Chapter Fifteen: Behold The Perfect Man..
In bringing to a close what I have deemed it necessary to say on Christian Progress, I desired to speak a few words, which I trust may be strengthening and comforting respecting the last great change here below, and the final destiny above.
Christians frequently misinterpret the feelings which arise in them at the prospect of death. As we are at present constituted we are made to live in this world. We are bound to it by numerous ties of friendship and affection. For many long years it has been our home. All the sweet memories of childhood and early life are connected with it, as are also the struggles and trials and sorrows of maturer years. It is here that we have planned and worked and hoped, and here that we are still planning and working and hoping. We are at all times mixed up with present business, present cares, present responsibilities — matters and things which are in process, which have not yet been worked out. All these things seem to give us the pledge and promise of a future here, not a distant one, but still one that for the time at least is assured and certain. We count upon it; we lay our plans with reference to it; and while we may recognize in a general way the uncertainty of life, and may even say from the heart, as taught by the Scriptures, “If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that”—we still think that we shall live. All this is natural and right. If it were otherwise with us we should not be fitted for the duties which God has made incumbent upon us. But it is this which causes the prospect of death to present itself as a sort of shock—as something that would be unwelcome and even dreadful. But it should be understood that this feeling with which we contemplate it is not the fear of death, or of any consequence growing out of it; it is simply the God-ordained clinging to this life until it shall please him to loose the times which bind us to it.
And when this time really comes—when the heavenly Father calls for us — it will be a Father’s call, and we shall feel and know that he is but saying to us, “Come up higher.” We have been accustomed to associate the idea of death with the river Jordan which separated the children of Israel from the land of promise; and it is almost with a shudder of apprehension that we think of entering the rolling flood of its deep, dark, cold waters—all alone! But blessed be God, we do not enter them. Our Great Priest, with the ark of the covenant, has passed in before us, and the waters have “stood up upon an heap,” so that, like the Israelites, we may pass over on dry ground. The fears and alarms, so naturally anticipated, are not realized. We finish our course with joy; and we enter the realm of death with thanksgiving to Him who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
No, it is not dreadful to die. And however our earthly nature may shrink back from it, I feel sure that He who has given us grace to live will, when we come to need it, give us grace to die. He will support us with the cordials of his love; he will comfort us with the blessed word; “Be not afraid, lo, I am with you;” and thus gently, tenderly, and lovingly he will lull us to sleep upon his bosom; and the great solemn, mysterious pilgrimage of life will be over.
To most of us it has been a long and wearisome journey. The pathway has often led through danger and difficulty, and we have had many a hard-fought battle. We have passed through trials and toils and tears; but out of them all the Lord has delivered us, and though them all he has brought us safely to the end. And now we leave behind us our carnal nature; we come out of our earthly house; and the real true individual self, for whose perfection and glorification we have been subjected to the discipline of life, departs in the blessed freedom of a spiritual body, without the burden of flesh and blood, and without the trammels of temptation or sin. By the powerful attraction of mutual love and likeness of nature it is drawn and borne into the society of just men made perfect, and into closer fellowship with Him who lives and reigns over all, God blessed forever.
It would not be seemly for us with our carnal eyes to try to peer curiously into the secrets of this spiritual state and condition. If it had been proper for us to know them, they had doubtless been fully revealed. As it is, we have only glimpses here and there of a life and a home of whose nature we can but faintly conceive. Enough, however, is told us to animate our hope, and to furnish cheer and support while waiting to be called.
Among the things thus certified to us, the reality of the future state is by no means the least important. It is never once spoken of in the New Testament in any problematical or doubtful terms. While the wisest men of the world, its deepest thinkers and soberest reasoners speculated about, and at best deemed it probable that such an existence might be, Christ testified of it; declared what he had seen and known in the heavens; spoke of the angels that lived there; of his Father’s house and its many mansions; and always as a matter of certain knowledge, never as an inference from observed phenomena, or a conclusion drawn from any logical premises. The existence of that blessed state was an assured and certain fact. “We speak that we do know, and bear witness of that we have seen.” In the same tone of perfect assurance the inspired apostles uniformly allude to it. We cannot read their recorded words without feeling that to their minds the future state was just as real as the present. They seemed to live and move and think and feel in the very light of it. However men may seek to account for it, it is at any rate a fact as remarkable as it is beyond question that somehow there had come into the minds and hearts of these chosen men a conviction respecting the world above and the life after death, which held them to be as undoubted and real as the world and the life below. As we read the plain and honest records of these holy men we feel that they but reflect the glories of overshining heavens; and the gospel of life everlasting which they preached — the gospel for whose success they lived, and for whose maintenance they died — seems to derive its charm and its efficacy from powers coming in from above. So well assured were they of all this; so present and certain was it to their consciousness; so deep and strong and clear were their convictions of it, that the very intensity with which they realized it has made it real to all succeeding generations.
In the next place it is obvious to remark that for all the children of God this state is depicted as one of unalloyed happiness. They rest from their labors. Their tear are wiped away. Sorrow and crying are unknown. Sin with its polluting touch, and temptation with its perilous power, are warded off, and nothing that defiles or that loveth a lie can gain access to them. And not only so; not only are they freed from all evil and saved from all danger, but they are positively and fully blessed. They sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, and rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
The fact, too, that it is a life in which the very highest intelligences take delight, is evidence conclusive that its employments and activities are such as can give pleasure and satisfaction to personalities so exalted in wisdom and so abundant in knowledge. It is not, therefore, a life which is passed in a mere round of monotonous ecstasy, nor yet in the idleness of dreamy inactivity, but such a life as the great mind and heart of Paul would love to lead; such a life as Luther and Wesley and Alexander Campbell would find congenial to their sanctified tastes and noblest powers; a life truer, loftier, more glorious and blessed than human heart has ever conceived; a life, therefore, worthy of all sacrifices and all perseverance to attain.
And finally, when it is attained, we begin for the first time to realize the profundity and immensity of that perfection in Christ Jesus towards which we have been going on. And let me hope that with renewed zeal and more determined purpose we will continue to “press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
The end shall crown the work—
Ah, who shall tell the end?
It is a woesome way, and clouds portend. The work is all we know;
Enough for our faint sight, The end God knows—press on— The crown is light!