The Blessed Dead
On the quay of an obscure Norwegian town I once saw a parting between a little group of emigrants, about to try their fortunes in a strange and distant land, and their friends and relatives, who gathered to bid them a last adieu. They were altogether of the poorest class, their goods in clumsy boxes, or clumsier canvas; but that nature spoke, through their evident grief, which makes U9 all kin. But the chief 60 point of interest was the wistful eagerness with which the eyes of those on shore followed the wake of the retreating vessel, as though they would fain pierce the parting veil of distance, and see the land into which their dear ones went, perhaps never to return.
So is it often as we gather around the spot from which some beloved soul is about to depart into the unseen. Whither does it go? What does it behold? Whence comes the light which illumines the wan and pallid features, till they seem already transfigured into the likeness of an angel? We gaze where we almost expect to see an open heaven, but all is opaque and dark; and we turn away to take up our lonely path, and to wonder with a great awe as to what is really involved in this great and solemn mystery, which we call Death, but which angels know as Birth.
Obviously in deaths there is no break in the souVs consciousness. The life of the spirit is altogether independent of the body in which it dwells. The signal-box may be in ruins, and yet the operator may be within — as clear in thought and quick of hand as in the day when all was new. It of tens happens, when the body is at the point of death, that the spirit reveals itself in undiminished splendor, and flashes forth in thoughts that can never be forgotten, and words that can never die. And does not this prove, beyond doubt, that the spirit is only a lodger in the body, and when the house of its tabernacle is broken up, it is not affected, but simply passes out to find some other and more lasting home. We know that if the earthly housa
52 of our tabernacle ‘’ (this bodily frame) “be dissolved, we have a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens” (2 Cor. v. 1).
This conclusion, arrived at on merely natural grounds, is substantiated by all the references of the New Testament. There is no shadow of warrant for the idea (held by some) that there is a pause in our consciousness, a parenthesis in our existence, between death and the resurrection. “To depart,” said St. Paul, ^’ is to Ue with Christ, which is far better ‘’ (Phil. i. 23). But surely it could not have been far better to pass into a sort of sleep! Better to live on in this mortal life, amid the acutest sufferings, and to have the presence of Christ, than to lose that presence during centuries of unconsciousness.
^’ To be absent from the body,” he 53 said again, “is to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. v. 8). The moment of absence is the moment of presence. As the spirit withdraws itself from the body, closing blinds and shutters as it retires, it immediately presents itself in the presence of the King, to go no more out for ever.
“Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him “(i, e., with the Lord on His second coming for His own); “and the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thess. iv. 14, 16). Clearly, then, those who have fallen asleep in Jesus (this is the constant phrase used by the Apostles for the death of the believer) have gone to be with Christ, or they could not be said to return with Him; and their spirit-life must be independent of their bodies, which will only be raised when the angel* trumpet calls them from the grave.
And the beloved Apostle distinctly closes the door against all further doubt and questioning on this matter, when he says,” I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth (Rev. xiv. 13). What can those two last words mean except that the blessed rest of the beloved dead dates from the moment that they have died in the Lord?
Death is not a state, but an act; not a condition, but a passage. In this it finds its true analogy in birth, by which we entered upon a new stage of existence. In death we are born out of the darkness and constraints of this mortal life into the freedom and light of Heaven. So Christ was called “the firstborn from among the dead.” A moment’s anguish; a wrench; a step; a transi- 55 tion; a breaking through the thin veil, which hangs between two worlds; a stepping across the boundary line — such is death. And the soul carries with it across that boundary line its freight of thought and life, to pursue its continuity of being and love and purpose in an unbroken and uninterrupted course. The dead are those who have died, and are living for evermore an intense bright life (Ps. xxi. 6).
Of course, then, our dear and sainted dead love us as they EVER DID. Their love to us was i part of their existence, woven int’^ their innermost being, as warp with woof. It was not a property of the body which they have left behind, but of themselves. And we cannot think of them as being the same beings as they were without that love. If, as we have seen, the spirit carries 66 on its life unbroken and unaffected by its passage from the body, then it must continue to live on the other side as on this side. Its love is only altered in its brilliance and intensity, not in its objects; just as a piece of phosphorus, which burns in ordinary air, sparkles with unwonted coruscations when suddenly plunged into a jar of oxygen gas.
Love never dies (1 Cor. xiii.). Our partial knowledge dies amid the revelations of perfect vision. Faith will be needed no more where we know as we are known. Hope fades in fruition. But love abides for ever. It never fails. Death may cut off the interchange of words and acts of love, but its cold hand cannot touch that which is Divine origin, eternal in nature and everlasting in duration.
That is what we pine to know. It 67 is not the distance that makes our souls faint and fear; we could bear that; but the feeling that perhaps we have lost for ever the love which was the light of our existence, the fire at which we were wont to warm ourselves. Let us know that this is preserved to us still; that they love us still who have left us; that their thoughts still enfold us in tender embracements, and follow us in our wanderings, and hover over us like ministering angels — then we can afiford to be without their presence; nay, we gladly resign them, because .they are happier where they are than we could ever have made them.
If your child were to cross the seas, and sojourn for all coming years of life amid strange surroundings and foreign tongues, would you expect it to cease to love? Did Joseph forget his father or brothers when suffering in the prison, or reigning on the throne? Did Moses cease to love his mother, when for forty years he dwelt in the palace of the Pharaohs? Did the little maid forget her home when she was transported to the halls of the warrior Naaman? And why should we suppose that those forget us who have passed into the City of God, where the soul only loses its grossness and denseness, but where all that is true and noble and lovely reveals itself in fellowship with its fellows?
Oh, press this thought to your innermost soul — that those whom you have “loved long since and lost awhile” love you still, care for you still, with a warmth of affection which kindles into an intenser brilliance, as they come nearer to the heart of the Eternal Father, the Source and Sun of Love. And
59 in this love they wait for us. They cannot attain their full consummation and bliss until we, too, emerge from the shadows of death into the perfect light of eternity; so only shall love be satisfied.
But if the love of earth be preserved on the other side, will they not suffer more pain than pleasure, more anguish for those who are overcome by evil than joy for those who conquer? Yet, surely. Heaven cannot be a place of selfish enjoyment. The very essence of its bliss will be in thought and care for others. Its happy residents cannot be oblivious to the travail that rends the heart of its Master for the world He loves, and the Church, His bride. Death will only bring them into closer sympathy with Him in His great plans of redemption, and may reveal to
them considerations and possibilities 60
•wMcH will mitigate their anxiety, and enable them to wait the unfolding of His plans for those whom they have left behind. “Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.”
Our sainted dead will be capable OF RECOGNITION. Of what
use would it be if they were so changed that we could not know them? Even if they were the same in essence they would not be the same to us. Of course they will not wear the body of mortality, racked with pain, dissolved in death. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.” “This corruptible must put on incorruption. This mortal must put on immortality.” But the resurrection body, as is proved by the story of the Forty Days, though in many respects different, is so nearly like the body of our present life that it can be recognized, not only in the 61 general outline, but by the very intonation of the voice, speaking the dear old familiar names of the past.
Mary did not recognize Christ at first, because she would not lift her tear-blinded eyes from the grave where she had seen His sacred body laid; but the tones of His voice recalled her from her sad reverie, and made her start with recognition. The two who walked to Emmaus would have known Him if their eyes had not been holden. And when repeated opportunities were given to the rest to verify Him as the same Jesus with Whom they had spent three years of blessed fellowship, they knew Him, and “were glad when they saw the Lord.” Those alone did not see Him whose senses were beclouded by unbelief or earthliness.
So shall it be with all who belong 62 to Him. His resurrectioQ body is a pattern of ours. “He shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory” (Phil. iii. 21). The spirit will be robed in an ethereal, spiritual body, obedient to its every behest, the meet vehicle of its bright and blessed life; but that glorious body will, in its tones and look and acts (John xxi. 7), recall the loved spirit with which our heart was entwined.
Sometimes, when reaching a crowded railway station, we have been refreshed by seeing the faces of those we know and love, who have come to meet us with their welcome. So Paul felt as his weary journey approached its end at Appii-Forum. But what will it not be to be greeted on the other side by familiar faces, and well-known voices, and tokens 63 by which to recognize the dearly loved! Yet this is what we may expect. We are to be gathered unto our people; a phrase which cannot mean their dust, because the word” buried ‘’ is used of this, and, therefore, which must mean their living, loving, recognized, and welcoming presence. Those whom we have befriended will welcome us into eternal habitations. A choral entrance is to be ministered unto us into the home of the saints (Luke xvi. 9; 2 Pet. i. 11).
Once more: the blessed dead ARE NOT FAR AWAY. They are where Jesus is; and since He is here, may they not be here too? Heaven is not “far away,” as the children are taught to sing. It is near at hand, within the moment’s flash of the spirit’s flight. “To-day” (and it was near sunset when the 64
Speaker said it) “thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.” “Absent from the body, present with the Lord.” No doubt there are several heavens through which ultimately spirits shall pass in their upward mounting (Eph. iv. 10); but the third chamber of the many mansions, Paradise, where now the blessed dead are gathering, and where they await the resurrection is near, very near (2 Cor. xii. 2, 4). There is but a step between.
The prayer of Jesus was that His Church should be one in the Father and Himself. He made no distinction between those who should have crossed the border line and those still lingering on this side. And thus we may infer that all those who are one with Him are one with each other; and that, when we realize our union with Him most closely, we are warranted also to realize our union
5 65 with all the Catholic Church in heaven and earth, and especially with our beloved. Moses and Elias met the disciples in the Transfiguration Mount. And saints still meet us when we are nearest Christ. The members of the same body cannot be very far from each other I
Those dissevered by miles of land and sea meet each other in spirit as they gather at the same hour at the Table of the Lord; and those who touch Christ from the heaven side meet us in Him when we touch Him from the earth side. Hallelujah I To the holy soul, not heaven only, but earth, and vale, and hill, and all lovely scenes are thronged with the presence of bright, radiant, and holy spirits, among whom we recognize those who have been ours, and are ours for ever.
And there is this thought also for
66 those who have lost the child, the young sweet friend, the bright dear life from which it seemed so hard to part. From the moment that death takes them they cease to grow old; they always remain to us what they were in all their radiant beauty. There is always a child-life in the house where a child has died, always merry ringing tones, always soft caresses, always pretty childish ways. The other children grow up and pass out into life and the world; but the child whom death has taken is always there, there for ever in unimpaired beauty and freshness. Oh, Death, thou angel of God, thou dost seem to rob us of our treasures, but thou dost really make them ours for ever in the dew of an immortal youth, transfiguring them with a light that can never fade from their faces or our lives; blotting out only what we are 67 glad to forget, preserving what we loved in imperishable beauty!
The bereaved have often said to me bitterly, “I cannot /eeZ resigned; I know that it must be all right, but I cannot feel resigned.” But, does God expect us to deny the love He gave us, as it pines for” the touch of the vanished hand, and the sound of the voice that is still ‘*? Jesus wept at the grave of His friend.
There are two kinds of sorrow — the sorrow which misses its companion at every turn, and at each fresh sense of loss weeps bitter tears under a keen sense of pain; and there is the hard, bitter, unresigned, and unsubmissive sorrow, which will not forgive God. It is only the latter of these which is wrong. The first is natural, and there is no cause in it for self-rebuke.
When grief is fresh do not try to 68 feel resignation, but will it. Look up to God, in the first stab of pain, and in all the long weary hours of suffering which follow, and say, “Father, I choose Thy will; I know it is the tjnderest and best for my loved one, and for me. Even so, my Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight; not my will, but Thine be done.” And as these words are repeated, and the will offers itself to God, and lays its sacrifice upon the altar, though the hand trembles and the eyes brim with tears, the inward tumult will subside and die down, and the sufferer will come to delight (not in the sorrow) but, in the Father’s appointment, which at first it could only choose.
We never know from what lingering suffering, from what bitter grief, from what impending disaster, spiritual or temporal, God has taken our dear
69 ones. He knows best, and has a sufficient reason, and will explain it clearly to us some day. Meanwhile, He Who wounds can heal. He Who takes will Himself fill the vacant place. And He will keep that which we have committed to Him, and give it back to us restored to perfect health and beauty.
God sometimes passes us into the valley of shadow that we may learn the way, and know how to lead others through it into the light. To get comfort we must comfort with the comfort wherewith we ourselves have been comforted. In wiping the tears of others our own will cease to fall.