I know few things more beautiful than the perfectly _naive_ way in
which the greatest of thoughts is here set forth by the simplest of
figures. If two men are walking on the same road to a place, the one
that is in front will get there first, and his friend that is coming up
after him will get there second, if he keeps on; and they will be
united at the end, because, one after the other, they travel the road.
And so says Christ: 'Of course, if you follow Me, you will join Me; and
where I am, there shall also My servant be.' The implications of a
Christian life, which is true following of Christ here, necessarily led
to the confidence that in that future there will be union with Him.
That is a deep thought, which might afford material for much to be
said, but on which I cannot dwell now.
I remarked at an early stage of this sermon how singular it was that
our Lord should present Himself as the Pattern for all human
excellence. Is it not even more singular that He should venture to
present His own companionship as the sufficient recompense for every
sorrow, for every effort, for all pain, for all pilgrimage? To be with
Him, He thinks, is enough for any man and enough for all men. Who did
He think Himself to be? What did _He_ suppose His relation to the rest
of us to be, who could thus calmly suggest to the world that the only
thing that a heart needed for blessedness was to be beside Him? And we
believe it, too little as it influences our lives. 'To be with Christ'
is 'very much better'; better than all beneath the stars; better than
all on this side eternity.
What does our Lord mean by this all-sufficient hope? We know very
little of that dim region beyond, but we know that until He comes again
His departed servants are absent from the body. And, in our sense of
the word, there can be no _place_ for spirits thus free from corporeal
environment. And so place, to-day at all events for the departed
saints, and in a subordinate degree all through eternity, even when
they are clothed with a glorified body, must be but a symbol of state,
of condition, of spiritual character. 'Where I am there shall My
servant be,' means specially '_What I_ am, _that_ shall My servant be.'
This perfect conformity to that dear Lord, whose footsteps we have
followed; assimilation there, which is the issue of imitation here,
though broken and imperfect, this is the hope that may gladden and
animate every Christian heart.
To be with Him is to be like Him, and therefore to be conscious of His
presence in some fashion so intimate, so certain, as that all our
earthly notions of presence, derived from the juxtaposition of
corporeal frames, are infinite distance as compared with it. That is
what my text dimly shadows for us. We know not how that union, which is
to be as close as is possible while the distinction of personality is
retained, may be accomplished. But this we know, that the coalescence
of two drops of mercury, the running together of two drops of water,
the blending of heart with heart here in love, are distance in
comparison with the complete union of Christ and of the happy soul that
rests in Him, as in an atmosphere and an ocean. Oh, brethren! it is not
a thing to talk about; it is a thing to take to our hearts, and in
silence to be thankful for; 'absent from the body; present with the
Lord.'
And is that not enough? The ground of it is enough. 'If we believe that
Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will
God bring with Him.' That future companionship is guaranteed to the
Christian man by the words of Incarnate Truth, and by the resurrection
of his Lord. The ground of it is enough, and the contents are
enough—enough for faith; enough for hope; enough for peace; enough for
work; and eminently enough for comfort.
Ah! there are many other questions that we would fain ask, but to which
there is no reply; but as the good old rough music of one of the
eighteenth-century worthies has it, we have sufficient.
'My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim;
But 'tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with Him.'
'It is enough for the disciple that he be as' (that is, with) 'his
Master.' So let us take that thought to our hearts and animate
ourselves with it, for it is legitimate for us to do so. That one hope
is sufficient for us all.
Only let us remember that, according to the teaching of my text, the
companionship that blesses the future is the issue of following Him
now. I know of no magic in death that is able to change the direction
in which a man's face is turned. As he is travelling and has travelled,
so he will travel when he comes through the tunnel, and out into the
brighter light yonder. The line of a railway marked upon a map may stop
at the boundaries of the country with which the map is concerned, but
it is clearly going somewhere, and in the same direction. You want the
other sheet of the map in order to see whither it is going. That is
like your life. The map stops very abruptly, but the line does not
stop. Take an unfinished row of tenements. On the last house there
stick out bricks preparatory to the continuation of the row. And so our
lives are, as it were, studded over with protuberances and preparations
for the attachment thereto of a 'house not made with hands,' and yet
conformed in its architecture to the row that we have built. The man
that follows will attain. For life, the all-sufficient law is, _after
Christ_; for hope, the all-sufficient assurance is, _with Christ_.