Be quite clear about this--that our Lord is not speaking of the FAR Hereafter--of the final stage of human life at the end of the world, in which after the Final Judgment come Heaven and Hell. He is speaking of the near Hereafter, the life immediately after death. We have seen that there are three stages in our history: 1st. This Earth life, where the "I," the self, has a body woven around it. 2nd. The Intermediate Life before the Judgment, into which I go at death without my body into my second stage of being. 3rd. The final stage at the end of the age in which come the Final Judgment and Heaven and Hell, which stage is still in the future for all humanity. Clearly our Lord is speaking of the Intermediate Life, of the unseen life existing to-day, running on side by side with the earthly life. For you see the men He speaks of are not long dead. Dives' brothers are still living here. Dives is quite conscious that the ordinary life of men is still going on on earth side by side with that other life. Clearly Jesus is telling of the present stage in the life of the departed--that life in which all our dear departed ones are living at this moment. § 3 Next I notice that that life in its inmost experiences seems very like this life, and follows from it quite naturally. He depicts it as a clear, conscious life. They are not dead nor asleep nor unconscious. They are very much alive. He represents them as thinking and speaking and feeling. Lazarus is feeling "comforted." Dives is feeling "tormented," and thinking keenly of his own misery and of his brothers' danger on earth at that moment. So actively alive are they all to him that he wants one of them to go back to earth to tell his brothers about it. Be quite clear about this. Challenge every statement as I go on. Is this a mere speculation of mine or have we Christ's authority for saying that in the new environment men are living a life as clear and vivid and conscious as on this earth--that death makes no break? § 4 Next I learn that each feels himself the same continuous "I" that he was on earth. Lazarus feels himself the same Lazarus, Dives feels himself the same Dives, the brother of those five boys. I shall still keep on saying "I." I am not somebody else over there. That is what Jesus said from the other side of the grave--"Handle Me and see--it is I, Myself." § 5