"
This is a promise direct and personal; not confined to the first
apostles, but stated in the most general way as attainable by any one
who loves and does the will of Jesus. It seems given to us as some
comfort for the unavoidable heart-breaking separations of death that
there should be, in that dread unknown, one all-powerful Friend with
whom it is possible to commune, and from whose spirit there may come a
response to us. Our Elder Brother, the partaker of our nature, is not
only in the spirit land, but is all-powerful there. It is he that
shutteth and no man openeth, and openeth and no man shutteth. He whom
we have seen in the flesh, weeping over the grave of Lazarus, is he
who hath the keys of hell and of death. If we cannot commune with our
friends, we can at least commune with Him to whom they are present,
who is intimately with them as with us. He is the true bond of union
between the spirit world and our souls; and one blest hour of prayer,
when we draw near to Him and feel the breadth, and length, and depth,
and heighth of that love of his that passeth knowledge, is better than
all those incoherent, vain, dreamy glimpses with which longing hearts
are cheated.
"They who have disbelieved all spiritual truth, who have been
Sadduceeic doubters of either angel or spirit, may find in modern
spiritualism a great advance. But can one who has ever really had
communion with Christ, who has said with John, "Truly our fellowship
is with the Father and the Son,"--can such an one be satisfied with
what is found in the modern circle?
"For Christians who have strayed into these inclosures, we cannot but
recommend the homely but apt quotation of old John Newton:--
"'What think ye of Christ is the test
To try both your word and your scheme.
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