The Life of the Waiting Soul in the Intermediate State | Page 2

men? Indeed, I believe it to be so. The
Christianity of to-day has too commonly accepted two untruths, which
yet it holds as truths.
1. One of them is this: That death ushers the soul immediately and
finally into the supreme condition which awaits the souls of men; so
that, at death, the souls of good men pass at once into heaven, while the
souls of bad men pass at once into hell; in other words, that the final
and irrevocable severance between the just and the unjust takes place at
death. Believing this, men have lost all faith in an Intermediate State
between death and the Day of Judgment. That intervening sojourn of
the soul has virtually dropped out of recognition in the popular
Christianity of the day, and is quite ignored. If you walk through any
resting place of the bodies of the dead, into your own churchyards and
cemeteries, you will, not seldom, find inscriptions upon tombs, which
express the confident assurance that one, whose death is recorded, has
already passed into heaven; that another has now become an angel of
Light, or is singing the praises of GOD before the throne, is, in short, in
the full present enjoyment of consummate and final bliss. Thus it is that
the Intermediate State between death and the final condition of
happiness in heaven, which can only follow the Day of the
Resurrection, is quite forgotten and overlooked.
2. And the second untruth, which is closely connected with the first, is
this: That there are but two classes of those who pass hence and are no
more seen; classes sharply distinguished, clearly outlined,--on the one
hand, of those who at death go straight to heaven, and, on the other, of
those who at death go straight to the place of final torment. If then
these are the only two clearly marked and sharply defined alternatives,
it follows that, whensoever we dare not be sure of any one soul at death

that it was good enough certainly for heaven, there is nothing for it but
to fear that the worse doom awaits it and that it is lost. For if it is not, at
the moment of death, pure enough or good enough for heaven, into
which there "shall in no wise enter anything that defileth, neither
whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie," {5} that soul,
according to this false belief, is lost. Yet, in fact, what do we see within
us and around us, as we honestly look into our own lives, and upon the
lives both of the best and of the worst among us? We see this, and we
are convinced that we are not mistaken, that even among the most
marked extremes of good men and evil men, few even of the best are so
free from stain or fault as, at death, to be certainly fit for heaven, and
few so vile and degraded as not to have still some good in them. And
between these two extremes there are multitudes of mixed characters,
in part good and in part bad. Among these, of whom we know that they
are full of worth yet full of imperfections too, we count so many who
are most dear to us, many the companions of our lives, our kindred, and
acquaintances, and cherished friends, whose failings and whose virtues
we know so well, of mixed and imperfect character, too frail for heaven,
too good, too lovable for hell, partly good and partly not good, strong
and also weak, marred with inconsistencies, and often for these very
inconsistencies the more dear to us, of whom, so truly have we loved
and even honoured them, it seems almost like an outrage upon their
memory to bring ourselves to think that there was just so much of evil
in them and just so little good, as would suffice to turn the balance
against them and thus fix, at the moment of their death, their final
doom.
What are we to think of such as these? Of some we perhaps say within
ourselves, "Would that there had been but a little amendment of this
blemish! A little more of strength and purpose against that fault! If only
this besetting hardness had not been the spoiler of his life, that great
heedlessness, that fatal procrastination, this too frequent sin! Oh! but
for this or that which marred the fair and well rounded character! But
for this we should have been full of hope: there was so much on the
better side, that we should have been full of trust, and even of
confidence. But, now, what are we to think? If only there were some fit
and fair proportion to be thought of, duly measured out, of reward and

punishment, a mixed destiny for