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OR,
"GOOD WORDS"
CONCERNING THE BETTER COUNTRY.
No. II.
"They rest not day and
night."—Rev. iv. 8.
"A little while the fetters hold no more,
The spirit long enthrall'd is free to soar,
And takes its joyful flight,
On radiant wings of light,
Up to the throne, to labour or adore!"
What a seeming paradox is
this! We last contemplated Heaven under the beautiful and significant
figure of a state of rest;—here it is spoken of as a state of unrest!
"They rest"—"They rest not." It is what the old writers quaintly
designate, "The rest without a rest." The combination of these two
similitudes involves no inconsistency; they bring together two different
but not antagonistic elements of earthly happiness, which will have their
highest exemplification in the bliss of a perfect world.
The emblem suggests two
views of a future Heaven—
First, As a state of
ceaseless activity; and, second, As a state of continual progression.
Heaven is a state of
ceaseless activity in the service of God.
Constituted as we now are,
a condition of listless-ness and inactivity is most inimical to true
happiness. Indeed, if we can judge from the references in Scripture as to
the constitution of higher and nobler natures, we are led to infer that
activity is a great normal law among the loftiest orders of intelligent
being. Angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, the "burning ones and
the shining ones," are "ministering spirits," engaged in untiring errands
of love to redeemed man, and probably also to other provinces in God's
vast empire; nay, with reverence be it said, the Great God Himself is ever
putting forth the unceasing activities of His omnipotence. "He that
keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps." "My Father," said Christ, "worketh
hitherto, and I work." It is sublimely said of Him, "He fainteth not,
neither is weary." (Ps. cxxi. 4; John v. 17; Isa. xl. 28.)
The human spirit has the
same lofty heritage. Activity is linked with pure and unsullied enjoyment.
The very curse of labour and the sweat of the brow, the birthright of
toil, is the birthright of mercy. A philosopher of ancient times said, if
he had truth in his grasp, he would open his hand and let it flee away
that he might enjoy the pursuit of it. Transfer this to Heaven. There the
law and love of activity will still be a governing principle among the
spirits of the glorified; and in this we shall be assimilated to the
"living ones" whose very name indicates the ardour of their holy being.
They rest not! There will be no more of the lassitude and languor of
earth. Here our bodies are clogs and hindrances to mental activity. There
the glorified frame will be a help and auxiliary to the ecstatic spirit.
Here the remains of indwelling corruption is like the chained corpse which
criminals of old were compelled to drag behind them. It elicits the
mournful cry, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this
body of death?" (Rom. vii. 24.) That soliloquy will be heard no more in
the ''better country." There, every chain will be unloosed, and the
uncaged spirit soar upwards unhampered by the impediments of its earthly
coil.
Glorious description! "They
serve Him day and night." (Rev. vii. 15.) No more pauses from weariness or
faintness; no more fitful frames and feelings. It has been said of God's
people in the present world, '"Though they do not weary of their Master's
work, they often weary in the work." Their experience is impressively
given in the Song of Solomon, when the Church, or believer in his earthly
state, is represented as saying, "I sleep, but my heart waketh" (Cant. v.
2)—worldly cares and business and engrossments chaining down the soul, and
inducing a state of drowsy insensibility. But there, they shall not
require to "lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees." (Heb.
xii. 12.) There, there shall be no more waking up refreshed from the
repose of exhausted nature—no more complaining that "the spirit is
willing, but the flesh is weak." (Matt. xxvi. 41.) "His servants shall
serve Him," and serve Him with joyful and untiring alacrity. If any of us
have felt the pleasurableness of doing good, even in a present imperfect,
chequered world, what will, what must this feeling be in a state of holy
activity, with no sin or weakness to repress our ardour or damp our
energies?
And what will be the chief
ingredient—the grand element in this state of holy activity ? It will be
the service of God. "They rest not day nor night," uttering the threefold
ascription to a Triune-Jehovah —Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—''Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord God of hosts." (Isa. vi. 3.) As we have found activity to
be an essential element in true happiness, surely that happiness will be
enhanced by the attractiveness of the service in which it is our privilege
to be engaged. An earthly servant, possessed of an honourable nature,
would feel himself obligated to perform work faithfully and
conscientiously even to a bad master; but how would his joy in the
performance of his duty be increased by the consciousness that he was
serving some lofty and beneficent spirit who was an ornament to his
station and revered by all? If we carry this law to the pinnacle of all
greatness and moral excellence, surely here will be the climax and
consummation of creature-happiness—cheerful duty in the service of Him
whose favour is life!
What is the truest source
of joy to an earthly child? Is it not by active duty, as well as by
passive obedience, fulfilling his parent's wishes? Will he not even suffer
much for the parent he loves? The earthly relationship is in this, as in
many other respects, a beautiful type of the heavenly. What pure and
unsullied delight will it afford the sainted spirit to be engaged
constantly in doing the will of Him who is better and kinder than the best
of earthly parents! Look at Him who, being very man as well as very God,
understood all the tenderest sensibilities of the human heart! What was
the great (shall we say, the only) joy which brightened the pilgrimage of
the Man of Sorrows? What was the one source of purest, ineffable delight
to Him, as he toiled on His blood-stained path ? Was it not the elevating
consciousness of doing His heavenly Father's will? —"My meat is to do the
will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work!" (John iv. 34.) We are
always most willing to serve those we love most. With what bounding joy,
then, shall we embark in heaven on errands of active service, when we
shall there have unfolded to us (what we here know so little of) the
unspeakable love of Him who for us spared not His own, His only Son! Oh,
what a motive will there be here for all the energies of the glorified
body, and all the faculties of the glorified spirit!—to love, and serve,
and honour, and adore Him, around whom our deepest affections are centred,
and our heart of hearts entwined;—getting ever nearer Him and liker Him, —
gazing more intently on His matchless perfections—diving more into the
ocean-depths and mysteries of His love, and becoming the channels of
conveyance of that love to others; —then, indeed, will duty be turned into
enjoyment, and supreme and unswerving devotedness to His service be its
own best reward.
It will be a consecration,
too, not only of unfettered, unclogged, unwearied powers ; but there will
be the still further element of a pure and single-eyed devotedness, which
earth never knew. Here, alas ! in the holiest activities of the present
state of being, there are ever, even when we ourselves may be insensible
to them, the existence of mingled motives. Wretched self, in its thousand
insidious forms, so imperceptibly will creep in, marring and mutilating
our best endeavours to please God. Our best offerings are full of
blemishes —our best thoughts are polluted with low, grovelling cares. But
there, self will for ever be dethroned. This usurping Dagon will then be
broken for ever in pieces before the presence of the true Ark, in that
glorious temple wherein "there is nothing that defileth." God's glory will
then be the one grand, absorbing, and terminating object of all desires
and all aspirations—then, for the first time in reality, shall we come to
realise and exemplify that great truth, which many from their infancy have
had on their lips—"Man's chief end is to glorify, God, and to enjoy Him
for ever."
Thus will active and
ceaseless occupation in the service of God form one of the sweetest
employments and sources of happiness in the upper sanctuary. "They rest,"
in a blessed absence from all sin, all suffering, all trial. "They rest
not," in the lofty behests and engagements of holiness. Believers are
called in this world by the name of "servants," "workmen," "husbandmen."
They will still retain these same designations of active duty. "His
servants," we read, "shall serve Him." (Rev. xxii. 3.) God, in every
portion of His wide universe, seems to work by creature agency. He does
not require to do so. A simple volition of His sovereign will would
suffice to fulfil His counsels as effectually as if never an angel sped on
his embassy of love ! But as on earth He accomplishes His purposes in His
Church by human agency, and as in heaven he employs angelic agency —those
who "excel in strength" "doing His commandments, hearkening unto the voice
of His word,"—so it would seem, as if in merciful consideration for the
happiness of His glorified saints, He is to make this a permanent law
through eternity ; so that heaven will be only a development of the
present condition of grace—with this single, but important difference,
that there will be no sin.
Indeed, it is this very
idea of Heaven as a state of action, that brings out the beauty of the
former representation as a state of rest. Best, to be enjoyed, supposes
previous activity or labour; and although it can have no such relation in
a place where weariness and fatigue are unknown, we can readily carry out
the beautiful idea of Pollok, in his "Course of Time," of the ransomed
spirit, retiring from the loud hallelujahs around the throne, to hold its
silent meditations apart by "the living fountains of waters:"—this,
however, only for a time, once more to return with unflagging and unabated
energy to resume the song, and speed on new errands of love!
Reader, I ask, is this your
anticipation of Heaven? —Heaven, not as it is pictured in the dreams of
ike sentimental or contemplative Christian,—not a drowsy Mohammedan
paradise—a state of torpor and inaction; but as it is known to angels, who
are now, though unseen to us, speeding down to our world in ceaseless
agencies of love and comfort? Do we realise this, and in realising the
grand truth, are we training for these lofty duties?—ready to take the
angel's place, or to join the angel's company, in travelling on similar
ministries to some other distant provinces of creation ? What the poet has
said of the present life is as true of its glorious counterpart hereafter—
"Life is real, life is
earnest."
Rest not until you have
attained a well-grounded assurance that this future state of active
blessedness is to be yours;—that you are looking for it, preparing for it,
ready for it. "Press forward," as a saint now in glory expressed it,
"uphill and downhill, to the city which hath foundations." Test your
meetness for the Heaven that is before you by the question, Bo I delight
now in active employment in the service of my God? Is prayer a season of
joyful refreshing? Does praise call into willing and gladsome exercise all
the renewed affections of a heaven-born nature? Is the Sabbath a joyful
pausing-place in life's chequered journey;—not a mere interlude of repose
for the tired and jaded body after the incessant toils and cares of the
week, but the day which summons into exercise the loftier activities of my
nobler being? Do I spend it under the feeling of Eternity being an
everlasting Sabbath; and that everlasting Sabbath occupied in some
personal ministry of holiness and love? In this life there should, at
least, be assimilations to the life hereafter. Though not in degree, it
should be the same in hind. If activity in a little child gives indication
of the energy and resolution of the man, so activity in the service of
God, in a state of grace, will be the pledge and earnest of nobler
activities in a state of glory.
"Oh, blessed rest! when we
rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!—when
we shall rest from sin, but not from worship—from suffering and sorrow,
but not from joy ! Oh, blessed day ! when I shall rest with, God—when I
shall rest in knowing, loving, rejoicing, and praising!—when my perfect
soul and body shall together perfectly enjoy the most perfect God—when
God, who is love itself, shall perfectly love me, and rest in His love to
me, and I shall rest in my love to Him—when He shall rejoice over me with
joy, and joy over me with singing, and I shall rejoice in Him." [Baxter.] |
