A MAP OF LIFE not enter Heaven. Man is not simply an individual, he is a member of a community. And while the only great human community in existence was Fallen Humanity — to which as a race Heaven was closed — the individual, however holy, was debarred from Heaven. Not till the right relation between God and the Human Race was re-established (as God had promised Adam it would one day be) could the individual member of the race enter Heaven. There was no question of course of a holy man being eternally debarred from Heaven. But till Heaven was re-opened he must be in a place of waiting.* At last God did for man what man could not do for himself: He made the threefold restoration and so built a new road for the human race; but consider what man had by his own act become, and it will be small wonder if the new road lacks some of the simplicity of the old. The first road had been planned for man as he came, all perfect from the hand of God; the second had to be planned for man as he was, with the wounds and stains that were upon him after countless ages of bearing the assaults of the world, the temptations of the devil, the warfare within himself. For the first road God had made man; for the building of the second road God became man. * This place is referred to in various terms. Our Lord spoke of it as “Abraham’s bosom” (in the parable of Dives and Lazarus), and “Paradise” (in His promise to the Good Thief). St. Peter calls it “prison” (1. Pet. iii., 19), theologians “Limbo,” and in the English version of the Apostles’ Creed it is called “hell.” 44