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1. A philosopher travelled around the world to find a place of perfect calm and rest. He found instead sin and sorrow, suffering and death everywhere. By the knowledge and experience so gained thus, he arrived at the conclusion that this world is not meant to be our permanent and real home; but that that real home, for which we have such deep longing in our soul, is elsewhere. There the soul will find perfect rest.
2. Once a bird was caught near the Gulf of Mexico and sent off to a place eight hundred and fifty miles away. It was put in a close cage and did not know the way along which it was taken. But when it grew up, it returned without any guidance or help to the very same spot from which it had been taken away. Instinct did it. Just so, the man whose conscience is alive by the grace of God leaves this transitory world and, with the guidance and help of the Holy Spirit, reaches heaven, the eternal home for which he has been created.
3. A naturalist took the eggs of a nightingale to a cold country, and hoped that when hatched the birds would regard that country as their home and remain there. But they came out, and, after the summer, they flew away to their native home and never came back. Similarly, though born in this world, we are not for this world. As soon as the time comes for us to leave the body, we shall move away into our eternal home.
4. At the time of death the soul does not die, nor does it go away to some far-off place. But through death it begins a new life, entering a new state. As a child coming out from a mother’s womb begins new life by entering into a new state, but the world or place he lives in continues to be the same, so the spirit after coming out of the body enters into a far better spiritual state, although the world in which it lives continues to be the same. The child in the mother’s womb and the spirit in the body remain in ignorance of their future condition, as that is hidden from their eyes. The child after coming out of the womb is unable to see the womb from which it came, and the soul after leaving the body, except under certain conditions, is unable to see the physical world from which it came, as it lives always in the spiritual world, and the physical world is but coarse matter enfolded in the spiritual. As by cutting the umbilical cord the child is severed from the mother’s womb, so the spirit is severed from the body by cutting off the silver cord (Eccles. xii. 6). The mother’s womb for the child, and the body for the soul, are places of preparation for the future. From the body the spirit passes into God’s presence, where it attains its real destiny and perfection.