Brought Again with Him

We think of thee, dear one, when the summer noon

shines bright,

And all the trees stand still in the solemn hush of light; We think of thee, dear one, when the long day is

done, And the land lies dark ‘twixt the full moon and the

rose of the vanished sun.

We think of thee in sorrow, and we think of thee in

mirth, And when we muse on Heaven, and when en the green

fair earth; A thousand thoughts, as the hours fleet, rise in our

souls and sink, But with them all, and in them all, of our dear one still

we think.

And thy thoughts of us, dear one, we know they do not

fail; Thou thinkest of us and our shadows in the light

within the veil; The veil trembles already with thoughts from that

side and this, And soon it will tremble asunder, and leave us together

in bliss.

H. D.

4 Brought again with Him ’

THE words above are borrowed from that paragraph, radiant with an eternal promise, where St. Paul tells the Thessalonians why they should ’ not i Thess. sorrow ’ without hope * for their beloved lv* I3~l8 who are asleep.’ Not that they are not to sorrow. They are the followers of One who, out of His deep manhood, shed tears J°hn ». beside the very grave He was about to open. 35 But hope is to shine through the sorrow. And by hope, what does the Gospel mean? Not a vague forecast, a something just better than a doubt, but an expectancy well grounded on a promise. In the Bible,

‘Hope is Faith, with her feet on the rock, and her face to the morning.*

What is the promise here beneath those feet? The Lord’s glorious Return, and the return along with Him of ’ them that sleep.’ To that wonderful Coming the first sequel, we read, will be a rapturous meeting. The risen and the surviving will gather, face to face, all transfigured: * we shall be caught up, together with them, to meet the Lord.’ Then again will follow the enjoyment of a Presence, satisfying, altogether happy; ’ so shall we ever be with the Lord.’ The ’ perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul,’ of which we are taught to speak beside the open grave, will have come in thus at last. And its vital factors will be two, each of them a wonderful companionship, an everlasting embrace of life and love, possessing the whole redeemed being. * We ’ shall be ’ together with them.” We ’ and * they,’ in the fulness of the life of the world to come, shall be * ever with the Lord.’

That prospect, the Parousia, the Arrival, of our ascended Lord, shines always in the foreground of the New Testament. For one allusion to the holy intermediate state there are many to the Coming, to the resurrection of the dead, so profoundly connected with the Coming, and to the final glory, in which the transfigured body is to be an integral partaker. Let our hopes and longings delightfully adjust themselves to this prominence of ’ that Titus ii. blessed hope.’ Too often the Church 13 has half forgotten it. I hold, with a faith

unreserved and humbly firm, every article of the Nicene Creed. But am I wrong in wishing, with my Testament open, that the article of the glorious Return had been larger, and more full of the joy of the prospect? We do indeed look for our holy Judge. But His apostles, in their utterances concerning the Coming, speak much more often about the bliss attendant on the call of the Bridegroom for His Bride, on the rising to indissoluble life of the buried z Thess. members of the Head, on the radiant v transfiguration of the waiting servant, on the crown set so gladly on the head not * Pet. v. of the martyr only but of the faithful 4 pastor, on the entrancing hope of recognition and reunion. * What is our hope, ?. Thess. or joy? Is it not even ye, in the presence” of our Lord Jesus Christ, at His coming? ’ * Until His coming again? We know where, in our ancestral worship, those words occur. We are kneeling near the Holy Table, awaiting our communion in the great sacrament of Redemption. The celebrant is in act to hallow the Bread and Wine to be, to our faith, the Body and Blood of the sacrifice of Calvary. The disciple’s soul is full, as he kneels, of the Cross and Passion, say rather of the Sufferer, the Crucified. But the sacred Office calls our faith to the Cross on purpose that it

i Pet. i. may rise through the Cross to ’ the glories

11 that should follow.’ It bids us ’ lift up

our hearts,’ and lift them on. We are to

recollect that this Communion, as every

Communion, is a heaven-given prelude to

the Coming. We * do this in remembrance

of Him ’ — ’ until His coming again.’

‘And thus that dark betrayal night
With the last Advent we unite,
In one blest chain of loving Rite,
Until He come;

* Until the trump of God be heard,
Until the ancient graves be stirred,
And with the great commanding word
The Lord shall come.’ l

It sheds a wonderful light on the life of faith, the presence in the heart of * that blessed hope.’ Not least it is meant to minister a balm all its own to the wounds of the soul, a cordial to its faintings. For it lifts us, by its very nature, not only above death but beyond the grave. It trains us and accustoms us to dwell already, in an anticipation over which God speaks His blessing, in that great age when death and separations will be left behind for ever. Then every part of the dear being which

1 Church Hymns, Hymn 250.

we have so sorely missed, since the last hour struck, will be released and restored into ’ the liberty of the glory of the sons of God.’ Rom. viii. That beloved bodily form, in which the 2I Spirit of God dwelt within the spirit of man will be ’ raised incorruptible,’ transfigured, r cor. yet itself. The Apostle warns us not to ask, xv- 5* almost not to think, how it shall be. Vainly we try to analyse and make definite any thought about the continuity of the risen form with the buried. And there is no need. For at least we are to be sure that this continuity there will be — the same dear spirit will express itself, only with a new fulness and precision, in the body of the resurrection. And that body will be no phantasm; it will be a genuine vehicle for the whole activity of the immortal will, in a real life of doing and serving. Does not the modern advance of discovery among the basal secrets of what we call matter help thought to wait in restful hope for this ’ divine event ‘? We are told now that matter, in its last analysis, seems to rest rather on motion than on mass. Is not the mind better able, for such a suggestion, to grasp the promise that its Maker shall one day ’ subdue all things,’ matter Phil. iii. as well as spirit, * to Himself ‘? Things seen and tangible, as He has willed them to be, are found to be no intractable solidities in their essence; they are infinitely plastic to His touch.

John vi. However, He has promised. ‘I will 40 raise him up, at the last day.’ He who

year by year re-creates each glory of the garden, after its kind, from the hard seed we bury, and crocus is not confused with snowdrop, nor tulip with lily, knows well how to raise your buried treasure, glorified but entirely human, glorified but wholly himself, the same soul looking through the same eyes and brow, in heaven as upon the earth.

‘Until His coming again.’ Until * that day ’ you must wait. But the waiting will be a vigil in the light. You know that the dear spiritual self meanwhile is in the Garden of God, ’ in those heavenly habitations where the souls of them that sleep in the Lord Jesus enjoy perpetual rest and felicity.’ * You know that you are on the way to join him there, through the same mercy. And you know not how soon the hour of the Parousia will sound in heaven, and the Lord will rise

1 The Visitation of the Sick: A Prayer for a sick Child.

up and call the bright spirits around Him to prepare to descend with Him, that they may reascend in consummated glory.

‘Of that hour knoweth no man.’ But Matt. we are commanded on the one hand to x*™. 36 watch, not to sleep, and on the other to know that it will strike precisely * when ye think Matt, not.’ It is an effort, we all know, to enter- xxv- Z3 tain the faith of the glorious Return in the midst of modern life. But that is one express reason for the firm confession that just now it may be at the doors.

There is a beautiful alto relievo, carved on a secluded headstone in the cemetery at Clarens, which thirty years ago was shewn me, and left an impress upon me for all my time. The great Angel of the Coming stands there; the trumpet is in one hand, pendent at his side; in the other hand he holds an hour glass. The solemn eyes are bent upon the glass, watching the running sand.

Is this present shock of nations, these awful phenomena of evil, this heaving force of almost visible powers of * spiritual wickedness,’ nothing less than the sound of the falling of the last sands of ’ this present age ‘? Are * the times of the Gentiles ‘Luke running out? Is the mysterious destiny xxi- 2« of Israel maturing for a new birth? Is

Matt. the cry near at hand, ‘The bridegroom

xxv. 6 cometh ‘?

It may be, it may well be. But any wise, in Benson’s noble words, ‘He may come any time; He must come some time.’ And that time will not only be the signal, it will be the efficient cause, of the resurrection of your dead, and of the unutterably happy entrance of you and them together into the fulness of the life of the world to come.