"I," "MYSELF" AFTER DEATH
§ 1
But we must not delay at Death. Death is a very small thing in
comparison with what comes after it--that wonderful, wonderful,
wonderful world into which Death ushers us. Turn away from the face of
your dead. Turn away from the house of clay which held him an hour
ago. The house is empty, the tenant is gone. He is away already,
gasping in the unutterable wonder of the new experience.
O change! stupendous change!
There lies the soulless clod.
The light eternal breaks,
The new immortal wakes,
Wakes with his God!
Oh! the wonder of it to him at first! Years ago I met with a story in
a sermon by Canon Liddon. An old Indian officer was telling of his
battles--of the Indian Mutiny, of the most striking events in his
professional career; and as he vividly described the skirmishes, and
battles, and sieges, and hair-breadth escapes, his audience hung
breathless in sympathy and excitement. At last he paused; and to their
expressions of wonderment he quietly replied, "I expect to see
something much more wonderful than that." As he was over seventy, and
retired from the service, his listeners looked up into his face with
surprise. There was a pause; and then he said, in a solemn undertone,
"I mean in the first five minutes after death."
That story caught on to me instantly. That has been for years my
closest feeling. I feel it at every death-bed as the soul passes
through. I believe it will be my strongest feeling when my own
death-hour comes--eager, intense, glad curiosity about the new, strange
world opening before me.
Not long ago in the early morning I stood by a poor old man as he was
going through into the Unseen. He was, as it were, fumbling with the
veil of that silent land--wishing to get through; and we were talking
together of the unutterable wonder and mystery that was only an hour or
two ahead. I always talk to dying people of the wonders of that world
just ahead of them. I left him and returned to see him in a couple of
hours; but I was too late, he had just got through--got through into
that wonder and mystery that I had been stupidly guessing about, and
the poor old worn body was flung dishevelled on the bed, as one might
fling an old coat, to be ready for the journey. He was gone. Just got
through--and I felt, with almost a gasp, that he had solved the riddle
of life; that I would give anything, risk anything, for one little
glimpse through; but I could not get it. I could only guess the
stupendous thing that had come to him. For all the stupendous changes
that have ever happened here are surely but trifles when compared with
that first few minutes in the marvellous life beyond, when our friends
pass from us within the veil, and our hearts follow them with eager
questioning--"What are they doing? What are they seeing? What are
they knowing now?"
§ 2
More and more of late years I keep asking those questions at
death-beds. I seem to myself constantly as if trying to hold back the
curtain and look through. But the look through is all blurred and
indistinct.
It must always be so while we are here, with our limited faculties,
shut up in this little earth body. I know certain facts about the "I,"
the "self" in the Unseen Life, but I have no knowledge and no
experience that would help me to picture his surroundings. I cannot
form any image, any, even the vaguest, conception of what that life
appears like. That is why my outlook is so blurred and indistinct.
And this brings me to point out WHAT SORT OF KNOWLEDGE WE CAN HAVE AND
WHAT SORT OF KNOWLEDGE WE CANNOT HAVE about that life. It may help you
not to expect the impossible.
You desire to know two things about the Unseen World.
1st. You desire to know the real life of the "I"
himself--consciousness, thought, memory, love, happiness, penitence and
such like.
2nd. You desire to know his outward surrounding, so that you can
picture to yourself his life in that world. That is what gives the
interesting touch to your knowledge of your friend's life in a foreign
land on earth.
Now the first of these is the really important knowledge, and such
knowledge you can have and you can understand because it is of the same
kind as the knowledge you already have of him on earth.
The second would be an interesting knowledge, but this knowledge you
cannot have, because you have no faculties for it and no similar
experience to help you to realize it. It is a law of all human
knowledge that you cannot know and cannot depict to yourself anything
of which you have had no corresponding experience before.
"I," "myself" which goes into the Unseen is the really important
matter, not my surroundings. And the essential knowledge, I say, about
that self, about his inner real life in the Unseen you can have and you
can understand because the inner life there is of the very same kind as
the inner life here. If I am told of full consciousness there, of
memory there, of love or hatred there, of happiness or pain there, of
joy or sorrow there, I can easily understand it. I have had experience
of the like here. There is no difficulty.
But the knowledge of the outward environment there--what we shall be
like, how that world will appear, how we shall live and move and have
our being in a spiritual existence--all that deeply interesting
knowledge which imagination could use to picture that life and bring it
before us--THAT we cannot have. It is not possible with our limited
faculties and limited experience. We could not be taught it. We have
no faculties to take it in and no experience to aid us in realizing it.
A blind man cannot picture colours to himself, a deaf man cannot
imagine music. It is not that we are unwilling to teach him, but that
his limited faculties prevent him from taking in the idea.
Realize your position then with regard to the spiritual world. Imagine
a population of blind, deaf men inhabiting this earth. One of them
suddenly gets his sight and hearing, and lo! in a moment an unutterable
glory, a whole world of beautiful colours and forms and music has
flowed into his life. But he cannot convey any notion of it to his
former companions. He cannot convey to them the slightest idea of the
lovely sunset or the music of the birds. We, shut up in these human
bodies, are the blind, deaf men in God's glorious universe. Some of
our comrades have moved into the new life beyond, where the eyes of the
blind are opened and the ears of the deaf are unstopped. But we have
no power of even imagining what their wondrous experience is like.
I suppose that is the reason why we have no description of Paradise or
Heaven except in earthly imagery of golden streets and gates of pearl.
I suppose that is why St. Paul could not utter what he saw when in some
tranced condition he was caught up into Paradise and that life was
shown to him--"whether in the body or out of the body," he could not
tell (2 Cor. xii. 4). I suppose that was why Lazarus could tell
nothing of these marvellous four days in which his disembodied spirit
mingled with the spirits of the departed.
"'Where wert thou, brother, those four days?'
There lives no record of reply,
Which, telling what it is to die,
Had surely added praise to praise."
I suppose it was all unintelligible to mortal ken when the spirit had
come back to the body it had left. If, in a crowd of blind deaf men,
one got his sight and hearing for a few minutes, and then relapsed,
what could he tell to his comrades or even fully realize to himself?
Thus you see the knowledge that you can have and the knowledge you
cannot have of that spirit life. Be content. God has given you a
great deal of knowledge of that real life of the self in the hereafter.
If He has so made you that the other knowledge that would help you to
picture the surroundings is impossible to you it is best that you
should know it. Be content. Don't cry for the moon. Follow your
departed in thought into that life and realize what you have learned
from Scripture about him.
II
What have you learned?
First that IT IS A VIVID CONSCIOUS life into which he has gone.
There are several passages in Scripture which speak of Death as sleep
and which taken alone might suggest a long unconsciousness, a sort of
Rip Van Winkle life, sleeping for thousands of years and waking up in a
moment at the Judgment Day, feeling as if there had been no interval
between. But a little thought will show it is a mere figure of speech
taken from the sleeping appearance of the body. "The sleep of Death"
is a very natural expression to use as one looks on the calm, peaceful
face after life's fitful fever and the long pain and sickness of the
death-bed. But no one can study the Bible references to the life
beyond without seeing that it cannot be a life of sleep or
unconsciousness. "Shall we sleep between Death and the Judgment?" asks
Tertullian. "Why souls do not sleep even when men are alive. It is
the province of bodies to sleep." This sleep theory has always been
condemned whenever the Church has pronounced on it. Even the Reformers
declare it at variance with Holy Scripture in spite of the strong
feeling in its favour in their day.[1]
The reader who has followed thus far will need no proof as to the
teaching of Scripture that the Waiting Life before the Judgment into
which our dear ones have gone is no unconscious sleep but a real vivid
conscious life. So vivid that our Lord's spirit is said to have been
quickened, made more alive, as He passed in. So vivid that the men of
the old world could listen to His preaching. So vivid that Moses and
Elias--those eager, impetuous leaders--in that wondrous life could not
be held by its bonds, but broke through to stand on the mountain with
Christ a thousand years after their death. So vivid that Lazarus (whom
our Lord describes as in Abraham's bosom) is depicted as living a full,
clear, intelligent life; and Dives as thinking anxiously about his five
brothers on earth.
That was surely no unconscious life which St. Paul saw when he was
caught up into Paradise and heard unspeakable things, nor was it a
blank unconsciousness that he looked for in his desire "to depart and
be with Christ which is far better" (Phil. i. 23).
Do you want further proof? Look at our Lord and the thief on the
cross. The two men had been hanging together dying on the cross, just
about to get through the veil to the world beyond. The poor thief did
not know what was beyond that veil--darkness, insensibility, stupor,
oblivion. The only one on earth who did know hung there beside him.
And when the poor dying one turned with the words, "Lord, remember me
when Thou comest in Thy kingdom," He promptly replied, "To-day thou
shalt be with Me." If any one knew, surely He knew. If it meant
anything, it meant, "There shall be no oblivion, no unconscious
sleeping. To-night, when our dead bodies lie here upon the cross, you
and I shall live and know each other as the two men who hung dying
together on Calvary." Ah! the wonder to him as he went in beyond the
veil, as though the Lord would lead him, lest he should be afraid.
Beyond all question God has revealed to you plainly enough that your
beloved has gone into a full, vivid, conscious life. He is more alive
to-day than he ever was on earth.
What follows? This. If I am fully conscious what am I conscious of?
Surely, first of all I must be conscious of myself, conscious of the
continuity of my personal identity, conscious of the continuity of my
personal character. I must feel that I am the same "I," I am still
"myself." Death which removes only the outer covering leaves the Ego
just where it was. No better. No worse. The Bible lays no emphasis
at all on death as making any change in character. Our Lord assumes
the characters as remaining the same. The mere act of dying does not
alter character. I am the same I. I have entered into a new
environment more favourable for the exercise of my faculties, more
adaptable to the acquisition of knowledge, more helpful, I trust, to
growth in good. But I am the same "I." As I leave off here I begin
there. I take into that world just myself as I have made it. If I
have made the best of myself what more should I desire to take?
Consciousness, Memory, Thought, Love, Character. If I have not made
the best of myself, if I have acquired a distaste for God, for
holiness, still I take in myself just as I stand. Think how
tremendously solemn that makes the life here. It is the place of
character making for the life there. I can never, never, never get
away from myself. I shall always be myself. You remember what our
Lord said from the other side of the grave. "Handle Me and see it is I
MYSELF."
It is I myself, the very same self. It is they themselves, the very
same selves whom I loved and who loved me so dearly. In that solemn
hour after death, believe it, your boy, your wife, your husband, who is
experiencing the startling revelations of the new life is feeling that
life as an unbroken continuance of the life begun on earth. Only the
environment is changed. He feels himself the same boy or man that he
was an hour ago, with the same character, aspirations, desires, the
same love and courage and hope. But oh, what a different view of all
things! How clearly he recognizes God's love and holiness. How
clearly he sees himself--his whole past life. If ever he cared for
Christ and His will, how longingly, wonderingly, he is reaching out to
Him. If ever he loved you tenderly on earth, how deeply and tenderly
he is loving you to-day. In all the whirl of awe and wonder and
curiosity and hope, love must stand supreme. For "love never faileth."
"And now," says St. Paul, "abideth Faith, Hope and Love (these three
that abide for ever), but the greatest of these is love."
§ 3
What else have you learned? That HE REMEMBERS CLEARLY the old life and
the old home and the old comrades and the old scenes on earth. There
is no conjecturing about that. That goes without saying if "I" am the
same "I" in that world. Personal identity of course postulates memory
which binds into one the old life and the new. And the Bible takes
that for granted. We saw that Lazarus remembered Dives and Dives
remembered Lazarus and remembered his old home and the five young
brothers who grew up with him. He remembers that they have grown to be
selfish men like himself and is troubled for them. And Abraham assumes
it as a matter of course. "My son, remember that thou in thy
lifetime," etc. Our Lord comes back from Death remembering all the
past as if Death made no chasm at all in His memory. "Go and meet Me
in Galilee," He says; "Lo I have told you" (before I died). And the
redeemed in the future life are represented as remembering and praising
God who had redeemed them from their sins on earth.
So you may be quite sure that your dear one is remembering you and
storing up in his memory all your love in the past. Did your wife ever
tell you on earth how happy you had made her? Did the old father and
mother now in the Unseen ever thank God for the comfort you had been to
them during their declining years? Be sure that in that land of love
these will be amongst the most precious pictures in their storehouse of
memory.
§ 4
And he has taken with him all the treasures of mind and soul which by
God's grace he has won for himself on earth. A man can take nothing of
the external things--of gold or lands. Nothing of what he HAS but all
of what he is--all that he has gained IN HIMSELF. The treasures of
memory, of disciplined powers, of enlarged capacities, of a pure and
loving heart. All the enrichment of the mind by study, all the love of
man, all the love of God, all the ennobling of character which has come
through the struggle after right and duty. These are the true
treasures which go on with us into that land where neither rust nor
moth doth corrupt.
§ 5
And he is "WITH CHRIST."
The Bible teaches that the faithful who have died in Christ are happy
and blest in Paradise even though the Final Heaven and the Beatific
Vision is still but a thing to be longed for far off in the future.
Lazarus is "comforted" after his hard life on earth. "The souls of the
righteous are in the hands of God, there shall no torment touch them."
"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord ... they rest from their
labours." But best of all it assures us that they are WITH CHRIST.
"Lord Jesus receive my spirit" the dying Stephen prayed as he passed
into the Unseen. They are "absent from the body at home with the
Lord." They "depart to be with Christ which is far better."
"With Christ." One has to write carefully here. The full vision of
the Divine Glory and Goodness and Love is reserved for the final stage
of existence in Heaven where nothing that defileth shall enter in,
whereas this Intermediate Life is one with many imperfections and
faults, quite unready for that vision of glory. But for all that St.
Paul believed that the presence of Christ was vouchsafed in that
waiting land, in some such way we may suppose as on earth long ago.
Only an imperfect revelation of the Son of God. And yet--and yet--oh,
how one longs for it! Think of being near Him, even in some such
relation as were the disciples long ago.
"I think when I read that sweet story of old,
When Jesus was here amongst men,
How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
How I long to have been with Him then."
Yes, St. Paul seems to say you shall be with Him, you shall have that
longing gratified in some measure even before you go to Heaven. So
that Paradise, poor and imperfect as it is compared with the Heaven
beyond, is surely a state to be greatly desired. Some pages back I
wrote with a certain shrinking "No man has ever yet gone to Heaven."
It is quite true, and yet I could feel some poor mourner shrinking back
from it as he thought of that beloved one gone. Nay, shrink not.
Paradise means the "Park" of God, the "Garden" of God, the place of
rest and peace and refreshing shade. The Park is not the Palace but it
is the precincts of the Palace. Paradise is not Heaven, but it is the
Courtyard of Heaven. And (the dearest, tenderest assurance of all)
they are with Christ. Is not that sufficient answer to many questions?
At any rate the Bible definitely teaches that.
[1] Our "39 Articles" were originally 42, and the 40th says, "They
which say that the souls of those who depart hence do sleep being
without all sense, feeling or perceiving till the Day of Judgment ...
do utterly dissent from the right belief declared to us in Holy
Scripture."