Where he no longer needs your poor protection,
And Christ Himself doth rule."

You think of your boy as serving at one side of the veil, and you at
the other; each in the presence of Christ. You think how he is being
lovingly trained and disciplined. How all his abilities are being used
in self-sacrificing deeds for others. Not in a glorified selfishness
in thanking God that he is safe, though his brethren be lost. Ah, no!
but in perfect self-sacrifice, even as his Lord. You think of him as
learning to fight for righteousness--to help the weak, aye, mayhap, to
go out--God's brave young knight--out into the darkness after some one
who has missed of Christ on earth. Realize that and your whole life
must perforce grow nobler. And realize that you will not have to wait
for the Resurrection or the Advent to meet him and learn all.

When your death comes, he will be waiting for you. He has been praying
and watching over you. He will tell you of all that has been
happening. And together in Christ's loving presence, side by side, you
will work and wait, and help your brethren; and look forward to the
glory of the heaven that is still in the future. Is not that a Gospel
worth the preaching--a Gospel to stir our souls and to comfort our
hearts for those "whom we have loved long since and lost a while"?

Thank God for the blessed doctrine of the Paradise life!

Thank God for all His poor penitent servants departed this life in His
faith and fear!

PART II

The Far Hereafter

I

THE JUDGMENT

We touch lightly on the subject of the FAR Hereafter which is still
away in the future for all humanity. One day the Intermediate Life
will close. The end of this age will come at the Second Advent. And
at this crisis our Lord places the great drama of the Judgment and the
final decision of each man's destiny. Whether it will be a great
spectacular event such as His picture suggests, with all humanity
assembled and the Judge on the great White Throne, or whether His
picture is figurative, we cannot affirm. We can only gather that it
will be a final judgment and that it will be a judgment according to
finally developed character, when men shall be clearly seen to belong
to the right hand or the left, the sheep or the goats, to the wheat or
the tares, to the good fish to be gathered up or the bad fish to be
thrown away.

Then come the final stages in the history of humanity, Hell and Heaven.