It is all a terrible delusion, arising from perverted sentiment and degraded thought. Of the five theoretical modes of salvation taught in the world, Election, Faith, Works, Knowledge, Harmony, one alone is real and divine, although it contains principles taken from all the rest and blended with its own. There is no salvation by foregone election; for that would dethrone the moral laws and deify caprice. There is no salvation by dogmatic faith; because faith is not a matter of will, but of evidence, not within man's own power, and a thousand varieties of faith are necessitated among men. There is no salvation by determinate works; for works are measurable quantities, whose rewards and punishments are meted and finally spent, but salvation is qualitative and infinite. There is no salvation by intellectual knowledge; for knowledge is sight, not being, an accident, not an essence, an attribute of one faculty, not a right state and ruling force in all. The true salvation is by harmony; for harmony of all the forces of the soul with themselves and with all related forces beyond, harmony of the individual will with the Divine will, harmony of personal action with the universal activity, what other negation of perdition is possible? what other definition and affirmation of salvation conceivable? By the Creator's fiat, man is first elected to be. By the guiding stimulus of faith, he is next animated to spiritual exertion. By the performance of good works, he then brings his moral nature into beautiful form and attitude. By knowledge of truth, he furthermore sees how to direct, govern, and attune himself. And finally, by the accomplishment of all this in the organized harmony of a wise and holy soul, there results that state of being whose passive conditions constitute salvation, and whose active experience is eternal life.
CHAPTER VI.
RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN A FUTURE LIFE.
OF all the sorrows incident to human life, none is so penetrating to gentle hearts as that which fills them with aching regrets, and, for a time, writes hollowness and vanity on their dearest treasures, when death robs them of those they love. And so, of all the questions that haunt the soul, wringing its faculties for a solution, beseeching the oracles of the universe for a response, none can have a more intense interest than gathers about the irrepressible inquiry, "Shall we ever meet again, and know, the friends we have lost? somewhere in the ample creation and in the boundless ages, join, with the old familiar love, our long parted, fondly cherished, never forgotten dead?" The grief of bereavement and the desire of reunion are experienced in an endless diversity of degrees by different persons, according as they are careless, hard, and sense bound, or thoughtful, sympathizing, and imaginative; undisciplined by the mysteries and afflictions of our mortal destiny, or profoundly tried by the disappointments and prophecies of time and fate; and as they are shadowed by the gloom of despair, or cheered by the radiance of belief. But to all who feel, even the least, the uncertain but deep monitions of the silent pall, the sad procession, and the burial mound, the impressive problem must occur, with frequency and power, Does the grave sunder us and the objects of our affection forever? or, across that dark gulf, shall we be united again in purer bonds? Outside of the atheistic dissolution and the pantheistic absorption, it is supposable that, surviving the blow of death, our spirits may return to God and run their endless course in divine solitude. On the other hand, it is supposable that, possessed with all the memories of this probationary state, blessed by the companionship of our earthly friends, we may aspire together along the interminable gradations of the world to come. If the former supposition be true, and the farewell of the dying is the announcement of an irrevocable separation, then the tears we shed over the shrouded clay, once so prized, should be distillations from Lethe's flood, to make us forget all. But if the latter be true, then our deadly seeming losses are as the partings of travellers at night to meet in the morning; and, as friend after friend retires, we should sigh to each departing spirit a kind adieu till we meet again, and let pleasing memories of them linger to mingle in the sacred day dreams of remaining life.
Evidently it is of much importance to a man which of these views he shall take; for each exerts a distinctive influence in regard to his peace of mind, his moral strength, and his religious character. On one who believes that hereafter, beyond all the partings in this land of tombs, he shall never meet the dear companions who now bless his lot, the death of friends must fall, if he be a person of strong sensibilities, as a staggering blow, awakening an agony of sorrow, taking from the sky and the earth a glory nothing can ever replace, and leaving in his heart a wretched void nothing can ever fill. Henceforth he will be deprived mostly for all felt connection between them is hopelessly sundered of the good influences they exerted on him when present: he must try, by all expedients, to forget them; think no more of their virtues, their welcome voices and kindly deeds; wipe from the tablets of his soul all fond records of their united happy days; look not to the future, let the past be as though it had never been, and absorb his thoughts and feelings in the turmoil of the present. This is his only course; and even then, if true to the holiest instincts of his soul, he will find the fatal separation has lessened his being and impoverished his life,
"For this losing is true dying; This is lordly man's down lying, This his slow but sure reclining, Star by star his world resigning."
But to him who earnestly expects soon to be restored under fairer auspices and in a deathless world to those from whom he parted as he laid their crumbling bodies in the earth, the death of friends will come as a message from the Great Father, a message solemn yet kind, laden indeed with natural sadness yet brightened by sure promise and followed by heavenly compensations. If his tears flow, they flow not in scalding bitterness from the Marah fountain of despair, but in chastened joy from the smitten rock of faith. So far from endeavoring to forget the departed, he will cling to their memories with redoubled tenderness, as a sacred trust and a redeeming power. They will be more precious to him than ever, stronger to purify and animate. Their saintly examples will attract him as never before, and their celestial voices plead from on high to win him to virtue and to heaven. The constant thought of seeing them once more, and wafting in their arms through the enchanted spaces of Paradise, will wield a sanctifying force over his spirit. They will make the invisible sphere a peopled reality to him, and draw him to God by the diffused bonds of a spiritual acquaintance and an eternal love.
Since the result in which a man rests on this subject, believing or disbelieving that he shall recognise his beloved ones the other side of the grave, exerts a deep influence on him, in one case disheartening, in the other uplifting, it is incumbent on us to investigate the subject, try to get at the truth, clear it up, and appreciate it as well as we can. It is a theme to interest us all. Who has not endeared relatives, choice friends, freshly or long ago removed from this earth into the unknown clime? In a little while, as the ravaging reaper sweeps on his way, who will not have still more there, or be there himself? Whether old acquaintance shall be all forgot or be well remembered there, is an inquiry which must profoundly interest all who have hearts to love their companions, and minds to perceive the creeping shadows of mystery drawing over us as we approach the sure destiny of age and the dim confines of the world. It is a theme, far removed from noisy strifes and vain shows, penetrating that mysterious essence of affection and thought which we are. The thing of first importance is not the conclusion we reach, but the spirit in which we seek and hold it. The Christian says to his friend, "Our souls will be united in yonder heaven." Danton, with a horrible travesty, said to his comrades on the scaffold, "Our heads will meet in that sack."
Before engaging directly in the discussion, it will be interesting to notice, for an instant, the verdict which history, in the spontaneous suppositions and rude speculations of ancient peoples, pronounces on this subject.1 Among their various opinions about the state after death, it is a prominent circumstance that they generally agree in conceiving it as a social state in which personal likenesses and memories are retained, fellow countrymen are grouped together, and friends united. This is minutely true of those nations with the details of whose faith we are acquainted, and is implied in the general belief of all others, except those who expected the individual spirit to be absorbed in the soul of the universe. Homer shows Ulysses and Virgil in like manner shows Aneas upon his entrance into the other world mutually recognising his old comrades and recognised by them. The two heroes whose inseparable friendship on earth was proverbial are still together in Elysium:
"Then, side by side, along the dreary coast Advanced Achilles' and
Patroclus' ghost, A friendly pair."