Oh, dreadful thought, if all our sires and we
Are but foundations of a race to be,—
Stones which one thrusts in earth, and builds thereon
A white delight, a Parian Parthenon,
And thither, long thereafter, youth and maid
Seek with glad brows the alabaster shade,
And in processions' pomp together bent
Still interchange their sweet words innocent,—
Not caring that those mighty columns rest
Each on the ruin of a human breast,—
That to the shrine the victor's chariot rolls
Across the anguish of ten thousand souls!
Tennyson once said to Professor Tyndall that, if he believed he were here simply to
usher in something higher than himself in which he could have no personal part or lot, he should feel that a liberty had been taken with him. And when that something higher is the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed, its devotees cannot forego their longing to share in its perfected life.
And, above all, Jesus opens up for us an intimacy with God which is both unbearable and incredible without the hope of its continuation beyond the grave. To enter with Jesus into sonship with the Father, to share God's interests and sympathies and purposes, to become the partner of His plans and labors, and then to think of God as living on while we drop out of existence, is the crowning misery, or rather the supreme confusion. Jesus would have pointed to some heartbroken man or woman, like Jairus or the widow of Nain or the sisters at Bethany, and said, "If ye then, being evil, know how to care so intensely for your kindred, and would give your all to keep them with you forever, how much more shall your heavenly Father insist on having His own with Him eternally?"
At Professor Huxley's own request three
lines from a poem by his wife are inscribed upon his tombstone:
Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep;
For still He giveth His beloved sleep,
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best.
But in such a sentence what possible meaning can be put into the expression "His beloved"? Can we conceive of God as really loving us, taking us into His secrets, using us in His purposes, letting us spend and be spent in the fulfilment of His will, and then putting us to an endless sleep? If Jesus leads us into the life with God which we Christians know, He renders immortality indispensable if God is to maintain His own Self-respect.
Others may do without everlasting life; to some an endless sleep may seem welcome; life has been to them such a mistake and a failure, that they would gladly be quit of it forever; but to followers of Jesus its continuance is a passionate and logical longing. Ibsen puts into Brindel's mouth the words: "I am going homewards. I am homesick for the mighty Void; the dark night is best." Jesus acclimatizes man's spirit to a far dif
ferent home, and sets in his heart an altogether different eternity. So insistent are the demands of our souls for the persistence of life with our God in Christ, that "if we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable."