II
What have you learned?
First that IT IS A VIVID CONSCIOUS life into which he has gone.
There are several passages in Scripture which speak of Death as sleep and which taken alone might suggest a long unconsciousness, a sort of Rip Van Winkle life, sleeping for thousands of years and waking up in a moment at the Judgment Day, feeling as if there had been no interval between. But a little thought will show it is a mere figure of speech taken from the sleeping appearance of the body. "The sleep of Death" is a very natural expression to use as one looks on the calm, peaceful face after life's fitful fever and the long pain and sickness of the death-bed. But no one can study the Bible references to the life beyond without seeing that it cannot be a life of sleep or unconsciousness. "Shall we sleep between Death and the Judgment?" asks Tertullian. "Why souls do not sleep even when men are alive. It is the province of bodies to sleep." This sleep theory has always been condemned whenever the Church has pronounced on it. Even the Reformers declare it at variance with Holy Scripture in spite of the strong feeling in its favour in their day.[1]
The reader who has followed thus far will need no proof as to the teaching of Scripture that the Waiting Life before the Judgment into which our dear ones have gone is no unconscious sleep but a real vivid conscious life. So vivid that our Lord's spirit is said to have been quickened, made more alive, as He passed in. So vivid that the men of the old world could listen to His preaching. So vivid that Moses and Elias—those eager, impetuous leaders—in that wondrous life could not be held by its bonds, but broke through to stand on the mountain with Christ a thousand years after their death. So vivid that Lazarus (whom our Lord describes as in Abraham's bosom) is depicted as living a full, clear, intelligent life; and Dives as thinking anxiously about his five brothers on earth.
That was surely no unconscious life which St. Paul saw when he was caught up into Paradise and heard unspeakable things, nor was it a blank unconsciousness that he looked for in his desire "to depart and be with Christ which is far better" (Phil. i. 23).
Do you want further proof? Look at our Lord and the thief on the cross. The two men had been hanging together dying on the cross, just about to get through the veil to the world beyond. The poor thief did not know what was beyond that veil—darkness, insensibility, stupor, oblivion. The only one on earth who did know hung there beside him. And when the poor dying one turned with the words, "Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom," He promptly replied, "To-day thou shalt be with Me." If any one knew, surely He knew. If it meant anything, it meant, "There shall be no oblivion, no unconscious sleeping. To-night, when our dead bodies lie here upon the cross, you and I shall live and know each other as the two men who hung dying together on Calvary." Ah! the wonder to him as he went in beyond the veil, as though the Lord would lead him, lest he should be afraid.
Beyond all question God has revealed to you plainly enough that your beloved has gone into a full, vivid, conscious life. He is more alive to-day than he ever was on earth.
What follows? This. If I am fully conscious what am I conscious of? Surely, first of all I must be conscious of myself, conscious of the continuity of my personal identity, conscious of the continuity of my personal character. I must feel that I am the same "I," I am still "myself." Death which removes only the outer covering leaves the Ego just where it was. No better. No worse. The Bible lays no emphasis at all on death as making any change in character. Our Lord assumes the characters as remaining the same. The mere act of dying does not alter character. I am the same I. I have entered into a new environment more favourable for the exercise of my faculties, more adaptable to the acquisition of knowledge, more helpful, I trust, to growth in good. But I am the same "I." As I leave off here I begin there. I take into that world just myself as I have made it. If I have made the best of myself what more should I desire to take? Consciousness, Memory, Thought, Love, Character. If I have not made the best of myself, if I have acquired a distaste for God, for holiness, still I take in myself just as I stand. Think how tremendously solemn that makes the life here. It is the place of character making for the life there. I can never, never, never get away from myself. I shall always be myself. You remember what our Lord said from the other side of the grave. "Handle Me and see it is I MYSELF."
It is I myself, the very same self. It is they themselves, the very same selves whom I loved and who loved me so dearly. In that solemn hour after death, believe it, your boy, your wife, your husband, who is experiencing the startling revelations of the new life is feeling that life as an unbroken continuance of the life begun on earth. Only the environment is changed. He feels himself the same boy or man that he was an hour ago, with the same character, aspirations, desires, the same love and courage and hope. But oh, what a different view of all things! How clearly he recognizes God's love and holiness. How clearly he sees himself—his whole past life. If ever he cared for Christ and His will, how longingly, wonderingly, he is reaching out to Him. If ever he loved you tenderly on earth, how deeply and tenderly he is loving you to-day. In all the whirl of awe and wonder and curiosity and hope, love must stand supreme. For "love never faileth." "And now," says St. Paul, "abideth Faith, Hope and Love (these three that abide for ever), but the greatest of these is love."
§ 3
What else have you learned? That HE REMEMBERS CLEARLY the old life and the old home and the old comrades and the old scenes on earth. There is no conjecturing about that. That goes without saying if "I" am the same "I" in that world. Personal identity of course postulates memory which binds into one the old life and the new. And the Bible takes that for granted. We saw that Lazarus remembered Dives and Dives remembered Lazarus and remembered his old home and the five young brothers who grew up with him. He remembers that they have grown to be selfish men like himself and is troubled for them. And Abraham assumes it as a matter of course. "My son, remember that thou in thy lifetime," etc. Our Lord comes back from Death remembering all the past as if Death made no chasm at all in His memory. "Go and meet Me in Galilee," He says; "Lo I have told you" (before I died). And the redeemed in the future life are represented as remembering and praising God who had redeemed them from their sins on earth.
So you may be quite sure that your dear one is remembering you and storing up in his memory all your love in the past. Did your wife ever tell you on earth how happy you had made her? Did the old father and mother now in the Unseen ever thank God for the comfort you had been to them during their declining years? Be sure that in that land of love these will be amongst the most precious pictures in their storehouse of memory.
§ 4
And he has taken with him all the treasures of mind and soul which by God's grace he has won for himself on earth. A man can take nothing of the external things—of gold or lands. Nothing of what he HAS but all of what he is—all that he has gained IN HIMSELF. The treasures of memory, of disciplined powers, of enlarged capacities, of a pure and loving heart. All the enrichment of the mind by study, all the love of man, all the love of God, all the ennobling of character which has come through the struggle after right and duty. These are the true treasures which go on with us into that land where neither rust nor moth doth corrupt.
§ 5
And he is "WITH CHRIST."
The Bible teaches that the faithful who have died in Christ are happy and blest in Paradise even though the Final Heaven and the Beatific Vision is still but a thing to be longed for far off in the future. Lazarus is "comforted" after his hard life on earth. "The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, there shall no torment touch them." "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord … they rest from their labours." But best of all it assures us that they are WITH CHRIST. "Lord Jesus receive my spirit" the dying Stephen prayed as he passed into the Unseen. They are "absent from the body at home with the Lord." They "depart to be with Christ which is far better."
"With Christ." One has to write carefully here. The full vision of the Divine Glory and Goodness and Love is reserved for the final stage of existence in Heaven where nothing that defileth shall enter in, whereas this Intermediate Life is one with many imperfections and faults, quite unready for that vision of glory. But for all that St. Paul believed that the presence of Christ was vouchsafed in that waiting land, in some such way we may suppose as on earth long ago. Only an imperfect revelation of the Son of God. And yet—and yet—oh, how one longs for it! Think of being near Him, even in some such relation as were the disciples long ago.
"I think when I read that sweet story of old,
When Jesus was here amongst men,
How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
How I long to have been with Him then."
Yes, St. Paul seems to say you shall be with Him, you shall have that longing gratified in some measure even before you go to Heaven. So that Paradise, poor and imperfect as it is compared with the Heaven beyond, is surely a state to be greatly desired. Some pages back I wrote with a certain shrinking "No man has ever yet gone to Heaven." It is quite true, and yet I could feel some poor mourner shrinking back from it as he thought of that beloved one gone. Nay, shrink not. Paradise means the "Park" of God, the "Garden" of God, the place of rest and peace and refreshing shade. The Park is not the Palace but it is the precincts of the Palace. Paradise is not Heaven, but it is the Courtyard of Heaven. And (the dearest, tenderest assurance of all) they are with Christ. Is not that sufficient answer to many questions? At any rate the Bible definitely teaches that.
[1] Our "39 Articles" were originally 42, and the 40th says, "They which say that the souls of those who depart hence do sleep being without all sense, feeling or perceiving till the Day of Judgment … do utterly dissent from the right belief declared to us in Holy Scripture."