Think how
tremendously solemn that makes the life here. It is the place of
character making for the life there. I can never, never, never get
away from myself. I shall always be myself. You remember what our
Lord said from the other side of the grave. "Handle Me and see it is I
MYSELF."

It is I myself, the very same self. It is they themselves, the very
same selves whom I loved and who loved me so dearly. In that solemn
hour after death, believe it, your boy, your wife, your husband, who is
experiencing the startling revelations of the new life is feeling that
life as an unbroken continuance of the life begun on earth. Only the
environment is changed. He feels himself the same boy or man that he
was an hour ago, with the same character, aspirations, desires, the
same love and courage and hope. But oh, what a different view of all
things! How clearly he recognizes God's love and holiness. How
clearly he sees himself--his whole past life. If ever he cared for
Christ and His will, how longingly, wonderingly, he is reaching out to
Him. If ever he loved you tenderly on earth, how deeply and tenderly
he is loving you to-day. In all the whirl of awe and wonder and
curiosity and hope, love must stand supreme. For "love never faileth."
"And now," says St. Paul, "abideth Faith, Hope and Love (these three
that abide for ever), but the greatest of these is love."

Section 3

What else have you learned? That HE REMEMBERS CLEARLY the old life and
the old home and the old comrades and the old scenes on earth. There
is no conjecturing about that. That goes without saying if "I" am the
same "I" in that world. Personal identity of course postulates memory
which binds into one the old life and the new. And the Bible takes
that for granted. We saw that Lazarus remembered Dives and Dives
remembered Lazarus and remembered his old home and the five young
brothers who grew up with him. He remembers that they have grown to be
selfish men like himself and is troubled for them. And Abraham assumes
it as a matter of course. "My son, remember that thou in thy
lifetime," etc. Our Lord comes back from Death remembering all the
past as if Death made no chasm at all in His memory. "Go and meet Me
in Galilee," He says; "Lo I have told you" (before I died). And the
redeemed in the future life are represented as remembering and praising
God who had redeemed them from their sins on earth.

So you may be quite sure that y