ich he has gone?

That death chamber is the best place on earth for solemn thought about
the Hereafter. But when you are thinking only of your own dead and
your heart is all quivering in pain and longing you are not in the best
condition for cool, clear searching after truth. Imagination and
sentiment are apt to run away with reason. The tender tortured woman
is apt to believe too easily what the heart longs to believe. The
stricken man in his deep numb pain is in danger of yielding to hopeless
doubt about it all.

So I lifted you away into a clearer atmosphere and sent you searching
for definite revelations of God about other people's dead thousands of
years ago, where your heart and affections were not involved, and where
cool, clear reason had a chance to be heard. We tried to study
impartially what Scripture reveals about the World of the Departed and
how the primitive Church interpreted that revelation. This gives us a
solid basis to proceed on.

Section 1

With that preparation we come back into the darkened room again looking
into the face of our dead, trying in perplexity of heart to follow him
on the great journey. To avoid confusion we assume here that he died a
penitent man in Christ's faith and fear.

Let me try to enter into your thoughts. Let me begin at the
beginning--Death.

Naturally we all shrink from death--the seeming shock of sundering soul
and body--the launching out against our will into the regions of the
Unexplored--the "land of far distances" as Isaiah calls it. We are
afraid of that unknown death, for our dear ones--like children afraid
of a bogey on the dark stairs. We can't help being afraid of it. But
ought we to be so MUCH afraid of it? Has not our Lord taught us that
there is no bogey on that dark stairs, that he who has just now closed
his eyes in death is opening them already into a larger life?

"There is no death, what seems so is transition."

Now think of this "unknown death." Has not Christ revealed to you that
this terrible thing that you so fear for him who is gone really only
means that at the close of this poor limited kindergarten stage of his
history Death has come--God's beneficent angel to lead him into the
next stage of being. Why should you be afraid? Birth gave him much,
Death will give much more. FOR DEATH MEANS BIRTH INTO A FULLER LIFE.
What a fright he gives us, this good angel of God! We do not trust his
Master much.

Do you say tha