CHAPTER I

E-text prepared by Al Haines

Transcriber's Note:

The Greek words in this e-book have been transliterated according

to Project Gutenberg's Greek How-To. Such words are indicated

with surrounding underscores. There are a couple of instances

of author-transliterated Greek words. Those words are bracketed

and not italicized. Underscores are also used to indicate

italicization of words, but in this e-book such words are always

English words.

THE GOSPEL OF THE HEREAFTER

by

J. PATERSON-SMYTH, B.D., LL.D., LITT. D., D.C.L,

_Rector of St. Georges, Montreal, Late Professor

of Pastoral Theology, University of Dublin_

_Author of "How We Got Our Bible," "The

Old Documents and the New Bible," etc., etc., etc._

New York ---- Chicago ---- Toronto

Fleming H. Revell Company

London And Edinburgh

Copyright, 1910, by

Fleming H. Revell Company

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue

Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.

London: 21 Paternoster Square

Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street

_To My Wife_

Contents

PART I

THE NEAR HEREAFTER

I. "I"

II. THE THREE STAGES OF EXISTENCE

III. WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER

IV. WHAT THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH SAY ABOUT THE NEAR HEREAFTER

V. THE CRISIS OF DEATH

VI. "I" "MYSELF" AFTER DEATH

VII. RECOGNITION

VIII. THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

IX. GROWTH AND PURIFICATION

X. PROBATION IN THIS LIFE

XI. MINISTRY IN THE UNSEEN LIFE

XII. CONCLUSION

PART II

THE FAR HEREAFTER

I. THE JUDGMENT

II. HELL

III. HEAVEN

Publishers' Note

This tenth American (and sixteenth British) edition has been carefully

revised and where necessary rewritten by the author. We call special

attention to an interesting note on page 108.

This year a Norwegian edition has been published, translated by Judge

Hambro of the Supreme Court of Norway assisted by the Bishops of

Christiania and Trondheim. Also request has been received for

permission to translate the book for readers in Holland. But more

interesting is a letter from a Brahmin gentleman in India asking

permission to produce at his own cost an edition for his people and

dedicated on the front page, "TO MY SON, SEREM ALI, WHO IS NOW IN THE

NEAR HEREAFTER."

Foreword

The Lord is risen, but the people do not know it. There is no death,

but the people do not believe it. Human life is the most exciting

romantic adventure in the Universe, going on stage after stage till we

are older than Methuselah and then on again through the infinite

eternities--and yet men pass into the Unseen as stupidly as the

caterpillar on the cabbage-leaf, without curiosity or joy or wonder or

excitement at the boundless career ahead.

Instead of the thrill of coming adventure we have the dull grey

monotony of aged lives drawing near the close, and the horror of this

war is doubled and the torture of wife or mother as the beloved one

crosses the barrier.

What is the matter with us, Christian people? Do we not know? Or have

we lost our beliefs? or has imagination grown dulled by too frequent

repetition of God's good news?

* * * * *

It was so different in early days when the world was younger, when

Christ's revelation was fresh. Look at St. John, four-score years and

ten, like an eager boy looking into the Great Adventure: "Beloved, now

are we the sons of God, and IT DOTH NOT YET APPEAR WHAT WE SHALL BE."[1]

What we shall be! What we shall be! Is not that the chief delight of

being young? Guessing and hoping and wondering what we shall be.

The dreariest thing in life is dulness--monotony. The brightest thing

in life is outlook--vision. And God has given us that. Like St. John

we too can stand on the rim of the world and look out over the wall.

* * * * *

Life is full of latent possibilities--of outlook, of romance, of

exciting futures. God has made it so, if we would only see it. God's

world of nature has its continuous progress, its ever new and

fascinating stages. God's caterpillars in their next stage are going

to be soaring butterflies--God's acorns are to become mighty

oaks--God's dry little seeds in the granary to-day will in autumn be

alive in the waving harvests. God's world of nature is full of

romantic possibilities.

And God's world of men is infinitely more so, and one of life's

delights is to know it and look forward to it guessing what we shall

be. Outlook. Vision. That is what gives zest to life. That is what

we need to make life bright and beautiful.

* * * * *

I see a group of small boys sitting at their play, and their eyes are

bright looking into the future. They are going to be soldiers, and

sailors, and circus riders, and travelers, and all sorts of things.

Because they are boys with the enthusiasms of boyhood, they may be

anything. All the possibilities of boyhood belong to them. It doth

not yet appear what they shall be, but it is delightful to look forward

and speculate about it.

* * * * *

I see them again a dozen years later. They are starting in life, just

left college, young soldiers and lawyers and curates and business

men--still with their visions and dreams of the future. It doth not

yet appear what they shall be, but because they are young men, all that

belongs to young manhood lies before them, as they look forward in

their day-dreams. What countries they shall live in and what girl they

shall marry, and what positions and what work, and what excitements,

and what pleasure lie before them. Ah, it is delightful to be young,

realizing the possibilities in front--dreaming of what we shall be.

* * * * *

I see a crowd of older people, men and women dull, uninterested. "We

are no longer young," they say, "we are middle-aged or elderly. And we

have ceased looking forward. We have lost the vision. We have not

become as great as we expected, or as good as we expected. We are

fairly comfortable. We have not much to complain of. But life is a

bit dull. The path is a bit monotonous now. We have traversed most of

it. We can see to the end. There are no more romantic possibilities

to make life exciting, no more visions of 'what we shall be.'"

* * * * *

Don't believe it! Not a word of it. The visions are there all right.

Look out over the wall. This life of yours is only one of the stages

in your career, and not the first stage, either. The first came to

you, silent, unconscious, "where the bones do grow in the womb of her

that is with child." There you grew and developed for the next move

forward. One day came the crisis of birth and you passed into the

second stage, the training stage for life and for God. Then through a

new crisis you pass on again to new adventures. For God has revealed

that what you call death, the end of this career, is but birth into a

new and more wondrous career which again passes you forward into still

nobler adventures, and that again, perhaps--who knows? Who shall fix

the limit?

* * * * *

Nay, you are not elderly. You are not middle-aged. These are but

comparative terms. A house-fly is elderly in twenty-four hours. An

oak-tree is young after a hundred years. And you, children of eternity

with ages and millenniums before you--you are not even one year old

babies in the light of your great future.

Now do you see why the old apostle of Ephesus did not feel aged or

elderly--why he looked out like an eager boy into the adventure before

him? "Beloved, now are we the sons of God but we don't know yet what

we shall be." Aye, we don't know yet. No more than did the small boys

laughing in their play and going to be soldiers and sailors and

wonderful people. We don't know yet. But it is all before us. And it

is all going to be good because it is in the Father's presence.

So I bid you do what I sometimes do myself, look out into the void and

guess like the children what you shall be when you are older than

Methuselah.

Shake off the dulness and monotony from your life. Don't talk as if

old or middle-aged any more. Be children again in the presence of the

Father, and with happy child hearts keep guessing what you shall be.

* * * * *

I see a woman with the deep pain in her eyes, one of the many mothers

whom I have met in these terrible four years.... They were afraid to

tell her when the War Office telegram came.... He had crept out in the

night to bring in a wounded chum, and the German sniper got him. At

first she could not believe it. It must be some mistake,--some one of

similar name. But the days passed on. And the light died in her eyes

and she became suddenly old. Her prayers ceased. God had disappointed

her. There was nothing left to pray for now. Nothing to be ambitious

for any more. Her boy was dead--buried in a shallow grave in France

with a little wooden cross at his head. And he was only twenty-two!

* * * * *

The awful waste of it! All her loving thought over his childhood--all

her care, her anxiety, her efforts, her prayers that God would make him

a good and noble man. All her hope and pride in the high promise of

his boyhood. He was dead. All that he might have been and done in the

world was lost. Her life was forever desolate. And God had let it

happen!

Kindly friends came to comfort and sympathise. But it was of little

use. They had not lost their boy. They could not understand. They

bade her be proud that he had died in a noble cause--that he had died

to save another. They told her that time would bring a blessed easing

to her pain. They told her she must bow to God's mysterious will.

Ah! what is the use of it? How can any outsider intermeddle in the

pain of a mother whose boy has just been killed?

Not all the talking since Adam

Can make death to be other than death.

* * * * *

God help us all if there were no better comfort for a tortured world in

this hour of its bitterest need--to "make death to be other than death."

* * * * *

She was a brave woman. She faced the issue clearly. She talked with

wise friends. She came back to her prayers. She recalled and

relearned the teaching of her Bible and her church which had lain

hazily in memory till her need arose. And gradually God's blessed

comfort came to her "as to one whom his mother comforteth." Slowly

peace came to her heart, and in spite of her pain life became worth

living again.... He was a good boy. He loved his God. He loved his

mother. He had his faults, but she could trust Christ with them. She

had had high ambitions for him. Her ambitions came back.

She learned to think of him in the wondrous new adventure, living a

full conscious life, thinking and remembering, growing and becoming

fitted for the eternal Heaven that is still in front. She believed

that the high promise of his boyhood might be fulfilled after all, and

that she might one day see it.

Life is still very desolate without him; but she believes that he lives

and knows, that he is growing and going on--that he remembers her and

loves her as never before, that he is waiting for her, perhaps watching

over her as in his days on earth, even though he cannot write home.

And trustfully, gratefully she remembers him in her prayers. She

thinks that the Heavenly Father is not likely to forget what a mother

says to Him about her son.

* * * * *

This book is a poor, imperfect attempt to put together some of the

teachings of our holy religion, to help a troubled world, in this day

of its necessity, "to look out over the wall."

[1] John iii. 2.

PART I

The Near Hereafter

CHAPTER I

"I"

The title of this chapter is a very short one. It consists of but a

single word, and that the shortest word in the whole English language.

And though it is the shortest word, yet it is the most wonderful and

mysterious word. Though it is a word that every one of us has on his

lips every moment of the day, yet no one who reads this book--no one in

the whole world--has ever been able to understand what it means.

Just the letter "I."--All day long, from morning till night, we are

using it:--I did this. I mean to do that. I ought. I shall. I will.

I think. I wish. I love. I hate. I remember. I forget. And so on

and on--ever ringing the changes on this little word in all its cases

"I" and "my" and "mine" and "me." I want to set you thinking. Who or

what is this "I," this "me"?

Perhaps you will say, "Oh, there is nothing mysterious about it--I know

very well what I mean by it. 'I' means myself."

But what do I mean by Myself? Of course there is a rough work-day

meaning in which it means my whole being as I stand--clothes, body,

brains, thoughts, feelings, general appearance, everything. But every

thinking man knows that this is not the real "I," that when he says I

can, I do, I will, I ought, I remember, the "I" means to him something

much deeper and more mysterious than that. Ask yourself, each one,

what do you mean by "I"?

§ 1

IS IT MY BODY? Nay, surely not. I know that my body is only my

outward garment woven by "me" out of certain chemical substances. In a

scientific museum I can stand before a glass case and see neatly

labelled the exact portions of lime and silica and iron and water and

other elements which compose my body. I know that this body is

continually changing its substance like the rainbow in the sky, like

the eddy round a stone in the river. The body I have to-day is no more

the body of last year than the fire on my hearth to-night is the fire

that was there this morning. I have had a dozen different bodies since

I was born, but I am the same still. Every thinking man knows that the

"I," the real self, stands behind the body looking out through the

windows of the eyes, receiving messages through the portals of the

ears. It rules the body, it possesses the body. It says, "I have a

body." "This body is a thing belonging to me."

As you watch the changing expression in the face of your friend, as you

see his eyes flashing in anger, or softening in affectionate sympathy,

do you not feel that all you see is but the outward casing, that the

real self of your friend is a something dwelling within?

I hope I am not puzzling you. What I want to do is to introduce you to

your own self, to make you really acquainted with that mysterious being

in his first stage of existence here and then to follow him out into

the great adventure of the Hereafter.

§ 2

Let us go on. What is this I, this self? IS IT MY BRAIN?

Physiologists tell us wonderful things of that brain; how its size and

shape, and the amount of gray matter modify my character; how it

excites itself when I am thinking; how it has different departments for

different functions; how it rules and directs everything I do. And men

impressed by these wonders have sometimes asserted that there is

nothing more to be found. It is the brain which originates all,

thought is only certain activities of the brain--memory is only

impressions on the substance of the brain--when the brain decays there

is no self remaining. What I call "I" is merely a function of my brain.

But immediately the question arises, Which brain? The particles of my

brain are always changing. I have had a dozen different brains in my

lifetime, with not a particle remaining the same. Which of these

brains is it that "I" am only a function of? And how does it happen

that I remember what I thought and did and said with the old vanished

brains of twenty and thirty years ago? Memory insists that I am still

the same "I" in spite of all those changes of brain. If memory be but

a series of impressions registered on the brain these could no more

survive the dissolution of the brain than impressions on wax could

survive the melting of the wax. Surely my memory, my irresistible

conviction of personal identity with my past makes it abundantly clear

that "I" am a mysterious unchanging spiritual being behind this ever

changing brain.

And that is what the best modern science asserts--that the brain is but

my instrument. If we compare it to a violin then "I" am the unseen

violin player behind it. The musician cannot produce violin music

without a violin, but also the violin cannot produce a musical note,

much less take part in a complex symphony without the musician behind

it. If the strings of the violin be injured, or if they be smeared

with grease, the result is discords and crazy sounds. If the brain be

physically injured or disordered the result is what we call mental

derangement.

To say, then, that the brain is the _seat_ of thought is not at all to

say that it is the _source_ of thought. Everything involved in my

conscious personality is _related_ to the brain, but it is not

_originated_ by the brain. The mysterious spiritual "I" is behind the

brain, using the brain--nay further--actually educating and fitting the

brain for its work. The brain of a little child with its plastic gray

matter is smooth and unformed. It is the "I" behind that is steadily

creasing and moulding and training it for its purpose. I don't know of

anything more impressive than the study of the human brain in its

activities, and how "I" am continually changing and modifying and

educating my brain. You feel sometimes as if you could almost lay

hands on that mysterious spiritual being that is behind it, like a

spider in his web--feeling and interpreting every quiver of it, sending

messages out into the world by means of it. But he always eludes you.

You have no instrument that can touch him. You only know that he is

there, enshrouded in mystery, a supernatural being not only using the

brain but educating it for use. The brain itself has no knowledge or

thought, and no power of itself to originate knowledge or thought. The

brain of a baboon differs very little from the brain of a man. The

difference is in the being who is behind it. I read lately the

statement of a great scientist: "As far as I can see, if the soul of a

man could get behind the brain of an ape he could probably use it

almost as well as his own."

I have never known a really thoughtful student of science satisfied

with the foolish notion that the brain is what thinks and remembers and

wills. He looks upon a human brain, on the dissecting table, a mere

mass of cells and nerve centres suffused with blood, and he thinks of

the glorious poems and the mighty intellectual efforts and the noble

thoughts of God and Righteousness, and perforce he laughs at the

thought that that poor bleeding thing originated them. Something

within him indignantly replies: "Nay, 'I' am not the brain. I possess

it. I use it. It is mine, but it is not me!"

§ 3

We have not yet gone deep enough to discover this "I." It is hardly

necessary to ask the next question which some foolish people are

speculating about to-day. Am I merely the TRAIN OF THOUGHTS AND

FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS? Am "I" but like an Eolian harp, played on by

the wind of sensations from without?

Surely not. This mysterious "I" is constantly and persistently

claiming to be a real conscious person behind all these--greater than

all these--possessing all these. Listen to the voice down deep in your

consciousness--COGITO, ERGO SUM. "I" think--therefore "I" exist. I am

not the thoughts and feelings and emotions--I am greater than them all.

I am the possessor of them all. They are mine. They are not Me. They

are only passing phases of my being. They are always changing.

Everything around is changing. I remain the same being always.

Nothing else in the universe remains the same being--except God. God

and I. God and these selves that are in every one of us.

I cannot escape that conviction that "I" am the permanent being behind

all the changes. No human vision can see me. No surgeon's knife can

detect me. But I am there, behind everything.

The particles of my body, of brain and nerves and heart are constantly

being changed--every few years they are completely renewed. I have had

a dozen new bodies, a dozen new sets of brains and heart since I was

born--I am always wearing them out. I change them when they are worn

out and throw them aside like old clothes. My thoughts and feelings

are ever changing, like the ripples on the sea.

But I am absolutely certain that "I" am still there--that I am the

same--just as God is the same. The same "I" that played as a little

child--the same "I" that lived and desired and thought and felt and

worked and sinned years and years ago.

Not a particle remains of the brain, or nerves, or tongue, or eyes, or

hands, or feet, with which I did a good or evil deed twenty years

since--but it is impossible for me to doubt that it was "I" who did it,

that I to-day deserve the praise or blame which is due to it.

Every man on earth, when he thinks about it, has this conviction of

himself as an "I"--as a person separate from all other persons, as a

self separate from all other selves, as remaining always the same

being, whatever changes may take place around him. That is what

constitutes man--a self conscious of itself. As far as we can

discover, the lower animals have no such idea. Children, at first,

have not. Did you ever notice how a little child never says "I" till

he is about three years old? He always speaks in the third person. It

is always "Baby does this," "Baby likes that," until the Divine

revelation of his personality gradually grows and he recognizes himself

as a person. Then, without any teaching on your part, the child, of

his own accord, will begin to say "I."

§ 4

Oh, who or what is this awful, mysterious "I" that dwells somewhere in

the centre of my being, and rules and possesses and is responsible for

everything? What is this self, in each of you, that is hidden behind

your faces as behind a mask--that is looking out through your eyes, and

receiving, through your ears, the thoughts that others are trying to

express for you? Can the surgeon's knife find any trace of it? Is it

possible to destroy it? Is it possible to get away from it? It has

survived the putting away of every part of the body a dozen times over.

Will it survive the final putting away of the whole body at death?

Will it survive everything? Shall "I" be "I," the same identical

person through all the ages of eternity?

§ 5

Look in again upon this "I" within you and answer this question. Why

does it assert so positively that it is impossible to doubt it; "I

ought to do certain things, I ought not to do certain other things"?

All over the earth this day--from the St. Lawrence to the Ganges, from

the North Pole to the South--there is no man outside of a lunatic

asylum without that conviction. No race, not even the lowest, has been

found without it. Where did that conviction come from? From the

Bible, do you say? From the teachings of Christ? Nay, surely not.

Long before the Bible, long before the incarnation of Christ, the old

pagan had the thought clear and distinct, though not by any means so

clear and distinct as Christianity has made it. Did you ever think of

the mystery of this authoritative utterance of the self within you: "_I

ought_"? In the very lowest savages it asserts this. St. Paul calls

this sense of "ought"--the law of God written in our hearts (Rom. ii.

15). St. John calls it the light of Christ in us, "the light which

lighteth every man coming into the world" (St. John i. 9). Longfellow

sings of it in "Hiawatha":

That in even savage bosoms

There are longings, yearnings, strivings

For the good they comprehend not;

That the feeble hands and helpless,

Groping blindly in the darkness,

Touch God's right hand in the darkness.

Even in the heart of the thief or the murderer it insists: I ought to

do this, I ought not to do that, and when he disobeys this mysterious

law within him he is compelled to drag himself up for judgment and

fierce remorse for wrong that no one else knows of, that no one else

can punish him for. What do you think of that mysterious fact about

this Conscious Personality within you? Does it not look as if it

belongs to God, that every soul is stamped with God's image and

superscription, as every coin of King George is stamped in the mint

with the image and superscription of the King?

§ 6

And this suggests a further question. Why is there in us this sense of

imperfection, of incompleteness--of ideals always away in the front

that we can never even approximately reach on earth? Look at this

conscience which we have just been thinking about. It is always

holding high above us an ideal of perfect goodness and insisting that

we must strive after it. But we can never get even near it on earth.

The very best man at the close of life sees his ideal still high above

him and feels how much better he might be and ought to be and then he

dies feeling the incompleteness of this life. Does not this unfinished

life thus broken off, with its aim still far in the future, demand

something further? The great German philosopher Kant founded on this

fact his famous argument for Immortality.

Or look at our efforts after knowledge. It takes nearly all this life

to fit the student for his search after truth, and when he is just

ready and the great ocean of truth lies before him, Death comes. Oh,

how incomplete and unfinished his life seems! Just the scaffolding put

up for his work, just the tools got into good order. Then he dies.

"For half a century," said Victor Hugo, "I have been writing my

thoughts in prose and verse, history, philosophy, drama, romance,

tradition, satire, ode, song. But I feel that I have not said a

thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave I shall

have finished my day's work." And this thought of incompleteness

compels in him the hope, "another day will begin next morning."

Was Victor Hugo right? Was the old pagan philosopher right? "You may

catch my body," said Socrates, "but no man can catch me, myself, to

bury me." Victor Hugo did not believe in the Christian Bible.

Socrates had no revelation from God, except the revelation of this self

within him. You have the revelation of Christ as well. What do you

think of the question? When the dust shall return to the earth as it

was, shall the spirit return to God who gave it? When brain and heart

and nerves are destroyed, when the sun is old and the stars grow cold,

and all that you ever saw is swept away into nothingness, will this

mysterious, lonely self remain, to say "I" and "my" and "mine" and

"me," through all the ages of Eternity?

§ 7

Now, I put a closer question still. Is not this mysterious "I" behind

the brain the being that God is especially concerned with? What He

sometimes calls your soul.[1] The ceiling of the Sistine chapel at

Rome has a fine painting by Michael Angelo from the text, "Man became a

living soul." It represents the Supreme Spirit floating in the ether

and touching with His finger the body of Adam. As He touches it an

electric spark flashes into the body and Adam becomes a living soul.

Is not this the centre of the awful mystery that I call "I,"

myself--the same of which our Lord asks His tremendous question: "What

shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own self?"

Is not this "self" the real man, the man in the centre of his life, in

the deepest recesses of his being, the man as he lives beneath the eye

of God and enters into relations with God--the man for whom the Bible

announces that exciting adventure in the long ages of the Hereafter?

Is not this "I" looking out from behind your eyes this moment--the real

man, of whom the body that you see is only the outward covering, of

whom the brain is only the outward telegraphic instrument? Should not

we adapt our thoughts to that tremendous fact? Instead of thinking "I

_have_ a soul," should we not rather think "I _am_ a soul"? Instead of

thinking, that beautiful girl has an ugly soul, that insignificant

looking man has a noble soul, should we not rather think, that ugly

soul has a beautiful girl body, that splendid soul is in a mean looking

body? Would not some such manner of thinking help to bring home the

reality, that "I" am the invisible immortal being which clothes itself

in a material body during this first stage of its life. Should not we

be more likely to become acquainted with our own soul, to become

impressed with its existence, to think about its character? Should we

not thus learn more easily that wealth and clothes and outward

appearance are not so important, that the character, the relation to

God is the one supreme thing?

Think out for yourself the answer to that and to all these questions.

I am not going to answer any of them. My purpose here is not to answer

questions but to set you asking them--not to do your thinking for you,

but to set you thinking for yourselves. Is it the spoiling and ruining

of that self within you which Christ balances against the whole world?

§ 8

Now, have I helped, even in a little way, to introduce you to

yourself--that "self" that is going out into the great adventure of the

Hereafter? If I have, I have done a very good thing for you. With so

many the soul is but a vague abstraction, belonging to the pulpit and

the sick-bed and the life of the hereafter. But amid the busy daily

life, the real work and pleasure, the real streets and houses, it is

hard to think of it except as something shadowy and unreal. My effort

here is to take it out of the region of the vague and unreal and bring

it into the region of every-day, practical life.

Try to respond to my thoughts. Try to get acquainted with your own

self--your own soul. Try to watch its wondrous life. Try to become

impressed with its existence--to think about its character. Think

whether, when the Bible says anything about your soul, it means this

mysterious being that you call "I." Think whether this "I" is an

emanation from God's nature, and therefore is intended to be in harmony

with Him. Think whether it must live for ever and ever, and therefore

if its character be not of enormous importance--if its character-making

be not the one supremely important thing in your life.

Then realize that whether you exalt or degrade it, it is with you for

ever. You CAN NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GET AWAY FROM YOURSELF. You will be

the very same self after death as before. I read some time since of

the sinking of a ship and how the captain dived through the cabin door,

and keeping the light above in view, swam up through the hatchway and

escaped out of the wreck. There is a deceitful expectation in human

nature that when we go down in the sea of death and eternity we shall

in some way escape out of ourselves, swim away from our own

personalities, and thus leave the ship at the bottom of the sea. If

the "I" meant only the body, that would be true. But this "I" is where

character exists, where love and desire and will exist. This "I" is

the captain himself. The captain cannot swim away from the captain.

Myself cannot swim away from "myself." "I" must be "I" to all

eternity. I cannot shake off my character, be it good or bad.

Realize next what you mean to the God who created you and lovingly

planned for you your magnificent destiny.

Let the soul within you feel its dignity, its priceless importance in

the eyes of its Maker. Measure the value of it by what God has done

for it.

Why was this world slowly built through thousands of ages? Just as a

platform for this "I" to develop character. Why was the Incarnation

and Death of the Everlasting Son of God? Why is the gift and energy of

the Holy Spirit? Why is the perpetual intercession of Christ in

Heaven? Why is the grace and power of the Sacraments in life? Why are

the boundless prospects opened beyond the grave?

All for the sake of this mysterious permanent supernatural being that

we call "I." Measure I say by what God has done for it, the tremendous

value He sets on your immortal soul.

[1] In a simple, popular statement such as this it would but be

confusing to go into nice metaphysical distinctions of soul and

"spirit."