Think of our Lord's mysterious preaching in the Life after Death and remember that some of the best known teachers of the early Church believed that the apostles and others had followed His example. (See Chapter IV, p. 59.)
Think that there are countless millions in the World of the Departed born in heathen lands, born in Christian lands, who had no chance on earth of knowing Christ in a way to win their love for Him.
Think, how shall His command be fulfilled by His Church, "Go preach the good news to every creature"—EVERY creature. What a mockery it seems with the heathen dying half a million every week if no work for Christ goes on in the Unseen! If millions of those Hindoos who have died without the Gospel would have accepted it, do you think it is not being taught to any of them now? If the men of ancient Tyre and Sidon would have repented at the teaching and work of Christ, if the mighty works had been done in them, do you not think He has taken care since that the men of Tyre and Sidon should have their chance? If the heathen Socrates, and Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus would have fallen at His feet as their Master and Friend—and you know they would—do you think they have not learned to know Him by now? If honest hearts in our own land who have died repelled from Him through their ignorance and through stupid misrepresentations would have loved Him if they knew Him as He really is, do you think that no one is helping them to understand Him now? Can we doubt that somehow within the Veil they will learn more fully of His tender love? And judging from what we know of God's methods on earth, is it unreasonable to think that they will learn it from their brethren? True, God might help them by means of the angels. But in God's dealings with men's souls on earth not angels but men were the helpers He gave them. Even in the stupendous miracle of the conversion of St. Paul it was a man (Ananias) whom God sent to help him.
§ 2
Here comes an interesting question about the doctrine of Election. To the generation before us it was a horrible doctrine clashing with all sense of fairness or right. Men said it meant that God decreed certain men to eternal Heaven and certain others to eternal Hell by His own arbitrary will. The stern revolt of Conscience at length sent us back to study our Bibles more carefully. We found that in the first recorded case of election Abraham was called for the good of others "that in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed."
We saw reason to believe that Abraham's case was a type of all other elect—elect for the service of others. We found that the Bible consistently and throughout affirms that when "God calls or separates one man to Himself it is for the good of other men; that when He selects one family it is that all families should be blessed; that when He chooses one nation it is for the welfare of all nations; that when He elects and establishes a church it is for the spiritual benefit of the world. No man, no family, no nation, no church possesses any gift or privilege or superior capacity or power for its own use and welfare alone but for the general good." So we learned that God's word is true in spite of our stupid misunderstanding of it and that this doctrine of Election rightly understood is one of the noblest things in the whole Bible.
Now comes my question. Are God's elect in the Hereafter life still "elect for the service of others"? Are those loving souls who are joyfully accepting Christ's service here,—destined for a still more glorious service in this ministry in the Unseen—the "first-fruits" of a great harvest which through them the Lord will reap in the Hereafter? Will some be just saved, saved so as by fire, saved "by the skin of their teeth," as we say, missing the noble destiny of the "elect," the joy of being a blessing to their race?
§ 3
"You have preached your last sermon," said one to Frederick Denison Maurice as he was dying. "Aye," he said; "but only my last sermon in THIS life." He believed he was going through the veil to preach to men. I believe it too, though I cannot prove it, nay, even though there be difficulties in the way of believing it. And many men greater than we are believing it, impelled by the stirring of Divine impulses within.
Do not think of it as merely a work for preachers and teachers. Every brave boy here who is trying to do right, every poor woman who is learning to love, every one who is blessing the world by kindly unselfishness, is helping on the Kingdom of God on earth and will be helping on the Kingdom of God beyond.