he
consciousness of the unearthly state? I have no materials out of which to
build it, because it is not a world of sense and matter, like that which
I now inhabit.

But death carries man over into the new and entirely different mode of
existence, so that he knows by direct observation and immediate
intuition. A flood of new information pours in upon the disembodied
spirit, such as he cannot by any possibility acquire upon earth, and yet
such as he cannot by any possibility escape from in his new residence.
How strange it is, that the young child, the infant of days, in the heart
of Africa, by merely dying, by merely passing from time into eternity,
acquires a kind and grade of knowledge that is absolutely inaccessible
to the wisest and subtlest philosopher while here on earth![1] The dead
Hottentot knows more than the living Plato.

But not only does the exchange of worlds make a vast addition to our
stores of information respecting the nature of the invisible realm, and
the mode of existence there, it also makes a vast addition to the kind
and degree of our knowledge respecting _ourselves_, and our personal
relationships to God. This is by far the most important part of the new
acquisition which we gain by the passage from time to eternity, and it is
to this that the Apostle directs attention in the text. It is not so much
the world that will be around us, when we are beyond the tomb, as it is
the world that will be within us, that is of chief importance. Our
circumstances in this mode of existence, and in any mode of existence,
are arranged by a Power above us, and are, comparatively, matters of
small concern; but the persons that we ourselves verily are, the
characters which we bring into this environment, the little inner world
of thought and feeling which is to be inclosed and overarched in the
great outer world of forms and objects,--all this is matter of infinite
moment and anxiety to a responsible creature.

For the text teaches, that inasmuch as the future life is the _ultimate_
state of being for an immortal spirit, all that imperfection and
deficiency in knowledge which appertains to this present life, this
"ignorant present" time, must disappear. When we are in eternity, we
shall not be in the dark and in doubt respecting certain great questions
and truths that sometimes raise a query in our minds here. Voltaire now
knows whether there is a sin-hating God, and David Hume now knows whether
there is an end