of them, others will ere long have concerning us. What would make us
satisfied and happy to know respecting them? What are we glad to say of
their preparation for an eternal state? What would we have had that
preparation be? In what respects better or different? Where do we love
to assign them their places? And what is it pleasant to believe are
their thoughts of us, of earth, of eternity, of the gospel, of this life
as a season of preparation for heaven? We shall soon be the subjects of
the same contemplations in the minds of others. The hosts of that long
procession, of which we are the part now passing over the stage, are
urging and pressing us from behind, and we must go down, as others have
before us,--our love, our envy, our hatred perish,--and we no more have
any portion in all that is done under the sun.
We must give up happiness as the great aim and end of existence, and,
instead of it, take this for our supreme endeavor and chief end--the
conscientious performance of our duty to God, and to others. We are
never really happy till we cease to expect happiness from the things of
this world. As soon as we begin to be satisfied with God, and find that
to think of God, to love him, to trust in him, to serve him, is
happiness enough, we attain to solid peace; and then, turning and
following the sun, all desirable pleasure pursues us and solicits us,
like our shadows, the more eagerly and steadily the more that we flee
from them, and the less that we turn ourselves to them. We never can be
happy by searching for happiness; but when we give up this search, and
duty becomes the motto of life, we are inevitably happy. God must
satisfy us--his personal love to us, communion with him, the
contemplation of his character, ways, and works; in short, the
consciousness of having him for a personal friend, disclosing all our
thoughts to him, looking to him and waiting for him in all things, and,
as the Bible expresses it, "walking" with him. Then he makes our wants
his care; and while he leads us through strange paths which we should
not have chosen, it is to bring us, at the last, into a condition which
will make us happy chiefly from the reflection that God himself
appointed it. Disappointments, of which we were forewarned, and which we
had every reason to expect, embitter that life whose only sources of
happiness are confined to this world, and do not relate to God. Making
him the supreme source of our happiness, we give up undue sorrow for
departed friends, feeling that they are removed from all need of our
commiseration, and all power to afford us comfort and help, any further
than their example and remembered words instruct us. We shall then be
chiefly concerned to know and to do the will of God, to watch over the
interests of our souls, preparing for life, with its important duties,
and storing up those recollections which are to occupy our thoughts in
the review of life beyond the grave. We shall bear in mind that we, too,
are to have survivors, to whom it will be the greatest favor if we leave
a good assurance, based upon their remembrance of our piety, that we are
happy, thus constraining them to follow us to heaven. We shall do well
if we habitually say, as Elijah said to Elisha, "The Lord hath sent me
to Jordan;" and that we are one day to be taken up and conveyed to that
same heaven whither Elijah went, and from which he came to meet Christ,
and to speak with him of his decease, which he should accomplish at
Jerusalem. What if we knew that some day, not far distant, flaming
chariots and horses, over our dwelling, would wait to bring us home to
God? The ministering spirits are already designated who are to perform
this office for those who are heirs of salvation. What, then, are we
searching for among the dark, gloomy valleys of sorrow, or on the hills
of earthly vision? If our friends are with Christ, we must be prepared
to be with him, or lose their society; and that loss will be worse than
the first.
Sometimes we feel as though we were sailing away from our departed
friends, leaving them behind us. Not so; we are sailing towards them;
they went forward, and we are nearer to them now than yesterday; and the
night is far spent; the day is at hand. If life, or any undue portion,
be spent in grief which unfits us for duty, we shall see, in heaven, how
much better it would have been had we had more faith, and had lived more
as then we should desire our surviving friends to live, quickened and
strengthened by the assured hope of our being in heaven, and by the
expectation of meeting us there.
But there is one kind of sorrow and desire for departed friends which,
in its consequences, is greatly to be deplored. Some refuse to become
decided Christians, because their friends, they think, were not
believers in the faith which these surviving friends are now persuaded
is the truth. To embrace this truth, as essential to salvation, it is
felt, will be to condemn these departed friends; and some have, in so
many words, declared that they preferred to share the fate of their
companions, or children, who gave no evidence of having accepted the
gospel, as it is now viewed by these survivors.
How sad would be such a catastrophe as this: The departed friend, in the
secret exercises of his mind, and by the good Spirit of God, may have
been, at the last hour, prevailed upon to accept the offers of salvation
by a crucified Redeemer. He gave no intimation of this, owing, perhaps,
to bodily weakness, or to fear and distrust; but, through infinite
mercy, he was saved by faith in the Lamb of God. The surviving friend,
persuaded of the truth, refuses to comply with it, and loves the
departed friend more than Christ, or truth and duty; and then, dying,
finds that the departed friend is saved, through that very faith, which
the other refused from idolatrous attachment to the departed; and now
they are separated; whereas, had the survivor forsaken all for Christ
and the truth, he would have had a hundred fold in this world, and, in
the world to come, would have found that friend whom he would, as it
were, have forsaken for Christ's sake and the gospel's. It is safe, it
is best, for each of us to do his duty, to walk by the light afforded
us, and not to make a creature our standard, nor our chief good.
If we meet certain of our friends at the end of their search after
pleasure, having forgotten their God and Saviour, and see them
disappointed, and utterly destitute of any thing to make them happy
forever, and all because they would not forego their chase after
unsatisfying pleasure,--there is many a faithful Christian friend, whose
example and advice they disregarded, who could then reply, "Did I not
say unto you, Go not?"
In the name of some unspeakably dear to you, we say, "We are journeying
unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you; come thou
with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good
concerning Israel."
Our friends, who have gone to heaven, ought not to be invested, in our
thoughts, with such melancholy associations as we are prone to connect
with them. To die is gain. Trouble, and sorrow, and the dark river,
interpose between us and heaven; but in the prospect which has opened
before the eye of the redeemed spirit, there is nothing but widening and
brightening glory. We must not seek for consolation at their departure
by bringing them back, in our thoughts, to our dwellings, but by going
forward, in faith, ourselves, to their dwelling. There is much to
encourage and help us in doing so, in the following lines, which may be
read with profit upon each anniversary of a friend's departure to
heaven, until surviving friends read them at the returning anniversaries
of our own entrance into the joy of our Lord:--
"A YEAR IN HEAVEN.
A YEAR UNCALENDARED; for what
Hast thou to do with mortal time?
Its dole of moments entereth not
That circle, mystic and sublime,
Whose unreached centre is the throne
Of Him, before whose awful brow,
Meeting eternities are known
As but an everlasting now.
The thought removes thee far away,--
Too far,--beyond my love and tears;
Ah, let me hold thee, as I may;
And count thy time by earthly years.
A YEAR OF BLESSEDNESS; wherein
Not one dim cloud hath crossed thy soul;
No sigh of grief, no touch of sin,
No frail mortality's control;
Nor once hath disappointment stung,
Nor care, world-weary, made thee pine;
But rapture, such as human tongue
Hath found no language for, is thine.
Made perfect at thy passing, who
Can sum thy added glory now?
As on, and onward, upward, through
The angel ranks that lowly bow,
Ascending still from height to height
Unfaltering, where rapt spirits trod,
Nor pausing 'mid their circles bright,
Thou tendest inward unto God.
A YEAR OF PROGRESS, in the love
That's only learned in heaven; thy mind
Unclogged of clay, and free to soar,
Hath left the realms of doubt behind,
And wondrous things which finite thought
In vain essayed to solve, appear
To thy untasked inquiries, fraught
With explanation strangely clear.
Thy reason owns no forced control,
As held it here in needful thrall;
God's mysteries court thy questioning soul,
And thou may'st search and know them all.
A YEAR OF LOVE; thy yearning heart
Was always tender, e'en to tears,
With sympathies, whose sacred art
Made holy all thy cherished years;
But love, whose speechless ecstasy
Had overborne the finite, now
Throbs through thy being, pure and free,
And burns upon thy radiant brow.
For thou those hands' dear clasp hast felt,
Where still the nail-prints are displayed;
And thou before that face hast knelt,
Which wears the scars the thorns have made.
A YEAR WITHOUT THEE; I had thought
My orphaned heart would break and die,
Ere time had meek quiescence brought,
Or soothed the tears it could not dry;
And yet I live, to faint and quail
Before the human grief I bear;
To miss thee so, then drown the wail
That trembles on my lips in prayer.
Thou praising, while I vainly thrill;
Thou glorying, while I weakly pine;
And thus between thy heart and mine
The distance ever widening still.
A YEAR OF TEARS TO ME; to thee
The end of thy probation's strife,
The archway to eternity,
The portal of immortal life;
To me the pall, the bier, the sod;
To thee the palm of victory given.
Enough, my heart; thank God! thank God!
That thou hast been a year in heaven.
IV.
THE SILENCE OF THE DEAD.
Dear, beauteous Death, the jewel of the just.
Shining nowhere but in the dark,
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could men outlook that mark!
He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, may know,
At first sight, if the bird be flown;
But what fair field, or grove, he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.
HENRY VAUGHAN.
The silence of the dead is one of the most impressive and affecting
things connected with the separate state of the soul. We hear the voice
of a dying friend, in some last wish, or charge, or prayer, or farewell,
or in some exclamation of joy or hope; and though years are multiplied
over the dead, that voice returns no more in any moment of day or night,
of joy or sorrow, of labor or rest, in life or in death.
The voices of creation return to us at periodical seasons. The early
spring bird startles us with her unexpected note; the winter is over and
gone. But no periodical change brings back the voices of departed
friends. A member of the family embarks on a long voyage; but, be it
ever so long, if life is spared, the letter is received, in which the
written words, so characteristic of him, recall his looks and the tones
of his voice. Years pass away, and the sound of his footsteps is at the
door again, and his voice is heard in the dwelling. But of the dead
there comes no news; from the grave no voice, from the separate state no
message. With our desire to speak once more to the departed, and to hear
them speak, we feel that they must have an intense desire to speak to
us. We wonder why they do not break the silence. There is so much of
which they could inform us; it would be such a relief, we think, to have
one word from them, assuring us that they arrived safely, and are happy,
and, above all things, granting us their forgiveness for the sins which
now have awakened sorrow. But we wait, and look, and wonder, in vain.
When we think of the number of the dead, this silence appears
impressive. Their number far exceeds that of the living. Could they be
assembled together, and could those now alive be set over against them,
upon an immense plain, to a spectator from above we should be a small
company in comparison with them. Should they lift up their voices
together, ours could not be heard. Yet from that vast multitude we never
hear a voice,--not even a whisper,--nor see a sign. Standing in a
cemetery a few miles distant from the great city, you hear the low,
muffled roar from the streets and bridges, reminding you of the living
tide which is coursing along those highways. But with eight thousand of
the dead around you in that cemetery, and a world of spirits, which no
man can number, just within the veil, you hear nothing from them. No one
comes back to tell us of his experience; no warning, nor comfort, nor
counsel, ever reaches our ears. Whatever our trouble, or our joy may be,
our need or prosperity; however long and painful the absence of the
departed may have been; however lonely we may feel, wishing for some
word of remembrance and love; and though we visit the grave day by day,
and call on the name of the departed, and use every art of endearment to
pierce the veil between us,--there is the same determined, cold, lasting
silence. "To go down into silence" is a scriptural phrase for the state
of the dead.
Our feelings seek relief from those vague, uncertain thoughts respecting
the dead which we find occasioned by the gentle manner in which death
most frequently occurs. The breath is shorter and shorter, and finally
ceases, yet so imperceptibly, that, for a moment, it is uncertain
whether the last breath has expired. There is no visible trace of the
outgoing of the soul. Could we see the spirit leave the body, we should
feel that one of the mysteries of death is solved. Could we trace its
flight into the air, could we watch its form as it disappeared among
the clouds, or melted away in a distance greater than the eye can
comprehend, we should not, perhaps, ask for a word to assure us
respecting the state of the soul. But there is no more perfect
delineation of the appearances which death presents to us, than in the
following inspired description: "As the waters fail from the sea, and
the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not; till
the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their
sleep." We see the lying down, the fixedness of the posture, the utter
disregard, in the cold remains, of every thing which passes before them;
and these remains are like the channels of a river, or the flats of the
sea, when the tide has utterly forsaken them. The soul is like those
vanished waters, as to any manifestation that it continues to exist.
We miss the departed from his accustomed places; we expect to meet him
at certain hours of the day; those hours return, and he is not there;
we start as we look upon his vacant place at the table, or around the
evening lamp, or in the circle at prayers. No tongue can describe that
blank, that chasm, which is made by death in the family circle, or the
variations in the tones of sorrow and desire with which those words are
secretly repeated, day after day, and night after night: "And where is
he?"
* * * * *
Is there any assignable cause for the silence of the dead?
We cannot, with certainty, assign the reason for it, and we do not know
why the dead are not suffered to reappear to us. We can, nevertheless,
see great wisdom and use in this silence, and in our perfect ignorance
respecting their state.
_It is the arrangement of divine Providence that faith, and not sight,
shall influence our characters and conduct._--It would be inconsistent
with this great law if we should see or hear from the dead.
The object of God, in his dealings with us, is to exalt the Bible as our
instructor. If men were left to visions and voices, in which there is so
much room for mistake and delusion, the confusion of human affairs would
be indescribably dreadful. Every man would have his vision, or his
message, the proof, or the correctness, of which would necessarily be
concealed from others, who might have contrary directions, or
impressions; and human affairs would then be like a sea, in which many
rivers ran across each other.
It would not be safe for departed spirits to be intrusted with the power
of communicating with the living. Though they know far more than we, yet
their information is limited; and, especially, if they should undertake
to counsel us about the future, as they would do in their earnestness to
help us, we can easily see that, being finite as they are, and unable to
look into the future, they might involve us in serious mistakes, either
by their ignorance, or by the contrariety of their information. Far
better is it for man to look only to God, who sees the end from the
beginning, with whom is no variableness, and who is able, as our anxious
friends would not be, to conceal from us the future, or any information
respecting it, which it would be an injury for us to know. Should we be
informed of certain things which will happen to us years hence, either
the expectation of them would engross our attention, and hinder our
usefulness, or the fear of them would paralyze effort, and destroy
health, if not life. Borrowed trouble, even now, constitutes a large
part of our unhappiness; but the certain knowledge of a sorrow
approaching us with unrelenting steps, would spread a pall over every
thing; while prosperity, far in the prospect, would tempt us to forget
our dependence upon God, and would weaken the motives to patient
continuance in well doing for its own sake.
Then, with regard to any assurance which the dead would give us about
truth and duty, we need not their help. For the dead can tell us
substantially no more than we find recorded in the Bible. They would
describe heaven to us, and speak of future punishment. But suppose that
they did. What language would they use more graphic, or more
intelligible to us, than the language of the Bible? Whatever they said,
we should feel obliged to compare it with the Scriptures; if it should
be according to them, we do not need it. Besides, the appearance to us
of departed friends, would, in many cases, only operate on our fears.
But the Bible pleads with us by many gentle motives, as well as by
warnings and terrific descriptions, and sets before us numberless
inducements to repent, which the whole world of the dead, uninspired,
could not so well furnish. The appearance and words of a spirit would
excite us, and make us afraid; we could not feel and act as well, under
such influences, as we can under the calm, dispassionate, convincing,
and persuasive influences of the Bible. One of the most intelligent and
cultivated of women, the wife of a missionary in Turkey, in her last
sickness, having heard her husband read to her several times, from the
Pilgrim's Progress, respecting the River of Death and the Celestial
City, at last said to him, as he was opening the book, "Read to me out
of the Bible; that soothes me; I can hear it for a long time; but even
Bunyan agitates me."
As much as we suppose it would comfort us to have intercourse with the
dead, it is easy to see that the great law of the divine government, by
which faith, and not sight, is the appointed means of our spiritual
good, would be violated, could the dead speak with us. We are to trust
in the mercy and the justice of God. This we could not so well do, if we
knew things about which, now, we are obliged to exercise faith. The
inspired Word, the only and the all-sufficient rule of faith and duty,
is a better guide than the voices of the dead.
An interesting illustration of this is given by one who witnessed the
appearance of departed spirits on a certain most interesting occasion.
Two illustrious men, of the Jewish line, appeared and spake with
Christ. The person of the Saviour experienced a remarkable
transfiguration, assuring his human soul of the joy set before him; the
presence of the celestial spirits, also, confirming his assurance
respecting the separate existence of souls, and the whole transaction
being designed to strengthen the faith of the disciples, and of the
world, in the Saviour.
But what comparative value does one of the inspired witnesses of this
scene give to this heavenly communication, these voices of the dead, and
this visit from the heavenly world? Does he build his faith upon it, as
upon a corner stone? No; but after telling us, in glowing language,
respecting this most wonderful and impressive scene, he says, "We have
also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take
heed as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn,
and the day star arise in your hearts." That sure word,--"more sure"
than the testimony of departed spirits, or than voices from the other
world,--is the Bible; for he immediately adds, "For the prophecy came
not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they
were moved by the Holy Ghost." The testimony of departed spirits, even
of Moses and Elijah, might be, after all, only "the will of man;" but in
the Bible men have spoken as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
As to its being a comfort, in any case, that departed friends should
speak to us, it is doubtful whether it would prove to be so. Suppose
them to utter words of endearment; this would open the fountains of
grief in our souls afresh. Suppose them to tell us that they are safe
and happy; it would be far better for us, in many cases, to hope
respecting this, than to know it; the knowledge of it might make us
careless and too confident about ourselves; we should be less inclined
to shun the errors of these friends, to guard against their
imperfections, and to fear lest a promise being left us of entering into
that rest, any of us should seem to come short of it. One of the most
inconvenient and uneasy states of mind, is that of insatiable
curiosity--longing to know that which is concealed, dispirited at the
delay of information, refusing effort except under the spur of absolute
assurance. Far better and more healthful is that state of mind which
performs present duty, and leaves the rest to the unfolding hand of
time; which disdains that prying, inquisitive disposition which is all
eye and ear, which lives on excitement, which has no self-respect, nor
regard for any thing but to know something yet unknown. If God suffered
the dead to speak to us, we should always be on the watch for some sign;
we should be unfitted for the common, practical duties of life; we
should be superstitious, visionary, fanatical, timorous. As it is, how
eager we are to pry into the future, or into things purposely hidden
from us! If it were certainly known that one had communication with the
dead, or if we had good reason to expect such communications, labor
would be neglected, faith, prayer, hope, confidence in God would
decrease, the Bible would be undervalued through a superior regard to a
different mode of revelation, and we should live, as it were, among the
tombs. A morbid state of feeling would pervade our minds, and the world
would be full of enchantments, necromancy, and cunning craftiness.
Blessed be God for the silence of the dead! We are glad that our weak
and foolish hearts, so prone to love the creature more than the Creator,
are broken off, by the impenetrable veil of death, from all connection
with the departed. The salutary influences of death on survivors would
be greatly lessened, if our connection and communication with them were
continued. God is our chief good, not our friends, nor our children; he
shuts them up in silence from us, to see if we can say, "Whom have I in
heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides
thee." The painful effect upon our feelings, and upon our nervous
system, of separations from departed friends, is involuntary and
natural; but to cherish our griefs, to spend much time in melancholy
moods, or in poring over the memorials of the departed, so as to excite
and indulge morbid feelings, is not Christian nor wise.