Think how it helps in the perplexities about God's dealings when young and useful lives are taken from the earth. An angry mourner said to me recently, "I don't believe God has anything to do with it, else why should He take away a noble life like that and leave all these stupid useless people in the world?" I told him of my hope of this ministry in the Unseen and suggested that perhaps God did not want ONLY the stupid useless people. And think especially how it deepens the importance of our life on earth to feel that it has a bearing on our usefulness for ever. The more we increase our talents here, the more we shall be able to help our Saviour there. He Himself suggests this in the parables of the Talents and the Pounds. "Thy pound has gained five, I will set thee over five cities. Thy pound has gained ten, I will set thee over ten cities. I will give thee a larger and nobler work hereafter." Is not that an incentive to stir one's blood? The more I grow in love, in unselfishness, in knowledge of God, in righteousness of life, the more use I shall be to my dear Lord and to my brethren for ever. CHAPTER XII CONCLUSION So we close our thoughts about the NEAR HEREAFTER, the life immediately after death. The FAR Hereafter--the great mystery of Judgment and Hell and Heaven belongs to a later section. Here we have been dealing only with the life going on to-day in the Unseen--side by side with our present life. Ah! that wonderful Paradise land--that wonderful Church of God in the Unseen--with its vast numbers, with its enthusiastic love, with all its grand leaders who have been trained on earth. WE AND THEY together form the great continuous Church of God. We are all ONE LONG PROCESSION; they at the head in the Unseen. What a life it is! What a work it has! Said I not well it was a Gospel of the Hereafter, a good news of God! It will make you solemn as you feel that character passes on unchanged. That is good; but it will do more. It will take away the sting and the horror of death. It is not the pain of dying that makes that horror when I come to die. After all, men bear far more pain without flinching. It is not merely the parting for the present with those I love. We have constantly to do that when they go to other lands without breaking our hearts about it. It is not even any doubt about a future Resurrection at the Second Advent. I may believe that, and yet get little comfort from it. That Advent seems so far away. It may be next week; but it may be 5,000 years hence, and meantime what of my life? Sleep, unconsciousness, darkness? What? No wonder I should shrink from that mysterious unknown. But teach me the ancient Scriptural doctrine of the PARADISE life as it appears in the Bible. Teach me that in the hour after death I shall pass into the Unseen with myself, with my full life, my feelings, my character, my individuality, and in that solemn hour death will lose its horror. Is not that a Gospel?