Download "Man and the Spiritual World" (.pdf) Some of the characteristics of the Spiritual World.
The reader who has carefully and thoughtfully read the foregoing pages, will, probably, surmise that the limits of our investigation have not yet been reached, and that other truths concerning the Spiritual World, possibly overlooked by many, may lie crystallised in the pages of Holy Writ.
We think that to be the case, and now proceed to consider some of those truths. We are told sometimes that it is, and ever will be, impossible for us, on this side of the grave, to know anything about the details of spirit existence. We do not admit that this is so; but even supposing it to be the case, we submit that a very great deal, at all events, may be known from the Bible as to the leading characteristics of the World Beyond. However ignorant we may be of the personal surroundings of beings in that World, we may discover the general principles that underlie their life there. The details connected with the working out of those principles may be hidden from us, but the principles themselves are not. To realise as much as this is surely an enormous gain on a religious agnosticism that avows that everything concerning the Spiritual World is veiled in impenetrable cloud and uncertainty. Not to know the other is, after all, of comparatively little importance.
Did I, for example, know that my son is in another part of the world alive and well cared for, and that he is being educated in an establishment whose system is so excellent that all that is good in the boy would surely be developed, I should not worry myself and be impatient because I do not perhaps know all about the details of his school-life. Knowing the general principles under which he is living, I should be satisfied. The boy can tell me all the rest when I go to see him. But ignorance of the system with which he is associated would, if I loved my son, be intolerable.
By the same reasoning, I assert that we can bear to be in ignorance of the immediate surroundings and occupations of dear ones who have passed into the Spirit-World, but we cannot bear (unless we be apathetic) not to know aught regarding the principles of the system of life under which they live. It is this conventional idea—that nothing can possibly be known of what lies beyond the veil—that invests death with such unutterable horror to thousands who profess to believe that 'the sting' has been removed.
'I am so glad to see you in this terrible time of my trouble,' said a young widow to the clergyman who had called upon her a few days after the funeral of her husband. 'You will be able to tell me what I do so much want to know. I believe that my dear one is still alive, and I feel convinced that he thinks of me and loves me as he did on earth. I feel convinced, moreover, that all the good in him will expand and mature, and that those things which perplexed him here, because he could not seem to understand them, although he went to church and thought about them, will not perplex him now. I have the idea that God will lead him to understand them where he is. Am I right? You have studied the Bible; tell me, does it sanction these beautiful thoughts?'
'Madam,' was the reply, 'the Bible tells us nothing of what is after death, except that one day there will be a resurrection and a great judgment, and a final Heaven or Hell.'
'You are not sure, then,' queried the lady, 'whether my dear husband is now even alive?'
'No,' answered the clergyman, 'he may be; but the Bible is very silent on the subject.'
'Then,' rejoined the lady,' you can take your Bible away; I don't want it; it is no good to me; it fails me at the point I most need light, comfort and assurance; it does not meet my case. If it be as you say, I will trust God and my own heart rather than it.'
We venture to tell a good many clergymen of the type of the one just instanced that, unless they open their eyes to perceive the truths that the Bible really does teach, there will be hundreds of thousands in their flocks, who will hold aloof from them and their attenuated teaching and think for themselves. We declare it to be untrue that the Bible is very silent on the subject of Life beyond the grave. That grand old Book discloses much over and above the bare fact of continued existence there.
It tells us—
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