The Continuity Of Life
Jesus plainly teaches that the next life is a continuation of the present on a higher level, that it will be itself a continual progress. When He referred to the many mansions in His Father’s house, He may have been intending rooms—places where those who had been associated together on earth may be gathered together; but He may be rather intending stations—stages in that long ascent of life that shall extend through the ages of ages.
Does not this conception of the future solve a very dark problem—the lives that have never arrived. Besides the man whose gifts have been laid out at usury and gained a splendid interest, are others whose talents have been hid, not by their own doing, but by Providence. They realized their gift; they cherished it; they would have used it; but for them there was no market. Providence, who gave them wings, placed them in a cage. Round us on every side are cramped, hindered, stillborn lives—merchants who should have been painters, clerks who should have been poets, laborers who should have been philosophers. Their talent is known to a few friends; they die, and the talent is buried in their coffin. Jesus says “NO!”
It has at last been sown for the harvest; it will come into the open and blossom in another land. These also are being trained—trained by waiting. They are the reserve of the race, kept behind the hill till God requires them. They will get their chance; they will come into their kingdom,
Where the days bury their golden suns
In the dear hopeful West.
The continuity of life lifts the shadow also from another mystery—the lives that have been cut off in their prime. When one is richly endowed and carefully trained, and has come to the zenith of his power, his sudden removal seems a reflection on the economy of God’s Kingdom. Why call this man to the choir celestial when he is so much needed in active service? According to Jesus, he has not sunk into inaction, so much subtracted from the forces of righteousness. He has simply gone where the fetters of this body of humiliation and embarrassment of adverse circumstances shall be no longer felt.
—John Watson.
Alternate Reading: Jude 1: 3-25.