I linger on the threshold. How shall I enter the temple of this wonder?
Through all ages men of all degrees and forms of religion have hoped at
least for a continuance of life beyond its seeming extinction. Without
such a hope, how could they have endured the existence they had? True,
there are in our day men who profess unbelief in that future, and yet
lead an enjoyable life, nor even say to themselves, "Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die;" but say instead, with nobleness, "Let us
do what good we may, for there are men to come after us." Of all things
let him who would be a Christian be fair to every man and every class of
men. Before, however, I could be satisfied that I understood the mental
condition of such, I should require a deeper insight than I possess in
respect of other men. These, however numerous they seem in our day,
would appear to be exceptions to the race. No doubt there have always
been those who from absorption in the present and its pleasures, have
not cared about the future, have not troubled themselves with the
thought of it. Some of them would rather not think of it, because if
there be such a future, they cannot be easy concerning their part in it;
while others are simply occupied with the poor present--a present grand
indeed if it be the part of an endless whole, but poor indeed if it
stand alone. But here are thoughtful men, who say, "There is no
more. Let us make the best of this." Nor is their notion of _best_
contemptible, although in the eyes of some of us, to whom the only worth
of being lies in the hope of becoming that which, at the rate of present
progress, must take ages to be realized, it is poor. I will venture one
or two words on the matter.
Their ideal does not approach the ideal of Christianity for _this_ life
even.
Before I can tell whether their words are a true representation of
themselves, in relation to this future, I must know both their conscious
and unconscious being. No wonder I should be loath to judge them.
No poet of high rank, as far as I know, ever disbelieved in the future.
He might fear that there was none; but that very fear is faith. The
greatest poet of the present day believes with ardour. That it is not
proven to the intellect, I heartily admit. But if it were true, it were
such as the intellect could not grasp, for the understanding must be the
offspring of the life--in itself essential. How should the intellect
understand its own origin and nature? It is too poor to grasp this
question; for the continuity of existence depends on the nature of
existence, not upon external relations. If after death we should be
conscious that we yet live, we shall even then, I think, be no more
able to prove a further continuance of life, than we can now prove our
present being. It may be easier to believe--that will be all. But we
constantly act upon grounds which we cannot prove, and if we cannot feel
so sure of life beyond the grave as of common every-day things, at least
the want of proof ought neither to destroy our hope concerning it, nor
prevent the action demanded by its bare possibility.
But last, I do say this, that those men, who, disbelieving in a future
state, do yet live up to the conscience within them, however much lower
the requirements of that conscience may be than those of a conscience
which believes itself enlightened from "the Lord, who is that spirit,"
shall enter the other life in an immeasurably more enviable relation
thereto than those who say _Lord, Lord_, and do not the things he says
to them.
It may seem strange that our Lord says so little about the life to
come--as we call it--though in truth it is one life with the present--as
the leaf and the blossom are one life. Even in argument with the
Sadducees he supports his side upon words accepted by them, and upon the
nature of God, but says nothing of the question from a human point of
regard. He seems always to have taken it for granted, ever turning the
minds of his scholars towards that which was deeper and lay at its
root--the life itself--the oneness with God and his will, upon which the
continuance of our conscious being follows of a necessity, and without
which if the latter were possible, it would be for human beings an utter
evil.
When he speaks of the world beyond, it is as _his Father's house_. He
says there are many mansions there. He attempts in no way to explain.
Man's own imagination enlightened of the spirit of truth, and working
with his experience and affections, was a far safer guide than his
intellect with the best schooling which even our Lord could have given
it. The memory of the poorest home of a fisherman on the shore of
the Galilean lake, where he as a child had spent his years of divine
carelessness in his father's house, would, at the words of our Lord _my
Father's house_, convey to Peter or James or John more truth concerning
the many mansions than a revelation to their intellect, had it been
possible, as clear as the Apocalypse itself is obscure.
When he said "I have overcome the _world_" he had overcome the cause of
all doubt, the belief in the outside appearances and not in the living
truth: he left it to his followers to say, from their own experience
knowing the thing, not merely from the belief of his resurrection, "He
has conquered death and the grave. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave,
where is thy victory?" It is the inward life of truth that conquers
the outward death of appearance; and nothing else, no revelation from
without, could conquer it.
These miracles of our Lord are the nearest we come to news of any kind
concerning--I cannot say _from_--the other world. I except of course our
Lord's own resurrection. Of that I shall yet speak as a miracle,
for miracle it was, as certainly as any of our Lord's, whatever
interpretation be put upon the word. And I say _the nearest to news we
come_, because not one of those raised from the dead gives _us_ at least
an atom of information. Is it possible they may have told their friends
something which has filtered down to us in any shape?
I turn to the cases on record. They are only three. The day after he
cured the servant of the centurion at Capernaum, Jesus went to Nain, and
as they approached the gate--but I cannot part the story from the lovely
words in which it is told by St Luke: "There was a dead man carried out,
the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and much people of the
city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her,
and said unto her, Weep not. And he came and touched the bier; and they
that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee,
Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered
him to his mother."
In each of the cases there is an especial fitness in the miracle. This
youth was the only son of a widow; the daughter of Jairus was his "one
only daughter;" Lazarus was the brother of two orphan sisters.
I will not attempt by any lingering over the simple details to render
the record more impressive. That lingering ought to be on the part of
the reader of the narrative itself. Friends crowded around a loss--the
centre of the gathering that which _was not_--the sole presence the
hopeless sign of a vanished treasure--an open gulf, as it were, down
which love and tears and sad memories went plunging in a soundless
cataract: the weeping mother--the dead man borne in the midst. They
were going to the house of death, but Life was between them and it--was
walking to meet them, although they knew it not. A face of tender pity
looks down on the mother. She heeds him not. He goes up to the bier, and
lays his hand on it. The bearers recognize authority, and stand. A
word, and the dead sits up. A moment more, and he is in the arms of his
mother. O mother! mother! wast thou more favoured than other mothers? Or
was it that, for the sake of all mothers as well as thyself, thou wast
made the type of the universal mother with the dead son--the raising
of him but a foretaste of the one universal bliss of mothers with dead
sons? That thou wert an exception would have ill met thy need, for thy
motherhood could not be justified in thyself alone. It could not have
its rights save on grounds universal. Thy motherhood was common to all
thy sisters. To have helped thee by exceptional favour would not have
been to acknowledge thy motherhood. That must go mourning still, even
with thy restored son in its bosom, for its claims are universal or they
_are_ not. Thou wast indeed a chosen one, but that thou mightest show to
all the last fate of the mourning mother; for in God's dealings there
are no exceptions. His laws are universal as he is infinite. Jesus
wrought no new thing--only the works of the Father. What matters it that
the dead come not back to us, if we go to them? _What matters it?_ said
I! It is tenfold better. Dear as home is, he who loves it best must know
that what he calls home is not home, is but a shadow of home, is but the
open porch of home, where all the winds of the world rave by turns, and
the glowing fire of the true home casts lovely gleams from within.
Certainly this mother did not thus lose her son again. Doubtless next
she died first, knowing then at last that she had only to wait. The dead
must have their sorrow too, but when they find it is well with them,
they can sit and wait by the mouth of the coming stream better than
those can wait who see the going stream bear their loves down to the
ocean of the unknown. The dead sit by the river-mouths of Time: the
living mourn upon its higher banks.
But for the joy of the mother, we cannot conceive it. No mother even who
has lost her son, and hopes one blessed eternal day to find him again,
can conceive her gladness. Had it been all a dream? A dream surely in
this sense, that the final, which alone, in the full sense, is God's
will, must ever cast the look of a dream over all that has gone before.
When we last awake, we shall know that we dreamed. Even every honest
judgment, feeling, hope, desire, will show itself a dream--with this
difference from some dreams, that the waking is the more lovely, that
nothing is lost, but everything gained, in the full blaze of restored
completeness. How triumphant would this mother die, when her turn came!
And how calmly would the restored son go about the duties of the
world. [Footnote:11 Those who can take the trouble, and are capable of
understanding it, will do well to study Robert Browning's "Epistle of an
Arab Physician."]
He sat up and began to speak.
It is vain to look into that which God has hidden; for surely it is by
no chance that we are left thus in the dark. "He began to speak." Why
does not the Evangelist go on to give us some hint of what he said?
Would not the hearts of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives,
children, husbands--who shall say where the divine madness of love
will cease?--grandfathers, grandmothers--themselves with flickering
flame--yes, grandchildren, weeping over the loss of the beloved gray
head and tremulously gentle voice--would not all these have blessed God
for St Luke's record of what the son of the widow said? For my part, I
thank God he was silent.
When I think of the pictures of heaven drawn from the attempt of
prophecy to utter its visions in the poor forms of the glory of earth, I
see it better that we should walk by faith, and not by a fancied sight.
I judge that the region beyond is so different from ours, so comprising
in one surpassing excellence all the goods of ours, that any attempt
of the had-been-dead to describe it, would have resulted in the most
wretched of misconceptions. Such might please the lower conditions of
Christian development--but so much the worse, for they could not fail to
obstruct its further growth. It is well that St Luke is silent; or that
the mother and the friends who stood by the bier, heard the words of the
returning spirit only as the babble of a child from which they could
draw no definite meaning, and to which they could respond only by
caresses.
The story of the daughter of Jairus is recorded briefly by St Matthew,
more fully by St Luke, most fully by St Mark. One of the rulers of the
synagogue at Capernaum falls at the feet of our Lord, saying his little
daughter is at the point of death. She was about twelve years of age. He
begs the Lord to lay his hands on her that she may live. Our Lord goes
with him, followed by many people. On his way to restore the child he is
arrested by a touch. He makes no haste to outstrip death. We can imagine
the impatience of the father when the Lord stood and asked who touched
him. What did that matter? his daughter was dying; Death would not wait.
But the woman's heart and soul must not be passed by. The father with
the only daughter must wait yet a little. The will of God cannot be
outstripped.
"While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house
certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master
any further?" "Ah! I thought so! There it is! Death has won the race!"
we may suppose the father to say--bitterly within himself. But Jesus,
while he tried the faith of men, never tried it without feeding its
strength. With the trial he always gives the way of escape. "As soon as
Jesus heard the word that was spoken"--not leaving it to work its agony
of despair first--"he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not
afraid; only believe." They are such simple words--commonplace in the
ears of those who have heard them often and heeded them little! but
containing more for this man's peace than all the consolations of
philosophy, than all the enforcements of morality; yea, even than the
raising of his daughter itself. To arouse the higher, the hopeful, the
trusting nature of a man; to cause him to look up into the unknown
region of mysterious possibilities--the God so poorly known--is to do
infinitely more for a man than to remove the pressure of the direst evil
without it. I will go further: To arouse the hope that there may be a
God with a heart like our own is more for the humanity in us than to
produce the absolute conviction that there is a being who made the
heaven and the earth and the sea and the fountains of waters. Jesus is
the express image of God's substance, and in him we know the heart of
God. To nourish faith in himself was the best thing he could do for the
man.
We hear of no word from the ruler further. If he answered not our Lord
in words, it is no wonder. The compressed lip and the uplifted eye would
say more than any words to the heart of the Saviour.
Now it would appear that he stopped the crowd and would let them go no
farther. They could not all see, and he did not wish them to see. It was
not good for men to see too many miracles. They would feast their eyes,
and then cease to wonder or think. The miracle, which would be all, and
quite dissociated from religion, with many of them, would cease to be
wonderful, would become a common thing with most. Yea, some would cease
to believe that it had been. They would say she did sleep after all--she
was not dead. A wonder is a poor thing for faith after all; and the
miracle could be only a wonder in the eyes of those who had not prayed
for it, and could not give thanks for it; who did not feel that in it
they were partakers of the love of God.
Jesus must have hated anything like display. God's greatest work has
never been done in crowds, but in closets; and when it works out from
thence, it is not upon crowds, but upon individuals. A crowd is not
a divine thing. It is not a body. Its atoms are not members one of
another. A crowd is a chaos over which the Spirit of God has yet to
move, ere each retires to his place to begin his harmonious work, and
unite with all the rest in the organized chorus of the human creation.
The crowd must be dispersed that the church may be formed.
The relation of the crowd to the miracle is rightly reflected in what
came to the friends of the house. To them, weeping and wailing greatly,
after the Eastern fashion, he said when he entered, "Why make ye this
ado, and weep? The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth." They laughed him
to scorn. He put them all out.
But what did our Lord mean by those words--"The damsel is not dead, but
sleepeth"? Not certainly that, as we regard the difference between death
and sleep, his words were to be taken literally; not that she was only
in a state of coma or lethargy; not even that it was a case of suspended
animation as in catalepsy; for the whole narrative evidently intends us
to believe that she was dead after the fashion we call death. That this
was not to be dead after the fashion our Lord called death, is a blessed
and lovely fact.
Neither can it mean, that she was not dead as others, in that he was
going to wake her so soon; for they did not know that, and therefore it
could give no ground for the expostulation, "Why make ye this ado, and
weep?"
Nor yet could it come only from the fact that to his eyes death and
sleep were so alike, the one needing the power of God for awaking just
as much as the other. True they must be more alike in his eyes than even
in the eyes of the many poets who have written of "Death and his brother
Sleep;" but he sees the differences none the less clearly, and how they
look to us, and his knowledge could be no reason for reproaching our
ignorance. The explanation seems to me large and simple. These people
professed to believe in the resurrection of the dead, and did believe
after some feeble fashion. They were not Sadducees, for they were the
friends of a ruler of the synagogue. Our Lord did not bring the news of
resurrection to the world: that had been believed, in varying degrees,
by all peoples and nations from the first: the resurrection he taught
was a far deeper thing--the resurrection from dead works to serve the
living and true God. But as with the greater number even of Christians,
although it was part of their creed, and had some influence upon their
moral and spiritual condition, their practical faith in the resurrection
of the body was a poor affair. In the moment of loss and grief, they
thought little about it. They lived then in the present almost alone;
they were not saved by hope. The reproach therefore of our Lord was
simply that they did not take from their own creed the consolation they
ought. If the child was to be one day restored to them, then she was not
dead as their tears and lamentations would imply. Any one of themselves
who believed in God and the prophets, might have stood up and
said--"Mourners, why make such ado? The maid is not dead, but sleepeth.
You shall again clasp her to your bosom. Hope, and fear not--only
believe." It was in this sense, I think, that our Lord spoke.
But it may not at first appear how much grander the miracle itself
appears in the light of this simple interpretation of the Master's
words. The sequel stands in the same relation to the words as
if--turning into the death-chamber, and bringing the maid out by the
hand--he had said to them: "See--I told you she was not dead but
sleeping." The words apply to all death, just as much as to that in
which this girl lay. The Lord brings his assurance, his knowledge of
what we do not know, to feed our feeble faith. It is as if he told us
that our notion of death is all wrong, that there is no such thing as we
think it; that we should be nearer the truth if we denied it altogether,
and gave to what we now call death the name of sleep, for it is but a
passing appearance, and no right cause of such misery as we manifest in
its presence. I think it was from this word of our Lord, and from the
same utterance in the case of Lazarus, that St Paul so often uses the
word sleep for die and for death. Indeed the notion of death, as we feel
it, seems to have vanished entirely from St Paul's mind--he speaks of
things so in a continuity, not even referring to the change--not
even saying before death or after death, as if death made no atom of
difference in the progress of holy events, the divine history of the
individual and of the race together. In a word, when he raised the
dead, the Son did neither more nor less nor other than the work of the
Father--what he is always doing; he only made it manifest a little
sooner to the eyes and hearts of men.
But they to whom he spoke laughed him to scorn. They knew she was dead,
and their unfaithfulness blinded their hearts to what he meant. They
were unfit to behold the proof of what he had said. Such as they, in
such mood, could gather from it no benefit. A faithful heart alone is
capable of understanding the proof of the truest things. It is faith
towards God which alone can lay hold of any of his facts. There is a
foregoing fitness. Therefore he put them all out. But the father and
mother, whose love and sorrow made them more easily persuaded of mighty
things, more accessible to holy influences, and the three disciples,
whose faith rendered them fit to behold otherwise dangerous wonders,
he took with him into the chamber where the damsel lay--dead toward
men--sleeping toward God. Dead as she was, she only slept.
"Damsel, I say unto thee, arise." "And her spirit came again," "and
straightway the damsel arose and walked," "and he commanded to give her
meat." For in the joy of her restoration, they might forget that the
more complete the health of a worn and exhausted body, the more needful
was food--food which, in all its commonness, might well support the
miracle; for not only did it follow by the next word to that which had
wrought the miracle, but it worked in perfect harmony with the law which
took shape in this resurrection, and in its relations to the human being
involved no whit less marvel than lay in the miracle itself. The
raising of the dead and the feeding of the living are both and equally
divine--therefore in utter harmony. And we do not any more understand
the power in the body which takes to itself that food, than we
understand the power going out from Jesus to make this girl's body
capable of again employing its ministrations. They are both of one and
must be perfect in harmony, the one as much the outcome of law as the
other.
He charges the parents to be silent, it may be for his sake, who did not
want to be made a mere wonder of, but more probably for their sakes,
that the holy thing might not evaporate in speech, or be defiled with
foolish talk and the glorification of self-importance in those for whom
a mighty wonder had been done; but that in silence the seed might take
root in their hearts and bring forth living fruit in humility, and
uprightness, and faith.
And now for the wonderful story of Lazarus. In this miracle one might
think the desire of Jesus for his friend's presence through his own
coming trouble, might have had a share, were it not that we never find
him working a miracle for himself. He knew the perfect will of the
Father, and left all to him. Those who cannot know that will and do not
care for it, have to fall into trouble that they may know God as the
Saviour from their own doings--as the fountain of all their well-being.
This Jesus had not to learn, and therefore could need no miracle wrought
for him. Even his resurrection was all for others. That miracle was
wrought in, not for him.
He knew Lazarus was dying. He abode where he was and let him die. For a
hard and therefore precious lesson for sisters and friends lay in that
death, and the more the love the more precious the lesson--the same
that lies in every death; and the end the same for all who
love--resurrection. The raising of Lazarus is the type of the raising
of all the dead. Of Lazarus, as of the daughter of Jairus, he said "he
sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep." He slept as every
dead man sleeps.
Read the story. Try to think not only what the disciples felt, but what
Jesus was thinking; how he, who saw the other side, regarded the death
he was about to destroy.
"Lord, if thou hadst been here," said Martha, "my brother had not died."
Did she mean to hint what she had not faith enough to ask?
"Thy brother shall rise again," said the Lord.
But her faith was so weak that she took little comfort from the
assurance. Alas! she knew what it meant. She knew all about it. He spoke
of the general far-off resurrection, which to her was a very little
thing. It was true he should rise again; but what was that to the
present consuming grief? A thousand years might be to God as one day,
but to Martha the one day was a thousand years. It is only to him who
entirely believes in God that the thousand years become one day also.
For he that believes shares in the vision of him in whom he believes. It
is through such faith that Jesus would help her--far beyond the present
awful need. He seeks to raise her confidence in himself by the strongest
assertions of the might that was in him. "I am the resurrection and the
life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live!"
The death of not believing in God--the God revealed in Jesus--is
the only death. The other is nowhere but in the fears and fancies of
unbelief. "And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."
There is for him nothing to be called death; nothing that is what death
looks to us.
"Believest thou this?"
Martha was an honest woman. She did not fully understand what he meant.
She could not, therefore, do more than assent to it. But she believed in
him, and that much she could tell him plainly.
"Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which
should come into the world."
And that hope with the confession arose in her heart, she gave the
loveliest sign: she went and called her sister. But even in the
profounder Mary faith reached only to the words of her sister:
"Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died."
When he saw her trouble, and that of the Jews with her, he was troubled
likewise. But why? The purest sympathy with what was about to vanish
would not surely make him groan in his spirit. Why, then, this trouble
in our Lord's heart? We have a right, yea, a duty, to understand it if
we can, for he showed it.
I think it was caused by an invading sense of the general misery of poor
humanity from the lack of that faith in the Father without which he, the
Son, could do, or endure, nothing. If the Father ceased the Son must
cease. It was the darkness between God and his creatures that gave room
for and was filled with their weeping and wailing over their dead.
To them death must appear an unmitigated and irremediable evil. How
frightful to feel as they felt! to see death as they saw it! Nothing
could help their misery but that faith in the infinite love which he had
come to bring them; but how hard it was to persuade them to receive
it! And how many weeping generations of loving hearts must follow! His
Father was indeed with them all, but how slowly and painfully would each
learn the one precious fact!
"Where have ye laid him?" he asked.
"Lord, come and see," they answered, in such mournful accents of human
misery that he wept with them.
They come to the grave.
"Take ye away the stone."
"Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days," said
she who believed in the Resurrection and the Life! They are the saddest
of sad words. I hardly know how to utter the feeling they raise. In all
the relations of mortality to immortality, of body to soul, there are
painful and even ugly things, things to which, by common consent, we
refer only upon dire necessity, and with a sense of shame. Happy they in
whom the mortal has put on immortality! Decay and its accompaniments,
all that makes the most beloved of the _appearances_ of God's creation a
terror, compelling us to call to the earth for succour, and pray her to
take our dead out of our sight, to receive her own back into her bosom,
and unmake in secret darkness that which was the glory of the light in
our eyes--this was upper-most with Martha, even in the presence of him
to whom Death was but a slave to come and go at his will. Careful of his
feelings, of the shock to his senses, she would oppose his will. For
the dead brother's sake also, that he should not be dishonoured in his
privacy, she would not have had that stone removed. But had it been as
Martha feared, who so tender with feeble flesh as the Son of Man? Who so
unready to impute the shame it could not help? Who less fastidious over
the painful working of the laws of his own world?
Entire affection hateth nicer hands.
And at the worst, what was decay to him, who could recall the disuniting
atoms under the restored law of imperial life?
"Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see
the glory of God?"
Again I say _the essential_ glory of God who raises all the dead, not
merely _an exceptional_ glory of God in raising this one dead man.
They should see not corruption but glory. No evil odour of dissolution
should assail them, but glowing life should spring from the place of the
dead; light should be born from the very bosom of the darkness.
They took away the friendly stone. Then Jesus spoke, not to the dead
man, but to the living Father. The men and women about him must know it
as the Father's work. "And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father,
I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me
always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they
may believe that thou hast sent me." So might they believe that the work
was God's, that he was doing the will of God, and that they might trust
in the God whose will was such as this. He claimed the presence of God
in what he did, that by the open claim and the mighty deed following it
they might see that the Father justified what the Son said, and might
receive him and all that he did as the manifestation of the Father. And
now--
"Lazarus, come forth."
Slow toiling, with hand and foot bound in the grave clothes, he that had
been dead struggled forth to the light. What an awful moment! When did
ever corruption and glory meet and embrace as now! Oh! what ready hands,
eager almost to helplessness, were stretched trembling towards the
feeble man returning from his strange journey, to seize and carry
him into the day--their poor day, which they thought _all_ the day,
forgetful of that higher day which for their sakes he had left behind,
content to walk in moonlight a little longer, gladdened by the embraces
of his sisters, and--perhaps--I do not know--comforting their hearts
with news of the heavenly regions!
Joy of all joys! The dead come back! Is it any wonder that this Mary
should spend three hundred pence on an ointment for the feet of the
Raiser of the Dead?
I doubt if he told them anything? I do not think he could make even his
own flesh and blood--of woman-kind, quick to understand--know the things
he had seen and heard and felt. All that can be said concerning this, is
thus said by our beloved brother Tennyson in his book _In Memoriam_:
'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.
Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unrevealed;
He told it not; or something sealed
The lips of that Evangelist.
Why are we left in such ignorance?
Without the raising of the dead, without the rising of the Saviour
himself, Christianity would not have given what it could of _hope_ for
the future. Hope is not faith, but neither is faith sight; and if we
have hope we are not miserable men. But Christianity must not, could not
interfere with the discipline needful for its own fulfilment, could
not depose the schoolmaster that leads unto Christ. One main doubt and
terror which drives men towards the revelation in Jesus, is this strange
thing Death. How shall any man imagine he is complete in himself, and
can do without a Father in heaven, when he knows that he knows neither
the mystery whence he sprung by birth, nor the mystery to which he goes
by death? God has given us room away from himself as Robert Browning
says:--
..."God, whose pleasure brought
Man into being, stands away,
As it were, an hand-breadth off, to give
Room for the newly-made to live,
And look at Him from a place apart,
And use His gifts of brain and heart"--
and this room, in its time-symbol, is bounded by darkness on the one
hand, and darkness on the other. Whence I came and whither I go are
dark: how can I live in peace without the God who ordered it thus? Faith
is my only refuge--an absolute belief in a being so much beyond myself,
that he can do all for this _me_ with utter satisfaction to this _me_,
protecting all its rights, jealously as his own from which they spring,
that he may make me at last one with himself who is my deeper self,
inasmuch as his thought of me is my life. And not to know him, even if I
could go on living and happy without him, is death.
It may be said, "Why all this? Why not go on like a brave man to meet
your fate, careless of what that fate may be?"
"But what if this fate _should_ depend on myself? Am I to be careless
then?" I answer.
"The fate is so uncertain! If it be annihilation, why quail before it?
Cowardice at least is contemptible."
"Is not indifference more contemptible? That one who has once thought
should not care to go on to think? That this glory should perish--is it
no grief? Is life not a good with all its pain? Ought one to be willing
to part with a good? Ought he not to cleave fast thereto? Have you never
grudged the coming sleep, because you must cease for the time to _be_
so much as you were before? For my part, I think the man who can go to
sleep without faith in God has yet to learn what being is. He who knows
not God cannot, however, have much to lose in losing being. And yet--and
yet--did he never love man or woman or child? Is he content that there
should be no more of it? Above all, is he content to go on with man and
woman and child now, careless of whether the love is a perishable thing?
If it be, why does he not kill himself, seeing it is all a lie--a false
appearance of a thing too glorious to be fact, but for which our best
nature calls aloud--and cannot have it? If one knew for certain that
there was no life beyond this, then the noble thing would be to make the
best of this, yea even then to try after such things as are written in
the Gospel as we call it--for they _are_ the noblest. That I am sure of,
whatever I may doubt. But not to be sure of annihilation, and yet choose
it to be true, and act as if it were true, seems to me to indicate
a nature at strife with immortality--bound for the dust by its own
choice--of the earth, and returning to the dust."
The man will say, "That is yielding everything. Let us eat and drink,
for to-morrow we die. I am of the dust, for I believe in nothing
beyond."
"No," I return. "I recognize another law in myself which seems to me
infinitely higher. And I think that law is in you also, although you are
at strife with it, and will revive in you to your blessed discontent.
By that I will walk, and not by yours--a law which bids me strive after
what I am not but may become--a law in me striving against the law of
sin and down-dragging decay--a law which is one with my will, and, if
true, must of all things make one at last. If I am made to live I ought
not to be willing to cease. This unwillingness to cease--above all,
this unwillingness to cease to love my own, the fore-front to me of my
all men--may be in me the sign, may _well_ be in me the sign that I am
made to live. Above all to pass away without the possibility of making
reparation to those whom I have wronged, with no chance of saying _I am
sorry--what shall I do for you? Grant me some means of delivering myself
from this burden of wrong_--seems to me frightful. No God to help one
to be good now! no God who cares whether one is good or not! if a God,
then one who will not give his creature time enough to grow good, even
if he is growing better, but will blot him out like a rain-drop! Great
God, forbid--if thou art. If thou art not, then this, like all other
prayers, goes echoing through the soulless vaults of a waste universe,
from the thought of which its peoples recoil in horror. Death, then, is
genial, soul-begetting, and love-creating; and Life is nowhere, save in
the imaginations of the children of the grave. Whence, then, oh! whence
came those their imaginations? Death, thou art not my father! Grave,
thou art not my mother! I come of another kind, nor shall ye usurp
dominion over me."
What better sign of immortality than the raising of the dead could God
give? He cannot, however, be always raising the dead before our eyes;
for then the holiness of death's ends would be a failure. We need death;
only it shall be undone once and again for a time, that we may know it
is not what it seems to us. I have already said that probably we are not
capable of being told in words what the other world is. But even the
very report through the ages that the dead came back, as their friends
had known them, with the old love unlost in the grave, with the same
face to smile and bless, is precious indeed. That they remain the same
in all that made them lovely, is the one priceless fact--if we may but
hope in it as a fact. That we shall behold, and clasp, and love them
again follows of simple necessity. We cannot be sure of the report as if
it were done before our own eyes, yet what a hope it gives even to him
whose honesty and his faith together make him, like Martha, refrain
speech, not daring to say _I believe_ of all that is reported! I think
such a one will one day be able to believe more than he even knows how
to desire. For faith in Jesus will well make up for the lack of the
sight of the miracle.
Does God, then, make death look what it is not? Why not let it appear
what it is, and prevent us from forming false judgments of it?
It is our low faithlessness that makes us misjudge it, and nothing but
faith could make us judge it aright. And that, while in faithlessness,
we should thus misjudge it, is well. In what it appears to us, it is a
type of what we are without God. But there is no falsehood in it. The
dust must go back to the dust. He who believes in the body more than in
the soul, cleaves to this aspect of death: he who believes in thought,
in mind, in love, in truth, can see the other side--can rejoice over
the bursting shell which allows the young oak to creep from its
kernel-prison. The lower is true, but the higher overcomes and absorbs
it. "When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part
shall be done away." When the spirit of death is seen, the body of death
vanishes from us. Death is God's angel of birth. We fear him. The dying
stretches out loving hands of hope towards him. I do not believe that
death is to the dying the dreadful thing it looks to the beholders. I
think it is more like what the spirit may then be able to remember
of its own birth as a child into this lower world, this porch of the
heavenly. How will he love his mother then! and all humanity in her, and
God who gave her, and God who gives her back!
The future lies dark before us, with an infinite hope in the darkness.
To be at peace concerning it on any other ground than the love of
God, would be an absolute loss. Better fear and hope and prayer, than
knowledge and peace without the prayer.
To sum up: An express revelation in words would probably be little
intelligible. In Christ we have an ever-growing revelation. He is the
resurrection and the life. As we know him we know our future.
In our ignorance lies a force of need, compelling us towards God.
In our ignorance likewise lies the room for the development of the
simple will, as well as the necessity for arousing it. Hence this
ignorance is but the shell of faith.
In this, as in all his miracles, our Lord _shows_ in one instance what
his Father is ever doing without showing it.
Even the report of this is the best news we can have from the _other_
world--as we call it.