read that sweet story of old,
When Jesus was here amongst men,
How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
How I long to have been with Him then."

Yes, St. Paul seems to say you shall be with Him, you shall have that
longing gratified in some measure even before you go to Heaven. So
that Paradise, poor and imperfect as it is compared with the Heaven
beyond, is surely a state to be greatly desired. Some pages back I
wrote with a certain shrinking "No man has ever yet gone to Heaven."
It is quite true, and yet I could feel some poor mourner shrinking back
from it as he thought of that beloved one gone. Nay, shrink not.
Paradise means the "Park" of God, the "Garden" of God, the place of
rest and peace and refreshing shade. The Park is not the Palace but it
is the precincts of the Palace. Paradise is not Heaven, but it is the
Courtyard of Heaven. And (the dearest, tenderest assurance of all)
they are with Christ. Is not that sufficient answer to many questions?
At any rate the Bible definitely teaches that.

[1] Our "39 Articles" were originally 42, and the 40th says, "They
which say that the souls of those who depart hence do sleep being
without all sense, feeling or perceiving till the Day of Judgment ...
do utterly dissent from the right belief declared to us in Holy
Scripture."

CHAPTER VII

RECOGNITION

Section 1

SHALL WE KNOW ONE ANOTHER IN THAT LIFE? Why not? As George Macdonald
somewhere pertinently asks, "Shall we be greater fools in Paradise than
we are here?"

This is a perfectly apt retort, and not at all flippant as it may seem
at first. It is based on the belief suggested by common sense and
confirmed by Scripture that our life there will be the natural
continuous development of our life here and not some utterly
unconnected existence. If consciousness, personal identity, character,
love, memory, fellowship, intercourse go on in that life why should
there be a question raised about recognition? True, there are morbid
times with most of us when we are inclined to doubt all desirable
things, and there are some gloomy Christians who are always suspicious
of anything especially bright and hopeful in the Gospel of Christ. But
to the normal Christian man who knows what is revealed and who believes
in the love of God, there should never be any serious doubt about
recognition in that life.

Section 2

Before saying anything about Scripture evidence let me poi