that it strips off the outer clothing which enveloped the soul.  It leaves the soul the same, no better, no

worse.  This is what is implied in the personal identity of the soul.  It means the continuity of consciousness, and therefore continuity of character.

Do we cling to some vague and fanciful expectation that the mere act of dying, so to call it, will itself work a great change upon the soul, will blot out our sins, will clear away our imperfections, will in an instant heal the wounds and scars, which evil habits, long inured in us, have wrought upon the soul?  It will do nothing of the sort.  We shall be no better, no holier on the other side than we were on this, no more fitted for heaven than when we died.  If this be so,—and, so far as we can see, it must be so,—how much does it behove us to fear greatly the peril we incur by a careless and God-forgetting life!  “Israel doth not know,” said the prophet, “My people doth not consider.” [47]  That was the pity of it.  It was the thoughtlessness,

and the ignorance which came of it, that ruined the nation.

Oh! that in life we would look things in the face more steadily!  Would that we were ready to take heed how surely we are, day by day, shaping and moulding our character for good or for evil, a character which no shock of dissolution will affect, which will be ours when the crisis comes to end our probation here, and to usher us, as we are and have become, into that unseen life beyond!

V.

“Being confident of this very thing, that He which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.”—Phil. i. 6 (R.V.)

The Intermediate Life is not a state of sleep, but a waiting time.  But is it a time of mere waiting, and of unemployed quiescence?  This would be no better than sleep.  There must be a reason for the waiting.  And what other reason can there be than that, during it, there is something to be done which can only be done then?  S. Paul speaks, in the text, of work which he is confident will be carried on till it is brought to completion on the Day of Judgment.  What is this work?  We have seen that the Scriptural conception of the happiness of heaven is that it consists in the sight of God, the Beatific Vision.  But there can

enter the heavenly city nothing that defileth, nothing imperfect.  It is the pure in heart who shall see God.  Isaiah dare hardly approach the vision of God’s glory on earth, because he felt himself to be a man of unclean lips.  The very heavens, the stars themselves, are not clean in God’s sight.  And at death, who is pure?  Who is free from stain?  Who is perfect, that he should be fit to look upon God?  Then, if no one that is imperfect can enter heaven, and none are perfect at death, can we not see what the work is that has to be done between death and the Resurrection?  It is this work of purification, that the soul may be fitted for the vision of God in heaven.  And this is what S. Paul is speaking of in the text.  The work begun in life, under the conditions of earth’s life, shall not stop at death, but, under new conditions, shall be carried on to perfection until the day of Jesus Christ.

So far, then, we may say that we are

treading on sure ground.  But when we go on to ask how shall this work and process of purification be effected, and what is the nature and method of it, we are approaching a stage in our enquiry about which, it may be thought, nothing but conjecture remains, because nothing has been revealed.  But let us see what light may be thrown upon this question.  And, that we may narrow our enquiry within manageable limits, let us confine our attention for the present to the condition of those of whom it may with truth and reason be said that they died in the favour and grace of God, died in good hope of salvation, surely trusting that their sins had been forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ, and that, however imperfect and blemished with sin their lives had been, there was an assured forgiveness for them and a good hope of eternal mercy.  We will not define the exact limits of this reasonable hope, nor attempt to show who are within or beyond

those limits.  We will only, in general terms, speak of those who have entered upon the Intermediate Life in a condition such as would make them capable of perfect purification.  Certainly it is impossible for any of us ever to say of any one absolutely that he is incapable of such progressive purification.  It is not possible, in Christian charity, to pronounce sentence upon any.  And it may be, and we may indeed hope, that a vast number, a much larger proportion than many now imagine, will prove on their entrance into the Intermediate Life to be capable of such progress of effective purification as may fit them, each according to his measure, for the final salvation for which he may be qualified in that home where “there are many mansions.”

When then does this purification begin?  Does it begin with dying?  That has been already disproved.  But so prevalent is the popular belief that dying has a kind of cleansing power in itself, that it is well

to touch upon it once more.  What is dying?  It is simply the parting of the soul from the body.  The soul, up to the moment of death, dwells in the body.  At death, in a moment it ceases to dwell in the body.  But have not the pain, it may be asked, and the very agony of dying a chastening and purifying force, serving in themselves to crown repentance, and to achieve, in the instant, the complete cleansing of the soul?  Why should it be so?  The pains which precede death are distinct from dying, from what we may call the act of dying.  The act of dying is instantaneous.  It is the moment, the crisis at which the soul takes its flight.  The pains and agony which accompany the process leading up to death are not the pains and agony of dying at all.  They are felt while the sick man is still living.  They belong to his life, not to his death.  At the moment of dying the sufferings are probably over.  The body has just felt its last throb of sensible anguish, and, in the

crisis of the soul’s departure, is incapable of feeling pain, and therefore is incapable of the discipline of pain.  And it is the discipline of pain alone that has any cleansing power.  And the discipline of pain went on in life up to the moment, if it be so, of the dying, and then ceased.  But it belonged, as the pain belonged, to the life, and not to the death.  During the life, at many times in the life past, the wholesome discipline of pain may or may not have been working a salutary change in the character, up to the very moment, perhaps, of death.  But it ceased, as the pain ceased, at death.

This then we conclude, that the act of dying in itself, apart from