THE CONDITION OF THE DEAD.
By L. D. Santee
I DO not want to believe that the dead are conscious between death and the resurrection. It brings in so many unhappy features that with all my heart I thank Him who has said, "The dead know not anything," (Eccl. 9:5), who has assured us in His Word of their unconsciousness. Those who find comfort in the belief that the dead are conscious and retain their faculties, have not considered all that it involves. Ever since my earliest memory, friends have been dropping out of my life. Like broken urns they strew the pathway of the years. "God's acre" holds them and I mourn their loss. Some died Christians, but by far the greater number were pleasure-loving, and unconverted. I do not want to think that they are now in unutterable pain, that the nerves of feeling are quivering in untold agony, that while life is sweet to me, their condition holds horror that would drive to insanity, that language can not tell, or heart imagine. The larger part of my friends were not Christians, is not your experience the same? Go out into the graveyard, visit the familiar mounds. Affection has chiseled their names on the marble. Love calls them up one by one, but while fond memory fills the eyes with tears and your heart holds them all, you know of the most of them that they are now peacefully sleeping and unconscious, or that they are in torment. While we hope and desire that our friends are in heaven, we only think of those that are saved, and forget the condition of the rest. Had you not rather that Christ should say of them, as He said of Lazarus, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth"? John 11:11. Even of those that you hope are in heaven, have you thought of their real condition? In heaven, joy is supreme. "In Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore." Ps. 16:11. My imagination shows me the battlements of heaven lined with the blessed, their beautiful eyes dark with the shadow of an infinite sorrow as they look earthward. The mother who has toiled for her children until the vital chord was loosed sees from on high her lessons forgotten, while neglect, degradation, and evil influences are ruining those whom she loves better than her life. Other little ones suffer from cruelty and brutality while the mother is in glory and sees it all. Such a condition can not be. The woes of earth would darken heaven, if the dead were conscious and knew what was transpiring on earth. Thank God, this picture will never be realized. I think that I have drawn the two pictures fairly—the unsaved, now wild with anguish and without hope; the saved, their hearts aching with an anxious solicitude. How much better is God's way, "He giveth His beloved sleep." Ps. 127:2. Job speaks of those that are in their graves: "There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest." Chapter 3:17. Inspiration generally speaks of death as a sleep. Job is supposed to be the first book written by inspiration, and it speaks of death in these words: "They shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." Job 14:12. The Lord said to Moses, "Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers." Deut. 31:16. I will copy some expressions from the record of the kings of Israel: "And Solomon slept with his fathers" (1 Kings 11:43); "And Rehoboam slept with his fathers" (1 Kings 14:31); "And Abijam slept with his fathers" (1 Kings 15:8); "And Asa slept with his fathers" (1 Kings 15:24). Daniel uses the same expression in chapter 12:2: "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake." The New Testament is full of evidence that death is a sleep. What could be plainer than the account of the death of Stephen: "And when he said this, he fell asleep." Acts 7:60. Again we repeat the words of the Saviour: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." The fifteenth of 1 Corinthians is full of the sleep of the dead and the resurrection: verse 6, "But some are fallen asleep;" verse 18, "Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." Read verse 20: "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept." In verse 51 he refers to translation, "Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." Turn to 1 Thess. 4:13: "But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope." Further proof is unnecessary. If it is not already plain, language can not teach it. At death, we, like Stephen, fall "asleep." "The spirit shall return to God who gave it." Eccl. 12:7. That is, the life principle leaves the body. What becomes of the mind, or intelligence?—"In that very day his thoughts perish" (Ps. 146:4); "Their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished," Eccl. 9:6. The preceding verse declares that "the dead know not anything." When I walk in the quiet cemetery I think, Of all that lie buried here, not one is suffering; they are sleeping till God shall awaken them in the resurrection. The psalmist says, "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness." Ps. 17:15. No sainted mother who is passed away is grieving over wayward children. She rests from her labors. Rev. 14:13. Truly God's way is best. L. D. Santee.