What After Death?

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Title:     What After Death?
Author: Norman Macleod [More Titles by Macleod]

It would be very difficult, I think, to put a more serious question to ourselves than this, What is to become of its after death?

All of us, I daresay, know from experience what is meant by thoughtlessness or indifference about our state for ever. There are, no doubt, some who, from having had a godly upbringing in their youth, or at least religious instruction, have always thought more or less about what would become of their souls. Perhaps these thoughts made them uneasy, afraid, or anxious; but still they were often in their mind, especially in times of sickness, or when death came near their doors, or any event occurred which obliged them to think of eternity, and of what might happen to themselves if they were to die suddenly, and appear before God. But there are others, again, who seem never at any time to have had a serious thought about their life after death. They have, perhaps, not had the same advantage with those I have been speaking of, but from infancy have lived among worldly-minded people, who gave the impression, by their conversation and general conduct, on week-days and Sundays, that this world was everything, and the next world nothing; that this world alone was real; and that man's chief end was to labour in it, and for it alone, to make money in it, be happy in it, get everything for self out of it, and, as a matter of hard necessity, at last die in it, and go from it--Whither? Ah! who could tell that? --who ever thought of that? To them it seemed that death ended all that was reality, and began all that was visionary. But whether early education is to blame, certain it is that many people do come to this state. They seem stoneblind to the future. Not one ray of light gets an entrance into their spirits from the great and eternal world, on whose confines they every moment live. They think, fear, hope, rejoice, plan, and purpose; but always about this world,--never about the other! To rise in the morning; to be occupied during the day; to buy and sell, and get gain; to talk on politics or trade; to gossip about people, and all they speak or do; to marry or give in marriage; to have this meeting or that parting; to give a feast or partake of one; to fear sickness, and to keep it off; or to be sick, and to try and get better:--all this sort of life, down to its veriest trifles, they understand and sympathise with, and busy themselves about. But what of God and Christ?--of eternal joy or sorrow?--of how a man should live to God, please Him, enjoy Him, love Him, and walk daily in fellowship with Him? What of such questions as,--What shall become of us in eternity? What shall we do to be saved? How shall we obtain life eternal? How shall we fulfil the end of our being? All this--oh, strange mystery!--has no interest to them. These thoughts, or any like these, never cross their mind, perhaps, from morning till night, or from the first till the last day of the year. They may, perhaps, have heard these words, read them in books, or heard ministers speak them from the pulpit on Sunday, and they know that the words have to do with what they call "religion," but never think they have to do with what awfully concerns themselves! They are words, but not about realities; or if they express realities, yet realities which belong to some world of mist, and cloud, and darkness, far, far away--one not nearly so real as this world of their own, made up of fields and barns, streets and shops, sea and ships, friends and action! But what, let me ask, separates us from that world which we think to be so very far off--so very unreal? The thin coat of an artery! No more! Let the thin pipe burst through which our life-blood is now coursing in the full play of health, and where then will our present world, now so very real, be to us? In a single second it will have vanished for ever from our grasp, like something we clutch at in the visions of the night. And where then will that other world be which to many is now so dim and unreal as not to be worth thinking about? We, the same living persons, will be in it--in the midst of all its realities; and with these we shall have to do, and with these only, for ever and ever.

But many people do not wish to think about the unseen future. It is not so much that no thoughts about it intrude themselves upon their minds, as that all such thoughts are deliberately banished. It is with the eternal future as with anything which here gives them pain,--they "hate to think about it." This, of course, arises from the suspicion, or rather the conviction, that it cannot be a good future to them. They have read enough about it from the Bible to make it alarming. At all events, they have no security for its being to them as happy as the present; and so, whether from a fearful looking for of judgment, because of their sins, or from ignorance of the means of salvation, or from unbelief in the good-will of God as ready to save them, the result is, that they voluntarily shut their eyes to, and banish all thought of, eternity. It pains them--it agonises them--to put the question, "What is to become of me when I die?" And the more pain the question gives them, the more they fly to the world, and occupy their minds with its society, its amusements, and even its dissipation and debaucheries, in order to banish care and snatch a fleeting joy. O my brother, if you so act, from my soul I feel for you and pity you! For the sick-bed is coming, and you may be compelled to think there; and if so, you are treasuring up tenfold agony for yourself, by your present off-putting apathy and wilful thoughtlessness. And should you manage, even in the time of sickness, and up to the very hour of death, to shut out the future from your mind; should long and inveterate habit enable you to succeed in the terrible, suicidal experiment, so that you shall die as you have lived--fearing nothing, because believing nothing,--can you avoid entering the other world? Can you prevent a meeting between yourself and your God; or silence an accusing conscience for ever; or hinder Christ from coming to judge the world; or fly from the judgment-seat, and by any possibility delay or prevent a minute examination of your life; or stay the sentence which the omniscient and holy Judge shall pronounce upon you? And if you cannot do this,--and if, rather, every power, faculty, and emotion of your heart and soul must one day be roused to the intensest pitch of earnestness about your eternal destiny,--do you not think it wise, my brother, to think about all this now?--now, when there is a remedy, rather than then, when there is none?

This suggests another reason why possibly you hate to think about the future. Not only are you conscious of want of any preparedness for it, but you do not see how it can be much better with you. You have, in a word, lost confidence in God--have no faith in His good-will to you. You think of Him--if you think of Him at all--as one who watches you with a jealous or angry eye; who has no wish that you should be better or happier than you are; or who, if He can save you, will not; or who, if He will, offers to do so only on such hard and impossible terms as to make it practically the same as if there was no salvation for you. In one word, you suspect God hates you, or at least is indifferent to you--if, indeed, He knows anything at all about you, which you are not quite sure of! It is very shocking to write such things: but it is much more shocking that any one should think or believe such things; for he who so thinks and believes is as yet profoundly ignorant of God. What is called God, is as unlike Him who is the living and true God as is any hideous idol in a heathen temple. But this ignorance breeds fear--and fear, hate--and hate increases the fear, until the future, in which this God must be met, is put away as a horrible thing, or never thought of at all.

But, my brother, why should you thus think of God, and so fear to think of the future? Read only what the Bible says of Him, and learn what true Christians know of Him, and listen honestly to how your own conscience responds to all you hear about Him, and then consider whether you can conceive of one more glorious in his character, or more worthy of your love. Peruse the history of Jesus Christ, and tell me anything He ever said or did calculated to fill your heart with fear or hate towards Him,--and remember, that he who sees Him sees the Father. Think of all Jesus suffered as our atoning Saviour, and all "to bring us to God." Think of all God has promised to those who will only trust Him through Jesus,--the pardon of all sin, and the gift of a new heart; with everything which can do them good, or make them happy; and say, How can this make you dislike God? Think of all He has given you since you were born,--friends and relations, health of body, powers of mind, much time, many happy days, innumerable mercies and sources of enjoyment; think how liberally, ungrudgingly, He has opened His hand; think what patience, forbearance, kindness, He has shewn, and what the eternal future has in store for all who love Him; and tell me, What has He done to make you dislike Him? Reflect on what He could have done and could do, if He disliked you as you dislike Him, and say, How can you continue in your enmity? O my brother, "Only believe!" Believe that "God is love." Believe that "in this is manifested the love of God, that He gave His Son to be a propitiation for our sins." Believe that He willeth not that any should perish,--that He has no pleasure in the death of sinners,--that He is ready to forgive,--that this is the record, that "God hath given eternal life." Believe--trust in God for the good, the whole good, the most perfect good, that of a child's heart and sincere love towards Him, which He seeks in you--trust God for this through faith in Christ, and in the mighty power of that Spirit who is love; and depend upon it, when you know God, and see how excellent He is, and understand His love to you, and what He is willing to make you, and to give you, and, above all, when you know what He himself will be to you for ever, you surely cannot choose but Him! and "there is no fear in love; because fear hath torment!"

[The end]
Norman Macleod's essay: What After Death?

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