Sermons to the Natural Man | Page 5

ideas, because we
go into regions of the earth of which we had previously known only by
the hearing of the ear. But the great and last journey that man takes
carries him over into a province of which no book, not even the Bible
itself, gives him any distinct cognition, as to the style of its scenery or
the texture of its objects. In respect to any earthly scene or experience,
all men stand upon substantially the same level of information, because
they all have substantially the same data for forming an estimate.
Though I may never have been in Italy, I yet know that the soil of Italy
is a part of the common crust of the globe, that the Apennines are like
other mountains which I have seen, that the Italian sunlight pours
through the pupil like any other sunlight, and that the Italian breezes
fan the brow like those of the sunny south the world over. I understand
that the general forms of human consciousness in Europe and Asia, are
like those in America. The operations of the five senses are the same in
the Old World that they are in the New. But what do I know of the
surroundings and experience of a man who has travelled from time into
eternity? Am I not completely baffled, the moment I attempt to
construct the consciousness of the unearthly state? I have no materials
out of which to build it, because it is not a world of sense and matter,
like that which I now inhabit.
But death carries man over into the new and entirely different mode of
existence, so that he knows by direct observation and immediate
intuition. A flood of new information pours in upon the disembodied
spirit, such as he cannot by any possibility acquire upon earth, and yet
such as he cannot by any possibility escape from in his new residence.
How strange it is, that the young child, the infant of days, in the heart
of Africa, by merely dying, by merely passing from time into eternity,
acquires a kind and grade of knowledge that is absolutely inaccessible

to the wisest and subtlest philosopher while here on earth![1] The dead
Hottentot knows more than the living Plato.
But not only does the exchange of worlds make a vast addition to our
stores of information respecting the nature of the invisible realm, and
the mode of existence there, it also makes a vast addition to the kind
and degree of our knowledge respecting _ourselves_, and our personal
relationships to God. This is by far the most important part of the new
acquisition which we gain by the passage from time to eternity, and it is
to this that the Apostle directs attention in the text. It is not so much the
world that will be around us, when we are beyond the tomb, as it is the
world that will be within us, that is of chief importance. Our
circumstances in this mode of existence, and in any mode of existence,
are arranged by a Power above us, and are, comparatively, matters of
small concern; but the persons that we ourselves verily are, the
characters which we bring into this environment, the little inner world
of thought and feeling which is to be inclosed and overarched in the
great outer world of forms and objects,--all this is matter of infinite
moment and anxiety to a responsible creature.
For the text teaches, that inasmuch as the future life is the ultimate state
of being for an immortal spirit, all that imperfection and deficiency in
knowledge which appertains to this present life, this "ignorant present"
time, must disappear. When we are in eternity, we shall not be in the
dark and in doubt respecting certain great questions and truths that
sometimes raise a query in our minds here. Voltaire now knows
whether there is a sin-hating God, and David Hume now knows
whether there is an endless hell. I may, in certain moods of my mind
here upon earth, query whether I am accountable and liable to
retribution, but the instant I shall pass from this realm of shadows, all
this skepticism will be banished forever from my mind. For the future
state is the final state, and hence all questions are settled, and all doubts
are resolved. While upon earth, the arrangements are such that we
cannot see every thing, and must walk by faith, because it is a state of
probation; but when once in eternity, all the arrangements are such that
we cannot but see every thing, and must walk by sight, because it is the
state of adjudication. Hence it is, that the preacher is continually urging
men to view things, so far as is possible, in the light of