"Being confident of this very thing, that He which began a good work
in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ."--PHIL. I. 6
(_R.V._)
The Intermediate Life is not a state of sleep, but a waiting time. But
is it a time of mere waiting, and of unemployed quiescence? This would
be no better than sleep. There must be a reason for the waiting. And
what other reason can there be than that, during it, there is something
to be done which can only be done then? S. Paul speaks, in the text, of
work which he is confident will be carried on till it is brought to
completion on the Day of Judgment. What is this work? We have seen that
the Scriptural conception of the happiness of heaven is that it consists
in the sight of GOD, the Beatific Vision. But there can enter the
heavenly city nothing that defileth, nothing imperfect. It is the pure
in heart who shall see GOD. Isaiah dare hardly approach the vision of
GOD'S glory on earth, because he felt himself to be a man of unclean
lips. The very heavens, the stars themselves, are not clean in GOD'S
sight. And at death, who is pure? Who is free from stain? Who is
perfect, that he should be fit to look upon GOD? Then, if no one that is
imperfect can enter heaven, and none are perfect at death, can we not see
what the work is that has to be done between death and the Resurrection?
It is this work of purification, that the soul may be fitted for the
vision of GOD in heaven. And this is what S. Paul is speaking of in the
text. The work begun in life, under the conditions of earth's life,
shall not stop at death, but, under new conditions, shall be carried on
to perfection until the day of Jesus Christ.
So far, then, we may say that we are treading on sure ground. But when
we go on to ask how shall this work and process of purification be
effected, and what is the nature and method of it, we are approaching a
stage in our enquiry about which, it may be thought, nothing but
conjecture remains, because nothing has been revealed. But let us see
what light may be thrown upon this question. And, that we may narrow our
enquiry within manageable limits, let us confine our attention for the
present to the condition of those of whom it may with truth and reason be
said that they died in the favour and grace of GOD, died in good hope of
salvation, surely trusting that their sins had been forgiven through the
blood of Jesus Christ, and that, however imperfect and blemished with sin
their lives had been, there was an assured forgiveness for them and a
good hope of eternal mercy. We will not define the exact limits of this
reasonable hope, nor attempt to show who are within or beyond those
limits. We will only, in general terms, speak of those who have entered
upon the Intermediate Life in a condition such as would make them capable
of perfect purification. Certainly it is impossible for any of us ever
to say of any one absolutely that he is incapable of such progressive
purification. It is not possible, in Christian charity, to pronounce
sentence upon any. And it may be, and we may indeed hope, that a vast
number, a much larger proportion than many now imagine, will prove on
their entrance into the Intermediate Life to be capable of such progress
of effective purification as may fit them, each according to his measure,
for the final salvation for which he may be qualified in that home where
"there are many mansions."
When then does this purification begin? Does it begin with dying? That
has been already disproved. But so prevalent is the popular belief that
dying has a kind of cleansing power in itself, that it is well to touch
upon it once more. What is dying? It is simply the parting of the soul
from the body. The soul, up to the moment of death, dwells in the body.
At death, in a moment it ceases to dwell in the body. But have not the
pain, it may be asked, and the very agony of dying a chastening and
purifying force, serving in themselves to crown repentance, and to
achieve, in the instant, the complete cleansing of the soul? Why should
it be so? The pains which precede death are distinct from dying, from
what we may call the act of dying. The act of dying is instantaneous. It
is the moment, the crisis at which the soul takes its flight. The pains
and agony which accompany the process leading up to death are not the
pains and agony of dying at all. They are felt while the sick man is
still living. They belong to his life, not to his death. At the moment
of dying the sufferings are probably over. The body has just felt its
last throb of sensible anguish, and, in the crisis of the soul's
departure, is incapable of feeling pain, and therefore is incapable of
the discipline of pain. And it is the discipline of pain alone that has
any cleansing power. And the discipline of pain went on in life up to
the moment, if it be so, of the dying, and then ceased. But it belonged,
as the pain belonged, to the life, and not to the death. During the
life, at many times in the life past, the wholesome discipline of pain
may or may not have been working a salutary change in the character, up
to the very moment, perhaps, of death. But it ceased, as the pain
ceased, at death.
This then we conclude, that the act of dying in itself, apart from the
pain which may have preceded it, can have no moral effect, or work any
moral change. Moral change, that is to say change of character, can only
go on in life. Dying is a physical operation, not a moral act. At death
the possibility of change of character has stopped, so far as this life
can be the sphere of it. Life, not death, may be accompanied by
cleansing, life on this side of death, and life on the other side of
death, but not death, which is between, the mere transition from life to
life, from one mode of life to another.
The soul, therefore, after death begins just where it left off, just as
life left it, no better, no worse. It passes into the unseen world,
pardoned, it may be, by GOD'S mercy, but yet no other than it was before
it left the body. Even GOD'S pardon does not change the character, nor
yet remove the tendency to sin. That still remains, alas! even in the
penitent. The consequences of our acts follow upon our acts, and form
our character. As there is uniformity in the law of cause and effect in
the realm of nature, so, in morals, is it the case with what we do. Let
a man yield to a temptation:--is he as strong against that temptation
after he has yielded to it as he would have been if he had not yielded to
it? We know that he is not. We know, by our own experience, that it
needs a far greater and more strenuous effort to withstand the same
temptation after previous yielding, than it did before. A man may repent
and be pardoned, but he is what his sin has made him, weak and frail and
prone to sin again. GOD'S pardon has cancelled his guilt, but it has not
removed his tendency, nor the moral consequences, which sin has wrought
upon his character.
This then is what is meant when it is said that the soul, which has
received the gracious pardon of GOD before it left the body, is still,
when it is launched into the Intermediate Life, clouded and disfigured
with the stains and imperfections which it had contracted in this life.
But GOD, Who has begun the good work of cleansing in this life, will
carry it on in the life unseen, until the soul be made perfect in the day
of Jesus Christ.
Who of us, the best of us, does not feel within him the bitterness of the
lingering poison, which sin has deposited in his heart? The holier a man
is, the more he is conscious of his sinfulness. To the end of life this
must be so; for there is no reaching perfection here. Those, chiefly,
who have made most progress in the struggle against sin here, know how
hateful it is. The higher men rise here in the divine life, the more
they discern their imperfections, because they can better measure them by
the measure of GOD'S perfections. Each loftier level is but a new
standpoint from which to lift the eyes, and view the peaks which soar
upward towards infinite elevations. For GOD is holiness itself; and
holiness is infinite, because GOD is infinite.