Chapter 12

Chapter 12 Joyful prospects The animating promises to which we have referred, naturally lead us to contemplate the blissful prospects which they unfold. Most of them, as was observed, relate to that world which is to come. Their full accomplishment is to be realized when the soul has passed through its earthly discipline, and reached its final and glorious rest. The Christian fixes his eye on the end, and finds his imagination busied there in contemplating the bright visions of eternal felicity.

Now, whatever intermediate joys or sorrows a person is destined to realize, yet is he cheered and sustained, if the end wears the aspect of predominant good. But by none, except the Christian, can this end be contemplated with entire satisfaction. We do not deny that even he has at times his dark forebodings; nor do we assert, that his faith always mounts to a triumphant tone, when he surveys the certainty and the solemnity of death. But his piety certainly does much to lessen its horrors. It gives him the promise of support in the fearful crisis, and reveals to his faith the certain and glorious prospects which lie beyond. It assures him that when "flesh and heart shall fail, God will be the strength of his heart, and his portion forever." It declares, that as now his greatest burden is sin, hereafter that burden shall be felt no more; and that since his strongest aspirations here are for greater degrees of holiness, his desire shall be satisfied, when he awakes in the image and likeness of God. But the promised exemption from the evils of this fallen state, both natural and moral, including an amount of good which no imagination can picture, and the positive addition of pure and satisfying pleasures, as endless in duration as they are ennobling in their influence on the soul, give us still higher impressions of the Christian’s future portion. "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love him."

It would ill become the writer to attempt any description of what is indescribable. We sometimes try to give an absent friend some sketch of natural scenery which has been particularly interesting to ourselves. We labor to place before him the distinct features of the landscape—to throw the same glowing picture upon his conceptions, which has impressed itself on our own; but we feel that our powers are inadequate to the task. We cannot make the scene live and breathe before him. The freshness, the fragrance, the sweet sounds, the soothing insinuating beauties which steal in through every sense, and tranquillize or enrapture the heart, we cannot infuse into the description. Now, if we strive in vain to sketch a scene from nature, so as to make an adequate impression, how poor must be the most labored attempt to set forth the glories of that world which we have not seen as yet, and of which even the primeval earthly paradise was but an emblem. When we speak of joyful prospects, we look at the end. Man lives more upon the future than upon the present. Hope is the activating feeling, or emotion, which gives elasticity to the soul’s powers. The heir to an estate expects soon to pass out of his minority. He chides the leaden-winged hours, which move so slowly towards the period when he is to take possession of his inheritance. His mind is teeming with high anticipations of the pleasures which will then be at his command. But what is this prospect, when compared with that which the Christian entertains? It is not to earthly and withering joys that he looks forward; but "to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and which fades not away." The warrior thinks of the crown which his admiring and grateful countrymen are to place upon his brow; and the prospect nerves his arm, and sustains his courage. It lights up the darkest scene of conflict, and makes the severest toil easy to be borne. The mariner far off on the deep, lives on the hope of a quiet haven, and the greeting of loved ones whose embraces are to make him forget the boisterous winds and the impending dangers of his voyage. But what are these prospects compared with the immortal crown for which the Christian contends, and which, if he is "faithful unto death," will be given him amid the congratulations of heaven’s blissful inhabitants? What haven is so calm as the "haven of eternal rest," after being tossed upon this troubled sea; the soul is then admitted to that river of life which is clear as crystal, and which is skirted by the immortal fruits of paradise! Cheering prospects these! Surely, the Christian can and ought to rejoice. The intermediate events may not, to the eye of sense, seem so auspicious as from his admitted character we should anticipate; but we are to estimate his happiness, not only by what is visible and present, but by what is unseen, and what is yet to be realized. The pathway to our rest, if not all smooth and pleasant, is sufficiently so to give it a decided preference, even now, over those which the worldling and the sensualist tread; but the great attraction lies in the direction which it takes, and in the glories to which it leads. We can bear to traverse a rugged way, if it terminates in a fertile country, or if it conducts us to a happy home. Now the Christian’s course is far from being a rugged one: on the contrary, as appears from what has been said, it has much to make the traveler elate and joyful. But oh, its end! See where it leads his feet! To what a calm and cloudless region it conducts him! HEAVEN is its termination! Its mansions of rest are ever in view. Like the never-fading glory which Bunyan keeps before his hero’s eye—and which, though far in the distance, serves to cheer him on through difficulties and dangers—these promised scenes appeal incessantly to the eye of faith, and sustain the spirit in its upward flight. Here is a view of the Christian’s prospects, which even those who deny his claim to present felicity, must admit to be a joyful one. Ah, how often does the child of vanity sigh, to think that he cannot have this world and heaven too; and with what gladness would he at last accept of the godly man’s prospects, and share his bright reward! But, to do this, he must consent to take his cross—to bear his burdens—to walk in the same paths—then, and not until then, may he indulge the hope, that "his last end will be like his."