The First Five Minutes after Death.
I. At our entrance on another state of existence we shall know what it is to exist under entirely new conditions. What will it be to find ourselves with the old self divested of that body which has clothed it since its first moment of existence able to achieve, it may be, so much, it may be, so little; living on, but under conditions which are so entirely new. This experience alone will add no little to our existing knowledge, and the addition will have been made during the first five minutes after death.
II. And the entrance on the next world must bring with it a knowledge of God such as is quite impossible in this life. His vast, His illimitable life, will present itself to the apprehension of our spirits as a clearly consistent whole not as a complex problem to be painfully mastered by the efforts of our understandings, but as a present, living, encompassing Being who is inflecting Himself upon the very sight, whether they will it or not, of His adoring creatures. "Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty" they were words of warning as well as words of promise.
III. At our entrance on another world we shall know ourselves as never before. The past will be spread out before it, and we shall take a comprehensive survey of it. One Being there is who knows us now, who knows each of us perfectly, who has always known us. Then, for the first time, we shall know ourselves even as also we are known. We shall not have to await the Judge's sentence; we shall read it at a glance, whatever it be, in this new apprehension of what we are.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit,No. 1098.
References: 1 Corinthians 13:12. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 1002; G. Huntington, Sermons for Holy Seasons,p. 157; Homilist,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 98; M. Dix, Sermons Doctrinal and Practical,p. 233; Talmage, Old Wells dug Out,p. 286; A. Craig, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 221; H. Wonnacott, Ibid.,vol. xvii., p. 238; Tinling, Ibid.,vol. xx., p. 392; E. Johnson, Ibid.,vol. xxii., p. 184; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., pp. 95, 137; vol. viii., p. 82; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 124.