Let us now consider the life which we can look forward to with certainty
after death, and the moral government of the world here on earth.
If we could hear the leaves complaining to one another that they must
die, and commiserating the hardness of their lot in having ever been
induced to bud forth, we should, I imagine, despise them for their
peevishness more than we should pity them. We should tell them that
though we could not see reason for thinking that they would ever hang
again upon the same-or any at all similar-bough as the same individual
leaves, after they had once faded and fallen off, yet that as they had
been changing personalities without feeling it during the whole of their
leafhood, so they would on death continue to do this selfsame thing
by entering into new phases of life. True, death will deprive them of
conscious memory concerning their now current life; but, though they die
as leaves, they live in the tree whom they have helped to vivify, and
whose growth and continued well-being is due solely to this life and
death of its component personalities.
We consider the cells which are born and die within us yearly to have
been sufficiently honoured [sic] in having contributed their quotum to
our life; why should we have such difficulty in seeing that a healthy
enjoyment and employment of our life will give us a sufficient reward in
that growth of God wherein we may live more truly and effectually after
death than we have lived when we were conscious of existence? Is Handel
dead when he influences and sets in motion more human beings in three
months now than during the whole, probably, of the years in which he
thought that he was alive? What is being alive if the power to draw men
for many miles in order that they may put themselves en rapport with
him is not being so? True, Handel no longer knows the power which he has
over us, but this is a small matter; he no longer animates six feet of
flesh and blood, but he lives in us as the dead leaf lives in the tree.
He is with God, and God knows him though he knows himself no more.
This should suffice, and I observe in practice does suffice, for all
reasonable persons. It may be said that one day the tree itself must
die, and the leaves no longer live therein; and so, also, that the very
God or Life of the World will one day perish, as all that is born must
surely in the end die. But they who fret upon such grounds as this must
be in so much want of a grievance that it were a cruelty to rob them of
one: if a man who is fond of music tortures himself on the ground that
one day all possible combinations and permutations of sounds will have
been exhausted so that there can be no more new tunes, the only thing
we can do with him is to pity him and leave him; nor is there any better
course than this to take with those idle people who worry themselves
and others on the score that they will one day be unable to remember
the small balance of their lives that they have not already forgotten
as unimportant to them-that they will one day die to the balance of
what they have not already died to. I never knew a well-bred or amiable
person who complained seriously of the fact that he would have to die.
Granted we must all sometimes find ourselves feeling sorry that we
cannot remain for ever at our present age, and that we may die so much
sooner than we like; but these regrets are passing with well-disposed
people, and are a sine qua non for the existence of life at all. For if
people could live for ever so as to suffer from no such regret, there
would be no growth nor development in life; if, on the other hand,
there were no unwillingness to die, people would commit suicide upon the
smallest contradiction, and the race would end in a twelvemonth.
We then offer immortality, but we do not offer resurrection from the
dead; we say that those who die live in the Lord whether they be just
or unjust, and that the present growth of God is the outcome of all past
lives; but we believe that as they live in God-in the effect they have
produced upon the universal life-when once their individual life is
ended, so it is God who knows of their life thenceforward and not
themselves; and we urge that this immortality, this entrance into
the joy of the Lord, this being ever with God, is true, and can be
apprehended by all men, and that the perception of it should and will
tend to make them lead happier, healthier lives; whereas the commonly
received opinion is true with a stage truth only, and has little
permanent effect upon those who are best worth considering. Nevertheless
the expressions in common use among the orthodox fit in so perfectly
with facts, which we must all acknowledge, that it is impossible not
to regard the expressions as founded upon a prophetic perception of the
facts.
Two things stand out with sufficient clearness. The first is the rarity
of suicide even among those who rail at life most bitterly. The other
is the little eagerness with which those who cry out most loudly for a
resurrection desire to begin their new life. When comforting a husband
upon the loss of his wife we do not tell him we hope he will soon join
her; but we should certainly do this if we could even pretend we thought
the husband would like it. I can never remember having felt or witnessed
any pain, bodily or mental, which would have made me or anyone
else receive a suggestion that we had better commit suicide without
indignantly asking how our adviser would like to commit suicide himself.
Yet there are so many and such easy ways of dying that indignation at
being advised to commit suicide arises more from enjoyment of life than
from fear of the mere physical pain of dying. Granted that there is much
deplorable pain in the world from ill-health, loss of money, loss of
reputation, misconduct of those nearest to us, or what not, and granted
that in some cases these causes do drive men to actual self-destruction,
yet suffering such as this happens to a comparatively small number, and
occupies comparatively a small space in the lives of those to whom it
does happen.
What, however, have we to say to those cases in which suffering and
injustice are inflicted upon defenceless [sic] people for years and
years, so that the iron enters into their souls, and they have no
avenger. Can we give any comfort to such sufferers? and, if not, is our
religion any better than a mockery-a filling the rich with good things
and sending the hungry empty away? Can we tell them, when they are
oppressed with burdens, yet that their cry will come up to God and be
heard? The question suggests its own answer, for assuredly our God knows
our innermost secrets: there is not a word in our hearts but He knoweth
it altogether; He knoweth our down-sitting and our uprising, He is
about our path and about our bed, and spieth out all our ways; He has
fashioned us behind and before, and "we cannot attain such knowledge,"
for, like all knowledge when it has become perfect, "it is too excellent
for us."
"Whither then," says David, "shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither
shall I go, then, from thy presence? If I climb up into heaven thou art
there; if I go down into hell thou art there also. If I take the wings
of the morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there
also shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say
peradventure the darkness shall cover me, then shall my night be turned
into day: the darkness and light to thee are both alike. For my reins
are thine; thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. My bones are not
hid from thee: though I be made secretly and fashioned beneath in the
earth, thine eyes did see my substance yet being unperfect; and in thy
book were all my members written, which day by day were fashioned when
as yet there was none of them. Do I not hate them, O Lord, that hate
thee? and am I not grieved with them that rise up against thee? Yea, I
hate them right sore, as though they were mine enemies." (Psalm
CXXXIX.) There is not a word of this which we cannot endorse with more
significance, as well as with greater heartiness than those can who
look upon God as He is commonly represented to them; whatever comfort,
therefore, those in distress have been in the habit of receiving from
these and kindred passages, we intensify rather than not. We cannot,
alas! make pain cease to be pain, nor injustice easy to bear; but we
can show that no pain is bootless, and that there is a tendency in all
injustice to right itself; suffering is not inflicted wilfully, [sic] as
it were by a magician who could have averted it; nor is it vain in its
results, but unless we are cut off from God by having dwelt in some
place where none of our kind can know of what has happened to us, it
will move God's heart to redress our grievance, and will tend to the
happiness of those who come after us, even if not to our own.
The moral government of God over the world is exercised through us, who
are his ministers and persons, and a government of this description
is the only one which can be observed as practically influencing
men's conduct. God helps those who help themselves, because in helping
themselves they are helping Him. Again, Vox Populi vox Dei. The current
feeling of our peers is what we instinctively turn to when we would know
whether such and such a course of conduct is right or wrong; and so Paul
clenches his list of things that the Philippians were to hold fast with
the words, "whatsoever things are of good fame"-that is to say, he falls
back upon an appeal to the educated conscience of his age. Certainly
the wicked do sometimes appear to escape punishment, but it must be
remembered there are punishments from within which do not meet the eye.
If these fall on a man, he is sufficiently punished; if they do not fall
on him, it is probable we have been over hasty in assuming that he is
wicked.