John
saw, in a vision, the souls of the martyrs, who had died for the
faith of the gospel, together, under the altar. From community of
suffering and a common abode together in heaven we may safely
infer their recognition of each other. The Gospels declare that
Christ after his death remembered his disciples and came back to
them to assure them that they should rejoin him on high; and the
apostles assert that we are to be with Christ and to be like him
in the future state. It follows from the admission of these
declarations that we shall remember our friends and be united with
them in conscious knowledge. Few, and brief, and vague as the
utterances of the Scriptures are in relation to this theme, they
necessarily involve all the results of an avowed doctrine. They
undeniably involve the supposition that in the other life we shall
be conscious personalities as here, retaining our memories and
constituting a society. From these implications the fact of the
future recognition of friends irresistibly results, unless there
be some special interference to prevent it; and such an
interposition there is no hint of and can be no reason for
fearing.

Such is really all that we can learn from the Scriptures on the
subject of our inquiry.4 Its indirectness and brevity would
convince us that God did not intend to betray to us in clear light
the secrets of the shrouded future, that for some reason it is
best that his teaching should be so reserved, and leave us to the
haunting wonder, the anxious surmise, the appalling mystery, the
alluring possibilities, that now meet our gaze on the unmoving
veil of death. God intends we shall trust in him without
knowledge, and by faith, not by sight, pursue his guidance into
the silent and unknown land.

Therefore, after analyzing the relevant facts of present
experience and inferring what we can from them, and after studying
the Scriptures and finding what they say, there is yet another
method of considering the problem of recognition in the future
state. That is without caring for critical discussion, without
deferring to extraneous authority, we may follow the gravitating
force of instinct, imagination, and moral reason. We are made to
love and depend on each other. The longer, the more profoundly, we
know and admire the good, the more our being becomes intertwined
with theirs, so much the more intensely we desire to be with them
always, and so much the more awful is the agony of separati