In this representation that there was a full recognition of acquaintances, all the accounts of the other world given in Greek and Roman literature harmonize. The same is true of the accounts contained in the literature of the ancient Hebrews. In the Book of Genesis, when Jacob hears of the death of his favorite child, he exclaims, "I shall go down to my son Joseph in the under world, mourning." When the witch of Endor raised the ghost of Samuel, Saul knew him by the description she gave of him as he rose. The monarch shades in the under world are pictured by Isaiah as recognising the shade of the king of Babylon and rising from their sombre thrones to greet him with mockery. Ezekiel shows us each people of the heathen nations in the under world in a company by themselves. When David's child died, the king sorrowfully exclaimed, "He will not return to me; but I shall go to him." All these passages are based on the conception of a gloomy subterranean abode where the ghosts of the dead are reunited after their separation at death on earth. An old commentator on the Koran says a Mohammedan priest was once asked how the blessed in paradise could be happy when missing some near relative or dear friend whom they were thus forced to suppose in hell. He replied, God will either cause believers to forget such persons or else to rest in expectation of their coming. The anecdote shows affectingly that the same yearning heart and curiosity are possessed by Moslem and Christian. A still more impressive case in point is furnished by a picture in a Buddhist temple in China. The painting represents the story of the priest Lo Puh, who, on passing into paradise at death, saw his mother, Yin Te, in hell. He instantly descended into the infernal court, Tsin Kwang Wang, where she was suffering, and, by his valor, virtues, and intercessions, rescued her. The picture vividly portraying the whole story may be seen and studied at the present time by Christian missionaries who enter that temple of the benevolent Buddha.2 From the faith of many other nations illustrations might be brought of the same fact, that the great common instinct which has led men to believe in a future life has at the same time caused them to believe that in that life there would be a union and recognition of friends. Let this far reaching historical fact be taken at its just value,
1 Alexius, Tod and Wiedersehen. Eine Gedankenfolge der besten Schriftsteller aller Zeiten und Volker.
2 Asiatic Journal, 1840, p. 211.
while we proceed to the labor in hand. The fact referred to is of some value, because, being an expression of the heart of man as God made it, it is an indication of his will, a prophecy.
There are three ways of trying the problem of future recognition. The cool, skeptical class of persons will examine the present related facts of the case; argue from what they now know; test the question by induction and inference. Let us see to what results they will thus be led. In the first place, we learn upon reflection that we now distinguish each other by the outward form, physical proportion, and combination of looks, tones of voice, and other the like particulars. Every one has his individuality in these respects, by which he is separable from others. It may be hastily inferred, then, that if we are to know our friends hereafter it will be through the retention or the recovery of their sensible peculiarities. Accordingly, many believe the soul to be a perfect reflection or immaterial fac simile of the body, the exact correspondence in shadowy outline of its gross tabernacle, and consequently at once recognizable in the disembodied state. The literature of Christendom we may almost say of the world teems with exemplifications of this idea. Others, arguing from the same acknowledged premises, conclude that future recognition will be secured by the resurrection of the material body as it was in all its perfection, in renovated and unfading prime. But, leaving out of view the inherent absurdity of the doctrine of a physical resurrection, there is a fatal difficulty in the way of both these supposititious modes of mutual knowledge in another world. It is this. The outward form, features, and expression sometimes alter so thoroughly that it is impossible for us to recognise our once most intimate companions. Cases are not rare of this kind. Let one pass in absence from childhood to maturity, and who that had not seen him in the mean time could tell that it was he? The trouble arising thence is finely illustrated by Shakspeare in the motherly solicitude of Constance, who, on learning that her young son has been imprisoned by his uncle, King John, and will probably be kept until he pines to death, cries in anguish to her confessor,
"Father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker sorrow eat my bud
And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit;
And so he'll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more."
Owing to the changes of all sorts which take place in the body, future recognition cannot safely depend upon that or upon any resemblance of the spirit to it. Besides, not the faintest proof can be adduced of any such perceptible correspondence subsisting between them.
Turning again to the facts of experience, we find that it is not alone, nor indeed chiefly, by their visible forms and features that we know our chosen ones. We also, and far more truly, know them by the traits of their characters, the elements of their lives, the effluence of their spirits, the magic atmosphere which surrounds them, the electric thrill and communication which vivify and conjoin our souls. And even in the exterior, that which most reveals and distinguishes each is not the shape, but the expression, the lights and shades, reflected out from the immortal spirit shrined within. We know each other really by the mysterious motions of our souls. And all these things endure and act uninterrupted though the fleshly frame alter a thousand times or dissolve in its native dust. The knowledge of a friend, then, being independent of the body, spirits may be recognised in the future state by the associations mutually surrounding them, the feelings connecting them. Amidst all the innumerable thronging multitudes, through all the immeasurable intervening heights and depths, of the immaterial world, remembered and desired companions may be selected and united by inward laws that act with the ease and precision of chemical affinities. We may therefore recognise each other by the feelings which now connect us, and which shall spontaneously kindle and interchange when we meet in heaven, as the signs of our former communion.
It needs but little thought to perceive that by this view future recognition is conditional, being made to depend on the permanence of our sympathies: there must be the same mutual relations, affinities, fitness to awaken the same emotions upon approaching each other's sphere, or we shall neither know nor be known. But in fact our sympathies and aversions change as much as our outward appearance does. The vices and virtues, loves and hatreds, of our hearts alter, the peculiar characteristics of our souls undergo as great a transformation, sometimes, as thorough a revolution, as the body does in the interval between childhood and manhood. These changes going on in our associates frequently change our feelings towards them, heightening or diminishing our affection, creating a new interest, destroying an old one, now making enemies lovers, and now thoroughly alienating very friends. Such fundamental alterations of character may occur in us, or in our friend, before we meet in the unseen state, that we shall no more recognise each other's spirits than we should know each other on earth after a separation in which our bodily appearances and voices had been entirely changed. These considerations would induce us to think that recognition hereafter is not sure, but turns on the condition that we preserve a remembrance, desire, and adaptedness for one another.
If now the critical inquirer shall say there is no evidence, and it is incredible, that the body will be restored to a future life, or that the soul has any resemblance to the body by which it may be identified, furthermore, if he shall maintain that the doctrine of the revelation and recognition of the souls of friends in another life by an instinctive feeling, a mysterious attraction and response, is fanciful, an overdrawn conclusion of the imagination, not warranted by a stern induction of the average realities of the subject, and if he shall then ask, how are we to distinguish our former acquaintances among the hosts of heaven? there is one more fact of experience which meets the case and answers his demand. When long absence and great exposures have wiped off all the marks by which old companions knew each other, it has frequently happened that they have met and conversed with indifference, each being ignorant of whom the other was; and so it has continued until, by some indirect means, some accidental allusion, or the agency of a third person, they have been suddenly revealed. Then, with throbbing hearts, in tears and rapture, they have rushed into each other's arms, with an instantaneous recurrence of their early friendship in all its original warmth, fulness, and flooding associations. Many such instances are related in books of romance with strict truth to the actual occurrences of life. Several instances of it are authenticated in the early history of America, when children, torn from their homes by the Indians, were recovered by their parents after twenty or thirty years had elapsed and they were identified by circumstantial evidence. Let any parent ask his heart, any true friend ask his heart, if, discovering by some foreign means the object of his love, he would not embrace him with just as ardent a gratitude and devotion as though there were no outward change and they had known one another at sight. So, in the life beyond the grave, if we are not able to recognise our earthly companions directly, either by spiritual sight or by intuitive feeling, we may obtain knowledge of each other indirectly by comparison of common recollections, or by the mediation of angels, or by some other Divine arrangement especially prepared for that purpose. And therefore, whether in heaven we look or feel as we do here or not, whether there be any provision in our present constitution for future recognition or not, is of no consequence. In a thousand ways the defect can be remedied, if such be the will of God. And that such is his will every relevant fact and consideration would seem to prove. It is a consistent and seemingly requisite continuation and completion of that great scheme of which this life is a part. It is an apparently essential element and fulfilment of the wonderful apparatus of retribution, reward, and discipline, intended to educate us as members of God's eternal family. Because from the little which we now understand we cannot infer with plainness and certainty the precise means and method by which we can discriminate our friends in heaven need be no obstacle to believing the fact itself; for there are millions of undoubted truths whose conditions and ways of operation we can nowise fathom. Upon the whole, then, we conclude that we cannot by our mere understandings decide with certainty the question concerning future recognition; but we are justified in trusting to the accuracy of that doctrine, since it rests safely with the free pleasure of God, who is both infinitely able and disposed to do what is best, and we cannot help believing that it is best for us to be with and love hereafter those whom we are with and love here.3