Chapter 5
Our feelings towards the departed are the same as towards other prohibited things. Many are continually seeking for pleasures which God has taken away, or is purposely withholding from them. Let any one look at the history of his feelings, and see if his state of mind be not one of perpetual expectation of some form of happiness yet to arrive; an ideal of bliss, some prefigured condition, in which contentment and peace are to abide; while the discovery that he is not to have it, would make him inconsolably miserable. Our search for lost joys, or for those which God is not prepared, or not disposed, to give us, and the happiness which he desires rather to give us, and to have us seek, are severally represented to us by this search for Elijah, and by Elijah himself, who is, meanwhile, at God's right hand. At his right hand are pleasures forever-more; but some, in the ardor and strength of their affections, are seeking for that which they will never obtain, and that is, happiness independent of God. Some tell us that they mean to make the most of life, and to be happy while they live; therefore, begone, reflection! religion is not for the spring-tide of youth; mirth and merry days are for the young; soberness and the russet garb of autumn belong to the decline of life, which certainly to them, they think, is far off;--as though every material necessary for their last, long sleep, may not at this moment be in the warerooms and shops; as though they could boast themselves even of one to-morrow, and knew what the to-morrows of many years would bring forth. The Bible is against their way of thinking and manner of life; and to push aside the Bible in our search after any thing, is a certain sign of being in the wrong. And all this with the mistaken belief that to love God, and to be loved of him, is not the greatest, the only satisfying good,--the God that framed the voice for that music which charms a circle of friends, and made those curious fingers, and gave them all that cunning skill which sheds delight on others, and empowered that heart to swell with such conceptions of earthly pleasure;--and that to love him, and be loved by him, is the direst necessity of our being, to be postponed as long as possible, and then to be accepted as a last resort and the less of two evils. Where is the Lord God of Elijah, the God of all power and might, the God of all grace and consolation, the God of our life, and the length of our days? Banished from the world which these friends have made for themselves; an intruder into the charmed circle in which the wand of fancy has enclosed them; a dreaded power standing over them, to snatch away the only bliss which they ever expect to enjoy. O gilded butterflies, made for a few days of sunshine, and doomed to perish at the first touch of frost! had they no souls; were there no hereafter, no heaven, no hell; if it would not be as desirable to be happy millions of years from to-day, as now; if they were not including all their hopes and efforts to be happy within a handbreadth of time, and liable to lose even that,--the wise man might stop with saying, "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes;" but the infinite future compels him to add, "but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Such are the motives by which, in their present condition, and with their present views, they are most likely to be affected; yet some of them, we are glad to say, in their best moods, are also affected and influenced aright when we tell them that, even if our existence terminated at death, the joys which are now to be found in loving and serving God, are better than the pleasures of sin for a season.
There is not one of us who has not lost a friend, a schoolmate, a companion of early life, one who has disappeared from our side, a frequent associate in the business of life, or one whom we have been accustomed to see in the places of business; and perhaps a member of our family circle.
Now, it is profitable to consider that the same thoughts which we have of them, others will ere long have concerning us. What would make us satisfied and happy to know respecting them? What are we glad to say of their preparation for an eternal state? What would we have had that preparation be? In what respects better or different? Where do we love to assign them their places? And what is it pleasant to believe are their thoughts of us, of earth, of eternity, of the gospel, of this life as a season of preparation for heaven? We shall soon be the subjects of the same contemplations in the minds of others. The hosts of that long procession, of which we are the part now passing over the stage, are urging and pressing us from behind, and we must go down, as others have before us,--our love, our envy, our hatred perish,--and we no more have any portion in all that is done under the sun.
We must give up happiness as the great aim and end of existence, and, instead of it, take this for our supreme endeavor and chief end--the conscientious performance of our duty to God, and to others. We are never really happy till we cease to expect happiness from the things of this world. As soon as we begin to be satisfied with God, and find that to think of God, to love him, to trust in him, to serve him, is happiness enough, we attain to solid peace; and then, turning and following the sun, all desirable pleasure pursues us and solicits us, like our shadows, the more eagerly and steadily the more that we flee from them, and the less that we turn ourselves to them. We never can be happy by searching for happiness; but when we give up this search, and duty becomes the motto of life, we are inevitably happy. God must satisfy us--his personal love to us, communion with him, the contemplation of his character, ways, and works; in short, the consciousness of having him for a personal friend, disclosing all our thoughts to him, looking to him and waiting for him in all things, and, as the Bible expresses it, "walking" with him. Then he makes our wants his care; and while he leads us through strange paths which we should not have chosen, it is to bring us, at the last, into a condition which will make us happy chiefly from the reflection that God himself appointed it. Disappointments, of which we were forewarned, and which we had every reason to expect, embitter that life whose only sources of happiness are confined to this world, and do not relate to God. Making him the supreme source of our happiness, we give up undue sorrow for departed friends, feeling that they are removed from all need of our commiseration, and all power to afford us comfort and help, any further than their example and remembered words instruct us. We shall then be chiefly concerned to know and to do the will of God, to watch over the interests of our souls, preparing for life, with its important duties, and storing up those recollections which are to occupy our thoughts in the review of life beyond the grave. We shall bear in mind that we, too, are to have survivors, to whom it will be the greatest favor if we leave a good assurance, based upon their remembrance of our piety, that we are happy, thus constraining them to follow us to heaven. We shall do well if we habitually say, as Elijah said to Elisha, "The Lord hath sent me to Jordan;" and that we are one day to be taken up and conveyed to that same heaven whither Elijah went, and from which he came to meet Christ, and to speak with him of his decease, which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. What if we knew that some day, not far distant, flaming chariots and horses, over our dwelling, would wait to bring us home to God? The ministering spirits are already designated who are to perform this office for those who are heirs of salvation. What, then, are we searching for among the dark, gloomy valleys of sorrow, or on the hills of earthly vision? If our friends are with Christ, we must be prepared to be with him, or lose their society; and that loss will be worse than the first.
Sometimes we feel as though we were sailing away from our departed friends, leaving them behind us. Not so; we are sailing towards them; they went forward, and we are nearer to them now than yesterday; and the night is far spent; the day is at hand. If life, or any undue portion, be spent in grief which unfits us for duty, we shall see, in heaven, how much better it would have been had we had more faith, and had lived more as then we should desire our surviving friends to live, quickened and strengthened by the assured hope of our being in heaven, and by the expectation of meeting us there.
But there is one kind of sorrow and desire for departed friends which, in its consequences, is greatly to be deplored. Some refuse to become decided Christians, because their friends, they think, were not believers in the faith which these surviving friends are now persuaded is the truth. To embrace this truth, as essential to salvation, it is felt, will be to condemn these departed friends; and some have, in so many words, declared that they preferred to share the fate of their companions, or children, who gave no evidence of having accepted the gospel, as it is now viewed by these survivors.
How sad would be such a catastrophe as this: The departed friend, in the secret exercises of his mind, and by the good Spirit of God, may have been, at the last hour, prevailed upon to accept the offers of salvation by a crucified Redeemer. He gave no intimation of this, owing, perhaps, to bodily weakness, or to fear and distrust; but, through infinite mercy, he was saved by faith in the Lamb of God. The surviving friend, persuaded of the truth, refuses to comply with it, and loves the departed friend more than Christ, or truth and duty; and then, dying, finds that the departed friend is saved, through that very faith, which the other refused from idolatrous attachment to the departed; and now they are separated; whereas, had the survivor forsaken all for Christ and the truth, he would have had a hundred fold in this world, and, in the world to come, would have found that friend whom he would, as it were, have forsaken for Christ's sake and the gospel's. It is safe, it is best, for each of us to do his duty, to walk by the light afforded us, and not to make a creature our standard, nor our chief good.
If we meet certain of our friends at the end of their search after pleasure, having forgotten their God and Saviour, and see them disappointed, and utterly destitute of any thing to make them happy forever, and all because they would not forego their chase after unsatisfying pleasure,--there is many a faithful Christian friend, whose example and advice they disregarded, who could then reply, "Did I not say unto you, Go not?"
In the name of some unspeakably dear to you, we say, "We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you; come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel."
Our friends, who have gone to heaven, ought not to be invested, in our thoughts, with such melancholy associations as we are prone to connect with them. To die is gain. Trouble, and sorrow, and the dark river, interpose between us and heaven; but in the prospect which has opened before the eye of the redeemed spirit, there is nothing but widening and brightening glory. We must not seek for consolation at their departure by bringing them back, in our thoughts, to our dwellings, but by going forward, in faith, ourselves, to their dwelling. There is much to encourage and help us in doing so, in the following lines, which may be read with profit upon each anniversary of a friend's departure to heaven, until surviving friends read them at the returning anniversaries of our own entrance into the joy of our Lord:--
"A YEAR IN HEAVEN.
A YEAR UNCALENDARED; for what Hast thou to do with mortal time? Its dole of moments entereth not That circle, mystic and sublime, Whose unreached centre is the throne Of Him, before whose awful brow, Meeting eternities are known As but an everlasting now. The thought removes thee far away,-- Too far,--beyond my love and tears; Ah, let me hold thee, as I may; And count thy time by earthly years.
A YEAR OF BLESSEDNESS; wherein Not one dim cloud hath crossed thy soul; No sigh of grief, no touch of sin, No frail mortality's control; Nor once hath disappointment stung, Nor care, world-weary, made thee pine; But rapture, such as human tongue Hath found no language for, is thine. Made perfect at thy passing, who Can sum thy added glory now? As on, and onward, upward, through The angel ranks that lowly bow, Ascending still from height to height Unfaltering, where rapt spirits trod, Nor pausing 'mid their circles bright, Thou tendest inward unto God.
A YEAR OF PROGRESS, in the love That's only learned in heaven; thy mind Unclogged of clay, and free to soar, Hath left the realms of doubt behind, And wondrous things which finite thought In vain essayed to solve, appear To thy untasked inquiries, fraught With explanation strangely clear. Thy reason owns no forced control, As held it here in needful thrall; God's mysteries court thy questioning soul, And thou may'st search and know them all.
A YEAR OF LOVE; thy yearning heart Was always tender, e'en to tears, With sympathies, whose sacred art Made holy all thy cherished years; But love, whose speechless ecstasy Had overborne the finite, now Throbs through thy being, pure and free, And burns upon thy radiant brow. For thou those hands' dear clasp hast felt, Where still the nail-prints are displayed; And thou before that face hast knelt, Which wears the scars the thorns have made.
A YEAR WITHOUT THEE; I had thought My orphaned heart would break and die, Ere time had meek quiescence brought, Or soothed the tears it could not dry; And yet I live, to faint and quail Before the human grief I bear; To miss thee so, then drown the wail That trembles on my lips in prayer. Thou praising, while I vainly thrill; Thou glorying, while I weakly pine; And thus between thy heart and mine The distance ever widening still.
A YEAR OF TEARS TO ME; to thee The end of thy probation's strife, The archway to eternity, The portal of immortal life; To me the pall, the bier, the sod; To thee the palm of victory given. Enough, my heart; thank God! thank God! That thou hast been a year in heaven.
IV.
THE SILENCE OF THE DEAD.
Dear, beauteous Death, the jewel of the just. Shining nowhere but in the dark, What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, Could men outlook that mark! He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair field, or grove, he sings in now, That is to him unknown.
HENRY VAUGHAN.
The silence of the dead is one of the most impressive and affecting things connected with the separate state of the soul. We hear the voice of a dying friend, in some last wish, or charge, or prayer, or farewell, or in some exclamation of joy or hope; and though years are multiplied over the dead, that voice returns no more in any moment of day or night, of joy or sorrow, of labor or rest, in life or in death.
The voices of creation return to us at periodical seasons. The early spring bird startles us with her unexpected note; the winter is over and gone. But no periodical change brings back the voices of departed friends. A member of the family embarks on a long voyage; but, be it ever so long, if life is spared, the letter is received, in which the written words, so characteristic of him, recall his looks and the tones of his voice. Years pass away, and the sound of his footsteps is at the door again, and his voice is heard in the dwelling. But of the dead there comes no news; from the grave no voice, from the separate state no message. With our desire to speak once more to the departed, and to hear them speak, we feel that they must have an intense desire to speak to us. We wonder why they do not break the silence. There is so much of which they could inform us; it would be such a relief, we think, to have one word from them, assuring us that they arrived safely, and are happy, and, above all things, granting us their forgiveness for the sins which now have awakened sorrow. But we wait, and look, and wonder, in vain.
When we think of the number of the dead, this silence appears impressive. Their number far exceeds that of the living. Could they be assembled together, and could those now alive be set over against them, upon an immense plain, to a spectator from above we should be a small company in comparison with them. Should they lift up their voices together, ours could not be heard. Yet from that vast multitude we never hear a voice,--not even a whisper,--nor see a sign. Standing in a cemetery a few miles distant from the great city, you hear the low, muffled roar from the streets and bridges, reminding you of the living tide which is coursing along those highways. But with eight thousand of the dead around you in that cemetery, and a world of spirits, which no man can number, just within the veil, you hear nothing from them. No one comes back to tell us of his experience; no warning, nor comfort, nor counsel, ever reaches our ears. Whatever our trouble, or our joy may be, our need or prosperity; however long and painful the absence of the departed may have been; however lonely we may feel, wishing for some word of remembrance and love; and though we visit the grave day by day, and call on the name of the departed, and use every art of endearment to pierce the veil between us,--there is the same determined, cold, lasting silence. "To go down into silence" is a scriptural phrase for the state of the dead.
Our feelings seek relief from those vague, uncertain thoughts respecting the dead which we find occasioned by the gentle manner in which death most frequently occurs. The breath is shorter and shorter, and finally ceases, yet so imperceptibly, that, for a moment, it is uncertain whether the last breath has expired. There is no visible trace of the outgoing of the soul. Could we see the spirit leave the body, we should feel that one of the mysteries of death is solved. Could we trace its flight into the air, could we watch its form as it disappeared among the clouds, or melted away in a distance greater than the eye can comprehend, we should not, perhaps, ask for a word to assure us respecting the state of the soul. But there is no more perfect delineation of the appearances which death presents to us, than in the following inspired description: "As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." We see the lying down, the fixedness of the posture, the utter disregard, in the cold remains, of every thing which passes before them; and these remains are like the channels of a river, or the flats of the sea, when the tide has utterly forsaken them. The soul is like those vanished waters, as to any manifestation that it continues to exist.
We miss the departed from his accustomed places; we expect to meet him at certain hours of the day; those hours return, and he is not there; we start as we look upon his vacant place at the table, or around the evening lamp, or in the circle at prayers. No tongue can describe that blank, that chasm, which is made by death in the family circle, or the variations in the tones of sorrow and desire with which those words are secretly repeated, day after day, and night after night: "And where is he?"
* * * * *
Is there any assignable cause for the silence of the dead?
We cannot, with certainty, assign the reason for it, and we do not know why the dead are not suffered to reappear to us. We can, nevertheless, see great wisdom and use in this silence, and in our perfect ignorance respecting their state.
_It is the arrangement of divine Providence that faith, and not sight, shall influence our characters and conduct._--It would be inconsistent with this great law if we should see or hear from the dead.
The object of God, in his dealings with us, is to exalt the Bible as our instructor. If men were left to visions and voices, in which there is so much room for mistake and delusion, the confusion of human affairs would be indescribably dreadful. Every man would have his vision, or his message, the proof, or the correctness, of which would necessarily be concealed from others, who might have contrary directions, or impressions; and human affairs would then be like a sea, in which many rivers ran across each other.
It would not be safe for departed spirits to be intrusted with the power of communicating with the living. Though they know far more than we, yet their information is limited; and, especially, if they should undertake to counsel us about the future, as they would do in their earnestness to help us, we can easily see that, being finite as they are, and unable to look into the future, they might involve us in serious mistakes, either by their ignorance, or by the contrariety of their information. Far better is it for man to look only to God, who sees the end from the beginning, with whom is no variableness, and who is able, as our anxious friends would not be, to conceal from us the future, or any information respecting it, which it would be an injury for us to know. Should we be informed of certain things which will happen to us years hence, either the expectation of them would engross our attention, and hinder our usefulness, or the fear of them would paralyze effort, and destroy health, if not life. Borrowed trouble, even now, constitutes a large part of our unhappiness; but the certain knowledge of a sorrow approaching us with unrelenting steps, would spread a pall over every thing; while prosperity, far in the prospect, would tempt us to forget our dependence upon God, and would weaken the motives to patient continuance in well doing for its own sake.