compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses, who themselves have
died, and who are watching his departure. We ought to die with such
faith in Jesus, such confidence in God, such confident expectation and
hope, that they will rejoice to see us conquer death. Our last conflict
should be fought in a manner worthy of the company and scenes into which
we are immediately to pass.
We should not anxiously seek to remove entirely from any one, in the
course of his life, his fears with regard to death, except as we may
substitute faith for those fears. God probably intends them now for the
increase of faith. Moreover, when the event of death happens, it will be
mingled with so much mercy as to make the Christian smile at his fears.
The exhortation of the apostle in view of his great discourse of death
and resurrection is noticeable: "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye
steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord;
forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."
There are cases in which the clouded faculties, or delirium, prevent
the full enjoyment of a peaceful, happy death. Such cases seem painful
to friends, but the Shepherd knows when it is best to hide the face of a
sheep which he carries through the valley, and that it is sometimes
better for the sheep to pass the valley in the black and dark night,
than when daylight, by revealing the horrors of the place, would excite
fear. All this may safely be left to those hands which spoiled death of
his sting, and to that love which is stronger than death. Wherever, and
whenever, and in whatever manner we may die, it will be under the care
and direction of Him who will no more see us in the power of the enemy,
than a strong and faithful shepherd would suffer a beloved member of his
flock to fall into the power of the lion.
The last lines of a hymn by Doddridge--
"Then speechless clasp thee in my arms,
The antidote of death"--
are altered, by some compilers, who substitute the word _conqueror_ for
_antidote_. But the author saw the truthfulness of his own chosen
language, though the word in question be not convenient for musical
expression. When we are already stung by a poisonous creature, we take
something which proves an antidote to the effect of the sting. This
medicine is not so much a conqueror, as an antidote; for the poison is
not developed. But the sting is inflicted, and before the poisonous
injury is felt, the antidote prevents it. These words of Christ
correspond to this: "Verily, verily I say unto you, If a man keep my
saying, he shall never see death." How often we behold this verified!
The spectators "see death," in his approach, in his effects; they weep
and tremble, while the dear patient does not "see" it; for something
else absorbs his thoughts, fixes his attention; he is stung, indeed, by
the monster; but Christ is an antidote to death, causes it to pass by
without inflicting pain upon the mind, or in any way hurting its victim.
Dr. Watts illustrates and confirms all this:--
"Jesus, the vision of thy face
Hath overpowering charms;
Scarce shall I feel death's cold embrace,
If Christ be in my arms."
* * * * *
The piece of paper which would suffice to write the twenty-third Psalm
upon it, would not be large enough for a common title deed; and yet that
Psalm, if it expresses our experience, is worth infinitely more than is
conveyed, or secured, by all the registries of deeds under the sun. We
are each of us to see a time when we shall feel the truth of this. If
but these first few words of the Psalm are true in my case, if "the Lord
is my Shepherd," all the rest of the Psalm is a record, a promise, a
pledge, of past, present, and future good.
There are six things declared by Christ to be characteristic of the
relation which he and his people sustain to each other, as Shepherd and
the sheep:
1. "My sheep hear my voice;
2. And I know them;
3. And they follow me;
4. And I give unto them eternal life;
5. And they shall never perish;
6. Neither shall any pluck them out of my hand."
Here we find directions to duty, as well as promises of future good.
Since it is more important how we live than how we die, and since death
is merely the arrival at the end of a journey, the beginning, progress,
and history of the journey determining what the arrival is to be, we
shall do well to dismiss our borrowed trouble with regard to the manner
of our departure out of the world, and be solicitous only with regard to
the right discharge of present duty. We read, "Precious in the sight of
the Lord is the death of his saints." The death of every child of his
is, with God, an object of unspeakable interest; his own honor is
concerned in it; its influence on survivors is of great importance; it
will be among the means by which God accomplishes several, it may be
many, purposes of providence, but especially of his grace. "No man
dieth to himself." Great interests are involved in his death, beyond
his own personal welfare. Now, if we have lived for God, he will make
our death the object of his especial care, and will honor it by its
being the means of promoting his glory. Instead, therefore, of gloomy
apprehensions as to dying, we should cherish the noble wish and aim that
Christ may be magnified in our body, whether it be by life or by death.
If our life has been a walking with God, "THOU ART WITH ME" will be a
perfect warrant, now, and in death, to "FEAR NO EVIL."
III.
THE SEARCH FOR THE DEPARTED.
No bliss mid worldly crowds is bred,
Like musing on the sainted dead.
BISHOP MANT.
We seek in vain, on earth, for one who has gone to heaven. Though better
informed as to the objects of our love than they who lingered about the
deserted tomb of the Saviour, and were asked, "Why seek ye the living
among the dead," we nevertheless find ourselves, in our thoughts,
searching for them; so difficult is it at once to feel that they are
wholly and forever departed. There is an affecting and beautifully
simple illustration of our thoughts and feelings, in this respect, in
the search which was made for Elijah after his translation. Fifty men of
the sons of the prophets went and stood to view afar off, when Elijah
and Elisha stood by the Jordan. Elisha returned alone, and these men
could not feel reconciled to the loss of their great master. They were
not persuaded that he had gone to heaven, no more to return; they sought
leave to seek him, and to recover him: "Peradventure," they said, "the
Spirit of the Lord hath taken him up and cast him upon some mountain, or
into some valley." Elisha peremptorily refused to grant them leave. They
were importunate; and when, at last, it would, perhaps, seem like
obstinacy in him, or like jealousy of their superior love for Elijah, to
forbid the search, which at the worst would only be fruitless, he
yielded. Three days they explored the valleys, ransacked the thickets,
groped in the caves, traversed hills, followed imaginary trails and
footprints, but found him not. When they came again to Elisha, "he said
unto them, Did I not say unto you, Go not?"
We cannot become accustomed at once, nor for a long time, to the absence
of our friend. If his death was sudden, or if it took place away from
home, or during our absence, we expect to see him again; if a vehicle
stops at the door, the heart beats with an instantaneous hope which dies
with its first breath, bringing over us a deeper and stronger refluence
of sorrow. We catch a sight of articles familiarly used by a departed
friend; they are identified with little passages in his history, or with
his daily life: is it possible that he is altogether and forever
disconnected from them? They are the same; those perishable things,
those comparatively worthless things, having no value at all except as
his use of them made them precious, retain their shapes and places; but
where is he? and must not he return and abide, like them?
No, he is gone to heaven. The places which knew him shall know him no
more forever. Those things, which have an imperishable value in being
associated with his memory, are, to him, like the leaves of a past
autumn to a tree now filled with blossoms. The mention of every valued
possession once indescribably dear to him, would awaken but slight
emotions; even the recent history of the dwelling which he built and
furnished, would be no more to him than the rehearsal to a grown person
of that which had happened to a block house, or card figure, which
amused his childhood. We walk and sit in the places identified with our
last remembrances of the departed; but he is not there; we hallow the
anniversaries of his birth and death; but he gives us no recognition; we
read his letters; they make him seem alive; his voice, his smile, his
love are there; and when we have finished, nature, exhausted with its
weeping, sighs, "And where is he?"
He is gone to heaven. Even the earthly house of his tabernacle is
dissolved; that part of him which was all of which we were cognizant by
our senses, is no more. We could not recognize it; to the earth, out of
which it was taken, it has, by slow degrees, returned,--as though every
thing earthly, belonging to him, 'must needs die, and be as water spilt
on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.' We travel to his
birthplace; there is the house where he was born; we meet those who grew
with him side by side; we are among the scenes which were most familiar
to him; he planted those trees; he collected those pictures; there is
his portrait, he rested here, he studied, he worked, he rejoiced, he
wept, in these consecrated places; but did we go thinking to find him
there? "Did I not say unto you, Go not?"
We shall surely make him real to our thoughts, if not to our senses,
where he lies buried. But we may as well stand upon the sea shore, where
we had the last look of a sea-faring friend, and think that those
waters, and those sands, and that horizon, will restore him. They only
serve to open farther the path of his departure; they lead our thoughts
away to dwell upon him where we imagine him to be. Nowhere does heaven
seem more real than at the grave of a friend; for we know that he has
not perished, and as we stand on that verge of all our fruitless search
and expectation, we are compelled to fix him somewhere in our thoughts;
but as he is nowhere behind us, we look onward and upward.
Our desire for departed friends, however natural and innocent, if it
resulted as we sometimes would have it, would prove to be unwise.
Suppose that those "fifty strong men" had found Elijah, or in any way
could have prevented his translation to heaven. With exultation, they
would have led him back across the Jordan to the company of their
friends, amidst the thanksgivings of the people. But, alas! for the
prophet himself, this would have been his loss, even had it proved to be
their gain. The opening Jordan, cleft in twain by his rapt spirit,
pressing its way to the skies, had returned to its course; and now the
fords of the river, with its rocky bed, would have required his laboring
feet to grope their way back to his toil; or the arms of men, instead of
the chariots of fire and horses of fire, would have borne him again to
the dull realities of life; and there, rebuking Ahab, and fleeing from
Jezebel, punishing the prophets of Baal, and upbraiding the people of
God in their idolatries, fasting and faint under junipers, or covering
his face with his mantle at the still small voice of the Lord his God,
he would again have prayed, "O Lord God, take away my life, for I am no
better than my fathers." 'Let me not wait longer for my promised
translation; let me die as my fathers did; for wherein am I better than
they?' So weary had he grown of life. Blind and weak do these fifty
strong men seem to us, in searching for this ascended prophet, this
traveller over the King's road in royal state, one of the only two who
might not taste of death; the companion, in heaven, of Enoch, with a
body which fills all the ransomed spirits there with joyful expectation,
because it is a pledge and earnest of "the adoption, to wit, the
redemption of their bodies." If, amid the new wonders and raptures of
the heavenly world, he had had one moment to look down upon those
"fifty strong men," as they searched for him, he might well have used,
in cheerful irony, something like his old upbraidings of the priests
near Baal's altar: "Search deeper, ye 'strong men,' in the thickets and
caves; peradventure I sleep in the brakes, and must be awaked; call,
with your fifty voices together, that I may be startled from my trance;
will ye give over till ye bring me back to Jericho? Will ye search but
three days? Shall I lose the remnant of my life on earth?"
And while they grew weary and discouraged, and concluded that, if he
should be found, it might be in the far distant hills of Moab, or the
wilds of Philistia, or they knew not where, and went back with hearts
unsatisfied, and debating whether he were yet a wanderer upon earth, or
whether so impossible a thing as they deemed his translation to heaven,
without dying, had taken place, the glorified Elijah was with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, with Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and David. But even
Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like him. There, with a body
like unto Christ's own future glorious body, he sat, with but one
compeer--Enoch, and he, transcending all the hosts of the redeemed in
the foretasted glories of the resurrection. Adam, by whom came death,
sees in him that which he himself is to share, when by one Man, also,
shall come the resurrection from the dead. Abel, whose feet first trod
the dark, cold stream, leaving his murdered body behind him, beholds
with love and wonder him who passed the river of death ("that ancient
river!") without dying. Even the Word beholds in him an earnest of his
own incarnation, resurrection, and ascension from Olivet. To-day, our
loved ones in heaven look upon him, and say, as Peter did at this
prophet's visit on Tabor, (when he spoke of tabernacles there--"one for
Elias,") "Master, it is good for us to be here." But we, like the "fifty
strong men," would find them and bring them back; and, like Peter,
would build tabernacles to retain them. The family circle is gathered
together at some birthday or festival, and, perhaps, we long for the
departed, and think that they long for us; and we would bring them back,
and place them in their deserted chairs. We are "strong men" in the
power of grief, and in our wishes; but the search for Elijah is the
counterpart of our vain desires and most unreasonable sorrow.
When our friends have gone to heaven, it is not apt to be heaven, so
much as earthly sorrow, which fills our minds. Happily, we have been
taught to believe, and we do generally believe, that the souls of the
righteous enter immediately into glory; that their happiness is perfect,
though not completed; they are as happy as disembodied spirits can be;
unspeakably happier than they were here, but still not in full
possession of those sources of pleasure which they will receive when
their bodies are raised, and their whole natures are made complete. But
"to die is gain;" it is "to depart and to be with Christ, which is far
better;" it is entering "into the joy of their Lord." That dreary
thought of sleeping after death till the day of judgment; the idea that
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, became insensible at death, and that the last
thing which Jacob, for example, knew, was Joseph's kiss, and the next
thing which he will know will be the archangel's trump, the interval of
many thousands of years being a perfect blank in his existence, is so
unlike the benevolent order of God's providence in nature and grace,
that it cannot gain much credence with believers in the simple
representations of the Bible. What a mockery Elijah's translation seems,
upon that theory! Whither was he translated? Did the chariots of fire,
and the horses of fire, convey him to a dreamless sleep of thousands of
years? Was that pomp, that emblazonry, all that fiery pageant, a
deception signifying nothing but that the greatest of prophets was to
begin a stupid slumber, which, this day, under a heaven with not one
redeemed soul in it, and in a world where there is every thing to be
done for God and men, holds him, and every other dead saint, in a
useless suspension of his consciousness, and, indeed, for so many ages,
annihilation? Poor economy in the dispensation of overflowing love to
intelligent beings,--we say it with submission,--does this seem to be;
nor can we think that, in the case of Elijah, it was this which was
heralded by horses and chariots of fire. Chariots and horses are emblems
of flight; but if sleep were descending upon the hero of the prophetic
age, twilight would more appropriately have drawn her soft veil over
nature, birds would have begun their vespers, clouds would have put on
their changing, pensive colors, while cadences of music, breathed by the
winds, would have shed lethargic influences into the scene. Inspiration
does not trifle with us by really meaning such a preparation for a sleep
of ages, and yet informing us, in so many words, that "the Lord would
take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind." No; going to heaven is not
going to sleep, and going to sleep is not going to heaven. Sleep and
death are used figuratively for each other, according to the laws of
language, which describes appearances without regard to scientific
truth, as in speaking of the sun's rising, for example, and the going
down of the sun; but to fall asleep in Jesus is to awake in heaven; to
be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. This we all
believe; and may we never be moved away from this cheering, animating
hope. Yet how little power has this belief and hope upon our feelings
and conduct! for our Christian graces partake of the same imperfection
which characterizes our whole nature; the soil is poor in which they
grow; the seasons are short, the climate cold; they do not reach
maturity. It is instructive to notice how men who have had the very best
advantages, and the greatest knowledge, are, nevertheless, prone to
unbelief. Christ appeared to his disciples, and upbraided them because
they believed not them which said he was risen. Their incredulity
strikes us as marvellous. They were not the first, nor the last, whose
want of faith is a marvel. These sons of the prophets in Elisha's day
were equally slow to believe. They themselves had said to him, "Knowest
thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day?"
Elisha came back to them from the scene of the translation. Of course he
told them what had happened, describing minutely the whole of that
preternatural scene; he probably related the conversation which Elijah
had with him as they walked; and this inspired companion of the departed
prophet, having himself no doubt that Elijah had gone to heaven, so
instructed these sons of the prophets. But how hard it is for the things
which are unseen and eternal to seize and hold our minds! how readily we
yield to surmises, rather than admit the clear disclosures of spiritual
things! Straightway these sons of the prophets, who should have retired
each to his secret place, for contemplation and prayer, and, in the
solemn assembly, should have directed the thoughts of each other and of
the people to the instructive lessons suggested by the departure of
Elijah to heaven, were making up an exploring party, to prove that their
illustrious chief had met with some disaster in being left forlorn upon
some mountain, or in a valley; that the spirit of God had entranced him,
and that his weary feet, instead of treading the pavement of heaven,
were ensnared in some dark place; and so, in pity for him, and with
filial love, they would seek him, and bring him back to Jericho!
If we had clear and strong faith, our joy at the thought of a glorified
spirit, however necessary its presence to us here, would transcend all
our sorrows; the streaming beams of sunshine would irradiate our
weeping; we should think more of his happiness than of our discomfort.
Instead of departed spirits falling asleep, it is we who have a spirit
of slumber. O that we might walk by faith with glorified spirits before
the throne, instead of remanding them,--as it seems we sometimes would
do, if we could,--to the ignorance and infirmity of our condition.
Our feelings towards the departed are the same as towards other
prohibited things. Many are continually seeking for pleasures which God
has taken away, or is purposely withholding from them. Let any one look
at the history of his feelings, and see if his state of mind be not one
of perpetual expectation of some form of happiness yet to arrive; an
ideal of bliss, some prefigured condition, in which contentment and
peace are to abide; while the discovery that he is not to have it, would
make him inconsolably miserable. Our search for lost joys, or for those
which God is not prepared, or not disposed, to give us, and the
happiness which he desires rather to give us, and to have us seek, are
severally represented to us by this search for Elijah, and by Elijah
himself, who is, meanwhile, at God's right hand. At his right hand are
pleasures forever-more; but some, in the ardor and strength of their
affections, are seeking for that which they will never obtain, and that
is, happiness independent of God. Some tell us that they mean to make
the most of life, and to be happy while they live; therefore, begone,
reflection! religion is not for the spring-tide of youth; mirth and
merry days are for the young; soberness and the russet garb of autumn
belong to the decline of life, which certainly to them, they think, is
far off;--as though every material necessary for their last, long sleep,
may not at this moment be in the warerooms and shops; as though they
could boast themselves even of one to-morrow, and knew what the
to-morrows of many years would bring forth. The Bible is against their
way of thinking and manner of life; and to push aside the Bible in our
search after any thing, is a certain sign of being in the wrong. And all
this with the mistaken belief that to love God, and to be loved of him,
is not the greatest, the only satisfying good,--the God that framed the
voice for that music which charms a circle of friends, and made those
curious fingers, and gave them all that cunning skill which sheds
delight on others, and empowered that heart to swell with such
conceptions of earthly pleasure;--and that to love him, and be loved by
him, is the direst necessity of our being, to be postponed as long as
possible, and then to be accepted as a last resort and the less of two
evils. Where is the Lord God of Elijah, the God of all power and might,
the God of all grace and consolation, the God of our life, and the
length of our days? Banished from the world which these friends have
made for themselves; an intruder into the charmed circle in which the
wand of fancy has enclosed them; a dreaded power standing over them, to
snatch away the only bliss which they ever expect to enjoy. O gilded
butterflies, made for a few days of sunshine, and doomed to perish at
the first touch of frost! had they no souls; were there no hereafter, no
heaven, no hell; if it would not be as desirable to be happy millions of
years from to-day, as now; if they were not including all their hopes
and efforts to be happy within a handbreadth of time, and liable to lose
even that,--the wise man might stop with saying, "Rejoice, O young man,
in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and
walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes;" but
the infinite future compels him to add, "but know thou, that for all
these things God will bring thee into judgment." Such are the motives by
which, in their present condition, and with their present views, they
are most likely to be affected; yet some of them, we are glad to say, in
their best moods, are also affected and influenced aright when we tell
them that, even if our existence terminated at death, the joys which are
now to be found in loving and serving God, are better than the pleasures
of sin for a season.
There is not one of us who has not lost a friend, a schoolmate, a
companion of early life, one who has disappeared from our side, a
frequent associate in the business of life, or one whom we have been
accustomed to see in the places of business; and perhaps a member of our
family circle.