But one day looking upon the grave she suddenly said to herself : " The thing that lies there is not my husband. His spirit and his love do not belong to the realm of decay. Soul lives : love is one of the eternals," And there in the midst of an acre dedicated to corruption she gathered herself up from the morbid debility of despair, forsook the grave, bade a permanent good-bye to putrefaction, and in the sweet and chastened vigour of a nature to which a new revelation had come, flung herself out upon the support of the great love of the heavenly Father, and in quietness and absolute assurance went on into the years brightened and warmed by an experience of the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard.^
Faithful friends, it lies, I know Pale, and white, and cold as snow; And ye say: "Abdallah's dead" — Weeping at the feet and head. I can see your falling tears; I can hear your sighs and prayers ; Yet I smile and whisper this : I am not the thing you kiss ! Cease your tears and let it lie, — It was mine, it is not I.
Sweet friends! what the women lave
For the last sleep of the grave
Is a hut which I am quitting, — •
Is a garment no more fitting, —
Is a cage from which, at last,
Like a bird my soul has passed.
Love the inmate, not the room ;
The weaver, not the garb, — the plume
Of the eagle, not the bars
That kept him from the splendid stars!
Loving friends, oh rise and dry Straightway every weeping eye! What ye lift upon the bier Is not worth a single tear.
* C. H. Parkluirst, A Little Lower than the Angels, "26.
ST. JOHN XIV. 2 6^
'Tis an empty sea-shell — one Out of which the pearl is gone. The shell is broken, it lies there; The pearl, the All, the Soul, is here. 'Tis an earthen jar whose lid Allah sealed, the while it hid That treasure of his treasury — A mind that loved him ; let it lie. Let the shards be earth once more, Since the gold is in his store.
Allah glorious ! Allah good ! Now thy world is understood — Now the long, long wonder ends; Yet ye weep, my foolish friends, While the man whom you call dead. In unbroken bliss instead, Lives and loves you, — lost, 'tis true, In the light that shines for you. But in the light you cannot see, In undisturbed felicity — In a perfect Paradise, And a life that never dies.
Farewell ! friends — yet not farewell ; Where I go you, too, shall dwell. I am gone before your face — A moment's worth, a little space. When you come where I have stept Ye will wonder why ye wept; Ye will know by true love taught That here is all, and there is naught.
2. The, Father's House is heaven. — When a saint draws near the appointed span of life, more and more do his thoughts go out to heaven. He dwells on heaven with an increasing joy, as you may read in many a biography. And it is, indeed, one of the last rewards of a life that has been spiritually true, that when the shadows of the twilight fall, it hails the glory dawning in Immanuel's Land. So it was with Jesus Christ our Lord. He did not hail the cross, He hailed the glory of which the cross was a God-appointed part. And ever, as He drew nearer to the end. He dwelt more intensely on Immanuel's Land, until at last for the joy that was set before
68 THE HOUSE OF MANY MANSIONS
Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame. For these reasons, as well as from the context, there is no doubt as to the first meaning of our words. Primarily, and as spoken to the Twelve, the House of the Father was the heavenly glory.
(1) And so, first of all, Christ's words give us assurance of life beyond death. Nothing evinces more conclusively the difference between Jesus Christ and other men who have lived and died upon the earth than the confidence and certainty with which He spoke of the invisible world. Not only is there no doubt or hesitation in His language, but there is no ignorance. He never says : " Now I know in part." On the contrary, we feel that He knew much more than He has disclosed ; and that if He had chosen to do so. He could have made yet more specific revelations concerning the solemn world beyond the tomb. For all other men, there are two worlds — the one here and the other beyond. Their utterances respecting this visible and tangible sphere are positive and certain ; but respecting the invisible realm they guess, and they hope, or they doubt altogether. But for our Lord, there was, practically, only one world. He is as certain in respect to the invisible as to the visible; and knows as fully concerning the one as the other.
^ No mind unassisted by revelation ever reached the pitch of faith in the unseen and eternal that was attained by Socrates. But he was assailed by doubts ; and he confesses his ignorance of the region beyond the tomb. After that lofty and solemn descrip- tion in the Phaedo (113, 114) of the different places assigned after death to the good, and incorrigibly bad, and those who have led a middle life between the two, he adds : " To affirm positively, indeed, that these things are exactly as I have described them, does not become a man of discernment. But that either this or something of the kind takes place in regard to our souls and their habita- tion— seeing that the soul is evidently immortal — appears to me most fitting to be believed, and worthy of hazard for one who trusts in the reality. For the hazard is noble, and it is right tc charm ourselves with such views as with enchantments." How different is the impression made upon us by these noble but hesitating words, from that which was made upon John the Baptist by our Lord's manner and teaching upon such points, as indicated in his testimony: "He that cometh from above is above all : he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth : he that cometh from heaven is above all. And what he