第35章 Our Relations to the Departed (3)

A dear friend goes away from us to a foreign land.We watch the receeding sail, and feel that that is a bond between us, until it fades away in the far blue horizon.Then it is a consolation to walk by the shore of that sea, and to realize that the same waters lave the other shore, where he dwells,--to watch some star, and know that at such an hour his eye and thought are also directed to it.Thus the soul will not entertain the idea of absolute separation, but makes all those material objects agents for its affinities.But how much nearer does that absent one come to us, when we know that at such an hour we both are kneeling in prayer, and that our spirits meet, as it were, around the footstool of God!

Thus we see that even in life there are spiritual relations which bind us to our fellows, and that often these are dearer and stronger than those of local contact.Why should we suppose that death cuts off all such affinities? It does not cut them off.

It only removes the loved from our converse and our sight; but if, when absent in some distant land of this earth, we are conscious of still holding relations to them, do we not retain the same though they have vanished into that mysterious and unseen land which lies beyond the grave? "She is not dead, but sleepeth." Christianity has taught us to look away from the ghastly secrets of the sepulchre, and not consider that changing clay as the friend we mourn, but as only the cast-off and mouldering garment.It has kindled within us a lively appreciation of the continued existence of those who have gone from us; taught us to feel that the thoughts, the love, the real life of the departed, all, in fact, that communed with us here below, still lives and acts.And our relations to them are relations which we bear, not to abstractions of memory, to phantoms of by-gone joy, but to spiritual intelligences, whose current of being flows on uninterrupted, with whose current of being our own mingles.I know not how it is with others, but to me there is inexpressible consolation in this thought.

But I would suggest that, as spiritual beings, we bear even a closer relation to the departed.I said that Christianity has transformed the whole idea of life.It has shown that we are essentially spirits, and that our highest relations are spiritual.If so, it seems an arrogant assumption to deny that any intercourse may exist between ourselves and the spiritual world.Possessing as we do this mysterious nature, throbbing with the attraction of the eternal sphere, who shall say that it touches no spiritual confines,--that it has communion only with the beings that we see? It is a dull atheism which repudiates all such intimations as superstitious or absurd.To speak more distinctly, I allude to the consoling thought which springs up almost intuitively, that the departed may, at times, see us, and be present with us, though we do not recognize them.For wise and good reasons, our senses may so constrain us that we cannot perceive these spiritual beings.But the same reasons do not exist to shut them from beholding and visiting us.The most essential idea of the immortal state is that it yields certain prerogatives which we cannot possess in our mortal condition.

may it not be, therefore, that while it is our lot to be restricted to sensuous vision, and to behold only material forms, it is their privilege, having received the spiritual sight, to see both spiritual and material things?

Nor need we imagine that immortality implies distance from us,--that change of state requires any great change of place.

Looking through this earthly glass, we see but darkly; but when death shatters it we may behold close around us the friends we have loved, and find their spiritual peculiarity is not incompatible with such near residence.The homes of departed spirits may be all around us,--these spirits themselves may be ever hovering near, unseen in our blindness of the senses.At all events, we deem it one of the grand distinctions of spirit that it is not confined to one region of space, but may pass, quick as its own intelligence, from sphere to sphere.And while I would rebuke rash speculation, I would also rebuke the cold materialism which unhesitatingly rejects an idea like this which I have now suggested.

I maintain, moreover, that such speculation is not all idle.It serves to quicken within us the thought of how near the dead may be to us, to purify that thought, and to breathe upon our fevered hearts a consoling hope.And when I combine its intrinsic reasonableness with the spirit and spiritualism of Christianity, and that intuitive suggestion which springs up in so many souls, I can urge but faint objection to those who entertain it, and would, if possible, share and diffuse the comfort which it gives.

Nearer, than, than we imagine--close as in mortal contact, and more intimately--may be those whom we, with earthly vision behold no more; visiting us in hours of loneliness, and affording unseen companionship; watching us in the stillness of slumber, and reflecting themselves in our dreams.

But, whether we indulge this notion or not, let us realize the relation which we have with the departed by the ties of mutual spirituality.Let us not coldly restrict or weaken this relation.If the material world is full of inexplicable things,--if we cannot explain the secret affinities of the star and the flower,--let us feel how full of mystery and how full of promise is this spiritual universe of which we are parts, and whose conditions we so little know.Let us cherish that transcendent faith, that quick, spiritual sympathy, which says of the departed, "They are not dead, but sleeping."III.Finally, we have with the dead the relation of discipline.