246 THE DEAD IN CHRIST
is but a veil between. The one family is never broken, though God has called some of them to rest in another room." ^
Tf Mrs. Carlyle had again written to Mazzini, and again received honourable and gentle counsel. On July 15 he wrote to her:
" Yes ! Sad as death ; but not basely sad. . . . You believe in God ; don't you think, after all, that this is nothing but an ephemeral trial, and that He will shelter you to your journey's end under the wide wing of His paternal love ? You had, have, though invisible to the eyes of the body, your mother, your father, too. Can't you commune with them ? I know that a single moment of true fervent love for them will do more for you than all my talking ! Were they now what you call living, would you not fly to them, hide your head in their bosom and be comforted, and feel that you owe to them to be strong — that they may never feel ashamed of their own Jane ? Why, can you think them to be dead, gone for ever, their loving immortal soul annihilated ? Can you think that this vanishing for a time has made you less respon- sible to them ? Can you, in a word, love them less because they are far from sight ? I have often thought that the arrangement by which loved and loving beings are to pass through death is nothing but the last experiment appointed by God to human love ; and often, as you know from me, I have felt that a moment of true soul-communing with my dead friend was opening a source of strength for me unhoped for, down here." ^
11.
The Eest of the Blessed Dead.
The Spirit, in the mind of the Seer, responds to the Voice from above him, " Yea, they are blessed, to rest (as they shall) from their labours."
1. Let us get this point quite clearly established from the Word of God, t liat those who depart this life in the Lord are in a state of bliss and rest. It is but an expansion of this truth when we are told that they shall " hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat." God Himself wipes all tears from their eyes ; and they wait calmly in
^ Aubrey L. Moore, God is Love, 214.
2 Mrs. A. Ireland, Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle^ 187.
REVELATION xiv. 13 247
that peaceful world and enjoy the rest, the Sabbath, that re- maineth for the people of God. They are in God's presence, and therefore they are blessed. They are in God's safe keep- ing, and therefore they are at rest. Eest from the toils of life, from the cares of life, from the griefs of life, to all those who have known them, is blessed indeed. There is no more naturally true or beautiful way of announcing a good man's death than the old-fashioned phrase, "He is at rest."
^ Emerson says that we carry the pledge of the continuance of our being in our own breast. Browning says that because there is so much wanting in this life, therefore there must be another life to supply the defect. . . . There is, however, another aspect of the future of which he is enamoured, and which he would fain portray, namely, that of cessation from the toils of earth. Hence, in the following verses [from Old Pictures in Florence] both phases are put before us side by side :
There's a fancy some lean to and others hate —
That, when this life is ended, begins New work for the soul in another state,
Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins: Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries,
Kepeat in large what they practised in small, Through life after life in unlimited series;
Only the scale's to be changed, that's all.
Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen
By the means of Evil that Good is best, And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene, —
When our faith in the same has stood the test — Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,
The uses of labour are surely done; There remaineth a rest for the people of God:
And I have had troubles enough, for one.
But are these two views entirely inharmonious or incongruous ? Are they mutually exclusive ? May there not be a sense in which the living dead "rest from their labours" — the excessive and exhausting efforts of earth — while " their works follow with them," to be continued and perfected in that other sphere ? But, whether that be so or not, what the poet in either case would have us see is that the future is a continuation of the present — on a higher level, in an ampler air, and surely with less to fetter or restrain.^
* J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 228.
248 THE DEAD IN CHRIST
2. The text speaks of one particular kind of rest — viz., a rest from labours ; not from work, not from occupation, for be it re- membered that man is endowed with an endless capacity for work. Heaven is not the rest of idleness; heaven is not the elysium of the drone and the sluggard. It is not rest from activity, rest from employment, that the dead in Christ enter upon, but a rest from toiling, wearying, disappointing, useless, harassing, painful labours. The Greek word for " labours " (xomi) which is used in the text has invariably the sense of trying and distressing labours, exertions which, whether effectual or not, involve a painful strain, efforts often baffled, ever exhausting, ever reminding us of the condition into which man falls when he deliberately sets his own will against God's will ; when therefore, instead of working in harmony with the eternal principles by which the universe is administered, he works more or less in antagonism to them, or in ignorance of their bearings. Looking at this point more closely, we feel that all the labours connected with our existence in the world of time and sense involve weari- ness, are liable to failure; at the best they are mixed up with much that we would gladly be rid of ; and a very large portion of them is altogether futile, directed to wrong ends, issuing in results utterly opposed to our own wishes and intents. Hence the very common feeling, which at times creeps over us all, that it is well all such labour should come to an end ; that the weary turmoil and struggle should cease ; that rest, even at the cost of unconsciousness, is in itself a good ; and could we but be secure that, together with this mortal coil, we shook off all responsibility for the past, and all possibility of recurrence of old struggles and trials, we might, perhaps, often be content to lay down our worn- out bodies for ever in the quiet grave.