leys dim
Which thou must pass to reach the heights sublime.
Then all the more because thou canst not hear
Poor human words of blessing will I pray.
O, true brave heart, God bless thee wheresoe'er
In God's wide universe thou art to-day!

[1] It is true that the Greek word translated "witnesses" is not the
word meaning "spectators" but rather "witnesses for the faith," but as
most good commentators (including Bishop Westcott) say--it is
impossible to exclude the thought of spectators in an amphitheatre
watching a race. The Revised Version, too, seems to accept this view
for it prints the word "witnesses" without any marginal remark.

[2] Luckock, _After Death_.

[3] The evidence for this can be seen in full in any standard work on
the subject, e. g., Luckock, _After Death_; or Lee, _Christian Doctrine
of Prayer for the Departed_.

CHAPTER IX

GROWTH AND PURIFICATION

What is the main purpose of the Intermediate Life? Is there something
to be done there which cannot be fully done at any other time?

Let us still try to keep to the firm ground of Scripture, and to avoid
confusion let us confine ourselves still to the case of those who have
died, in some degree at least, in penitence and faith.

Section 1

We have already seen that Scripture intimates that that life is not one
of sleep or unconsciousness. It is a clear conscious life. It is
therefore natural to ask what happens in it? What is the use of it?
Science and experience teach that growth is the law of all the life
which we know anything about. Even if we had no further light of
revelation we should find it difficult to believe that imperfect beings
dying in the grace of God pass into that life and live in it for years
or for ages without any growth or development.

Scripture also teaches that God's aim for us is not merely that we
should escape hell or just creep into heaven. Our goal is to grow into
the likeness of God, to "rise to the stature of the perfect man, even
to the stature of the fullness of Christ." How many of us are ever
even in sight of that goal when we die?

But Scripture goes further still. It points us forward to the final
stage of being, to the Beatific Vision of God in the far future and
tells us with awe that that God "is of purer eyes than to behold
iniquity," that "even the heavens are not clean in His sight;" that
into that final abode of bliss "nothing that defileth shall enter in."
Which of u