Heaven our home : we have no saviour but Jesus, and no home but heaven

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Preface

[ HAVE often felt, that the views which most divines ° have given of heaven are so utterly negative in their nature, and also so utterly wnsocial in their aspect, that they are more calculated to repel the inquiries and longings and aspirations of the children of God after it, than to allure their thoughts upwards, and fix them affections and desires upon the things that are above.

The mechanism of our moral nature — God’s own workmanship — fits us for a social heaven. We are social bemgs. A heaven from which saint-friendship and social intercourse, among those who are in glory, are excluded, zs not and cannot be a suitable abode for us, who have received from God’s own plastic hand those social affections which we are to possess for ever. A. social heaven is, accordingly, the leading idea which. I have endeavored to embody and illustrate in the following treatise. [5]

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/ Richard Baxter’s heaven, depicted in his “ Saint’s | Everlasting Rest,” is an eternity of holy repose, free from the sins and troubles of earth. John Howe’s heaven, delineated in his “Blessedness of the Righteous,” is a calm, intellectual eternity spent in the beatific vision of God. St Paul’s heaven is a being through eternity with Christ. St. John’s heaven, exhibited in the Apocalypse, is a great and gorgeous temple crowded with the worshippers of God. ‘The heaven I have attempted to delineate is a home, with a great and happy and loving family m it.

The Bible is the orient sun that has dispelled the long, deep night of darkness that once hung over heaven, and in a great measure concealed it from the view of man. ‘The natural sun, by his rising every morning, brings the earth—our present home— into our view, with its variegated scenery, and its living, busy population. The Bible—God’s bright spiritual sun that has risen upon us—also brings by its revelations into our view an eternal heaven, which we who are the children of God are to enter at death, and meet each other again on the other side of the Jordan’s floods, and be happy for eternity there, im our

Father’s home.

PREFACE. A

We need a home. What is our life here? Look at a river upon earth: you see, in its flowing waters, life’s symbol. That river is but a little streamlet in its source, welling out from its small and pebbly fountain: it gradually increases in depth and in width; it never rests ; it flows on and on, and still unceasingly onwards, without a moment’s pause. So does our life, till at last, like the mighty river nearing the ocean, it flmgs its waters, with a convulsive and gurgling roll, into the sea that is before the Lord, there to mingle with the living floods of angels and glorified saints, who move and gleam like a great ocean, filling the heavens, and stretching far and wide, and seemingly without a shore. Look at the sun in the sky: you see in it a symbol of life. That sun peeps up into the view of a living world, at his first rising, with but a comparatively dim and feeble shing; he gradually emerges with an increasing lustre from his chamber in the east; he goes forth over us in the sky, like a vessel of light sailing along upon the bosom of the great ocean of space; he reaches his meridian splendor ; then he begins to descend gradually towards the western horizon, until at the close of day he passes from our gaze into the expanse beyond, going forth to sail still as a vessel of light over another sea of life in the opposite hemisphere, there to rise and to pour down his beams upon other homes and upon other eyes, but removed from our view. It is the same with our life. Our soul is our sun. The thoughts of our minds are the beams of light that gleam forth in their scintillations and radiancy and illumination upon those around us. There is the first glimmering dawn of reason, then the increasing splendor of brightening faculties, then the meridian sunshine of intellectual and moral powers. ‘The zenith of life is reached: our mental sun then begins to descend the western sky of age; the evening of death darkens around; then our soul, if in a state of grace, leaves the sphere in which it moved and shone for a season here, passes over the horizon that bounds eternity and time, the Lord Jesus transferring it to a new firmament, — the hemisphere of glory, — there to rise in new splendor before the throne of God; there to shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars of God for ever and ever.

It is computed that one of the human family dies every moment. ‘Thus, every tick of the clock, an immortal spirit, as if with the outspread wings of an angel, is flying over the boundary-line of time, and is entering the great world of spirits on the other side.

There is thus a river of living souls continuously flowing from time into eternity. In the bed of that stream, we are all, sooner or later, to take our place, and to pass away; for ‘

‘as the waters fail from the sea, as 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.”

How comforting, in these circumstances, is the revelation that God has made to us in his Word,— we have a home for etermty, and that home is heaven !

In the following treatise, I look in upon that home of love. I survey the family assembled there. I view their intercourse with each other, and with us who are still upon earth; and I notice the zterest which they feel in what is occurring here. I also show, that, in the gospel view of heaven which I am led to set forth, death, to believers in Jesus, is gomg home.

It is no cold and uninteresting subject which I am thus led to treat. Was it like music in the ears of the Israelites, whilst journeying in the wilderness, to listen to the accounts, which were orally and through tradition handed down to them, of the land promised

1* to their fathers,—a land flowing with milk and honey, and towards which they were advancing? And will it not be equally comforting to you who are the children of God, nay, will it not be infinitely more so, in the midst of your present wearisome journeyings, to read a gospel description of your Father’s home in the heavens, which many of your friends from earth have already entered, where you are again to meet them at your death, when time with you is past, and the world is left?

The descriptions which I have given of heaven have a deep and personal interest about them; for heaven is to be your home for eternity who read these, if ye are the children of God. ‘The emigrant, who is about to sail to a foreign land, feels that he has a personal interest in the accounts which he reads about it in the newspapers or otherwise: for he is soon to sail to it, to land upon its shore; and he is to spend there the remainder of his life. The bride, who is about to go to her new home, feels that she has a personal interest in the descriptions which her friends give her of its site, of its appearance, and of its furnishings ; for she has upon her soul the sunshine of the gladdening hope, that she is to spend her future life beneath its roof.

You have a similar interest in heaven. The sea, the deep-blue sea, is not far off, over the bosom of which you will soon set sail, that ye may land in eternity. The vessel is in the harbor; it is preparing to go forth to plough the bosom of the unseen deep, as Columbus launched forth upon the Atlantic, whilst America, on the other side, was all unseen; the sails are already spread; the pilot is at the helm. You already hear the dash upon the shore, and the roll of the great waters; and soon you, who are believers in Jesus, will be in the position of the emigrant, whilst standing upon the deck of the vessel that is already under sail,— you will look back, and you will look down upon your weeping, bereaved friends, whom you are leaving in your death-chamber ; upon your home, with its dark cloud of bereavement lowering around it; and upon the earth itself, receding from your view, and gradually becoming smaller in the distance, till, like the vessel upon the far-off horizon, it flits away entirely from your gaze. You will then rise upwards to heaven, your home; you will enter, and join for eternity, God’s family now assembled there. In the anticipation of that abundant entrance into heaven, you can even now look up to Jesus upon the throne, and you hear him thus addressmg you: “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And, if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that, where I am, there ye may be also.”

PrA RE 71.

HHeaben our Wome,

Chapter I

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14 CONTENTS.

WIE.

PAGE COMMUNION OF SAINTS IN HEAVEN .. 2 « « « « 104 VALE COMMUNION OF SAINTS IN HEAVEN (continued) . . . 116 aX COMMUNION OF SAINTS IN HEAVEN (continued) . . . 132 x COMMUNION OF SAINTS IN HEAVEN, A SOURCE OF INSTRUCTION AND OF JOY . . . « S| « epee PART LE Becognition of Friends in Weaben, CHAPTER I.

RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN HEAVEN .... . . 149 die RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN Heaven (continued) . . 160 IIL.

CONTENTS. 15

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PAGE

RECOGNITION OF FrRreNDS IN IIEAVEN (continued) . . 175 Y.

RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN HEAVEN (continued) . . 188 VI.

RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN HEAVEN (continued) . . 191 VIE

PAVE LEP

Ghe Unterest those in Weahen feel in Earth.

CHAPTER LI.

THe INTEREST THOSE IN HEAVEN FEEL IN EartTH. . 219

THe:

PHILOSOPHICAL EVIDENCES FOR THIS INTEREST. . 226 III.

ScrRIPTURAL EVIDENCE OF THIS INTEREST... . . 238 FV;

ScrreruRAL EvipENcE or THIS INTEREST (continued) . 243

16 CONTENTS.

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: PATE SE

Heaven our Home,

‘““IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE ARE MANY MANSIONS,”

CHAPTER I.

HEAVEN A LOCALITY.

aSe(|HE subject of the following treatise is one =! SQV that ought to arrest the attention and en- SL gage the interest of every member of the human family, and especially of believers in Jesus. Heaven is the locality around which are clustering the highest and the holiest hopes and associations of the people of God. It is to be their home for ever. Thus all who are Christians must surely feel a holy desire to hear about the dwelling-place in which they

_ are to spend their immortal existence when life with . them here is finished, and when, at death, they have bidden adieu for ever to the home in which they now dwell. fin

The exile’s heart exults with joy as he peruses a description of the land of his nativity, either in the newspaper or in the more elaborate treatise ; for he knows the day is coming when he will set sail for it: [19]

such a description leads him often to look across the deep-blue sea, and longingly and pensively to gaze in the direction where his future home is lymg. The pilgrim, in the midst of his desert-journey, opens and reads, with the glowing emotions of a lively interest, the letter which has reached him from his home, and which gives him an account of the dear ones who are there, —his affectionate partner and beloved children,— whom he has the prospect of joining when his journey is finished ; and to whom, sitting in the comfortable parlor, he will joyfully recount the incidents that happened to him by the way. The mariner who is afloat upon the bosom of the ocean, and on his voyage homeward, not only consults the compass habitually and carefully, which points out the course in which he is to sail that he may reach the desired and sheltered haven, where he will cast anchor, and be safe and secure, for the billows will then be rolling far away in the distance behind him: he also delights to read the narrative which gives him an account of the country to which he is sailing.

In like manner, you, who are the children of God, must feel your hearts’ best affections and purest desires enlisted when you think of your eternal home; and you must surely feel some interest in an attempt to give you a description of it, what it 2s, and what you are to experience when you enter it. This is the task which I now endeavor to execute.

HEAVEN A LOCALITY. Als

What, then, is heaven? ‘This is no trifling or unimportant question. If I am immortal, and if heaven is to be my home for ever, it is of the utmost importance that I should form a right and scriptural view of it. Much of my present happiness will depend upon the particular conception of it which I now imbibe and cherish; and this, again, will exert an influence upon my conduct, leading me to prepare and make ready, that I may enter it at death. Before, however, I proceed to consider what heaven is, I will, in this chapter, make a few reflections upon the question, Where is heaven ?

I believe that the views of many Christians about the “locality” of heaven are quite as indefinite and vague as are the musings of a little child two or three years old respecting the position of India, or of Australia, or of the Cape of Good Hope. With many Christians, all is dark and visionary and dreamy respecting the fact that heaven is verily a locality, and not merely a state.

I believe that the young, generally, have a far more ’ vwid though an erroneous view of the exact place where the eternal home of the people of God rears its walls than that possessed by those more mature in years. In youth, the heart’s affections are warm, curiosity is strong, the imagination is lively; and fancy paints heaven as situated just above the blue arch of the visible sky. Ask a child, “Where is heaven?”

Is there any dimness or doubt existing in the mind ye HEAVEN A LOCALITY.

whilst giving an answer to your question? No: the finger is instantly lifted up; and, looking and pointing to the overarching sky, the answer is, “Up there.”

Advancing years, however, and increasing knowledge, effect a complete revolution in our view of this locality. A knowledge of astronomy does this by ennobling and elevating the mind. Astronomy not only exhibits to us the greatness and the splendor of the material universe, but the greatness also and sovereignty of Him who made it; to whom it is a great palace, with its lighted chandeliers burning in every apartment; and through which he walks in his glory and in his majesty.

A similar change of view about the exact position of a departed friend sometimes comes oyer our imaginings. Have you not sometimes dreamt, that you saw in the visions of the night some such valued one meeting you in your home, and smiling upon you with the love and friendship which he showed to you whilst he yet lived with you? You awoke in the morning, and saw, amid the light of awakened reason, that you mistook in that dream the dwelling-place of him who stood before you. Would it be rivht reasoning, in these circumstances, for you thus to conclude: “Because I had a wrong view in the visions of the night respecting the place of his present abode, therefore my friend has no habitation at all; or, in other words, has no existence”? It is the same with the whereabouts of heaven. After the dream of childhood about its localization has vanished amid the descending light of increased knowledge, would it be right in us hastily to jump to the conclusion, “Oh, heaven is nowhere! It is not where we once thought it was, and therefore it has no ezistence at all: itis in no region at present” ?

Some divines have attempted to get over the difficulty of fixing the present locality of heaven by representing it as a habitation that is not yet formed. These theologians place heaven in the same category as the millennium, the latter-day glory, the gudgmentday, the resurrection of the dead; and, in support of their view, they are in the habit of quoting the following words of the Apostle Peter: ‘“ Nevertheless, we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” These words, misinterpreted, have prevented Christians from looking up and abroad upon God’s great universe in search of a local and presently-existing home. Assuredly there is a heaven, existing just now, into which Jesus, our new-covenant Head, has ascended, — the heavens have received him until the final restitution of all things; where God has established his throne, —a throne of glory that is high and lifted up; in which angels who have kept their first estate have their usual habitation, —“for their angels,” says Jesus, “do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven;” and in which are dwelling “the spirits of the just made perfect ;” or otherwise the revelations of the Bible are so many myths. ‘There zs a heaven, existing just now: moreover, it is not merely a local but a material habitation, into which Enoch and Elijah have ascended, carrying their bodies with them; and into which the resurrection-bodies of all the children of God are to rise after the judgment is over, and where they are to dwell for ever; or otherwise the whole Bible is a novel, and its beatific revelations are merely comfortable dreams.

There zs a heaven, into which patriarchs have entered who lived long ages near the beginning of the world’s history; for they are still alive. At Horeb, God’s language to Moses is, “I am,” not I was, “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” When these words were spoken, the patriarchs had been dead for several hundred years. (God asserts they were still alive: he is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him. There ts a heaven, into which prophets have ascended, who once acted as the mouth of God upon earth, and made audible in the hearing of the children of men those high and important revelations which the eternal Jehovah for ages sent down from his throne, and from the habitation of his glory, to his children. There 7s a heaven, into which the disciples of our Lord have entered who once followed Jesus in his mission of love in this world, and who still follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. There is a heaven, into which martyrs have ascended in their chariots of flame, who sealed their testimony to Jesus with their blood. There is a heaven, into which believers, from every clime of earth and from every age of this world’s history, have ascended ; who have been coming from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and have been sitting down with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. From the throne of his love, in these high places, God has been saying to the north, “Give up;” and to the south, “Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth.” The redeemed of the Lord have been for thousands of years returning and coming to the heavenly Zion with songs of praise. They are now obtaining, in God’s presence above, the joy and gladness that were promised, and sorrow and mourning have for ever fled away from them; and these collected and assembled multitudes now stand together in their exaltation, and sing before their God and Saviour the praises of the celestial temple. There is a heaven, presently existing, into which ye are to ascend at your death who are the children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

Where, then, is heaven? The Bible constantly _ speaks of it as up, as above. But this language, it is quite evident, is only relative ; in other words, it merely implies that heaven is away from the earth,

* and is localized in some distant region of space. The earth, every student of geography knows, is, in form, a sphere, or globe, and has two motions. It has its annual motion along its orbit round the sun : it has also its diurnal motion; or, in other words, it turns completely round upon an imaginary axis every twenty-four hours. Take the case of an individual who speaks about heaven, and who, in faith, looks up to it at twelve o’clock in the day. Up, with him, simply means the direction in which he is looking into the great pavilion of space, in a line drawn from the centre of the earth, and the part of its surface upon which he at the moment stands. Let twelve hours pass over that individual’s head, whilst meanwhile the earth is revolving in its diurnal motion, and has now brought him into the exactly opposite direction, in reference to that great pavilion, from what he was twelve hours before. Let him now speak of heaven, and let him look wp to it, in imagination and in faith: his feet are now, in a line leading from the centre of the earth, towards the heaven to which he looked twelve hours before; his head and uplifted eyes are in the entirely opposite direction. Is that man right in his view of the direction in which heaven lies fronf him at twelve o'clock in the night? Either there must be ‘two heavens, or all space is heaven; or he is mistaken in his view of the direction in which heaven lies from the earth at one or other of these seasons. Now, because we involuntarily and inadvertently commit this mistake in our view of the situation of heaven, — imagining it localized in one part of space at twelve o'clock in the day, and in the entirely opposite region in space at twelve o’clock in the night, — 1s heaven nowhere? ‘The man would neither be a good mathematician nor a good logician who would draw such a conclusion from the premises. |

I believe the Scriptures do not fix the place: they have not assigned, they do not assign, the exact locality which heaven occupies in the great pavilion of space, no more than they have fixed definitively the exact locality upon earth where Eden was situated. There has been no small controversy among writers on scriptural subjects respecting the site of Eden: one writer has actually placed it in the moon. Suppose I had, in my judgment, fixed upon a particular locality as that of Eden, and had afterwards — either by reasoning, or by observation, or by meeting some one inspired, and getting him to point out to me its exact place and its boundaries — been led to see that I was wrong: does it follow that Eden never had an existence because I was wrong in my localization of it?

The Scriptures, I repeat, do not attempt to define to us the exact region in the great immensity of space where heaven is situated. JI am not sure, indeed, that they could have done this so as to have been understood. Were the earth stationary, and the heavens at rest too, I believe this could have been done; but, looking at the earth’s revolution round the sun, and looking at the fact, that, for any thing T can tell, the sun may have a similar revolution through space round the outside of the wall of heaven, —which is said to be great and high, and from the radiancy of which the sun may derive his light, and thus be a merely reflecting body like the moon, — heaven may thus be in one direction from me at one time, and in the directly opposite at another. Even physically, we speak of the sun being up from us; and nevertheless we are all aware, that, every twelve hours, he is down. An illustration will show the impossibility of assigning the exact celestial region. If heaven be stationary, and the sun with his attendant planets, and the stars with their several family orbs, roll in their courses round about it, surveying it like children playing round a fire, its exact position cannot be assigned. Look to that vessel which has cast anchor in the bay, and is at rest at her moorings: it is to be your home whilst you are crossing the Atlantic; but it has not yet set sail. Suppose you go into a boat at a distance of two hundred yards, and row quite round the vessel. Whilst you are making that circuit, in what direction will the vessel be from you? It is quite manifest that it will be at different sections of your circle in entirely opposite directions; and were you to say that the position of the vessel,-as seen from your boat, and the direction from which it lies from you, is due west, this, it is evident, would be true only whilst you were at one part of your course.

I cannot tell the exact position of heaven. I cannot stand in the boat — the earth —in which I am now sailing, and point my finger in the exact direction along the ocean of space in which heaven is, — the vessel of glory in which I am, as a child of God, yet to have my home through eternity. But what if heaven, the vessel of immortality, has weighed. anchor, and is also under sail as well as the earth? It is manifest, that in this case the difficulty of fixing . the situation is greatly increased. The Scriptures have not fixed the locality ; and, as far as I can see, they cowld not do so. But heaven has its position in the great ocean of space, just as much as the vessel has that is lying at rest upon the waters, kept there by the anchor.

It may be, that beyond all that is visible, and beyond all that is existing in God’s lower creation, there lies and there expands and there gleams beneath the light of God’s own manifested presence the heaven of heavens, which forms the etherealized, luminous, material habitation in which the children of God are, throughout eternity, todwell. Heaven may be to the whole material orbs of God’s great universe what the sun is to the solar system, — a region of brightness so dazzling, that all the light that is in the universe may be flowing out from it; and thus it may be, that all that is luminous in the lower creation is exactly to heaven what the planets are to the sun, —dark, floating masses, till lighted by its beams.

Do not say, that this view of the situation of heaven removes it to an almost indefinite distance from the earth. ‘Time has, as it were, no duration in the reckoning of God. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Space, upon the same principle, has, as it were, no extension in the measurement of God. There is no such thing as distance, considered in its relation to him. Space is thus annihilated in God. Quickness of transition, to some extent, also annihilates space. The speed of angels may be so great in their transitions from heaven to earth, and from earth back again to heaven, that, far‘as the regions may be asunder, they may make the passage quick as the gleam of the lightning, and rapid as the twinkling of an eye. The invention of the telegraph has almost annihilated space along the surface of the earth. For any thing I can tell, God may have made known, to those who are above, some nobler space-annihilating invention, through which, though situated on the other side from us of the great pavilion of the universe, they may nevertheless feel that they are at earth’s very door. Our thoughts almost annihilate space as they roam to and fro through the great creation, and up and down through the heavens, and round about the throne of God. Angels, glorified spirits, may move through space much quicker than our thoughts do, and therefore quicker than the beams of light move away from the sun into the regions around, and hence so much more quick than the ball when just propelled from the cannon’s mouth.