he knowledge that you can have and the knowledge you
cannot have of that spirit life. Be content. God has given you a
great deal of knowledge of that real life of the self in the hereafter.
If He has so made you that the other knowledge that would help you to
picture the surroundings is impossible to you it is best that you
should know it. Be content. Don't cry for the moon. Follow your
departed in thought into that life and realize what you have learned
from Scripture about him.

II

What have you learned?

First that IT IS A VIVID CONSCIOUS life into which he has gone.

There are several passages in Scripture which speak of Death as sleep
and which taken alone might suggest a long unconsciousness, a sort of
Rip Van Winkle life, sleeping for thousands of years and waking up in a
moment at the Judgment Day, feeling as if there had been no interval
between. But a little thought will show it is a mere figure of speech
taken from the sleeping appearance of the body. "The sleep of Death"
is a very natural expression to use as one looks on the calm, peaceful
face after life's fitful fever and the long pain and sickness of the
death-bed. But no one can study the Bible references to the life
beyond without seeing that it cannot be a life of sleep or
unconsciousness. "Shall we sleep between Death and the Judgment?" asks
Tertullian. "Why souls do not sleep even when men are alive. It is
the province of bodies to sleep." This sleep theory has always been
condemned whenever the Church has pronounced on it. Even the Reformers
declare it at variance with Holy Scripture in spite of the strong
feeling in its favour in their day.[1]

The reader who has followed thus far will need no proof as to the
teaching of Scripture that the Waiting Life before the Judgment into
which our dear ones have gone is no unconscious sleep but a real vivid
conscious life. So vivid that our Lord's spirit is said to have been
quickened, made more alive, as He passed in. So vivid that the men of
the old world could listen to His preaching. So vivid that Moses and
Elias--those eager, impetuous leaders--in that wondrous life could not
be held by its bonds, but broke through to stand on the mountain with
Christ a thousand years after their death. So vivid that Lazarus (whom
our Lord describes as in Abraham's bosom) is depicted as living a full,
clear, intelligent life; and Dives as thinking anxiously about his five
brothers on earth.