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Page 12
[Footnote 9: Biography. Vol. I, p. 260.]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The Life Everlasting.]
[Sidenote: Literalism.]
"The life everlasting!" This is the grand finale of the Creed as it is
the end which all devout souls seek. It is made probable by what man is,
which is the same as saying that there are, from considerations above
mentioned, probabilities in its favor. It has been the habit of pious
souls to attempt to understand and describe this life, and many are the
volumes which proceed upon the literalness of the Bible descriptions. I
suppose there are phases of faith which can not reach beyond
literalness, and hence do not rightly interpret the splendid imagery of
St. John. Such we must leave to the blessed surprise and ecstatic
awakening of Paradise.
[Sidenote: Great Figures.]
[Sidenote: Locating Heaven.]
[Sidenote: Eternal Punishment.]
To other minds the life everlasting is unbelievable except as the great
pictures of John are spiritualized. To such the place becomes a state or
condition. It is of no interest to us to inquire, as did the Christian
philosopher, Dick, into the locality of heaven and hell. Such ideas as
those recently put forth by a preacher, not of our Church, thank God!
that hell is in one of the spots on the sun, and heaven in the
chromosphere are distasteful to the last degree to those who believe
that "God is a Spirit," and that "flesh and blood can not inherit the
kingdom of God." Such feel that heaven may be anywhere and everywhere;
that the gulf which separates the rich man and Lazarus may be only a
moral gulf, seeing that they talked across it. They see eternal
punishment in the perception of the sinner that he has forever stunted
his soul by his sinfullness and the grossness of his affections. Though
he should begin a progressive life from his present status, he could
never catch up with a soul which has a purer point of departure.
There is an awful penalty in the fact that this sense of loss may be
eternal. The consciousness of limited powers, the certainty that so much
is lost, never to be regained, is surely a fire that is not quenched; a
worm that dieth not!
[Sidenote: Limitation by Sin.]
[Sidenote: Illustrations.]
[Sidenote: Strength and Disuse.]
But how much more awful the thought that this limitation of the nature
by sin, whether of body or soul, may affect the soul through unending
life without fitness for any pleasure or delight possible to that
state! The company of good and refined men and women is here little less
than hell to a bad and coarse man, if he is compelled to stay in it.
There is nothing in the spirit, aim, and employments of such that he can
measure. He can understand the delights of eating and drinking. Even
then it is the coarse foods and the drunk-bringing drink that he most
enjoys. He can understand noise, coarse jokes, but not quiet
conversation, nor the play of a delicate wit. When the pleasure of life
is sensual, bodily, the capacity for mental and moral pleasure slowly
diminishes, and at last dies. Project such a soul into the company of
the redeemed; place it where the body has no existence, and therefore no
pleasure to give; compel it to remain among those whose every thought is
pure, and whose eyes are fixed on the "King in His beauty," and, like
the rich man, it will lift its eyes in torment, and ask for "water to
cool his parched tongue."
* * * * *
It is no part of my aim to say a final word on any of these great
truths, even if I deemed myself capable thereof.
[Sidenote: Aim and Intent.]
[Sidenote: Confirmation by Experience.]
[Sidenote: Effect on the Bible.]
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