(_VIEWS OF DEATH AND HEAVEN--ASPIRATIONS._)
MISTRESS,--Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.--If death, which is
before you and us all, were any other thing than a friendly
dissolution, and a change, not a destruction of life, it would seem a
hard voyage to go through such a sad and dark trance,[456] so thorny a
valley, as is the wages of sin. But I am confident the way ye know,
though your foot never trod in that black shadow. The loss of life is
gain to you. If Christ Jesus be the period, the end, and lodging-home,
at the end of your journey, there is no fear; ye go to a friend. And
since ye have had communion with Him in this life, and He hath a pawn
or pledge of yours, even the largest share of your love and heart, ye
may look death in the face with joy.
[456] Passage.
If the heart be in heaven, the remnant of you cannot be kept the
prisoner of the second death. But though He be the same Christ in the
other life that ye found Him to be here, yet He is so far in His
excellency, beauty, sweetness, irradiations, and beams of majesty,
above what He appeared here, when He is seen as He is, that ye shall
misken Him, and He shall appear a new Christ. And His kisses,
breathings, embracements, the perfume, the ointment of His name poured
out on you, shall appear to have more of God, and a stronger smell of
heaven, of eternity, of a Godhead, of majesty and glory, there than
here; as water at the fountain, apples in the orchard and beside the
tree, have more of their native sweetness, taste, and beauty, than
when transported to us some hundred miles.
I mean not that Christ can lose any of His sweetness in the carrying,
or that He, in His Godhead and loveliness of presence, can be changed
to the worse, betwixt the little spot of the earth that ye are in, and
the right hand of the Father far above all heavens. But the change
will be in you, when ye shall have new senses, and the soul shall be a
more deep and more capacious vessel, to take in more of Christ; and
when means (the chariot, the Gospel, that He is now carried in, and
ordinances that convey Him) shall be removed. Sure ye cannot now be
said to see Him face to face; or to drink of the wine of the highest
fountain, or to take in seas and tides of fresh love immediately,
without vessels, midses, or messengers, at the Fountain itself, as ye
will do a few days hence, when ye shall be so near as to be with
Christ (Luke xxiii. 43; John xvii. 24; Phil. i. 23; 1 Thess. iv. 17).
Ye would, no doubt, bestow a day's journey, yea, many days' journey on
earth, to go up to heaven, and fetch down anything of Christ; how much
more may ye be willing to make a journey to go in person to heaven (it
is not lost time, but gained eternity) to enjoy the full Godhead! And
then, in such a manner as He is there! not in His week-day's apparel,
as He is here with us, in a drop or the tenth part of a night's dewing
of grace and sweetness; but He is there in His marriage-robe of glory,
richer, more costly, more precious, in one hem or button of that
garment of Fountain majesty than a million of worlds. Oh, the well is
deep! Ye shall then think that preachers, and sinful ambassadors on
earth, did but spill and mar His praises, when they spoke of Him and
preached His beauty.
Alas! we but make Christ black and less lovely, in making such
insignificant, and dry, and cold, and low expressions of His highest
and transcendent super-excellency to the daughters of Jerusalem. Sure
I have often, for my own part, sinned in this thing. No doubt angels
do not fulfil their task, according to their obligation, in that
Christ keeps their feet from falling with the lost devils; though I
know they are not behind in going to the utmost of created power. But
there is sin in our praising, and sin in the quantity, besides other
sins. But I must leave this; it is too deep for me. Go and see, and we
desire to go with you; but we are not masters of our own diet.[457]
If, in that last journey, ye tread on a serpent in the way, and
thereby wound your heel, as Jesus Christ did before you, the print of
the wound shall not be known at the resurrection of the just. Death is
but an awesome step, over time and sin, to sweet Jesus Christ, who
knew and felt the worst of death, for death's teeth hurt Him. We know
death hath no teeth now, no jaws, for they are broken. It is a free
prison; citizens pay nothing for the grave. The jailor who had the
power of death is destroyed: praise and glory be to the First-begotten
of the dead.
[457] _Diet_, used for fixed time.
The worst possible that may be is, that ye leave behind you children,
husband, and the church of God in miseries. But ye cannot get them to
heaven with you for the present. Ye shall not miss them, and Christ
cannot miscount one of the poorest of His lambs. No lad, no girl, no
poor one shall be a-missing, ere[458] ye see them again, in the day
that the Son shall render up the kingdom to His Father.
[458] None shall be longer missed than just till the time when ye
shall see them again.
The evening and the shadow of every poor hireling is coming. The sun
of Christ's church in this life is declining low. Not a soul of the
militant company will be here within a few generations; our Husband
will send for them all. It is a rich mercy that we are not married to
time longer than the course be finished.
Ye may rejoice that ye go not to heaven till ye know that Jesus is
there before you; that when ye come thither, at your first entry ye
may feel the smell of His ointments, His myrrh, aloes, and cassia. And
this first salutation of His will make you find it is no uncomfortable
thing to die. Go and enjoy your gain; live on Christ's love while ye
are here, and all the way.
As for the church which ye leave behind you, the government is upon
Christ's shoulders, and He will plead for the blood of His saints. The
Bush hath been burning above five thousand years, and we never yet saw
the ashes of this fire. Yet a little while, and the vision shall not
tarry: it will speak, and not lie. I am more afraid of my duty, than
of the Head Christ's government. He cannot fail to bring judgment to
victory. Oh that we could wait for our hidden life! Oh that Christ
would remove the covering, draw aside the curtain of time, and rend
the heavens, and come down! Oh that shadows and night were gone, that
the day would break, and that He who feedeth among the lilies would
cry to His heavenly trumpeters, "Make ready, let us go down and fold
together the four corners of the world, and marry the bride!" His
grace be with you.
Now, if I have found favour with you, and if ye judge me faithful, my
last suit to you is that ye would leave me a legacy; and that is, that
my name may be, at the very last, in your prayers: as I desire also,
it may be in the prayers of those of your Christian acquaintance with
whom ye have been intimate.
Your brother, in his own Lord Jesus,