PART IV.

ASSOCIATIONS, SECULAR AND SACRED.

“By these mysterious ties, the busy power Of Memory her ideal train preserves Entire; or when they would elude her watch Reclaims their fleeting footsteps from the waste Of dark oblivion: thus collecting all The living forms of being, to present Before the curious aim of mimic art Their longest choice: like Spring’s unfolded blooms Exhaling sweetness, that the skilful bee May taste at will, from their selected spoils, To work her dulcet food.”

AKENSIDE.

ENDOWED as we are with a principle of suggestion—one of the most active principles in the human mind, ministering greatly to the pleasures of existence, and giving to men of enlarged intelligence the means of various and extensive gratification—it is very natural, on looking at the great event of the present year, to cluster round it in thought a number of facts bearing in relation to it some kind of affinity. Even the structure and its contents are not without suggestive interest, while the great gatherings of the people to behold them excites the memory and imagination, and brings out many a picture of things that have been or that shall be. Associations are suggested, commercial and classical, romantic and religious.

As a simple exposition of art, the Exhibition reminds us, in the first place, of the Expositions of Art in the French metropolis, which at intervals have taken place during the last fifty years. We go back to the times of the first republic, when after the tragedies of the revolution, and their dire effect on industry and commerce, it was felt that some stimulus and encouragement were needed to revive them; and the deserted palace of St. Cloud, under the superintendence of the Marquis d’Avèze, was enriched and adorned with the productions of a people whose tasteful ingenuity no social disorders could extinguish. The walls were hung with costly draperies from the Gobelin manufactory—the floors were covered with rich carpets from the looms of La Savonnerie, and, amassed in profusion and arranged with skill, there was a display of the variegated porcelain of Sevres, that hive of curious industry which borders the spacious park of the palace we have mentioned. Succeeded by a second Exposition at the Hotel d’Orsay, in the city of Paris, the two were regarded by Napoleon,—who, though flushed with his early victories, failed not to discern that war without commerce would but exhaust his country,—as sufficient to warrant a third and greater attempt, and accordingly the Temple of Industry, as it was called, was reared in the Champ de Mars. It was of simple construction, adorned with oriflames, and the victorious tricolours of the first Italian campaign, and within the walls there were exhibited for three days, some of the most beautiful works of art the country could supply. The temper of that great nation at the juncture was candidly expressed by the prime minister: “Our manufactures are the arsenals which will supply us with the weapons most fatal to the British power;” and as we read his words we rejoice in the far different relations of the two empires now, and the pleasant union and amicable rivalry of our Gallic neighbours with ourselves in the present enterprise. Other Expositions followed, but the ninth, under Louis Philippe, in the magnificent Place de la Concorde, in the year 1839, eclipsed them all; and as the gratified monarch gazed on the trophies of French ingenuity and skill, he exclaimed, “These are the true victories which cause no tears to flow.” Nor can we, while these imposing scenes in the French capital and its neighbourhood pass before us, forget the humble attempts made in our own country in connexion with our valuable Mechanics’ Institutions, to exhibit in some of our large towns, especially Manchester and Leeds, the products of native industry. They are worthy of honourable and grateful remembrance, as indications of that indomitable and individual spirit of enterprise, which is one of the secrets of our commercial prosperity.

The Exhibition is a great Bazaar. It is, to a considerable extent, based on the true principle of such establishments. That principle is one of classification, and therefore the term Bazaar is incorrectly applied to certain marts in the metropolis which are but heterogeneous clusters of shops under a common roof. The original principle is a classification of products according to the trades to which they belong; here it is a classification of products according to the countries from which they are received. The Bazaar, as essentially oriental, carries us away to Cairo and Constantinople, to Persian towns and Indian cities. We find ourselves in the crowded alley of some vaulted building, with shops of a similar kind presenting goods of the same general description, lining either side the way. Provisions, wares, and fabrics, both mean and gorgeous, rude and ornamented, simple and ornate, are piled or spread forth to please and entice the passer-by, while, in some cases, the moody Turk, who sits cross-legged amidst his stores, smoking his pipe, is so absorbed in the enjoyment of that soporific luxury, that he seems hardly to care about attending to the wants of his customers. In Persia, we are told, the buildings are of rich appearance, decorated with paintings, particularly under the domes, with portraits of hunters and heroes, and pictures of animals, real or imaginary. Generally in the East these markets are places of immense resort, including the characteristics of an exchange, a news room, a debating theatre, a promenade, and a rendezvous for idlers. The gaiety of oriental costume affords a marked feature in the promiscuous assemblages, while the noise of many voices, in various tongues and dialects, is like the echo of that strange confusion of sounds once heard on the plains of Shinar. In this respect the mixed scenes and various languages in the Hyde Park Bazaar will be less surprising to the Eastern visitors than to the people of the West. It will seem to them the augmented and multiplied counterpart of one of their own busy markets—a city-like mart, an immense assemblage of shops beneath one crystal roof—and embosoming in the midst of it a pleasure garden, with great trees, and fresh flowers, and gushing fountains—the whole the work, as they might think, of some of their most famous magicians.

The spirit of industrial activity and commercial competition creates all these scenes, and as we trace them to their source we cannot help noticing the desire of acquisition, one of the original principles of human nature, which often and most generally kindles and keeps that spirit alive. The desire of gain, regulated by justice and generosity, is to be distinguished from that love of money which is so strongly reprobated in the best of books, as “the root of all evil;” but it cannot be denied that the innate acquisitiveness of man which may be trained up into a virtue is too apt to sink down into a vice. Influenced by a moral feeling, especially by those considerations which Christianity suggests, and by those precepts which Christianity enjoins, this principle prompts individuals to gather only that they may prudently appropriate a befitting portion, and generously distribute the rest; but apart from these checks and guides, and stimulated by the sordid passions of man’s fallen soul, the natural tendency to acquire, in a multitude of cases, degenerates into the sin of covetousness, which is idolatry, and he who makes haste to be rich becomes a worshipper of Mammon. Nor can we here omit to notice what a wonderful spring of human energy; what a motive to exertion has the material wealth of this world ever proved; how, perhaps, even beyond the highest prizes of warlike ambition, it has more frequently and continuously agitated the surface of society, and moved it from its lowest depths. It has been like a strong east wind sweeping over the world from the earliest ages, and keeping the sea of civilized life in constant commotion. As we read the history of commerce, and think of the mercantile cities of antiquity, Tyre, Corinth, Alexandria, and the rest—as we trace the stream onwards through the middle ages, by the way of Amalfi, Venice, and Genoa;—as we descend to latter times, and touch on Amsterdam, Bruges, and Louvain, and then come home and muse on the rise and rivalry, the progress and changes of the great centres of commerce in our own country;—as we pause in each place to look at the busy traffic going on within them, to the crowded quays, the well-stored warehouses, the mart of the trader, the shop of the artisan;—as we see groups of merchants, mechanics, and mariners;—as we listen to the buzz of many lips, and the noise of unfurled sails, and vessels loosened from their moorings, the tramp of men piling up bales of goods, the click of the shuttle and clangour of the anvil, we have an impressive illustration of the high estimate of that material wealth, which it is the object of all this energetic activity to produce and preserve. Percival’s description of the pearl fishery at Ceylon—itself a branch of most profitable traffic, and exhibiting a scene of bustle akin to that of an oriental bazaar—may be regarded as a parable of the great world-mart we are thinking of, and of the precious prize which the thousands who throng it all covet to obtain. Several thousands of people of different colours, countries, casts, and occupations, continually passing and re-passing in a busy crowd: the vast numbers of small tents and huts erected on the shore, with the bazaar or market-place; the vast numbers of jewellers, brokers, merchants of all colours and all descriptions, both natives and foreigners, who are occupied in some way or other with the pearls, some separating and assorting them, others weighing and ascertaining their number and value, while others are hawking them about, or drilling and boring them for future use; “all these circumstances tend to impress the mind with the value and importance of _that object which can of itself create this scene_.” On reading this description it suggests another parable, a holy one from the holiest of lips. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchant seeking goodly pearls: who, when he hath found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

Wandering far back into the regions of classic antiquity, the finger of association points to Olympia and her games, those Greek celebrations of which such graphic sketches are preserved in the triumphal odes of Pindar. Though “the immediate object of these meetings was the exhibition of various trials of strength and skill, which from time to time were multiplied so as to include almost every mode of displaying bodily activity, they became subservient to the interests of genius and taste, of art and literature.” Statues were reared to the memory of successful combatants, “and the most eminent poets willingly lent their aid on such occasions, especially to the rich and great. And thus it happened that sports, not essentially different from those of our village green, gave birth to master-pieces of sculpture, and called forth the sublimest strains of the lyric muse.” “The scene of the Olympic Festival was during the season a mart of busy commerce, where productions, not only of manual but of intellectual labour, were exhibited and exchanged. In this respect it served many of the same purposes which, in modern times, are more effectually indeed answered by the press, in the communication of thoughts, inventions, and discoveries, and the more equable diffusion of knowledge.” {91} But these memorable institutions are suggested to us in the way of resemblance, chiefly on account of the vast and various concourse of persons which they periodically attracted. At the time when the games returned, the banks of the Alpheus became a centre of universal interest, and exhibited a pilgrim population typical of a congregated world. The festival “was very early frequented by spectators, not only from all parts of Greece itself, but from the Greek colonies in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and this assemblage was not brought together by the mere fortuitous impulse of private interest or curiosity, but was in part composed of deputations, which were sent by most cities as to a religious solemnity, and were considered as guests of the Olympian god.” It is curious to observe—in contrast with the inclusion of so many of the female sex in our gathering of the nations, the circumstance illustrative of the different position of woman in society in the old classic world—that, with the exception of the priestesses of Ceres, and certain virgins, none but men, during the earlier periods of Grecian history, were permitted to appear in Olympia at the time of those national festivities. The history of this remarkable institution, through the many ages in which Greece was the pattern and mirror of artistic, intellectual, and social civilization, exhibited that civilization in its rise, progress, and decay—its spring-tide freshness, summer pride, and autumnal beauty. There might the hand of providence be seen, disclosing, expanding, and then folding up forms of thought, modes of association, and habits of life, which while they actually existed gave much of their own impress to the foreigners who were gradually familiarized with them, and will long continue, through the medium of their history and their remains, to refresh the imagination, stimulate the genius, chasten the taste, and arouse the emulation of mankind.

Other associations, which belonging to the mediæval ages may be grouped together under the class of romantic, next occur to our minds, bringing in procession before us a train of images nearer in point of time, but more remote in point of resemblance. We think of the rich old picturesque cities of Europe, which sprung up, after the fall of the Roman Empire, in Spain, and France, and Germany, and the Netherlands, a hardy and robust offspring, born in troublous times, cradled amidst storms, thrown on the world in infancy to take care of themselves, and gathering, like individuals, strength and nerve and wit and prudence from this rough and irregular sort of training:—and forthwith the quaint-looking narrow streets are seen crowded with flocks of foreign visitors to drive a bargain in the bourse, or to barter their wool at the staple, or to mingle in the amusements of some civic festival. And amidst the concourse of merchants, and pedlars, and workmen may be seen the knight and the squire, the monk and the minstrel.

“Quaint old towns of toil and traffic, quaint old towns of art and song, Memories haunt their pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng. Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walked of yore the master-singers chancing rude poetic strains. From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild, Building nests in Fame’s great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.”

“I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of old; Stately dames like queens attended, knights who bore the fleece of gold; Lombard and Venetian merchants, with deep laden argosies; Ministers from twenty nations, more than royal pomp and ease.” {94}

And, then, Venice is seen, rising out of the sea—a “mazy dream of marble palaces, old names, fair churches, strange costumes, while the canals are like the silver threads, the bright unities of one of sleep’s well-woven visions.” Within that great city—the modern Tyre, her history full of warnings pointed at pride, cupidity, ambition, and tyranny—are seen her merchant princes, with strangers from other lands, “Greek, Armenian, Persian,” meeting together in busy excited crowds to look on the wares and treasures supplied by her richly freighted ships; nor can we help glancing at the annual festival of that commercial republic, when, to use the words of Rogers,—

“The fisher came From his green islet, bringing o’er the waves His wife and little one, the husbandman From the far land, with many a friar and nun, And village maiden, her first flight from home, Crowding the common ferry. All arrived: And in his straw the prisoner turned and listened; So great the stir in Venice. Old and young Thronged her three hundred bridges.”

And then these cities disappear, and give place to some curiously carved chapel—a gem of architecture—within whose dim aisles there gather groups of pilgrims from far-off places, to pay their vows and offer their gifts at the shrine of a popular saint. Walsingham and Canterbury show eager and zealous worshippers, coming from distant towns and other lands, to kneel with ignorant and superstitions reverence on the altar steps, and to help by their genuflexions to deepen the indentations on the wave-like surface of the floor. And then again our thoughts wander away to Mediterranean ports, and pilgrims are seen gathering there to go forth on a more formidable expedition to the Holy Land, and as the vessel weighs anchor, the old church hymn, the _Veni Creator_, chanted by the sailors, is heard stealing over the waters, as they spread their canvass to the wind. Nor can we forget that even these gatherings, with all their superstition, folly, waste of time, and pernicious moral influence, nevertheless enlarged the circle of human knowledge, and the domains of civilization, and corrected errors in geography, and wore away prejudices between race and race, and promoted the interests of commerce and navigation; and, towards the latter part of the mediæval age, contributed, by the knowledge which many of those who visited Rome acquired respecting its corrupt and licentious court, to create and swell that deep tide of anti-papal feeling which preceded the Lutheran reformation and promoted it when it came. Far greater crowds than ever are seen, in the eleventh century, embarking: in the richly painted galleys of Genoa and Venice, on their way to the East. Zeal for the Crusades was the very spirit of the times, fanned in some instances and kindled in others by the eloquence of Peter the Hermit. Europe precipitated itself into Asia, and multitudes who marched on foot, as well as those who crossed the Mediterranean, appeared on the plains of Palestine. Rarely has our world, which has so often witnessed the gathering of armed men, seen such a host as met the eye of our Richard Cœur de Lion when he reached Acre. “Around the city spread the camp of the besiegers, a collection of warriors from every country in Europe, with their separate and appropriate standards. The walls of the place were manned by its resolute defenders, urging their active engines of warlike defence. Beyond, at a visible distance, the powerful army of Saladin appeared covering the hills and plains: their tents radiating with the gorgeous colours so precious to Turkish taste.” The Crusades wasted an immense amount of wealth, sacrificed human life to an awful extent, and were productive of intense misery in various forms. But, as in the case of all great gatherings of the human race for a common purpose, the evils were in the main temporary, the good produced permanent. They did on a large scale what pilgrimages did on a small one. They tended to undermine the system of feudalism and to sow seeds of liberty. Men were waked as by a thunder-clap from the slumber of centuries. A movement was produced in society, the impulse of which never died away, for from that era European affairs underwent a change; intellectual, moral, political, religious life began afresh to throb through the Western world, and never since have men completely gone to sleep again.

Transported in imagination to Palestine, the eye travels from the processions and crusades of former days to assemblages in modern times, animated by a like spirit of superstition; and among scenes of this kind such a picture as the following occurs on the banks of the Jordan, by the fountain of Elisha, detaining the fancy by its poetical interest, while, as an expression of blind and misguided feeling improperly termed religious, it fills with melancholy reflections the mind which has been enlightened by true piety. “I estimated the number of persons encamped upon the plain before Jericho at 2,500, including a singular variety of languages and costumes. There was scarcely a people under heaven among whom Christianity is professed without its representatives here. There were Copts, Greeks, Armenians, Catholics, Protestants from Abyssinia, Egypt, Asia Minor, Turkey, Greece, Malta, Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Poland, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, America, and I believe all or nearly all other Christian lands. Cossacks were very numerous, and were distinguished for their equipages and personal bearing among a motley assemblage, which could hardly claim to be less than semi-barbarous. This was no mean opportunity to study customs and costumes, when a walk of two or three minutes brought under your inspection the Egyptian dining upon an onion and a doura cake, the Syrian with his hands full of curds, the Armenian feasting on pickled olives or preserved dates, the Cossack devouring huge pieces of boiled mutton, and the European and American seated around a box, serving the purpose of a table, covered with the usual variety of meats and drinks demanded by the pampered appetite of civilized man. As it grew dark, a multitude of fires was kindled throughout the camp and in the grove adjoining, which threw their strong glare upon these very characteristic curious groups, and gave the fullest effect to the picturesque scene. The red caps, the huge turbans, the vast flaunting robes of striped silk or scarlet, the coarse shaggy jacket and bag trousers of the Cossacks, the venerable huge beards and bare feet and legs of the orientals, all seemed part and parcel of the human beings who lay nestled together upon the ground like domestic animals, or moved about the illuminated area, thus varying and multiplying by every possible change of light and shade the phases and hues of all that appears grotesque and fantastic to an eye accustomed to the graver modes of the western world.”

And now that a chain of rather wild but not uninteresting suggestions has brought us to the Holy Land, other thoughts, sacred and divine, bind us there for a while, strengthened by the sight of many a foreign and home-born visitor among the actual crowd, within and about the great Crystal Palace, unmistakably of Israelitish origin, the descendants of the men who possessed the country in her better days. And there, on the summit of Moriah, stands an edifice devoted neither to war nor wealth, to the advancement of art or to the gratification of pleasure, but to the service of the God of the whole earth. “A mountain of snow,” it seemed to the Roman Titus, “fretted with golden pinnacles.” But, with an attractiveness surpassing that of material beauty, it revealed itself to the lingering eyes of large companies at their holy feasts two thousand years ago, as they at length touched the summit of some one of “the mountains which stood round about Jerusalem.” They came over hill and dale, through mountain pass and by river stream, singing the songs of Zion, and rehearsing glorious things spoken of the city of God. At many a cottage door, and village border, and city gate, groups of Israelites young and old, with smiling faces and beating hearts, fell into the augmenting crowd; which, as it rolled on, resembled the “swelling of their own Jordan.” They came “upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to the holy mountain.” Thither “the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord.” There was “little Benjamin with their ruler, the princes of Judah and their council, the princes of Zebulun, and the princes of Naphtali.” They entered “through the gates into the city.” The Jew from “Dan” met the Jew from “Beersheba,” and he who dwelt “by the haven of ships,” saluted his brother from “the other side of the river.” Lover and friend, acquaintance and “kindred according to the flesh,” fell upon one another’s necks and kissed each other. The old man with his “staff in his hand for very age” saw “his children’s children and peace upon Israel.” The “streets of the city were full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.” “There was a voice of noise from the city—a voice from the temple.” “They went up to the house of the Lord.” The priests were “clothed with salvation, the saints shouted for joy.” “The singers went before, the players on instruments followed after, among them the damsels playing with timbrels.” “They praised his name in the dance, and sang praise unto him with the timbrel and the harp.” They “brought an offering and came into his courts.” “They came to the altar of God.” “They compassed it round about.” They beheld “the beauty of the Lord, and inquired in his temple.”

One year stands out in the history of those gatherings before which every other fades. Then _our_ passover was slain. Then the day of the world’s pentecost was fully come, and great was the gathering. The multitude without the gates who were assembled to gaze on that spectacle before which, at its close, “the sun was darkened,” saw an inscription, in the threefold language, of which there was a pregnant meaning that Pilate little thought of—“It was written in Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew,” the three great languages then spoken on the earth. Men who had used these languages from infancy were there. Representatives of the world were there—the Roman centurion was there—Simon the Cyrenian was there {103}—multitudes of the Jews were there. And as they deciphered that strange writing, the various tongues in which the title of the Divine Sufferer was expressed was a sign that in Him, the Roman, Greek, and Israelite would find a Saviour and a Lord. The three languages “which like gold threads bind up the history of the ancient world,” were here beautifully entwined to tell the teeming crowd of one for whose coming all the changes in the story of their respective nations had, in the comprehensive working of Divine providence, prepared. The cross of ignominy, at the sight of which they shuddered, was the threshold he must needs pass to enter his kingdom and ascend his throne, there to sway over them a sceptre at whose touch their hearts would bow and be rid of the burden of sin and guilt,—while their mutual antipathies would melt away, and He who had brought them peace would make them one for ever. “The Roman, powerful but not happy—the Greek distracted with the inquiries of an unsatisfying philosophy—the Jew bound hand and foot with the chain of a ceremonial law,” would find in Christ crucified the power of God and the wisdom of God; and, in the superscription of his accusation, read wondrous words of “peace, pardon, and love,” to all the dwellers upon earth. {104}

Seven weeks afterwards and again there was a gathering. “They were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Are not all these which speak Galilæans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judæa, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”

“And the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people.” Then was the beginning of that ingathering of souls which the Redeemer of the world predicted when he uttered those amazing words: “I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me.” Then he began, and still he continues that infinitely gracious work, in the accomplishment of which he unites a fallen and divided race together by uniting them to himself. The moral world has been, as it were, riven by an earthquake—consumed by an internal fire—and he undertakes to reunite and restore it. He employs his cross as the point around which the whole mass of regenerated humanity is to collect: indeed, by the simple virtue of that cross, he accomplishes the change, and constitutes it the axis on which the “new earth” shall rest and revolve. The attraction is invisibly going on, and the successful issue shall be at length developed. To him shall the gathering of the people be. They shall come not as captives, but as those who choose his service “to worship before him in his holy mountain.” “The abundance of the sea shall be converted; the forces of the Gentiles shall come.” They shall “fly as a cloud and as doves to their windows.” “The isles shall wait” on him. “The ships of Tarshish first, to bring his sons from afar.” “He will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see his glory.” “He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off. Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim.” Thus the divided world shall be made one in a way infinitely transcending the ambitious dreams of an Alexander or Napoleon. The moral dispersion, of which that at Babel was the type, shall be reversed; men shall be united in religion and love: and the lines of human interest, like the radii of a circle, concentrating in spiritual obedience and the glory of Christ, shall no longer confusedly and in strife cross each other as they do now, and ever must, while a base selfishness makes each man his own centre.

Lifted into this mood of feeling, so much loftier than that with which we began the chapter, we cannot close without turning a reverential gaze on other gatherings, in that state of being on whose precincts we and all the multitudes around us every moment tread. There is the gathering in the grave, “the silent waiting-hall where Adam meeteth with his children.” “The chief ones of the earth, the kings of the nations,” are “brought down there and the worm is spread over them, and the worms cover them.” And “there the rich and the poor meet together.” “The small and the great are there.” Who can count the sands on the sea shore—and who can cast up the number of the dead? Vast as it is already, the concourse in the great city of the grave shall in a few short years receive accessions of myriads more. The multitudes who crowd the streets of the Great Metropolis, in their way to the Palace of Industry, and all whom they represent in distant lands, will ere long descend to the “place of their fathers’ sepulchres.” This globe, as it sails round the sun, carries in its deep hold many a costly thing; but the dust of its buried generations is a freightage more precious than gold or silver!

Along with this there is the gathering of souls into invisible realms. It is consonant with reason and revelation, that we should believe in the conscious existence of minds after their separation from the body. While the mortal remains are preserved by Divine Providence for a mysterious restoration to life at the last day, the immaterial and immortal spirit enters into a separate condition of blessedness or woe, according to its character in the present state of being. “Lazarus died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom.” “Absent from the body, present with the Lord.” The emancipated souls of all the holy dead, through the mediation of the blessed Redeemer, are gathered together in his immediate presence where there is fulness of joy, and at his right hand where there are pleasures for evermore. “To that state all the pious on earth are tending; and if there is a law from whose operation none are exempt, which irresistibly conveys their bodies to darkness and dust, there is another not less certain and powerful which conducts their spirits to the abodes of bliss, to the bosom of their Father and their God. The wheels of nature are not made to roll backward, everything presses on to eternity: from the birth of time an impetuous current has set in, which bears all the sons of men towards that interminable ocean. Meanwhile heaven is attracting to itself whatever is congenial to its nature: is enriching itself by the spoils of earth, and collecting within its capacious bosom whatever is pure, permanent, and divine; leaving nothing for the last fire to consume but the objects and the slaves of concupiscence: while everything which grace has prepared and beautified shall be gathered and selected from the ruins of the world, to adorn that Eternal City which hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” {110} And terrific is it to think that as the multitude of the spirits of the just made perfect is thus ever augmenting, so also is there an increase of the crowds of fallen and lost beings in the abodes of despair. How many, it is to be feared, are hastening on, by their course in this world, not to paradise, but to prison—not to be with Christ, but to go with Judas to their own place!

And beyond these scenes of awful interest there lies another of like character, to be witnessed at the end of time by everyone who may look at these pages, because it will be the gathering of the whole human race. “The dead which are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and shall come forth.” The sea shall give up the dead which is in it. Death and Hades shall deliver up the dead which are in them. The dead, small and great, shall stand before God. The Son of man shall come in his glory, with all the holy angels with him. Then shall he sit on the throne of his glory. And before Him shall be gathered all nations. “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him.” To think of all the multitudes who have ever lived upon the earth—all who are now in heaven or hell—all who are existing like ourselves—all who are yet to be born, assembled before the judgment-seat of Christ! No such an aggregate of human beings can have ever met before. Compared with that final one, even regarded simply in reference to numbers, every other assemblage fades into insignificance. The solemn incidents of that day, relating merely to the material globe and the works of men, as predicted in the New Testament; the melting of the elements and the burning of the earth really appear, upon reflection, less startling and impressive than the vast concourse of mortals which shall then be seen. And, to add to the wonder, all, with the exception of those who will be alive at the coming of the Son of man, shall have passed through mysterious stages of existence, through the hour of dissolution and the disembodied state, and shall bring with them to the great tribunal some knowledge of the secrets of eternity. Something anticipative of their future and everlasting state they shall have experienced; so that, not in suspense, but with certain hope or fixed despair, shall they meet their God. They will have learned long before, that their moral history in this world had determined their eternal history in the next: that if not twice born here below—born of the Spirit as well as of nature—they must then die “the second death.” Thoughts and emotions, remembrances and expectations, such as in none of the world’s great gatherings have been or ever shall be known, will then be felt. And, to complete this, the most affecting of all the associations which our subject has suggested, the mind passes on to contemplate the purpose and issue of the whole. Placed before the great white throne, every man’s work shall be made manifest, the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, that the rectitude of the judge may be seen in his final sentence of life or death. No human adjudication can be comparable to that. “Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true art thou in all thy ways, thou King of saints.”

The brightest of all visions next unfolds. A structure of peerless beauty rises above the ruins of the world, and within its gates there gather men from all lands, select but innumerable. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, . . . and be their God. And he showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; and had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels . . . And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

Here let the reader lay down the book, and in devout silence muse on these “four last things.”