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The Destiny of the Soul
William Rounseville Alger
CHAPTER VI.
RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN A FUTURE LIFE.
OF all the sorrows incident to human life, none is so penetrating to gentle hearts as that which fills them with aching regrets, and, for a time, writes hollowness and vanity on their dearest treasures, when death robs them of those they love. And so, of all the questions that haunt the soul, wringing its faculties for a solution, beseeching the oracles of the universe for a response, none can have a more intense interest than gathers about the irrepressible inquiry, "Shall we ever meet again, and know, the friends we have lost? somewhere in the ample creation and in the boundless ages, join, with the old familiar love, our long parted, fondly cherished, never forgotten dead?" The grief of bereavement and the desire of reunion are experienced in an endless diversity of degrees by different persons, according as they are careless, hard, and sense bound, or thoughtful, sympathizing, and imaginative; undisciplined by the mysteries and afflictions of our mortal destiny, or profoundly tried by the disappointments and prophecies of time and fate; and as they are shadowed by the gloom of despair, or cheered by the radiance of belief. But to all who feel, even the least, the uncertain but deep monitions of the silent pall, the sad procession, and the burial mound, the impressive problem must occur, with frequency and power, Does the grave sunder us and the objects of our affection forever? or, across that dark gulf, shall we be united again in purer bonds? Outside of the atheistic dissolution and the pantheistic absorption, it is supposable that, surviving the blow of death, our spirits may return to God and run their endless course in divine solitude. On the other hand, it is supposable that, possessed with all the memories of this probationary state, blessed by the companionship of our earthly friends, we may aspire together along the interminable gradations of the world to come. If the former supposition be true, and the farewell of the dying is the announcement of an irrevocable separation, then the tears we shed over the shrouded clay, once so prized, should be distillations from Lethe's flood, to make us forget all. But if the latter be true, then our deadly seeming losses are as the partings of travellers at night to meet in the morning; and, as friend after friend retires, we should sigh to each departing spirit a kind adieu till we meet again, and let pleasing memories of them linger to mingle in the sacred day dreams of remaining life.
Evidently it is of much importance to a man which of these views he shall take; for each exerts a distinctive influence in regard to his peace of mind, his moral strength, and his religious character. On one who believes that hereafter, beyond all the partings in this land of tombs, he shall never meet the dear companions who now bless his lot, the death of friends must fall, if he be a person of strong sensibilities, as a staggering blow, awakening an agony of sorrow, taking from the sky and the earth a glory nothing can ever replace, and leaving in his heart a wretched void nothing can ever fill. Henceforth he will be deprived mostly for all felt connection between them is hopelessly sundered of the good influences they exerted on him when present: he must try, by all expedients, to forget them; think no more of their virtues, their welcome voices and kindly deeds; wipe from the tablets of his soul all fond records of their united happy days; look not to the future, let the past be as though it had never been, and absorb his thoughts and feelings in the turmoil of the present. This is his only course; and even then, if true to the holiest instincts of his soul, he will find the fatal separation has lessened his being and impoverished his life,
"For this losing is true dying; This is lordly man's down lying, This his slow but sure reclining, Star by star his world resigning."
But to him who earnestly expects soon to be restored under fairer auspices and in a deathless world to those from whom he parted as he laid their crumbling bodies in the earth, the death of friends will come as a message from the Great Father, a message solemn yet kind, laden indeed with natural sadness yet brightened by sure promise and followed by heavenly compensations. If his tears flow, they flow not in scalding bitterness from the Marah fountain of despair, but in chastened joy from the smitten rock of faith. So far from endeavoring to forget the departed, he will cling to their memories with redoubled tenderness, as a sacred trust and a redeeming power. They will be more precious to him than ever, stronger to purify and animate. Their saintly examples will attract him as never before, and their celestial voices plead from on high to win him to virtue and to heaven. The constant thought of seeing them once more, and wafting in their arms through the enchanted spaces of Paradise, will wield a sanctifying force over his spirit. They will make the invisible sphere a peopled reality to him, and draw him to God by the diffused bonds of a spiritual acquaintance and an eternal love.
Since the result in which a man rests on this subject, believing or disbelieving that he shall recognise his beloved ones the other side of the grave, exerts a deep influence on him, in one case disheartening, in the other uplifting, it is incumbent on us to investigate the subject, try to get at the truth, clear it up, and appreciate it as well as we can. It is a theme to interest us all. Who has not endeared relatives, choice friends, freshly or long ago removed from this earth into the unknown clime? In a little while, as the ravaging reaper sweeps on his way, who will not have still more there, or be there himself? Whether old acquaintance shall be all forgot or be well remembered there, is an inquiry which must profoundly interest all who have hearts to love their companions, and minds to perceive the creeping shadows of mystery drawing over us as we approach the sure destiny of age and the dim confines of the world. It is a theme, far removed from noisy strifes and vain shows, penetrating that mysterious essence of affection and thought which we are. The thing of first importance is not the conclusion we reach, but the spirit in which we seek and hold it. The Christian says to his friend, "Our souls will be united in yonder heaven." Danton, with a horrible travesty, said to his comrades on the scaffold, "Our heads will meet in that sack."
Before engaging directly in the discussion, it will be interesting to notice, for an instant, the verdict which history, in the spontaneous suppositions and rude speculations of ancient peoples, pronounces on this subject.1 Among their various opinions about the state after death, it is a prominent circumstance that they generally agree in conceiving it as a social state in which personal likenesses and memories are retained, fellow countrymen are grouped together, and friends united. This is minutely true of those nations with the details of whose faith we are acquainted, and is implied in the general belief of all others, except those who expected the individual spirit to be absorbed in the soul of the universe. Homer shows Ulysses and Virgil in like manner shows Aneas upon his entrance into the other world mutually recognising his old comrades and recognised by them. The two heroes whose inseparable friendship on earth was proverbial are still together in Elysium:
"Then, side by side, along the dreary coast Advanced Achilles' and Patroclus' ghost, A friendly pair."
In this representation that there was a full recognition of acquaintances, all the accounts of the other world given in Greek and Roman literature harmonize. The same is true of the accounts contained in the literature of the ancient Hebrews. In the Book of Genesis, when Jacob hears of the death of his favorite child, he exclaims, "I shall go down to my son Joseph in the under world, mourning." When the witch of Endor raised the ghost of Samuel, Saul knew him by the description she gave of him as he rose. The monarch shades in the under world are pictured by Isaiah as recognising the shade of the king of Babylon and rising from their sombre thrones to greet him with mockery. Ezekiel shows us each people of the heathen nations in the under world in a company by themselves. When David's child died, the king sorrowfully exclaimed, "He will not return to me; but I shall go to him." All these passages are based on the conception of a gloomy subterranean abode where the ghosts of the dead are reunited after their separation at death on earth. An old commentator on the Koran says a Mohammedan priest was once asked how the blessed in paradise could be happy when missing some near relative or dear friend whom they were thus forced to suppose in hell. He replied, God will either cause believers to forget such persons or else to rest in expectation of their coming. The anecdote shows affectingly that the same yearning heart and curiosity are possessed by Moslem and Christian. A still more impressive case in point is furnished by a picture in a Buddhist temple in China. The painting represents the story of the priest Lo Puh, who, on passing into paradise at death, saw his mother, Yin Te, in hell. He instantly descended into the infernal court, Tsin Kwang Wang, where she was suffering, and, by his valor, virtues, and intercessions, rescued her. The picture vividly portraying the whole story may be seen and studied at the present time by Christian missionaries who enter that temple of the benevolent Buddha.2 From the faith of many other nations illustrations might be brought of the same fact, that the great common instinct which has led men to believe in a future life has at the same time caused them to believe that in that life there would be a union and recognition of friends.
1 Alexius, Tod and Wiedersehen. Eine Gedankenfolge der besten Schriftsteller aller Zeiten und Volker.
2 Asiatic Journal, 1840, p. 211.
Let this far reaching historical fact be taken at its just value,while we proceed to the labor in hand. The fact referred to is of some value, because, being an expression of the heart of man as God made it, it is an indication of his will, a prophecy.
There are three ways of trying the problem of future recognition. The cool, skeptical class of persons will examine the present related facts of the case; argue from what they now know; test the question by induction and inference. Let us see to what results they will thus be led. In the first place, we learn upon reflection that we now distinguish each other by the outward form, physical proportion, and combination of looks, tones of voice, and other the like particulars. Every one has his individuality in these respects, by which he is separable from others. It may be hastily inferred, then, that if we are to know our friends hereafter it will be through the retention or the recovery of their sensible peculiarities. Accordingly, many believe the soul to be a perfect reflection or immaterial fac simile of the body, the exact correspondence in shadowy outline of its gross tabernacle, and consequently at once recognizable in the disembodied state. The literature of Christendom we may almost say of the world teems with exemplifications of this idea. Others, arguing from the same acknowledged premises, conclude that future recognition will be secured by the resurrection of the material body as it was in all its perfection, in renovated and unfading prime. But, leaving out of view the inherent absurdity of the doctrine of a physical resurrection, there is a fatal difficulty in the way of both these supposititious modes of mutual knowledge in another world. It is this. The outward form, features, and expression sometimes alter so thoroughly that it is impossible for us to recognise our once most intimate companions. Cases are not rare of this kind. Let one pass in absence from childhood to maturity, and who that had not seen him in the mean time could tell that it was he? The trouble arising thence is finely illustrated by Shakspeare in the motherly solicitude of Constance, who, on learning that her young son has been imprisoned by his uncle, King John, and will probably be kept until he pines to death, cries in anguish to her confessor,
"Father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker sorrow eat my bud
And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit;
And so he'll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more."
Owing to the changes of all sorts which take place in the body, future recognition cannot safely depend upon that or upon any resemblance of the spirit to it. Besides, not the faintest proof can be adduced of any such perceptible correspondence subsisting between them.
Turning again to the facts of experience, we find that it is not alone, nor indeed chiefly, by their visible forms and features that we know our chosen ones. We also, and far more truly, know them by the traits of their characters, the elements of their lives, the effluence of their spirits, the magic atmosphere which surrounds them, the electric thrill and communication which vivify and conjoin our souls. And even in the exterior, that which most reveals and distinguishes each is not the shape, but the expression, the lights and shades, reflected out from the immortal spirit shrined within. We know each other really by the mysterious motions of our souls. And all these things endure and act uninterrupted though the fleshly frame alter a thousand times or dissolve in its native dust. The knowledge of a friend, then, being independent of the body, spirits may be recognised in the future state by the associations mutually surrounding them, the feelings connecting them. Amidst all the innumerable thronging multitudes, through all the immeasurable intervening heights and depths, of the immaterial world, remembered and desired companions may be selected and united by inward laws that act with the ease and precision of chemical affinities. We may therefore recognise each other by the feelings which now connect us, and which shall spontaneously kindle and interchange when we meet in heaven, as the signs of our former communion.
It needs but little thought to perceive that by this view future recognition is conditional, being made to depend on the permanence of our sympathies: there must be the same mutual relations, affinities, fitness to awaken the same emotions upon approaching each other's sphere, or we shall neither know nor be known. But in fact our sympathies and aversions change as much as our outward appearance does. The vices and virtues, loves and hatreds, of our hearts alter, the peculiar characteristics of our souls undergo as great a transformation, sometimes, as thorough a revolution, as the body does in the interval between childhood and manhood. These changes going on in our associates frequently change our feelings towards them, heightening or diminishing our affection, creating a new interest, destroying an old one, now making enemies lovers, and now thoroughly alienating very friends. Such fundamental alterations of character may occur in us, or in our friend, before we meet in the unseen state, that we shall no more recognise each other's spirits than we should know each other on earth after a separation in which our bodily appearances and voices had been entirely changed. These considerations would induce us to think that recognition hereafter is not sure, but turns on the condition that we preserve a remembrance, desire, and adaptedness for one another.
If now the critical inquirer shall say there is no evidence, and it is incredible, that the body will be restored to a future life, or that the soul has any resemblance to the body by which it may be identified, furthermore, if he shall maintain that the doctrine of the revelation and recognition of the souls of friends in another life by an instinctive feeling, a mysterious attraction and response, is fanciful, an overdrawn conclusion of the imagination, not warranted by a stern induction of the average realities of the subject, and if he shall then ask, how are we to distinguish our former acquaintances among the hosts of heaven? there is one more fact of experience which meets the case and answers his demand. When long absence and great exposures have wiped off all the marks by which old companions knew each other, it has frequently happened that they have met and conversed with indifference, each being ignorant of whom the other was; and so it has continued until, by some indirect means, some accidental allusion, or the agency of a third person, they have been suddenly revealed. Then, with throbbing hearts, in tears and rapture, they have rushed into each other's arms, with an instantaneous recurrence of their early friendship in all its original warmth, fulness, and flooding associations. Many such instances are related in books of romance with strict truth to the actual occurrences of life. Several instances of it are authenticated in the early history of America, when children, torn from their homes by the Indians, were recovered by their parents after twenty or thirty years had elapsed and they were identified by circumstantial evidence. Let any parent ask his heart, any true friend ask his heart, if, discovering by some foreign means the object of his love, he would not embrace him with just as ardent a gratitude and devotion as though there were no outward change and they had known one another at sight. So, in the life beyond the grave, if we are not able to recognise our earthly companions directly, either by spiritual sight or by intuitive feeling, we may obtain knowledge of each other indirectly by comparison of common recollections, or by the mediation of angels, or by some other Divine arrangement especially prepared for that purpose. And therefore, whether in heaven we look or feel as we do here or not, whether there be any provision in our present constitution for future recognition or not, is of no consequence. In a thousand ways the defect can be remedied, if such be the will of God. And that such is his will every relevant fact and consideration would seem to prove. It is a consistent and seemingly requisite continuation and completion of that great scheme of which this life is a part. It is an apparently essential element and fulfilment of the wonderful apparatus of retribution, reward, and discipline, intended to educate us as members of God's eternal family. Because from the little which we now understand we cannot infer with plainness and certainty the precise means and method by which we can discriminate our friends in heaven need be no obstacle to believing the fact itself; for there are millions of undoubted truths whose conditions and ways of operation we can nowise fathom. Upon the whole, then, we conclude that we cannot by our mere understandings decide with certainty the question concerning future recognition; but we are justified in trusting to the accuracy of that doctrine, since it rests safely with the free pleasure of God, who is both infinitely able and disposed to do what is best, and we cannot help believing that it is best for us to be with and love hereafter those whom we are with and love here.3
There is a way of dealing with the general subject before us wholly different from the course thus far pursued. Ceasing to act the philosopher, laying aside all arguments and theories, all dry speculations, we may come as simple believers to the Christian Scriptures and investigate their teachings to accept whatever they pronounce as the word of God's truth.
3 Munch, Werden wir uns wiedersehen nach dem Tode. This work, based on the Kantian philosophy, denies future recognition. There is an able reply to it by Vogel, Ueber die Hoffnung des Wiedersehens.
Let us see to what results we shall thus be led. Searching the New Testament to learn its doctrinein regard to reunion in a future state, we are very soon struck with surprise at the mysterious reserve, so characteristic of its pages, on this entire theme. Instead of a full and minute revelation blazing along the track of the gospel pens, a few fragmentary intimations, incidental hints, scattered here and there, are the substance of all that it expressly says. But though little is directly declared, yet much is plainly implied: especially the one great inference with which we are now concerned may be unequivocally and repeatedly drawn. In the parable of the Rich Man and the Beggar the Savior pictures forth the recognition of their souls in the disembodied state. Dives also is described as recollecting with intense interest, with the most anxious sympathy, his endangered brethren on earth. Although this occurs in a parable, yet it is likely that so prominent and vital a feature of it would be moulded, as to its essential significance, in accordance with what the author intended should be received as truth. Jesus also speaks of many who should come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; from which it would appear that the patriarchs are together in fellowship and that the righteous of after times were to be received with them in mutual acquaintance. On the Mount of Transfiguration the witnessing disciples saw Moses and Elias together with Jesus, and recognised them, probably from their resemblance to traditional descriptions of them. Jesus always represented the future state as a society. He said to his followers, "I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there ye may be also;" and he prayed to his Father that his disciples might be with him where he was going. At another time he declared of little children, "Their angels always behold the face of my Father in heaven:" he also taught that "there is joy in heaven over every sinner that repenteth;" passages that presuppose such a community of faculties, sympathies, in heaven and earth, in angels and men, as certainly implies the doctrine of continued knowledge and fellowship. When heaven was opened before the dying Stephen, he saw and instantly knew his Divine Master, the Lord Jesus, and called to him to welcome his ascending spirit. Paul writes to the Thessalonians that he would not have them sorrow concerning the dead as those who have no hope, assuring them that when Christ reappears they shall all be united again. In the Apocalypse, John saw, in a vision, the souls of the martyrs, who had died for the faith of the gospel, together, under the altar. From community of suffering and a common abode together in heaven we may safely infer their recognition of each other. The Gospels declare that Christ after his death remembered his disciples and came back to them to assure them that they should rejoin him on high; and the apostles assert that we are to be with Christ and to be like him in the future state. It follows from the admission of these declarations that we shall remember our friends and be united with them in conscious knowledge. Few, and brief, and vague as the utterances of the Scriptures are in relation to this theme, they necessarily involve all the results of an avowed doctrine. They undeniably involve the supposition that in the other life we shall be conscious personalities as here, retaining our memories and constituting a society. From these implications the fact of the future recognition of friends irresistibly results, unless there be some special interference to prevent it; and such an interposition there is no hint of and can be no reason for fearing.
Such is really all that we can learn from the Scriptures on the subject of our inquiry.4 Its indirectness and brevity would convince us that God did not intend to betray to us in clear light the secrets of the shrouded future, that for some reason it is best that his teaching should be so reserved, and leave us to the haunting wonder, the anxious surmise, the appalling mystery, the alluring possibilities, that now meet our gaze on the unmoving veil of death. God intends we shall trust in him without knowledge, and by faith, not by sight, pursue his guidance into the silent and unknown land.
Therefore, after analyzing the relevant facts of present experience and inferring what we can from them, and after studying the Scriptures and finding what they say, there is yet another method of considering the problem of recognition in the future state. That is without caring for critical discussion, without deferring to extraneous authority, we may follow the gravitating force of instinct, imagination, and moral reason. We are made to love and depend on each other. The longer, the more profoundly, we know and admire the good, the more our being becomes intertwined with theirs, so much the more intensely we desire to be with them always, and so much the more awful is the agony of separation. This, what is it but great Nature's testimony, God's silent avowal, that we are to meet in eternity? Can the fearful anguish of bereavement be gratuitous? can the yearning prophecies of the smitten heart be all false? Belief in reunion hereafter is spontaneously adopted by humanity. We therefore esteem it divinely ordered or true. Without that soothing and sustaining trust, the unrelieved, intolerable wretchedness in many cases would burst through the fortress of the mind, hurl reason from its throne, and tear the royal affections and their attendants in the trampled dust of madness. Many a rarely gifted soul, unknown in his nameless privacy of life, has been so conjoined with a worthy peer, through precious bonds of unutterable sympathy, that, rather than be left behind, "the divided half of such a friendship as had mastered time," he has prayed that they, dying at once, might, involved together, hover across the dolorous strait to the other shore, and
"Arrive at last the blessed goal
Where He that died in Holy Land
Might reach them out the shining hand
And take them as a single soul."
Denied that inmost wish, the rest of his widowed life below has been one melancholy strain of "In Memoriam." Many a faithful and noble mourner, whose garnered love and hope have been blighted for this world, would tell you that, without meeting his lost ones there, heaven itself would be no heaven to him. In such a state of soul we must expect to know again in an unfading clime the cherished dead. That belief is of Divine inspiration, an arrangement to heal the deadly wounds of sorrow. It is madness not to think it a verity. Who believes, as he shall float through the ambrosial airs of heaven, he could touch, in passing, the radiant robes of his chosen friends without a thrill of recognition, the prelude to a blissful and immortal communion? Is there not truth in the poet's picture of the meeting of child and parent in heaven?
4 Harbaugh, The Heavenly Recognition. Gisborne, Recollections of Friends in the World to Come. Muston, Perpetuation of Christian Friendship.
"It was not, mother, that I knew thy face: The luminous eclipse that is on it now, Though it was fair on earth, would have made it strange Even to one who knew as well as he loved thee; But my heart cried out in me, Mother!"
Think of the unfathomable yearnings, the infinite ecstasies of desire and faith from age to age swelling in the very heart of the world, all set on the one hope of future union, and who then can believe that God will coldly blast them all? They are innocent, they are holy, they are meritorious, they are unspeakably dear. We would not destroy them; and God will not.
Man's life is the true fable of that beautiful youth, Narcissus, who had a twin sister of remarkable loveliness, strongly resembling himself, and to whom he was most tenderly attached. She dies young. He frequents fountains to gaze upon his own image reflected in the waters, it seeming to him the likeness of her he has lost. He is in pity transformed into a flower on the border of a stream, where, bending on his fragile stem, he seeks his image in the waters murmuring by, until he fades and dies. Has not God, the all loving Author who composed the sweet poem of Man and Nature, written at the close a reconciling Elysium wherein these pure lovers, the fond Narcissus and his echo mate, shall wander in perennial bliss, their embracing forms mirrored in unruffled fountains?
Looking now for the conclusion of the whole matter, we find that it lies in three different aspects, both of inquiring thought and of practical morality, according to the lights and modes in which three different classes of minds approach it. To the consistent metaphysician, reasoning rigidly on grounds of science and philosophy, every thing pertaining to the methods and circumstances of the future life is an affair of entire uncertainty and hypothesis.5 If in the future state the soul retains its individuality as an identical force, form, life, and memory, and if associates in the present state are brought together, it is probable that old friends will recognise each other. But if they are oblivious of the past, if they are incommunicably separated in space or state, if one progresses so much farther that the other can never overtake him, if the personal soul blends its individual consciousness with the unitary consciousness of the Over Soul, if it commences a new career from a fresh psychical germ, then, by the terms, there will be no mutual recognition. In that case his comfort and his duty are to know that the anguish and longing he now feels will cease then; to trust in the benignity of the Infinite Wisdom, who knows best what to appoint for his creatures; and to submit with harmonizing resignation to the unalterable decree, offering his private wish a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of natural piety. That he shall know his friends hereafter is not impossible, not improbable; neither is it certain. He may desire it, expect it, but not with speculative pride dogmatically affirm it, nor with insisting egotism presumptuously demand it.
5 Gravell, Das Wiedersehen nach dem Tode. Wie es nur sein konne.
To the uncritical Christian the recognising reunion of friends in heaven is an unshaken assurance.6 There is nothing to disturb his implicit reception of the plain teaching of Scripture. The legitimate exhortations of his faith are these. Mourn not too bitterly nor too long over your absent dead; for you shall meet them in an immortal clime. As the last hour comes for your dearest ones or for yourself, be of good cheer; for an imperishable joy is yours. You:
"Cannot lose the hope that many a year
Hath shone on a gleaming way,
When the walls of life are closing round
And the sky grows sombre gray."
Put not away the intruding thoughts of the departed, but let them often recur. The dead are constant. You know not how much they may think of you, how near they may be to you. Will you pass to meet them not having thought of them for years, having perhaps forgotten them? Let your mind have its nightly firmament of religious communion, beneath which white and sable memories shall walk, and the sphered spirits of your risen friends, like stars, shed down their holy rays to soothe your feverish cares and hush every murmuring doubt to rest. From the dumb heavings of your loving and trustful heart, sometimes exclaim, Parents who nurtured and watched over me with unwearied affection, I would remember you oft, and love you well, and so live that one day I may meet you at the right hand of God. Early friends, so close and dear once, who in the light of young romance trod with me life's morning hills, neither your familiar faces nor your sweet communion are forgotten by me: I fondly think of you, and aspire towards you, and pray for a purer soul, that I may mount to your celestial circle at last;
"For many a tear these eyes must weep,
And many a sin must be forgiven,
Ere these pale lids shall sink to sleep,
Ere you and I shall meet in heaven."
Blessed Jesus, elder Brother of our race, who sittest now by thy Father's throne, or pacest along the crystal coast as a leader, chief among ten thousand, whose condescending brow the bloody thorns no longer press, but the dazzling crown of thy Divinity encircles, oh, remember us, poor erring pilgrims after thine earthly steps; pity us, help us, and after death bring us to thy home.
To the sympathetic poet, the man of sentiment and meditation, who views the question from the position of the heart, in the glory and vistas of the imagination, but with all the known facts and relations of the subject lying bare under his sight, the uniting restoration, in another sphere, of earth's broken ties and parted friends, is an unappeasable craving of the soul, in harmony with the moral law, powerfully prophesied to his experience from all quarters, and seemingly confirmed to his hopes by every promise of God and nature.7
6 Grafe, Biblische Beitrage zu der Frage, Werden wir uns wiedersehen nach dem Tode.
7 Engel, Wir werden uns wiedersehen. Halst, Beleuchtung der Hauptgrunde fur den Glauben an Erinnerung und Wiedersehen nach dem Tode. Streicher, Neue Beitrage zur Kritik des Glaubens an Ruckerinnerung nach dem Tode.
Received as a truth, it is a well of inexhaustible comfort, making experience a green oasis where it overflows. The denial of it as a proven falsehood is a withering blast of dust blowing on the friendly caravan of sojourners in the desert of life. If existence is the enjoyment of a largess of social love, and death is to have a solitary hand snatch it all away forever, how dismal is the prospect to the poor heart that loves and clings, loses and despairs, and can only falter hopelessly on! It cannot be so. Love is the true prophet. Heaven will restore the treasures earth has lost.
The mourner by the grave! Eve convulsed over the form of Abel! Jesus weeping where Lazarus lay! America embracing the urn of Washington! The Genius of Humanity at the Tomb of the Past! It is the most pathetic spectacle of the world. As in the old myth the pelican, hovering over her dead broodlets, pierced her own breast in agony and fluttered there until by the fanning of her wings above them and the dropping of her warm blood on them they were brought to life again, so the great Mother of men seems in history to brood over the ashes of departed ages, dropping the tears of her grief and faith into the future to restore her deceased children to life and draw them together within her embrace. And that sublime Rachel will not easily be comforted except when her thoughts, migrating whither her offspring have gone, seem to find them happy in some happy heaven.
The poet, lover of his race, who cannot trust his happier instinct, but perforce believes that beyond the sepulchral line of mortality he shall know no more of his friends, may find, as helps to a willing acquiescence in what is fated, either one of two possible contemplations.8 He may sadly lay upon his heart the stifling solace, There will be no baffled wants nor unhappiness, but all will be over when hic jacet is sculptured on the headstone of my grave. Or, with measureless rebound of faith, he may crowd the capacity of his soul with the mysterious presentiment, In the unchangeable fulness of an infinite bliss, all specialties will be merged and forgotten, and I shall be one of those to whom "the wearisome disease" of remembered sorrow and anticipated joy "is an alien thing."
8 Wieland's Euthanasia expresses disbelief in the preservation of personality and consciousness after death. The same ground had been taken in the work published anonymously at Halle in 1775, Plato and Leibnitz jenseits des Styx. See, on the other side of the question, Wohlfahrt, Tempel der Unsterblichkeit, oder neue Anthologie der wichtigsten Ausspruche, besonders neuerer Weisen uber Wiedersehen u. s. w.
