I.

"I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which

are asleep."--1 THESS. IV. 13.

There are moments in the lives of every one of us, when the mind is

irresistibly drawn on to wonder what our own personal future shall be, as

soon as life is over and death has overtaken us. We cannot help the

speculation. However bound by present duties and absorbed in present

interests, often, in quiet hours, in times of solitude or bereavement, or

under the sense of failing hopes or failing health, in seasons of sorrow

or of sickness, the mood takes hold of us; and it may be, we know not

why, our eyes turn with an anxious and a wistful look towards that

inevitable end which is surely coming upon us.

At such moments we ask ourselves, what will my lot be when the hand of

death touches me--even _me_; when all the light of life goes out, all

thought of this world's cares, all pleasant joys and hopes and desires of

time sink down and fade into the chill gloom and shadow of the unknown?

Such questionings, brought close home to our very selves, cannot but fill

us with very anxious fears and misgivings, as we either look back upon

the past, or think upon what chiefly possesses our minds and thoughts

now. Indeed, many of us cannot bear this forward glance, and refuse to

face it. We would fain brush the thought aside, and with some hasty

utterance of vague trust, of shadowy self-comforting hope that GOD will

be merciful, we turn sharply round and give ourselves again to the calls

of the life which is about us.

In this way, we Christians, we children of GOD, heirs of life and

immortality, learn to be terrified at death, which, as we are taught to

believe, ushers us into life; learn to associate it with trembling doubt

and shuddering dismay. But is this dread of death nothing else than the

natural instinctive shrinking, which the warmth of life feels at the

touch of its cold hand? Or is it not rather, in the case of most of us,

due to some false imaginations with which religion itself--that form, at

least, of religion which to-day encompasses us--has for many years

possessed and imbued the minds of men? Indeed, I believe it to be so.

The Christianity of to-day has too commonly accepted two untruths, which

yet it holds as truths.

1. One of them is this: That death ushers the soul immediately and

finally into the supreme condition which awaits the souls of men; so

that, at death, the souls of good men pass at once into heaven, while the

souls of bad men pass at once into hell; in other words, that the final

and irrevocable severance between the just and the unjust takes place at

death. Believing this, men have lost all faith in an Intermediate State

between death and the Day of Judgment. That intervening sojourn of the

soul has virtually dropped out of recognition in the popular Christianity

of the day, and is quite ignored. If you walk through any resting place

of the bodies of the dead, into your own churchyards and cemeteries, you

will, not seldom, find inscriptions upon tombs, which express the

confident assurance that one, whose death is recorded, has already passed

into heaven; that another has now become an angel of Light, or is singing

the praises of GOD before the throne, is, in short, in the full present

enjoyment of consummate and final bliss. Thus it is that the

Intermediate State between death and the final condition of happiness in

heaven, which can only follow the Day of the Resurrection, is quite

forgotten and overlooked.

2. And the second untruth, which is closely connected with the first, is

this: That there are but two classes of those who pass hence and are no

more seen; classes sharply distinguished, clearly outlined,--on the one

hand, of those who at death go straight to heaven, and, on the other, of

those who at death go straight to the place of final torment. If then

these are the only two clearly marked and sharply defined alternatives,

it follows that, whensoever we dare not be sure of any one soul at death

that it was good enough certainly for heaven, there is nothing for it but

to fear that the worse doom awaits it and that it is lost. For if it is

not, at the moment of death, pure enough or good enough for heaven, into

which there "shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, neither

whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie," {5} that soul,

according to this false belief, is lost. Yet, in fact, what do we see

within us and around us, as we honestly look into our own lives, and upon

the lives both of the best and of the worst among us? We see this, and

we are convinced that we are not mistaken, that even among the most

marked extremes of good men and evil men, few even of the best are so

free from stain or fault as, at death, to be certainly fit for heaven,

and few so vile and degraded as not to have still some good in them. And

between these two extremes there are multitudes of mixed characters, in

part good and in part bad. Among these, of whom we know that they are

full of worth yet full of imperfections too, we count so many who are

most dear to us, many the companions of our lives, our kindred, and

acquaintances, and cherished friends, whose failings and whose virtues we

know so well, of mixed and imperfect character, too frail for heaven, too

good, too lovable for hell, partly good and partly not good, strong and

also weak, marred with inconsistencies, and often for these very

inconsistencies the more dear to us, of whom, so truly have we loved and

even honoured them, it seems almost like an outrage upon their memory to

bring ourselves to think that there was just so much of evil in them and

just so little good, as would suffice to turn the balance against them

and thus fix, at the moment of their death, their final doom.

What are we to think of such as these? Of some we perhaps say within

ourselves, "Would that there had been but a little amendment of this

blemish! A little more of strength and purpose against that fault! If

only this besetting hardness had not been the spoiler of his life, that

great heedlessness, that fatal procrastination, this too frequent sin!

Oh! but for this or that which marred the fair and well rounded

character! But for this we should have been full of hope: there was so

much on the better side, that we should have been full of trust, and even

of confidence. But, now, what are we to think? If only there were some

fit and fair proportion to be thought of, duly measured out, of reward

and punishment, a mixed destiny for a mixed character, partly good and

partly evil for those who in this life were in part good and in part were

evil! But these two awful and sharp alternatives, either reward or

punishment, these two separate issues, heaven or hell, and if not heaven

then necessarily and inevitably hell! What shall we think? We dare not

think. In the Bible we are encouraged to believe that we shall receive

the due reward of our deeds, whether they be good or whether they be

evil. {8} But how shall any receive in heaven the due reward of evil

deeds done on earth? and how, in hell, shall any wretched soul receive in

any truth the due rewards of good deeds done on earth? Yet in each,

there was some good even in the worst, and some evil even in the best."

We see then what follows upon this false belief, that at death an instant

judgment assigns finally the destiny of all men, to men of every degree

of wickedness, without distinction, Hell; and one final and absolute

Heaven to men of every varying measure of goodness. Surely there is a

great perplexity in this. No wonder if such beliefs lead men to dread

the thought of death, of their own death, of the death of their friends.

No mere physical repulsion makes us shrink, but rather the uncertainty

and doubt of what may follow,

"The dread of something after death,

The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,"

and makes us Christian men and women turn to find relief from these

bewildering fears by plunging deeply into the waters of life's amusements

and ambitions. It is the uncertainty of things, wearing to some the

aspect of caprice, which leads to recklessness, and sometimes to

defiance.

I believe, from my heart, that Holy Scripture rightly understood solves

these confusing riddles. I believe that a more sound and Scriptural

grasp of what will be the future of each of us after death, the

restoration of a right belief in an Intermediate State, will go far to

correct these unworthy and most un-Christian fears. But it is said, at

times, that nothing can be really known about this Intermediate State,

that all that can be asserted of it is mere guess and vain conjecture,

and even that it betrays a too curious intrusion into things unseen to

speculate about the condition of souls after death. Yes! if we only

speculate, but not surely if we seek humbly to find out what the Bible

has taught us. S. Paul did not think it a too presumptuous intrusion

into things beyond the reach of our knowledge to make this enquiry. "I

would not have you to be ignorant concerning them which are asleep." He

would rather that the Thessalonians should know all that can be known, to

their edification. And something can be known, or he would not have

written this. And to know it will be to our edification also. Certainly

to ignore what can be known has led, as we have seen, to loss and offence

in these days. Therefore I propose to try and set before you not idle

speculations indeed, but what has been actually revealed in Holy

Scripture, or may be drawn from it about the Intermediate State. It is

upon Holy Scripture that we must depend for our learning. At least I

shall make no attempt to build arguments upon any other foundation than

Holy Scripture. But let us, in GOD'S Name, get out of Holy Scripture all

that can, according to the proportion of the faith, be deduced from it.

It is as perilous, not to say as undutiful towards GOD, the Revealer, to

neglect what He has for our sakes revealed, as it would be to invent

speculations of our own about that which He has not revealed.

The unseen world is not easy to apprehend, and to our matter-of-fact

English mind and temper is especially difficult. Yet, with the awful

future in our mind, which awaits not only those who are very dear to

ourselves, but ourselves also, we must be dull indeed, if we have no

concern for it. Then if sober questioning may reveal more clearly to us

what Holy Scripture can tell us of things that shall befall each of us,

we may hope to gain fresh confidence, and to renew our trust in Him Who

launched us into time, that we may live with Him in eternity through

Jesus Christ our Lord.