4. And so we are prepared—you see now why I chose that particular text—we are prepared for the great revelation when it comes. Even science has prepared us. This great instinct of the soul, that it will live again, has prepared us. Our belief in a good God prepared us. We were all ready to hear it, and at last it comes from heaven. "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."
And now we have got it. It has been all led up to; we were all prepared for it. We could not have been certain till we were told it by One who came from heaven. This is the Christian religion. It is no miserable half-and-half Gospel about a good man that once lived. That view of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with Christianity. The Son of God came Himself from heaven.
That is the Christian religion. And, having come from heaven, He knows what is in heaven. And He speaks with the certainty of knowledge: "In My Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you." And "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."
And, mark you, to prove it, to get the whole truth this morning, not only for your own selves, but for the mourners who abound in our midst, and must abound more and more as the weeks pass—to prove this doctrine that He rose Himself from the dead, we must have the full gospel of Easter. Alas! a new theology has been whittling away the faith of some in this country. But the old doctrine of Easter was this, "David saw corruption, but He whom God raised up saw no corruption." And as He died and was buried, so He rose again. Why do we keep Sunday, do you suppose, if there was no Resurrection? Why not keep as the sacred day Friday, if nothing happened on Sunday? If Christ did not rise on that day, why do we have at our Eucharists the Body broken and the Blood shed? How could any people enshrine in their Eucharistic service the tokens of a shameful death unless the body buried had risen again? How did the Cross get to the top of the dome of St. Paul's? Why should we have the old gallows erected over the finest city in the world, unless it was the symbol, not only of death, but of glorious resurrection?
Therefore, we have not got to put our reason behind our backs in believing that He who said "I am the resurrection and the life" raised Himself from the grave. It is with our reason as well as with our hearts that we say, in answer to the question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" "Yes, thank God, he has never really died."
5. And what sort of life is it going to be on the other side of the veil, the veil which hides this unseen world? Those young men who are dying are not always specially religious. They come to church sometimes, and some come to Communion. I had from the front the other day an account of how two hundred and fifty of the Artists' Corps received the Communion before they went into battle. But, still, we know many of our soldiers are not what we should call specially religious men. What, therefore, are we to think of the life awaiting them on the other side of the veil? Well, I will tell you what I think. I pin my faith to this: Jesus Christ knows them through and through. "Jesus beholding him loved him" was said of one young man. Jesus beheld all these boys of ours, all these young comrades, and He loved them. And He knows what kind of life they will enjoy, and He prepares them for the life that is for them. He has something for each that they will be fit for, when, strengthened in character and purified in soul, they are ready to inherit the kingdom prepared for them. You can trust them with Him, you can trust your boy to Christ, who understands him better than you do.
What shall we have in the other world which will correspond to what we have here? One thing at least that we shall have is memory. You remember, in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Abraham says to Dives: "Son, remember." "Son, remember." Resolve to lay up something in your life here to which your thoughts will turn happily and find pleasure in, in the quiet times beyond death. In that stillness there must be no bitter quarrels to remember, no bitter jealousies, no unkindnesses. Make to yourselves, while here, friends from your use of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that when it fails those friends may receive you into everlasting habitations.
And then with memory will come love, all the old beautiful love and friendship which makes us so happy here. But, mark you, the right kind of love—not lust. "Love is the fulfilling of the law," says St. John.
"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done."[14]
The two are absolutely different. Love thinks of the interests of the loved one, and is full of self-control and self-restraint. But lust only thinks of self, and is unbridled and unrestrained. Love goes on into the other world.