The Spirits in Prison
E. H. Plumptre, D.D, Dean of Wells, talks about his sermon "The Spirits in Prison". Includes other short studies on the life after death. Printed in 1884.
“...As long as man is in this present world he is in a kingdom of externals, wherein he can escape from self-contemplation and self-knowledge, by the distractions of time, the noise and tumult of the world; but at death he enters upon a kingdom the opposite of all this. The veil which the world of sense, with its varied and incessantly moving manifoldness, spreads with soothing and softening influence over the stern reality of life, and which man finds ready to his hand to hide what he does not wish to see--this veil is torn asunder from before him in death, and his soul finds itself in a kingdom of pure realities. The manifold voices of this world, which during this earthly life sounded together with the voices of eternity, grow dumb, and the holy voice now sounds alone, no longer deadened by the tumult of the world; and hence the realm of the dead becomes a realm of judgment....”