IV.
“And when he had said this he fell asleep.”
—Acts vii. 60.
At death, as we have seen, the spirit and the soul are separated from the body, and, still united together, are launched into the unseen world. For though the soul is not the spirit, these two form the incorporeal parts of our compound nature, are the two immaterial elements of that trinity of life,—body, soul, spirit, which are united to make one human being. They both survive death. For death is the separation of the soul from the body, not of the soul from the spirit. But it must be remembered that the spirit, when at death it is, in company with the soul, withdrawn from the body, passes into the Intermediate State, shaped and stamped with the impress which the life on earth has fastened upon it. The
spirit enters the new life, either enslaved, disfigured, degraded, dishonoured by the sensual soul, or else strong, free, true, purified in its victory over the flesh. It carries with it, in short, the character which in life it has acquired.
It may be well to fall into the usage of ordinary speech, and speak of that which survives death as the soul, so long as we keep in mind what is really meant, viz., that it is the soul united with the spirit which survives death.
When, then, we say that the disembodied soul enters the Intermediate Life, we are bound to consider in what condition it enters it. For people sometimes argue thus: “Yes! I grant that there will be an interval or waiting time between death and the Day of Judgment. But then, during that time, is not the soul asleep? Surely the dying are said to fall asleep. Then, if asleep, they are unconscious, and to the unconscious soul the Intermediate State will seem to last but for an instant,
and will no sooner be entered upon than it will be practically at an end. For complete insensibility to the passing and movement of time is one of the effects of complete unconsciousness. And, in truth, is it not the case that the Bible over and over again speaks of death as a state of sleep or taking rest? [41a] Thus the Intermediate State is in fact a blank. The eyes close in death, and they remain closed till they open to gaze upon the glories of the Resurrection, and the terrors of the judgment seat of Christ. Does not our own Prayer Book sanction this view in her Service for the Burial of the Dead? [41b] And do we not in common language ourselves express the same belief when we give to the resting place of the bodies of the dead the name of ‘cemetery,’ or sleeping place?”
The answer to all this is that the language which represents death as a
profound slumber is language applicable enough to describe what befalls the body, but is quite inapplicable when it is used of the soul. Sleep is distinctly a physical and corporeal function. The soul cannot be liable to or affected by corporeal influences when it is separated from the body. The soul cannot sleep. It is the body, in the hushed stillness of the chamber of death, which seems, now that the last struggle is over, and the spasm of dying leaves it motionless, to be sleeping. But even in life, while the body sleeps, the soul is awake. It is often, during the sleep of the body, even more active than during the waking hours. In dreams the soul is busy with its fancies. Thoughts flit this way and that through the mind of the sleeper. Indeed, the body is more often a hindrance rather than a help to the activities of thought. To lose all consciousness of the existence of the body, to be as if the body for the time were not,—this is to set the mind
thinking in freedom unrestrained. For the body and the conscious sensation of the presence of the body seem to serve to drag down and encumber the energy of thought. A sound through the ear, a sight presented to the eye, a touch, an ache,—these break off sustained thinking. No wonder, when the body sleeps profoundly, the soul is often then most active. And will not this be so when the profoundest sleep of all falls upon the body?