OUR FALLEN HEROES AND THEIR DESTINY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/ourfallenheroestOOdown 6 OUR FALLEN HEROES AND THEIR DESTINY ROBERT P. DOWNES, LL.D. Author of "Pillars of Our Faith" " The Art of Noble Living" " Woman: Her CJiarm and Power," " Pure Pleasures, 1 ' " Thoughts on Living Subjects/' "Cities which Fascinate," "Mind and its Culture," ''Seven Supreme Poets," etc. etc. " He to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother ; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition." Shakespearu, Henry V. " Fear not ; I am the first and the last, and the living one ; and 1 was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades."— Rev. i. 17-19 (R.V.). LONDON HORACE MARSHALL AND SON TEMPLE HOUSE 125 FLEET STREET E.C. PREFACE Honour the brave who for their country bled, Nor let us dream of them as lost, or dead ; Life is but brief at best, and death's control Extends not over the heroic soul. Immortal garlands crown such brows as these; They are the dead, who rot in selfish ease. R. P. D. Some years ago we published, as a contribu- tion to " the larger hope," a volume entitled Man's Immortality and Destiny. In that book we differed from the orthodox, or generally accepted view of human destiny, in this, that we extended the period of human opportunity and probation beyond death to the day of final Judgment. The lapse of time has only served to convince us that the position then taken is sustained not only by sound reason, and by the urgent necessities of the case, but also by the testimony of Holy Writ, The book to which we have referred is now out of print, but the argument it contains is so suitable to the present time, when so many of our kindred, friends, and fellow-country- men, are falling in battle, that we restate it 5 6 PREFACE in these pages with other matter relative to the crisis. What we plead for in our view of Hades is not the Roman Catholic Purgatory, which is only a provision for imperfect Christians, but Christ's Grand Hospital for every maimed and stricken human soul. Robert P. Downes. 13 Vaixance Road, Hove, Sussex. We are indebted to Messrs. F. R. Britton Sf Co., 21 Basinghall Street, E.C.,for permission to re- produce on the cover the picture entitled " The White Comrade," by G. Hillyard Swinstead, R.I. PROEM " For Thou hast made him but little lower than God." Psalm viii. 5, R.V. O Thou who reignest over all, The starry vault, the sparrows' fall, Alike are in Thy ken ; Nor can we doubt Thy tender care, Which rules and blesses everywhere, Regards the souls of men. Shrin'd in frail tenements of clay, Which swiftly crumble and decay, They seem but as a breath ; Yet through the life receiv'd from Thee, They anchor in eternity, And mock the power of death. Pilgrims in this uncertain life, They urge a keen and restless strife, And find no final goal ; Still thirsting for the unattain'd, Each height is spurn'd as soon as gain'd By the advancing soul. Science explores all finite things, Thought mounts aloft on angel wings, Faith digs a grave for care, Hope into endless glory peers, Love clasps the hand that moves the spheres, Religion bows in prayer. Thus stirred by infinite desire. The souls of men to heaven aspire, Longing their God to see ; While Christ, the holy and the blest, Stoops from high heaven to attest Their immortality. R. P. D. 7 CONTENTS PART FIRST MAN'S IMMORTALITY CHAPTER I FAQB Our Fallen Heroes . . . . .11 CHAPTER II A Future Life ...... 21 CHAPTER III The Argument from the Divine Perfection 38 CHAPTER IV The Witness of Divine Revelation . . 50 PART SECOND THE DESTINY OF MAN CHAPTER I The Great Problem .... CHAPTER II The Work of Christ in Hades . CHAPTER III A Gospel in Hades .... CHAPTER IV Christ the Judge of Men . 8 65 77 93 99 PART FIRST MAN'S IMMORTALITY 9 CHAPTER I OUR FALLEN HEROES Voices are silenced which we loved to hear, The bright " Good Morning," which made morning brighter ; The ringing laughter jubilant and clear, Which banished care and made each burden lighter. Our hopes are withered as with winter's breath, Days of most sweet companionship are o'er ; Struck down by the remorseless hand of death, Our darlings will return to us no more. R. P. D. Some one has written that love makes people believe in immortality, because there seems not to be room enough in this life for so great tenderness." R. L. Stevenson. Much has been written of late about " the stricken field," with its roar of cannon, its shriek of shells, and its blood crushed from the veins of men by the demon of War, like red wine from grapes in the winepress. But there is another side to this bitter conflict, and it is found in the stricken home — the home desolated and bereaved by the hellish strife. Not without reason is the word " Home " considered the sweetest word in the English tongue, fraught, for all who have ever had a true home, with ineffable music. To see a family so bound together by ties of affection that they have only one interest and one soul. To see them united by bonds which time and distance are powerless to sever, sharing in each other's joy, and participating in each 11 12 MAN'S IMMORTALITY other's sorrow — this is to contemplate some- thing saved from the wreck of Paradise. The mother's welcome ; the father's tender thought ; the child's sweet uncaringness and unquestioning trust ; the fond " What ails thee ? " of the watching wife ; the brother's steadfast chivalry ; the sister's clinging trust, — how beautiful they are ! With what pathetic power does memory cleave to these things as the years roll by ! They are the very life and well-spring of the heart. Conceive, then, the sorrow which has swept like a cold and pitiless wave over the land through the loss of the golden lads who have been " wede away " in the battles of this fateful hour. Before the War we read the obituary notices of the aged, of men dying full of years, whose work was done, and who departed obedient to the irrevocable law of natural decay. The wheels of life grew weary, and at last stood still. But now we face conditions under which death smites the young and spares the old. Slain on the battle-field, they sleep in foreign graves, their splendid promise unful- filled, their bright career untimely ended. They have passed away while it was yet dawn. They have gone down in the offing with all their wealth aboard. Those lines of Tennyson receive a new significance, and make an appeal more poignant than ever before : " O father, wheresoe'er thou be, Who pledgest now thy gallant son ; A shot, ere half thy draught be done, Hath still'd the life that beat from thee. " O mother, praying God will save Thy sailor, — while thy head is bow'd, His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave." OUR FALLEN HEROES 13 Fine Chivalry That our noble British youth have fallen in the cause of right and justice ; that they have fallen in defence of home and native land ; that they have fallen for the overthrow of a brutal and cruel tyranny, — all this may, in a measure, alleviate our sorrow, through the blending with it of a noble pride. But it does not make our loss less bitter. Rather does it accentuate its bitterness by enhancing in our thought the value of the lives thus laid down. If those lives had been surrendered in the cause of wrong ; if this royal blood had been shed in the service of cruel and insatiable ambition, then we might haply accept our loss in silence, and even bow our heads in secret shame. But the glory of the cause they freely espoused, and for which they bled, deepens our sense of loss, and renders their memory unspeakably sacred and precious. We cannot but ponder with pardonable pride the chivalry which has been exemplified in this unparalleled drama. We are con- fronted with a heroism on the part of our British youth and manhood which has never been excelled in the history of nations. It is heroism which has been freely accepted, hero- ism which involves no personal aggrandize- ment, heroism in behalf of the sacred claims of justice and national liberty, heroism in its purest form — a whole-hearted sacrifice for that which men regard as their duty to King and country. Honour, patriotism, and fide- lity to high aims, have been preferred to personal safety and even to life itself. The battle blaze, the fierce fury of a fiendish foe, the fatal bolt, and the nameless grave, have been freely accepted that national 14 MAN'S IMMORTALITY honour and well-being might be guarded and maintained. George Eliot has said : " Ideas are often poor ghosts ; they pass athwart us in thin vapour, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh ; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith, and its love. Then their presence is a power, then they shake us like a passion." In this conflict ideas have been magnificently incarnated. They have moved before us in the godlike forms of valorous men. They have compelled our admiration and our homage. Most of our sons have faced death on the battleplain not without due reflection as to the probable results. Hence when chidden by us for some unwonted extravagance before going forth, we have heard them say, "Well, it is likely I shall never return ! " On this our hearts have stood still, but we could not hold them back, feeling that, after all, the beauty of life lies not in mere living, nor yet in health and vigour of body and mind, precious as these things undoubtedly are, but in a noble nature which finds delight in noble service. Those whose names are emblazoned to-day on the roll of honour are not the victims of some cruel mischance. Their lives were freely given in sacrifice for their country in the hour of its utmost need. Nor have they left themselves without a record. We are told that on several of their graves the noble words have been inscribed : " Tell England we lie here content." Only in August last a young fellow who has since fallen in Gallipoli, writing to his mother, said : " During the next few days we shall be facing death every minute. If I am taken off, do — OUR FALLEN HEROES 15 as the Roman matrons of old— keep your tears for privacy, steel your heart, and try and get a dozen recruits to fill my place." Facing Death The calm heroism with which Englishmen face death at the front has been described by Corporal W. Buckland, of the Meerut Division, Indian Expeditionary Force, in a letter to a friend in the South Notts Hussars. He tells how his comrade, by falling over a German trip wire near one of the enemy's listening posts in Flanders, brought a fusillade upon both of them, the comrade being mortally wounded. " I'm handing in my checks, old man," said the wounded man, as they regained the British lines, " and all the doctors in the world can't save me." " After I had made him as comfortable as I could, on an old overcoat, and lit a cigarette for him, he started to talk over the times we had had together in different parts of the world. He did not last long, though. "Just as the grey dawn was breaking he asked me to lay his rifle by him, and, after I had done so, he pulled me down by his side, and I just managed to hear him say, Bill, I'm on the road now. I can hear some one sounding the great challenge, "Halt, who comes there ? " ' With a tremendous effort he staggered up, and, in a terrible voice, shouted, with almost superhuman strength, ' An Englishman who did his duty.' Shall I ever forget that scene ! The grey dawn break- ing in the east, and over all an ineffable peace seemed to reign. The only sound to be heard was an aeroplane that was just going over our lines and the drone of its propeller. 16 MAN'S IMMORTALITY "That is how an English soldier meets his death. Similar scenes take place day after day, all along the line ; but it is only with this particular incident that I am con- cerned." Nor are the fighting men of France less heroic or less praiseworthy. Take for example the case of Second Lieutenant Cazeau, who, when mortally wounded, with his last breath urged on his men, shouting, " There is nothing better than to die for one's country." A Man from the Trenches Men from the front are returning daily to their homes, some of them maimed for life, others to rest and recuperate for a return to the dread conflict. Their kindred at home note in them a spirit of intense seriousness, and they all speak of the trenches as nothing less than " hell." But not a few of them are eager to return to duty and to danger. Writ- ing of such a one whom he interviewed per- sonally, A. G. Gardiner, of the Daily News and Leader, says : " He had given up a good position, had enlisted as a private and got his commission in the field. He had lived with death in all its shapes. He had seen a com- rade shot dead over his shoulder, another blown to pieces by his side, his regiment re- duced to a shadow of its former self. He him- self had been buried alive in the trench by an explosion and was only saved by a happy chance. He hated war and its horrors. He had no fear of the shells or of death, but he admitted that he dreaded the coming of winter and of the strain of life in the cold, wet trenches. But he was eager to go back and face it all again. For what ? Not because OUR FALLEN HEROES 17 life was less dear to him than to you or to me — not for any personal gain, or ambition, or even any love of adventure : only because he felt within him the call of something dearer than life, something without which life would be a base and unworthy surrender. And there are thousands and hundreds of thousands like him." In this way heroic men are offering their lives daily for their fellow men. For them- selves they gain nothing for it in this world. And yet willingly they die that others may live. Before this hellish war the great watch- word seemed to be " Ihe right to live," now men are nobly claiming " The right to die." For ourselves, we have been deeply pained by the silence of the watching crowd, when a company of our gallant recruits have marched through the street. We have never failed to cry with all our might, " God bless the lads ! " And a feeling of scorn has possessed us when men have looked upon us as little less than insane. But the insanity was really theirs, not ours. To look tamely on the young valour which is going forth to bleed and die for our liberties is, to our thinking, little less than in- famous. " This," says Mr. Robert Blatchford, " is not a Royal war, nor a Government war, nor a war of diplomatic making ; it is a war of free nations against a devilish system of im- perial domination and national spoliation." All this is true. Great Britain and her Allies have unsheathed the sword " to confront and overthrow an unparalleled assault upon the continuity of civilisation and the peace of mankind." The smoking and ruined cities of innocent Belgium, and the despairing shrieks of the unoffending victims of the Lusitania, 2 18 MAN'S IMMORTALITY bear witness to the truth of these words. We are out against an intolerable wrong which should sting us like fire until it is righted and indeed avenged. To quote from Shakes- peare : " If these tilings, As we are sure they do, bear fire enough To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour The melting spirits of women ; then, countrymen, What need we any spur but our own cause To prick us to redress ! " The Common Grief Meanwhile the bitterness of bereavement affects every relation of life. Affianced maidens mourn the passing hence of those who never will return to redeem the passionate, oft-re- peated vow. Sisters deplore the fall of their companions and protectors. Brothers weep for brothers whose face they here will see no more. Fathers who have toiled, early and late, to equip their sons for success in life, see their proudest hopes defeated. And mothers whose sons were a part of their very being, " bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh, bow their heads in a sorrow which time is powerless to heal. Widows and fatherless children also fill the land with wailmg. In such an hour we are compelled to recon- sider our position in regard to those great Christian verities which we have been tempted to ignore, if not, indeed, to deny. . . Ihere can be no question among thinking men that before this terrible world-drama appeared upon the stage the future lite was veiled It was well-nigh banished from our thought by the absorbing and ever-pressing interests of the life which now is But trie stars appear when it is dark enough, and tne OUR FALLEN HEROES 19 passing of so many from our midst in the prime and glory of their early manhood, has arrested thought and compelled us to duly weigh the evidences of a life beyond the grave. We cannot think unmoved of so much which is precious flung into the void. Where are our loved ones who have fallen in battle, and what well-grounded hope exists that we shall see them once again ? For solemn and majestic import what ques- tion of the hour can for a moment compare with the question " Are we immortal ? " Mourning our beloved dead with a grief which has no equal upon earth, what question can prove so thrilling or so momentous as this ? Is man a creature dowered with the capacity for an endless life, or is he only — " A walking shadow ; a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more ? " Is man created only a little lower than God, or is he but spouse to the worm and brother of the clay ? Shall the righteous in very truth shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, or is the sweet light of love and hope kindled within them only to be quenched in death like a lamp falling into a stream ? Must the pure and the noble sink at last into dust and darkness, or shall they summer " high in bliss upon the hills of God " ? Questions such as these must needs arrest the thoughtful as if an angel spake. They con- tain within them every promise of blessedness and every presage of doom. They invest the lowliest incidents of life with the most solemn possibilities of event. The majesty of eternity lies behind them as behind the floating cloud- lets, the illimitable sky. If, indeed, the import MAN'S IMMORTALITY of these questions were fully realised, we should be in danger of neglecting our daily avocations and of becoming, like the men of Galilee, gazers into heaven. It would be fanaticism and not wisdom to desire such a result. But just as far from wisdom is the indifference which refuses to issues so stu- pendous some adequate degree of attention and consideration. As Lewis Morris sings : " Alas, for him who never sees The stars shine through the cypress trees t Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play ! Who hath not learnt in hours of faith The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever Lord of Death, And love can never lose its own I " CHAPTER II A FUTURE LIFE "My own dim life should teach me this, That life shall live for evermore, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is ; "This round of green, this orb of flame. Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks In some wild poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim." Tennyson, In Memoriam. " I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work." John Fiske, The Destiny of Man. Is man immortal ? This is the simple and direct issue now before us. Will the individual personal soul continue to exist after death — the soul not only of the philosopher but also of the clown, not only of the saint but also of the sinner ? Does that spiritual entity in man which we call the soul, that in him which thinks, and loves, and aspires, and worships, possess inherently the potency of an endless existence ? Do the mental, and moral, and spiritual powers of man survive the dissolution of "the body " ? Our conviction is that they do, and it is in support of this conviction that we advance the following arguments from Reason and Revelation. In appealing primarily to enlightened reason 21 22 MAN'S IMMORTALITY for an answer to this great question, we will consider, first, the argument for man's im- mortality deducible from those faculties of his complex nature which separate him from the mere animal ; and, secondly, the evidence afforded in favour of the doctrine by the con- sideration of the Divine perfection. First, the intellectual endowments of man, together with his inherent capacity for almost boundless progress, afford strong probability of his immortality. If we admit the Darwinian statement of man's physical origin, it must still be felt that with him, in virtue of his intelligence, a new and nobler existence dawns upon the world. The mental organisation of human beings, even in the lowest savages, is so superior to that of the highest animal that, according to the eminent scientist, A. R. Wallace, the hypo- thesis of " natural selection " here breaks down. Thought, spirit, free volition, with dominant sway over all lower life, here come into view. The hiatus can only be explained by the state- ment of the sacred records that into this ex- celling creature — the archetype " and ideal exemplar," towards which vertebrated animals had been aspiring through so many ages, the summary and mirror of the whole lower crea- tion — God breathed the breath of a higher life than the beast could know. The beast emerges from the earth as a product of matter quickened by the operation of the Divine Spirit. But the soul of man is the product of a special and immediate act of God Himself, a direct communication of the creative breath. Thus man is the creature, not of Nature, or of necessity, but of God, a free, personal, spiri- tual being made in the Divine image and placed in a relation to God unshared by the A FUTURE LIFE 23 brute. Man, indeed, is constituted in the beginning of his career master of the brute and lord of the lower world. Receiving from the Supreme the express command to " re- plenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over it," this weak-seeming creature, this creature so much slower than the horse, so much feebler than the elephant, so much lazier than the ant, set himself to his ap- pointed task. And with what result ? The forces of Nature hasten to obey him. He charters the sunlight to paint his portrait. He speaks unto the lightnings, and they go, and say unto him " Here we are," and bear his messages of commerce or of brotherhood round the orbed world. He hews from the quarry the insensate stone, and translates it into the " frozen music " of fretted arch, soaring spire, and pencilled minaret. He transforms reeking swamps into fertile plains, and unites oceans by canals cut through vast spaces of desert sand. He cannot with his puny hands tear the prey from the jaws of the lion, or quell by his glance the fierceness of the tiger ; but he constructs the rifle, be- fore which they bite the dust. He mocks by his artistic power the insolence of beauty, creating an ideal loveliness which puts it to the blush. He dispenses, as inspired poet, the wine of God, and exhilarates nations with its subtle quality. He steals the melodies of Heaven for the consolation of the children of earth. He foils and conquers devils by the splendour of his faith and the vigour of his will. He measures the heavens with his span, and comprehends the dust of the earth in his balance. " Disdaining to wait for favouring gales, he carries the elements in the boiler of his boat." He touches the canvas, and it 24 MAN'S IMMORTALITY almost breathes. He smites the marble, and it almost speaks. He questions the fixed stars, and they tell him the substances of which they are fashioned. By the subtle waves of light and heat which, proceeding from the planets, break upon his world, he guesses the velocity of their varied march. The moon is familiar ground to him, the trea- sures of the sun are reckoned up in order. He rolls away the stone from the grave of the long-buried sunlight, and bids it cheer his home and illuminate his streets. He gives his messages to the uncertain keeping of the air, and it transmits them unimpaired over land and sea. He concentrates on matter certain rays of light, and it dissolves like a delusive dream. He treads in conscious strength pre- Adamite sea-margins to mark the spot where the reptile, aeons ago extinct, has left its foot- prints, and the ancient thunder-gust has flung the tear-stains of its sudden passion. He will measure for you the steps from " nimble Mer- cury, flitting moth-like in the beard of the sun, to dull Neptune sagging in his cold course twenty-six hundred million miles away." And, because his spirit is touched for yet finer issues, he ascends the ladder of the visible creation, to bow at last before the invisible Source of all, offering to the High and the Lofty One who inhabiteth eternity the hom- age of humble and adoring worship. Such is the imperial power wielded by man in virtue of his mental endowments — endow- ments which seem to place him on the very threshold of an invisible, spiritual world. Man's Capability of Progress Contending yet further for the doctrine of a future life as suggested by the faculties and A FUTURE LIFE 25 endowments of man, we are arrested by the fact that, as far as we can see, no limit can be placed on man's capability of progress. It is not by the consideration of his present faculties and endowments merely that we can measure the real greatness of man, but by his power of endless growth. Not only is he essentially great as proved by what he has already achieved, but thought can set no limit to his capability of future progress. In this brief existence he can only give mere hints and suggestions of the power that is in him. His mind completes only an imperfect fraction of that which he had conceived. Lend him a thousand bodies in succession, and his mental energies will out-wear them all and remain as fresh as they are now. With remembrance, imagination, love, conscience, hope, yet young and imperishable within him, he possesses an indefinite and apparently boundless energy, a capacity for limitless and unimaginable progress. Say, then, is this onward-looking creature to be arrested at the gate of death to find that he is, after all, no- thing but a brute that perishes ? Must he here pause ? Must he here make an end ? Are the faculties of an angel given to the in- sect of a day ? Among the " infinite possi- bilities of nature " of which Mr. Huxley speaks, is there no possibility of a future life for this imperial and excelling creature ? Is not the man greater than his work, and thus destined to outlast it ? Is he but moul- dering dust, who, standing on the Ionian coast, beheld — " The Iliad and the Odyssey Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea " ? Is he but insensate clay who created the Greek drama, with its sceptred pomp and its solemn 26 MAN'S IMMORTALITY delineations of fate and destiny ? Is he as dumb as the marbles he shaped into forms of ideal beauty who carved the sculptures of the Parthenon and flashed on the mariners of the ^Egean the loveliness of Pallas Athenae ? Is he extinct who poised in the Italian air the dome of St. Peter's, and wrought the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel ? When he whom men called " the divine Raphael " lay dead beneath that masterpiece of his genius " The Transfiguration," was he no more while the canvas he had glorified still glowed with all the hues of heaven ? The authors of Hamlet and Faust, of the Principia and the Paradise Lost, are they blotted out of existence? Here scepticism itself is baffled, and the great Goethe, stepping forth from its icy halls into the sunshine of God, exclaims, " The destruction of such a mind as Wie- land's is not to be thought of ; Nature is not so prodigal of her jewels." The Thinking Principle Yet further, on this question of a future life, reason asserts the immateriality of the thinking principle within us, and the possi- bility of its continued existence when released froin its earthly environment. That in us which thinks cannot be matter, for matter, whether it sleep in the clod or dart in the sunbeam, is incapable of thought. If it be urged that thought results from a certain arrangement of atoms or molecules of matter, we reply that we cannot have in the whole what does not exist in any of the parts. Here materialism is baffled, and Professor Tyndall writes : " The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of conscious- A FUTURE LIFE 27 ness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the one phenomenon to the other." That mind is not a product of matter will appear from the following considerations : First, that we are conscious of a personal identity unaffected by physical change. We inhabit many bodies before we die, for it is a scientific fact that there is not now in our physical frame one particle of matter which was there seven years ago. How, then, if thought results from the movement of certain molecules in the brain, are the facts of memory transmitted, and the soul still kept conscious of its own essential sameness ? Here material- ism is again baffled, and Mr. Tyndall, with a scientific use of the imagination which is really amazing, says : " Like changing sentinels, the oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon which de- part whisper their secret to their comrades that arrive, and thus, while the Non-ego shifts, the Ego remains intact." Again, the mind's independence of time and space demon- strates that it is not the product of matter. All material things are limited by space and time. Not so the soul. She sports with time — " Can crowd eternity into an hour, Or stretch an hour into eternity." In the phenomena of dreams, again, while the body is inert and as it were dead, the soul ranges amid visions more glorious than any of those which come under the cognisance of the senses. The spirit leaves the tired partner of her life asleep, and careers in vigorous joy 28 MAN'S IMMORTALITY through the universe. Again, the fact of our freedom of will evidences the mind's superi- ority over matter, and its independence of material laws. Though swayed by motives, we are yet conscious of liberty. We can re- sist even the call of the Almighty. Not thus is it with matter. It is not self-acting, but bound by the chain of inexorable law. The earth cannot swerve from its orbit or the sun refuse to shine. But man is master of his own volitions. He can do the things which he ought not to do, and leave undone the things which he ought to do. Again, if mind is only a function of the corporeal organism, how are its records of dates, facts, and ex- periences preserved ? They must be printed somewhere on the material structure of the brain. But the treasures of memory are in multitude and variety so marvellous that the very heavens would seem too small a scroll on which to inscribe them. In Nature nothing is Annihilated Yet further, reason demonstrates that as far as our knowledge goes, nothing in the uni- verse is annihilated, not even an atom of unconscious matter ; why, then, should we suppose that the self-conscious, immaterial, and indivisible soul of man is annihilated ? However lavish in her gifts, Nature is never wasteful. Science affirms that since time began not a single atom of matter has perished. It may have been diversified in a thousand forms — it may have assumed a variety of attitudes, and formed new combinations with other particles with which it had no previous connection ; but this only affects its modifica- tion : it is still the same under every form, A FUTURE LIFE 29 all modes and accidents leave it perfect matter still. And is the power which is so careful about the inanimate reckless about the ani- mate ? Is Nature penurious in everything else, and destructive only when she encounters her children ? Are unthinking atoms jealously preserved, while genius, capacity, will, con- science, thought, and love, utterly perish ? If— " Nought that we know dies ; Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightnings ? " The idea is inconceivable, the mind spurns it with a beautiful disdain. And here, inasmuch as from false views of death arise nine-tenths of our terrors and difficulties in relation to a future life, the ques- tion forces itself upon us — What is death ? Is it an agent ? Is it a force ? Is it a sub- stantive cause working effects ? No ! It is none of these. It is simply the shadow of God when He bends over existence to change or to glorify it. It is in the world of nature only a transition and the instrument of life. All its power in the physical realm is reduced to changing the forms of matter which it cannot destroy, and which life again takes from it. It is a phantom dagger, not a real one, and we may " defy its point." Its per- ceptible object is not to annihilate existences, but only to multiply them. It merely dis- solves the organism ; it does not touch the essence. It merely disintegrates the tissues ; the true life escapes it. Why, then, have we commissioned it in the grand world of spirit with absolute power? Why have we bap- tized it " King of terrors " and crowned it 30 MAN'S IMMORTALITY Lord of all ? Why have we deified it, setting it above life and even above God ? True, it wears upon its head " the likeness of a kingly crown " ; but, when we drag this imaginary monarch into the light, it dissolves like those once stately forms in old tombs when ex- posed to the living air. It is, in truth, a thing so poor and feeble that it cannot destroy a grain of dust. How, then, shall it destroy that spirit which is the breath of God within us ? Let it take our bodily organism, bor- rowed from the earth on which we tread, and, separating its particles, return it "to the dust as it was " ; but, defiant of its power, nay, rising fuller of life because of it, our " spirit shall return unto God who gave it." If it be urged here that, as death is com- missioned to dissolve the bodily organism and blend it with new forms, so it may disintegrate the mind and distribute its properties and powers among new intelligences, we reply, No ! this cannot be, seeing that it would in- volve the very destruction and annihilation against which we are arguing, and which is nowhere else found. My mind is something which cannot be broken up into parts and enter into union with other minds. My per- sonal existence, with all its memories and experiences, cannot be shared by any other being. I am myself, and can become no other. My mental powers, emotions, and aspirations are not transferable. They cannot be worked up into new forms of spiritual existence. If they perish, they perish altogether. I am a solitary essence, personal and indi- visible. Interfere with my identity, disinte- grate my consciousness, and my spirit is mur- dered, and the grandest thing under heaven is proved of less value, and of briefer duration A FUTURE LIFE 31 than the lichen stained by the colours of the sunset, or the grain of sand which contributes its share of power to pillow the head of the unresting sea. From such a possibility as this reason recoils, and the soul sinks back, smiling and assured, into the arms of a faith- ful Creator. The Moral Consciousness of Man Yet further, on this great question reason is compelled to recognise in the moral con- sciousness of man a powerful prediction of immortality. There is nothing which hints more magnifi- cently at man's eternal destiny than the law of the right and the wrong, the pure and the impure, which is written on his heart. Finely does Montaigne ask, " What kind of beasts are purity and justice ? " In the animal world we find no consciousness of a higher law than that of nature, no pressure of a solemn necessity to choose right, and to do it at whatever cost. But when we rise to man, we find a creature endowed with a con- sciousness of what he ought to do and of what he ought not to do. This consciousness is not the result of education or persuasion, but an inward moral voice which echoes and enforces every outward call to purity and truth. Wherever human beings are found, we discover in them this sense of moral obligation. Dim and imperfect it may be m the savage, but it is still there, like a flower languishing in darkness, only waiting the touch of light to develop and perfect it. Now, nothing can be more certain than that this law points to a law-giver— this needle trembles toward a pole. "As the starry heavens above me," writes Kant, " teach that MAN'S IMMORTALITY my body is related to vast spheres of matter which roll beyond my ken, so the moral law within me teaches that my soul is related to a universe of goodness, beauty, and truth, which needs another heaven than the one above me, and a higher world than our sun warms." Yes ! we feel it is so. We feel that conscience points to a higher tribunal than any that is human, and that righteous- ness looks for richer recompense and nobler satisfaction than any earth can furnish ; that truth and justice and purity and honour are throned above chance and change — above the moon which waneth and the stars which fade and fall. On these acquirements and riches of our moral nature " Time writes no wrinkle with his antique hand," and when the stern conflict and discipline of life are over, thev will be as wings to bear us into the "palace of angels and God." "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. As Lewis Morris sings : " We know not what we shall be, but are sure The spark once kindled by th' eternal breath Goes not quite out, but somewhere doth endure In that strange life we blindly christen death. Somewhere he is, though where we cannot tell : But whereso'er God hides him, it is well." Man's Religious Consciousness Our reason affirms the more than probable immortality of a creature capable of fellow- ship with God. The writer is of those who believe in the Pauline doctrine of the tripar- tite nature of man. He holds that man pos- sesses three orders of life. There is the body, or sense-consciousness, that which feels, eats, drinks, and rests. There is the soul, or self- consciousness, that which thinks, and dreams, A FUTURE LIFE S3 and loves. There is the spirit, or God-con- sciousness, that which receives impressions of heavenly things and communes with the un- seen Deity. The first and second of these are possessed by the mere animal ; the third is the exclusive prerogative of man, and is the highest endowment of his being, that which at once and for ever separates him from the beasts that perish. The words of Pascal cannot be too deeply pondered where he says, "What the body is to the intellect, that the intellect is to the spirit." That is, as far as the intellect is superior to the body, so far is the spirit superior to the intellect — superior, because it is the organ of the divine life within us, bring- ing our nature into contact with the Infinite, and with God the infinite Personality. Brutes cannot entertain heavenly ideas or feel re- ligious emotions, but we are " constitutionally related to God in terms which admit of corre- spondence." God has formed us for Himself. All lower things find their end m man. Man finds his end in God. The mineral is made for the plant, the plant is made for the animal, the animal is made for man, man is made for God. Man is far, and for ever re- moved in constitution and endowment from everything beneath him by his receptivity ol God In the inner shrine of His wondrous nature, God can dwell communing with the creature made in His image. This part ol man's constitution is no mere adjunct ol his nature, but his most permanent and highest self This splendid capability is not the special privilege of certain favoured individuals, but is an endowment possessed by all, how- ever darkly it may slumber in the unawakened soul. 3 34 MAN'S IMMORTALITY Who can fail to recognise in this capacity for God the guarantee of a future life for man ? Turning to a faithful and loving Creator, we ask : " Can a finite being created in the bounds of time and Can ItTive, and grow, and love Thee, catch the glory of Thy face, , . , But to die, be gone for ever, know no being, have no place ? " And we feel that the question can have but one answer. It seems incredible that the Divine Being should have manifested Himselt to a creature who must one day cease to know Him. The very capacity for religion includes within it an immortal destiny. this is hfe eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. Re-created after the divine image, and made a partaker of the divine nature, the Christian believer " rejoices m sure and cer- tain hope of a glorious immortality. Ideas from Heaven have been infused into his soul which bear him upward to their native sphere. Feelings and joys have been awakened within him "whose very sweetness yieldeth proot that they were born for immortality." " He feels through all this earthly^ dress Bright shoots of everlastingness." Living in time he yet knows himself to be living in the eternal life— knows that the heavens above him are open, and that there his Father reigns. He is well assured that God will not forsake His own life which He has quickened in his soul, or deny those ardent desires after the beatific vision which He Himself has inspired. The life he holds from earth may crumble and perish, but the A FUTURE LIFE 35 life he has in God he knows to be immortal as its source. The pledge of immortality is given in the spiritual life now pulsing in his soul — that life of faith, and hope, and sublime thirst after perfection with which the decay of the body has nothing at all to do. The sons of God must be immortal, for His own sons God can- not slay. The temple which He has entered, and in which He dwells, can never be violated or cast down. The life which He has im- parted to the souls of those who love Him is eternal as its source. It is " a well of water springing up into everlasting life." Corrup- tion cannot stain it. Physical decay cannot affect it. It survives the brief transition which we call death. It will stretch beyond the grave, and be found secure and inviolate when the stars have ceased to be, and the heavens are rolled up and laid aside like a worn-out vesture. Thus does the soul's capacity for God guarantee to those who have found affiance in Him a magnificent destiny. The gate of death will only open out into a larger sphere. As Carlyle has said, " The universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres, but godlike, and my Father's." To quote from Festus : " Death is another life. We bow our heads At going out, we think, and enter straight Another golden chamber of the King's,^ Larger than this we leave, and lovelier." Such are a few of the considerations in favour of man's immortality deducible from those faculties and endowments which separate him in nature, and therefore surely in destiny, from the mere animal. We do not assert that the doctrine is proved by these arguments 36 MAN'S IMMORTALITY taken singly, or even by the whole of them taken together. Still, every thoughtful mind will allow that their cumulative force is such as to make them worthy our serious attention. Thev at least, show that the doctrine may be true, leaving it for other and higher evi- dence to show that it is true. They bring the doctrine, at least, within the confines oi pro- bability, and thus prepare the devout mind for the weightier testimony of revelation. "Independently of revealed ideas," writes Montesquieu, " metaphysical ideas give me a vigorous hope of my eternal well-being, which I would never renounce." Even on the scientific principle of evolution we may reasonably anticipate a future life tor man How can a consistent evolutionist ima- gine that death ends all ? Climbing steadily up through lower ranges of being, Nature, with God behind it, has brought forth man, who stands before us as "the roof and crown of things." Why, then, should it pro- gress no further ? Does the process stop just at the point where reason demands that it shall go on ? Is the greatest creature m this lower world alone mocked, thwarted, and un- finished ? There is a design in creation, and the end of it is man. He is the final result ot evolution, and there is nothing which we know beyond him. Gifted with the capacity to think, to will, to love, to worship, are we to believe that the end of all that is— nothing I Does the mighty process of evolution end at last in a cul-de-sac ? We cannot think so meanly of the mighty intelligence behind it. We stand side by side with the great Christian evolutionist, St. Paul, and listen to his words where he declares that " the earnest expecta- tion of the creature waiteth for the manifesta- A FUTURE LIFE 37 tion of the sons of God." We anticipate the divine order : " First, that which is natural, and afterward, that which is spiritual." We are prepared for the statement that "as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." To quote the splendid lines of Tennyson, found in his In Memoriam : " And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, " Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law — Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed — " Who loved, who suffered countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or seal'd within the iron hills ? " No more ? A monster then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, Were mellow music match'd with him." i CHAPTER III The Argument from the Divine Perfection " There's a wideness in God's mercy Like the wideness of the sea ; There's a kindness in His justice Which is more than liberty. " There is no place where earth's sorrows Are more felt than up in heaven ; There is no place where earth's failings Have such kindly judgment given. " For the love of God is broader Than the measures of man's mind ; And the heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind." F. W. Faber. " If the whole existence of man be circumscribed within the circle of a few fleeting years, man appears an enigma, an inexplicable phenomenon in the universe, human life a mystery, the world a scene of confusion, virtue a mere phantom, the Creator a capricious Being, and His plans and arrangements an inextricable maze." T. Dick. Another weighty argument for man's immor- tality is found in the consideration of the Divine perfection. That is a striking passage in the private journal of the good Queen Victoria which reads : " After luncheon I saw the great poet, Tennyson, in dearest Albert's room for nearly an hour ; and most interesting he was. He is grown very old, his eyesight much impaired. But he is very kind. I 38 DIVINE PERFECTION 39 asked him to sit down. He talked of many- friends he had lost, and what it would be if he did not feel and know that there was an- other world where there would be no partings ; and then he spoke with horror of the un- believers and philosophers who would make you believe there was no other world, no immortality, who tried to explain all away in a miserable manner. We agreed that, were such a thing possible, God, who is Love, would be far more cruel than any human being." This conclusion of two noble souls in con- verse with each other is not irreverent, but noble, and deserves the deepest consideration on the part of all who are interested in the destiny of man. Admit the Divine perfec- tion, the justice, and truth, and benevolence of God, and human immortality flows from it as naturally as a stream from its fountain, or as light from the sun. This has been univer- sally acknowledged. Plutarch asserts that the doctrine of the Divine providence and that of the immortality of the soul rest on the same basis. Socrates taught that " God would give to every man that which was best for him." Marcus Aurelius said, " Thou wilt do well for me and the world." Emerson writes, " The Creator keeps His word with us. All I have ever seen teaches me to trust Him for all I have not seen." Browning says : " Although I stoop Under a dark tremendous sea of cloud It is but for a time. I hold God's lamp Close to my breast." Walt Whitman chants a strain of welcome to " lovely and soothing death," and returns to the misgivings which haunt him the vie- MAN'S IMMORTALITY torious answer, " Did you think life was so well provided for, and death, the purport of all life, is not well provided for ? " Writing to his wife on the death of her mother, Carlyle says, " Patience, my darling ! She is gone whither we are swiftly following her. Perhaps essentially she is still near us. Near and far do not belong to that eternal world which is not of space and time. God rules that too." And J. M. Barrie's white-haired mother, sit- ting in the twilight which preludes the eternal morning, repeats again and again to her gifted son her favourite paraphrase : " Art thou afraid His power shall fail When comes the evil day ? And can the all-creating arm Grow weary or decay ? " Such is the deep-seated conviction in the human mind that the perfection of God assures the highest well-being of man. " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " is the sublime question of the very earliest revelation ; and that question is finely vindi- cated by the majestic challenge of the Almighty addressed to a stiff-necked and rebellious people. " What iniquity have your fathers found in Me, that they have gone from Me ? " " Justice," says an old Persian book, " is so dear to the Eternal, that if, at the last day, an atom of injustice were to remain on earth, the universe would shrivel like a snake's skin to cast it out for ever." Here, I think, we stand on adamant with reference to the great doctrine of man's immortality. It is a ques- tion which involves the Divine Justice, and the final vindication of the ways of God to man. DIVINE PERFECTION 41 The Inequalities of Human Lot The difficulty presented to the thoughtful mind by the bewildering inequalities of human lot is one which demands a future life for its solution. This difficulty is finely expressed in the seventy-third Psalm, where Asaph con- fesses that the contemplation of them must have driven him into scepticism, but for the consideration of that nearing eternity which would justify and explain them. If we leave out from our calculation the consideration of eternity it would seem as if Providence fre- quently crowned the unworthy and allowed the patriot, the prophet, and the martyr to perish unregarded. St. Paul languishes in the Mamer- tine dungeon, while Nero " fiddles in ivory palaces over a burning Rome." The wicked flourish like a green bay tree, and are mighty in power, while the righteous sit down in ashes, and " tears are their meat day and night." And what of the nameless thousands in our world nourishing beautiful possibilities of thought and love, which here have no appro- priate development — " children of misery, bap- tized in tears," sobbing themselves into the world, and cursing themselves out of it ? What of the thousands who are never permitted to sit down at the table of life, and are spurned even in their effort to pick up the crumbs at its gate ? What of the thousands nursed in infamy and suckled on gin, herding together in their squalid homes in such association that virtue is for them impossible ? This startling disparity in the lot of human- kind pressed itself upon the writer with peculiar vividness when, some time ago, he passed from the home of a wealthy builder, in one of the midland counties, into his brick- MAN'S IMMORTALITY yard. Within that stately mansion were girls, nurtured with deepest tenderness, and sur- rounded by everything which could minister to grace, culture, and virtue. Outside, and not far distant, were poor women and girls, bearing on their heads large masses of clay from the pit where coarse men were digging to the machine for brick-making. Bowed down by their oppressive labour, with bared feet and dresses stained and tattered, with a dreary sky above them, and no song of bird or vision of tree or flower to lend a touch of cheer, they pursued their monotonous and degrading toil. Hope seemed to have faded from their hearts, as the light from their eyes, and, though made in the " image of God," they were reduced to a life near akin to that of the brutes. Instinctively, though God seemed very far away from that place, I bowed my head in prayer on their behalf, and left them — surely not in vain— in the hands of the Universal Father, who has said that " the needy shall not be forgotten, nor the expecta- tion of the poor perish." What is the meaning of the existence of such as these if there be no immortality ? Is there no future which will unravel or explain the tangled web of their present life ? Is there no happier sphere where these may learn that, though man is sinful, God is good, and where they may unfold the possibilities here trampled upon and blighted ? Is there no light in a diviner world which shall fill the urn of these poor darkened lives, making a rounded orb of that which here was but a crescent moon with ragged edge, and within a great gulf of darkness ? If not, then may we not blot from our Bibles the sentence " God is love," and conclude that He has endowed His crea- DIVINE PERFECTION 43 tures with a pity and a tenderness larger and diviner than His own ? Immortality an Instinct of the Soul In further proof of our contention that our life is not " rounded by a sleep," but destined to endure beyond the transition which we have " blindly christened death," we find that a faithful Creator has endowed us with an in- stinct for immortality which He will not mock. It is to the heart rather than to the intellect that all the sublimest truths primarily appeal. They are apprehended by feeling rather than by logic. It is thus with our belief in a future life for man. Logic, reason, metaphysics, and even science, so called, may deny it, but the soul perceives it. The belief in immortality is native to our constitution. It is woven into the very tissue of our being. It pervades all nations and all ages. How- ever it may have been travestied and dis- torted, this belief throbs in the breast of the lowest savage, and, in a measure, uplifts him. The faith in immortality is written upon the heart of humanity. There is but one hand which could have engraved it there, and that hand writes no falsehoods. We cannot imagine ourselves as non-existent. The most acute arguments for annihilation leave us still, when we go deep enough, profoundly sceptical. The evidential value of this fact is finely stated by Cicero, where he says : " In every- thing, the consent of all nations is to be ac- counted the law of Nature; and, therefore, with all good men, it should be instead of a thousand demonstrations ; and to resist it, what is it but to resist the voice of God ? " Yes, our instinct for immortality is the voice 44 MAN'S IMMORTALITY of God within us-the direct call of the uni- versal Father to His children^ and the Creator keeps His word with us Oh it is not in mockery that a laitntul Creator has planted within us this unquench- able hope. Not more confidently does the child, falling asleep beneath the gaze ot its holy mothe?, expect that the same love will smile on it in waking which hushed it to rest, than we that the unchanging love ot our Heavenly Father will, after the brief sleep of death, greet us in the eternal morning. He will show us the path of life. " In His pre- sence there is fulness of joy, and at His right hand there are pleasures for evermore. Life as a School Elaborating still the argument for immor- tality to be derived from the perfection of God, we remark that He has constituted our earthly life an education ; and, as He is wise and just, this education must involve a destiny. In our present existence we seem not so much to live as to be struggling into life. We are like the tawny lion which Milton repre- sents, in his description of the creation, as half developed and half earth-imprisoned, pawing to be free. Our life is an education— a potentiality rather than a possession, an unfolding rather than a completion. All talk of it being ended by the dissolution of the body seems idle. " 'Tis not a life, 'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away." How swiftly fly the years! Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. If we came into the world with fully developed DIVINE PERFECTION 45 faculties and then nourished ninety years, our earthly existence might appear satisfactory ; but all through our mortal state we only begin to acquire knowledge, and wisdom, and virtue. It is only when we are just about to die that we have truly learned to live. Consider, too, how long and gradual our life is in its intro- duction. Inferior creatures are already old, while we remain in our childhood or our youth. Twelve, fifteen, or it may be twenty of our few years are spent under parents or tutors in the mere preparation for life. This slow commencement plainly indicates the greater weight and dignity of our existence as contrasted with that of the mere animal. Indeed, all our life is a school — a probation — a mere beginning. This St. Paul felt when he spoke of it as a childhood preparatory to the manhood of eternity ; and Mahomet when he said, " Earth is the cradle of man " ; and Emerson when he wrote, " Everything is prospective, and man is to live hereafter. That the world is for his education is the only sane solution of the enigma." Yes, life is a school. Does it then graduate its children into the grave ? Is death the end of our tuition ? Do we learn wisdom by fre- quent falls and humiliating mistakes, only to plunge with it into darkness and annihila- tion ? Do we grow and ripen by Divine dis- cipline, by Heaven-sent rain of silent weeping, and joys which bless like sunshine, and frosts of disappointments merciful, only to fall and rot ? We refuse to think so meanly of the benefi- cent Power who controls our destiny. How pathetic was the cry of Thomas Carlyle, when, after storming through his century like an intellectual Titan, he sat in his old age un- 46 MAN'S IMMORTALITY der the shadow of eternity and e X e lah ned " whence ? O Heaven ! Whither t ^ense kn^w not; faith knows not ; only that jt xs through mystery to mystery, from God to Cod" Thus did that deep-thoughted man of ninety winters reach his earthly goal, and was still only — " An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry. Did he sit in vain, that pure and noble thinker, amid the twilight gloom of existence listening eagerly for the call of the gieat teacher Death, that he might no longer see through a glass darkly, but face to face ; no Wei know in part, but know even as also he was known ? We trow not. Soon the Master called, and His servant answered He had a desire toward the work of His nanas, and when men laid the grand cWld m his honoured grave they might fitly have carved upon his tablet the Greek epitaph on Tl ales " He was removed on high because his eyes, dimmed by age, could no longer from afar behold the stars." The Aspirations of the Soul Yet further, God cherishes in man aspira- tions, 'finding their end in immortality, which He will not disappoint. . . . . One of the most beautiful principles m the universe is that of special adaptation-the prin- ciples by which each creature is endowed with faculties y exactly suited to the position which it occupies, and the ends it is intended to serve. The brutes are not mocked ; they fulfil their destiny, and are at rest. Iney are DIVINE PERFECTION 47 not wearied by any torture of disappointed faculties, or haunted by desires, hopes, and aspirations which find in creation no answer- ing good. But in man we have a creature filled with Divine discontent — a creature whose surroundings and satisfactions are all too narrow for his nature. Give him all the joys of earth, and there still burns within him the thirst for a higher happiness. When he has exhausted every human experience, and tasted every earthly joy, and listened to the music of every earthly promise— " Then still his heart a far-off glory sees, Strange music hears ; A something not of earth still haunts the breeze, The sun and spheres. " All things that be, all love, all thought, all joy, Sky, cloud, and star, Spell-bind the man, as once the growing boy, And point afar — " Point to some world of endless love and truth, Of life and light, Where souls, renewed in their immortal youth, Shall know the Infinite." If man is not made for a nobler world than this, he is surely over-made. The faculties of an angel are given to a creature whose exis- tence is briefer than the tree which waves above his grave, or the lichen which stains his tombstone. Give him a character which by comparison might be pronounced saintly, and he will still tell you how his ideal of life flits on before him, an angel which he cannot touch. The resources of the universe and those of his own heart are alike insufficient to satisfy his vast desires. "Low as he now lies in evil and weakness, he is evidently born for the good and the perfect." If there be no future before him, then he is not nature's master- 48 MAN'S IMMORTALITY niece but nature's abortion-nature's darkest SvsterV He alone of all creatures is doomed to Y a life of aimless longing and cruel disap- pointment—he alone— " Who is the first of things, Is ever weighed upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, And makes perpetual moan." His finest faculties here pine and droop, missina their appropriate nourishment ±iis grandest purposes end in the deepest disap- pointments. His highest efforts appear to be the most palpable failures. Yet all the while there are within him onward- drawing forces longing for a completer life which he feds he cannot ignore without unspeakab e degradation. " Proud and sorrowing, an eagle weary of his mighty wings," he must st.11 press I toward some far-off goal of nobleness and rest, or deny the highest instincts of his being. Now, why is man so restless, yet m his rest- lessness so noble, if he be not immortal ? Is f possible that all his celestia promise is doomed to cruel disappointment ? Had he been intended to perish like the brutes he would surely have been made like them, shar- Tng the quiet contentment of the sheep m its pasture, or of the ox going down into the valley If there be no future life for him, then might he wish to be some meaner thing that he might escape the shame of unattamed ideals, and the fever of unsatisfied desires.; then might he desire to bury his magnificent aspirations in the dust, because the objects after which they yearn are unattainable here or hereafter ; then might he utter what has been fitly called the most touching and melan- choly paradox ever expressed in human speech — DIVINE PERFECTION 49 " What good came to my mind I did deplore, (j Because it perish must, and not live evermore. Oh ! who can doubt that these high instincts, lifting themselves like wings withm us and trembling with premonitions of future flight and holy song, point to the glad fruition of a heavenly summer? Who can doubt that those lofty aspirations by which we are now visited and ennobled, proclaim that we are here only to receive the mere rudiments of our existence, and that there is a future before us, where, in the fulness of our strength and the glory of our capabilities, the universe shall unfold to us its hidden magnificence, and the God of the universe shall "lift us up tor ever " ? To quote from J. D. Hull : " In the abysses of the blue expansion, By its own radiance hid, a Palace lies : Love is the climate of that glorious mansion ; And from its precincts grief for ever flies. " What its felicity, and what its splendour Baffles the loftiest intellect to guess : The grandest joys of earth no more than render A trembling image of its happiness. » 'Tis the Great King's abode-Creation's centre- Whence o'er His boundless realm His smiles Oh! wou\dst"thou His bright Presence-chamber ChrisUs'the Ladder which thou must ascend." 4 CHAPTER IV The Witness of Divine Revelation " The Fathers are in dust, yet live to God. So says the truth, as if the motionless clay Still held the seeds of life beneath the sod, . Smouldering and struggling till the Judgment Day , And hence we learn with reverence to esteem Of these frail houses, though the grave confines. Sophist may urge his cunning tests, and deem That they are earth ;-but they are heavenly shrmes. John Henry Newman. " We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of ^ eye at the as itrump- for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed For this cor- ruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptib e shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up m victory. St. Paul, 1 Cor. xv. The Witness of the Old Testament The great truth of man's immortality does not rest merely on the testimony of reason. It is the subject of a special divme revelation contained alike in the Old Testament and the New. It is thus raised from the low point of probability to the confines of certainty. Nature and reason testify that it may be. Revelation demonstrates that it is. The doc- trine of human immortality runs through the Bible. There is no attempt made to prove it any more than there is any attempt to prove 50 WITNESS OF DIVINE REVELATION 51 the existence of God; but, like that great verity, it is everywhere assumed. The Bible, in its essential substance, is a revelation addressed to the spirit of man. Its eloquent witness of things invisible and eternal, as well as of Him who in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, is addressed to man as a spiritual being. It appeals to the needs, hopes, and fears of man as a spirit in- divisible and immortal. It is specially dis- tinguished from all other books as a revelation to man of his spiritual nature and his spiritual destiny. It is this which invests it with — " A deeper transport and a mightier thrill Than comes of commerce with mortality." It throbs with the burden of a hope trans- cending death, and anchored in eternity. Job sings of this majestic hope as he sits in his sorrow. Enoch and Elijah mount up, God-taken, from the earth to realise it. The harps of the psalmists continually vibrate to this high music. Balaam breathes the prayer that he may die the death of the righteous and that his last end may be like his. Saul communes at Endor with a spirit from the unseen world. Isaiah catches the lurid light of the future on his wings, as he tells ot the fall of Lucifer and his derisive welcome among the ancient dead. . Very impressive also are the expressions ot faith in a personal immortality which appear in the Psalms. Here, again, hope, resting on God, makes all the future its own 1 have set the Lord always before me : because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved " Thou wilt show me the path of life : m Iny presence is fulness of joy ; at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore." "Thou shalt 52 MAN'S IMMORTALITY guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward ^ efve me to glory/ Whom have leaven but Thee ? and there is none upon earth that Tdesire beside Thee. My flesh and my heart fafleth • but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." How pathetic is that utterance of David, when, after pleading with God in vain for the life of his child he savs at last, " Wherefore should I fast ? Can I bring him back again ? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." It is futile and misleading to affirm that there is in the Old Testament Dispensation no revelation of immortality. As Bishop Perowne has said ■ " It is there for all who can look beneath the surface. It lurks in every word which expresses a sense of personal relation to God. It breathes in every prayer ot taitn. It is the life of every hymn in which the soul lifts itself in wings of light and love to the Throne of the Eternal. The precepts, pro- mises, entreaties, and warnings of the Old Testament transcend the bounds of time, and find in futurity their sanction and their mean- m The great examples of the old economy, from Moses unto Daniel, endure as seeing Him who is invisible. They find in eternity their inspiration and their strength. They breathe its air, and it makes them strong and fearless. Through faith in its sublime realities they are emancipated from the thraldom of time. I hey voyage through life as sailed the ancient mariners, keeping the land in view, but mov- ing only by the signs of the heavens. Their attitude is fitly described by the author ot the Epistle to the Hebrews. They looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." They "had respect WITNESS OF DIVINE REVELATION 53 unto the recompense of reward." Through faith in the unseen eternity, m the God who is Lord thereof, they "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of the fire, escaped the edge ot the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens." Through faith they were of those who, to adapt to our purpose the battle-lines of Browning— " Never turned their back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would HeT^they fell to rise, were baffled to fight better, Slept to wake." The Witness of the New Testament We have referred to the dim, prelusive wit- ness of the Old Testament Scriptures to the reality of a life beyond the grave. As we have studied that witness it has appeared to us, as we have said before, like one of the revolving lights kindled at sea, now shining clearly across the heaving waters, now lessen- ing its guiding ray, and now fading into dark- ness The Nlw Dispensation, however, brings the truth into clearer light, and by a great historic fact establishes its certainty for al coming ages. In the grand words of the great Awstle of the Gentiles : Our Saviour Jesus cCst abolished death and b^ghtMe^ immortality to light through the ■ ^pel brought it to light, not out of absolute dark nSs "but 'm hafmony with the whole spirit of a progressive revelation, brought it from a dim twilight into a glorious dawn Thus we shall not read the New Testament aright un- 54 MAN'S IMMORTALITY less we find in it explicit utterances concerning this great truth. The entire teaching of Christ rests on the basis of man's immortality, the immortality of the unjust as well as of the just, of the depraved as well as of the holy. According to the witness of the Great Teacher, man possesses a twofold life, physical and spiritual — the one temporal and passing, the other eternal and abiding. He is — " A vase of earth, a trembling clod, Constrain'd to hold the breath of God." Though the words of our Lord on this great subject are few, none can misunderstand their meaning or fail to recognise their force. No part of His teaching is explicable on the sup- position that death is the end of all. In every sentence of the Sermon on the Mount, in every appeal to the sinful and the fallen, in every word of comfort to the bereaved, the oppressed, and the unfortunate, there is implied the assurance of a larger, fuller life beyond the grave, a life conditioned to a great extent by conduct and character in the present world. It was the reality and import of the life to come which explained the presence of the Son of God in the human world. He was given by the Divine Father that " whosoever be- lieveth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." He descends from heaven and speaks of it as one familiar with its life. " There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." " They are neither married nor given in marriage, but are as the angels of God." " In My Father's house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have told you." We can WITNESS OF DIVINE REVELATION 55 scarcely place too much emphasis on this last statement. If there had been no future life for man, Christ would have told us. And He has told that there is. Continually he affirmed the dignity and value of the human soul. It was great. It was account- able. It was immortal. The body would die, but the soul would endure for ever in the pre- sence of God, or shut out from His presence by persistent, self-chosen evil. The well-being of the deathless spirit within him was there- fore man's chief concern. " What shall it profit a man,' : He asks, " if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? " If danger assailed this deathless principle, the right hand or the right eye, that which was most precious in life, should be sacrificed rather than it should be stricken with the paralysis of sin. Death itself might be faced without a tremor if only the life and well-being of the soul were maintained. " Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul : but rather fear Him who is able to cast both body and soul into hell." To the unbelieving Jews He asserted His authority, as the Son of Man, to execute judgment on the soul, closing His appeal with the remarkable utterance : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God : and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself ; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself ; and hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. Marvel not at this : for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth ; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they that 56 MAN'S IMMORTALITY have done evil, unto the resurrection of con- demnation." Again, when death dashed its dark ques- tion against His gentle heart in the passing of Lazarus, we hear Him say to the sorrow- stricken Martha : "I am the resurrection, and the life : he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : and whoso- ever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." The Resurrection of Christ Furthermore, the Lord Jesus Christ did not merely teach man's immortality as a doctrine, but He exemplified it in His own personal ex- perience. Like the sun in his rising, He not only announces but creates the morning. " In His grand life we see the living path, And in His death the price, and in His rise The proof supreme of immortality." " Nothing," said the first Napoleon, " is so obstinate as a fact," and in this sphere we are confronted with the fact of Christ's own re- surrection. This is the most clearly authenti- cated event in New Testament history, an event to which the followers of Christ, who had seen Him after His resurrection, eaten with Him, and even handled His sacred body, bore unceasing and triumphant witness. They preached "Jesus and the resurrection." To the sensuous Gentiles, who, buried in the pleasures and pursuits of the transitory pre- sent, were crying, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," they went and added the terrible sequel— " and after death the judgment." Scorned, trampled, persecuted, hunted down, and sacrificed as a prey to im- prisonment and death, they still persisted in WITNESS OF DIVINE REVELATION 57 their testimony until they stamped the truth of Christ crucified and Christ risen on the brain of Athens, and the heart of Rome, and thousands started from their sensual slumber to live a grander and a diviner life. Without question, the unanimous faith of the Apostles in the resurrection of Christ, as having occurred the third day after His death, is the cause of the continued existence of Christianity beyond that date, and of the founding of the Christian Church. Whether Christianity should survive or perish rested in that event. Before Christ rose, His fol- lowers were mourning as for a lost cause. Their hopes were buried in that grave, from which they turned away with the melancholy reflection, " We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel." Con- firmatory evidence to the same effect is found in the first Epistle of Peter, in the words : " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to His abun- dant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead " — that is, who has restored us from the condition of despair into which His death had plunged us, to a renewed hope by His rising again. On the day after the crucifixion all was despair and confusion ; but after the resurrection these timid fishermen, encouraged by a fact in attestation of which they were ready to lay down their lives, went forth with the courage of lions and the patience of martyrs to preach the Gospel to the world. Nothing but the reality of this central miracle of the faith could have revived the spirit of these men, and produced that revulsion of feeling out of which sprang the Christian Church, concerning which an apologist could 58 MAN'S IMMORTALITY say to the Roman Emperor within fifty years of the death of the last Apostle : " We are but of yesterday, and we have filled all that belongs to you — the cities, the fortresses, the free towns, thevery camps, thepalace, the senate, the forum ; we leave to you the temples only." The Sequel of this Great Event The value of the resurrection of Christ from the grave cannot be too highly estimated as a mighty fact, showing how One bearing the very nature which we bear has escaped the clutch of death and passed into the glory of an endless life. So fettered are we in this prison-house of clay, so impressed by the in- timate relation of soul and body, that we needed to see an actual human life rise out of death before we could be convinced that such a transition was possible. Here we behold death robbed of its power, and the grave balked of its victory by a Son of Man wearing the very nature which we wear. The doctrine of a future life for man is thus lifted out of the sphere of mere dogma and abstract thought, and placed before us as a concrete reality. Men say, " You tell us of a future life, of the existence of man after death ; but no man has come back to assure us of that which you assert — that unseen world is the bourne from which no traveller returns." In reply to this, the clarion of St. Paul rings out into the world of men the thrilling message, " Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept." He leads the vanguard of the human race through the dark defile of death, and His brow first salutes the light of the plains of heaven beyond the gloom. Conjecture no longer takes the place of certainty. " Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tip-toe on the misty mountain-tops." WITNESS OF DIVINE REVELATION 59 How grand are the words which the " Pro- methean conqueror " addresses to our trem- bling souls from the heavenly side of death : " Fear not : I am He that liveth, and was dead ; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of death and of Hades." For all who accept this great utterance and repose on Him who " is the resurrection and the life," the sting is torn from the jaws of death, and it has become a tame and harmless thing, a thing we need not fear, a porter to the gates of life. Death has been overcome in our flesh. The Divine invitation, " Sit thou on My right hand," has been addressed to One in the nature of him to whom it was said, " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Finely did the poet Goethe enter into the deep significance of this event when, in his Faust, the frenzied student, in the act of raising the poison-cup to his lips, flings it away on hearing the glad Easter hymn rising from the lips of the rejoicing people beneath. Still Living, Still Ours From all these things we gather the assur- ance that our fallen heroes are not dead. We are blinded by our tears and apt to think with regard to those who have fallen in their prime only of the splendid promise which has been cut off, the fine careers which have been closed, the glorious possibilities which have remained undeveloped. We forget that life is not a failure simply because its earthly record is brief and broken. " This present life," says George Herbert, " is but the tuning of the instruments." The perfected music is re- served for another and a higher life. Life is not closed, but only transfigured and glorified by the passing incident which we have blindly 60 MAN'S IMMORTALITY christened death. The earth side is only a small part of life, the side beyond bears it on to fuller joy, wider service, and nobler deve- lopment. " On the earth the broken arcs ; In the heaven, a perfect round ! " The lives laid down in freedom's battle are not a broken melody, but only the prelude of a richer music. The symbol for those who depart from us in youth should not be a broken column, but a heaven-pointing spire ; not a torch inverted and extinguished, but a torch lifted in an angel's hand and shaken into brighter flame. What we call dying is only part of a perfect life-process. It is a new be- ginning, not an ending. Earth is not the goal, but only the starting-point of man. We claim that death, so-called, does not disinte- grate or destroy our individual identity. The continuity of our life seems to be broken by sleep, which is indeed the brother of death. But we wake with our native energies unim- paired, we renew our personal consciousness, we are again ourselves. So with the experi- ence of our passing into the unseen life. We sleep to wake in a diviner world. The stars do not go out when morning dawns. They do not sink in night. They shine on other worlds. Even with respect to the work ac- complished in this life we cannot speak of our fallen heroes in terms of failure : " They have laid down their lives for Britain's sake, They are the living soul of Britain now." These considerations relieve us with regard to what appears to be the cruel waste of life on the battle-plain. God seems to view the incident of death as a very little thing. The WITNESS OF DIVINE REVELATION 61 fact is, that all things give way to the pro- gress of souls along the grand roads of the universe. We know not where they go, but we are sure they go towards the best — towards something great and worthy of the Deity who loved them into being, and whose tender mercies are over all His works. " Think not that He in whom we live doth mock Our dearest hopes and aspirations ! " Walt Whitman says in one place : "If rats and maggots end us, then alarum ! for we are betrayed ! " But we are not betrayed, because we dwell in the universe of the All- Father. As that beautiful soul — Florence Nightingale — affirmed, " Our ground for be- lieving in a future life is simply Because God is." Concerning those who have fallen in their prime in this awful drama, we may fitly adapt to our purpose the fine lines of Shelley : " Peace ! Peace ! they are not dead, they do not sleep — They have awakened from the dream of life — 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife . . . They have outsoared the shadows of our night ; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch them not nor torture them again ; From the contagion of the world's slow stain They are secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain ; Nor when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn." PART SECOND THE DESTINY OF MAN 63 " God of the living, in Whose eyes Unveiled Thy whole creation lies ; All souls are Thine ; we must not say That those are dead who pass away ; From this our world of flesh set free, We know them living unto Thee. " Released from earthly toil and strife, With Thee is hidden still their life ; Thine are their thoughts, their works, their powers, All Thine, and yet most truly ours : For well we know, where'er they be, Our dead are living unto Thee. " Not spilt like water on the ground, Not wrapped in dreamless sleep profound, Not wandering in unknown despair ; Beyond Thy voice, Thine arm, Thy care ; Not left to lie like fallen tree ; Not dead, but living unto Thee. " Thy word is true, Thy will is just ; To Thee we leave them, Lord, in trust ; And bless Thee for the love which gave Thy Son to fill a human grave, That none might fear the world to see Where all are living unto Thee. " O Breather into man of breath, Holder of the keys of Death, O Quickener of the life within, Save us from death, the death of sin ; That body, soul, and spirit be For ever living unto Thee ! " J. Ellebton, M.A. G4 CHAPTER I THE GREAT PROBLEM Not for this fleeting life alone, O Love Divine, we look to Thee ; Thou never canst Thy work disown, In time or in eternity. All finite love may droop and fail, Set to the fashion of the hour ; But Thine must evermore prevail, Changeless in pity as in power. No soul is lost by Thy decree, But only through its scorn of Thee. R. P. D. " Reverent thinkers are coming increasingly to feel it to be likely that the key to the problems of what is called Eschatology is to be found in our blessed Lord's personal administration of the Intermediate State." Bishop Thorold. In our previous argument we have asserted the natural immortality of the soul, the per- sistence of the self-conscious individual life beyond the grave. Our position, clearly stated, amounts to this : that every individual of that great community which we call the human race has within him an immortal spirit, capable of either happiness or misery in that world toward which all souls are moving. Having made, on the authority alike of reason and of divine revelation, this stupen- dous claim, a further question is naturally forced upon us — namely, if man is indeed dowered with the power of an endless life, what is His destiny in that life ? What will 5 65 66 THE DESTINY OF MAN be his condition in that great hereafter to which death is the portal ? Will it be one of happi- ness or misery, of hope or despair ? Is the awful endowment of immortality a blessing to the race or a curse ? Is it something for which we need to thank a faithful Creator and the Father of our spirits, or something which it would be a boon unspeakable to be able to cast away ? This is the great problem which confronts us in these days of battle, and of wholesale slaughter, and its significance is deepened when we consider the character of many, nay, of the vast majority, of those who are falling in the field. Concerning the justice of this terrible war as far as Britain and her Allies are concerned, we cannot entertain the shadow of a shade of a doubt. The conscience of the nobler part of the civilised world accepts and approves it as a dark necessity. We hate war. We re- gard it as an appalling catastrophe utterly alien to the spirit and teaching of Christ whose message, after the lapse of two thousand years, is still so far in advance of human pro- gress. But we are compelled to admit there are conditions under which a just war is preferable to a dishonourable peace. Such conditions confront us in the present conflict. The war which rages in the world to-day was not of our seeking. It has been thrust upon us by the insatiable ambition of a remorseless tyrant and his military entour- age. Honour, and not self-seeking, has called us to the field. We could not stand aloof and see an unoffending people, whom we were bound under solemn treaty to assist, crushed beneath the heel of the German Kaiser and his pitiless associates. We were compelled, however unwillingly, to draw the sword. THE GREAT PROBLEM 67 Christian minds, however, are baffled and perplexed as to the future destiny of the hap- less thousands who in this titanic struggle have been hurried unprepared into eternity. How does it fare with them ? What is their condition in that dread, eternal world into which they have been swept like leaves before the blasts of autumn ? It is clear that in this tremendous crisis the so-called orthodox conception, that they have been consigned to eternal perdition because strangers to the experience of repentance, faith, and holiness, utterly breaks down. According to the idea prevalent in the creeds and churches of Chris- tendom, they have not known Christ in this life, and therefore they cannot be saved. They have not been fitted for the sanctities of heaven, and therefore they have been con- signed to the miseries of hell. They have not been " born again " and become " new creatures in Christ Jesus," and therefore they are cast out from God for ever. Such is the commonly received idea among Christian people, and who can contemplate it without dismay and horror ? A Stupendous Difficulty The enormous difficulty of this position was forcibly impressed upon the writer in an ad- dress by Charles Bradlaugh, heard many years ago. In the course of that address he re- marked : "It has been said that I despise ministers of the Gospel, and continually re- flect on their intelligence. How can I respect the intelligence of men who tell the people from the pulpit in one breath that God is love, and who affirm in the next that ninety- nine out of every hundred of the human race 68 THE DESTINY OF MAN are lost and given over to eternal torment ? " This objection was sternly and bluntly put, yet who can question its substantial truth ? If repentance, faith, and holiness, or, in other words, a scriptural conversion, are demanded from all men in this life as the indispensable conditions of salvation, and therefore of their well-being in the life to come, how are we to escape Mr. Bradlaugh's appalling conclusion ? Dr. Chalmers reminds us that " spiritual re- novation is an event of exceeding rarity, that those thus renewed are but a handful out of the untouched mass." It is certain that this conclusion is correct with regard to those who have fallen in the present war. What shall we say then ? There must be some escape from a dogma which, if accepted and thought- fully considered, plunges us into unspeakable misery and doubt. There must be some relief from a conception, which, while it saves the Church, commits the great human world to damnation and despair. There must be some relief from a conclusion which raises a privi- leged few into the presence of God, but which makes hell " a living shore, heaped with the damned like pebbles." There must be some relief from a position which would force from the lips of myriads of our hapless race the awful cry : " Father of mercies, why from silent earth Didst Thou awake and curse me into birth, Push into being a reverse of Thee, And animate a clod with misery ? " The Mediatorial View While pleading neither for the Romish Purgatory on the one hand, nor for univer- salism on the other, we believe there is a way THE GREAT PROBLEM 69 of escape out of this gulf of darkness and of horror. We believe there is a solution of this awful problem in harmony at once with Rea- son, Conscience, and Divine Revelation. We believe there is a " hope set before us " which we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast, and entering into that which is within the veil ; whither as a fore- runner Jesus entered for us, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Mel- chizedek " (Heb. vi. 19, 20). The view we advocate and defend is based on the work of Christ as atoning Mediator, in Hades, that region of the unseen world occupied by departed spirits during the period between death and judgment. Over this region, in virtue alike of His re- deeming work and His position as Mediatorial Sovereign, Christ is in a special and peculiar sense both Lord and King. This is implied in His own magnificent announcement made to St. John on Patmos, where He said, " Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades " (Rev. i. 18, R.V.). From this announcement we learn that the work of Christ as the divine agent and ad- ministrator of human redemption did not end on the cross, but is continued in the inter- mediate state. Charles Wesley has caught with a poet's penetrating insight the significance of this fact in the familiar lines : " Arise, my soul, arise, Shake off thy guilty fears ; The bleeding sacrifice In my behalf appears ; Before the throne my Surety stands : My name is written on His hands. THE DESTINY OF MAN " He ever lives above For me to intercede, His all-redeeming love, His precious blood, to plead ; His blood atoned for all our race, And sprinkles now the throne of grace." The office and work of the atoning Mediator and Saviour in the intermediate state is a necessary counterpart of the Gospel as pro- claimed in time, and constitutes an essential factor in the divine economy of Redemption. It is simply inconceivable that the Divine Redemption — the Redemption which proclaims the message of God's love to all mankind —the Redemption by which God reconciles the world unto Himself— the Redemption which relates to the everlasting — is confined to this world and to man's brief life in it, and is therefore branded with defeat. The ad- ministration of Christianity and all which it involves, does not cease with the dispensation on this side the grave. The Gospel, as ad- ministered in time, does not contain the sum of all the mercy which God contemplates for the world. It merely reveals the ground of that mercy. When our theologians tell us otherwise, we say, as Oliver Cromwell said to the Presbyterian divines of his time : " I do beseech your reverences for once to think it possible that you may be wrong." On the supposition 'that death is the vanish- ing-point of the mediatorial work, the super- structure of Redemption would be unworthy of its foundation, and the divine economy would not be adapted to human duration or to the weight of human destinies. Either the Gospel, which is God's message of hope and deliverance for universal man, must appeal to universal man, and that under conditions which make an adequate response possible, or THE GREAT PROBLEM 71 its costly provisions are impotent, and our hopes are built on stubble. We therefore publish, not merely on the ground of our own spiritual instincts, but on the witness also of Holy Scripture, the great truth that there is but one limit to the redeeming power of God's love in Christ — the limit of a will, which, fixed in the love and choice of evil, persis- tently rejects the divine. The Kingdom of Hades The word Hades in the New Testament represents the locality or waiting-place of departed spirits in the intermediate state be- tween the incident of death and the final judgment. One of the most helpful changes in the Revised Version is the insertion of the word Hades as a substitute for the word Hell. In the Authorised Version the translators had uniformly rendered the two Greek words, Hades and Gehenna, by the one English word Hell. The new version, however, preserves the distinction intended in the original. The region of the intermediate state is represented by the word Hades : and Gehenna, the place of final doom, is always rendered Hell. Hades is a locality alike distinguished from hell, the final destination of the obstinately wicked, and from heaven, the final home of the righteous. The term Hades, in its general use amongst the Jews, in biblical times, denoted the region whither all departed human spirits went after leaving the body. They believed that the spirits, both of good men and bad men, went to Hades. They drew, however, a distinction between the good and the bad. They be- lieved that the spirits of good men abode in THE DESTINY OF MAN that upper and brighter region of Hades, near the confines of heaven, which they called Paradise ; and that the spirits of wicked men dwelt in the lower part of Hades, in a place of comparative gloom. They did not regard the spirits of good men as being supremely happy in their condition, neither did they regard the spirits of bad men as being su- premely miserable. They believed that both the righteous and the wicked would remain in Hades till the Judgment, and that then, and not till then, they would enter on a fixed condition of happiness or of misery, the good entering on their final heaven, the region of the beatific vision, and the bad passing into hell, or Gehenna, the abode of the devil and his angels. We may here remark that the Hebrew word Sheol, which so often occurs in the Old Testa- ment, and is generally translated Hell, or the grave, is the exact equivalent of the Greek word Hades, employed in the New Testament. A Vast and Many-peopled Region Losing, through our immediate environ- ment, the sense of the real relation of things, we are apt to forget that the human race is far more truly in Hades than here. There all enter after the transition which we call death. Always claiming but never satisfied, ever filling but never full, that unseen world con- tinually enlarges with the spoils of death until number fails to reckon its inhabitants, and the very heavens would be too small a scroll on which to inscribe their names. " The statesman and the clown ; the sage and the idiot ; fathers in God and light, dancing women ; the babe in its first cradled beauty ; THE GREAT PROBLEM 73 the strong, bearded man ; the patriarch, whose locks are ripe and full of awe ; the beautiful, the brave, the noble ; every age and every degree," have passed the inevitable portal, and are numbered with the mighty majority beyond the gates of death. How solemn and majestic is this great empire of the myriads of departed human souls ! It is a charge so weighty and so momentous that we should tremble if it were not declared to be under the control of un- shadowed and eternal love. Only He who bled for the fallen race, and who still inter- cedes for it, could be entrusted with issues so mighty and with destinies so vast and so en- during. We gather heart and hope, therefore, when we learn that, of this vast and many-peopled region, Christ, the atoning Mediator, is Lord and King. He has absolute dominion over the intermediate state and over the un- numbered millions who people it, for He is the " Lord of both the dead and the living " (Rom. xiv. 9). Hades is the seat of His Mediatorial Kingdom, and He will not sur- render His dominion over it until the last great day. His rule over the future state and the realms of departed spirits was attested by His promise to the dying malefactor : " To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise," and by the mighty words, already quoted, spoken to St. John in the vision of Patmos, " I have the keys of Hades and of death." In the empire of death are manifestly included both the grave and the state of disembodied spirits. They are both under His mediation as the ascended and enthroned Redeemer. This mediatorial reign is specially distinguished from the original reign of God over His crea- 74 THE DESTINY OF MAN tures as their Creator and Preserver. It recognises a Person both human and Divine at its head, wielding for a special purpose the prerogatives of Deity, namely, the purpose of redemption. Its ends are those of human salvation and restoration to God. The divine agent here revealed is a Saviour, a Redeemer, the Incarnate God, the Atoning God, " a just God and a Saviour," whose voice has gone forth in the glorious utterance, " Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth " (Isa. xlv. 22). In virtue of this fact, the unnumbered mil- lions congregated in Hades are under the law of grace. They are under His control who " came to seek and to save that which was lost," who " for the joy which was set before Him " — the joy of saving a lost world — " en- dured the cross, despising the shame," and of whom it is written that " He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied." Death has not paralysed the hand of divine love. The compassion for the guilty and the fallen which Christ manifested on earth could not pass away for ever with His earthly life. Mere change of place has not changed the heart which bled on the cross for a guilty world, and which poured forth for those who pierced it the majestic litany of mercy — " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Without doubt the same heart beats on the mediatorial throne which beat and broke on the fatal hill of Calvary. The love which redeemed the world at such a cost must work on while there are miseries it can yet relieve, lost ones it can yet recover, prodigals whom it can yet restore. In evidence of this the sympathies which our Lord displayed on earth are always as- THE GREAT PROBLEM 75 cribed to Him in His exalted state. He is said to be "touched with the feeling of our in- firmities." We are told that, " being tempted. He is able to succour them that are tempted. We are assured that He has entered within the veil as our merciful High Priest, and for this reason we are to " come boldly to the throne of grace." After His ascension He describes Himself as the Minister of Redemption pre- cisely in the same terms as while on earth. He bids His servants speak of Him as the Prince and the Saviour whom God exalted with His right hand "to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins" (Acts v. 31). He rises from His throne to welcome the mar- tyred Stephen, and His commission to Saul on his conversion is " to turn men from dark- ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in Me ' (Acts xxvi. 18). His presence in heaven constitutes nothing less than an enthroned atonement, and in His gracious intercession He presents Himself before God in behalf of redeemed humanity. . .. The bearing of these truths on the question of the final destiny of our soldiers hurled sud- denly into eternity on the battle-field will be recognised by every thoughtful mind And they have for us a very profound significance because, however reluctantly, we are com- pelled to join issue with those who hold that our fighting men who fall suddenly m battle, pass, in that moment, as martyrs into the final heaven of the righteous. No moral miracle is wrought by the transition which we call death. To imagine that the mere inci- dent of death, even in a righteous cause, can 76 THE DESTINY OF MAN free human souls from all impurity and pass them into eternity without stain, is to invest a mere physical process with that saving and sanctifying power which can only be realised through the co-operation of the human Will with the cleansing energy of the Holy Spirit. The question is one of character, in its rela- tion to the sanctity of God, and the order, security, and well-being of the intelligent and unfallen universe. How can a human crea- ture passing into eternity blood-boltered, and in a frenzy of deadly hate ; wildly shouting, if not cursing, eager to slay, enter into the pre- sence of God, and the fellowship of saints and angels, without some process of amendment ? In all such cases there must be such time and opportunity as the intermediate state affords. In all science and philosophy that is admitted to be the best hypothesis which in- cludes most of the facts, which meets most of the difficulties, and which is most worthy of God. On careful examination we find that all these conditions are met in what we have termed the Mediatorial View of human des- tiny. Personally we are profoundly thankful that this tempted and suffering earthly life does not end man's probation and opportunity, but that there is another sphere under the immediate sway of the atoning Christ, where the ignorant may be enlightened, the wan- dering recovered, and the depraved restored. Believing this, we say with Robert Browning : " Let our God's praise Go bravely through the world at last." CHAPTER II THE WORK OF CHRIST IN HADES " I say to thee, Do thou repeat To the first man thou mayest meet In lane, highway, or open street, That we, and he, and all men, move Under the canopy of love, As broad as the blue sky above. And ere thou leave him say yet thou This one word more. They only miss The winning of that final bliss Who will not count it true that love, Blessing, not cursing, reigns above, And that in it we live and move." RlCHABD CHENEVIX TBENCH. " The Gospel will be decisively presented to all who have not come to a final decision in this life, and all who do not shut themselves against it will be saved." Isaac August Dobneb. The sovereignty of the atoning Mediator over the intermediate state receives a profound significance from the fact that the destiny of man is not fixed at death, but only at the day of judgment. This is a truth which needs to be specially accentuated, for, though vividly realised by the early Church, it was strangely ignored, if not indeed denied, at the time of the Reformation. In proof of this the Homilies of the Church of England assert that at death the souls of men are " sent straight home to their own country," and the Westminster Confession declares that at the moment of decease the souls of the righteous " are received 77 THE DESTINY OF MAN into the highest heavens, and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness." Here we confront a startling recklessness of fact. No mention is made in Scripture of a judgment following immediately after death, neither is it ever asserted that death ends probation, that the results of evil character are then fixed, or that the sinner's heritage of woe is at death made perpetual. Such passages as Eccles. xi. 3, " If the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there shall it be," or Psalm ix. 17, " The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God," have no reference whatever to the future condition of any one. The testimony of Scripture is that human destiny is fixed at the Day of Judgment, and not till then. St. Paul sums up its wit- ness on this subject in the declaration made on Mars Hill : " He hath appointed a day, in which He will judge the world in righteous- ness by that Man whom He hath ordained ; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead." (Acts xvii. 31). The modern Protestant doctrine expressed in the familiar phrase of " dying, and going to heaven or hell," was certainly not the belief of the primitive Church, nor was it held by any considerable section of the Church, nor by any of the great teachers of the Church, in any age before the Reformation. Such were the evils wrought by the doctrine of Purgatory on the heart and conscience of Europe during the Middle Ages that the Protestant Reformers resolved to pluck the whole thing up by the roots. As Jung Stilling says : " They en- larged the bounds of hell by adding Hades to THE WORK OF CHRIST IN HADES 79 it. No middle state of purification was any longer believed in, but every departed soul entered upon its place of final destination, either heaven or hell." In plucking up the tares, however, they tore up with them wheat which was most precious and fruitful of golden promise. Dorner, one of the greatest of all theologians, says : " The descent into Hades expresses the universality of Christ's significance, even in respect to former generations, and the entire kingdom of the dead. The distinction be- tween earlier and later generations, between the time of ignorance and the time when He is known, is done away by Christ. No physical power is a limit to Him. The future world, like the present, is the sphere of His activity." The Redeemer of men is master of all the ages. His footsteps are slow because eternity is His work-day. Human rebellion cannot out- weary Him. He does not need to hasten on the Judgment lest His mind should prove unequal to the demands of the Great Assize. He can afford to wait until the last man has had his period of opportunity, of light, and of uplifting. The Book of Human Destiny, in the mystery of man's fall and Redemption, will remain a sealed book until His last purpose of mercy has been achieved for man, and when, as the Lamb in the midst of the throne, He opens it, the anxious human watcher will dash aside his tears and all heaven will ring with Alleluias. On this subject John Wesley says, in his fifty-first sermon : " Some have imagined that we are to be judged immediately after death, as soon as we enter into the world of spirits. . . . But the Scripture gives us no reason to believe that God will then sit in judgment 80 THE DESTINY OF MAN upon us. There is no passage in all the oracles of God which affirms any such thing." The words of Dr. W. B. Pope are equally decisive on this question, where he says, in his Com- pendium of Theology, page 719 : " The re- action from the dogma of purgatory has tended of late to efface the distinction between the kingdom of the dead and the kingdom of the living above. The extremes of perfect un- changeable fixedness of condition, on the one hand, and the full work of probation, on the other, must be avoided. The fixed and un- alterable state of mankind is always associated with the Day of Judgment and its issues. We must not antedate those issues ; nor must we, with regard either to the saved or lost, decide that the eternal state as such precedes the crisis when there should be time no longer." Who can deny that this fact opens a door of hope concerning the destiny of departed souls which many perplexed thinkers, anxious " to justify the ways of God to man," will enter with great joy ? Take away the erroneous doctrine of the finality of things at death, and a thousand difficulties disappear. The post- ponement of the judgment of departed spirits has some motive, and that motive must be the use of the intermediate time between death and the judgment for the gradual pre- paration of souls not yet made perfect for entrance into heaven, on the one hand, and for the help of those who in this life have had no adequate probation on which to base the issues of an eternal destiny on the other. Probation and Destiny A very limited amount of reflection will suffice to convince us that we are obliged, in common justice, and in honest vindication of THE WORK OF CHRIST IN HADES 81 the ways of God to man, to assume a further probation than that supplied in this present earthly life to countless millions of the human race. Apart altogether from the question of chil- dren and of imbeciles, we are compelled to consider the multitudes who have died, both in heathen and Christian lands, without re- ceiving an offer of Christ and His salvation. Insomuch as the heathen could not be damned for ignorance of that which they could not know, and insomuch as Christ is the predes- tined and only Saviour, an offer of Christ must be made to them in some place or sphere of the divine government. We are taught that " without holiness no man can see the Lord." Now, the heathen enter the unseen world, not only ignorant but depraved. There must be, therefore, some remedial agency in the unseen world which deals with guilt and depravity, or we charge God with the un- speakable offence of delivering millions of men, without pity and without compunction, to irretrievable ruin, who have never had a fair chance of salvation. Yet, further, there are heathen at our doors whom we are equally compelled to cast on the mercy of God in another world than this. Tens of thousands around us are yearly spawned into an environment in which purity and virtue cannot breathe. " Drunkards from the breast, harlots from the cradle, damned before they're born," says the Radical tailor in Charles Kingjiley's Alton Locke. Nursed in infamy, suckled on gin, compelled to breathe from their birth an atmosphere of impurity and blasphemy, they grow up thieves and prosti- tutes, and men call them " fallen," but God knows they have never stood. Humanly 6 82 THE DESTINY OF MAN speaking, they have never had a chance in this life ; but, if there is justice in the uni- verse, they must have a chance hereafter. Otherwise their consignment to perdition would " Cast a shadow on the throne of God, And darken heaven." Our Fighting Men Gathered for the most part from the un- privileged masses, the majority of our soldiers in the field may be included in this category. Their birth and environment have been un- favourable to virtue. We are compelled to take into our consideration, in our judgment of right and wrong in individuals, their con- dition in childhood and their start in life. We need to bear in mind the fact that when men come into this life, they are not only born into a world in which they are the creatures of Divine providence, visited by that grace of the Holy Spirit which is the soul's native en- dowment, but they are also born into human society, and affected by it for good or evil. In every human experience there is that neces- sary contact with others, that influence for good or evil, which others exert, lifting the soul toward purity or pushing it into the mire of sin. " Members one of another," " We touch and go, And sip the foam of many lives." Yet, further, we must needs remember that none of those who this day are fighting for our liberties are utterly depraved. The idea that men may be divided into two distinct classes and labelled, without any further distinction, good or bad, vile or pure, is a mistaken one. Look where we will, we find that faults break the continuity and the THE WORK OF CHRIST IN HADES 83 grace of the noblest lives, while gems sparkle in the dry dust of the most degraded. There are lingerings of God in natures where evil is predominant, and we have to look far to find a man crawling between earth and heaven so utterly a serpent that he is only fit to be dropped into the final fires. There is abun- dant good in the general crowd of men — love, patience, and unselfishness are not the attri- butes only of a favoured few. In many, who, in the evangelical sense, are unconverted, there are things just, pure, lovely, and of good report. Not a few who, blind to the beauty and the glory of religion, never enter our churches, are yet capable of noble self-respect, of strict integrity, of tender domestic affection, of loyal friendship, of splendid patriotism, and of the most kindly sympathies. Some men who have been regarded as steeped in depravity and defiant unbelief have mani- fested qualities of tenderness and helpfulness which have astonished thoughtful observers of their conduct. It has been the fashion with some men to call these virtues " splendid sins." Then all we can hope for is an increase in the number of such sinners. The lines of W. H. Hayne are appropriate here : " In every mortal life, however marred — With crime encompassed, or by passion scarred — Shining and sinless at the spirit's core, Lies undeveloped an immortal ore — Changed not by time, unreached by ruthless fate — The gold divine of some redeeming trait." Something exists of the image of God within them on which His gracious Spirit may work for their cleansing and uplifting. They may not be in the orthodox sense of pardon and adoption children of God, but they are by no means children of the devil. They may not 84 THE DESTINY OF MAN be good enough for heaven, but they are cer- tainly too good for hell. They have not decided for Christ, but, on the other hand, they have not decided against Him. They hover like stars 'twixt night and morning. Perhaps they may be justly charged with indifference to spiritual concerns; but it is an indifference born of shallowness rather than an indifference which is the result of rebellion. Neglect of religion is apparent in them, but not hatred of religion. They turn away from the Gospel, not so much from pride of intel- lect, or sin of heart, or obstinacy of will, as from sheer incapacity to realise its beauty and its grandeur. If the mind is to be regarded as its own place, and therefore as making its own hell, we cannot see the hell which these have made, neither can we think of them as consigned to perdition and excluded from hope. President Lincoln sweetly said of the common people that they were very dear to God, else He would not have made so many of them. Even so, neither will He consign them to perdition without ample reason for so doing. If this were possible then we should be inclined to accept the dictum of the sceptic who said that " the great enemy to be over- come was man's belief in immortality." Penalty for Sin in Hades Let it not be imagined that by these con- siderations we are apologising for sin. Doubt- less there will be some just and fitting penalty for sin in the intermediate state. The testi- mony of Scripture relative to the invisible world points to the conclusion that penalties for sin are visited there on the souls of the guilty — penalties which spring out of past THE WORK OF CHRIST IN HADES 85 character, and which are exactly proportioned to the just requirements of the case— " few stripes " or " many stripes," as the occasion warrants. Many of the Fathers who stood nearest the Apostles in the days when the Church yet retained its simplicity and purity, firmly believed and taught that sin-stained and imperfect souls, detained in Hades until the final judgment, underwent a process of puri- fication through suffering, and justly measured penalty for transgression. "Learn," says Newman — " Learn that the flame of Everlasting Love Doth burn ere it transform." Dante again writes of sighs breathed by stricken and remorseful souls in Hades which " made the eternal air to tremble." But in a universe over which God reigns nothing is irreparable, and behind all, and beneath all, there is divine mercy, tender and magnificent, which is striving to heal and to transform. The fire is applied to purify the erring soul, and not to destroy it. It implies punishment, but the punishment is remedial. It is the instrument of that divine love, which, failing in one direction, turns itself to another until its purpose is accomplished, or until, as in the case of the lost, it is finally thwarted by persistent, self-chosen evil under light. It is the work of the Refiner bending over the crucible until the alloy is separated from the gold, and His image is reflected in its depths. To quote from Browning, in that — " Obscure, sequestered state Where God unmakes but to remake the soul He else had made in vain, which must not be " — there will be found merciful ministries for the instruction of the ignorant, the strengthening THE DESTINY OF MAN of the feeble, and the regeneration of the de- praved. There many painful misunderstand- ings which have hindered men in the appro- priation of truth will be removed. Doubters will find certainty, and the baffled and per- plexed will have their difficulties resolved and cleared. There the Divine Spirit, that Holy One who plants Himself within the soul deeper than our human consciousness can penetrate, will work as an illuminating, convicting, re- vealing, and purging fire. He will visit the inner central loneliness, the solitude of the soul, created to be His temple, touching its springs of thought and action, passing through its chambers like a refining flame, cleansing and renovating the will. There will be found — " Light, mercy, hope, and love, To build a new life on a ruined life ; To make the future fairer than the past, To make the past appear a troubled dream." It is not the Roman Catholic Purgatory, for that, merciful as it is, is a provision only for imperfect Christians — it is Christ's Grand Hos- pital for every maimed and stricken human soul. A Wider Vision It is difficult to exaggerate the importance and significance of that passage in his Analogy where Bishop Butler says : " Virtue, to bor- row the Christian allusion, is militant here, and various untoward accidents contribute to its being overborne ; but it may combat with greater advantage hereafter, and prevail com- pletely, and enjoy its consequent rewards in some future states. ... If our notions of the plan of Providence were enlarged in any sense proportional to what late discoveries have en- THE WORK OF CHRIST IN HADES 87 larged our views with respect to the material world, representations of this kind would not appear absurd or extravagant." It is for this wider vision that we plead, this inclusion in the plans of Providence of larger issues and opportunities than those contained in our present brief existence. What we deprecate is the assertion that the present dim and tempted life, in which at first we know nothing and have everything to learn, is the only moral preparation for an existence which is to be fixed in unchangeable conditions for ever and ever. What we resent is the teaching that the transition which we call death freezes character into permanence and forbids for ever the possibility of any progress toward better and purer things ; that when the last sigh of the departing spirit is breathed, " all is ended, one way or the other, for every one and for ever.'''' If this were so, the poor Hottentot who never had a ray of light from Heaven to guide his feet amid the glooms of life would be plunged into eternal darkness because his lot was cast and his character depraved in heathendom ; and the hunted and wretched victim of the slums would be consigned to everlasting perdition because of the foul and polluting environment in which he was born, and for which he was no more responsible than for the shape of his features or the colour of his hair. We must not conceive God to be capable of that which would be manifestly unjust on the part of man. For these and other reasons the commonly accepted idea with reference to the connection between the present and the future is utterly inadequate as a solution of the terrible problem 88 THE DESTINY OF MAN of sin and misery, and, as a matter of fact, thoughtful people do not really believe in it, either with regard to their own destiny or the destiny of those they love. There has been a time when some of us thought we believed it, because we were trained to believe it ; but when we begin to think, when we summon reason to the bar and weigh all the issues in- volved, the idea that in this life alone light, freedom, and opportunity are granted to souls staggering under the burden of an immortal destiny becomes alike incredible and intolerable. " The Powers of the World to Come " If we thoughtfully consider the condition of souls in the great under-world, we cannot but feel that it is favourable to virtue. In that state of waiting between death and the judgment there must be much which tends to awaken the careless, to convince the sceptical, and to appal the guilty. Truth and grace, light and life are insepar- able elements in the mediatorial sway, and they will not be withheld in the intermediate state. It is, indeed, only the existence of these ele- ments which can explain it. If it contained no hope of mercy and amendment, it would have been better that judgment should be pronounced at death, and the issues of des- tiny at once decided. Why the long delay before the mediatorial system is permitted to expire if there is no hope of mercy and amendment in it? Why this hovering on the verge of eternity if the destination of the spirit is already fixed and unalterable ? As a provision of God in the interests of redemption we may be sure that the intermediate state has an object, and an object worthy of the Divine wisdom and benevolence. THE WORK OF CHRIST IN HADES 89 If we only ponder it, it must be an immense advantage for a human soul to contemplate its nature and its destiny freed from its prison- house of clay, and removed from the fascina- tion of this delusive world. Emancipation from physical passions and escape from the incidents of worldly temptation must in them- selves be fraught with redemptive consequences. The soul is translated into new surroundings. It is impressed by realities, which, during its earthly life, were dim and uncertain. It is lifted into the light of a new knowledge. It is thrilled by visions of glory and by portents of doom to which it was before a stranger. New motives are brought to bear which must powerfully affect the will. New aspirations are kindled which cannot fail to influence the affections. There memory disinters the past in all its startling quality. There conscience is awake, with no earthly distractions to break its power or blunt its sting. There hungry cares and depressing anxieties no longer press upon the bewildered spirit and drown the urgency of moral reflection and resolution. There, that dim twilight of uncertainty in which the anxious soul only beheld " men as trees walk- ing " is succeeded by a brightness as of noon- day. There the inadequate and half-hearted presentation of truth which is so common on earth gives place to a realisation of its certain- ties which can no longer be misunderstood. There the unworthy conceptions of God which blurred His justice and His sanctity, and which chilled the confidence of a glad affection, no longer alienate and deceive. There invincible ignorance and innate incapacity no longer bar the door of the spirit against the entrance of saving truth. There the moral 90 THE DESTINY OF MAN significance of life appears in all its solemn majesty. The brief introductory portion of existence passes into the awful significance of conditions which are spiritual and eternal. The mighty future is not merely the world to come. The soul has entered on it. It beholds its glories and its glooms. It hears its sounds, moving as the trumpet of the archangel and the voicl ot God It dwells in the vicinity of its spirits with their tidings. The sainted dead are there with heir mighty eloquence of entreaty, and those golden vials full of odours," which axe their tender and prevailing prayers. All the disguises incident to frail mortality are stnpped a way. The poverty of time dedares itsell. Its gauds and shows and intrusive 1 ie spell of earthly distractions is broken They no longer cheat the spirit into the for'- eClr'AleW diVinC ' ? e — en, and tk eternal. Angel-forms gather where aforetime only westering clouds flecked the evening sky tarrv v?,! 7 the u s ™g* of Seraphim. The the ZZ, f n .! Xcha "g ed f ^ the shadow of appeal fnd n eit 7- + haS Uttered its toTuote a te -lence, and Eternity stands always fronting God :— And 6 ^nH T al , image ' with blind eyes, Gtod GoH r 7, UP 1' that murmur evermore a wnf ' ? ! which mi % ht y word HiPh n S ^ min ? ang6ls St ^ightway lift W ° n bestial altitudes of song And choral adoration, and then drop Hushed^in 7 ' Shuttin « the ^™tes xausnecl up m silver wings." influen C e on ei ? ble l^l a " this wil1 exe 't no mnuence on character ? It is true that the THE WORK OF CHRIST IN HADES 91 law of sinful habit in the soul is dark and ter- rible, and that a soul which has deliberately chosen evil under light may be shut up in evil. But may not a soul rise as well as fall ? Is there not a possible evolution as well as a possible devolution ? If a disembodied spirit should be capable of falling deeper into sin, is it not equally capable of striving upward toward virtue? Is it conceivable that in a state controlled by the atoning Mediator the solemn interval between death and judgment is only granted that the sinner may plunge into a deeper abyss of iniquity, and thus incur a more awful penalty ? Only in the brain of an incarnate devil could such a thought find shelter. No — a thousand times no ! Analogy, probability, the highest laws of humanity, and the unfaltering goodness of God, plead like angels trumpet-tongued against such a monstrous conclusion. Without freedom oi will there can be no sin, and wherever moral freedom exists there may be reformation and amendment. In that mighty under-world mind is not destroyed, liberty is not abro- gated, choice is not impossible, destiny is not fixed, the laws of spiritual attraction are not suspended, the provisions of mercy and re- demption still exist, and therefore evil may be conquered and defeat give place to victory. The Attractiveness of Christ A clearer and fuller vision of Christ must be a prominent feature in the realm which is under His special control for the gracious purposes of Redemption. There, the earthly veils which obscured the ineffable loveliness of the Son of God will be lifted, and the dwellers in Hades will know Him as never before. He will appear as the divine, suffer- 92 THE DESTINY OF MAN ing, self-sacrificing personality who reveals to the fallen and the guilty the tender mercy of the All-Father. The spirits in prison, but not yet judged and condemned, will contem- plate the very well-spring of Infinite Love. They will " look upon Him whom they have pierced " and be ashamed of their ingratitude, and repent of their dark rebellion. The beauty which they should have loved, but from which they have turned away ; the com- passion which should have drawn them to His embrace, but which they have ignored, — these things will stab them into remorse and un- utterable shame. They will taste a sorrow bitterer to drink than blood. They will feel that they deserve to be cast out, and that only infinite mei-cy can pardon and save them. They will be ready to cry with St. Augustine in a moment of lucid vision, " Oh, Beauty, so old and so new, too late have I loved thee ! " John Henry Newman, in his Dream of Gerontius, describes with the power of a master the effect of this revelation of Christ upon a soul in Hades : " The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts. Thou wilt be sick with love and yearn for Him, And feel as though thou could'st but pity Him, That One so sweet should e'er have placed Himself At disadvantage such, as to be used So vilely by a being so vile as thee. There is a pleading in His pensive eyes Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee. And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself . . . . . . And thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned As never did'st thou feel ; and wilt desire To slink away, and hide thee from His sight ; And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell Within the beauty of His countenance. " It is the face of the Incarnate God Shall smite thee with that keen and subtle pain ; And yet the memory which it leaves shall be A sovereign febrifuge to heal the wound." CHAPTER III A GOSPEL IN HADES " Still Thy love, O Christ arisen, Yearns to reach all souls in prison ; Down beneath the shame and loss Sinks the plummet of Thy cross ; Never yet abyss was found Deeper than Thy cross could sound." Whittieb. " While the sacrifice of Christ is represented as the very foundation of man's salvation, there is no need to confine, as some have done, the benefit of His death to those who in this life have been brought under Christian influences. . . . While it is true that it is only under the Christian covenant that salvation is promised, there is nothing in this opposed to the hope — a hope which appears to be supported by pretty plain intimation of Scripture — that salvation will be more widely extended." Sib Geoboe Stokes. Christ and the Spirits in Prison Having asserted and sustained the previous argument, it now behoves us to inquire as to whether our position is sustained by any in- spired testimony with regard to the bestowal of further light, privilege, and opportunity to souls in peril on the other side of death. The answer to this inquiry is found in the Epistles of St. Peter. St. Peter teaches that after Christ died in the flesh He was yet alive in the spirit, and that in the spirit He went and preached glad tidings to men who were disobedient and who had died impenitent and depraved in the days of Noah. In other 93 THE DESTINY OF MAN words, the descent of our Lord into Hades was accompanied by a proclamation of His Gospel to spirits " in prison," but not yet judged and finally condemned. The famous passage in St. Peter reads as follows in the Revised Version : " Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God ; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit ; in which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing " (1 Peter iii. 18-20). Lest there should be any doubt as to the meaning of this passage, St. Peter asserts in the next chapter that " the Gospel was preached even to the dead " (1 Peter iv. 6). Thus, when we teach the possibility of salva- tion for some after death, we are not indulging in a dangerous speculation, but stating a great and most precious truth on the authority of one of the first of the Apostles. The learned and devout Dean Alford sums up his critical comment on the passage with which we are dealing by saying : " It will be gathered from all which has been said, that with the great majority of commentators, ancient and modern, I understand these words to say that our Lord, in His disembodied state, did go to the place of departed spirits, and did then commence His work of redemption — preach salvation, in fact, to the disembodied spirits of those who refused to obey the voice of God when the judgment of the Flood was hanging over them." As to the natural conclusions to be drawn from this important record, Dean Alford con- tinues : " It is wise to deal with the plain A GOSPEL IN HADES 95 words of Scripture, and to accept its revela- tions as far as they are vouchsafed to us ; and they are vouchsafed to us to the utmost limit of legitimate inference from revealed facts. That inference every intelligent reader will draw from the fact here announced. It is not purgatory, it is not universal restitution, but it is one which throws blessed light on one of the darkest enigmas of the divine justice, the cases where the final doom seems infinitely out of proportion to the lapse which has in- curred it. And as we cannot say to what other cases this preaching to the spirits may have applied, so it would be presumption in us to limit its occurrence or its efficiency. The reason of mentioning here these sinners of the antediluvian world above other sinners appears to be their connection with the type of baptism which follows " (Alford, Gi-eek Test. vol. iv.). Another conclusion which we naturally draw from this event is this — that as the fate of these hapless antediluvians was not irrevocably fixed by death, neither is the fate of the souls which have since followed them into the unseen world. This important incident points to a con- tinuity in the unseen world on the part of Christ of the work which He had carried on in His earthly life. " The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," we cannot conceive of any state or condition in which He will not be found pursuing the work which He came from the Father to accomplish, and for which He stooped to the death of the Cross. We are indeed strongly of opinion that it is to the perpetuation of His work in the unseen world that the great words in John v. 25 refer : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, the time cometh, and now is, when the dead shall 96 THE DESTINY OF MAN u the voice of the Son of God, and they hear the voice 01 >? aw&re that ^M^t^raily^ad as relating to the the passage is g_ j interpretation does SP non£ with the reference to the physi- n °l v dead which follows this great utterance. C D^pl?e the lucid and unstrained exposition nf St Peter's important Scripture by Dean L a it has been urged that the passage is i Jd mysterious, and because only once obscure and myster , ^ on ^ r T Ttt s \ve reply that many of the greater delations of Christianity are given m single ^m£s only, yet no one thinks of rejecting ?henf on St account. On what a slight 1 basis for example, is the great doc- trrne^ of ^he Trinity built. Yet we accept it bemuse of its value in the study of the economy of redemption and because of its preciousness in the realm of Christian experience. An ample statement has been built up with regard tot: SSnal damnation of men o^enous nassases of Scripture, parables which have CnSrained beyond legitimate bounds and mere figures of Oriental imagery. Why, then should we deny its proper significance toa pas sape of such precious import as this t We ieei to say to many of our theologians : " Of two such lessons why forget The nobler and the Christher one ? The fact is that the passage appears obscure only because it has been neglected It couia not be made to fit in with certain gloomy and oppressive structures of current theology, ana so it has been left on the wayside like a stone quarried and prepared for a temple, but wh en the foolish builders have rejected. Neverthe- less, we are bold to assert that it is one ol tne A GOSPEL IN HADES 97 chief stones of the corner, and must find its place there if the building is to endure. Nor are there lacking those amongst our noblest Christian teachers who hold this view with beautiful fidelity, and who have pro- claimed it fearlessly to the Churches. On this solemn subject the late Dean Farrar wrote : " Much popular teaching about the awful subject of future retribution, its physical torments, its endless, and necessarily endless, duration, gives us an utterly false picture of the God of love, which, though it may find warrant in texts wrongly translated or ignorantly misunderstood, find no warrant either in the general tone of Scripture, or in God's no less sacred teachings through our individual souls." Did our space permit we could quote pas- sages to the same effect from such writers as Kingsley, Maurice, F. W. Robertson, Dr. Cox, Baldwin Brown, Bishop Westcott, Dean Church, Phillips Brooks, Principal Caird, Dr. Littledale, Bishop Wilberforce, and many other of the foremost Christian thinkers and theologians of our time. Prominent among these stands the winsome and beloved Lord Bishop of London, Dr. Winnington Ingram. The convictions con- cerning this issue of a man who is so fully acquainted with the sins and sorrows, the struggles and despairs, of the toiling poor, are of special value. Fully and sympathetically cognisant of the pathos and the peril of slum life, of " The dread strife Of poor humanity's afflicted will Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny," before many a vast assembly he has boldly proclaimed this doctrine of Eternal Hope. 7 98 THE DESTINY OF MAN The question is forced upon us are these devoted ministers and servants of Christ all in error* Is their moral sense perverted? Ace they' not amongst the most enhghtened reverent! and careful students of the Bible