Part 16 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE AFTER DEATH.

It is two years and a half ago now that I pa.s.sed through Westminster Hall, one of a great mult.i.tude. They went in double file, thickly packed between barriers of rails on either side the hall, and between where everyone looked there lay--what? A plain oak coffin on a table.

Within this coffin there lay the body of Mr. Gladstone, he who in his day had filled the public eye in England more than any other man. His body lay there in state, and the people came to see.

Emerging into the street beyond and seeing the ceaseless stream of people that flowed past, I wondered to myself. These people are Christians. If you ask them where Mr. Gladstone is now, they will, if they reply hurriedly, answer, ”He is dead and in there”; but if they pause to reflect they will say, ”He is in heaven. His soul is with G.o.d.”

If, then, his soul, if _he_ be with G.o.d, what are you come to see?

Shortly there will be a funeral, and what will it be called? The funeral of Mr. Gladstone. But Mr. Gladstone is in heaven, not here. Surely this is strange.

”If there is anything I can do for you be sure you tell me, for your husband was my great friend.” So wrote the man. And to him came her reply: ”Sometimes when you are near go and see his grave where he sleeps in that far land, and put a flower upon it for your remembrance and for mine.”

But if he, too, be in heaven and not there at all? If it be, as the Burmans say, but the empty sh.e.l.l that lies there? Why should we visit graves if the soul be indeed separate from the body? If he be far away in happiness, why go to his grave? To remember but the corruption that lies beneath?

Men use words and phrases remembering what they ought to believe. For very few are sincere and know what really they do believe. You cannot tell from their professions, only from their unconscious words and their acts.

What do these unconscious words, these acts, tell us of the belief about the soul and body? That they are separable and separate? No, but that they are inseparable. No one in the West, I am sure--no one anywhere, I think--has ever been able to conceive of the soul as apart from the body. We cannot do so. Try, try honestly, and remember your dead friends. What is it you recall and long for and miss so bitterly?

It was his voice that awoke echoes in you, it was the clasp of his hand in yours, it was his eyes looking back to you the love you felt for him.

It was his footfall on the stair, his laugh, the knowledge of his presence. And are not these all of the body?

Men talk glibly of the soul as apart from the body. What do they mean?

Nothing but words, for the soul without a body is an incomprehensible thing, certainly to us.

And it is always the same body, not another. It is the old hand, the face, that we want. Not the soul, if it could be possible, looking at us out of other eyes. No; we want him we lost, and not another. It is the cry of our hearts.

And therefore, ”I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” Have you wondered how that came into the creed? It came into religion as came all that we believe in, never out of theory but out of instinct.

What is your feeling towards the dead? Is it envy that they have reached everlasting happiness? Is it gladness to reflect that they are no longer with us? Do we think of them as superior to us? Alas, no. The great and overpowering sentiment we have for them is pity. The tears come to our eyes for them, because they are dead. They have left behind them light and life and gone into the everlasting forgetfulness. ”The night hath come when no man can work.” That is our real instinct towards the dead.

”Poor fellow.” And you will hear people say, with tardy remembrance of their creeds, ”But for his sake we ought to rejoice, because he is at peace.”

We ought? But _do_ we? Surely we never do. We are sorry for the dead.

All the compa.s.sion that is in us goes out to them, because they are dead.

The Catholic Church has prayers for the dead. There was never a Church yet that knew the hearts of men as that Church of Rome. Prayers for the dead. Ma.s.ses for the dead.

Our Protestant theories forbid such. But tell me, is there a woman who has lost those she loves to whom such prayers would not come home? How narrow sometimes are the Reformed Creeds in their refusal to help the sorrow of their people.

”In the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection.” What is to arise? The disembodied soul? But you say it is already with G.o.d. What is to arise? It is the body. It is more. It is he who is dead--who sleeps; he whom we have buried there. Whatever our creeds may say, we do not, we cannot ever understand the soul without the body. Not _a_ body, but _the_ body. We believe not in the life of a soul previous to the body.

They are born together, and they die together. If they live hereafter it must be together. For they are one.

Never be deceived by theories or professions. No one in the West has ever understood the soul without the body, no one can do so. The conception is wanting. We play with the theory in words as we do with the fourth dimension. But who ever realised either?

But with the Oriental it is different. He believes in the migration of souls. They pa.s.s from body to body. He can realise this--somehow, I know not--but he can. Those who have read my ”Soul of a People” will remember that they not only believe it but _know_ it. They are sure of it because it has happened to each one, and he can remember his former lives. This comes not from Buddhism, because Buddhist theory denies the existence of soul at all, nor from Brahminism. It is the Oriental's instinct. He does not, I think, ever realise a soul apart from any body, but he can and does realise a soul exhibited first in one body then in another, as a lamp s.h.i.+ning through different globes.

Therefore, when a Christian tells him of the resurrection of the body he cannot understand. ”Which body,” he asks, ”for I have had so many?”