On page 42 of "Miscellaneous Writings" we find this wonderfully assuring statement by our revered Leader: "Man is not annihilated, nor does he lose his identity, by passing through the belief called death." On the same page Mrs. Eddy writes, "When we shall have passed the ordeal called death, or destroyed this last enemy, and shall have come upon the same plane of conscious existence with those gone before, then we shall be able to communicate with and to recognize them." It is too true that material sense gives little hint of man's identity and immortality, but happily for humanity the light of spiritual reality can never be wholly shut out by mortal belief, hence we have glimpses all along the way of our own identity as well as of the spiritual selfhood of those with whom we are associated on the human plane.
In times of sorrow the human heart often leads one to ask whether we would know those whom we loved here, if we were to meet them on another plane of existence. There are many remarkable lessons to be gathered from the Bible which fully answer this question, if we grasp their spiritual intent. There is the familiar story of Dives and Lazarus, which has no slightest hint that the identity of those who figured therein was even momentarily obscured by the great changes through which they had passed. The rich man recognized the identity of Lazarus, whom he had doubtless seen many times, and that of Abraham, whom he had never seen. It is also interesting to note that he whose all-sufficiency on the plane of material belief had been his wealth, appears ill Jesus parable as a humble suppliant, asking help even from Lazarus, the erstwhile beggar. Besides this, we see that he had possibly a keener sense than ever of affection for his brothers after the flesh, because he greatly desired to do something which would tend to waken them spiritually, showing that his sense of love was not destroyed but possibly quickened in passing through the experience called death.
A beautiful lesson on identity as a spiritual idea may be learned in reading of the meeting of the old patriarch Jacob with his son Joseph in Egypt. They had been separated for fully twenty-three years, and all this time Jacob had believed that his son was dead. When they met, both must have been greatly changed, so far as the bodily appearance goes; but the identity, the true selfhood, is that which we really love, in spite of all the blindness of mortal mind. There can be no question that Jacob had done his utmost for Joseph, in a far higher way than is indicated by the splendid coat of many colors which the boy wore. Jacob and his son ofttimes drew near to God together; hence as the years passed they grew closer to each other, as must ever be the case where thought is spiritualized. We find that Joseph never for a moment lost sight of the real man's spiritual purity, with its mighty power to clarify thought and purpose, and it was this very thing which gave such rapturous joy to the meeting of father and son in Goshen. It also points unmistakably to the uniting of what have seemed to many of us to be severed bonds.
