|
OR,
"GOOD WORDS"
Concerning the better country.
No. IV.
"He shall swallow up death
in victory."—ISA. xxv. 8.
"See the haven full in view,
Love divine shall bear thee through.
Saints in glory, perfect made,
Wait thy passage through the shade.
Ardent for thy coming o'er,
See, they throng the blissful shore!"
Victory is a cheering word!
Joyous is the return to their own land of a band of warriors after a long
and triumphant campaign. Inspiriting are the hosannas of welcome poured
upon them by an applauding country, and sweeter still the music of
home-voices. To those who, it may be, dreamt themselves widowed and
fatherless, the memory of past toil and suffering is forgotten, or
remembered only to enhance the gladness of reunion!
What shall it be when the
Christian, freed from the last conflict, enters the gates of the heavenly
city, the hosannas of angels and saints resounding through the streets of
the New Jerusalem! Each toil-worn warrior bathing his wounds in the river
of the water of life—death-divided friends gathered to welcome him to his
everlasting home!
Looking back from the
heights of glory on earth's long battle-field, it is a gloomy and
chequered retrospect of stern foes, stubborn temptations, mountains of
difficulties that had to be climbed, valleys of humiliation that had to be
descended—ay, and the sadder memory of unwatchfulness and betrayal,
temporary defeat and disaster. But all is now crowned with "victory," and
the last and most recent foe—death itself—disarmed. How great the contrast
NOW and then! Now, alas! he is the unsparing invader of every household;
all our precautions, all our wisest human expedients in vain are employed
to disarm him of his power, and arrest his advancing footsteps. He reigns
on earth with a terrible ubiquity! He comes in the hour least
expected—often just when the fondest visions of earthly joy are being
realised.
Ah! do we think of it—we
who may be living all careless and thoughtless, lulled by the dream of
prosperity, presuming on our present cloudless horizon—that each moment,
with sleepless vigilance, the stealthy foe is creeping nearer and nearer
?—-that the smooth current is gliding slowly but surely onward, and still
onward, towards the brink of the cataract, where all at once the
irrevocable leap will and must be taken?
Reader, perchance you can
even now tell the tale! You may at present be reading it, or you may have
recently done so, with tearful eyes and a breaking heart! You may be
marking the vacant seat at your table, missing the accents of some
well-known voice, or the sound of some well-remembered footfall; a beaming
eye in your daily walk may be gone, and gone forth for ever of time! What
other antidote for hearts—smitten down by these simoom-blasts which leave
earth a blackened wilderness—but a look beyond, to that better land, where
this enemy's power is neither felt nor feared? In that glorious
resurrection morning, the sceptre which he has wielded for 6000 years will
be wrested from his grasp, and that chorus will begin for which centuries
of suffering hearts have been wistfully longing, "O death, where is thy
sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" Sounding trumpets commenced the
song of the Lord in the temple of old, (2 Chron. xxix. 27.) It was a type
of a mightier festival in the temple of glory. "The trump of God" is to
sound first. Slumbering millions will start at the summons, "Awake, and
sing, ye that dwell in the dust!" (Isa. xxvi. 19.) Believer! seek to
contemplate death from the heavenward side, as a foe doomed and conquered!
If you are now in Jesus, victory over death is yours by anticipation. You
cannot sing the song of victory completed; but you can be weaving the
garlands of triumph, and tuning your harp for the prophetic strain! Safe
in Christ! then, indeed, is death disarmed of its real terrors. It becomes
a stupendous triumphal arch, through which God's redeemed legions pass
into glory! A dark valley, but bridged by the bow of promise, with its
radiant hues of love, and joy, and peace! Live on the promises now; they
alone will support you in the hour of death, and prove to you, like
Elijah's horses and chariot, of fire ! Living now near to Jesus, you will
have nothing to do when the last, solemn hour does arrive, but to step
into these chariots, and be upborne by angels to your Father's house!
Oh, blissful consummation!
once across that threshold, and every remembrance of sadness which death
generates here, and which often makes life one valley of Baca, and one
vale of weeping, will be obliterated, and that for ever! No sun going down
while it is yet day; no glory of manhood suddenly eclipsed; no early
blossoms nipped in the bud; no venerable trees—trees under whose shadow we
have long reposed—succumbing to the axe of the destroyer. Viewing death
from the earthly side, it seems the mournful "exodus of life," the fatal
extinguisher of being, the dread annihilator of fondest hopes and purest
happiness. Taking the heavenward view, it is what Matthew Henry
significantly calls "the parenthesis of being." It is the bridge from the
finite to the infinite; the birthday of immortality; the momentary rushing
of the shallows in entering the quiet haven; the day which, while it
terminates the joys of the worldling, only truly begins those of the
believer!
Suffering saints of God! ye
who may have been tossed about with a great fight of afflictions, long out
on the stormy sea, neither sun nor star appearing, and, like the seamen in
Adria of old, ''wistfully looking for the day,"—be comforted. Each day is
bringing you nearer and nearer these peaceful shores. You may even now be
discovering indications that you cannot be far from the desired port!
It is beautifully recorded
by the biographer of Columbus, that, as he was approaching the hitherto
unknown shores of the new world, "one day, at sunrise, some rushes,
recently torn up, were seen near the vessel; a plank, evidently hewn by an
axe; a stick, skilfully carved by some cutting instrument; a bough of
hawthorn in blossom; and, lastly, a bird's neat-built nest on a branch
which the wind had broken, and full of eggs, on which the parent bird was
sitting amidst the gently rolling waves, were seen floating past upon the
waters ! The sailors brought on board these living and inanimate witnesses
of their approach to land. They were a voice from the shore confirming the
assurances of Columbus. The pilots and seamen clinging about the masts,
yards, and shrouds, each tried to keep the best place, and the closest
watch, to get the earliest sight of the new hemisphere. . . . Delicious
and unknown perfumes reached the vessels from the dim outlines of the
shore, with the roar of the waves upon the reefs, and the soft land
breeze. In a few hours his foot trod the sands of a new world!"—(See
Lamartine's "Columbus.") Beautiful picture of a nearing heaven! afflicted,
tempest-tossed, and not comforted! "Lift up your heads with joy, for your
redemption draweth nigh!" Yet a little while and He that shall come will
come, and will not tarry. Every new sorrow that visits you; every new
season which passes over you; every friend taken from you;—these are so
many silent messengers from the shores of glory, whispering, "Nearer
eternity!" Time itself seems not to be without significant
monitors—signals scattered on its ocean that the day is at hand! Prophecy
is fast fulfilling. There are those who, from the shrouds and rigging, can
descry, in the hazy distance, the dim outline of a more glorious
hemisphere than that of earth—"the new world" —even "the new heaven and
the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness!" Let no scriptural mariner
trifle at his post, or relax his vigilance; "it is high time to awake out
of sleep; for now is your salvation nearer than when you believed!" |
