"It is a beautiful belief,
That ever round our head
Are hovering on viewless wings
The spirits of the dead."
While every year is taking one and another from the ranks of life
and usefulness, or the charmed circle of friendship and love, it is
soothing to remember that the spiritual world is gaining in riches
through the poverty of this.
In early life, with our friends all around us,--hearing their
voices, cheered by their smiles,--death and the spiritual world
are to us remote, misty, and half fabulous; but as we advance in
our journey, and voice after voice is hushed, and form after form
vanishes from our side, and our shadow falls almost solitary on the
hillside of life, the soul, by a necessity of its being, tends to
the unseen and spiritual, and pursues in another life those it seeks
in vain in this.
For with every friend that dies, dies also some especial form of
social enjoyment, whose being depended on the peculiar character of
that friend; till, late in the afternoon of life, the pilgrim seems
to himself to have passed over to the unseen world in successive
portions half his own spirit; and poor indeed is he who has not
familiarized himself with that unknown, whither, despite himself,
his soul is earnestly tending.
One of the deepest and most imperative cravings of the human
heart, as it follows its beloved ones beyond the veil, is for
some assurance that they still love and care for us. Could we
firmly believe this, bereavement would lose half its bitterness.
As a German writer beautifully expresses it, "Our friend is not
wholly gone from us; we see across the river of death, in the
blue distance, the smoke of his cottage;" hence the heart, always
creating what it desires, has ever made the guardianship and
ministration of departed spirits a favorite theme of poetic fiction.
But is it, then, fiction? Does revelation, which gives so many hopes
which nature had not, give none here? Is there no sober certainty
to correspond to the inborn and passionate craving of the soul? Do
departed spirits in verity retain any knowledge of what transpires
in this world, and take any part in its scenes? All that revelation
says of a spiritual state is more intimation than assertion; it has
no distinct treatise, and teaches nothing apparently of set purpose;
but gives vague, glorious images, while now and then some accidental
ray of intelligence looks out,--
"like eyes of cherubs shining
From out the veil that hid the ark."
But out of all the different hints and assertions of the Bible we
think a better inferential argument might be constructed to prove
the ministration of departed spirits than for many a doctrine which
has passed in its day for the height of orthodoxy.
First, then, the Bible distinctly says that there is a class of
invisible spirits who minister to the children of men: "Are they
not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to those who
shall be heirs of salvation?" It is said of little children, that
"their angels do always behold the face of our Father which is in
heaven." This last passage, from the words of our Saviour, taken
in connection with the well-known tradition of his time, fully
recognizes the idea of individual guardian spirits; for God's
government over mind is, it seems, throughout, one of intermediate
agencies, and these not chosen at random, but with the nicest
reference to their adaptation to the purpose intended. Not even the
All-seeing, All-knowing One was deemed perfectly adapted to become
a human Saviour without a human experience. Knowledge intuitive,
gained from above, of human wants and woes was not enough--to it
must be added the home-born certainty of consciousness and memory;
the Head of all mediation must become human. Is it likely, then,
that, in selecting subordinate agencies, this so necessary a
requisite of a human life and experience is overlooked? While around
the throne of God stand spirits, now sainted and glorified, yet
thrillingly conscious of a past experience of sin and sorrow, and
trembling in sympathy with temptations and struggles like their own,
is it likely that he would pass by these souls, thus burning for the
work, and commit it to those bright abstract beings whose knowledge
and experience are comparatively so distant and so cold?
It is strongly in confirmation of this idea, that in the
transfiguration scene--which seems to have been intended purposely
to give the disciples a glimpse of the glorified state of their
Master--we find him attended by two spirits of earth, Moses and
Elias, "which appeared with him in glory, and spake of his death
which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." It appears that these
so long departed ones were still mingling in deep sympathy with
the tide of human affairs--not only aware of the present, but also
informed as to the future. In coincidence with this idea are all
those passages which speak of the redeemed of earth as being closely
and indissolubly identified with Christ, members of his body, of his
flesh and his bones. It is not to be supposed that those united
to Jesus above all others by so vivid a sympathy and community of
interests are left out as instruments in that great work of human
regeneration which so engrosses him; and when we hear Christians
spoken of as kings and priests unto God, as those who shall judge
angels, we see it more than intimated that they are to be the
partners and actors in that great work of spiritual regeneration of
which Jesus is the head.
What then? May we look among the band of ministering spirits for our
own departed ones? Whom would God be more likely to send us? Have we
in heaven a friend who knew us to the heart's core? a friend to whom
we have unfolded our soul in its most secret recesses? to whom we
have confessed our weaknesses and deplored our griefs? If we are to
have a ministering spirit, who better adapted? Have we not memories
which correspond to such a belief? When our soul has been cast down,
has never an invisible voice whispered, "There is lifting up"? Have
not gales and breezes of sweet and healing thought been wafted over
us, as if an angel had shaken from his wings the odors of paradise?
Many a one, we are confident, can remember such things--and whence
come they? Why do the children of the pious mother, whose grave has
grown green and smooth with years, seem often to walk through perils
and dangers fearful and imminent as the crossing Mohammed's fiery
gulf on the edge of a drawn sword, yet walk unhurt? Ah! could we
see that attendant form, that face where the angel conceals not the
mother, our question would be answered.
It may be possible that a friend is sometimes taken because the
divine One sees that his ministry can act more powerfully from the
unseen world than amid the infirmities of mortal intercourse. Here
the soul, distracted and hemmed in by human events and by bodily
infirmities, often scarce knows itself, and makes no impression on
others correspondent to its desires. The mother would fain electrify
the heart of her child; she yearns and burns in vain to make her
soul effective on its soul, and to inspire it with a spiritual and
holy life; but all her own weaknesses, faults, and mortal cares
cramp and confine her, till death breaks all fetters; and then,
first truly alive, risen, purified, and at rest, she may do calmly,
sweetly, and certainly, what, amid the tempests and tossings of
life, she labored for painfully and fitfully. So, also, to generous
souls, who burn for the good of man, who deplore the shortness of
life, and the little that is permitted to any individual agency on
earth, does this belief open a heavenly field. Think not, father or
brother, long laboring for man, till thy sun stands on the western
mountains,--think not that thy day in this world is over. Perhaps,
like Jesus, thou hast lived a human life, and gained a human
experience, to become, under and like him, a saviour of thousands;
thou hast been through the preparation, but thy real work of good,
thy full power of doing, is yet to begin.
But again: there are some spirits (and those of earth's choicest)
to whom, so far as enjoyment to themselves or others is concerned,
this life seems to have been a total failure. A hard hand from the
first, and all the way through life, seems to have been laid upon
them; they seem to live only to be chastened and crushed, and we
lay them in the grave at last in mournful silence. To such, what a
vision is opened by this belief! This hard discipline has been the
school and task-work by which their soul has been fitted for their
invisible labors in a future life; and when they pass the gates of
the grave, their course of benevolent acting first begins, and they
find themselves delighted possessors of what through many years they
have sighed for--the power of doing good. The year just past, like
all other years, has taken from a thousand circles the sainted,
the just, and the beloved; there are spots in a thousand graveyards
which have become this year dearer than all the living world; but
in the loneliness of sorrow how cheering to think that our lost
ones are not wholly gone from us! They still may move about in our
homes, shedding around an atmosphere of purity and peace, promptings
of good, and reproofs of evil. We are compassed about by a cloud
of witnesses, whose hearts throb in sympathy with every effort and
struggle, and who thrill with joy at every success. How should this
thought check and rebuke every worldly feeling and unworthy purpose,
and enshrine us, in the midst of a forgetful and unspiritual world,
with an atmosphere of heavenly peace. They have overcome--have
risen--are crowned, glorified, but still they remain to us, our
assistants, our comforters, and in every hour of darkness their
voice speaks to us: "So we grieved, so we struggled, so we fainted,
so we doubted; but we have overcome, we have obtained, we have seen,
we have found--and in our victory behold the certainty of thy own."