793. “(3.) It is also said that the condition of many is represented in that day to be undecided. Thus many are said to be disappointed; coming to be judged, they find that their expectations of heaven are vain, and they say, ‘Have we not prophesied, cast out devils, and done many wonderful works in Thy name?’ Now it is said that if these persons had been in a fixed state before, they could not have been in doubt on this matter. The force of this objection is only apparent. The representations of the judgment are after the manner of men, and consequently our conceptions of it must be more or less according to what we are accustomed to see on earth. The Saviour is warning his hearers not to delay preparation for death; and, in order to impress his solemn exhortation, tells them that many will find themselves disappointed in their expectations in reference to the final decision of their judge, and that their hopes of heaven, being built on the sand, will fail at last. It does no more exclusively refer to that day than the many warnings to prepare to meet the Son of Man refer to the time of his second coming. He is always coming, and to prepare for death is to prepare to meet him. So to find ourselves deceived at the day of death is the same as to find ourselves deceived at the day of judgment.

794. “(4.) Again, it is said that in some cases the full effects and consequences of persons’ actions are not fully worked out when persons die. Thus, for instance, it is known that the labours and writings of many infidels, who are long since dead, are still working for evil; and on the other hand, the labours and writings of many good men are still working out good. These consequences must, in a certain sense, come into the consideration of their punishment or reward. Hence it is thought their destiny cannot immediately be decided. But to this it may be replied that God, who judges, knows how these consequences will work themselves out, and is able, therefore, to give a just judgment as well at the day of death as at the end of the world. At the last day, when all consequences have run out their history, it will be proper that they should be exhibited in a solemn public judgment, that all may see for themselves that all his ways are just and right. Besides, there is nothing unreasonable or unscriptural in the belief that the happiness of the righteous in heaven, and the misery of the lost in hell, will increase in exact proportion as the consequences of their actions on the earth are developing themselves, until the day of judgment, when the cup will be full, and then the full draught of happiness or misery will be taken finally and forever! Oh, what a moment will that be!

795. “Some additional considerations will serve more completely still to answer these and other objections, and reconcile the serious and thoughtful mind to the idea that the souls of the saints are in heaven before the resurrection of the body.

796. “We shall only gain proper ideas in reference to this interesting subject when we have corrected our ideas of heaven, for many of them are evidently wrong. We are inclined to think of heaven as affording to the saints a fixed or stereotyped condition, without attaching to it the idea of degrees and progression. When we maintain that the saints pass immediately at death into heaven, we do not mean that they enter then upon their final condition, or into their highest state of perfection, but only that they enter into that place which is their final abode. When, for instance, a child is born into the world, it is in the world; but it is limited in its observations, actions, ideas, capacities, and enjoyments, and yet all these are in their state perfect; all its faculties occupy their place symmetrically, and we have in the child a uniform but not a perfect being. Analogous to this may be the primary stage of our future celestial history. The child is in the world before it is born and during its infantile years, but how different is it, and how different is the world to it, from what it will be when all its faculties are ripe! So in heaven. The child before self-consciousness appears to enjoy an indistinct and floating life, but happy too; so may it be with our future condition before the resurrection of the body. The condition of the disembodied spirit will, no doubt, be somewhat isolated and lonely, (in a pleasant sense,) its happiness being derived much, though not entirely, from the flow of its own harmonious existence, and not from its connection with things external. Its future connection with its body will arrest its floating condition, and connect it again more consciously with locality and materiality. Thus it will become more capable of social relations and joys; just as the child emerging from its floating state in infancy has its social powers developed by being furnished with self-consciousness and speech, by which it learns intelligently to separate and distinguish itself from the general mass of being, which makes its enjoyments higher in their nature and more acute and sensible in their quality.

797. “Perhaps the state of the saints previous to the resurrection of the body, and in the first stage of their future being, may be analogous to (but of course higher than) a state of ordinary sleep, with active, pleasant dreaming. In dreams, the spirit acts and enjoys, unconscious of the body; and may we not suppose that the spirit after death may, to a certain extent, act and enjoy without the body? Perhaps it may in this state pass profitably and pleasantly through the first stages of its future history. It may, so to say, become habituated to eternal things, and develop its spiritual capacities to such a degree as to be prepared, at the time of the resurrection, to enter upon a more tangible and positive state of existence. It may thus, also, become acquainted with purely spiritual beings, and with the modes of purely spiritual existence. This will be useful, because the saints after the resurrection will be required to hold communion with things material and immaterial. While the saint is in this world, in the body, he becomes conversant with material things, and habituated to them; now, in the other world, in a disembodied state, previous to the resurrection, he will become conversant with and habituated to purely spiritual existence, so that after the resurrection, when soul and body are again united, he will be able to hold converse and communion with either material or immaterial existences at pleasure.

798. “To this it may be objected that while those who lived in the early ages of the world would have a long time to remain in this state of celestial pupilage, those who live in later ages would have less, and those in the last days scarcely any.

799. “This objection, so far from militating against this idea, most beautifully illustrates and confirms it. Thus the souls of men are more developed in spiritual things now, and will be still more in future, than they were in the earlier ages of the world. Those who lived in the morning of the world had very limited and indistinct ideas of divine and eternal things. Their views of a future world, especially, were exceedingly misty and obscure. As the church advanced, life and immortality were more and more brought to light. Revelation passed from types, shadows, and ceremonies, into brighter and clearer realities; and spiritual conceptions gained a firmer and more distinct hold upon the consciousness of men. The new dispensation was an advance upon the old, as under the old the age of prophecy had been upon the law, and the law upon the simple twilight of the patriarchal age. In what a different light those who lived after the new dispensation dawned, stood from those under the Old Testament, is clear from what the Saviour says—‘Among those that are born of women, there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist; but he that is least in the kingdom of God’ (in the new dispensation) ‘is greater than he.’

800. “At the present day, clearer views are enjoyed than were enjoyed in the early history of the Christian church. Let any one read the history of the patristic controversies, and he will see how the most learned stumbled among propositions in search of truth which are now clearly comprehended by intelligent Sabbath-school children. And so it will go on into the future. Spiritual ideas which are as giants to us, and the nature and relations of which we do not see, will be apprehended by our successors at once. Thus, under the tuition of the Spirit, revelation will show itself progressive, and new things, as well as old, in reference to the spiritual world, will be constantly and successively brought out of the treasure of God’s word, of which the divine Spirit is the commentator. How, you ask, does all this apply to the subject in hand? Thus the earlier a saint lived in this world, the longer time for this heavenly pupilage he will have in the next before the resurrection, and he needs more; the later he lived in this world, the less will he have in the other before the resurrection, and he needs less. Thus those who enjoy in this world superior advantages on account of living under the clearer dispensation of divine truth in the last ages of the church, shall not have any advantage over those who had less on account of living in the first ages, since those who had less will have longer time in the future world before the resurrection.

801. “With this idea in view, the passage in 1 Thess. iv. 15 becomes beautifully intelligible: ‘For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent’ (that is, shall not go before, anticipate, or have any advantage over) ‘those which are asleep; the dead in Christ shall RISE first: then’ (when they have risen) ‘we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord.’ Those who shall live in the last moment, having had their spirits fully enlightened and prepared for a future existence in the brightness of the latter-day glory before death, shall not ‘sleep’ at all, for there will be no necessity for it; but ‘shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.’ ‘The dead shall be raised incorruptible,’ having been prepared for their incorruptible body, but ‘we shall be changed.’ 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52.

802. “This theory may be seen in the same way to illustrate itself consistently when applied to those who are lost. Those who live last in the world, when superior light is around them, sin against greater light than those who lived earlier, and are therefore sooner prepared to have their doleful station fixed finally in hell, in the union of soul and body.