What we sow here, we reap there! Can it be supposed that the soul will enjoy a reward or endure a retribution for deeds of which it has no recollection? Is the thing possible? Will it enjoy the bliss of heaven, praising Christ forever as its great Saviour, without any remembrance of the sins and sufferings from which He redeemed and saved it? The idea is absurd.
Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes, and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells, and with dying promises that they would wait to welcomes us when we should arrive. And so they do. Not sorrowfully, not anxiously, but lovingly, they wait to bid us welcome.
With Christ, and like Christ, and not love our friends! Impossible! when He loves them so tenderly. Going into the fuller presence of Him whose very name is "Love" can never make our hearts less loving.
I shall know the loved who have gone before,
And joyfully sweet will the meeting be,
When over the river, the peaceful river,
The angel of death shall carry me.
Then re-united to the friends with whom we took sweet counsel upon earth, we shall recount our toil, only to heighten our ecstasy; and call to mind the toil and the din of war, only that, with a more bounding throb and a richer song, we may feel and celebrate the wonders of redemption.
