l pass to another better, there, where that lady
lives, of whom my soul was enamoured." Will Christ counter-sign a hope
like this? I do not know any "proof-text" that can be quoted, yet it
were profanation to think otherwise. There are many flowers of time, we
know, which cannot be transplanted; but "love never faileth," love is
the true _immortelle_. And whatever changes death may bring, those who
have been our nearest here shall be our nearest there. And though, as I
say, we can quote no "proof-text," our faith may find its guarantee in
the great word of Jesus: "If it were not so, I would have told you."
This is one of the instincts of the Christian heart, as pure and good as
it is firm and strong. Since Christ let it pass unchallenged, may we not
claim His sanction for it? If it were not so, He would have told us.

II

I turn now to the reverse side of Christ's teaching concerning the
future. And let us not seek to hide from ourselves the fact that there
_is_ a reverse side. For, ignore it as we may, the fact remains: those
same holy lips which spoke of a place, "where neither moth nor rust doth
consume," spoke likewise of another place, "where their worm dieth not,
and the fire is not quenched."

In considering this solemn matter we must learn to keep wholly separate
from it a number of difficult questions which have really nothing to do
with it--with which, indeed, we have nothing to do--and the introduction
of which can only lead to mischievous confusion and error. What is to
become of the countless multitudes in heathen lands who die without
having so much as heard of Christ? How will God deal with those even in
our own Christian land to whom, at least as it seems to us, this life
has brought no adequate opportunity of salvation? What will happen in
that dim twilight land betwixt death and judgment which men call "the
intermediate state"? Will they be few or many who at last will be for
ever outcasts from the presence of God? These are questions men will
persist in asking, but the answer to which no man knows. Strictly
speaking, they are matters with which we have nothing to do, which we
must be content to leave with God, confident that the Judge of all the
earth will do right, even though He does not show us how. What we have
to do with, what does concern us, is the warning of Jesus, emphatic and
reiterated, that sin will be visited with punishment, that retribution,
just, awful, inexorable, will fall on a