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THE LIFE OF THE WAITING SOUL IN THE INTERMEDIATE STATE.

London: WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO., 3 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C.

FIRST EDITION, MAY, 1896. SECOND ,, SEP., ,, THIRD ,, FEB., 1897. FOURTH ,, JAN., 1898. FIFTH ,, FEB., 1900.

PREFACE

These Addresses were delivered in Chichester Cathedral, and subsequently, with slight alterations, at Hastings. They would not have been printed but at the urgent request of very many who heard them preached. It should be remembered that they are not a theological treatise, but a course of plain words addressed to an ordinary congregation. It seemed desirable to awaken interest in a subject which has dropped out of English Christian thought, and almost out of people's knowledge. The Addresses are an attempt to explain what can be known about the Intermediate Life. There is nothing new in them. If there were, probably what is new would not be true.

The doctrines of so-called "Universalism" and "Conditional Immortality" are not touched upon. They do not belong to the period which is covered by the Intermediate State. Moreover, I doubt whether we can ever regard those doctrines as anything more than speculations invented to answer modern and possibly ephemeral objections.

How much I have unconsciously been indebted to those who have dealt with this subject more fully, I hardly know. One reads and remembers, and reproduces in preaching, often without thought of the sources from which material has been drawn. I gratefully acknowledge in the notes what I know to be debts incurred. I can only express my regret if any have been overlooked.

R. E. S.

There are moments in the lives of every one of us, when the mind is irresistibly drawn on to wonder what our own personal future shall be, as soon as life is over and death has overtaken us. We cannot help the speculation. However bound by present duties and absorbed in present interests, often, in quiet hours, in times of solitude or bereavement, or under the sense of failing hopes or failing health, in seasons of sorrow or of sickness, the mood takes hold of us; and it may be, we know not why, our eyes turn with an anxious and a wistful look towards that inevitable end which is surely coming upon us.

In this way, we Christians, we children of GOD, heirs of life and immortality, learn to be terrified at death, which, as we are taught to believe, ushers us into life; learn to associate it with trembling doubt and shuddering dismay. But is this dread of death nothing else than the natural instinctive shrinking, which the warmth of life feels at the touch of its cold hand? Or is it not rather, in the case of most of us, due to some false imaginations with which religion itself--that form, at least, of religion which to-day encompasses us--has for many years possessed and imbued the minds of men? Indeed, I believe it to be so. The Christianity of to-day has too commonly accepted two untruths, which yet it holds as truths.

What are we to think of such as these? Of some we perhaps say within ourselves, "Would that there had been but a little amendment of this blemish! A little more of strength and purpose against that fault! If only this besetting hardness had not been the spoiler of his life, that great heedlessness, that fatal procrastination, this too frequent sin! Oh! but for this or that which marred the fair and well rounded character! But for this we should have been full of hope: there was so much on the better side, that we should have been full of trust, and even of confidence. But, now, what are we to think? If only there were some fit and fair proportion to be thought of, duly measured out, of reward and punishment, a mixed destiny for a mixed character, partly good and partly evil for those who in this life were in part good and in part were evil! But these two awful and sharp alternatives, either reward or punishment, these two separate issues, heaven or hell, and if not heaven then necessarily and inevitably hell! What shall we think? We dare not think. In the Bible we are encouraged to believe that we shall receive the due reward of our deeds, whether they be good or whether they be evil. But how shall any receive in heaven the due reward of evil deeds done on earth? and how, in hell, shall any wretched soul receive in any truth the due rewards of good deeds done on earth? Yet in each, there was some good even in the worst, and some evil even in the best."

We see then what follows upon this false belief, that at death an instant judgment assigns finally the destiny of all men, to men of every degree of wickedness, without distinction, Hell; and one final and absolute Heaven to men of every varying measure of goodness. Surely there is a great perplexity in this. No wonder if such beliefs lead men to dread the thought of death, of their own death, of the death of their friends. No mere physical repulsion makes us shrink, but rather the uncertainty and doubt of what may follow,

"The dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will,"

and makes us Christian men and women turn to find relief from these bewildering fears by plunging deeply into the waters of life's amusements and ambitions. It is the uncertainty of things, wearing to some the aspect of caprice, which leads to recklessness, and sometimes to defiance.

I believe, from my heart, that Holy Scripture rightly understood solves these confusing riddles. I believe that a more sound and Scriptural grasp of what will be the future of each of us after death, the restoration of a right belief in an Intermediate State, will go far to correct these unworthy and most un-Christian fears. But it is said, at times, that nothing can be really known about this Intermediate State, that all that can be asserted of it is mere guess and vain conjecture, and even that it betrays a too curious intrusion into things unseen to speculate about the condition of souls after death. Yes! if we only speculate, but not surely if we seek humbly to find out what the Bible has taught us. S. Paul did not think it a too presumptuous intrusion into things beyond the reach of our knowledge to make this enquiry. "I would not have you to be ignorant concerning them which are asleep." He would rather that the Thessalonians should know all that can be known, to their edification. And something can be known, or he would not have written this. And to know it will be to our edification also. Certainly to ignore what can be known has led, as we have seen, to loss and offence in these days. Therefore I propose to try and set before you not idle speculations indeed, but what has been actually revealed in Holy Scripture, or may be drawn from it about the Intermediate State. It is upon Holy Scripture that we must depend for our learning. At least I shall make no attempt to build arguments upon any other foundation than Holy Scripture. But let us, in GOD'S Name, get out of Holy Scripture all that can, according to the proportion of the faith, be deduced from it. It is as perilous, not to say as undutiful towards GOD, the Revealer, to neglect what He has for our sakes revealed, as it would be to invent speculations of our own about that which He has not revealed.

The unseen world is not easy to apprehend, and to our matter-of-fact English mind and temper is especially difficult. Yet, with the awful future in our mind, which awaits not only those who are very dear to ourselves, but ourselves also, we must be dull indeed, if we have no concern for it. Then if sober questioning may reveal more clearly to us what Holy Scripture can tell us of things that shall befall each of us, we may hope to gain fresh confidence, and to renew our trust in Him Who launched us into time, that we may live with Him in eternity through Jesus Christ our Lord.

"Jesus said unto him, Verily I say onto thee, To-day shall thou be with Me in Paradise."

If we should ask what happens to the soul of a good man when he dies, the answer would probably be that he has gone to heaven. Of a little child it would be said at his death, that he has become an angel in heaven. But this would be quite untrue, because it contradicts the Bible. The Bible teaches that there will at the end of the world be a day when all the dead shall rise and stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ, to be judged for the deeds done in the body, whether they be good, or whether they be evil. But if a good man's soul goes straight to heaven at death, without waiting for the Day of Judgment, he practically has no Day of Judgment at all. He escapes it. The Bible also teaches that before the Day of Judgment there will be a general Resurrection of all, both of the just and of the unjust. But how can one who is already in heaven, while his body lies in the grave of corruption,--how can he, being already glorified and even now beholding the vision of GOD, to any intelligible purpose, or for any conceivable end, take part in the general Resurrection? Why should he, as it were, come away from heaven and rise from the dead, in order to be judged?

Thus the popular belief, that the souls of the righteous pass straight to heaven, and the souls of the wicked go straight to hell, is against the plain teaching of the Bible. But the Bible not only contradicts this popular and careless fancy. It asserts what is directly contrary to it: it asserts positively, I mean, that there is an age-long period between death and the final state of happiness or misery, during which period the soul is separate from the body and remains separate. We are, according to the Bible, destined to undergo three great changes in the mode and nature of our existence. In the first period, while we are here in this our life on earth, the soul and spirit are united to a material and tangible body of flesh and blood, suited to our life here. The second stage begins at death, the name we give to the separation which then takes place between this material fabric of the body and the incorporeal part of us; and then the soul and spirit dwell disembodied for a time. There follows at the Resurrection the third period, when the soul and spirit are reunited with the body, but with the body now so spiritualized and refined as to suit the heavenly existence. The second of these two periods, coming between the first and the third, is therefore fitly called the intermediate or middle state, the state in which the disembodied soul dwells apart from its material tenement.

What has the Bible then to say about this Intermediate State? I will not ask you to listen to the comments or interpretations of the early Christian writers, although, of course, very great respect is due to what they say. I will only beg of you to pay common attention to what the Bible itself says.

But, if this be so, why, it may be asked, did not our Lord speak in plainer and more definite language? Such a truth, it may be urged, a truth which so much concerns us, ought not to depend upon a single text. I do not propose to ask you to be content with an inference from a single text. But it may be that our Lord did not say more than this about the great truth with which we are dealing for this reason, that the disciples whom He gathered round Him, being Jews, perfectly well knew what He meant by Paradise. This single reference, therefore, is enough to show that what was a common and prevalent belief among the Jews was a true belief,--a belief which our Lord not only recognized, but by recognizing established and sanctioned. But if we are once clear on this point, we shall find the belief more plainly set forth by our Lord in another place. What then is the belief that we have learned from this single passage? We have learned this, that the human spirit of our Lord, and the spirit of the dying thief did not pass at death to heaven, though if any spirit should ever be fit to pass at death to heaven His spirit was fit, but to a state which He called Paradise.

Now, there was another expression used in the ordinary Jewish language of the day for the state to which the blessed dead passed at death. They were spoken of as at rest "in Abraham's bosom." Of a very holy man they would say, "This day he rests in Abraham's bosom." So that in the minds of the Jews and therefore of the disciples the term "Paradise" meant exactly the same thing as "Abraham's bosom." We have learned what "Paradise" meant. Therefore now we know what "resting in Abraham's bosom" meant. It meant the Intermediate State. The scene then in the narrative of the rich man and Lazarus, which follows the deaths of the two men, belongs not to the final state of happiness and misery at all, but to the Intermediate State. The joy is the joy of the Intermediate State. The suffering, which is in such strong contrast to the joy as to be divided from it by a deep gulf, so that the joy cannot be tinged with the misery, nor the misery relieved by the joy,--this suffering also is the suffering of the Intermediate State.

The reality then of the Intermediate State is confirmed by our Lord in this narrative. Now observe the weight of this testimony. If the Jews were wrong in believing that the spirits of the just passed into Paradise or into Abraham's bosom our Lord would never have uttered words twice over which sanctioned their mistake. We may observe further from these two passages that the Intermediate State has two parts or conditions. There are those in it who suffer, and there are those who rejoice. At death, the spirits of those whose lives have been evil pass to suffering and anguish, as we read of the rich man that "in Hades he lifted up his eyes being in torments"; and the spirits of the faithful pass to rest and joy. But between these two representatives in the narrative, the one of the evil, the other of the good, there are the multitudes who are neither very good nor very evil, so varied in the indeterminate tokens of good and evil which marked their lives on earth, that it would seem to be impossible for us to know on which side of "the great gulf" their position ought to be. But if the extremes enter the Intermediate State, and there is room for them in it, is it to be supposed that there is no room for those who are between the extremes? Rather do we learn that the spirits of all go thither, not only of the faithful and of the wicked, but of the wavering and uncertain also, of those who were weak and fell, of those who, with unsteady and tottering steps, sometimes rising, often falling, now obeying, now rebelling, now believing, now doubting, now walking in the light, now plunged in darkness, at one time treading firmly the ground of the narrow path, and then at times wandering into the quagmires and morasses of sin and lust, passed through the pilgrimage of life, and, at length, when their allotted span was completed, were assigned to the place which awaited them, to the place which was their own and was fitted for them.

We have seen what conclusions must be drawn from the express language of our Lord Himself. Let us now examine the evidence afforded by His Apostles, in the Epistles and in the book of the Revelation. But first I would ask you to consider what, according to the Bible, is the chief feature in the conception of the happiness and glory of Heaven, what is its essential nature. Is it not this, that being the dwelling place of GOD Himself, the glory and happiness of Heaven will consist in the Presence itself of GOD, and therefore in the vision of GOD? As a great writer has said, "It must be remarked by everybody that the glory of the future state is always put before us not as an inner consciousness or mental communion simply, not as an absorption into ourselves within, but as a great spectacle without us, the spectacle of a great visible manifestation of GOD. It is a sight, a picture, a representation, that constitutes the heavenly state, not mere thought and contemplation. The glorified saint of Scripture is especially a beholder; he gazes, he looks, he fixes his eyes upon something before him; he does not merely ruminate within, but his whole mind is carried out towards and upon a great representation. And thus Heaven specially appears in Scripture as the sphere of perfected sight, where the faculty is raised and exalted to its highest act, and the happiness of existence culminates in vision." If this be so, all the most entrancing spectacles and scenes of earth shall appear dim and coarse and uncouth in comparison with the sight on which the ravished gaze of eternity shall be fastened. For then shall our eyes see "The King in His Beauty." They shall see GOD, see Him face to face,--GOD! No higher conception of happiness is set before the heart of man, which ever craves for heaven and for perfection, than GOD Himself, the sight of GOD, the Presence of GOD, the Knowledge of GOD. "In Thy Presence is the fulness of joy." But we must not lose sight of the effect which this vision of GOD produces upon those who gaze. To see Him is to become like Him. "Then," says S. John, "we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." "We all," says S. Paul, "with open face, beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory." This is what seeing GOD will do.

These are a few out of many like passages, all showing that heaven is not reached at death, but only after the Day of Judgment. From all which it is clear that the Apostles had in their minds the firm assurance that there was to be a waiting time, how long they knew not, or how short they knew not, during which the spirit without the body would dwell in expectation. If it were otherwise, if at death the spirit passes into the light which no man can approach unto, into the Presence of GOD and beholds the Beatific Vision, which, as we saw, constitutes the consummation of happiness and perfection in heaven, I would ask, how it can be conceived that our Lord would have called Lazarus back from that supreme happiness, which eye hath never seen nor ear ever heard, nor heart of man ever conceived,--called him back to mingle in the griefs and sorrows, the pains and failures, the doubts and fears, the mists and confusions of this earthly life. Was this the act of Him Who loved Lazarus? Was there no other way of consoling the living sisters, than by so great a loss to the vanished brother? Was it not to call him from life to death, rather than from death to life?

The consummation for them is yet to come. They are waiting for it. It is postponed. GOD'S work on earth is yet uncompleted. The number of the elect is not yet made up. The Second Coming of Christ is yet delayed. All things are not yet ready. A little while longer must they wait, that they without us may not be made perfect.

So far we have examined the witness which the Bible affords in support of the truth that there is such a sphere as the Intermediate State, in which the spirit dwells alone, apart from the body, awaiting the Day of Judgment. We have now to see what can be known as to the condition of the spirit in that disembodied state. It is one thing to be assured on good grounds that there is such a life, and quite another thing to be assured what sort of life it is. Can we fully understand what is meant by the life of the spiritual part of our being when it is separated from the body? We cannot. We cannot understand that of which we have had no experience. In speaking, therefore, of the disembodied spirit, we are speaking of that which we cannot explain. Yet it does not in consequence follow that it is impossible to believe it to be. For we are bound in reason to be assured of many things of which we can form no conception. Reason compels us to be assured of the reality of space, of eternity, of the creation of the universe out of nothing, and, perhaps we may add, of the being of GOD; the being of GOD, I mean, considered apart from His nature and attributes. Yet we cannot form any intelligent conception of these realities. We cannot shape to our apprehension the faintest rational conception of the Personality of GOD, of His Omniscience, of His Omnipresence. Yet we are able, and indeed are forced to believe, as Christians, in these attributes of His Nature, although we cannot comprehend them.

In the same sense, we can be reasonably sure that the spirit can still live after it has left the body, even though we are unable to form to our minds any clear conception of the existence of the disembodied spirit. We can do more. On the assumption of the existence of the disembodied spirit, we are able, to some extent also, to reason upon the laws and limits of that separate and secluded life.

We are, no doubt, in so doing, dealing with a profoundly mysterious subject. But it does not therefore follow that we are thereby really intruding into things which ought not to be enquired into. For the questions raised in the search concern us very closely; and, moreover, it is a matter about which GOD has made a revelation. And to know more about it than many people even care to know is a safeguard against many an unwholesome fear, against many a mischievous deceit.

Death at length steps in, and tears asunder the flesh from the incorporeal part of us; and soul and spirit, still united, pass together to the life which awaits them in the world unseen.

"And when he had said this he fell asleep."

At death, as we have seen, the spirit and the soul are separated from the body, and, still united together, are launched into the unseen world. For though the soul is not the spirit, these two form the incorporeal parts of our compound nature, are the two immaterial elements of that trinity of life,--body, soul, spirit, which are united to make one human being. They both survive death. For death is the separation of the soul from the body, not of the soul from the spirit. But it must be remembered that the spirit, when at death it is, in company with the soul, withdrawn from the body, passes into the Intermediate State, shaped and stamped with the impress which the life on earth has fastened upon it. The spirit enters the new life, either enslaved, disfigured, degraded, dishonoured by the sensual soul, or else strong, free, true, purified in its victory over the flesh. It carries with it, in short, the character which in life it has acquired.

When, then, we say that the disembodied soul enters the Intermediate Life, we are bound to consider in what condition it enters it. For people sometimes argue thus: "Yes! I grant that there will be an interval or waiting time between death and the Day of Judgment. But then, during that time, is not the soul asleep? Surely the dying are said to fall asleep. Then, if asleep, they are unconscious, and to the unconscious soul the Intermediate State will seem to last but for an instant, and will no sooner be entered upon than it will be practically at an end. For complete insensibility to the passing and movement of time is one of the effects of complete unconsciousness. And, in truth, is it not the case that the Bible over and over again speaks of death as a state of sleep or taking rest? Thus the Intermediate State is in fact a blank. The eyes close in death, and they remain closed till they open to gaze upon the glories of the Resurrection, and the terrors of the judgment seat of Christ. Does not our own Prayer Book sanction this view in her Service for the Burial of the Dead? And do we not in common language ourselves express the same belief when we give to the resting place of the bodies of the dead the name of 'cemetery,' or sleeping place?"

The answer to all this is that the language which represents death as a profound slumber is language applicable enough to describe what befalls the body, but is quite inapplicable when it is used of the soul. Sleep is distinctly a physical and corporeal function. The soul cannot be liable to or affected by corporeal influences when it is separated from the body. The soul cannot sleep. It is the body, in the hushed stillness of the chamber of death, which seems, now that the last struggle is over, and the spasm of dying leaves it motionless, to be sleeping. But even in life, while the body sleeps, the soul is awake. It is often, during the sleep of the body, even more active than during the waking hours. In dreams the soul is busy with its fancies. Thoughts flit this way and that through the mind of the sleeper. Indeed, the body is more often a hindrance rather than a help to the activities of thought. To lose all consciousness of the existence of the body, to be as if the body for the time were not,--this is to set the mind thinking in freedom unrestrained. For the body and the conscious sensation of the presence of the body seem to serve to drag down and encumber the energy of thought. A sound through the ear, a sight presented to the eye, a touch, an ache,--these break off sustained thinking. No wonder, when the body sleeps profoundly, the soul is often then most active. And will not this be so when the profoundest sleep of all falls upon the body?

What, then, follows from the soul's consciousness in and through the passage of death? Obviously this,--that the life of the soul goes on, and is therefore the life of the same soul, sustained without break or interruption, after death, by an unsuspended continuity of the consciousness of personal identity. For of what is the soul still conscious? Of itself. The life therefore of the soul after death is one with the life of the soul before death. The same soul lives on. The only change to it is the absence of the body, which has been withdrawn from it, and is laid in the ground, and dissolves into dust. And this continuous consciousness of identity means that the soul's character is preserved unchanged and unaffected by the shock of the separation. For a character it had been contracting during its sojourn in the body, a character of its own. The spiritualized soul before death is a spiritualized soul after death. The animalized soul before death remains after death an animalized soul. The righteous is righteous still. The holy, the pure, the faithful, the devout, the true, are true, and devout, and faithful, and pure, and holy still. The wicked and tainted soul is still wicked and tainted when it enters the unseen, and begins its life in the Intermediate State. It is on the other side what it was on this side. Death,--the crisis and shock of death,--makes no change, no other change than this, that it strips off the outer clothing which enveloped the soul. It leaves the soul the same, no better, no worse. This is what is implied in the personal identity of the soul. It means the continuity of consciousness, and therefore continuity of character.

Do we cling to some vague and fanciful expectation that the mere act of dying, so to call it, will itself work a great change upon the soul, will blot out our sins, will clear away our imperfections, will in an instant heal the wounds and scars, which evil habits, long inured in us, have wrought upon the soul? It will do nothing of the sort. We shall be no better, no holier on the other side than we were on this, no more fitted for heaven than when we died. If this be so,--and, so far as we can see, it must be so,--how much does it behove us to fear greatly the peril we incur by a careless and GOD-forgetting life! "Israel doth not know," said the prophet, "My people doth not consider." That was the pity of it. It was the thoughtlessness, and the ignorance which came of it, that ruined the nation.

Oh! that in life we would look things in the face more steadily! Would that we were ready to take heed how surely we are, day by day, shaping and moulding our character for good or for evil, a character which no shock of dissolution will affect, which will be ours when the crisis comes to end our probation here, and to usher us, as we are and have become, into that unseen life beyond!

The Intermediate Life is not a state of sleep, but a waiting time. But is it a time of mere waiting, and of unemployed quiescence? This would be no better than sleep. There must be a reason for the waiting. And what other reason can there be than that, during it, there is something to be done which can only be done then? S. Paul speaks, in the text, of work which he is confident will be carried on till it is brought to completion on the Day of Judgment. What is this work? We have seen that the Scriptural conception of the happiness of heaven is that it consists in the sight of GOD, the Beatific Vision. But there can enter the heavenly city nothing that defileth, nothing imperfect. It is the pure in heart who shall see GOD. Isaiah dare hardly approach the vision of GOD'S glory on earth, because he felt himself to be a man of unclean lips. The very heavens, the stars themselves, are not clean in GOD'S sight. And at death, who is pure? Who is free from stain? Who is perfect, that he should be fit to look upon GOD? Then, if no one that is imperfect can enter heaven, and none are perfect at death, can we not see what the work is that has to be done between death and the Resurrection? It is this work of purification, that the soul may be fitted for the vision of GOD in heaven. And this is what S. Paul is speaking of in the text. The work begun in life, under the conditions of earth's life, shall not stop at death, but, under new conditions, shall be carried on to perfection until the day of Jesus Christ.

So far, then, we may say that we are treading on sure ground. But when we go on to ask how shall this work and process of purification be effected, and what is the nature and method of it, we are approaching a stage in our enquiry about which, it may be thought, nothing but conjecture remains, because nothing has been revealed. But let us see what light may be thrown upon this question. And, that we may narrow our enquiry within manageable limits, let us confine our attention for the present to the condition of those of whom it may with truth and reason be said that they died in the favour and grace of GOD, died in good hope of salvation, surely trusting that their sins had been forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ, and that, however imperfect and blemished with sin their lives had been, there was an assured forgiveness for them and a good hope of eternal mercy. We will not define the exact limits of this reasonable hope, nor attempt to show who are within or beyond those limits. We will only, in general terms, speak of those who have entered upon the Intermediate Life in a condition such as would make them capable of perfect purification. Certainly it is impossible for any of us ever to say of any one absolutely that he is incapable of such progressive purification. It is not possible, in Christian charity, to pronounce sentence upon any. And it may be, and we may indeed hope, that a vast number, a much larger proportion than many now imagine, will prove on their entrance into the Intermediate Life to be capable of such progress of effective purification as may fit them, each according to his measure, for the final salvation for which he may be qualified in that home where "there are many mansions."

When then does this purification begin? Does it begin with dying? That has been already disproved. But so prevalent is the popular belief that dying has a kind of cleansing power in itself, that it is well to touch upon it once more. What is dying? It is simply the parting of the soul from the body. The soul, up to the moment of death, dwells in the body. At death, in a moment it ceases to dwell in the body. But have not the pain, it may be asked, and the very agony of dying a chastening and purifying force, serving in themselves to crown repentance, and to achieve, in the instant, the complete cleansing of the soul? Why should it be so? The pains which precede death are distinct from dying, from what we may call the act of dying. The act of dying is instantaneous. It is the moment, the crisis at which the soul takes its flight. The pains and agony which accompany the process leading up to death are not the pains and agony of dying at all. They are felt while the sick man is still living. They belong to his life, not to his death. At the moment of dying the sufferings are probably over. The body has just felt its last throb of sensible anguish, and, in the crisis of the soul's departure, is incapable of feeling pain, and therefore is incapable of the discipline of pain. And it is the discipline of pain alone that has any cleansing power. And the discipline of pain went on in life up to the moment, if it be so, of the dying, and then ceased. But it belonged, as the pain belonged, to the life, and not to the death. During the life, at many times in the life past, the wholesome discipline of pain may or may not have been working a salutary change in the character, up to the very moment, perhaps, of death. But it ceased, as the pain ceased, at death.

This then we conclude, that the act of dying in itself, apart from the pain which may have preceded it, can have no moral effect, or work any moral change. Moral change, that is to say change of character, can only go on in life. Dying is a physical operation, not a moral act. At death the possibility of change of character has stopped, so far as this life can be the sphere of it. Life, not death, may be accompanied by cleansing, life on this side of death, and life on the other side of death, but not death, which is between, the mere transition from life to life, from one mode of life to another.

The soul, therefore, after death begins just where it left off, just as life left it, no better, no worse. It passes into the unseen world, pardoned, it may be, by GOD'S mercy, but yet no other than it was before it left the body. Even GOD'S pardon does not change the character, nor yet remove the tendency to sin. That still remains, alas! even in the penitent. The consequences of our acts follow upon our acts, and form our character. As there is uniformity in the law of cause and effect in the realm of nature, so, in morals, is it the case with what we do. Let a man yield to a temptation:--is he as strong against that temptation after he has yielded to it as he would have been if he had not yielded to it? We know that he is not. We know, by our own experience, that it needs a far greater and more strenuous effort to withstand the same temptation after previous yielding, than it did before. A man may repent and be pardoned, but he is what his sin has made him, weak and frail and prone to sin again. GOD'S pardon has cancelled his guilt, but it has not removed his tendency, nor the moral consequences, which sin has wrought upon his character.

This then is what is meant when it is said that the soul, which has received the gracious pardon of GOD before it left the body, is still, when it is launched into the Intermediate Life, clouded and disfigured with the stains and imperfections which it had contracted in this life. But GOD, Who has begun the good work of cleansing in this life, will carry it on in the life unseen, until the soul be made perfect in the day of Jesus Christ.

Who of us, the best of us, does not feel within him the bitterness of the lingering poison, which sin has deposited in his heart? The holier a man is, the more he is conscious of his sinfulness. To the end of life this must be so; for there is no reaching perfection here. Those, chiefly, who have made most progress in the struggle against sin here, know how hateful it is. The higher men rise here in the divine life, the more they discern their imperfections, because they can better measure them by the measure of GOD'S perfections. Each loftier level is but a new standpoint from which to lift the eyes, and view the peaks which soar upward towards infinite elevations. For GOD is holiness itself; and holiness is infinite, because GOD is infinite.

The ground is now cleared for an answer to the question,--How is the purification of the soul effected in the Intermediate Life, and what is the nature of the process? We have seen, 1st, that this waiting time is not an idle time, but a time when something has to be done which can only be done then; 2nd, that what has to be done then is the work of cleansing and purifying the soul, that it may be perfected for the Beatific Vision in heaven; 3rd, that the souls of those who die in grace do yet, although fully pardoned, retain frailties of character, the consequences of former sins; and, 4th, that dying in itself has no cleansing virtue whatever. What, then, are the conditions on which we may rely as grounds for legitimate inferences?

But if we grant this, we may go further. What is it which makes memory in this life so imperfect? What is it but the obtrusive hindrance of the body? The body is at the mercy of the disturbing assaults of present impressions. Through ear, and eye, and touch external objects invade the mind, and dispel and distract fixed and steadfast retrospect. The present blots out the past. When we look back, scenes, and events, and words, and names fade from our memory, and are dimmed by the haze of distance. The past is smothered by what has happened since. Only with a supreme effort, only in solitude, and then only imperfectly, can we recall what has gone by. But there, in the Intermediate State, when the soul dwells apart from the body, there, in the stillness of that "cloistered and secluded life," the powers of memory will be undistracted and perfect. Even in this life, as we are told, some, in a great crisis, have seen at a single glance the whole story of their past experience, and scenes and events, long since forgotten, have flashed in an instant before the mind, clear and vivid. Such clearness, we may well suppose, will the memory have in the Intermediate Life, as it recalls in that quiet stillness the actions of the past days on earth. Here is the first equipment then for the work of cleansing. All the evil things done in life, all the forgotten sins, in all their naked and uncouth colours, will stand undisguised before the mind. Nothing will escape the memory:--nothing. The days of childhood, of youth, of middle age, of elder years will give in their report. The soul will see things then as they are, no longer tricked out in false and flattering guise. There, in all their miserable littleness, and coarseness, and meanness, and cowardice, bygone sins will rise up before the stern tribunal of the unsparing memory, each as it was, each as it is, each as GOD saw it at the time, each as GOD sees it now.

What, then, follows from this? It follows that the soul will not only remember but also be able to judge of the past. For not only will it see its sins, but it will behold Christ also. It will see them, therefore, in the light of the perfect love, and most gracious sinlessness of Jesus Christ. It will look upon sin's stains as they stand out in contrast with His purity, its ingratitude in contrast with His compassion. He will be the atmosphere of the soul's existence. All the shame and dishonour, which in life the soul so complacently accepted, will then overwhelm it with self-reproach and very bitter compunction. This is what is meant by seeing sins as GOD sees them. It is to see them as the soul will see them under the sense of the Presence of the Holy Christ. Then will the soul know its guilt as it never knew it before. The guilt of sin will then be no bare expression, no conventional formula, but a spiritual fact, not an abstract doctrine, but a concrete reality.

There will be revealed also to the soul the true meaning and significance of GOD'S providences in life, which at the time were overlooked, or slighted, or strangely misunderstood. Tokens of GOD'S love and care will then find their interpretation. The soul will see plainly why was this, wherefore was that, what that sorrow meant, what that loss, that parting from one who was more dear than life. The many perplexities which on earth misled the soul, of these the loving mercy and the gracious reason will then be seen.

And will there not be with the amazing surprise at these revelations a strange and unaccountable gladness? But, no less, at the thought of the soul's past blindness and persistence in ill-doing, will there not be an exquisite pain? And the soul's pain can be even more oppressive than the pain of the body. "Pain," it may be asked, "in the Presence of Christ?" Yes, indeed! pain, because in the Presence of Christ; pain in remembering, and in the consciousness, new to the soul, of its utter unworthiness before Christ. The soul cannot fully feel it now, but it will feel it then. The fire of His love will kindle a fire of loving self-reproach. The weight of a heavy shame to think of the past, and to know now of His beauty, and His love, and His care, care for so careless a soul, love for a soul so loveless,--this will sting with an extreme severity the soul humbled before Him. And here we should do well to remember that, as the characters of each differ almost infinitely, whereby there are innumerable shades and degrees of every conceivable distinction of merit and of sin, so the proportion and depth of the pains which the souls will feel will vary equally. The pains of no two souls will be exactly the same. They will be measured out, in subtle and exact aptness to each, according to its guilt or goodness, precisely as the process of its purification shall require. There will be nothing unjust, nothing capricious in them.

And thus the pain will surely be a very wholesome pain. What could more deepen penitence? The pain of self-reproach for unworthiness, and the pain of the sense of goodness in the Presence of Jesus Christ,--these two pains will purify the soul. No work of sanctification has ever been wrought in any soul without suffering. And none ever will. Even Christ Himself was not made perfect, as Man, without suffering. But the suffering in Paradise will be accompanied with an exquisite delight and joy. Do we not know, even here on earth, how near to each other very often are joy and sorrow? He whose spirit is swelling with a great gladness has often a sense of an undercurrent of great pain along with it. How often tears and laughter go together! So, in that home of the disembodied soul, the very process of purification will be marked by an intensity of joy and an intensity of pain. They will be simultaneous. Nay! increasingly, it may be, they will deepen in the soul. The nearer the soul reaches its perfection the more abounding may be its gladness, and the more piercing its compunction. Thus its very anguish will be a delight, and its very delight will be an anguish, and these will proceed, and advance, and increase until the soul is ripe for the Blessed Vision of GOD in Heaven. For He Which began the good work in the soul, here, in life, will, we may be very confident, never abandon it, nor suspend it, but will continue it and perfect it all through the after life, even until the day of Jesus Christ.

"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 longsuffering of GOD waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing."

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