, is against the
plain teaching of the Bible. But the Bible not only contradicts this
popular and careless fancy. It asserts what is directly contrary to it:
it asserts positively, I mean, that there is an age-long period between
death and the final state of happiness or misery, during which period the
soul is separate from the body and remains separate. We are, according
to the Bible, destined to undergo three great changes in the mode and
nature of our existence. In the first period, while we are here in this
our life on earth, the soul and spirit are united to a material and
tangible body of flesh and blood, suited to our life here. The second
stage begins at death, the name we give to the separation which then
takes place between this material fabric of the body and the incorporeal
part of us; and then the soul and spirit dwell disembodied for a time.
There follows at the Resurrection the third period, when the soul and
spirit are reunited with the body, but with the body now so spiritualized
and refined as to suit the heavenly existence. The second of these two
periods, coming between the first and the third, is therefore fitly
called the intermediate or middle state, the state in which the
disembodied soul dwells apart from its material tenement. {15}

What has the Bible then to say about this Intermediate State? I will not
ask you to listen to the comments or interpretations of the early
Christian writers, although, of course, very great respect is due to what
they say. I will only beg of you to pay common attention to what the
Bible itself says.

Now, first, I will point to the words which our Lord spoke from the
Cross, just before His Death, to the thief who was also slowly dying at
His side. "To-day," He said, "shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." So
then within a few hours,--it was then not yet mid-day--they were both to
be in Paradise. They both died before sunset, and at their death both
entered Paradise. Their dead bodies were left behind upon the Cross.
What then entered Paradise? Not their bodies, but the spiritual or
incorporeal part of them. Was Paradise then another name for heaven? It
cannot be; our Lord did not go to heaven until the day of His Ascension,
forty-three days after His death. For, after His Resurrection, He said
to S. Mary Magdalene, "I am _not yet_ ascended to My Father." {17} With
His risen body, united again to His human soul and spirit, He went to
Heaven, His whole