angels or messengers who carried Lazarus to his abode of bliss. They are present to receive the departing spirit; they accompany and guide it; they are ministering spirits still. "Thou art not alone; on either side It is no dream of the fancy, no poetic imagery, that shows them hovering near the deathbed of the just; but the very word of Him at whose birth and at whose departure into the skies angels were visibly present, and talked with men. In that spiritual state they are doubtless visible to the spirit. Often before the departure, it has seemed to hear unearthly music; and, in many legends, such strains are related to have been heard by the spectators. An apostle, too, was once caught up into Paradise, and, without death, passed where death is the common passage. He knew not whether he was in the body or out of the body; but he heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." It is probable that the very remembrances were but such as could not be communicated in language; perhaps such. as no human thought could even convey in a distinct form across the boundary of worlds. We need not forget that such have been the dimly glorious recollections of those who have seemed to die, yet returned. Like Tennant, they have forborne to speak often of what they remembered; yet have felt a certain home-sickness for the land which they had but seen from afar. The employments and joys of that land seem too different from our own sphere to be here described or even with clearness conceived; but not too different to be capable of being united for a moment with the experience of mor tal man, whether, like Paul, he enter in, or, like the others, stand on the borders. But there is nothing in their experience to persuade us that the spirit opens its eyes in eternity, as with a shock of surprise, allied to alarm. The apostle was caught up, without even knowing whether he had left behind him his earthly tabernacle. If, as is probable, the soul in death feels the same transition, it is but as the continuance of life in another scene and sphere; as an unbroken thread passing gently up, though passing swiftly. The rest is hidden. LIX. State of the Just after Death. "Isle of the evening skies, cloud-visioned land, WILLIAMS. THE souls of the just are blessed, from the period of their death, as the souls of the wicked are wretched; the former in Paradise, the latter in torments. So much the Holy Scriptures have revealed of the life which immediately follows death, and they have revealed little more. it some When the ancients spoke in general terms of the world of spirits, without allusion to any diversity of abodes, they called it the unseen land, or gave similar designation, which repeats itself in their different languages. In the Scriptures of the Old Testament, this general designation of the general state of the dead is employed with the same wideness of significance. It was a vast unseen world; and usually, from its alliance to the grave, was described as if it were below. In that world, the dead princes are poetically represented as welcoming the fallen sovereign of Babylon; in that world, too, the rich man sees Abraham and Lazarus far across the impassable gulf of separation. In that world are "the spirits in prison." Into that world passed the soul of the Redeemer, though there it was not left. That world embraces alike the Paradise of the penitent malefactor and the chains and dungeons in which the lost await their final portion. How different, how opposite, how inseparable, must be the regions of that one world, we could imagine from the extremes which are found in this, and we can learn from all that is told of their inhabitants. St. Paul exulted that "to depart and to be with Christ" was far better than to abide here, useful and blessed as he was, in the flesh; that though to him to live was Christ," yet to die was gain." But Judas Iscariot, after Satan had entered into him, after his guilt had been consummated, went, driven by despair, through the awful path of suicide," to his own place." "The souls of the wicked, in their separate state," says Owen, "are perpetually harassed with the disquieting passions which they have impressed on their minds by their corrupt fleshly lusts." It is a thought which has often been urged, and sometimes has been expanded into an immense theory. The foundation is truth; and that truth is peculiarly terrible. Of those who came out of great tribulation," it is written that fore the throne of God, and serve him in his temple;" that "they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat;" that "the Lamb shall feed them, and lead them unto living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." Of one who in hell lifted up his eyes, being in torments," it is written that he asked, and asked in vain, for one drop of water to touch the tip of his tongue and cool him in the flame. So different are the inhabitants, so ..66 they are beday and night different the habitations. Words and images could not be devised which should more thoroughly express joy and woe than those which are employed to describe the state of the soul after death. Its state, still later, when all is consummated, is expressed by the very same images and words. The prospect beyond the resurrection is only that of the same joy and woe, prolonged and made more intense, like twilight passing into day. In all Christian ages, the mind, clinging to the substantial reality of these scriptural disclosures, has yet sought to give them a definitiveness more than their own. Irenæus was content to say that, since the soul of our Lord departed in that shadow of death where are the souls of the dead, the souls of his disciples also shall go into the place assigned them by God. But Tertullian, in his gross, literal spirit, supposes it to be beneath the earth; yet reckons Paradise higher than hell. Augustin distinguishes Paradise from heaven, though St. Paul was certainly caught up into Paradise at the same time as into the third heaven; and in this distinction he is followed by Bull, Whitby, and Doddridge, in their interpretations of that very passage. But the language of St. Paul decides that Paradise, the abode of the just, is not more scripturally represented as below than as above. Many of the early fathers, as Eusebius, Cyril, and Ambrose, carried out. the Pagan imagery of Hades as a shadowy realm, intowhich Christ descended as a conqueror or a preacher of deliverance. Thus his preaching to the spirits in prison" is interpreted by Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, and Cyril. One of the earliest Christian writers says that there is one passage into Hades; but that, after passing this gate, the righteous journey towards the right, to the place called the bosom of Abra > |