s, the greatest soul of us all, can look forward to such a
prospect without bowing himself in dread like Isaiah of old, "Woe is me
for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, that mine eyes should
see the King of the Lord of Hosts!" If there be no growth or
purification in the Waiting Life what hope is there ever for any one of
us of fitness for the presence of the all holy God?

Think that the great majority of those who die, even though penitent
and striving after right, have much of evil clinging to them; that many
after a whole life of ingraining their characters with evil have
brought sorrowfully to Christ at last their poor defiled souls; that
even the best is not without many faults and stains. If nothing that
defileth shall enter Heaven, if growth is a law of all life as far as
we know it, are we not practically compelled to believe that much of
the growth and purification needed to fit us for God's presence shall
take place in the great Waiting Life?

And this belief and hope for all these poor faulty souls in whom the
good work of God has begun on earth, St. Paul confirms. "Being
confident of this very thing, that He who hath begun a good work in you
will perfect it UNTIL THE DAY OF JESUS CHRIST"--_i. e._, right through
the earth life, right through the Intermediate Life, until the last
great scene in the drama of our history opens at the Judgment Day.

Section 2

How this shall take place God has not definitely revealed to us. But
God has given us reason and common sense to enable us to draw
conclusions from what He has revealed. Since in that life I am the
same conscious "I," with the same consciously continuous personality,
with the same conscience and memory, I may surely expect that the Holy
Spirit "who hath begun a good work in me and will continue it until the
day of Jesus Christ"--will continue it in much the same natural way as
here, through Conscience and Memory and the Sense of His Presence.
Only that these will be all more keen and effective and free from the
disturbance of the bodily senses and the distractions of this life on
earth.

CONSCIENCE here is the throne of the Holy Ghost, from which He rules
and directs my life. Therefore my body is "the temple of the Holy
Ghost." But Conscience here is greatly weakened by fears and hopes and
ambitions and distractions of various kinds. At times, when I lie
awake at night and think about my life, or when I enter into my closet
to pr