P.S.--I let these words stand as they appear in the earlier editions of this book. For they are true. But to my mind now there is a far more probable answer. It is this: That it is not you who will have to do the recognizing; at any rate that you will not be first with it. If it be true, as we have reason to believe (see next chapter), that your dear one there is watching your life on earth, of course he would know you at once. While, year by year, you have been changing from youth to old age he has been near you all the time. He knows you as familiarly as if he had been on earth beside you. Probably he has been waiting and watching as you came through. And whatever change has passed on him in his new life, surely he too will be easier to recognize when he has claimed you first. Whether this suggestion appeals or no, at any rate we need have no doubt that we shall know one another there. Nay, shall we not know each other there far more thoroughly than we do here? "Now," says St. Paul, "we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then shall I know even as also I have been known." St. Paul's thought is of our fuller knowledge of things hereafter. Does it not include also our fuller knowledge of one another? I met this passage lately in a letter of Phillips Brooks: "I wonder what sort of knowledge we shall have of our friends in the Hereafter and what we shall do to keep up our intimacy with one another. There will be one good thing about it. I suppose we shall see through one another to begin with and start off on quite a new basis of mutual understanding. I should think it would be awful at first, but afterwards it must be nice to feel that your friends knew the worst of you and you need not be continually in fear that they will find out what you really are." I think a simple natural thought such as that seems to bring the idea of spiritual recognition more within our ken. But we must remember that our conjectures about the MODE of recognition have very little basis. The FACT of recognition we may practically assume. The "how" we must leave with God. "Soul of my soul I shall meet thee again. With God be the rest." [1] Momerie. Immortality. CHAPTER VIII THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS We have already seen that the evidence of Scriptures leads us to the assurance that our dear ones departed are living a vivid, conscious life; that there is continuance of personal identity. "I" am still "I," and that there is memory still, clear and distinct, of the old friends and the old scenes on earth. § 1 We pass on to consider the relations between ourselves and them. Do they know now of our life on earth? Can there be between us comradeship in any sense? Can there be love and care and sympathy and prayer between us on these two sides of the grave, as there is between friends on earth on the two sides of the Atlantic?