This is a profoundly agitating thought to every fair-minded man and
woman. You live, together on earth; you want to live together forever.
You do not want ten, or twenty, or fifty years to end your
association, you want to take your companion into the kingdom of God
with you. If this subject is irritating in the household, it is
because you do not understand Christian stratagem.
Every Christian companion may take his or her companion into glory.
How? Ask God, and he will tell you how. Perhaps by occasional
religious remark. Perhaps by earnest prayer. Perhaps by a consistent
life. More probably by all these things combined. Paul put it
forcefully when he said: "How knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt
save thy husband? how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy
wife?" In this house, how many have been remarried for the skies!
It has become so much the general rule that when in my congregation,
as I often do, I find a family in which the wife is a Christian, and
the husband is not, I just say frankly to him: "Now you have got to
come in. You might just as well try to swim up against Niagara rapids
as against the tide of religious influence which in this church is
going to surge you into the kingdom of God. You must come in. You know
that your wife is right in this matter of religion. She may be quick
of temper, and you may sometimes lose your patience with her, but you
know she is better than you are, and you know when she dies she will
go as straight to heaven as a shot to a target.
"And, if to-day, on the way home, a vehicle should dash down the
street, and she should fall lifeless, with no opportunity for last
words, you might have a doubt about what would become of you, and a
doubt about what would become of the children, but you would have no
doubt about her eternal destiny. Somewhere under the flush of her
cheek, or under the pallor of her brow is the Lord's mark. She is your
wife, but she is God's child, and you are not jealous of that
relationship. You only wish that you yourself were a son of the Lord
Almighty. Come and have the matter settled. If I die before you, I
will not forget in the next world how you stood together here, but I
will expect both of you. You must come.
"I say it in all Christian love and emphasis, as a brother talks to a
brother. You must come. You have been united so long, you cannot
afford to have death divorce you. How long it is since you began the
struggle of life together! You have helped each other on the road, and
what you have done for each other God only knows. There have been
tedious sicknesses, and anxious watching, and here and there a grave,
short but very deep; and though the blossoms of the marriage day may
have scattered, and the lips that pronounced you one may have gone
into dust, you have through all these years been to each other true as
steel.
"Now, to-day, I am going to remarry you for heaven. This is the bridal
day of your soul's peace. Here is the marriage altar. Kneel side by
side, take the oath of eternal fidelity, clasp hands in a covenant
never to be broken. I pronounce you one on earth, I pronounce you one
for eternity. What God by His grace hath joined together, let not
earth or hell put asunder. Hark! I hear a humming in the air--an
anthem--a wedding march--organs celestial played upon by fingers
seraphic."
I do not think I ever read anything more beautiful and quaintly
pathetic than