With Christ
Shudder not to pass the stream;
Venture all thy care on Him,
Him whose dying love and power
Stilled its tossing, hushed its roar;
Safe is the expanded wave,
Gentle as a summer’s eve;
Not one object of His care
Ever suffered shipwreck there.
TOPLADY
‘With Christ’
-FAR BETTER1
Phil. i. 21, 23
Aye, think of all things at the best; in one fair thought
unite All purest joys of sense and soul, all earthly love and
light; Bid Hope and Memory meet at length and knit their
wreaths in one, And o’er them shed the tenderest light of Fancy’s inner
sun;
Yet bind the truth upon thy brow and clasp it to thy
heart, And then nor grief nor gladness here shail claim too
great a part —
All radiance of this lower sky is to that glory dim; Far better to depart it is, for we shall be with Him.
H. D.
* ILS NOUS ONT DEVANCliS ’
Qu’il est doux dans les cieux, le reveil des fideles! Qu’avec ravissement, autour de Dieu presses, Us unissent au son des harpes immortelles Les hymnes de 1’amour ia bas commences! Amis, joignons nos voix a leurs voix fraternelles: Us ne sont pas perdus, ils nous ont devances.
VINET
1 With Christ ’
WE have been thinking, with reverence and great tenderness of spirit, about the passing of beloved souls. Let us follow the track further into the world of light. Let us interrogate anew our oracle, that Book which is always proving itself to be now, what it was to the Son of Man Himself, nothing less than God’s revealing Word. What has it to tell us of the life of souls, of that state in which the departed Christian wakes again?
Here, as so often, the Bible is reserved. Its trustworthiness comes out not a little in its persistent refusal to satisfy mere curiosity, to pretend to lift the veil freely, to tell us, as apocryphal ’ apocalypses ’ so often do, a host of details about the marvels of another life. But all the more precious are the disclosures, however guarded, which we do find in the Bible. We are meant entirely to trust them. We are meant to be sure that the light of which such glimpses are given is even larger and more beautiful than the glimpses.
Of the fact of conscious personal survival the Book leaves not a doubt, as it sheds its full illumination, in the New Testament, 2 Tim. on c life and immortality.’ The Lord Jesus affirms it in a hundred ways, direct and indirect. His severest warnings look beyond the body’s death to the experiences of the soul. His parables move familiarly Luke xvi. in the unseen state. Lazarus and Dives IT’3,1 .. survive, conscious, recollecting, fully them-Mark xu., mi i-k i i /
26, 27 selves. The .Patriarchs subsist, after ages of time, related still, spirit to spirit, to God.
Luke * When ye fail ’ (or rather, so the true reading runs, c when it fails,’ when earthly wealth goes from you at death), then, if you have used your talent for others’ good, those others, gone before, * shall receive you into the eternal habitations.’ A welcome will await you then and there, personal, recognizing, delighted.
Listen to the dying Christ Himself. His own time is near. He will soon, with His final breath, ’ commit His spirit,’ as it goes out, to the hands of His Father. But first He speaks to the penitent beside Him. For this man, in so many words, He not only assumes survival; He tells him that the survival shall be consciously, inconceivably, immediately, happy: ‘To-day shalt thou be, Luke with me, in Paradise.’ He bequeaths to His xxiii* 43 apostles the same message of immortality. He teaches Paul to anticipate the instant sequel of death in words of blissful life: ‘To depart, and to be with Christ, which phii. i. 23 is far better ‘; ‘We are willing to be absent 2 Corp from the body, and to be present with the v. 8 Lord.’ Long before those words were written, the Christ had personally opened the door of the unseen to His martyr Stephen. And the man * fell asleep ’ amidst the battering stones, saying, * Receive my Acts vii spirit,’ to a Lord visibly risen from the 55, 60 throne of God to meet him. Later again, a Christian prophet (we shall know his name hereafter) wrote the great Epistle to the Hebrews. He also had commission to lift a corner of the veil, and he lets a long ray of light shine through. 6 Ye are come,’ in Christ, * to the spirits of the Heb. xii. just made perfect.’ Wonderful words, 23 pregnant of life and love! In one breath they tell us of the personal subsistence of the holy dead, and also of our spiritual proximity to them, a nearness and companionship of untold intimacy and affection, here, now, before we die.
That the being of man is greater than io6 CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR
death, that it must, in the nature of God’s plan for it, transcend death, is in one respect the message of literally the whole Bible. For the whole Bible is the record of God’s unceasing and intimate concern about man, and of His dealings with man. Next to God, man is the great mystery and message of the Bible. And the being who can so occupy his eternal Maker is, whatever else he is, no creature of an hour; he is such that he is capable of spirit-relations with the Infinite One. So the Lord reasons, confuting tie guided Sadducees: ‘God is not the God of the dead,’ the extinct, ’ but of the living.’ Thus this Book of mystery and of light meets the wistful heart of man, hungry with its * appetite of immortality.’ It finds man weaving his web of intellectual and inferential ’ intimations ’ of a future life. And, in the name of the Man who died and rose again, and who lives above death for ever, it simply tells man that he is immortal. Rather, it takes this for granted as a basal fact, and develops it into a revelation of holiness and bliss.
And now, what are these developments, these guarded, sparing, but most precious disclosures of the sequel of the Christian’s death?
i. The spirit leaves the mortal body. The conscious self is ’ absent from the 2 Cor. body,’ or, to render St. Paul’s Greek more v< 8 exactly, it ’ leaves its home in the body.’
Between death and resurrection that connexion is broken. But we are not to assume for certain that the outgoer is therefore formless, bodiless. Some Christian thinkers have explained, I think with reason, the ’ house not made with hands ’ 2 Cor. to be the form, the vehicle, of our inter- v* x mediate state. Such a form Moses must have worn in the Transfiguration hour. The angels have power to ’ materialize ’ a bodily vehicle. The human spirit, yonder, may well have a similar privilege, the possession of an organ for its life and action, pending the resurrection glory.
ii. That beyond the veil light reigns we are to be quite sure. Whittier is true to revelation when he says that
* Death is a covered way which opens into light.’
It is a tunnel, a very short tunnel, with a summer landscape at the far end. On the outside of the tunnel the whole day is shining all the while. And the day is breaking already, from the end, into the darkness underneath the roof.
Beyond the shadow there is not less life but more. Your beloved one who has vanished there has passed up, not down. He is not wasted; he is advanced. * She lives above the stars,’ is the phrase of one epitaph in the catacombs. The ultimate best is not yet come; this waits for resurrection. But wonderful is the spirit’s present good. ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,’ what it is to be. But we have revelation, as we have seen already, for the Phil. i. 23 £act tjiat -t is far better ’ than our best
below.
Wonderful visions have been given of that ’ good,’ now and then, to passing souls. Such was the ineffable insight, in one case known to me, that it kept the young man alive on his last bed three days longer, said the doctors, than he had any physical right to live. ‘Is this really the river? ’ he said; c well, it is neither deep nor dark.’ So, long before, Henry Venn the elder, allowed to look under the lifted veil, began to feel the immortal life already in him. ‘Sir,’ said his physician, ’ with these joyful feelings you cannot die.’
A Scottish believer, strong, self-restrained, a characteristic son of the Presbyterian Church, the late Dr. Kalley, approached his end, an aged man. As a veteran medical practitioner, lie calmly told his wife, who told my informant, how he must expect to die suddenly, but that he hoped to give her notice. One day he laid his hand on her arm, said the words, * Oh my dear wife! ’ and immediately expired. The words and the manner, said Mrs. Kalley, were precisely those with which, years before, during a tour they took in the Highlands, he touched her arm and bade her look, when suddenly a mountain view of entrancing grandeur broke upon them.
iii. There will be light there, and so indeed there will be sight. This is revealed in many places of the Book. Take one only, that pregnant passage (we have referred to 2 Cor. v. it twice already) where St. Paul discourses x-7 on the ’ dissolution ’ of ’ the earthly house of this tabernacle,’ and the sequel. Incidentally he says of our present state, as contrasted with the state after dissolution, that ’ we walk by faith, not by sight,’ or, to translate with more precision, ’ not by object visible.’ The holy logic works out to the conclusion that there, * absent from the body,’ the Christian does * walk by object visible.’ He sees, he sees indeed.
iv. This light and this sight are
no CHRISTUS CONSOLA10R
experienced in peace and rest. Quite
incidentally, but how significantly, this is
. given us, for instance, in that apostolic
Heb. xui. 6 i -o u JL !• i n
3 word, Remember them which suffer
adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.9 * Absent from the body,’ then, the Christian soul has done with
ISa. 1V11. 2, f TT 1 11
adversity. ‘He shall enter into peace;
Rev. xiv., i * A i i i MII
I3 they rest. Ah, what that repose will be
to some passing souls! I recall the dying words of one most laborious Christian layman; * I shall ask just to rest, for a hundred years.’ I do not think, by the way, that he would need it; that rest will be so deep that it need not be long. But there may well be an intense while conscious quiescence for a season, the stress over. * No more fighting there, was Charles Kingsley’s thought as he prepared to pass away.
Repose, assuredly, will in one aspect be permanent, unending. Friction, physical and moral, will be gone. And where friction goes there action, however intense, however large, however long, will carry at its heart a repose unspeakable.
v. Action, surely, there will be. I do not wish to deal much in conjecture. But I think that the divine economy of
6 WITH CHRIST ’ ni
power suggests that the holy multitudes of that unseen life, vast beyond our numbering, cannot possibly be left unused, day and year, age after age, by Him who is ‘Lord both of the dead and living.’ That word Lord — does it not suggest, by correspondence, a life of service on the part of His vassals? Not without warrant does Trench write, in his noble poem, ‘On an Early Death,’ a poem which is full all through of messages of the highest hope and cheer: —
‘Doubt not but that in the worlds above There must be other offices of love; That other tasks and ministries there are, Since it is promised that His servants there Shall serve Him still.’
Thought soon fails us when we try to conjecture what those offices and ministries may be. We long to look but for a moment within the thin but opaque curtain. We want greatly to know whether it is given to them to do anything like angelic ministry, and to bless us below with their dear activities, watching and working for our good. That they remember us, and with love, is quite certain. If Dives remembered, and was reminded, did not Lazarus also? Were not his sinless sympathies and desires ii2 CHRISTUS CONSOL4TOR
continually with those he left in life, and were they not often spoken out before his Lord?
We saw just now that we ’ are come unto the spirits of the just.’ Then they are come unto us. They are not remote in space, nor severed from us in date. In the times and places of the spirit they are not memories but presences.
* ‘Tis but the Lord that walks between, And they His other side.’
True it is that, by a mysterious law, the benignant discipline of which we shall understand hereafter, they are silent to us. But we are not therefore to be silent to them. Every day of our lives let us greet them. Let us tell them how dear they are to us. Let us let them know what a power they are upon us. Let us tell them what we think about them, and ask for them; above all, how we pray continually for the dawn of that eternal morning when the Lord will bring them again with Him. Let us cheerfully think and speak of our own passing through the veil one day to be with them, taking our place in our turn in the holy community. Let us bid them meet us at the door of * the eternal tabernacles ’ — which will all the more be Home because they are there.
A living and uplifting anticipation will grow upon us from such converse. It will prepare us, may we not think? for all the more perfect recognition and companionship when we meet again, and find them wonderfully grown in the spirit’s life. Death fixes lines, but indeed it does not crystallize and stay development. The bud then will be the flower, the flower the fruit. In the better life there is indeed no age; the * everlasting spring ’ reigns and shines not only in the Garden but in its denizens. But enrichment will go on for evermore.
Ah, what will it be to meet them in that life! There they, and we, shall be wholly pure, for
‘One sight of Jesus as He is Will strike all sin for ever dead.’
There * adversity,’ as we have seen, will be over. There tears are all exhaled into the sunlight of the Presence. But there peace and joy are so holy that they can carry on and glorify the disciplinary work of pain — deepening, lifting up, opening every sympathy, exalting every grace. There the knowledge of the Blessed, i Cor. no more * in part,’ will always expand,
xiii. g jn the school of Him who said that ’ thou
John shalt know hereafter.’ But it will wear
»”• 7 always a beauty of love and humbleness
which will keep the blight of mental pride
infinitely far away. There, as it has been
said, eyes will have keener and fuller
vision by far than all our optical instruments.
Yet always they will beam virtue and
affection out, as they drink knowledge in.
vi. But the supreme and crowning certainty about the Christian’s life after death is summed in those two words, ‘WITH CHRIST.’ That was the Lord’s own promise from the Cross. It was made, let us remem ber, not to a Stephen, not to a John, but Luke to the dying thief: ‘Today shalt thou »”• 43 be in Paradise,’ in the heavenly Garden, * with me.’ Wonderful is that word ’ today,’ with its immediateness of bliss. Wonderful is that word ‘Paradise,’ charged with every radiant idea of the beautiful in the environment of the soul. But the living sun, which makes the glory of it all, is these words, ’ with me.’ So it is again and again, in passages which we have taken Phil. i. note of already. * To depart, and to be *3 with Christ ‘; ‘We are willing to leave
* ^or* home in the body and to get home to the
Lord.’ The ultimate bliss of resurrection has no higher promise in kind than this promise of the intermediate state: ‘So x shall we ever be with the Lord.’ »v. 17
Think of it, 0 friend, over the grave of your beloved. In a sense newly and unimaginably vivid, immediate, he is now and for ever face to face with his Redeemer. All that he is, thinks, feels, enjoys, desires, is steeped in this astonishing reality, the unveiled Presence. Even here, let us boldly say, he loved his Lord more than he knew; and the love which he knew was a great love. But now he has got full sight of Him; he is consciously quite close to Him; he suns himself, and expands from purity to purity, from glorious grace to grace, in that beatific sight and company. He begins indeed to be like Him, for he sees Him as He is. x He begins the endless happiness of shewing “*• Him what he thinks of Him, what rapture there is for him in the wonderful * beauty of his King,’ in the unspeakable love of m. I7 his King, who suffered for him the unknown sorrows, and who now must needs have him close to Him for evermore.
Such is that presence with Christ that it is ’ far better,” far, far better ’ says n6 CHRISTUS CONSOL4TOR
St. Paul. And better far — than what? Than this life’s sighs and sorrows? No; than this life’s holiest and fullest happiness. The apostle has just spoken of this life in Phil. i. 21 glorious terms; ’ to me to live is Christ.’ But that life, the life waiting for him when he ’ departs,’ is to be such, because it is so wonderfully and immediately * with Christ,’ that it will be * far, far better ’ than even that happy antecedent state.
What must the results be of that holy and unclouded company-keeping I What depths and heights of growth! What outshining more and more of the likeness of the Beloved in the lover, of the Worshipped in the happy worshipper!
What a region of praise and singing must
be the walks and bowers of that great
a. Rev. Garden, which the last vision of the Bible
ii. 7 with places in the midst of the City of the saints!
XXll. 2 £. - i i 1 i 1
It is no scene of contemplation only, hushed
and solemn. The inhabitants begin already isa. to wear the ’ everlasting joy upon their xxxv. 10 heads ’ j they make their singing heard
aloud on the celestial Sion.
’ 0 ye Spirits and Souls of the Righteous,
bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify
Him for ever.’