The Life of the Waiting Soul in the Intermediate State

The Life of the Waiting Soul, by
R. E.

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Sanderson
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Title: The Life of the Waiting Soul in the Intermediate State
Author: R. E. Sanderson

Release Date: June 20, 2007 [eBook #21881]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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OF THE WAITING SOUL***

Transcribed from the 1900 Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. edition by
David Price, email [email protected]

THE LIFE OF THE WAITING SOUL IN THE INTERMEDIATE
STATE.
BY R. E. SANDERSON, D.D., ST. MICHAEL, BRIGHTON; CANON
RESIDENTIARY OF CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL; FORMERLY
HEAD MASTER OF LANCING COLLEGE.
London: WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO., 3 PATERNOSTER
BUILDINGS, E.C.
FIRST EDITION, MAY, 1896. SECOND ,, SEP., ,, THIRD ,, FEB.,
1897. FOURTH ,, JAN., 1898. FIFTH ,, FEB., 1900.

PREFACE.
These Addresses were delivered in Chichester Cathedral, and
subsequently, with slight alterations, at Hastings. They would not have
been printed but at the urgent request of very many who heard them
preached. It should be remembered that they are not a theological
treatise, but a course of plain words addressed to an ordinary
congregation. It seemed desirable to awaken interest in a subject which
has dropped out of English Christian thought, and almost out of
people's knowledge. The Addresses are an attempt to explain what can
be known about the Intermediate Life. There is nothing new in them. If
there were, probably what is new would not be true.
The doctrines of so-called "Universalism" and "Conditional
Immortality" are not touched upon. They do not belong to the period
which is covered by the Intermediate State. Moreover, I doubt whether
we can ever regard those doctrines as anything more than speculations
invented to answer modern and possibly ephemeral objections.
How much I have unconsciously been indebted to those who have dealt
with this subject more fully, I hardly know. One reads and remembers,
and reproduces in preaching, often without thought of the sources from

which material has been drawn. I gratefully acknowledge in the notes
what I know to be debts incurred. I can only express my regret if any
have been overlooked.
R. E. S.
Easter, 1896.

I.
"I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which
are asleep."--1 THESS. IV. 13.
There are moments in the lives of every one of us, when the mind is
irresistibly drawn on to wonder what our own personal future shall be,
as soon as life is over and death has overtaken us. We cannot help the
speculation. However bound by present duties and absorbed in present
interests, often, in quiet hours, in times of solitude or bereavement, or
under the sense of failing hopes or failing health, in seasons of sorrow
or of sickness, the mood takes hold of us; and it may be, we know not
why, our eyes turn with an anxious and a wistful look towards that
inevitable end which is surely coming upon us.
At such moments we ask ourselves, what will my lot be when the hand
of death touches me--even me; when all the light of life goes out, all
thought of this world's cares, all pleasant joys and hopes and desires of
time sink down and fade into the chill gloom and shadow of the
unknown? Such questionings, brought close home to our very selves,
cannot but fill us with very anxious fears and misgivings, as we either
look back upon the past, or think upon what chiefly possesses our
minds and thoughts now. Indeed, many of us cannot bear this forward
glance, and refuse to face it. We would fain brush the thought aside,
and with some hasty utterance of vague trust, of shadowy
self-comforting hope that GOD will be merciful, we turn sharply round
and give ourselves again to the calls of the life which is about us.
In this way, we Christians, we children of GOD, heirs of life and

immortality, learn to be terrified at death, which, as we are taught to
believe, ushers us into life; learn to associate it with trembling doubt
and shuddering dismay. But is this dread of death nothing else than the
natural instinctive shrinking, which the warmth of life feels at the touch
of its cold hand? Or is it not rather, in the case of most of us, due to
some false imaginations with which religion itself--that form, at least,
of religion which to-day encompasses us--has for many years possessed
and imbued the minds of