I suppose it was all unintelligible to mortal ken when the spirit had come back to the body it had left. If, in a crowd of blind deaf men, one got his sight and hearing for a few minutes, and then relapsed, what could he tell to his comrades or even fully realize to himself?
Thus you see the knowledge that you can have and the knowledge you cannot have of that spirit life. Be content. God has given you a great deal of knowledge of that real life of the self in the hereafter. If He has so made you that the other knowledge that would help you to picture the surroundings is impossible to you it is best that you should know it. Be content. Don't cry for the moon. Follow your departed in thought into that life and realize what you have learned from Scripture about him.
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.