But if he, too, be in heaven and not there at all? If it be, as the Burmans say, but the empty shell that lies there? Why should we visit graves if the soul be indeed separate from the body? If he be far away in happiness, why go to his grave? To remember but the corruption that lies beneath?
Men use words and phrases remembering what they ought to believe. For very few are sincere and know what really they do believe. You cannot tell from their professions, only from their unconscious words and their acts.
What do these unconscious words, these acts, tell us of the belief about the soul and body? That they are separable and separate? No, but that they are inseparable. No one in the West, I am sure—no one anywhere, I think—has ever been able to conceive of the soul as apart from the body. We cannot do so. Try, try honestly, and remember your dead friends. What is it you recall and long for and miss so bitterly? It was his voice that awoke echoes in you, it was the clasp of his hand in yours, it was his eyes looking back to you the love you felt for him. It was his footfall on the stair, his laugh, the knowledge of his presence. And are not these all of the body?
Men talk glibly of the soul as apart from the body. What do they mean? Nothing but words, for the soul without a body is an incomprehensible thing, certainly to us.
And it is always the same body, not another. It is the old hand, the face, that we want. Not the soul, if it could be possible, looking at us out of other eyes. No; we want him we lost, and not another. It is the cry of our hearts.
And therefore, "I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." Have you wondered how that came into the creed? It came into religion as came all that we believe in, never out of theory but out of instinct.
What is your feeling towards the dead? Is it envy that they have reached everlasting happiness? Is it gladness to reflect that they are no longer with us? Do we think of them as superior to us? Alas, no. The great and overpowering sentiment we have for them is pity. The tears come to our eyes for them, because they are dead. They have left behind them light and life and gone into the everlasting forgetfulness. "The night hath come when no man can work." That is our real instinct towards the dead. "Poor fellow." And you will hear people say, with tardy remembrance of their creeds, "But for his sake we ought to rejoice, because he is at peace."
We ought? But do we? Surely we never do. We are sorry for the dead. All the compassion that is in us goes out to them, because they are dead.
The Catholic Church has prayers for the dead. There was never a Church yet that knew the hearts of men as that Church of Rome. Prayers for the dead. Masses for the dead.
Our Protestant theories forbid such. But tell me, is there a woman who has lost those she loves to whom such prayers would not come home? How narrow sometimes are the Reformed Creeds in their refusal to help the sorrow of their people.