By Sir ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B., B.A., LL.D.

"The nearer I approach death I seem to gain a glimpse of the shore and to be, at last, about to sail into harbour after a long voyage." Such was the reverie of Cicero, the great pagan philosopher, 2,000 years ago. And he went on to quote the following words of Cyrus the Elder on his death-bed: "Do not suppose, my dearest sons, that when I shall have left you I shall exist nowhere, or lose my being, for not even while I remained with you did you see my soul, yet you inferred from my own conduct that it was in the body; be assured, therefore, that its existence is all the same, even though you will continue not to see it."

Do not some of the contributions to this symposium compare very unfavourably with the thoughts and words of classic paganism? There are only two books from which we can learn anything respecting the future and the unseen - Nature and Revelation. And those grand men, the great philosophers of ancient paganism, attained to all that in this sphere Nature can supply. But is this the limit of our knowledge in Christian England?

If all who are afflicted with blindness agreed to deny the existence of the sun, should we consent to treat its existence as an open question? And the denials of agnostics and infidels cannot be allowed to discredit our belief in the Bible as a Divine revelation. Nor can we forget the manner in which the revelation is accredited. "John Stuart Mill observed that mankind cannot be too often reminded that there was once a man of the name of Socrates. Still more important is it to remind mankind again and again that a man of the name of Jesus Christ once stood in their midst." These words are quoted from Dr. Harnack, the greatest of living rationalists; and they represent the sort of teaching that is common nowadays in many a quasi-Christian pulpit. But how different the faith of the Christian! "We know that the Son of God is come"; and the inspired record of His teaching is an end of controversy on every subject which falls within it. And this being so, we are not left to grope in darkness for a solution of the question, "What happens to us when we die?"

Beginning with the Latin Fathers, theologians have claimed to anticipate "the judgment of the great Assize" respecting the eternal destiny both of individuals and of races and classes of men. But what concerns us here is the teaching, not of theology, but of the Son of God. And while the Bible is not designed to solve academic questions, its teaching is full and clear in respect of all that we are concerned to know. Within that category falls the question, "What happens to us when we die?" and the answer given to it is explicit. At death the righteous pass into a condition of conscious happiness, and the unrighteous of conscious misery.

Who is righteous, and who unrighteous? That is not the question now before us; and a discussion of it would be deemed unsuitable in the pages of this little book. But the fact that at death men do not pass out of existence, but into a new condition of existence, is accredited by Him Who is both the Saviour and the Judge, and Who declared expressly that all His teaching was Divine. The answer to our problem, therefore, is no matter of mere opinion or of guesswork. "God Who in times past spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son." This is no mere conjecture; "We know that the Son of God has come."

And He has drawn aside the veil which screened from human sight the world into which we pass at death. And it is not the "intermediate state " only that He has unveiled. For after declaring that now, and in this present world, there is life for all who hear His voice, He adds, "Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment."

Now here we are not dealing with theological doctrines of a kind that are a matter of controversy, but with basic truths plainly revealed by the Lord Himself. And this being so, any one who rejects them declares himself an infidel.

Such then is the answer which Christianity gives to the question here at issue. Death is not the end of human existence, but a crisis after which existence continues in a new phase. And that phase, moreover, is only temporary.

Scripture tells us something about the bodies in which the just will pass to glory; but as to the others it is strangely silent. As I have seen prisoners on their discharge from jail resuming the wretched garments they wore upon arrest, I have sometimes wondered whether the unjust will be reclothed in bodies akin to those in which they sinned. My purpose here, however, is not to indulge in idle speculations of any kind, but rather to indicate what Christianity plainly reveals upon the subject of this symposium.