Our Voice After Death
““He being dead yet speaketh.” — Hen. xi. 4.
WE go on speaking after we are dead. That is a very solemn thought. What will be the character of the voice with which we shall speak? What will our life continue to say in the lives and remembrances of others? The continuing voice has sometimes been described as the echo of the life
and shares its character. But it is far other
than that. An echo is only a weak and weakening continuance of the original voice, and it speedily passes into unobserved and unregistered silence. But death does not change life’s voice into a fading echo. The life itself persists, vital and positive, radiating quickening or deadening influence. Death does not change character, and character 15 never loses its contagion. We live on, and after death the influence of our life is what it was before. The quality of the river is unchanged, whether its waters be clear and pure as crystal, or the vehicles of the most nauseous corruption. ‘“‘He that is holy, let him be holy still; he that is unrighteous, let him be unrighteous still.”
If, therefore, we would know with what kind of voice we shall continue to speak after death, we need only consider the character of our life. I do not mean our reputation. A man’s reputation may seem to represent his influence, but it is by no means the main current of his life. Reputation is like an outer garment which we can frequently change; it may be changed a dozen times in the course of seventy years. But character is an inner garment, whose texture is woven by thought, and feeling, and desire, and action; and this garment is not exposed. to the fickle whims of men or the caprice of circumstance. Happy the man who is clothed in the robe of righteousness and the garment of salvation! It is that inner self, our very self, with its own abiding purpose and devotion, which determines what happens in the way of continuance when death removes us from our visible place among the children of men. ‘“He being dead yet speaketh!”’
All this is very solemn. And it would be overwhelming if we knew no way by which our lives may be made pure and harmonious, and, even now, able to radiate influences which will help to sweeten and inspire our fellow-men. But the secret has been unveiled to us, and we know the way. Our Saviour had His own wonderful figure of speech which no one else could employ. ‘*The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” And from that infilling there results an overflowing. From that well there flows a river. ‘‘ Out of him shall flow rivers of water,” irrigating and fertilising the lives of others. Death does not dry up that living well, and therefore death does not dry up the river. The river flows from the living well, and therefore death does not stop the flowing! And so with the river of John, and of Paul! And so it will be with thy river and mine!