“Shall we meet again?” sighs the bereaved mother, the lonely wife, the despairing lover! Most assuredly you will!—by all the known laws of attraction in this glorious Universe you must meet again, if your love be love indeed! Love is not limited by time or space; we know that we can obtain light from a star many millions of miles distant, and in the same way we can give and receive love from our parted dear ones, and can exert this power far beyond the confines of our bodies. But only when love is really true can this happen. For, when the veil is withdrawn from heaven and the released Spirit goes hence, it sees and knows clearly which of all its friends on earth has loved it most unselfishly and sincerely—whose sorrow is the most tender—whose faith is most entirely faithful! And only shall such an one meet it again and rejoice in everlasting union. We find our own: we discover our beloved ones in that state of clear vision and life-fulfilment to which we are all hastening. And in realising this we shall also realise that in all the truths of science and of reasoning there is No Death; and that we deceive ourselves in the confusing shadow of our personal griefs when they are strong and bitter as they are to-day, because of our own “personal” sense of loss.
“It is because my beloved is gone!” is the cry—“Because I shall see him no more!”
Patience! He has not “gone” far! Just into the next room of existence, whither you yourself will soon go; there is but the slightest partition between you! And you will see him, as it were, directly—and you will know him, as he will see and know you!—and you will wonder why you shed so many tears when all the while he is alive, and happy in the consciousness of having done something in his earthly life to prepare a cleaner, safer world for the generations coming after him.
But, if this is so, some of us ask, why are we not given the proofs of it? Why does not God make us sure? You might as well demand why, in the former ages of the world, the learning and science of the present day were not revealed. “Sound-waves,” “light-rays,” “radium,” “electric force,”—all these existed from the very beginning of creation—why were we not told? Simply because, by universal law, all advancement is, and must be the result of gradual evolvement, suited to the slowly expanding capacity of the human brain and its attendant mental spirituality, and because it is decreed that we shall “work out our own salvation.” One thing is certain, and that is, that—if we knew—if we were told the smallest part of the wondrous hidden future awaiting us, hardly any of us would have the resolution to live this preparatory life through! We should all hurry ourselves out of the world, for we would not have the patience to endure its schooling. We could not wait. We would rush to grasp our glory; we would not work to win it, and so we might lose what we must ourselves deserve to gain. Hence arose the saying, “Those whom the gods love die young.” For their schooling has been brief and easy—“Even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours.”
A striking illustration of faith in God and the future life has been given to us in these days of darkness by the heroic martyrdom and death of Edith Cavell, murdered by human brutes for whom Christianity has become a dead letter. Her resignation, and her thanks to God for her “ten weeks’ quiet before the end”—her unaffected devotion to the Christian Faith—her simple “Good-bye” to her spiritual adviser with a happy smile and her confident assurance, “We shall meet again!” make a brilliant and inspiring contrast to the doubt and distrust of God’s mercy openly manifested by many of those who are bereaved and mourning in the “Valley of the Shadow.” Prayerfully one wonders when the inhabitants of this small planet of ours will come to realise the fixed law of its being?—a Law which knows no changing! Namely, that Progression towards Good—Good, not only for one’s Self, but for Humanity—brings peace and prosperity; while Retrogression towards Evil results in war and ruin! God Himself cannot undo this Law, which is part of His own Eternal Existence—it is as fixed as the poles. We dare not blame His Almighty justice for the evil we have deliberately brought upon ourselves. No one can deny that all the nations now warring together have for many years past sought to put God altogether out of their countings, while societies and individuals, rejoicing in prolonged good fortune and taking as their right the blessings bestowed upon them through the mercy of a beneficent and kindly Providence, have forgotten to Whom they should give thanks, and have become “puffed up,” as the Psalmist says, with pride, and enervated by luxury. We have had innumerable warnings, but we would not listen. We have made a jest and a mockery of all those who sought to rouse us from our lethargy. We have permitted such inroads of vice and atheism into our lives and morals, our art and letters, as might make pagans blush. The Press of the world has not occupied itself with the uplifting of the brotherhood of the peoples,—on the contrary, it has taken pleasure in sowing the seeds of discontent and rebellion, and has given prominence to the unworthy, praising the stage-mime more than the statesman—the materialist more than the idealist. Moreover, so far as our foe is concerned, it has left no stone unturned that could rouse the Teuton wolf from its lair. Bitter mockery, stinging gibe, misplaced sneers—these have all been flung at Germany for the past ten years or more, and, though they have been written chiefly by half-educated young men and boys who in the might of an ineffable conceit “rush in where angels fear to tread,” they have had harmful effect. A great statesman said to me recently, “Had there been no Press there would have been no war.”
This may or may not be true,—but whether true or false the eternal verities make no mistake in their summing-up of evil things to a fatal figure. Thoughts give place to words, and words to actions. The War-thought is the embryo of the War-deed. Let us not, therefore, in the bitterness of our own personal sorrows blame God, or demand “Where was He?” when our dear ones have been slain. The nations have brought this chastisement of terror upon themselves; and that the innocent must suffer with the guilty is the worst part of the punishment. The world was becoming sordid, covetous, and materialistic; and now the young and strong and brave of our best manhood are called upon to cleanse it of its foul humours and to leave it clean. Some thousands of lives must be sacrificed in this great struggle for Freedom and for Right, but better to die honoured than live shamed! Life, as generally lived, is not worth the pains we take to preserve it; we do our loved ones an infinite wrong when we assume that their best chance of happiness is to eat and sleep and play, and make the wherewithal to eat and sleep and play. A brave death is more valuable than an ignoble life; death itself being the admission to a more vital and splendid experience.
This being so, we should not mourn as “those having no hope.” We, who have loved and lost for a time, will go on loving till we find our lost again, as we shall surely do. We shall meet and know each other on that higher plane where life is life indeed and love is love indeed; and we shall make amends for all our weeping and complaint. We shall see how slight and brief, after all, were the troubles of this present, compared with the perfect joy of the attained future. And we shall read the Book of the Wisdom of God without mistaking one word or letter of its meaning, and we shall learn that Love alone is the conqueror of all kingdoms. So lift up your weeping eyes, ye million mourners!—lift them to the Light and Life Eternal, which shall not fail you even in this dark Battle-Dream of Death!