The Near Hereafter

CHAPTER I

"I"

The title of this chapter is a very short one. It consists of but a single word, and that the shortest word in the whole English language. And though it is the shortest word, yet it is the most wonderful and mysterious word. Though it is a word that every one of us has on his lips every moment of the day, yet no one who reads this book—no one in the whole world—has ever been able to understand what it means.

Just the letter "I."—All day long, from morning till night, we are using it:—I did this. I mean to do that. I ought. I shall. I will. I think. I wish. I love. I hate. I remember. I forget. And so on and on—ever ringing the changes on this little word in all its cases "I" and "my" and "mine" and "me." I want to set you thinking. Who or what is this "I," this "me"?

Perhaps you will say, "Oh, there is nothing mysterious about it—I know very well what I mean by it. 'I' means myself."

But what do I mean by Myself? Of course there is a rough work-day meaning in which it means my whole being as I stand—clothes, body, brains, thoughts, feelings, general appearance, everything. But every thinking man knows that this is not the real "I," that when he says I can, I do, I will, I ought, I remember, the "I" means to him something much deeper and more mysterious than that. Ask yourself, each one, what do you mean by "I"?

§ 1

IS IT MY BODY? Nay, surely not. I know that my body is only my outward garment woven by "me" out of certain chemical substances. In a scientific museum I can stand before a glass case and see neatly labelled the exact portions of lime and silica and iron and water and other elements which compose my body. I know that this body is continually changing its substance like the rainbow in the sky, like the eddy round a stone in the river. The body I have to-day is no more the body of last year than the fire on my hearth to-night is the fire that was there this morning. I have had a dozen different bodies since I was born, but I am the same still. Every thinking man knows that the "I," the real self, stands behind the body looking out through the windows of the eyes, receiving messages through the portals of the ears. It rules the body, it possesses the body. It says, "I have a body." "This body is a thing belonging to me."

As you watch the changing expression in the face of your friend, as you see his eyes flashing in anger, or softening in affectionate sympathy, do you not feel that all you see is but the outward casing, that the real self of your friend is a something dwelling within?

I hope I am not puzzling you. What I want to do is to introduce you to your own self, to make you really acquainted with that mysterious being in his first stage of existence here and then to follow him out into the great adventure of the Hereafter.

§ 2

Let us go on. What is this I, this self? IS IT MY BRAIN? Physiologists tell us wonderful things of that brain; how its size and shape, and the amount of gray matter modify my character; how it excites itself when I am thinking; how it has different departments for different functions; how it rules and directs everything I do. And men impressed by these wonders have sometimes asserted that there is nothing more to be found. It is the brain which originates all, thought is only certain activities of the brain—memory is only impressions on the substance of the brain—when the brain decays there is no self remaining. What I call "I" is merely a function of my brain.

But immediately the question arises, Which brain? The particles of my brain are always changing. I have had a dozen different brains in my lifetime, with not a particle remaining the same. Which of these brains is it that "I" am only a function of? And how does it happen that I remember what I thought and did and said with the old vanished brains of twenty and thirty years ago? Memory insists that I am still the same "I" in spite of all those changes of brain. If memory be but a series of impressions registered on the brain these could no more survive the dissolution of the brain than impressions on wax could survive the melting of the wax. Surely my memory, my irresistible conviction of personal identity with my past makes it abundantly clear that "I" am a mysterious unchanging spiritual being behind this ever changing brain.

And that is what the best modern science asserts—that the brain is but my instrument. If we compare it to a violin then "I" am the unseen violin player behind it. The musician cannot produce violin music without a violin, but also the violin cannot produce a musical note, much less take part in a complex symphony without the musician behind it. If the strings of the violin be injured, or if they be smeared with grease, the result is discords and crazy sounds. If the brain be physically injured or disordered the result is what we call mental derangement.

To say, then, that the brain is the seat of thought is not at all to say that it is the source of thought. Everything involved in my conscious personality is related to the brain, but it is not originated by the brain. The mysterious spiritual "I" is behind the brain, using the brain—nay further—actually educating and fitting the brain for its work. The brain of a little child with its plastic gray matter is smooth and unformed. It is the "I" behind that is steadily creasing and moulding and training it for its purpose. I don't know of anything more impressive than the study of the human brain in its activities, and how "I" am continually changing and modifying and educating my brain. You feel sometimes as if you could almost lay hands on that mysterious spiritual being that is behind it, like a spider in his web—feeling and interpreting every quiver of it, sending messages out into the world by means of it. But he always eludes you. You have no instrument that can touch him. You only know that he is there, enshrouded in mystery, a supernatural being not only using the brain but educating it for use. The brain itself has no knowledge or thought, and no power of itself to originate knowledge or thought. The brain of a baboon differs very little from the brain of a man. The difference is in the being who is behind it. I read lately the statement of a great scientist: "As far as I can see, if the soul of a man could get behind the brain of an ape he could probably use it almost as well as his own."

I have never known a really thoughtful student of science satisfied with the foolish notion that the brain is what thinks and remembers and wills. He looks upon a human brain, on the dissecting table, a mere mass of cells and nerve centres suffused with blood, and he thinks of the glorious poems and the mighty intellectual efforts and the noble thoughts of God and Righteousness, and perforce he laughs at the thought that that poor bleeding thing originated them. Something within him indignantly replies: "Nay, 'I' am not the brain. I possess it. I use it. It is mine, but it is not me!"

§ 3

We have not yet gone deep enough to discover this "I." It is hardly necessary to ask the next question which some foolish people are speculating about to-day. Am I merely the TRAIN OF THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS? Am "I" but like an Eolian harp, played on by the wind of sensations from without?

Surely not. This mysterious "I" is constantly and persistently claiming to be a real conscious person behind all these—greater than all these—possessing all these. Listen to the voice down deep in your consciousness—COGITO, ERGO SUM. "I" think—therefore "I" exist. I am not the thoughts and feelings and emotions—I am greater than them all. I am the possessor of them all. They are mine. They are not Me. They are only passing phases of my being. They are always changing. Everything around is changing. I remain the same being always. Nothing else in the universe remains the same being—except God. God and I. God and these selves that are in every one of us.

I cannot escape that conviction that "I" am the permanent being behind all the changes. No human vision can see me. No surgeon's knife can detect me. But I am there, behind everything.

The particles of my body, of brain and nerves and heart are constantly being changed—every few years they are completely renewed. I have had a dozen new bodies, a dozen new sets of brains and heart since I was born—I am always wearing them out. I change them when they are worn out and throw them aside like old clothes. My thoughts and feelings are ever changing, like the ripples on the sea.

But I am absolutely certain that "I" am still there—that I am the same—just as God is the same. The same "I" that played as a little child—the same "I" that lived and desired and thought and felt and worked and sinned years and years ago.

Not a particle remains of the brain, or nerves, or tongue, or eyes, or hands, or feet, with which I did a good or evil deed twenty years since—but it is impossible for me to doubt that it was "I" who did it, that I to-day deserve the praise or blame which is due to it.

Every man on earth, when he thinks about it, has this conviction of himself as an "I"—as a person separate from all other persons, as a self separate from all other selves, as remaining always the same being, whatever changes may take place around him. That is what constitutes man—a self conscious of itself. As far as we can discover, the lower animals have no such idea. Children, at first, have not. Did you ever notice how a little child never says "I" till he is about three years old? He always speaks in the third person. It is always "Baby does this," "Baby likes that," until the Divine revelation of his personality gradually grows and he recognizes himself as a person. Then, without any teaching on your part, the child, of his own accord, will begin to say "I."

§ 4

Oh, who or what is this awful, mysterious "I" that dwells somewhere in the centre of my being, and rules and possesses and is responsible for everything? What is this self, in each of you, that is hidden behind your faces as behind a mask—that is looking out through your eyes, and receiving, through your ears, the thoughts that others are trying to express for you? Can the surgeon's knife find any trace of it? Is it possible to destroy it? Is it possible to get away from it? It has survived the putting away of every part of the body a dozen times over. Will it survive the final putting away of the whole body at death? Will it survive everything? Shall "I" be "I," the same identical person through all the ages of eternity?

§ 5

Look in again upon this "I" within you and answer this question. Why does it assert so positively that it is impossible to doubt it; "I ought to do certain things, I ought not to do certain other things"? All over the earth this day—from the St. Lawrence to the Ganges, from the North Pole to the South—there is no man outside of a lunatic asylum without that conviction. No race, not even the lowest, has been found without it. Where did that conviction come from? From the Bible, do you say? From the teachings of Christ? Nay, surely not. Long before the Bible, long before the incarnation of Christ, the old pagan had the thought clear and distinct, though not by any means so clear and distinct as Christianity has made it. Did you ever think of the mystery of this authoritative utterance of the self within you: "I ought"? In the very lowest savages it asserts this. St. Paul calls this sense of "ought"—the law of God written in our hearts (Rom. ii. 15). St. John calls it the light of Christ in us, "the light which lighteth every man coming into the world" (St. John i. 9). Longfellow sings of it in "Hiawatha":

That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not;
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in the darkness.

Even in the heart of the thief or the murderer it insists: I ought to do this, I ought not to do that, and when he disobeys this mysterious law within him he is compelled to drag himself up for judgment and fierce remorse for wrong that no one else knows of, that no one else can punish him for. What do you think of that mysterious fact about this Conscious Personality within you? Does it not look as if it belongs to God, that every soul is stamped with God's image and superscription, as every coin of King George is stamped in the mint with the image and superscription of the King?

§ 6

And this suggests a further question. Why is there in us this sense of imperfection, of incompleteness—of ideals always away in the front that we can never even approximately reach on earth? Look at this conscience which we have just been thinking about. It is always holding high above us an ideal of perfect goodness and insisting that we must strive after it. But we can never get even near it on earth. The very best man at the close of life sees his ideal still high above him and feels how much better he might be and ought to be and then he dies feeling the incompleteness of this life. Does not this unfinished life thus broken off, with its aim still far in the future, demand something further? The great German philosopher Kant founded on this fact his famous argument for Immortality.

Or look at our efforts after knowledge. It takes nearly all this life to fit the student for his search after truth, and when he is just ready and the great ocean of truth lies before him, Death comes. Oh, how incomplete and unfinished his life seems! Just the scaffolding put up for his work, just the tools got into good order. Then he dies.

"For half a century," said Victor Hugo, "I have been writing my thoughts in prose and verse, history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, song. But I feel that I have not said a thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave I shall have finished my day's work." And this thought of incompleteness compels in him the hope, "another day will begin next morning."

Was Victor Hugo right? Was the old pagan philosopher right? "You may catch my body," said Socrates, "but no man can catch me, myself, to bury me." Victor Hugo did not believe in the Christian Bible. Socrates had no revelation from God, except the revelation of this self within him. You have the revelation of Christ as well. What do you think of the question? When the dust shall return to the earth as it was, shall the spirit return to God who gave it? When brain and heart and nerves are destroyed, when the sun is old and the stars grow cold, and all that you ever saw is swept away into nothingness, will this mysterious, lonely self remain, to say "I" and "my" and "mine" and "me," through all the ages of Eternity?

§ 7

Now, I put a closer question still. Is not this mysterious "I" behind the brain the being that God is especially concerned with? What He sometimes calls your soul.[1] The ceiling of the Sistine chapel at Rome has a fine painting by Michael Angelo from the text, "Man became a living soul." It represents the Supreme Spirit floating in the ether and touching with His finger the body of Adam. As He touches it an electric spark flashes into the body and Adam becomes a living soul. Is not this the centre of the awful mystery that I call "I," myself—the same of which our Lord asks His tremendous question: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own self?"

Is not this "self" the real man, the man in the centre of his life, in the deepest recesses of his being, the man as he lives beneath the eye of God and enters into relations with God—the man for whom the Bible announces that exciting adventure in the long ages of the Hereafter?

Is not this "I" looking out from behind your eyes this moment—the real man, of whom the body that you see is only the outward covering, of whom the brain is only the outward telegraphic instrument? Should not we adapt our thoughts to that tremendous fact? Instead of thinking "I have a soul," should we not rather think "I am a soul"? Instead of thinking, that beautiful girl has an ugly soul, that insignificant looking man has a noble soul, should we not rather think, that ugly soul has a beautiful girl body, that splendid soul is in a mean looking body? Would not some such manner of thinking help to bring home the reality, that "I" am the invisible immortal being which clothes itself in a material body during this first stage of its life. Should not we be more likely to become acquainted with our own soul, to become impressed with its existence, to think about its character? Should we not thus learn more easily that wealth and clothes and outward appearance are not so important, that the character, the relation to God is the one supreme thing?

Think out for yourself the answer to that and to all these questions. I am not going to answer any of them. My purpose here is not to answer questions but to set you asking them—not to do your thinking for you, but to set you thinking for yourselves. Is it the spoiling and ruining of that self within you which Christ balances against the whole world?

§ 8

Now, have I helped, even in a little way, to introduce you to yourself—that "self" that is going out into the great adventure of the Hereafter? If I have, I have done a very good thing for you. With so many the soul is but a vague abstraction, belonging to the pulpit and the sick-bed and the life of the hereafter. But amid the busy daily life, the real work and pleasure, the real streets and houses, it is hard to think of it except as something shadowy and unreal. My effort here is to take it out of the region of the vague and unreal and bring it into the region of every-day, practical life.

Try to respond to my thoughts. Try to get acquainted with your own self—your own soul. Try to watch its wondrous life. Try to become impressed with its existence—to think about its character. Think whether, when the Bible says anything about your soul, it means this mysterious being that you call "I." Think whether this "I" is an emanation from God's nature, and therefore is intended to be in harmony with Him. Think whether it must live for ever and ever, and therefore if its character be not of enormous importance—if its character-making be not the one supremely important thing in your life.

Then realize that whether you exalt or degrade it, it is with you for ever. You CAN NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GET AWAY FROM YOURSELF. You will be the very same self after death as before. I read some time since of the sinking of a ship and how the captain dived through the cabin door, and keeping the light above in view, swam up through the hatchway and escaped out of the wreck. There is a deceitful expectation in human nature that when we go down in the sea of death and eternity we shall in some way escape out of ourselves, swim away from our own personalities, and thus leave the ship at the bottom of the sea. If the "I" meant only the body, that would be true. But this "I" is where character exists, where love and desire and will exist. This "I" is the captain himself. The captain cannot swim away from the captain. Myself cannot swim away from "myself." "I" must be "I" to all eternity. I cannot shake off my character, be it good or bad.

Realize next what you mean to the God who created you and lovingly planned for you your magnificent destiny.

Let the soul within you feel its dignity, its priceless importance in the eyes of its Maker. Measure the value of it by what God has done for it.

Why was this world slowly built through thousands of ages? Just as a platform for this "I" to develop character. Why was the Incarnation and Death of the Everlasting Son of God? Why is the gift and energy of the Holy Spirit? Why is the perpetual intercession of Christ in Heaven? Why is the grace and power of the Sacraments in life? Why are the boundless prospects opened beyond the grave?

All for the sake of this mysterious permanent supernatural being that we call "I." Measure I say by what God has done for it, the tremendous value He sets on your immortal soul.

[1] In a simple, popular statement such as this it would but be confusing to go into nice metaphysical distinctions of soul and "spirit."