could not get it. I could only guess the stupendous thing that had come to him. For all the stupendous changes that have ever happened here are surely but trifles when compared with that first few minutes in the marvellous life beyond, when our friends pass from us within the veil, and our hearts follow them with eager questioning—"What are they doing? What are they seeing? What are they knowing now?"
§ 2
More and more of late years I keep asking those questions at death-beds. I seem to myself constantly as if trying to hold back the curtain and look through. But the look through is all blurred and indistinct.
It must always be so while we are here, with our limited faculties, shut up in this little earth body. I know certain facts about the "I," the "self" in the Unseen Life, but I have no knowledge and no experience that would help me to picture his surroundings. I cannot form any image, any, even the vaguest, conception of what that life appears like. That is why my outlook is so blurred and indistinct.
And this brings me to point out WHAT SORT OF KNOWLEDGE WE CAN HAVE AND WHAT SORT OF KNOWLEDGE WE CANNOT HAVE about that life. It may help you not to expect the impossible.
You desire to know two things about the Unseen World.
1st. You desire to know the real life of the "I" himself—consciousness, thought, memory, love, happiness, penitence and such like.
2nd. You desire to know his outward surrounding, so that you can picture to yourself his life in that world. That is what gives the interesting touch to your knowledge of your friend's life in a foreign land on earth.
Now the first of these is the really important knowledge, and such knowledge you can have and you can understand because it is of the same kind as the knowledge you already have of him on earth.
The second would be an interesting knowledge, but this knowledge you cannot have, because you have no faculties for it and no similar experience to help you to realize it. It is a law of all human knowledge that you cannot know and cannot depict to yourself anything of which you have had no corresponding experience before.
"I," "myself" which goes into the Unseen is the really important matter, not my surroundings. And the essential knowledge, I say, about that self, about his inner real life in the Unseen you can have and you can understand because the inner life there is of the very same kind as the inner life here. If I am told of full consciousness there, of memory there, of love or hatred there, of happiness or pain there, of joy or sorrow there, I can easily understand it. I have had experience of the like here. There is no difficulty.
But the knowledge of the outward environment there—what we shall be like, how that world will appear, how we shall live and move and have our being in a spiritual existence—all that deeply interesting knowledge which imagination could use to picture that life and bring it before us—THAT we cannot have. It is not possible with our limited faculties and limited experience. We could not be taught it. We have no faculties to take it in and no experience to aid us in realizing it. A blind man cannot picture colours to himself, a deaf man cannot imagine music. It is not that we are unwilling to teach him, but that his limited faculties prevent him from taking in the idea.
Realize your position then with regard to the spiritual world. Imagine a population of blind, deaf men inhabiting this earth. One of them suddenly gets his sight and hearing, and lo! in a moment an unutterable glory, a whole world of beautiful colours and forms and music has flowed into his life. But he cannot convey any notion of it to his former companions. He cannot convey to them the slightest idea of the lovely sunset or the music of the birds. We, shut up in these human bodies, are the blind, deaf men in God's glorious universe. Some of our comrades have moved into the new life beyond, where the eyes of the blind are opened and the ears of the deaf are unstopped. But we have no power of even imagining what their wondrous experience is like.
I suppose that is the reason why we have no description of Paradise or Heaven except in earthly imagery of golden streets and gates of pearl. I suppose that is why St. Paul could not utter what he saw when in some tranced condition he was caught up into Paradise and that life was shown to him—"whether in the body or out of the body," he could not tell (2 Cor. xii. 4). I suppose that was why Lazarus could tell nothing of these marvellous four days in which his disembodied spirit mingled with the spirits of the departed.
"'Where wert thou, brother, those four days?'
There lives no record of reply,
Which, telling what it is to die,
Had surely added praise to praise."
I suppose it was all unintelligible to mortal ken when the spirit had come back to the body it had left. If, in a crowd of blind deaf men, one got his sight and hearing for a few minutes, and then relapsed, what could he tell to his comrades or even fully realize to himself?
Thus you see the knowledge that you can have and the knowledge you cannot have of that spirit life. Be content. God has given you a great deal of knowledge of that real life of the self in the hereafter. If He has so made you that the other knowledge that would help you to picture the surroundings is impossible to you it is best that you should know it. Be content. Don't cry for the moon. Follow your departed in thought into that life and realize what you have learned from Scripture about him.