The Search For the Departed

III. THE SEARCH FOR THE DEPARTED.
No bliss mid worldly crowds is bred, Like musing on the sainted dead.
BISHOP MANT.
We seek in vain, on earth, for one who has gone to heaven. Though better informed as to the objects of our love than they who lingered about the deserted tomb of the Saviour, and were asked, "Why seek ye the living among the dead," we nevertheless find ourselves, in our thoughts, searching for them; so difficult is it at once to feel that they are wholly and forever departed. There is an affecting and beautifully simple illustration of our thoughts and feelings, in this respect, in the search which was made for Elijah after his translation. Fifty men of the sons of the prophets went and stood to view afar off, when Elijah and Elisha stood by the Jordan. Elisha returned alone, and these men could not feel reconciled to the loss of their great master. They were not persuaded that he had gone to heaven, no more to return; they sought leave to seek him, and to recover him: "Peradventure," they said, "the Spirit of the Lord hath taken him up and cast him upon some mountain, or into some valley." Elisha peremptorily refused to grant them leave. They were importunate; and when, at last, it would, perhaps, seem like obstinacy in him, or like jealousy of their superior love for Elijah, to forbid the search, which at the worst would only be fruitless, he yielded. Three days they explored the valleys, ransacked the thickets, groped in the caves, traversed hills, followed imaginary trails and footprints, but found him not. When they came again to Elisha, "he said unto them, Did I not say unto you, Go not?"
We cannot become accustomed at once, nor for a long time, to the absence of our friend. If his death was sudden, or if it took place away from home, or during our absence, we expect to see him again; if a vehicle stops at the door, the heart beats with an instantaneous hope which dies with its first breath, bringing over us a deeper and stronger refluence of sorrow. We catch a sight of articles familiarly used by a departed friend; they are identified with little passages in his history, or with his daily life: is it possible that he is altogether and forever disconnected from them? They are the same; those perishable things, those comparatively worthless things, having no value at all except as his use of them made them precious, retain their shapes and places; but where is he? and must not he return and abide, like them?
No, he is gone to heaven. The places which knew him shall know him no more forever. Those things, which have an imperishable value in being associated with his memory, are, to him, like the leaves of a past autumn to a tree now filled with blossoms. The mention of every valued possession once indescribably dear to him, would awaken but slight emotions; even the recent history of the dwelling which he built and furnished, would be no more to him than the rehearsal to a grown person of that which had happened to a block house, or card figure, which amused his childhood. We walk and sit in the places identified with our last remembrances of the departed; but he is not there; we hallow the anniversaries of his birth and death; but he gives us no recognition; we read his letters; they make him seem alive; his voice, his smile, his love are there; and when we have finished, nature, exhausted with its weeping, sighs, "And where is he?"
He is gone to heaven. Even the earthly house of his tabernacle is dissolved; that part of him which was all of which we were cognizant by our senses, is no more. We could not recognize it; to the earth, out of which it was taken, it has, by slow degrees, returned,--as though every thing earthly, belonging to him, 'must needs die, and be as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.' We travel to his birthplace; there is the house where he was born; we meet those who grew with him side by side; we are among the scenes which were most familiar to him; he planted those trees; he collected those pictures; there is his portrait, he rested here, he studied, he worked, he rejoiced, he wept, in these consecrated places; but did we go thinking to find him there? "Did I not say unto you, Go not?"
We shall surely make him real to our thoughts, if not to our senses, where he lies buried. But we may as well stand upon the sea shore, where we had the last look of a sea-faring friend, and think that those waters, and those sands, and that horizon, will restore him. They only serve to open farther the path of his departure; they lead our thoughts away to dwell upon him where we imagine him to be. Nowhere does heaven seem more real than at the grave of a friend; for we know that he has not perished, and as we stand on that verge of all our fruitless search and expectation, we are compelled to fix him somewhere in our thoughts; but as he is nowhere behind us, we look onward and upward.
Our desire for departed friends, however natural and innocent, if it resulted as we sometimes would have it, would prove to be unwise.
Suppose that those "fifty strong men" had found Elijah, or in any way could have prevented his translation to heaven. With exultation, they would have led him back across the Jordan to the company of their friends, amidst the thanksgivings of the people. But, alas! for the prophet himself, this would have been his loss, even had it proved to be their gain. The opening Jordan, cleft in twain by his rapt spirit, pressing its way to the skies, had returned to its course; and now the fords of the river, with its rocky bed, would have required his laboring feet to grope their way back to his toil; or the arms of men, instead of the chariots of fire and horses of fire, would have borne him again to the dull realities of life; and there, rebuking Ahab, and fleeing from Jezebel, punishing the prophets of Baal, and upbraiding the people of God in their idolatries, fasting and faint under junipers, or covering his face with his mantle at the still small voice of the Lord his God, he would again have prayed, "O Lord God, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers." 'Let me not wait longer for my promised translation; let me die as my fathers did; for wherein am I better than they?' So weary had he grown of life. Blind and weak do these fifty strong men seem to us, in searching for this ascended prophet, this traveller over the King's road in royal state, one of the only two who might not taste of death; the companion, in heaven, of Enoch, with a body which fills all the ransomed spirits there with joyful expectation, because it is a pledge and earnest of "the adoption, to wit, the redemption of their bodies." If, amid the new wonders and raptures of the heavenly world, he had had one moment to look down upon those "fifty strong men," as they searched for him, he might well have used, in cheerful irony, something like his old upbraidings of the priests near Baal's altar: "Search deeper, ye 'strong men,' in the thickets and caves; peradventure I sleep in the brakes, and must be awaked; call, with your fifty voices together, that I may be startled from my trance; will ye give over till ye bring me back to Jericho? Will ye search but three days? Shall I lose the remnant of my life on earth?"
And while they grew weary and discouraged, and concluded that, if he should be found, it might be in the far distant hills of Moab, or the wilds of Philistia, or they knew not where, and went back with hearts unsatisfied, and debating whether he were yet a wanderer upon earth, or whether so impossible a thing as they deemed his translation to heaven, without dying, had taken place, the glorified Elijah was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and David. But even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like him. There, with a body like unto Christ's own future glorious body, he sat, with but one compeer--Enoch, and he, transcending all the hosts of the redeemed in the foretasted glories of the resurrection. Adam, by whom came death, sees in him that which he himself is to share, when by one Man, also, shall come the resurrection from the dead. Abel, whose feet first trod the dark, cold stream, leaving his murdered body behind him, beholds with love and wonder him who passed the river of death ("that ancient river!") without dying. Even the Word beholds in him an earnest of his own incarnation, resurrection, and ascension from Olivet. To-day, our loved ones in heaven look upon him, and say, as Peter did at this prophet's visit on Tabor, (when he spoke of tabernacles there--"one for Elias,") "Master, it is good for us to be here." But we, like the "fifty strong men," would find them and bring them back; and, like Peter, would build tabernacles to retain them. The family circle is gathered together at some birthday or festival, and, perhaps, we long for the departed, and think that they long for us; and we would bring them back, and place them in their deserted chairs. We are "strong men" in the power of grief, and in our wishes; but the search for Elijah is the counterpart of our vain desires and most unreasonable sorrow.
When our friends have gone to heaven, it is not apt to be heaven, so much as earthly sorrow, which fills our minds. Happily, we have been taught to believe, and we do generally believe, that the souls of the righteous enter immediately into glory; that their happiness is perfect, though not completed; they are as happy as disembodied spirits can be; unspeakably happier than they were here, but still not in full possession of those sources of pleasure which they will receive when their bodies are raised, and their whole natures are made complete. But "to die is gain;" it is "to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better;" it is entering "into the joy of their Lord." That dreary thought of sleeping after death till the day of judgment; the idea that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, became insensible at death, and that the last thing which Jacob, for example, knew, was Joseph's kiss, and the next thing which he will know will be the archangel's trump, the interval of many thousands of years being a perfect blank in his existence, is so unlike the benevolent order of God's providence in nature and grace, that it cannot gain much credence with believers in the simple representations of the Bible. What a mockery Elijah's translation seems, upon that theory! Whither was he translated? Did the chariots of fire, and the horses of fire, convey him to a dreamless sleep of thousands of years? Was that pomp, that emblazonry, all that fiery pageant, a deception signifying nothing but that the greatest of prophets was to begin a stupid slumber, which, this day, under a heaven with not one redeemed soul in it, and in a world where there is every thing to be done for God and men, holds him, and every other dead saint, in a useless suspension of his consciousness, and, indeed, for so many ages, annihilation? Poor economy in the dispensation of overflowing love to intelligent beings,--we say it with submission,--does this seem to be; nor can we think that, in the case of Elijah, it was this which was heralded by horses and chariots of fire. Chariots and horses are emblems of flight; but if sleep were descending upon the hero of the prophetic age, twilight would more appropriately have drawn her soft veil over nature, birds would have begun their vespers, clouds would have put on their changing, pensive colors, while cadences of music, breathed by the winds, would have shed lethargic influences into the scene. Inspiration does not trifle with us by really meaning such a preparation for a sleep of ages, and yet informing us, in so many words, that "the Lord would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind." No; going to heaven is not going to sleep, and going to sleep is not going to heaven. Sleep and death are used figuratively for each other, according to the laws of language, which describes appearances without regard to scientific truth, as in speaking of the sun's rising, for example, and the going down of the sun; but to fall asleep in Jesus is to awake in heaven; to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. This we all believe; and may we never be moved away from this cheering, animating hope. Yet how little power has this belief and hope upon our feelings and conduct! for our Christian graces partake of the same imperfection which characterizes our whole nature; the soil is poor in which they grow; the seasons are short, the climate cold; they do not reach maturity. It is instructive to notice how men who have had the very best advantages, and the greatest knowledge, are, nevertheless, prone to unbelief. Christ appeared to his disciples, and upbraided them because they believed not them which said he was risen. Their incredulity strikes us as marvellous. They were not the first, nor the last, whose want of faith is a marvel. These sons of the prophets in Elisha's day were equally slow to believe. They themselves had said to him, "Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day?" Elisha came back to them from the scene of the translation. Of course he told them what had happened, describing minutely the whole of that preternatural scene; he probably related the conversation which Elijah had with him as they walked; and this inspired companion of the departed prophet, having himself no doubt that Elijah had gone to heaven, so instructed these sons of the prophets. But how hard it is for the things which are unseen and eternal to seize and hold our minds! how readily we yield to surmises, rather than admit the clear disclosures of spiritual things! Straightway these sons of the prophets, who should have retired each to his secret place, for contemplation and prayer, and, in the solemn assembly, should have directed the thoughts of each other and of the people to the instructive lessons suggested by the departure of Elijah to heaven, were making up an exploring party, to prove that their illustrious chief had met with some disaster in being left forlorn upon some mountain, or in a valley; that the spirit of God had entranced him, and that his weary feet, instead of treading the pavement of heaven, were ensnared in some dark place; and so, in pity for him, and with filial love, they would seek him, and bring him back to Jericho!
If we had clear and strong faith, our joy at the thought of a glorified spirit, however necessary its presence to us here, would transcend all our sorrows; the streaming beams of sunshine would irradiate our weeping; we should think more of his happiness than of our discomfort. Instead of departed spirits falling asleep, it is we who have a spirit of slumber. O that we might walk by faith with glorified spirits before the throne, instead of remanding them,--as it seems we sometimes would do, if we could,--to the ignorance and infirmity of our condition.
Our feelings towards the departed are the same as towards other prohibited things. Many are continually seeking for pleasures which God has taken away, or is purposely withholding from them. Let any one look at the history of his feelings, and see if his state of mind be not one of perpetual expectation of some form of happiness yet to arrive; an ideal of bliss, some prefigured condition, in which contentment and peace are to abide; while the discovery that he is not to have it, would make him inconsolably miserable. Our search for lost joys, or for those which God is not prepared, or not disposed, to give us, and the happiness which he desires rather to give us, and to have us seek, are severally represented to us by this search for Elijah, and by Elijah himself, who is, meanwhile, at God's right hand. At his right hand are pleasures forever-more; but some, in the ardor and strength of their affections, are seeking for that which they will never obtain, and that is, happiness independent of God. Some tell us that they mean to make the most of life, and to be happy while they live; therefore, begone, reflection! religion is not for the spring-tide of youth; mirth and merry days are for the young; soberness and the russet garb of autumn belong to the decline of life, which certainly to them, they think, is far off;--as though every material necessary for their last, long sleep, may not at this moment be in the warerooms and shops; as though they could boast themselves even of one to-morrow, and knew what the to-morrows of many years would bring forth. The Bible is against their way of thinking and manner of life; and to push aside the Bible in our search after any thing, is a certain sign of being in the wrong. And all this with the mistaken belief that to love God, and to be loved of him, is not the greatest, the only satisfying good,--the God that framed the voice for that music which charms a circle of friends, and made those curious fingers, and gave them all that cunning skill which sheds delight on others, and empowered that heart to swell with such conceptions of earthly pleasure;--and that to love him, and be loved by him, is the direst necessity of our being, to be postponed as long as possible, and then to be accepted as a last resort and the less of two evils. Where is the Lord God of Elijah, the God of all power and might, the God of all grace and consolation, the God of our life, and the length of our days? Banished from the world which these friends have made for themselves; an intruder into the charmed circle in which the wand of fancy has enclosed them; a dreaded power standing over them, to snatch away the only bliss which they ever expect to enjoy. O gilded butterflies, made for a few days of sunshine, and doomed to perish at the first touch of frost! had they no souls; were there no hereafter, no heaven, no hell; if it would not be as desirable to be happy millions of years from to-day, as now; if they were not including all their hopes and efforts to be happy within a handbreadth of time, and liable to lose even that,--the wise man might stop with saying, "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes;" but the infinite future compels him to add, "but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Such are the motives by which, in their present condition, and with their present views, they are most likely to be affected; yet some of them, we are glad to say, in their best moods, are also affected and influenced aright when we tell them that, even if our existence terminated at death, the joys which are now to be found in loving and serving God, are better than the pleasures of sin for a season.
There is not one of us who has not lost a friend, a schoolmate, a companion of early life, one who has disappeared from our side, a frequent associate in the business of life, or one whom we have been accustomed to see in the places of business; and perhaps a member of our family circle.
Now, it is profitable to consider that the same thoughts which we have of them, others will ere long have concerning us. What would make us satisfied and happy to know respecting them? What are we glad to say of their preparation for an eternal state? What would we have had that preparation be? In what respects better or different? Where do we love to assign them their places? And what is it pleasant to believe are their thoughts of us, of earth, of eternity, of the gospel, of this life as a season of preparation for heaven? We shall soon be the subjects of the same contemplations in the minds of others. The hosts of that long procession, of which we are the part now passing over the stage, are urging and pressing us from behind, and we must go down, as others have before us,--our love, our envy, our hatred perish,--and we no more have any portion in all that is done under the sun.
We must give up happiness as the great aim and end of existence, and, instead of it, take this for our supreme endeavor and chief end--the conscientious performance of our duty to God, and to others. We are never really happy till we cease to expect happiness from the things of this world. As soon as we begin to be satisfied with God, and find that to think of God, to love him, to trust in him, to serve him, is happiness enough, we attain to solid peace; and then, turning and following the sun, all desirable pleasure pursues us and solicits us, like our shadows, the more eagerly and steadily the more that we flee from them, and the less that we turn ourselves to them. We never can be happy by searching for happiness; but when we give up this search, and duty becomes the motto of life, we are inevitably happy. God must satisfy us--his personal love to us, communion with him, the contemplation of his character, ways, and works; in short, the consciousness of having him for a personal friend, disclosing all our thoughts to him, looking to him and waiting for him in all things, and, as the Bible expresses it, "walking" with him. Then he makes our wants his care; and while he leads us through strange paths which we should not have chosen, it is to bring us, at the last, into a condition which will make us happy chiefly from the reflection that God himself appointed it. Disappointments, of which we were forewarned, and which we had every reason to expect, embitter that life whose only sources of happiness are confined to this world, and do not relate to God. Making him the supreme source of our happiness, we give up undue sorrow for departed friends, feeling that they are removed from all need of our commiseration, and all power to afford us comfort and help, any further than their example and remembered words instruct us. We shall then be chiefly concerned to know and to do the will of God, to watch over the interests of our souls, preparing for life, with its important duties, and storing up those recollections which are to occupy our thoughts in the review of life beyond the grave. We shall bear in mind that we, too, are to have survivors, to whom it will be the greatest favor if we leave a good assurance, based upon their remembrance of our piety, that we are happy, thus constraining them to follow us to heaven. We shall do well if we habitually say, as Elijah said to Elisha, "The Lord hath sent me to Jordan;" and that we are one day to be taken up and conveyed to that same heaven whither Elijah went, and from which he came to meet Christ, and to speak with him of his decease, which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. What if we knew that some day, not far distant, flaming chariots and horses, over our dwelling, would wait to bring us home to God? The ministering spirits are already designated who are to perform this office for those who are heirs of salvation. What, then, are we searching for among the dark, gloomy valleys of sorrow, or on the hills of earthly vision? If our friends are with Christ, we must be prepared to be with him, or lose their society; and that loss will be worse than the first.
Sometimes we feel as though we were sailing away from our departed friends, leaving them behind us. Not so; we are sailing towards them; they went forward, and we are nearer to them now than yesterday; and the night is far spent; the day is at hand. If life, or any undue portion, be spent in grief which unfits us for duty, we shall see, in heaven, how much better it would have been had we had more faith, and had lived more as then we should desire our surviving friends to live, quickened and strengthened by the assured hope of our being in heaven, and by the expectation of meeting us there.
But there is one kind of sorrow and desire for departed friends which, in its consequences, is greatly to be deplored. Some refuse to become decided Christians, because their friends, they think, were not believers in the faith which these surviving friends are now persuaded is the truth. To embrace this truth, as essential to salvation, it is felt, will be to condemn these departed friends; and some have, in so many words, declared that they preferred to share the fate of their companions, or children, who gave no evidence of having accepted the gospel, as it is now viewed by these survivors.
How sad would be such a catastrophe as this: The departed friend, in the secret exercises of his mind, and by the good Spirit of God, may have been, at the last hour, prevailed upon to accept the offers of salvation by a crucified Redeemer. He gave no intimation of this, owing, perhaps, to bodily weakness, or to fear and distrust; but, through infinite mercy, he was saved by faith in the Lamb of God. The surviving friend, persuaded of the truth, refuses to comply with it, and loves the departed friend more than Christ, or truth and duty; and then, dying, finds that the departed friend is saved, through that very faith, which the other refused from idolatrous attachment to the departed; and now they are separated; whereas, had the survivor forsaken all for Christ and the truth, he would have had a hundred fold in this world, and, in the world to come, would have found that friend whom he would, as it were, have forsaken for Christ's sake and the gospel's. It is safe, it is best, for each of us to do his duty, to walk by the light afforded us, and not to make a creature our standard, nor our chief good.
If we meet certain of our friends at the end of their search after pleasure, having forgotten their God and Saviour, and see them disappointed, and utterly destitute of any thing to make them happy forever, and all because they would not forego their chase after unsatisfying pleasure,--there is many a faithful Christian friend, whose example and advice they disregarded, who could then reply, "Did I not say unto you, Go not?"
In the name of some unspeakably dear to you, we say, "We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you; come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel."
Our friends, who have gone to heaven, ought not to be invested, in our thoughts, with such melancholy associations as we are prone to connect with them. To die is gain. Trouble, and sorrow, and the dark river, interpose between us and heaven; but in the prospect which has opened before the eye of the redeemed spirit, there is nothing but widening and brightening glory. We must not seek for consolation at their departure by bringing them back, in our thoughts, to our dwellings, but by going forward, in faith, ourselves, to their dwelling. There is much to encourage and help us in doing so, in the following lines, which may be read with profit upon each anniversary of a friend's departure to heaven, until surviving friends read them at the returning anniversaries of our own entrance into the joy of our Lord:--
"A YEAR IN HEAVEN.
A YEAR UNCALENDARED; for what Hast thou to do with mortal time? Its dole of moments entereth not That circle, mystic and sublime, Whose unreached centre is the throne Of Him, before whose awful brow, Meeting eternities are known As but an everlasting now. The thought removes thee far away,-- Too far,--beyond my love and tears; Ah, let me hold thee, as I may; And count thy time by earthly years.
A YEAR OF BLESSEDNESS; wherein Not one dim cloud hath crossed thy soul; No sigh of grief, no touch of sin, No frail mortality's control; Nor once hath disappointment stung, Nor care, world-weary, made thee pine; But rapture, such as human tongue Hath found no language for, is thine. Made perfect at thy passing, who Can sum thy added glory now? As on, and onward, upward, through The angel ranks that lowly bow, Ascending still from height to height Unfaltering, where rapt spirits trod, Nor pausing 'mid their circles bright, Thou tendest inward unto God.
A YEAR OF PROGRESS, in the love That's only learned in heaven; thy mind Unclogged of clay, and free to soar, Hath left the realms of doubt behind, And wondrous things which finite thought In vain essayed to solve, appear To thy untasked inquiries, fraught With explanation strangely clear. Thy reason owns no forced control, As held it here in needful thrall; God's mysteries court thy questioning soul, And thou may'st search and know them all.
A YEAR OF LOVE; thy yearning heart Was always tender, e'en to tears, With sympathies, whose sacred art Made holy all thy cherished years; But love, whose speechless ecstasy Had overborne the finite, now Throbs through thy being, pure and free, And burns upon thy radiant brow. For thou those hands' dear clasp hast felt, Where still the nail-prints are displayed; And thou before that face hast knelt, Which wears the scars the thorns have made.
A YEAR WITHOUT THEE; I had thought My orphaned heart would break and die, Ere time had meek quiescence brought, Or soothed the tears it could not dry; And yet I live, to faint and quail Before the human grief I bear; To miss thee so, then drown the wail That trembles on my lips in prayer. Thou praising, while I vainly thrill; Thou glorying, while I weakly pine; And thus between thy heart and mine The distance ever widening still.
A YEAR OF TEARS TO ME; to thee The end of thy probation's strife, The archway to eternity, The portal of immortal life; To me the pall, the bier, the sod; To thee the palm of victory given. Enough, my heart; thank God! thank God! That thou hast been a year in heaven.