^ " It is not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are so many of them."
This was a remark made by the Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table to the assembled guests. And the company looked as if they wanted an explanation. So the Autocrat went on.
" When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is natural that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension."
The people thought that the Autocrat had suddenly gone mad. The landlady turned pale. The old gentleman opposite thought the Autocrat might seize the carving-knife. But he proceeded to explain that at the fewest six personalities are distinctly to be recognized as taking part in the dialogue between John and Thomas. There is (1) the real John, known only to his Maker ; (2) John's ideal John, never the real one, and often very unlike him ; (3) Thomas's ideal John, never the real John, nor John's John ; but often very unlike either. In precisely the same way there are three Thomases. There is Thomas as he really is, as God sees him ; Thomas as he thinks he is ; and Thomas as John thinks he is. In all, there are six people. No wonder two disputants often get angry when there are six of them talking and listening at the same time !
i CORINTHIANS xm. 12 389
Tf There is a truth in the word that marriages are made in heaven. You may remember that Charles Kingsley had put on his grave, which was to be his wife's, " We have loved, we love, we shall love." Death does not, as most of us know, put an end to love. We love the dead because they are the living. Death separates, it is all that it can do ; it cannot annihilate. Surely then, when death is destroyed the law of separation will be disannulled, and those who loved and love will meet again and enjoy one another's love again. I say then, because we shall have full knowledge of our past life, because we preserve our individuality in the resurrection change, because in the other world we know and are known, because we are perfectly mani- fested by our spiritual bodies, and because by means of their powers we shall perfectly discern, because of the mutual attraction of love — love which was stronger than death, we shall, I feel confident, recognize one another in the life of the world to come. And it will be a full recognition ; our hearts in perfect sympathy will beat one with another, answering love for love.1
3. Ourselves. — At our entrance on another world we shall know our old selves as never before. The past will lie spread out before us, and we shall take a comprehensive survey of it. Each man's life will be displayed to him as a river, which he traces from its source in a distant mountain till it mingles with the distant ocean. The course of that river lies sometimes through dark forests which hide it from view, sometimes through sands or marshes in which it seems to lose itself. Here it forces a passage angrily between precipitous rocks, there it glides gently through meadows which it makes green and fertile. At one time it might seem to be turning backwards out of pure caprice ; at another to be parting, like a gay spendthrift, with half its volume of waters ; while later on it receives contributory streams that restore its strength ; and so it passes on, till the ebb and flow of the tides upon its bank tells that the end is near. What will not the retrospect be when, after death, we survey, for the first time, as with a bird's-eye view the whole long range — the strange vicissi- tudes, the loss and the gain, as we deem it, the failures and the triumphs of our earthly existence ; when we measure it, as never before, in its completeness, now that it is at last over !
This, indeed, is the characteristic of the survey after death, that it will be complete.
1 F. Watson, The Christian Life Here and Hereafter, 240.
390 THE PARTIAL AND THE PERFECT
There no shade can last, In that deep dawn behind the tomb, But clear from marge to marge shall bloom The eternal landscape of the past.
In entering another world we shall know as never before what we have been in the past ; but we shall know also what we are. Our present thoughts, feelings, mental habits, good and bad, are the effects of what we have done or left undone, of cherished impressions, of passions indulged or repressed, of pursuits vigorously embraced or willingly abandoned. And as our past mental and spiritual history has made us what we are, so we are at this very moment making ourselves what we shall be.
U Eichard le Gallienne delighted us some years ago by a brilliant essay on " Life in Inverted Commas." He represented himself as watching from the top of an omnibus in Fleet Street the capture of a notorious plagiarist by detectives in the employ of the Incorporated Society of Authors, who led him away secured between strong inverted commas. This set him thinking. And he looked round at his companions in the 'bus. " There was the young dandy just let loose from his band-box, wearing exactly the same face, the same smile, the same neck-tie, holding his stick in exactly the same fashion, talking exactly the same words, with precisely the same accent, as his neighbour, another dandy, and as all the other dandies between the Bank and Hyde Park Corner. Looking at these examples of Nature's love of repeating herself," he goes on, " I said to myself : Somewhere in heaven stands a great stencil, and at each sweep of the cosmic brush a million dandies are born, each one alike as a box of collars. Indeed, I felt that this stencil process had been employed in the manufacture of every single person in the omnibus : two middle- aged matrons, each of whom seemed to think that having given birth to six children was an indisputable claim to originality; two elderly business men to correspond ; a young miss, carrying music and wearing eyeglasses ; and a clergyman discussing stocks with one of the business men; I alone in my corner being, of course, the one occupant for whom Nature had been at the expense of casting a special mould, and at the extravagance of breaking it ! " To be sure " /, myself" am the original one. And each one of us is an " /, myself! " 1