definite notion of the future life, another and quite different. The
popular doctrine in our churches I think is this: That this body which
we lay in the dust shall one day be raised again, the living soul joined
on anew, and both together live the eternal life. But where is the soul
all this time, between our death-day and our day of rising? Some say it
sleeps unconscious, dead all this time; others, that it is in Heaven
now, or else in hell; others, in a strange and transient home, imperfect
in its joy or woe, waiting the final day and more complete account. It
seems to me this notion is absurd and impossible: absurd in its doctrine
relative to the present condition of departed souls; impossible in what
it teaches of the resurrection of this body. If my soul is to claim the
body again, which shall it be, the body I was born into, or that I died
out of? If I live to the common age of men, changing my body as I must,
and dying daily, then I have worn some eight or ten bodies. So at the
last, which body shall claim my soul, for the ten had her? The soul
herself may claim them all. But to make the matter still more intricate,
there is in the earth but a certain portion of matter out of which human
bodies can be made. Considering all the millions of men now living, the
myriads of millions that have been before, it is plain, I think, that
all the matter suitable for human bodies has been lived over many times.
So if the world were to end to-day, instead of each old man having ten
bodies from which to choose the one that fits him best, there would be
ten men, all clamoring for each body! Shall I then have a handful of my
former dust, and that alone? That is not the resurrection of my former
body. This whole doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh seems to me
impossible and absurd.
I know men refer this, as many other things no better, to Jesus. I find
no satisfactory evidence that he taught the resurrection of the body;
there is some evidence that he did not. I know it was the doctrine of
the Pharisees of his time, of Paul, the early Christians, and more or
less of the Christian churches to this day. In Christ's time in Judea,
there were the Sadducees, who taught the eternal death of men; the
Pharisees who taught the resurrection of the flesh and its reunion with
the soul; the Essenes, who taught the immortality of the soul, but
rejected the resurrection of the body. Paul was a Pharisee, and in his
letters taught the resurrection of the dead, the belief of the
Pharisees. From him it has come down to us, and in the creed of many
churches it is still written, "I believe in the resurrection of the
flesh." Many doubted this in early times, but the council of Nice
declared all men accursed who dared to doubt the resurrection of the
flesh. I mention this as absurd and impossible, because it is still, I
fear, the popular belief, and lest some should confound the doctrine of
immortality with this tenet of the Pharisees. Let it be remembered the
immortality of the soul is one thing, the resurrection of the body
another and quite different.
* * * * *
What is this future life? what can we know of it besides its existence?
Some men speak as if they knew the way around Heaven as around the wards
of their native city. What we can know in detail is cautiously to be
inferred from the nature of man and the nature of God. I will modestly
set down what seems to me.
It must be a conscious state. Man is by his nature conscious; yes,
self-conscious. He is progressive in his self-consciousness. I cannot
think a removal out of the body destroys this consciousness; rather that
it enhances and intensifies this. Yet consciousness in the next life
must differ as much from consciousness here as the ripe peach differs
from the blossom, or the bud, or the bark, or the earthly materials out
of which it grew. The child is no limit to the man, nor my consciousness
now to what I may be, must be hereafter.
It must be a social state. Our nature is social; our joys social. For
our progress here, our happiness, we depend on one another. Must it not
be so there? It must be an advance upon our nature and condition here.
All the analogy of nature teaches that. Things advance from small to
great; from base to beautiful. The girl grows into a woman; the bud
swells into the blossom, that into the fruit. The process over, the work
begins anew. How much more must it be so in the other life. What old
powers we shall discover now buried in the flesh; what new powers shall
come upon us in that new state, no man can know; it were but poetic
idleness to talk of them. We see in some great man, what power of
intellect, imagination, justice, goodness, piety, he reveals, lying
latent in us all. How men bungle in their works of art! No Raphael can
paint a dew-drop or a flake of frost. Yet some rude man, tired with his
work, lies down beneath a tree, his head upon his swarthy arm, and sleep
shuts, one by one, these five scant portals of the soul, and what an
artist is he made at once! How brave a sky he paints above him, with
what golden garniture of clouds set off; what flowers and trees, what
men and women does he not create, and moving in celestial scenes! What
years of history does he condense in one short minute, and when he
wakes, shakes off the purple drapery of his dream as if it were but
worthless dust and girds him for his work anew! What other powers there
are shut up in men less known than this artistic phantasy; powers of
seeing the distant, recalling the past, predicting the future, feeling
at once the character of men--of this we know little, only by rare
glimpses at the unwonted side of things. But yet we know enough to guess
there are strange wonders there waiting to be revealed.
What form our conscious, social, and increased activity shall take, we
know not. We know of that no more than before our birth we knew of this
world, of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch, or the things which
they reveal. We are not born into that world, have not its senses yet.
This we know, that the same God, all-powerful, all-wise, all-good, rules
there and then, as here and now. Who cannot trust him to do right and
best for all? For my own part, I feel no wish to know how or where, or
what I shall be hereafter. I know it will be right for my truest
welfare; for the good of all. I am satisfied with this trust.
Yet the next life must be a state of retribution. Thither we carry
nothing but ourselves, our naked selves. Our fortune we leave behind us;
our honors and rank return to such as gave; even our reputation, the
good or ill men thought we were, clings to us no more. We go thither
without our staff or scrip; nothing but the man we are. Yet that man is
the result of all life's daily work; it is the one thing which we have
brought to pass. I cannot believe men who have voluntarily lived mean,
little, vulgar and selfish lives, will go out of this and into that,
great, noble, generous, good, and holy. Can the practical saint and the
practical hypocrite enter on the same course of being together? I know
the sufferings of bad men here, the wrong they do their nature, and what
comes of that wrong. I think that suffering is the best part of sin, the
medicine to heal it with. What men suffer here from their wrong-doing is
its natural consequence; but all that suffering is a mercy, designed to
make them better. Every thing in this world is adapted to promote the
welfare of God's creatures. Must it not be so in the next? How many men
seem wicked from our point of view, who are not so from their own; how
many become infamous through no fault of theirs; the victims of
circumstances, born into crime, of low and corrupt parents, whom former
circumstances made corrupt! Such men cannot be sinners before God. Here
they suffer from the tyranny of appetites they never were taught to
subdue; they have not the joy of a cultivated mind. The children of the
wild Indian are capable of the same cultivation as children here; yet
they are savages. Is it always to be so? Is God to be partial in
granting the favors of another life? I cannot believe it. I doubt not
that many a soul rises up from the dungeon and the gallows, yes, from
dens of infamy amongst men, clean and beautiful before God. Christ, says
the Gospel, assured the penitent thief of sharing heaven with him--and
that day. Many seem inferior to me, who in God's sight must be far
before me; men who now seem too low to learn of me here, may be too high
to teach me there.
I cannot think the future world is to be feared, even by the worst of
men. I had rather die a sinner than live one. Doubtless justice is there
to be done; that may seem stern and severe. But remember God's justice
is not like a man's; it is not vengeance, but mercy; not poison, but
medicine. To me it seems tuition more than chastisement. God is not the
Jailer of the Universe, but the Shepherd of the people; not the Hangman
of mankind, but their Physician; yes, our Father. I cannot fear Him as I
fear men. I cannot fail to love. I abhor sin, I loathe and nauseate
thereat; most of all at my own. I can plead for others and extenuate
their guilt, perhaps they for mine; not I for my own. I know God's
justice will overtake me, giving me what I have paid for. But I do not,
cannot fear it. I know His justice is love; that if I suffer, it is for
my everlasting joy. I think this is a natural state of mind. I do not
find that men ever dread the future life, or turn pale on their
death-bed at thought of God's vengeance, except when a priesthood has
frightened them to that. The world's literature, which is the world's
confession, proves what I say. In Greece, in classic days, when there
was no caste of priests, the belief in immortality was current and
strong. But in all her varied literature I do not remember a man dying,
yet afraid of God's vengeance. The rude Indian of our native land did
not fear to meet the Great Spirit, face to face. I have sat by the
bedside of wicked men, and while death was dealing with my brother, I
have watched the tide slow ebbing from the shore, but I have known no
one afraid to go. Say what we will, there is nothing stronger and deeper
in men than confidence in God, a solemn trust that He will do us good.
Even the worst man thinks God his Father; and is he not? Tell me not of
God's vengeance, punishing men for his own glory! There is no such
thing. Talk not to me of endless hell, where men must suffer for
suffering's sake, be damned for an eternity of woe. I tell you there is
no such thing, nor can there ever be. Does not even the hireling
shepherd, when a single lamb has gone astray, leave the ninety and nine
safe in their fold, go forth some stormy night and seek the wanderer,
rejoicing to bring home the lost one on his shoulders? And shall God
forget His child, his frailest or most stubborn child; leave him in
endless misery, a prey to insatiate Sin, that grim, bloodthirsty wolf,
prowling about the human fold? I tell you No; not God. Why, this
eccentric earth forsakes the sun awhile, careering fast and far away,
but that attractive power prevails at length, and the returning globe
comes rounding home again. Does a mortal mother desert her son, wicked,
corrupt and loathsome though he be? If so, the wiser world cries, Shame!
But she does not. When her child becomes loathsome and hateful to the
world, drunk with wickedness, and when the wicked world puts him away
out of its sight, strangling him to death, that mother forgets not her
child. She had his earliest kiss from lips all innocent of coming ill,
and she will have his last. Yes, she will press his cold and stiffened
form to her own bosom; the bosom that bore and fed the innocent babe
yearns yet with mortal longing for the murdered murderer. Infamous to
the world, his very dust is sacred dust to her. She braves the world's
reproach, buries her son, piously hoping, that as their lives once
mingled, so their ashes shall. The world, cruel and forgetful oft,
honors the mother in its deepest heart. Do you tell me that culprit's
mother loves her son more than God can love him? Then go and worship
her. I know that when father and mother both forsake me, in the
extremity of my sin, I know my God loves on. Oh yes, ye sons of men,
Indian and Greek, ye are right to trust your God. Do priests and their
churches say No!--bid them go and be silent forever. No grain of dust
gets lost from off this dusty globe; and shall God lose a man from off
this sphere of souls? Believe it not.
I know that suffering follows sin, lasting long as the sin. I thank God
it is so; that God's own angel stands there to warn back the erring
Balaams, wandering towards woe. But God, who sends the rain, the dew,
the sun, on me as on a better man, will, at last, I doubt it not, make
us all pure, all just, all good, and so, at last, all happy. This
follows from the nature of God himself, for the All-good must wish the
welfare of His child; the All-wise know how to achieve that welfare; the
All-powerful bring it to pass. Tell me He wishes not the eternal welfare
of all men, then I say, That is not the God of the universe. I own not
that as God. Nay, I tell you it is not God you speak of, but some
heathen fancy, smoking up from your unhuman heart. I would ask the worst
of mothers, Did you forsake your child because he went astray, and
mocked your word? "Oh no," she says; "he was but a child, he knew no
better, and I led him right, corrected him for his good, not mine!" Are
we not all children before God; the wisest, oldest, wickedest, God's
child! I am sure He will never forsake me, how wicked soever I become. I
know that he is love; love, too, that never fails. I expect to suffer
for each conscious, wilful wrong; I wish, I hope, I long to suffer for
it. I am wronged if I do not; what I do not outgrow, live over and
forget here, I hope to expiate there. I fear a sin; not to outgrow a
sin.
* * * * *
A man who has lived here a manly life, must enter the next under the
most favorable circumstances. I do not mean a man of mere negative
goodness, starting in the road of old custom, with his wheels deep in
the ruts, not having life enough to go aside, but a positively good man,
one bravely good. He has lived heaven here, and must enter higher up
than a really wicked man, or a slothful one, or one but negatively good.
He can go from earth to heaven, as from one room to another, pass
gradually, as from winter to spring. To such an one, no revolution
appears needed. The next life, it seems, must be a continual progress,
the improvement of old powers, the disclosure or accession of new ones.
What nobler reach of thought, what profounder insight, what more
heavenly imagination, what greater power of conscience, faith and love,
will bless us there and then, it were vain to calculate, it is far
beyond our span. You see men now, whose souls are one with God, and so
His will works through them as the magnetic fire runs on along the
unimpeding line. What happiness they have, it is they alone can say. How
much greater must it be there; not even they can tell. Here the body
helps us to some things. Through these five small loop-holes the world
looks in. How much more does the body hinder us from seeing? Through the
sickly body yet other worlds look in. He who has seen only the daylight,
knows nothing of that heaven of stars, which all night long hang
overhead their lamps of gold. When death has dusted off this body from
me, who will dream for me the new powers I shall possess? It were vain
to try. Time shall reveal it all.
I cannot believe that any state in Heaven is a final state, only a
condition of progress. The bud opens into the blossom, the flower
matures into the fruit. The salvation of to-day is not blessedness
enough for to-morrow. Here we are first babes of earth, with a few
senses, and those imperfect, helpless and ignorant; then children of
earth; then youths; then men, armed with reason, conscience, affection,
piety, and go on enlarging these without end. So methinks it must be
there, that we shall be first babes of Heaven, then children, next
youths, and so go on growing, advancing and advancing--our being only a
becoming more and more, with no possibility of ever reaching the end. If
this be true, then there must be a continual increase of being. So, in
some future age, the time will come, when each one of us shall have more
mind, and heart, and soul, than Christ on earth; more than all men now
on earth have ever had; yes, more than they and all the souls of men now
passed to Heaven;--shall have, each one of us, more being than they all
have had, and so more truth, more soul, more faith, more rest and bliss
of life.
* * * * *
Do men of the next world look in upon this? Are they present with us,
conscious of our deeds or thoughts? Who knows? Who can say aye or no?
The unborn know nothing of the life on earth; yet the born of earth know
somewhat of them, and make ready for their coming. Who knows but men
born to heaven are waiting for your birth to come--have gone to prepare
a place for us? All that is fancy, and not fact; it is not philosophy,
but poetry; no more. Of this we may be sure, that what is best will be;
what best for saint or sinner; what most conducive to their real good.
That is no poetry, but unavoidable truth, which all mankind may well
believe.
There are many who never attained their true stature here, yet without
blameworthiness of theirs; men cheated of their growth. Many a Milton
walks on his silent way, and goes down at last, not singing and unsung.
How many a possible Newton or Descartes has dug the sewers of a city,
and dies, giving no sign of the wealthy soul he bore!
"Chill penury repressed his noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul."
What if the best of you had been born slaves in North Carolina, or among
savages at New Zealand; nay, in some of the filthy cellars of Boston,
and turned friendless into the streets; what might you have become?
Surely not what you are; yet, before God, you might, perhaps, be more
deserving, and, at death, go to a far higher place. What is so terribly
wrong here, must be righted there. It cannot be that God will thrust a
man out of Heaven, because his mother was a savage, a slave, a pauper,
or a criminal. It is men's impiety which does so here, not Heaven's
justice there! How the wrong shall be righted I know not, care not now
to know; of the fact I ask no further certainty. Many that are last
shall be first. It may be that the pirate, in heaven, having outgrown
his earthly sins, shall teach justice to the judge who hanged him here.
They who were oppressed and trampled on, kept down, dwarfed, stinted and
emaciate in soul, must have justice done them there, and will doubtless
stand higher in Heaven than we, who, having many talents, used them
poorly, or hid them idle in the dirt, knowing our Father's will, yet
heeding not. It was Jesus that said, Many shall come from the east and
the west, and sit down in the kingdom of God, and men, calling
themselves saints, be thrust out.
* * * * *
Shall we remember the deeds of the former life; this man that he picked
rags out of the mud in the streets, and another that he ruled nations?
Who can tell; nay, who need care to ask? Such a remembrance seems not
needed for retribution's sake. The oak remembers not each leaf it ever
bore, though each helped to form the oak, its branch and bole. How much
has gone from our bodies! we know not how it came or went! How much of
our past life is gone from our memory, yet its result lives in our
character! The saddler remembers not every stitch he took while an
apprentice, yet each stitch helped form the saddle.
* * * * *
Shall we know our friends again? For my own part I cannot doubt it;
least of all when I drop a tear over their recent dust. Death does not
separate them from us here. Can life in heaven do it? They live in our
remembrance; memory rakes in the ashes of the dead, and the virtues of
the departed flame up anew, enlightening the dim cold walls of our
consciousness. Much of our joy is social here; we only half enjoy an
undivided good. God made mankind, but sundered that into men, that they
might help one another. Must it not be so there, and we be with our
real friends? Man loves to think it; yet to trust is wiser than to
prophesy. But the girl who went from us a little one may be as parent to
her father when he comes, and the man who left us have far outgrown our
dream of an angel when we meet again. I cannot doubt that many a man who
not long ago left his body here, now far surpasses the radiant manliness
which Jesus won and wore; yes, is far better, greater, too, than many
poorly conceive of God.
* * * * *
There are times when we think little of a future life. In a period of
success, serene and healthy life; the day's good is good enough for that
day. But there comes a time when this day's good is not enough; its ill
too great to bear. When death comes down and wrenches off a friend from
our side; wife, child, brother, father, a dear one taken; this life is
not enough. Oh, no, not to the coldest, coarsest, and most sensual man.
I put it to you, to the most heartless of you all, or the most cold and
doubting--When you lay down in the earth your mother, sister, wife, or
child, remembering that you shall see their face no more, is life
enough? Do you not reach out your arms for heaven, for immortality, and
feel you cannot die? When I see men at a feast, or busy in the street, I
do not think of their eternal life; perhaps feel not my own. But when
the stiffened body goes down to the tomb, sad, silent, remorseless, I
feel there is no death for the man. That clod which yonder dust shall
cover is not my brother. The dust goes to its place, the man to his own.
It is then I feel my immortality. I look through the grave into heaven.
I ask no miracle, no proof, no reasoning for me. I ask no risen dust to
teach me immortality. I am conscious of eternal life.
But there are worse hours than these: seasons bitterer than death,
sorrows that lie a latent poison in the heart, slowly sapping the
foundations of our peace. There are hours when the best life seems a
sheer failure to the man who lived it, his wisdom folly, his genius
impotence, his best deed poor and small; when he wonders why he was
suffered to be born; when all the sorrows of the world seem poured upon
him; when he stands in a populous loneliness, and though weak, can only
lean in upon himself. In such hour he feels the insufficiency of this
life. It is only his cradle-time, he counts himself just born; all
honors, wealth and fame are but baubles in his baby hand; his deep
philosophy but nursery rhymes. Yet he feels the immortal fire burning in
his heart. He stretches his hands out from the swaddling-clothes of
flesh, reaching after the topmost star, which he sees, or dreams he
sees, and longs to go alone. Still worse, the consciousness of sin comes
over him; he feels that he has insulted himself. All about him seems
little; himself little, yet clamoring to be great. Then we feel our
immortality; through the gairish light of day we see a star or two
beyond. The soul within us feels her wings, contending to be born,
impatient for the sky, and wrestles with the earthly worm that folds us
in.
"Mysterious Night! when our first Parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came;
And lo, Creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?"
I would not slight this wondrous world. I love its day and night. Its
flowers and its fruits are dear to me. I would not wilfully lose sight
of a departing cloud. Every year opens new beauty in a star; or in a
purple gentian fringed with loveliness. The laws too of matter seem more
wonderful the more I study them, in the whirling eddies of the dust, in
the curious shells of former life buried by thousands in a grain of
chalk, or in the shining diagrams of light above my head. Even the ugly
becomes beautiful when truly seen. I see the jewel in the bunchy toad.
The more I live, the more I love this lovely world; feel more its Author
in each little thing; in all that is great. But yet I feel my
immortality the more. In childhood the consciousness of immortal life
buds forth feeble, though full of promise. In the man it unfolds its
fragrant petals, his most celestial flower, to mature its seed
throughout eternity. The prospect of that everlasting life, the perfect
justice yet to come, the infinite progress before us, cheer and comfort
the heart. Sad and disappointed, full of self-reproach, we shall not be
so forever. The light of heaven breaks upon the night of trial, sorrow,
sin; the sombre clouds which overhung the east, grown purple now, tell
us the dawn of heaven is coming in. Our faces, gleamed on by that, smile
in the new-born glow; we are beguiled of our sadness before we are
aware. The certainty of this provokes us to patience, it forbids us to
be slothfully sorrowful. It calls us to be up and doing. The thought
that all will at last be right with the slave, the poor, the weak, and
the wicked, inspires us with zeal to work for them here, and make it all
right for them even now.