R. E. Sanderson

“ 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. ”

“ 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 But it must be remembered that the spirit, when at death it is, in company with the soul, withdrawn from the body, passes into the Intermediate State, shaped and stamped with the impress which the life on earth has fastened upon it.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 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. ”

“ 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 p. 54crisis of the soul’s departure, is incapable of feeling pain, and therefore is incapable of the discipline of pain. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” [24b] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is they who reject God, not God Who is rejecting them. It is they who spurn Him, not He Who chastises them. He does not banish them from His Presence: it is they who banish Him from their presence. And if this defiance against God survives and lasts, if, as ages pass, it becomes more resolutely inveterate and set, what power can stop it, what love can soften it? ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ First, then, memory survives death. In the narrative to which we have had occasion to refer more than once, Abraham is spoken of as bidding the rich man to remember. “Son, remember, that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things.” The survival of memory is involved in the soul’s consciousness of its own existence. And to be conscious of our own existence is to be conscious that we are still the same persons that we were. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every human soul must have had a chance of knowing Christ, before it can justly be punished for the consequences of not knowing Him. Countless millions in all ages, since the world began, in our own land, and in other lands, have never heard the good news of Jesus Christ in life. It is not so with us. With them it is and has been so. Christ preached to those who in safe keeping had been waiting long. Then is it not possible for such as those in all ages to receive the teaching in the Intermediate Life which they never received in this? ”

“ At such moments we ask ourselves, what p. 2will my lot be when the hand of death touches me—even me; when all the light of life goes out, all thought of this world’s cares, all pleasant joys and hopes and desires of time sink down and fade into the chill gloom and shadow of the unknown? ”

“ 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? ”

“ Are we to pray for those whom we dearly love up to the very last moment of their life, and then for ever to refrain? We could understand this on the supposition that death was the end of all things, or that at death there followed an immediate heaven or an instant hell; but not if the process of purification and of real Church life are continuing after death. And Christian instinct urges it. God is a Father. ”

“ It is true that, as has been said, the door that opens between this life and that life only “open inwards,” and that none have come back to tell us what in that after life they knew about us and about our doings on earth. Yet this ignorance of ours is not the same thing as knowledge of the contrary, any more than silence is always equivalent to denial. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ But we may surely ask for them what S. Paul asked for his friend, that they may find mercy in that day, that they may have rest and peace and light and refreshment, the joy of Christ’s Presence, and the gladness of a blessed Resurrection.
And now these words must be brought to a close. The arguments which have been urged rest upon the very language of Holy Scripture, or upon legitimate inferences from it. What then? If they are worthy of trust, to accept them is to rob death of half its fears and alarms. It is the unknown that inspires terror. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ May it not be said with due reverence that, if only His human life on earth had been prolonged, His teaching, and His miracles, and His sinlessness, and His love must have swayed and melted the hearts of men, even of those who so long and so stubbornly withstood Him? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore we must be able to remember each successive moment what and who we were in the moment previous: so that the continuance of life involves the continuance of the consciousness that it is ourselves that live. ”