walk between the beds of bliss, and pluck fresh flowers at each step; here we just look and see the sunlight of heaven in the distance, like the lamps of the thousand gated cities shining afar off, but there we shall see them in all their blaze of splendour; here we listen to the whisperings of heaven’s melody, borne by winds from afar; but there, entranced, amid the grand oratorio of the blessed, we shall join in the everlasting hallelujah to the great Messiah, the God, the I AM. Oh! again I say, do we not wish to mount aloft, and fly away, to enter into the rest which remains for the people of God?
20. II. And now, yet more briefly, and then we shall be finished. I am to endeavour to EXTOL this rest, as I have tried to EXHIBIT it. I would extol this rest for many reasons; and oh! that I were eloquent, that I might extol it as it deserves! Oh! for the lip of an angel, and the burning tongue of a cherub, to talk now of the bliss of the sanctified and of the rest of God’s people!
21. It is, first, a perfect rest. They are wholly at rest in heaven. Here rest is only partial. I hope in a little while to cease from everyday labours for a season; but then the head will think, and the mind may be looking forward to prospective labour, and while the body is still, the brain will yet be in motion. Here, on Sundays a vast multitude of you sit in God’s house, but many of you are obliged to stand, and rest very little except in your mind; and even when the mind is at rest the body is wearied with the toil of standing. You have a weary mile, perhaps, many miles, to go to your homes on Sunday. And let the Sabbatarian say what he will, you may work on the Sunday, if you work for God; and this Sunday’s work of going to the house of God is work for God, and God accepts it. For yourselves you may not labour, God commands you to rest, but if you have to toil these three, these four, these five, these six miles, as many of you have done, I will not and I must not blame you. “The priests in the sanctuary profane the Sabbath, and are blameless.” It is toil and labour, it is true, but it is for a good cause — for your Master. But there, my friends, the rest is perfect; the body there rests perpetually, the mind too always rests; though the inhabitants are always busy, always serving God, yet they are never weary, never toil worn, never exhausted; they never fling themselves upon their beds at the end of the day, and cry, “Oh! when shall I be away from this land of toil?” They never stand up in the burning sunlight, and wipe the hot sweat from their brow; they never rise from their bed in the morning, half refreshed, to go to laborious study. No, they are perfectly at rest, stretched on the couch of eternal joy. They do not know the semblance of a tear; they are finished with sin, and care, and woe, and, with their Saviour at rest.
22. Again, it is a seasonable rest. How seasonable it will be for some of you! You sons of wealth, you do not know the toils of the poor; the callous handed labourer, perhaps, you have not seen, and you do not know how he has to work and to toil. Among my congregation I have many of a class, upon whom I have always looked with pity; poor women who must rise tomorrow morning with the sun, and begin that everlasting “stitch, stitch,” that works their fingers to the bone. And from Monday morning until Saturday night, many of you, my members, and multitudes of you, my hearers, will not be able to lay aside your needle and your thread, except when, tired and weary, you fall back on your chair, and are lulled to sleep by your thoughts of labour! Oh! how seasonable will heaven’s rest be to you! Oh! how glad will you be, when you get there, to find that there are no Monday mornings, no more toil for you, but rest, eternal rest! Others of you have hard manual labour to perform; you have reason to thank God that you are strong enough to do it, and you are not ashamed of your work; for labour is an honour to a man. But still there are times when you say, “I wish I were not so dragged to death by the business of London life.” We have very little rest in this huge city; our day is longer, and our work is harder than our friends in the country. You have sometimes sighed to go into the green fields for a breath of fresh air; you have longed to hear the song of the sweet birds that used to wake you when you were lads; you have longed for the bright blue sky, the beautiful flowers, and the thousand charms of a country life. And perhaps, you will never get beyond this smoky city; but remember, when you get up there, “sweet fields arrayed in living green” and “rivers of delight” shall be the place where you shall rest, you shall have all the joys you can conceive of in that home of happiness; and though worn and weary, you come to your grave, tottering on your staff; having journeyed through the wilderness of life, like a weary camel, which has only stopped on the Sunday to sip its little water at the well, or fed at the oasis, there you will arrive at your journey’s end, laden with gold and spices, and enter into the grand caravanserai {b} of heaven, and enjoy for ever the things you have wearily carried with you here.
23. And I must say, that to others of us who do not have to toil with our hands, heaven will be a seasonable rest. Those of us who have to tire our brain day after day will find it no slight boon to have an everlasting rest above. I will not boast about what I may do, there may be many who do more; there may be many who are perpetually and daily striving to serve God, and are using their mind’s best energies in so doing. But this much I may say, that almost every week I have the pleasure of preaching twelve times; and often in my sleep I think of what I shall say next time. Not having the advantage of laying out my seven shillings and sixpence in buying manuscripts, it costs me hard diligent labour to find even something to say. And I sometimes have a difficulty to keep the hopper full in the mill; I feel that if I had not now and then a rest I should have no wheat for God’s children. Still it is on, on, on, and on we must go; we hear the chariot wheels of God behind us, and we dare not stop; we think that eternity is drawing near, and we must go on. Rest to us now is more than labour; we need to be at work; but oh! how seasonable it shall be, when to the minister it shall be said —
Servant of God, well done!
Rest from your loved employ;
The battle fought, the victory won,
Enter your Master’s joy.
It will be seasonable rest. You who are weary with state cares, and have to learn the ingratitude of men; you who have sought honours, and have gotten them to your cost, you seek to do your best, but your very independence of spirit is called servility, while your servility would have been praised! You who seek to honour God, and not to honour men, who will not bind yourselves to parties, but seek in your own independent and honest judgment to serve your country and your God; you, I say, when God shall see fit to call you to himself, will find it no small joy to have be finished with parliaments, to have be finished with states and kingdoms, and to have laid aside your honours, to receive honours more lasting among those who dwell for ever before the throne of the Most High.
24. One thing, and then once more, and then farewell. This rest, my brethren, ought to be extolled, because it is eternal. Here my best joys bear “mortal” on their brow; here my fair flowers fade; here my sweet cups have dregs and are soon empty; here my sweetest birds must die, and their melody must soon be hushed; here my most pleasant days must have their nights; here the flowings of my bliss must have their ebbs, everything passes away, but there everything shall be immortal; the harp shall be unrusted, the crown unwithered, the eye undimmed, the voice unfaltering, the heart unwavering, and the being wholly consolidated to eternity. Happy day, happy day, when mortality shall be swallowed up in life, and the mortal shall have put on immortality!
25. And then, lastly, this glorious rest is to be best of all commended for its certainty. “There remains a rest for the people of God.” Doubting one, you have often said, “I fear I shall never enter heaven.” Do not fear, all the people of God shall enter there; there is no doubt about that. I love the quaint saying of a dying man, who, in his country brogue, exclaimed, “I have no fear of going home; I have sent all before me; God’s finger is on the latch of my door and I am ready for him to enter.” “But,” one said, “are you not afraid lest you should miss your inheritance?” “No,” he said, “no, there is one crown in heaven that the angel Gabriel could not wear; it will fit no head but mine. There is one throne in heaven that Paul the apostle could not fill; it was made for me, and I shall have it. There is one dish
