David seemed to think that he would know his dead child. "I shall go to him but he shall not return to me."
Our Lord assumes that Dives and Lazarus knew each other. And in another passage He uses a very homely illustration of a friendly gathering when He speaks of those who shall "sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom." And again in His advice about the right use of riches. "Make to yourselves friends by the means of the mammon of unrighteousness that when ye die they may receive you into the everlasting habitations" (Luke xvi. 9). Surely, that at least suggests recognition and a pleasant welcoming on the other side.
I remember well, how in the pain of a great bereavement, His words to the penitent thief came into my life like a message from the Beyond. "To-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise." I put myself in the place of that poor friendless man taking his lonely leap off into the dark and felt what a joy and comfort it must have been. "To-day we shall be together again at the other side." Not, "I will remember thee," but, "Thou shalt be with Me." Not, by and by when I come in My Kingdom, but "To-day." If anybody knew, surely Jesus knew. If His words meant anything surely they meant we shall be conscious of each other, we shall know each other as the two friendless ones who hung on the cross together.
Then I see St. Paul (though he is referring to the later stage of existence) comforting bereaved mourners with the thought of meeting those whom Christ shall bring with Him. Where would be the comfort of it if they should not know them? He expects to meet his converts and present them to Christ. How could he say this if he thought He would not know them?
I wonder if anybody really doubts it after all. Just think of it! With Christ in Paradise and not knowing or loving any comrade soul! Is that possible in the land of love? With our dear ones in Paradise and never a thrill of recognition as we touch in spiritual intercourse the mother, or wife, or husband, or child for whose presence we are longing! Cannot you imagine our wondering joy when our questionings are set at rest? Cannot you imagine the Lord in His tender reproach, "Oh, thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?"
§ 5
Sometimes one vaguely wonders, How can there be spiritual recognition? How shall we recognize each other without this accustomed bodily shape? And in the effort to realize the fact of recognition men have made many guesses. But really we know nothing about the "How." We know that the self in that life can think and remember and love. We know that we can still communicate thoughts to each other. Can we not leave with God the "how" of recognition?
In several places Scripture seems to suggest that the souls of the departed are clothed in some kind of visible spirit shape. They are spoken of as not only recognized but in some way seen as in the case of Samuel and of Dives and Lazarus and of Moses and Elias at the Transfiguration and of our Lord Himself in the spiritual body after the Resurrection. They seem to be visible when they please and as they please.
But when a mother asks, how then should she know her child who died twenty years ago, one feels that recognition must be something spiritual and not depending on visible shape. Even here on earth much of our recognition is spiritual. Soul recognizes soul. We recognize in some degree good and evil character of souls even through the coarse covering of the body. We instinctively, as we say, trust or distrust people on first appearance. Or again, a slight young stripling goes away to India and returns in twenty years a big, bearded, broad-shouldered man, with practically no outward resemblance to the boy that went away. But even though he strive to conceal his identity he cannot hide it long from his mother. She looks into his eyes and her soul leaps out to him. Call it instinct, insight, intuition, sympathy, what you please, it is the spiritual vision, soul recognizing soul. If that spiritual vision apart from bodily shape plays so great a part in recognition here, may it not be all-sufficient there? In that life where there is consciousness, character, memory, love, longing for our dear ones, and power of communication, is it conceivable that we should have intercourse with our loved and longed for, without any thrill of recognition? Surely not. Instinctively we shall know.
It was not mother that I knew thy face,
It was my heart that cried out Mother![1]