In heaven at last. The days of mourning are ended. God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. To the wicked he says, "Woe unto you who laugh now; for you shall mourn and weep," to the righteous, "Blessed are you who weep now; for you shall laugh." Everlasting joy shall be upon their head, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
"O blessed way, and thrice-blessed end!" We are still in the wilderness, and have not yet reached that city of our God. We are still buffeting the storm, but pressing onward to the land where clouds and darkness are known no more.
The soul of man in the present world is no true expression of its Maker's handiwork. Its elements are incongruous and discordant. It is a disjointed mechanism; unrefined and undirected, all its movements are ominous of disaster. It needs to pass through the furnace, before it shall come out in purity and brightness. So long as the people of God linger on these shores of time, they will not only be suffering, but sinning men. "I shall be satisfied," says the Psalmist, "when I awake in your likeness." Nothing else satisfies. The regenerated soul thirsts for God, for the living God. The turbid and bitter waters of earth have served to prepare it for the pure river of life. Nor was the process completed until, at the grave's mouth, the last chain that bound it to earth was dissolved. These infirmities and sins and sorrows will vanish then. Christ's sorrowing followers are made like unto the angels; they are "the children of God, being the children of the resurrection."
Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man--the things which God has prepared for those who love him. That is a wondrous world of which the Savior says, "Where I am, there also shall my servant be." It has no need of the sun or the moon to shine in it. The glory and honor of the nations are gathered into it; there is no more curse; but the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him. The actual transition of the immortal spirit from time to eternity, from earth to heaven, no human eye ever beheld. No ear of man ever heard the shout, as the weary feet of the once mourning pilgrim were first planted on the long wished for shore, though guardian angels hovered over him as he passed through the dark valley.
There is no darkness now; the Lamb is the light thereof; they are the dazzling glories of eternal day. When the martyr Stephen fell, he exclaimed, "I see the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God." And what must be the vision when the children of sorrow see him face to face, and know even as they are known; where "the ransomed of the Lord return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads, and they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
Well may they look to the rock whence they were hewn, and the hole of the pit whence they were dug. It was a world alienated from God, and where sorrow upon sorrow, and convulsion upon convulsion agitated it in a thousand forms. It is a mournful, a fearful retrospect they look upon, with only here and there a few radiations - Is this the dark land from which we have been rescued, and this the wilderness we have traveled over?
And how were they rescued? They were partakers in the universal apostasy, and under the condemning sentence of that law which is holy, just, and good. It was not by works of righteousness which they had done, or ever could perform. They are redeemed sinners, and would have sunk under the weight of their iniquity, had not the God-man bore their sins in his own body on the tree. Not a thread, not a filament, not a fiber of their justifying righteousness was wrought by their own hands. And their personal holiness, whence was it? Who made them to differ from a world that lies in wickedness--and from what they themselves once were? When days of trial came, and temptations assaulted them, and flesh and sense were arrayed against them; when there was conflict and tumult, and the subtle adversary went about seeking whom he might devour; who stimulated them to watch and pray, and wrestle and overcome? Whose unsleeping eye and unwearied arm and unchanging faithfulness cared for them in youth, in manhood, and in old age- at home and abroad, in health and in sickness, in storm and in sunshine? And whose were those everlasting arms ever and anon thrown around them; and whose that loving heart, giving them the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, lest they should be discouraged in the conflict, and never reach the heavenly land?
Many a youthful pilgrim who seemed to run well, grew weary and fainted, and turned back. The wilderness, as they look back upon it, is strewed with the fainting, the slumbering, the fallen, the dead, the lost. From the cradle to the grave, and from the grave up to the heavenly city, every incident in their history, every joy and every pang of sorrow has been under the control of infinite love. Even the hairs of their head were all numbered. Will it not be delightful to look back and see how the outstretched arm was spread over them, and how they were borne as on eagles' wings?
Oh what adoring, what humble thankfulness will then take the place of that restless and depressed and murmuring spirit with which they so unsubmissively endured their trials in the present world. Sweet reminiscences these, that make the mourner humble. Blessed retrospect, that prostrates the soul in the dust, and makes it fall at the feet of Jesus, and cover its angelic face with its wings. Profound will be the veneration with which they enter into his presence and contemplate his awesome majesty, yet calm and tranquil as the sea of glass on which they stand to show forth his praise. Never will they again love the creature more than the Creator. They are lost and swallowed up, not in the floods of earthly sorrow, but the ocean of heavenly joy- not in themselves and those they loved on the earth, but in the uncreated, undying glories of the Infinite One. It will be the wonder of their eternity that they are thus filled with all the fullness of God, and that, plunging as they once were in miry places, they now float in that ocean of light and love where there is neither bottom nor shore!
The humility of heaven is one of the brightest features of its character, and one of the sources of its sweetest joy. Honors they have; but they cast their crowns before the throne. If "pride was not made for man," it will never be found in heaven. Its empire on earth is world-wide and powerful; it reigns in hell; but in the spirits of just men made perfect, it shall find no place. Amid the splendors of that everlasting and glorious world, every laurel withers that is not wreathed around the Savior's brow. If the religion of earth is the religion of heaven in miniature, the purest gem that adorns it is this heaven-born humility. It is a sacred thing, because it is so humble and lies so low. We should love to think of that blessed world if it were only for its humility. When those ransomed spirits, weary of the conflicts of earth, repose under the shadow of the tree of life, and there, at the feet of the enthroned Lamb, reflect upon the way they have been led through the wilderness, and look down upon the agonies of that eternal pit from which they have been rescued, how can it be otherwise than that a deep and everlasting sense of their unworthiness and ill-desert should add to the fullness of their gratitude and joy?
They are perfectly humble, and perfectly happy. From the hour of their conversion, redeeming love has been their theme; but never until now, as they stand on Mount Zion, have they given utterance to the ecstasy of their joy. And even here, on this low earth, where the graves of the departed are scattered and the cypress mourns, voices are not lacking, embarrassed and suppressed it may be by their tears, to utter the song, "You are worthy; for you were slain, and have redeemed us unto God by your blood." Oh that I could direct the eyes of the mourner upward, and in these hours of darkness bid his heart rest on that blessed world where, in a few short hours, all, both among the living and the dead, who fear God and love his Son, will meet in holier and more intimate fellowship. "Up there," sin and sorrow and death never enter. "Up there," sighs and farewells are a sound unknown. "Up there," they sit together in heavenly places, and drink the wine new with Christ in his Father's kingdom. "Up there," the holy men and women who parted at the grave, redeemed parents and their redeemed children, whom the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God have summoned from the sleep of centuries, will meet, not to recount their own sorrows, but to tell of him who came to the humiliation of the manger, and the agonies of the cross--to rescue them from endless weeping and infinite despair!
"I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, "Look, the home of God is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will remove all of their sorrows, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. For the old world and its evils are gone forever." And the one sitting on the throne said, "Look, I am making all things new!" And then he said to me, "Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true." Revelation 21:3-5.
