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[Having met with the
following elevating and consolatory remarks in a German theological
pamphlet, which is not likely to become known in this country, the
translator offers them with the hope that they may prove valuable to some
afflicted child of God.]
I HAVE experienced the same
trial with which God has visited you, and can therefore sympathise with
you, and offer you counsel with full confidence, based, as it is, on my
own experience. Be patient, and do not direct your thoughts so much to
what is behind you, cherishing your grief by recalling the beautiful days
which are gone, but rather meditate on what is before you, what is above,
the far more beautiful days of the golden future. And this do, not merely
to heal your wound, but do it as Paul tells us he looked unto the things
which are before. (Phil. iii. 7.) It is thus that we get beyond the idea
of merely meeting again our departed friends, which may still be but a
cleaving to the creature. It is thus that we are brought nearer to the
kingdom of God and the Lord of glory. It is thus that our loved ones
become to us magnets in the higher firmament, drawing us to seek and build
up homes in heaven, and to enter into a life-communion with the kingdom
above—a communion which is not sentimental and imaginary, but real, and
exerting spiritual and moral influence. If we wish to be heavenly-minded
and not carnal, we must not merely meditate on eternity, but proceed from
such meditations to a practical denial of worldliness—worldly gain and
enjoyment. It is possible to think of heaven, merely in order to think of
loved departed friends, and to idealise our former connexion with them. If
so, God and His kingdom is not the end, but only means to an end. But
reverse the order; seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness, press
toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus,
press toward it by giving up the past, and the Lord will surely give unto
us, in addition, a new and blessed reunion with our friends who have gone
before, and who are ennobled by their separation from this world. We may
expect to receive this renewed intercourse as a ripe fruit from His
merciful hand. May the Lord guide you into all truth, and may He cause a
brighter and higher light than you have known as yet to rise out of the
darkness, which according to His counsel surrounds His chastisements, so
that, after having sown in tears, you may reap with joy! |
