"Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is."
We must be sure that G.o.d has a right hand and a left, that good and evil are distinct, and will for ever remain so, that each will go to his own place, the place for which he is prepared, for which he has prepared himself, or our day would be turned into night and our whole life put to confusion.
So far, Christ"s words present no difficulty. To many, however, it is a serious perplexity to find that Christ speaks of but two cla.s.ses into which by the Judgment men are divided. There are the sheep and the goats, the good and the bad, and there are no others. To us it seems impossible to divide men thus. They are not, we think, good _or_ bad, but good _and_ bad. "I can understand," some one has said, "what is to become of the sheep, and I can understand what is to become of the goats, but how are the alpacas to be dealt with?"[59] The alpaca, it should be said, is an animal possessing some of the characteristics both of the sheep and the goat, and the meaning of the question is, of course, what is to become of that vast middle cla.s.s in whose lives sometimes good and sometimes evil seems to rule?
Now it is a remarkable fact that Scripture knows nothing of any such middle cla.s.s. Some men it calls good, others it calls evil, but it has no middle term. Note, _e.g._, this typical contrast from the Book of Proverbs: "The path of the righteous is as the light of dawn, that shineth more and more unto the noon-tide of the day. The way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble." Or listen to Peter"s question: "If the righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the unG.o.dly and sinner appear?" In both instances the a.s.sumption is the same: there, on the one hand, are the righteous; and there, on the other, are the wicked; and beside these there are no others. The same cla.s.sification is constant throughout the teaching of Jesus. He speaks of two gates, and two ways, and two ends. There are the guests who accept the King"s invitation and sit down in His banqueting hall, and there are those who refuse it and remain without. In the parable of the net full of fishes the good are gathered into vessels, but the bad are cast away. The wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest; then the wheat is gathered into the barn, and the tares are cast into the fire. The sheep are set on the right hand, and the goats on the left hand; and there is no hint or suggestion that any other kind of cla.s.sification is necessary in order that all men may be truly and justly dealt with.
All this may seem very arbitrary and impossible until we remember that the cla.s.sification is not ours but G.o.d"s. It is not we who have to divide men, setting one on the right hand and another on the left; that is G.o.d"s work; and it is well to remind ourselves that He invites none of us to share His judgment-throne with Him, or, by any verdict of ours, to antic.i.p.ate the findings of the last great day. And because to us such a division is impossible, it does not therefore follow that it should be so to Him before whom all hearts are open and all desires known. _We_ cannot separate men thus because human character is so complex. But complexity is a relative term; it depends on the eyes which behold it; and our naming a thing complex may be but another way of declaring our ignorance concerning it. We all know how a character, a life, a course of events, which, on first view, seemed but a tangled, twisted skein, on closer acquaintance often smooths itself out into perfect simplicity.
And there is surely no difficulty in believing that it should be so with human life when it is judged by the perfect knowledge of G.o.d. Life is like a great tree which casts forth on every side its far-spreading branches. Yet all that moving, breathing mystery of twig and branch and foliage springs from a single root. To us the mystery is baffling in its complexity: we have looked at the branches. To G.o.d it is simple, clear: He sees the hidden root from which it springs. So that, to go back to our former ill.u.s.tration, it is only our ignorance which compels us to speak of "alpacas" in the moral world. To perfect knowledge they will prove to be, as Mr. Selby says, either slightly-disguised sheep or slightly-disguised goats.
There is a further fact also to be taken into account in considering Christ"s two-fold cla.s.sification. Since it is the work of infinite knowledge and justice it will have regard to all the facts of our life.
G.o.d looks not only at the narrow present, but back into the past, and forward into the future. He marks the trend of the life, the bent and bias of the soul. He chalks down no line saying, "Reach this or you are undone for ever." He sets up no absolute standard to which if a man attain he is a saint, or falling short of which he is a sinner. And when He calls one man righteous and another wicked, He means very much more than that one has done so many good deeds, and another so many evil deeds; "righteous" and "wicked" describe what each is in himself, what each will decisively reveal himself to be, when present tendencies have fully worked themselves out. There are two twilights, the twilight of evening and the twilight of morning; and therefore G.o.d"s question to us is not, how much light have we? but, which way do we face? to the night or to the day? Not "What art thou?" but "What wilt thou?" is the supreme question; it is the answer to this which sets some on the right hand and some on the left.
Let us close as we began, remembering that it is Christ who is to be our Judge. Therefore will the judgment be according to perfect truth. We know how He judged men when He was here on earth--without respect of persons, undeceived by appearances, seeing things always as they are, calling them always by their true names. And such will His judgment be hereafter. On the walls of the famous Rock Tombs of Thebes, there is a group of figures representing the judging of the departed spirit before Osiris, the presiding deity of the dead. In one hand he holds a shepherd"s crook, in the other a scourge; before him are the scales of justice; that which is weighed is the heart of the dead king upon whose lot the deity is called to decide. The pictured symbol is a dim foreshadowing of that perfect judgment which He who looketh not at the outward appearance but at the heart will one day pa.s.s on all the lives of men. And yet an apostle has dared to write of "boldness in the day of Judgment"! Surely St. John is very bold; yet was his boldness well-based. He remembered the saying of his own Gospel: "The Father hath given all judgment unto the Son ... because He is the Son of Man." Yes; He who will come to be our Judge is He who once for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was made man, and upon the Cross did suffer death for our redemption. Herein is the secret of the "boldness" of the redeemed.
"Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress; "Midst flaming worlds in these arrayed, With joy shall I lift up my head.
Bold shall I stand in that great day, For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved through these I am, From sin and fear, from guilt and shame."
CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE
"My knowledge of that life is small, The eye of faith is dim; But "tis enough that Christ knows all, And I shall be with Him."
RICHARD BAXTER.
XVI
CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE
"_Where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal._"--MATT. vi. 20.
"_Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched._"--MARK ix.
48.
These are both sayings of Christ, and each has reference to the life beyond death; together they ill.u.s.trate the two-fold thought of the future which finds a place in all the records of our Lord"s teaching.
Popular theology, it is sometimes said, seriously misunderstands and misinterprets Jesus. And so far as the theology of the future life is concerned there need be no hesitation in admitting that, not unfrequently, it has been disfigured by an almost grotesque literalism.
The pulpit has often forgotten that over-statement is always a blunder, and that any attempt to imagine the wholly unimaginable is most likely to end in defeating our own intentions and in dissipating, rather than reinforcing, our sense of the tremendous realities of which Christ spoke. Nevertheless, much as theology may have erred in the form of its teaching concerning the future, its great central ideas have always been derived direct from Christ. It has not, we know, always made its appeal to what is highest in man; it has sometimes spoken of "heaven" and "h.e.l.l" in a fashion that has left heart and conscience wholly untouched; nevertheless, the time has not yet come--until men cease to believe in Christ, the time never will have come--for banishing these words from our vocabulary. Unless Christ were both a deceiver and deceived, they represent realities as abiding as G.o.d and the soul, realities towards which it behoves every man of us to discover how he stands. In the teaching of Jesus, no less than in the teaching of popular theology, the future has a bright side and it has a dark side; there is a heaven and there is a h.e.l.l.
I
That there is a life beyond this life, that death does not end all, is of course always a.s.sumed in the teaching of Jesus. But it is much more than this that we desire to know. What kind of a life is it? What are its conditions? How is it related to the present life? What is the "glory" into which, as we believe, "the souls of believers at their death do immediately pa.s.s"? Perhaps our first impression, as we search the New Testament for an answer to our questions, is one of disappointment; there is so much that still remains unrevealed. We do indeed read of dead men raised to life again by the power of G.o.d, but of the awful and unimaginable experiences through which they pa.s.sed not a word is told.
""Where wert thou, brother, those four days?"
There lives no record of reply.
Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal"d; He told it not; or something seal"d The lips of that Evangelist."
How much even Christ Himself has left untold! At His incarnation, and again at His resurrection, He came forth from that world into which we all must pa.s.s; yet how few were His words concerning it, how little able we still are to picture it! Nevertheless, if He has not told us all, He has told us enough. Let us recall some of His words.
He spoke of "everlasting habitations"--"eternal tabernacles"--into which men should be received. Here we are as pilgrims and sojourners, dwelling in a land not our own.
"Earth"s but a sorry tent, Pitched but a few frail days;"
and the chances and changes of this mortal life often bear heavily upon us. But there these things have no place. Moth and rust, change and decay, sorrow and death cannot enter there.
"The day"s aye fair I" the land o" the leal."
Again, Christ said, "I go to prepare a place for you." Just as when a little child is born into the world it comes to a place made ready for it by the thousand little tendernesses of a mother"s love, so does death lead us, not into the bleak, inhospitable night, but into the "Father"s house," to a place which love has made ready for our coming. "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." _Into Thy hands_--thither Jesus pa.s.sed from the Cross and the cruel hands of men; thither have pa.s.sed the lost ones of our love; thither, too, we in our turn shall pa.s.s. Why, then, if we believe in Jesus should we be afraid? "Having death for my friend," says an unknown Greek writer, "I tremble not at shadows."
Having Jesus for our friend we tremble not at death.
Further, Christ taught us, the heavenly life is a life of service. Every one knows how largely the idea of rest has entered into our common conceptions of the future. It is indeed a pathetic commentary on the weariness and restlessness of life that with so many rest should almost have come to be a synonym for blessedness. But rest is far from being the final word of Scripture concerning the life to come. Surely life, with its thousandfold activities, is not meant as a preparation for a Paradise of inaction. What can be the meaning and purpose of the life which we are called to pa.s.s through here, if our hereafter is to be but one prolonged act of adoration? We shall carry with us into the future not character only but capacity; and can it be that G.o.d will lay aside as useless there that which with so great pains He has sought to perfect here? It is not so that Christ has taught us to think: "He that received the five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliverest unto me five talents: lo, I have gained other five talents.
His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord." G.o.d will not take the tools out of the workman"s hands just when he has learned how to handle them; He will not "pension off" His servants just when they are best able to serve Him.
The reward of work well done is more work; faithfulness in few things brings lordship over many. Have we not here a ray of light on the mystery of unfinished lives? We do not murmur when the old and tired are gathered to their rest; but when little children die, when youth falls in life"s morning, when the strong man is cut off in his strength, we know not what to say. But do not "His servants serve Him" there as well as here? Their work is not done; in ways beyond our thoughts it is going forward still. [60]
One other question concerning the future with which, as by an instinct, we turn to Christ for answer is suggested by the following touching little poem:
"I can recall so well how she would look-- How at the very murmur of her dress On entering the room, the whole room took An air of gentleness.
That was so long ago, and yet his eyes Had always afterwards the look that waits And yearns, and waits again, nor can disguise Something it contemplates.
May we imagine it? The sob, the tears, The long, sweet, shuddering breath; then on her breast The great, full, flooding sense of endless years, Of heaven, and her, and rest."
Can we quote the authority of Jesus for thoughts like these? The point is, let it be noted, not whether we shall know each other again beyond death, but whether we shall be to each other what we were here. At the foot of the white marble cross which his wife placed upon the grave of Charles Kingsley are graven these three words: _Amavimus, Amamus, Amabimus_ ("We have loved, we love, we shall love"). After Mrs.
Browning"s death her husband wrote these lines from Dante in her Testament: "Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall pa.s.s to another better, there, where that lady lives, of whom my soul was enamoured." Will Christ counter-sign a hope like this? I do not know any "proof-text" that can be quoted, yet it were profanation to think otherwise. There are many flowers of time, we know, which cannot be transplanted; but "love never faileth," love is the true _immortelle_. And whatever changes death may bring, those who have been our nearest here shall be our nearest there. And though, as I say, we can quote no "proof-text," our faith may find its guarantee in the great word of Jesus: "If it were not so, I would have told you."
This is one of the instincts of the Christian heart, as pure and good as it is firm and strong. Since Christ let it pa.s.s unchallenged, may we not claim His sanction for it? If it were not so, He would have told us.
II
I turn now to the reverse side of Christ"s teaching concerning the future. And let us not seek to hide from ourselves the fact that there _is_ a reverse side. For, ignore it as we may, the fact remains: those same holy lips which spoke of a place, "where neither moth nor rust doth consume," spoke likewise of another place, "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."