“I,” “MYSELF” AFTER DEATH
Section 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?”
Section 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. xi. 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.
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. .
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.”
Section 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.
Section 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.
Section 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.