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THE GOSPEL OF THE HEREAFTER
THE GOSPEL OF THE HEREAFTER
by Rector of St. Georges, Montreal, Late Professor of Pastoral Theology, University of Dublin Author of "How We Got Our Bible," "The Old Documents and the New Bible," etc., etc., etc. New York —— Chicago —— Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London And Edinburgh Copyright, 1910, by Fleming H. Revell Company New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street To My Wife Contents...
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PART II
PART II
Publishers' Note This tenth American (and sixteenth British) edition has been carefully revised and where necessary rewritten by the author. We call special attention to an interesting note on page 108. This year a Norwegian edition has been published, translated by Judge Hambro of the Supreme Court of Norway assisted by the Bishops of Christiania and Trondheim. Also request has been received for permission to translate the book for readers in Holland. But more interesting is a letter from a Bra
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
The title of this chapter is a very short one. It consists of but a single word, and that the shortest word in the whole English language. And though it is the shortest word, yet it is the most wonderful and mysterious word. Though it is a word that every one of us has on his lips every moment of the day, yet no one who reads this book—no one in the whole world—has ever been able to understand what it means. Just the letter "I."—All day long, from morning till night, we are using it:—I did this.
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
§ 1 Now, grip with both hands the fact that this life, as you know it, is but one single stage in God's plan for you—the Kindergarten stage, the caterpillar stage of your existence. That in five thousand years that spiritual being looking out from behind the mask of your face to-day will be living still, and feeling still, and thinking still. That what you call death, the end of this career, is but birth into a new and more exciting career, stretching away into the far future, age after age, aeo
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II
II
As in all our troubles, we had best go first to our Lord. As He is the only one who really knows all the questions of our hearts, so He is the only one who really knows the secrets of the invisible world. He is the only one on earth who has ever gone away into that strange land and then came back to tell us anything about it. In all things He is our great forerunner. He, the Son of Man, has gone before us poor sons of man in all the experiences of life,—childhood, youth, manhood, temptation, str
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III
III
We get another hint of the Unseen Life in the story of the Transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah, two of the greatest souls of the old world days in the wondrous Waiting Life, come out from that life to meet the Lord and to speak with Him "of His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke ix. 31). Does it not suggest at once the deep interest which they and their comrades, the great souls within the Veil, were taking in the mighty scheme of Redemption that was being worked out on e
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IV
IV
Our next hint comes when the Lord is dying on the Cross. The penitent thief is hanging beside Him. Death is drawing near. The poor sinner is about to take the leap off into the dark. He does not know what is before him: Darkness—unconsciousness—nothingness—what? He does not know. The only one on earth who does know is on a cross beside him. "LORD, REMEMBER ME WHEN THOU COMEST IN THY KINGDOM." And Jesus said: "TO-DAY THOU SHALT BE WITH ME IN PARADISE." Not in Heaven, but in Paradise—the Jews' wor
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
Only three hours later the Lord passed through into that Unseen Land. "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit, and having said this He gave up the ghost," and departed on the mysterious journey. If we could know anything about what He saw and did on that mysterious journey surely it would give some hints about our dear ones departed. § 1 That journey of the Lord into the world of the dead has been made a great article of the Christian faith. We all repeat it regularly in the Apostles' Creed,
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
In an earlier chapter I placed you in imagination in the darkened death chamber, looking on the face of your dead and feeling the keen pressure of the inevitable questions: What has happened to him? Where is he? What is he seeing? What is he knowing in that mysterious world into which he has gone? That death chamber is the best place on earth for solemn thought about the Hereafter. But when you are thinking only of your own dead and your heart is all quivering in pain and longing you are not in
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II
II
What have you learned? First that IT IS A VIVID CONSCIOUS life into which he has gone. There are several passages in Scripture which speak of Death as sleep and which taken alone might suggest a long unconsciousness, a sort of Rip Van Winkle life, sleeping for thousands of years and waking up in a moment at the Judgment Day, feeling as if there had been no interval between. But a little thought will show it is a mere figure of speech taken from the sleeping appearance of the body. "The sleep of
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
§ 1 SHALL WE KNOW ONE ANOTHER IN THAT LIFE? Why not? As George Macdonald somewhere pertinently asks, "Shall we be greater fools in Paradise than we are here?" This is a perfectly apt retort, and not at all flippant as it may seem at first. It is based on the belief suggested by common sense and confirmed by Scripture that our life there will be the natural continuous development of our life here and not some utterly unconnected existence. If consciousness, personal identity, character, love, mem
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II
II
Yes, you say, that is a beautiful thought. But is that all? My poor heart is craving for more communion than that. Do they know or care about my love and sorrow to-day? And are they helping me? Are they praying for me to that dear Lord whom we both love—in whose presence we both stand to-day? And can I do anything for them on my side in this "Communion of Saints"? § 1 Do they pray for us or help us in any way? Does any one need to ask that question? Since they are with Christ of course they pray
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III
III
And the hope which Scripture thus suggests and never contradicts commends itself to reason and to the deepest instincts in our hearts. I think of a mother leaving her children and going into a full conscious life, where, mark you, she can still think and remember and love. I see that her love for them was probably the most powerful influence in ennobling her life here. And she has gone into a life where that ennobling is God's chief aim for her. Since she can remember them, I feel quite sure tha
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
What is the main purpose of the Intermediate Life? Is there something to be done there which cannot be fully done at any other time? Let us still try to keep to the firm ground of Scripture, and to avoid confusion let us confine ourselves still to the case of those who have died, in some degree at least, in penitence and faith. § 1 We have already seen that Scripture intimates that that life is not one of sleep or unconsciousness. It is a clear conscious life. It is therefore natural to ask what
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II
II
But this hope must not ignore the solemn thought that in a very real sense the probation of this life seems the determining factor in human destiny—even for the unthinking—even for the ignorant—nay even for the heathen who could never have heard of Christ here. Rightly understood all that we have said does not conflict with this. It may seem strange at first sight to think of the heathen as having any real probation here. Yet, mark it well, it is of this heathen man who could not consciously hav
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
§ 1 Is it allowable here to make a venture of faith and speculate on a matter of which we cannot give definite proof? There is a beautiful old allegory of KNOWLEDGE, the strong mailed knight, tramping over the great table-land that he surveyed, and testing and making his ground sure at every step, while beside him, just above the ground, moved the white-winged angel FAITH. Side by side they moved, till the path broke short off on the verge of a vast precipice. Knowledge could go no further. Ther
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
So we close our thoughts about the NEAR HEREAFTER, the life immediately after death. The FAR Hereafter—the great mystery of Judgment and Hell and Heaven belongs to a later section. Here we have been dealing only with the life going on to-day in the Unseen—side by side with our present life. Ah! that wonderful Paradise land—that wonderful Church of God in the Unseen—with its vast numbers, with its enthusiastic love, with all its grand leaders who have been trained on earth. WE AND THEY together f
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I
I
We touch lightly on the subject of the FAR Hereafter which is still away in the future for all humanity. One day the Intermediate Life will close. The end of this age will come at the Second Advent. And at this crisis our Lord places the great drama of the Judgment and the final decision of each man's destiny. Whether it will be a great spectacular event such as His picture suggests, with all humanity assembled and the Judge on the great White Throne, or whether His picture is figurative, we can
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I
I
The theory of Everlasting Torment and Everlasting Sin . This theory keeps with Scripture in asserting the fatal and irrevocable result of unrepented sin—but it goes beyond the reserve of Scripture in defining that result and so defining it as to impugn the character of God. It teaches that all who are condemned in the Judgment are doomed to a life of endless torment, in the company of devils—forsaken of God. Millions of millions of ages shall see this punishment no whit nearer to its end. It mus
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II
II
The theory of Universalism, i. e., that all men shall at length be saved . This opinion is based on the more hopeful side of Scripture that we have referred to, but it ignores or explains away what contradicts it in the darker and sterner side. If one could forget that, it would be the most inspiring of all the guesses that have been made. As presented by its best exponents, such men as Allen and Jukes and Cox, it is wonderfully attractive and at first sight seems to satisfy many of the conditio
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III
III
The theory of Conditional Immortality, i. e. , that all souls who fail of Eternal Life shall be punished not by Endless Torment, but by Annihilation and the loss of God and Heaven for ever and ever. This is another conjecture framed to escape the difficulties of the former two. It would be consistent both with retribution for evil and also with the final victory of good. That in the mysterious nature of things when the malignity of sin becomes incurable, a soul rotted through with sin might ulti
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IV
IV
These are the only conjectures offered us to solve the difficulties connected with Final Retribution. We find them all unsatisfactory. We have reached no definite doctrine of Hell. With the evidence at our disposal it seems impossible to do so. The failure of all attempts at reconciling the seeming contradictions of Scripture must suggest to us that the solution of this problem is beyond the range of our present powers. At any rate it is beyond the range of our present knowledge. Surely it is wi
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I. WHAT IS MEANT BY HEAVEN?
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY HEAVEN?
To us with our limited faculties Heaven is practically inconceivable. We have no experience that would help us to realize it. Even the inspired writers can but touch the thought vaguely in allegory and gorgeous vision, piling up images of earthly things precious and beautiful—thrones and crowns and gates of pearl and golden streets in the heavenly city "coming down from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." The only clear thought we have about external things in Heaven is that "I" wh
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II. WHAT IS HEAVEN'S SUPREME JOY?
II. WHAT IS HEAVEN'S SUPREME JOY?
Thus, then, we answer the first of our questions—What is meant by Heaven? Heaven means a state of character rather than a place of residence. Heaven means to be something rather than to go somewhere. But though Heaven means a state of character rather than a place of residence, yet it means a place of residence, too. And though Heaven means to be something rather than to go somewhere, yet it means to go somewhere, too. And from this the second question easily follows. What can be known about tha
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III. THE LIFE IN HEAVEN
III. THE LIFE IN HEAVEN
What can we know further about the life in Heaven, about what the old theologians called the secondary or accidental joys as compared with the supreme joy of the Beatific Vision? We know, first, There shall be no sin there . It shall be a pure and innocent life. All who on earth have been loving, and pure, and noble, and brave, and self-sacrificing, shall be there. All who have been cleansed by the blood of Christ from the defilements of sin, and strengthened by the power of Christ against the e
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IV. SHALL WE KNOW ONE ANOTHER IN HEAVEN?
IV. SHALL WE KNOW ONE ANOTHER IN HEAVEN?
What else can we learn? Shall we know one another? Does any one really doubt it who believes in God at all? What sort of Heaven would it be otherwise? What sort of comfort would there be if we did not know one another? Oh, this beggarly faith, that God has to put up with, that treats the Father above as it would treat a man of doubtful character. "I must have His definite texts. I must have His written pledges, else I will not believe any good thing in His dealing." That is our way. We talk very
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V. HOW DO MEN ENTER HEAVEN?
V. HOW DO MEN ENTER HEAVEN?
We have asked, What is meant by Heaven? What can be known of the details of life in Heaven? And now I close this book with the solemn question for us all: How shall we enter Heaven? If you have followed me thus far the answer is easy. Though there is a special place which shall be Heaven, yet, if Heaven means a state of mind rather than a place of residence, if Heaven means to be something rather than to go somewhere, though it means to go somewhere, too, then the answer is easy. We enter Heaven
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