"With Christ." One has to write carefully here. The full vision of the Divine Glory and Goodness and Love is reserved for the final stage of existence in Heaven where nothing that defileth shall enter in, whereas this Intermediate Life is one with many imperfections and faults, quite unready for that vision of glory. But for all that St. Paul believed that the presence of Christ was vouchsafed in that waiting land, in some such way we may suppose as on earth long ago. Only an imperfect revelation of the Son of God. And yet—and yet—oh, how one longs for it! Think of being near Him, even in some such relation as were the disciples long ago.
"I think when I read that sweet story of old,
When Jesus was here amongst men,
How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
How I long to have been with Him then."
Yes, St. Paul seems to say you shall be with Him, you shall have that longing gratified in some measure even before you go to Heaven. So that Paradise, poor and imperfect as it is compared with the Heaven beyond, is surely a state to be greatly desired. Some pages back I wrote with a certain shrinking "No man has ever yet gone to Heaven." It is quite true, and yet I could feel some poor mourner shrinking back from it as he thought of that beloved one gone. Nay, shrink not. Paradise means the "Park" of God, the "Garden" of God, the place of rest and peace and refreshing shade. The Park is not the Palace but it is the precincts of the Palace. Paradise is not Heaven, but it is the Courtyard of Heaven. And (the dearest, tenderest assurance of all) they are with Christ. Is not that sufficient answer to many questions? At any rate the Bible definitely teaches that.
[1] Our "39 Articles" were originally 42, and the 40th says, "They which say that the souls of those who depart hence do sleep being without all sense, feeling or perceiving till the Day of Judgment … do utterly dissent from the right belief declared to us in Holy Scripture."
CHAPTER VII
RECOGNITION
§ 1
SHALL WE KNOW ONE ANOTHER IN THAT LIFE? Why not? As George Macdonald somewhere pertinently asks, "Shall we be greater fools in Paradise than we are here?"
This is a perfectly apt retort, and not at all flippant as it may seem at first. It is based on the belief suggested by common sense and confirmed by Scripture that our life there will be the natural continuous development of our life here and not some utterly unconnected existence. If consciousness, personal identity, character, love, memory, fellowship, intercourse go on in that life why should there be a question raised about recognition? True, there are morbid times with most of us when we are inclined to doubt all desirable things, and there are some gloomy Christians who are always suspicious of anything especially bright and hopeful in the Gospel of Christ. But to the normal Christian man who knows what is revealed and who believes in the love of God, there should never be any serious doubt about recognition in that life.
§ 2