never sin;
There from the rivers of his grace,
Drink endless pleasures in.
10. Here, too, on earth, the Christian has to suffer; here he has the aching head and the pained body; his limbs may be bruised or broken, disease may rack him with torture; he may be an afflicted one from his birth, he may have lost an eye or an ear, or he may have lost many of his powers; or if not, being of a weakly constitution, he may have to spend most of his days and nights upon the bed of weariness. Or if his body is sound, yet what suffering he has in his mind! Conflicts between depravity and gross temptations from the evil one, assaults of hell, perpetual attacks of various kinds, from the world, the flesh, and the devil. But there, no aching head, no weary heart; there no palsied arm, no brow ploughed with the furrows of old age; there the lost limb shall be recovered, and old age shall find itself endowed with perpetual youth; there the infirmities of the flesh shall be left behind, given to the worm and devoured by corruption. There they shall flit, as on the wings of angels, from pole to pole, and from place to place, without weariness or anguish; there they shall never need to lie upon the bed of rest, or the bed of suffering; for day without night, with joy unflagging, they shall circle God’s throne rejoicing, and ever praise him who has said, “The inhabitants there shall never be sick.”
11. There, too, they shall be free from persecution. Here Sicilian Vespers, and St. Bartholomew, and Smithfield, are well known words; but there shall be no one to taunt them with a cruel word, or touch them with a cruel hand. There emperors and kings are not known, and those who had power to torture them cease to be. They are in the society of saints; they shall be free from all the idle conversation of the wicked, and from their cruel jeers set free for ever. Set free from persecution! You army of martyrs, you were slain, you were torn asunder, you were cast to wild beasts, you wandered around in sheep skins and goats’ skins, destitute, afflicted, and tormented. I see you now, a mighty host. The clothes you wear are torn with thorns; your faces are scarred with sufferings; I see you at your stakes, and on your crosses; I hear your words of submission on your racks, I see you in your prisons, I behold you in your pillories — but
Now you are arrayed in white,
Brighter than the noonday sun,
Fairest of the sons of light,
Nearest the eternal throne.
These are they, who “for their Master died; who love the cross and crown”; they waded through seas of blood, in order to obtain the inheritance; and there they are, with the blood red crown of martyrdom on their heads, that ruby brightness, far excelling every other. Yes, there is no persecution there. “There remains a rest for the people of God.”
12. Alas! in this mortal state the child of God is also subject to sin; even he fails in his duty, and wanders from his God; even he does not walk in all the law of his God blamelessly, though he desires to do it. Sin now troubles him constantly; but there sin is dead; there they have no temptation to sin, from without or from within, but they are perfectly free to serve their Master. Here the child of God sometimes has to weep repentantly of his backslidings; but there they never shed tears of penitence, for they never have cause to do so.
13. And last of all, here, the child of God has to wet the cold ashes of his relatives with tears; here he has to bid adieu to all who are lovely and fair of mortal race; here it is he hears, “earth to earth, and dust to dust, and ashes to ashes,” while the solemn music of the dust upon the coffin lid beats doleful time to those words. It is here that the mother buried, the child snatched away, the husband torn from the bosom of a loving wife, the brother parted from the sister. The plate upon the coffin, the last coat of arms of earth, earth’s last emblems are here always before our eyes. But there never once shall be heard the toll of the funeral bell; no hearse with plumes has ever darkened the streets of gold; no emblems of sorrow have ever intruded into the homes of the immortal; they are strangers to the meaning of death; they cannot die — they live for ever; having no power to decay, and no possibility of corruption. Oh! rest of the righteous, how blest are you, where families shall again be bound up in one bundle, where parted friends shall again meet to part no more, and where the whole church of Christ united in one mighty circle, shall together praise God and the Lamb throughout eternal ages.
14. Brethren, I have tried thus to set the rest of the righteous in the way of contrast; I feel I have failed. Poor are the words I can utter to tell you of immortal things. Even holy Baxter himself, when he wrote about the “Saints’ Rest,” paused and said, “But these are only tinklings compared with the full thunders of heaven.” I cannot tell you, dear friends, nor can mortal tell, what God has prepared for those who love him.
15. 2. And now I shall try very briefly to exhibit this contrast in the way of comparison. The Christian has some rest here, but nothing compared with the rest which is to come.
16. There is the rest of the church. When the believer joins the church of God, and becomes united with them, he may expect to rest. The good old writer of the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” says, that when the weary pilgrims were once admitted to the house Beautiful, they were shown to sleep in a room called “peace,” or “rest.” The church member at the Lord’s table has a sweet enjoyment of rest in fellowship with the saints; but ah! up there the rest of church fellowship far surpasses anything that is known here; for there are no divisions there, no angry words at the church meetings, no harsh thoughts of one another, no bickerings about doctrine, no fightings about practice. There Baptist, and Presbyterian, and Independent, and Wesleyan, and Episcopalian, serving the same Lord, and having been washed in the same blood, sing the same song, and are all joined in one. There pastors and deacons never look coolly on each other; no haughty prelates are there, no lofty minded ministers are there, but all meek and lowly, all knit together in brotherhood; they have a rest which surpasses all the rest of the church on earth.
17. There is, again, a rest of faith which a Christian enjoys; a sweet rest. Many of us have known it. We have known what it is, when the billows of trouble have run high, to hide ourselves in the arms of Christ, and feel secure. We have cast our anchor deep into the rocks of God’s promise, we have gone to sleep in our bedroom and have not feared the tempest, we have looked at tribulation, and have smiled at; we have looked at death himself, and have laughed him to scorn; we have had much trust by Christian faith that, dauntless and fearless, nothing could move us. Yes, in the midst of calumny, reproach, slander and contempt, we have said, “I shall not be moved, for God is on my side.” But the rest up there is better still, more unruffled, more sweet, more perfectly calm, more enduring, and more lasting than even the rest of faith.
18. And, again, the Christian sometimes has the blessed rest of communion. There are happy moments when he puts his head on the Saviour’s breast — when, like John, he feels that he is close to the Saviour’s heart, and there he sleeps. “God gives his beloved sleep”; not the sleep of unconsciousness, but the sleep of joy. Happy, happy, happy are the dreams we have had on the couch of communion; blessed have been the times, when, like the spouse in Solomon’s song, we could say about Christ, “His left hand was under my head, and with his right hand he embraced me.”
But sweeter still the fountain head,
Though sweet may be the stream;
19. When we shall have plunged into a very bath of joy, we shall have found the delights even of communion on earth to have been only the dipping of the finger in the cup, but the dipping of the bread in the dish, whereas heaven itself shall be the participation of the whole of the joy, and not the mere foretaste of it. Here we sometimes enter into the portico of happiness, there we shall go into the presence chamber of the King; here
