J. Paterson Smyth

“ God reveals to us too that the closing of the eyes in the darkness of Death is but the opening them to the light of a larger life, to the vision of the new mysterious real world which the glare of this world obscured. It is just what happens every day when the glare of the sunlight, revealing to us every little flower and leaf and insect, shuts out from us the great universe of God which stands forth in the midnight sky. Do you know Blanco White's famous sonnet? He is imagining what Adam must have felt as the first night fell on the earth. ”

“ I need not point out to you that our immortal spirits would find little happiness in golden pavements and gates of pearl. People on this earth, who have their fill of gold and pearl, do not always gain much happiness from them. They are mere external things—they cannot give eternal joy, because that comes from within, not from without. It depends not on what we have, but on what we are, not on the riches of our possessions, but on the beauty of our lives.
The gorgeous vision of the Apocalypse has its meaning, but it is not the carnal, literal meaning of foolish men. ”

“ I don't know of anything more impressive than the study of the human brain in its activities, and how "I" am continually changing and modifying and educating my brain. You feel sometimes as if you could almost lay hands on that mysterious spiritual being that is behind it, like a spider in his web—feeling and interpreting every quiver of it, sending messages out into the world by means of it. But he always eludes you. You have no instrument that can touch him. You only know that he is there, enshrouded in mystery, a supernatural being not only using the brain but educating it for use. ”

“ And we have seen what a prophecy of recognition lies deep in the very fibres of that nature which God has implanted in us. If we shall not know one another, why is there this undying memory of departed ones, the aching void that is never filled on earth? The lower animals lose their young and in a few days forget them. But the poor, human mother never forgets. When her head is bowed with age, when she has forgotten nearly all else on earth, you can bring the tears into her eyes by mentioning the child that died in her arms forty years ago. ”

“ As He touches it an electric spark flashes into the body and Adam becomes a living soul. Is not this the centre of the awful mystery that I call "I," myself—the same of which our Lord asks His tremendous question: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own self?"
Is not this "self" the real man, the man in the centre of his life, in the deepest recesses of his being, the man as he lives beneath the eye of God and enters into relations with God—the man for whom the Bible announces that exciting adventure in the long ages of the Hereafter? ”

“ There is no death, but the people do not believe it. Human life is the most exciting romantic adventure in the Universe, going on stage after stage till we are older than Methuselah and then on again through the infinite eternities—and yet men pass into the Unseen as stupidly as the caterpillar on the cabbage-leaf, without curiosity or joy or wonder or excitement at the boundless career ahead. ”

“ But running through all this dark background of Scripture is a curious golden thread of prophecy that evil shall not be eternal in God's universe. One turns to it perplexed with wondering hope. For however fully Conscience recognizes the righteousness of a terrible retribution for sin, there is in all thoughtful minds a shrinking from the thought that Evil shall be as permanent as Good in the universe of the All-holy God—that any evil power can exist unendingly side by side with Him and unendingly resist Him; that Hell and Heaven, Satan and God shall co-exist for all eternity. ”

“ MEMORY in this life is a very wonderful thing. It can call up in a moment, for Conscience to work on, pictures of half a century ago. But in the fast crowding impressions on the senses Memory is overtaxed and has to lay away in its storehouse of subconsciousness whole tracts of the past which never rise up before my conscious thought at all. Psychological science has much to say in late years about this storehouse of subconscious memory and the power that, unknown to me, it is exerting on my life. It is there all the time, "under the threshold." ”

“ Every memory will be more keen and poignant and yet more peaceful and touching in the presence of that dear loving Lord who I feel knows all and yet has loved and received and forgiven me in spite of all, and who is watching over me with deep tenderness like the refiner of silver over His furnace as the dross is cleared away and I grow steadily in fitness for the glorious life of unselfish joy and service in Heaven. ”

“ Worth the Incarnation of the Eternal Son—worth the sorrow and the pain—worth being misunderstood and shamed and mocked and scourged and spitted on and crucified—this final satisfaction of His tender love. "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things that God hath prepared. They shall hunger no more nor thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them nor any burning heat, for the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall shepherd them and lead them to eternal fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. ”

“ WE AND THEY together form the great continuous Church of God. We are all ONE LONG PROCESSION; they at the head in the Unseen. What a life it is! What a work it has!
Said I not well it was a Gospel of the Hereafter, a good news of God! It will make you solemn as you feel that character passes on unchanged. That is good; but it will do more. It will take away the sting and the horror of death. It is not the pain of dying that makes that horror when I come to die. After all, men bear far more pain without flinching. It is not merely the parting for the present with those I love. ”

“ The joy of Heaven is impossible to the unholy just as the joy of beautiful scenery to the blind or the joy of exquisite music to the deaf. Probation in this life—simply means that in this first stage of his being a man either is or is not blinding his eyes and dulling his ears and hardening his heart so as to make himself incapable of higher things in the life to come. ”

“ I can remember still lying awake in the night and crying as I thought of the lost souls in Hell as my poor little brain reeled at the thought of the journeys of that wretched insect and of those whom God kept alive to suffer for ever and ever and ever.
Then as one grew older came the further horror that these "lost" are kept alive not only to suffer but to sin everlastingly. They are to go on increasing in sin for ever and ever and ever in the universe of the All-holy God. One tests this by the ruling thoughts of Scripture. One thinks of God's holiness. One thinks of the golden thread of hope. ”

“ So vivid that our Lord's spirit is said to have been quickened, made more alive, as He passed in. So vivid that the men of the old world could listen to His preaching. So vivid that Moses and Elias—those eager, impetuous leaders—in that wondrous life could not be held by its bonds, but broke through to stand on the mountain with Christ a thousand years after their death. So vivid that Lazarus (whom our Lord describes as in Abraham's bosom) is depicted as living a full, clear, intelligent life; and Dives as thinking anxiously about his five brothers on earth. ”

“ That death chamber is the best place on earth for solemn thought about the Hereafter. But when you are thinking only of your own dead and your heart is all quivering in pain and longing you are not in the best condition for cool, clear searching after truth. Imagination and sentiment are apt to run away with reason. The tender tortured woman is apt to believe too easily what the heart longs to believe. The stricken man in his deep numb pain is in danger of yielding to hopeless doubt about it all. ”

“ Of course, if a man be very selfish and worldly; a man who never tries to help another; a man who smiles at these things as unreal sentiment; who tells you that hard cash and success in life, and "to mind number one," as they say, are the chief things; a man who never feels his pulses beat faster at the story of noble deeds—you cannot absolutely prove to him that the joy of character is the highest happiness. You cannot prove to a blind man the beauty of the sunset sky; you cannot arouse a deaf man to enthusiasm about sweet music ”

“ Surely my memory, my irresistible conviction of personal identity with my past makes it abundantly clear that "I" am a mysterious unchanging spiritual being behind this ever changing brain.
And that is what the best modern science asserts—that the brain is but my instrument. If we compare it to a violin then "I" am the unseen violin player behind it. The musician cannot produce violin music without a violin, but also the violin cannot produce a musical note, much less take part in a complex symphony without the musician behind it. ”

“ Death is drawing near. The poor sinner is about to take the leap off into the dark. He does not know what is before him: Darkness—unconsciousness—nothingness—what? He does not know. The only one on earth who does know is on a cross beside him. "LORD, REMEMBER ME WHEN THOU COMEST IN THY KINGDOM." And Jesus said: "TO-DAY THOU SHALT BE WITH ME IN PARADISE." Not in Heaven, but in Paradise—the Jews' word for the resting place of good men after death. ”

“ It is all quite natural. If "I" am still the same "I" in full vivid conscious life, in full memory of the past—if I have passed out of the mists of earth into the full light of the Eternal, where everything is seen at its full value, where money counts for nothing and love counts for everything, it is of course natural that the good man should feel comforted and the bad man should feel tormented. ”

“ A man can take nothing of the external things—of gold or lands. Nothing of what he HAS but all of what he is—all that he has gained IN HIMSELF. The treasures of memory, of disciplined powers, of enlarged capacities, of a pure and loving heart. All the enrichment of the mind by study, all the love of man, all the love of God, all the ennobling of character which has come through the struggle after right and duty. ”

“ All who have been cleansed by the blood of Christ from the defilements of sin, and strengthened by the power of Christ against the enticements of sin, shall be there. There shall be no drunkenness nor impurity there, nor hatred, nor emulation, nor ill temper, nor selfishness, nor meanness. Ah! it is worth hoping for. We poor strugglers who hate ourselves and are so dissatisfied with ourselves, who look from afar at the lovely ideals rising within us, who think sorrowfully of all which we might have been and have not been—let us keep up heart. One day the ideal shall become the real. ”

“ Why is there in us this sense of imperfection, of incompleteness—of ideals always away in the front that we can never even approximately reach on earth? Look at this conscience which we have just been thinking about. It is always holding high above us an ideal of perfect goodness and insisting that we must strive after it. But we can never get even near it on earth. The very best man at the close of life sees his ideal still high above him and feels how much better he might be and ought to be and then he dies feeling the incompleteness of this life. ”

“ Not a particle remains of the brain, or nerves, or tongue, or eyes, or hands, or feet, with which I did a good or evil deed twenty years since—but it is impossible for me to doubt that it was "I" who did it, that I to-day deserve the praise or blame which is due to it.
Every man on earth, when he thinks about it, has this conviction of himself as an "I"—as a person separate from all other persons, as a self separate from all other selves, as remaining always the same being, whatever changes may take place around him. That is what constitutes man—a self conscious of itself. ”

“ Are those loving souls who are joyfully accepting Christ's service here,—destined for a still more glorious service in this ministry in the Unseen—the "first-fruits" of a great harvest which through them the Lord will reap in the Hereafter? Will some be just saved, saved so as by fire, saved "by the skin of their teeth," as we say, missing the noble destiny of the "elect," the joy of being a blessing to their race? ”

“ If honest hearts in our own land who have died repelled from Him through their ignorance and through stupid misrepresentations would have loved Him if they knew Him as He really is, do you think that no one is helping them to understand Him now? Can we doubt that somehow within the Veil they will learn more fully of His tender love? And judging from what we know of God's methods on earth, is it unreasonable to think that they will learn it from their brethren? True, God might help them by means of the angels. ”

“ In all things He is our great forerunner. He, the Son of Man, has gone before us poor sons of man in all the experiences of life,—childhood, youth, manhood, temptation, struggle, sorrow, disappointment, victory, joy. And He has gone before us, too, into the Unseen Land, as if to lead us and say to us "Be not afraid." ”

“ Every brave boy here who is trying to do right, every poor woman who is learning to love, every one who is blessing the world by kindly unselfishness, is helping on the Kingdom of God on earth and will be helping on the Kingdom of God beyond.
Surely there will be scope for them all. When you think of that great mingled crowd that is daily passing through the gates of death, all sorts and conditions—from the strong saints of God to the poor children brought up in homes of sin—you need have little doubt that there is room for service. ”