“Dear hearts,” saith Father, “there is in God’s Word a word for the smallest need of every one of us, if we will only take the pain to search and find it there. ‘They had no rest day neither night,’ (Cranmer’s version of Revelations chapter four verse 8)—that is for the eager, active soul that longs to be up and doing. And ‘they rest from their labours,’—that is for the weary heart that is too tired for rapture.”
“Yet doth not that latter class of texts, think you,” saith Sir Robert, “refer mainly to the rest of the body in the grave?”
“Well, it may be so,” answers Father: “yet, look you, the rest of the grave must be something that will rest us.”
“What is thy notion, Aubrey,” saith Aunt Joyce, “of the state of the soul betwixt death and resurrection?”
“My notion, Joyce,” saith Father, “is that Scripture giveth us no very plain note thereon. I conclude, therefore, that it shall be time to know when we come to it. This only do I see—that all the passages which speak thereof as ‘sleep,’ ‘forgetfulness,’ and the like, be in the Old Testament: and all those—nay, let me correct myself—most of those which speak thereof as of a condition of conscious bliss, ‘being with Christ,’ and so, are in the New. There I find the matter: and there, under your good pleasure, will I leave it.”
“Well, that should seem,” quoth Aunt Joyce, “as if the condition of souls had been altered by the coming of our Lord.”
“By His death, rather, as methinks, if so be. It may be so. I dare not be positive either way.”
“Has it never seemed strange to you, Louvaine,” saith Sir Robert, “how little we be told in God’s Word touching all those mysteries whereon men’s minds will ever be busying themselves—to all appearance, so long as the world lasts? This matter of our talk—the origin of evil—free-will and sovereign grace—and the like. Why are we told no more?”
“Why,” saith Father, with that twinkle in his eyes which means fun, “I am one of the meaner intelligences of the universe, and I wis not. If you can find any whither the Angel Gabriel, you may ask at him if he can untie your knots.”
“Now, Aubrey, that is right what mads me!” breaks in Aunt Joyce. “Sir Robert asks why we be told no more, and thine answer is but to repeat that we be told no more. Do, man, give a plain answer to a plain question.”