The World to Come.
“The World to Come” was for a long time one of those favourite pieces
which occupied a place upon our forefathers’ book-shelves, and
especially charmed the dwellers at home in those times and places
when and where there were no Sabbath evening services; it belongs to
that era when Christian people found their spiritual pleasure and
refreshment in Baxter’s “Saint’s Everlasting Rest,” to which work it
bears no inconsiderable resemblance. Southey, in his “Life of Watts,” in
which, like Johnson, he lays aside all his acerbity against Watts and
Dissenters, appears to dwell with much pleasure on this book. Probably
most of our readers are now unacquainted with it; and, if so, they
have to learn how much there is in these two volumes of suggestion and
instruction. Watts was fond of dwelling in imagination upon, and dilating
with his pen over, the conditions of the world to come. The work first
appeared in two volumes, although the second was not published until the
year 1745, when Watts was drawing near to the period of his own entrance
into that kingdom, upon whose conditions he had speculated so largely
and interestingly. Some portions of this work soon found their way into
other languages; his piece on “The End of Time” was translated, as a
tract, into most of the tongues of Europe; an edition is now circulating,
or was a short time since, in modern Greek, on the shores of the Levant;
and none of the prose works of Watts have perhaps obtained so large an
acceptance, or produced, on the one hand, more serious impressions, and,
on the other, more quieting and comfortable consolation.
The work has the characteristic of the times in which it was
written—diffuseness; but here, if sometimes there is an indulgence in
those fancies and colourings of speech of which we become impatient
now, we find some of the best illustrations of that happy power of
illumination and imagination which we should expect to abound in the
works and sermons of such a poet as Watts. The poet and the metaphysician
meet, and mutually aid each other in the attempt to enter upon the
mysteries of the unseen world; his ideas, perhaps, do not differ greatly
from those which are ordinarily entertained amongst us. Franke, the
well-known German pietist, was the means of the translation of a portion
of the work in Geneva, and the translator said, in introducing the work,
that “the preacher had taken occasion of flying with his thoughts into
the blessed mansions of the just, and had given not only a very probable
and beautiful idea of the glory of a future life in general, but also an
enumeration of the many sorts of enjoyments and pleasures that are to be
met with there.”
But Watts’ “World to Come” is not limited to the work that bears that
title. His thoughts perpetually hovered round that fascinating theme. He
was constantly, as we find in many of his pieces, engaged in attempts to
understand the nature of metaphysical substance. Though from Revelation
we can only gather that “we know not what we shall be,” yet there are
precious hints from which we may obtain all that is sufficient for
comfort and for light, especially in the Great Teacher’s promise that
“where I am there shall also My servant be,” and the assurance of His
apostle that “we shall see Him as He is.”
It would not be uninteresting to group together all Watts’ words from his
various works illustrating his conception of “The World to Come,” his
conjectures concerning the mode of our immortality; thus he presents to
us—
THE BRAIN BOOK.
“We may try to illustrate this matter by the similitude
of the union of a human soul to a body. Suppose a learned
philosopher be also a skilful divine and a great linguist, we
may reasonably conclude that there are some millions of words
and phrases, if taken together with all the various senses of
them, which are deposited in his brain as in a repository,
by means of some correspondent traces or signatures; we may
suppose also millions of ideas of things, human and divine,
treasured up in various traces or signatures in the same brain.
Nay, each organ of sense may impress on the brain millions
of traces belonging to the particular objects of that sense;
especially the two senses of discipline, the eye and the ear;
the pictures, the images, the colours, and the sounds, that are
reserved in this repository of the brain, by some correspondent
impressions or traces, are little less than infinite; now,
the human soul of the philosopher, by being united to this
brain, this well-furnished repository, knows all these names,
words, sounds, images, lines, figures, colours, notions, and
sensations. It receives all these ideas; and is, as it were,
mistress of them all. The very opening of the eye impresses
thousands of ideas at once upon such a soul united to a human
brain; and what unknown millions of ideas may be impressed on
it, or conveyed to it in successive seasons, whensoever she
stands in need of them, and that by the means of this union
to the brain, is beyond our capacity to think or number. Let
us now conceive the Divine Mind or Wisdom as a repository
stored with infinite ideas of things present, past, and
future: suppose a created spirit, of most extensive capacity,
intimately united to this Divine Mind or Wisdom: may it not by
this means, by Divine appointment, become capable of receiving
so many of those ideas, and so much knowledge, as are necessary
for the government and the judgment of all nations? And this
may be done two ways, viz., either by the immediate application
of itself, as it were by inquiry, to the Divine Mind, to which
it is thus united, or by the immediate actual influences and
impressions which the Divine Mind may make of these ideas on
the human soul, as fast as ever it can stand in need of them
for these glorious purposes. Since a human brain, which is
mere matter, and which contains only some strokes and traces,
and corporeal signatures of ideas, can convey to a human soul
united to it many millions of ideas, as fast as it needs them
for any purposes of human life; how much more may the infinite
God, or Divine Mind or Wisdom, which hath actually all real and
possible ideas in it in the most perfect manner, communicate to
a human soul united to this Divine Wisdom, a far greater number
of ideas than a human brain can receive; even as many as the
affairs of governing and judging this world may require. This
may be represented and illustrated by another similitude, thus:
suppose there were a spherical looking-glass or mirror vast as
this earth is; on which millions of corporeal objects appeared
in miniature on all sides of it impressed or represented there,
by a thousand planetary and starry worlds surrounding this vast
mirror; suppose a capacious human spirit united to this mirror,
as the soul is to the body: what an unknown multitude of ideas
would this mirror convey to that human spirit in successive
seasons! Or, perhaps, this spirit might receive all these ideas
at once, and be conscious of the millions of things represented
all round the mirror. This mirror may represent the Deity; the
human spirit taken in these ideas successively, or conscious
of them all at once, may represent to us the soul of Christ
receiving, either in a simultaneous view, or in a successive
way, unknown myriads of ideas, by its union to Godhead; though,
it must be owned, it can never receive all these ideas which
are in the Divine Mind.”
And thus he endeavours to image to his mind the worlds:
EARTH, HEAVEN, AND HELL.
“I have often tried to strip death of its frightful colours,
and make all the terrible airs of it vanish into softness and
delight; to this end, among other rovings of thought, I have
sometimes illustrated to myself the whole creation as one
immense building, with different apartments, all under the
immediate possession and government of the great Creator. One
sort of these mansions are little, narrow, dark, damp rooms,
where there is much confinement, very little good company,
and such a clog upon one’s natural spirits, that a man cannot
think or talk with freedom, nor exert his understanding, or
any of his intellectual powers with glory or pleasure. This
is the Earth in which we dwell. A second sort are spacious,
lightsome, airy, and serene courts open to the summer sky,
or at least admitting all the valuable qualities of sun and
air, without the inconveniences; where there are thousands
of most delightful companions, and everything that can give
one pleasure, and make one capable and fit to give pleasure
to others. This is the Heaven we hope for. A third sort of
apartments are open and spacious too, but under a wintry
sky, with perpetual storms of hail, rain, and wind, thunder,
lightning, and everything that is painful and offensive;
and all this among millions of wretched companions cursing
the place, tormenting one another, and each endeavouring to
increase the public and the universal misery. This is Hell.
“Now what a dreadful thing it is to be driven out of one of
the first narrow dusky cells into the third sort of apartment,
where the change of the room is infinitely the worst! No
wonder that sinners are afraid to die. But why should a soul
that has good hope, through grace, of entering into the serene
apartment, be unwilling to leave the narrow smoky prison he
has dwelt in so long, and under such loads of inconvenience?
Death to a good man is but passing through a death entry, out
of one little dusky room of his Father’s house into another
that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely
entertaining. Oh may the rays and splendours of my heavenly
apartment shoot far downward, and gild the dark entry with such
a cheerful beam as to banish every fear, when I shall be called
to pass through.”
He teaches and very much elaborates, as Southey says, the doctrine of
Milton:
—What, if earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?
Southey somewhat naturally finds an occasion for humour in that Milton
beheld in heaven a place for armies, the review of bright brigades, and
illustrious cohorts with keen swords and long bright spears, and so he
remarks, “The Heaven of Watts’ imagination was coloured by his earthly
pursuits, and whether there were to be reviews of armies or not there
were to be sermons.” “For,” says Watts, “not only is there the service of
thanksgiving here and of prayer, but such entertainment as lectures and
sermons also, and there all the worship that is paid is the established
worship of the whole country.” But the conceptions formed by Watts of
the heavenly state are majestic in the main. “For the Church,” he says,
“on earth is but a training school for the church on high, and is, as
it were, a tiring-room in which we are dressed in proper habit for our
appearance and our places in that bright assembly.” Thus he beholds
“Boyle and Ray pursuing the philosophy in which they delighted on earth,
contemplating the wisdom of God in His works; and Henry More and Howe
continuing their metaphysical researches with brightened and refined
powers of mind.” It is singular that Watts, who speculated so keenly
and clearly into the nature of metaphysical substance, should have thus
somewhat embarrassed his views of the heavenly state by discriminating so
much the pursuits of a pure and perfect soul, by characteristics which
partake of the faulty views of an earthly understanding; but we are to
remember that he wrote for useful purposes, and we may believe that some
of those excursions of the fancy, while scarcely consistent even with his
own metaphysics, added not a little to the pleasant horizon spread out
before the view of those readers unable or indisposed to follow him into
more abstract and pure regions of thought. Interestingly and curiously
he seeks to trace the progress of the soul from the visible to the
invisible world; we know this world by Space and Substance, the solution
of these in connection with our existence in that future world to come
is not less a trouble to Watts than it has been to the rest of us. Space
he endeavoured to annihilate, Substance also, and he argues, as Isaac
Taylor has argued since in his “Physical Theory of Another Life,” that as
disembodied spirits cannot exist _everywhere_, and do not probably exist
_anywhere_, philosophically they may be said to exist _nowhere_.[41] The
question then is whither does the soul depart when it is separated from
the body? Perhaps it may be furnished with some new vehicle of a more
refined matter, which will remind readers of Abraham Tucker’s singular
chapters in his “Light of Nature,” on the “Vehicular State;” and it is
very suggestive to find him intimating that it may abide where death
finds it, not changing its place, but only its manner of thinking and
acting, and its mode of existence, and without removal finding itself
in heaven or in hell according to its own consciousness, and that is,
according to its own previous training or education, and then he says,
“I may illustrate this by two similitudes, and especially apply them to
the case of holy souls departing.” They may remind the reader of Henry
Vaughan’s beautiful verse:
If a star were confined in a tomb,
Its captive light would e’en shine there;
But when it bursts it dissipates the gloom,
And shines through all the sphere.
“Suppose a torch enclosed in a cell of earth, in the midst of ten
thousand thousand torches that shine at large in a spacious amphitheatre.
While it is enclosed, its beams strike only on the walls of its own cell,
and it has no communion with those without. But let this cell fall down
at once, and the torch that moment has full communion with all those
ten thousands; it shines as freely as they do, and receives and gives
assistance to all of them, and joins to add glory to that illustrious
place.
“Or suppose a man born or brought up in a dark prison, in the midst
of a fair and populous city. He lives there in a close confinement;
perhaps he enjoys only the twinkling light of a lamp, with thick air
and much ignorance; though he has some distant hints and reports of
the surrounding city and its affairs, yet he sees and knows nothing
immediately but what is done in his own prison, till in some happy
minute the walls fall down; then he finds himself at once in a large and
populous town, encompassed with a thousand blessings. With surprise he
beholds the king in all his glory, and holds converse with the sprightly
inhabitants. He can speak their language, and finds his nature suited to
such communion. He breathes free air, stands in the open light; he shakes
himself, and exults in his own liberty.”
The gentle spirit of Watts trembled before hell; he expressed his belief
in eternal punishment in the strongest and most unequivocal terms, not
because he found it plainly in his understanding, but because he found it
plainly declared in the New Testament, while yet, like other fathers in
the Church, he expresses within himself a latent hope that God has some
secret and mitigating decree, and that although we neither dare preach
nor speculate upon it, bowing to the word, we yet may hope that Infinite
Love will find out a way.[42]
Some readers will be surprised to find that among his proofs of a
separate state, Watts does not hesitate, although very modestly, to
avow some belief in Apparitions. It was the age of superstition and
supernatural visitations. Joseph Addison indeed was aiming at a sweeping
reform, and attempting to lay all the ghosts in the country. Watts says—
CONCERNING THE POSSIBILITY OF APPARITIONS.
“At the conclusion of this chapter I cannot help taking
notice, though I shall but just mention it, that the multitude
of narratives, which we have heard of in all ages, of the
apparition of the spirits or ghosts of persons departed from
this life, can hardly be all delusion and falsehood. Some of
them have been affirmed to appear upon such great and important
occasions as may be equal to such an unusual event; and several
of these accounts have been attested by such witnesses of
wisdom, and prudence, and sagacity, under no distempers of
imagination, that they may justly demand a belief; and the
effects of these apparitions, in the discovery of murders and
things unknown, have been so considerable and useful, that a
fair disputant should hardly venture to run directly counter
to such a cloud of witnesses without some good assurance on
the contrary side. He must be a shrewd philosopher indeed who,
upon any other hypothesis, can give a tolerable account of all
the narratives in Glanvil’s ‘Sadducisimus Triumphatus,’ or
Baxter’s ‘World of Spirits and Apparitions,’ etc. Though I will
grant some of these stories have but insufficient proof, yet if
there be but one real apparition of a departed spirit, then the
point is gained that there is a separate state.
“And, indeed, the Scripture itself seems to mention such
sort of ghosts or appearances of souls departed (Matt. xiv.
26). When the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water they
‘thought it had been a spirit.’ And (Luke xxiv. 37) after
His resurrection they saw Him at once appearing in the midst
of them, ‘and they supposed they had seen a spirit;’ and our
Saviour doth not contradict their notion, but argues with
them upon the supposition of the truth of it, ‘a spirit hath
not flesh and bones as ye see Me to have.’ And, Acts xxiii.
8, 9, the word ‘spirit’ seems to signify ‘the apparition of a
departed soul,’ where it is said, ‘The Sadducees say there is
no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit;’ and, verse 9, ‘If a
spirit or an angel hath spoken to this man,’ etc. A spirit here
is plainly distinct from an angel; and what can it mean but an
apparition of a human soul which has left the body?”
An acquaintance with the “World to Come” will take away even now from
the reader any surprise at the popularity it once enjoyed during years
when printed sermons were not very abundant, and when readers received
without questioning the doctrines and statements of such books as bore
the imprint of the names of eminent men. Many passages are fraught with a
most pleasing eloquence, and, read by a serious mind, are well calculated
to convey not only passing, but permanent impressions. Shall we take two
or three?
ALL THINGS PREACH THE END OF TIME.
“Time, hastening to its period, will furnish us with perpetual
new occasions of holy meditation. Do I observe the declining
day, and the setting sun sinking into darkness? So declines the
day of life, the hours of labour, and the seasons of grace;
oh may I finish my appointed work with honour ere the light
is fled! May I improve the shining hours of grace ere the
shadows of the evening overtake me, and my time of working is
no more! Do I see the moon gliding along through midnight, and
fulfilling her stages in the dusky sky? This planet also is
measuring out my life, and bringing the number of my months
to their end. May I be prepared to take leave of the sun and
moon, and bid adieu to these visible heavens, and all the
twinkling glories of them! These are all but the measures of
my time, and hasten me on towards eternity. Am I walking in
a garden, and stand still to observe the slow motion of the
shadow upon a dial there? It passes over the hour lines with
an imperceptible progress, yet it will touch the last line
of daylight shortly: so my hours and my moments move onward
with a silent pace; but they will arrive with certainty at the
last limit, how heedless soever I am of their motion, and how
thoughtless soever I may be of the improvement of time, or the
end of it. Does a new year commence, and the first morning
of it dawn upon me? Let me remember that the last year was
finished, and gone over my head, in order to make way for the
entrance of the present: I have one year the less to travel
through the world, and to fulfil the various services of a
travelling state: may my diligence in duty be doubled, since
the number of my appointed years is diminished! Do I find a
new birth-day in my survey of the calendar, the day wherein I
entered upon the stage of mortality, and was born into this
world of sins, frailties, and sorrows, in order to my probation
for a better state? Blessed Lord, how much have I spent already
of this mortal life, this season of my probation, and how
little am I prepared for that happier world! How unready for
my dying moment! I am hastening hourly to the end of the life
of man, which began at my nativity: am I yet born of God? Have
I begun the life of a saint? Am I prepared for that awful day
which shall determine the number of my months on earth? Am I
fit to be born into the world of spirits through the strait
gate of death? Am I renewed in all the powers of my nature, and
made meet to enter into that unseen world, where there shall
be no more of these revolutions of days and years, but one
eternal day fills up all the space with Divine pleasure, or one
eternal night with long and deplorable distress and darkness?
When I see a friend expiring, or the corpse of my neighbour
conveyed to the grave: alas! their months and minutes are all
determined, and the seasons of their trial are finished for
ever; they are gone to their eternal home, and the estate of
their souls is fixed unchangeably: the angel that has sworn
their ‘time shall be no longer’ has concluded their hopes,
or has finished their fears, and, according to the rules of
righteous judgment, has decided their misery or happiness for a
long immortality. Take this warning, oh my soul, and think of
thine own removal! Are we standing in the churchyard, paying
the last honours to the relics of our friends? What a number of
hillocks of death appear all round us! What are the tombstones
but memorials of the inhabitants of that town, to inform us of
the period of all their lives, and to point out the day when
it was said to each of them, your ‘time shall be no longer.’
Oh may I readily learn this important lesson, that my turn is
hastening too! Such a little hillock shall shortly arise for me
on some unknown spot of ground; it shall cover this flesh and
these bones of mine in darkness, and shall hide them from the
light of the sun, and from the sight of man, ‘till the heavens
be no more.’ Perhaps some kind surviving friend may engrave my
name, with the number of my days, upon a plain funeral stone,
without ornament and below envy; there shall my tomb stand,
among the rest, as a fresh monument of the frailty of nature
and the end of time. It is possible some friendly foot may,
now and then, visit the place of my repose, and some tender
eye may bedew the cold memorial with a tear: one or another
of my old acquaintance may possibly attend there to learn the
silent lecture of mortality from my grave-stone, which my lips
are now preaching aloud to the world: and if love and sorrow
should reach so far, perhaps, while his soul is melting in his
eye-lids, and his voice scarce find an utterance, he will point
with his finger and show his companion the month and day of my
decease. Oh that solemn, that awful day, which shall finish
my appointed time on earth, and put a full period to all the
designs of my heart and all the labours of my tongue and pen.
Think, oh my soul! that while friends or strangers are engaged
on that spot, and reading the date of my departure hence, thou
wilt be fixed under a decisive and unchangeable sentence,
rejoicing in the rewards of time well improved, or suffering
the long sorrows which shall attend the abuse of it in an
unknown world of happiness or misery.”
And we should think that many a believer has read the following with
sentiments of delight:
CHRIST ADMIRED AND GLORIFIED IN HIS SAINTS.
“Astonishing spectacle! When the dark and savage inhabitants of
Africa, and our forefathers, the rugged and warlike Britons,
from the ends of the earth, shall appear in that assembly,
with some of the polite nations of Greece and Rome, and each
of them shall glory in having been taught to renounce the gods
of their ancestors, and the demons which they once worshipped,
and shall rejoice in Jesus the King of Israel, and in Jehovah
the everlasting God. The conversion of the Gentile world to
Christianity is a matter of glorious wonder, and shall appear
to be so in that great day: that those who had been educated to
believe in many gods, or no god at all, should renounce atheism
and idolatry, and adore the true God only; and those who were
taught to sacrifice to idols, and to atone for their own sins
with the blood of beasts, should trust in one sacrifice,
and the atoning blood of the Son of God. Here shall stand a
believing atheist, and there a converted idolater, as monuments
of the almighty power of grace. There shall shine also in that
assembly here and there a prince and a philosopher, though ‘not
many wise, not many noble, not many mighty are called.’[43]
And they shall be matter of wonder and glory: that princes,
who loved no control, should bow their sceptres and their
souls to the royalty and Godhead of the poor Man of Nazareth:
that the heathen philosophers, who had been used to yield
only to reason, should submit their understandings to Divine
revelation, even when it has something above the powers and
discoveries of reason in it.
“Come, all ye saints of these latter ages, ‘upon whom the
end of the world is come,’ raise your heads with me, and look
far backwards, even to the beginning of time, and the days of
Adam; for the believers of all ages, as well as of all nations,
shall appear together in that day, and acknowledge Jesus the
Saviour: according to the brighter or darker discoveries of
the age in which they lived, He has been the common object of
their faith. Ever since He was called ‘the Seed of the woman,’
till the time of His appearance in the flesh, all the chosen of
God have lived upon His grace, though multitudes of them never
knew His name. It is true, the greater part of that illustrious
company on the right hand of Christ lived since the time of
His incarnation, for the ‘great multitude which no man could
number’ is derived from the Gentile nations. Yet the ancient
patriarchs, with the Jewish prophets and saints, shall make a
splendid appearance there: ‘one hundred and forty-four thousand
are sealed among the tribes of Israel;’ these of old embraced
the Gospel in types and shadows; but now their eyes behold
Jesus Christ, the substance and the truth. In the days of their
flesh they read His name in dark lines, and looked through the
long glasses of prophecy to distant ages, and a Saviour to
come; and now, behold, they find complete and certain salvation
and glory in Him. ‘These all died in faith, not having received
the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded
of them, and embraced them.’ They died in the hope of this
salvation, and they shall rise in the blessed possession of it.
“Behold Abraham appearing there, the father of the faithful,
‘who saw the day of Christ, and rejoiced to see it;’ who
trusted in his Son Jesus, two thousand years before He was
born; his elder family, the pious Jews, surround him there,
and we, his younger children, among the Gentiles, shall stand
with him as the followers of his faith, who trust in the same
Jesus almost two thousand years after He is dead. How shall we
both rejoice to see this brightest day of the Son of Man, and
congratulate each other’s faith, while our eyes meet and centre
in Him, and our souls triumph in the sight, love, and enjoyment
of Him in whom we have believed! How admirable and divinely
glorious shall our Lord Himself appear, on whom every life is
fixed with unutterable delight, in whom the faith of distant
countries and ages is centered and reconciled, and in whom ‘all
the nations of the earth appear to be blessed,’ according to
the ancient word of promise.
“Then one shall say: ‘I was a sensual sinner, drenched in
liquor and unclean lusts, and wicked in all the forms of
lewdness and intemperance; the grace of God my Saviour appeared
to me, and taught me to deny worldly lusts, which I once
thought I could never have parted with. I loved my sins as
my life, but He has persuaded and constrained me to cut off
a right hand, and to pluck out a right eye, and to part with
my darling vices; and behold me here a monument of His saving
mercy.’
“‘I was envious against my neighbour,’ shall another say, ‘and
my temper was malice and wrath; revenge was mingled with my
constitution, and I thought it no iniquity; but I bless the
name of Christ my Redeemer, who, in the day of His grace,
turned my wrath into meekness; He inclined me to love even my
enemies, and to pray for them that cursed me; He taught me
all this by His own example, and He made me learn it by the
sovereign influences of His Spirit. I am a wonder to myself,
when I think what once I was. Amazing change, and Almighty
grace!’
“Then a third shall confess: ‘I was a profane wretch, a
swearer, a blasphemer; I hoped for no heaven, and I feared no
hell; but the Lord seized me in the midst of my rebellions,
and sent His arrows into my soul; He made me feel the stings
of an awakened conscience, and constrained me to believe there
was a God and a hell, till I cried out astonished, “What
shall I do to be saved?” Then He led me to partake of His own
salvation, and, from a proud, rebellious infidel, He has made
me a penitent and a humble believer, and here I stand to show
forth the wonders of His grace, and a boundless extent of His
forgiveness.’
“A fourth shall stand up and acknowledge in that day: And I was
a poor carnal, covetous creature, who made this world my god,
and abundance of money was my heaven; but He cured me of this
vile idolatry of gold, taught me how to obtain treasures in the
heavenly world, and to forsake all on earth, that I might have
an inheritance there; and, behold, He has not disappointed my
hopes: I am now made rich indeed, and I must for ever sing His
praises.’
“There shall be no doubt or dispute in that day whether it was
the power of our own will, or the superior power of Divine
grace, that wrought the blessed change, that turned the lion
into a lamb, a grovelling earthworm into a bird of paradise,
and of a covetous or malicious sinner made a meek and a
heavenly saint. The grace of Christ shall be so conspicuous
in every glorified believer in that assembly, that, with one
voice, they shall all shout to the praise and glory of His
grace, ‘Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Thy name be all
the honour!’
“Behold that noble army with palms in their hands; once they
were weak warriors, yet they overcame mighty enemies, and have
gained the victory and the prize; enemies rising from earth
and from hell to tempt and to accuse them, but they overcame
‘by the blood of the Lamb.’ What a Divine honour it shall be
to our Lord Jesus Christ, ‘the Captain of our salvation,’ that
weak Christians should subdue their strong corruptions, and
get safe to heaven through a thousand oppositions within and
without! It is all owing to the grace of Christ, that grace
which is all-sufficient for every saint. They are made ‘more
than conquerors through Him that has loved them.’ Then shall
the faith and courage and patience of the saints have a blessed
review; and it shall be told before the whole creation what
strife and wrestlings a poor believer has passed through in
a dark cottage, a chamber of lone sickness, or perhaps in a
dungeon; how he has there combated with ‘powers of darkness,’
how he has struggled with huge sorrows, and has borne, and has
not fainted, though he has been often ‘in heaviness through
manifold temptations.’ Then shall appear the bright scene which
St. Peter represents as the event of sore trials (1 Peter i. 6,
7). ‘When our faith has been tried in the fire of tribulation,
and is found more precious than gold,’ it shall shine to the
praise, honour, and glory of the suffering saints, and of
Christ Himself at His appearance.
“Behold that illustrious troop of martyrs, and some among
them of the feebler sex and of tender age. Now, that women
should grow bold in faith, even in the sight of torments, and
children, with a manly courage, should profess the name of
Christ in the face of angry and threatening rulers; that some
of these should become undaunted confessors of the truth, and
others triumph in fires and torture, these things shall be
matter of glory to Christ in that day; it was His power that
gave them courage and victory in martyrdom and death. Every
Christian there, every soldier in that triumphing army, shall
ascribe his conquest to the grace of his Lord, his Leader, and
lay down all their trophies at the feet of his Saviour, with
humble acknowledgments, and shouts of honour.
“Almost all the saved number were, at some part of their lives,
weak in faith, and yet, by the grace of Christ, they held out
to the end, and are crowned; ‘I was a poor trembling creature,’
shall one say, ‘but I was confirmed in my faith and holiness
by the Gospel of Christ; or, I rested on a naked promise, and
found support, because Christ was there, and He shall have the
glory of it.’ ‘In Him are all the promises yea, and in Him
amen, to the glory of the Father;’ and the Son shall share in
this glory; for He died to ratify these promises, and He lives
to fulfil them.
“‘Oh, what an almighty arm is this,’ shall the believer say,
‘that has borne up so many thousands of poor sinking creatures,
and lifted their heads above the waves!’ The spark of grace
that lived many years in a flood of temptations, and was not
quenched, shall then shine bright to the glory of Christ, who
kindled and maintained it. When we have been brought through
all the storms and the threatening seas, and yet the raging
waves have been forbid, to swallow us up, we shall cry out
in raptures of joy and wonder: ‘What manner of Man is this,
that the winds and the seas have obeyed him?’ Then shall it be
gloriously evident that He has conquered Satan, and kept the
hosts of hell in chains; when it shall appear that He has made
poor, mean, trembling believers victorious over all the powers
of darkness, for the Prince of Peace has bruised him under
their feet.”
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