The Redemption of the Body

V. THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY.
What though my body run to dust? Faith cleaves unto it, counting every grain With an exact and most particular trust, Reserving all for flesh again.
GEORGE HERBERT.
It is good to think of Michael, the archangel, disputing with the devil about the body of Moses. The dispute was over a grave. The Most High had himself performed the funeral rites of his servant; for, we read, "The Lord buried him." We naturally think of the archangel as placed in charge of the precious dust.
Some great commission, connected with the resurrection of the dead, appears to be held by the chief spirit of the angelic world. "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God." The burial of each and every body which is destined to the resurrection of the just, is, therefore, not improbably an object of interest with him who, under the God-man, will have the supervision of the last day. With a view to that harvest of the earth, he will now see the furrows made, the seed planted, the hill prepared. He will have a care that every thing lies down, whether by seeming accident, or by violence, or by design, in just the place from which the arranging mind of Him who is Lord both of the dead and of the living, has appointed it to come forth. Every circumstance attending that event, the great object of hope in heaven and on earth,--our resurrection,--is of sufficient importance to be the subject of thought and preparation on the part of Christ, himself the first fruits of them that slept.
The care of the patriarchs concerning their burial places is like one of those premonitions in an antecedent stratum of geology, or species of animals, of a coming manifestation;--a prophesying germ, a yearning, created by Him who, with all-seeing wisdom, establishes anticipations in the moral, as well as in the natural, world, concerning things with regard to which a thousand years are with him as one day.
Not on earth alone, as it seems, is an interest felt in the death and burial of the righteous.
For when the leader of Israel in the wilderness went up to the hill top to die, the two great angels, of heaven and hell, met and contended over his grave.
Denied the privilege of burial in the promised land, Moses may have appeared to Satan so evidently under the frown of God, as to encourage his meddlesome efforts to inflict some injury upon him, through dishonor done to his remains. Perhaps he would convey them back to Egypt, a gift to the brooding vengeance of the Pharaohs, who would gratify their anger by preserving that body in the house of their gods;--thus showing their spiteful satisfaction at the disappointment of the prophet whom Jehovah would not permit to enter that promised land, in hope of which the great spoiler had led away the bondmen of Egypt.
Perhaps the devil would gratify the desire of some idolatrous nation, craving new objects of worship, by leading them to canonize this Hebrew chief; and thus make of the lawgiver and prophet of Israel a false god.
Perhaps he could even prevail on some of the Israelites themselves, if not the whole of them, to worship this revered form; or might he but have the designation and the custody of his grave, he would, perhaps, fix it where it would be most convenient for the nation to assemble, at stated times, for some idolatrous rites.
But the great vicegerent of the resurrection was there. To him the body of a saint is suggestive of the last day; it is a special assignment by Christ, an official trust, to the archangel. Bodies of saints are, therefore, most precious to him. Particles of the precious metal are not more precious to the miner, pearls to the diver, ivory to the Coast-merchant, and the shell-fish to the maker of Tyrian purple. The body of each saint is an unfinished history of redemption; a destiny of indescribable interest and importance belongs to it. Any subaltern angel may have charge of winds and seas, of day and night, of summer and winter; but only the archangel is counted meet to have charge, and to keep watch and ward, over the bodies of saints as they sleep in Jesus.
"He disputed about the body of Moses." It was a dispute characterized on the part of the archangel more by act than word. Words are hushed in great encounters. Debate with a pirate, a body-snatcher, would be folly; no arguments, therefore, were wasted, on the top of Nebo, by Michael, over the grave of Moses. "The Lord rebuke thee," was his retort; his heavenly form stopping the way, his baffling right arm hindering the accursed design, were the invincible logic of that dispute.
O prince of angels, watchman, herald, master of the guard, at the resurrection of the just,--comptroller, now, of that treasury which receives and keeps their precious forms,--from whose lips that signal is to come which millions on millions are to hear, and live,--what images of glory and terror fill thy mind in the anticipation of that moment when thy dread commission is to be fulfilled! Is not that "trumpet" sometimes taken into thy hand? Dost thou not place it to thy lips, but quickly lay it aside, and patiently and joyfully watch the swelling number of the graves of saints? Funerals of those who fall asleep in Jesus, to thee are pleasant scenes; they are spring-work, planting times, for thy harvest, O chief reaper! While, with bursting hearts, we turn from the new-made mound, one more glorified body, in anticipation, is added to thy charge.
Smiling at our sorrow, in joyful thought of the change to be witnessed in and around that sepulchre when the family circle shall there put on incorruption, thou canst not pity us except as we pity the brief sorrows of children. If the devil should approach that spot, to work some unknown, and, to us, inconceivable, harm to that body,--be it the body of the humblest saint, one of those little ones who believe in Jesus, or of those infants whose angels do always behold the face of God,--thou, mighty cherub, wouldst be there, and, if need be, with a band of angels, "every one with his sword upon his thigh, because of fear in the night;" and Nebo and its "dispute" would reappear. Poor, dying, mouldering body! hast thou the archangel himself for thy keeper? Not only so:
"God, my Redeemer, lives, And often from the skies Looks down and watches all my dust, Till he shall bid it rise."
Nor is it strange, since we read, "The body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?"
To rise from the dead seems to have been something more to Paul than going to heaven, or than being in heaven. He knew that he was to spend the interval between death and the resurrection in heaven; but beyond even this, he had a joy which he felt was essential to the completeness of the heavenly state.
See the proof of this in the following words: "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead."
Since he was destined, like all of Adam's race, to come forth from his grave, he needed to make no effort whatever merely to rise from the dead; that was inevitable, and irrespective of character. Besides, he represents this object for which he strove as something which required effort, which cannot be said of merely rising from the grave.
Paul had been permitted to know, by personal observation, what the rising from the dead implies. Caught up into Paradise, we may suppose that he had seen the patriarch Enoch, and the prophet Elijah, with their glorified bodies; the presence of which in heaven, we may imagine, has ever served to enhance the happiness of that world, by holding forth, before the eyes of the redeemed, the sign and pledge of their future experience when they shall receive their bodies. For it is not presumptuous to suppose that the sight of Enoch and Elijah has been, and will be, till the last trumpet sounds, a source of joyful expectation to the inhabitants of heaven, leading them to anticipate the final day with intense interest, as the time when they will be invested, like those honored saints, with all the capacities of their completed nature, which nature, while the body lies buried, is in a dissevered state. If Paul, when in heaven, saw and felt the power of this expectation in the minds of glorified saints, no wonder that the resurrection of the body seemed to him, ever after, to be the crown of Christian expectation and hope.
More than all, he had seen the man Christ Jesus, in his glorified body; who on earth had said, "I am the resurrection and the life"--himself an illustration of it, whom alone the grave has yielded up to die no more. He is, therefore, to saints in heaven, a far more interesting object than Enoch and Elijah, who never died. "For now is Christ risen from the dead, and is become the first fruits of them that slept." This sight, of Christ in heaven, must have had unutterable interest for Paul, from the assurance that Christ will "change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body;" for "we know that when he shall appear," Paul himself tells us, "we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." This knowledge, obtained in the heavenly world, may have led the apostle to think of the resurrection as the crown of all his expectations and hopes.
It is noticeable that the writers of the New Testament, and Jesus himself, refer chiefly to the resurrection and the last day as sources of comfort, and also of warning. Now this is made a principal ground of belief, with many, that there is either no consciousness between death and the resurrection; or, that none have gone to heaven, nor to hell, but to intermediate places, seeing that final rewards and punishments are, in so many instances, wholly predicated of the last day.
But those who believe that the souls of the righteous are, at their death, made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory, see proof, in all this prominence which is given to the last day, and to the resurrection, that the sacred writers regarded the resurrection and final judgment as the great consummation, towards which souls, in heaven and in hell, would be looking forward with intense expectation and interest; that neither will the joys of heaven nor the pains of hell be complete, till the account of our whole influence upon the world, extending to the end of time, is made up, and the body is added to the soul. When Paul comforts the mourners of Thessalonica, he bids them to "sorrow not as they that have no hope; for," (and now he does not speak of heaven, and of souls being already there, as the source of consolation, but) "if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them, also, that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him;" and he proceeds to speak of the resurrection,--not of the speedy reunion of friends after death, but of the departed as coming with Christ at the last day. This, instead of being an argument against the immediate departure of souls to heaven, arises from the desire to employ the strongest possible proof that the pious dead are not only safe, but are greatly honored. "Resurrection" was an abounding subject of thought, argument, and illustration in those days; the state of the dead between death and the last day, is comparatively disregarded by the apostles, while their minds were full of the great question of the age--the Resurrection. This fullness of thought and constant occupation of mind about the resurrection, as the cardinal doctrine of Christian hope, explains the apparent belief of the apostles, in some passages, that the final day was near. This the apostle Paul expressly denies, in the second chapter of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. But a greater event, looked at in the same line of vision with an intermediate and smaller object, will, of course, have the prominent place in our thoughts. The less will be held subordinate to the greater; perhaps we shall seem to underrate the less, in our exalted conceptions of that which rises beyond and above. We shall see, as we proceed, why the expectation of the last day seemed to occupy the thoughts of apostles as the paramount object of expectation.
It is perfectly obvious that, at the resurrection, the bodies of the just will be endued with wonderful susceptibilities and powers. This is rendered certain by the great mystery of godliness,--God manifest in the flesh. The greatest honor which could be conferred upon our nature, and the greatest testimony to its intrinsic dignity, and to its being, in its unfallen state, in the image of God, is bestowed upon it by the incarnation of the Word. True, there was a necessity that the Redeemer should be made like unto us, however inferior human nature might be in the scale of creation; still, unless there had been such intrinsic dignity and excellence in our sinless nature, as to make it compatible for the second Person in the Godhead to be united with it, we cannot suppose that this union would have been permanent; it would have fulfilled a temporary purpose, and then have ceased.
Perhaps we slightly err if we think of Christ's assumption of human nature as, in any respect, an incongruous act of humiliation. For man was made in the image of God; so that when Christ was made flesh, without sin, he took upon himself that which, in some sense, was congruous with his divine nature. His humiliation consisted, in part, in his doing this; but more especially in his doing this for such a purpose--for sinners; "in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross, in being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time." Had there been no inherent congruity between our nature and the divine, the human nature of Christ, having accomplished its purpose of suffering and death, would have been left in the grave. "But now is Christ risen from the dead;" the body and the human soul, which were disunited when he hung upon the cross, now constitute the same man, Christ Jesus. "The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continues to be, God and man, in two distinct natures and one person, forever." The latter part of this answer of the Assembly's Shorter Catechism is thus substantiated by the New Testament: "When he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." In other words, he will be, when he appears, that which he now is--will remain the same until his second coming. After that, he will remain as he was before: "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." He is represented as holding an eternal relation to the redeemed in his glorified nature: "The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters." We might, indeed, suppose that the man Christ Jesus would have an eternal recompense for his sufferings and death in an everlasting union with the Godhead; nor can any one think, with satisfaction, of a severance between his two natures, and of a consequent humiliation, or deposition, of that human nature, which, at the great day, will, for so long a time, have sustained such a connection with the divine nature. For our present purpose, however, which is to show the intrinsic dignity of the human nature, it would be enough that it has been in such connection with the Godhead, and has passed through such scenes, and sustained such vast responsibilities. This is sufficient to prove that human nature is intrinsically capable and great; and, indeed, it reveals to us as nothing else does, the real dignity of our nature. Some, who have rejected the doctrine of Christ's two natures, have written much and eloquently with regard to man's greatness in creation. They, however, missed the very thing which chiefly proves it; for all who believe in the Deity of Christ have a proof and illustration of this great theme which trancend all others.
This idea, of future capability and exaltation for human nature, as proved by the Saviour's incarnation, is brought to view in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The second Psalm is there quoted as speaking of man: "Thou hast put all things under his feet." "But now," the apostle says, "we see not yet all things put under him;" man, as a race, has not reached his full destiny of glory and honor; but, in the person of Christ, human nature has taken possession of its future inheritance. We see not yet all things put under man, as a race; but "we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor;"--a sign and pledge of our destiny.
To the mind of Paul, the sight, in heaven, of what he was to become, set forth by the glorified person of the Son of God, his Saviour and infinite Friend, no doubt made the resumption of the body, at the last day, the most desirable experience of which it was possible for him to conceive. Paradise, with all its social pleasures, gates of pearl, streets of gold, every thing, in short, external to him, must have seemed, to the apostle, not worthy to be compared with the glory which was to be revealed in him. An intelligent man is far more interested in his own personal endowments, than in the accidental circumstances of his situation. Every one, who is not degraded in his feelings, would prefer to be enriched with natural, moral, and intellectual powers, rather than be the richest of men, or an hereditary monarch, with inferior talents and worth. To such a man as Paul, the possession of his complete, glorified nature, at the resurrection, must, for this reason, have seemed far better than all the pleasures or honors of the heavenly world. That completed nature would constitute him a being wholly perfected, invest him with a likeness to the Son of God, bring him into still nearer union with that adorable Redeemer, who, Paul says, loved him and gave himself for him, and for whom, he says, he had suffered the loss of all things. The sight of the man Christ Jesus wearing Paul's nature in a glorified state, no doubt lived and glowed in his memory after his return to earth, and made him think of the resurrection as the event, in his personal history, to which every thing else was subordinate. He shows the interest which he felt in this event, when, writing to the Romans, he says, "And not only they,"--that is, "the creatures," or creation,--"but ourselves, also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption, of our body." In his address, at Jerusalem, before his accusers and the people, he cried out, "Of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question." It was uniformly a prominent topic of his thoughts.
It is by no means impossible, nor improbable, judging from analogy, that there may be, in the human soul, faculties which are slumbering, until a glorified body assists in their development. Persons born blind have the dormant faculty of seeing; the gift of the eye would bring it into exercise. So of the other senses, and their related mental faculties. With a glorified body, then, truly it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but the thought itself is rapture, that our souls at present may be as disproportioned to their future expansion, as the acorn is to the oak of a century's growth, which is infolded now, and dormant, in the seed.
The addition of a body to the glorified spirit will, therefore, be a help, and not an encumbrance. For we are not to suppose that the soul, after having been for centuries in a state superior to its present condition, would retrograde, in returning to the body. A common idea respecting a body is, that it is necessarily a clog. True, by reason of sin and its effects, it is now a "vile body;" and Paul speaks of it as "the body of this death." But, even while we are in this world, a body is an indispensable help to the soul. The disembodied spirit, probably, is not capable of sustaining a full, active relation to a world of matter; a material form is necessary to make its powers serviceable here. This being so, there is certainly reason, from analogy, to suppose that the addition of a spiritual body to the glorified soul will not necessarily work any deterioration to the spirit. At all events, we cannot suppose that the bliss of heaven will be suffered to diminish, by remanding the emancipated spirit into connection with any thing which will subtract from the state to which it will have arrived. There is a law of progress in the divine government, by which the intelligent universe will be forever advancing. We are to be changed "from glory to glory;" not from a greater glory to a less, but into the same image with Christ.
It is the opinion of some that every created being has a corporeal part, and that God alone is perfectly a spirit. However this may be, it is evident that the souls of believers after death, though advanced far beyond their present earthly condition, and though they are "with Christ," and though to die is gain, and though they are in the heaven of heavens with Christ, (which is where the penitent thief went, and where Paul had his revelation, and where Christ went when he died;--for Paul uses the words "third heavens," and "Paradise," interchangeably,) are, nevertheless, incomplete as to their natures, "waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." Where in the Bible are we led to suppose that they are detained in an inferior region, or that there are, at most, only two redeemed human beings now in "heaven," viz., Enoch and Elijah, or probably not even they? But a corporeal part, we may suppose, is necessary to the fullest participation in the employments and enjoyments of the spiritual world. Light requires atmosphere to modify it for the human eye, which otherwise could not endure its brightness. So it may be that a corporeal part is necessary to modify many of the things which are unseen and eternal, that they may be apprehended by the soul. Let no one say that matter must obstruct or dim the senses of the soul; that a body must act as a veil to the spirit, and shut out much knowledge. It is not so here. Matter helps us in the acquisition of knowledge, as, for example, glass in optical instruments. The telescope, with its lenses, gives the eye vast compass; the microscope gives it a power, equally wonderful, of minute vision. True, in these cases it is matter helping matter--glass assisting the eye; the analogy is not perfect between this and the aid which the spiritual body may afford the soul. But, if we remember that there is to be progression in the powers and faculties of our nature, and that if a body is added to the glorified spirit, it must be to assist it, to put it forward in its acquisitions and enjoyments, we cannot resist the belief that the addition of the new body to the soul will be a vast accession of power and capability. If the eye and the mind can receive such aid from the telescope here, who knows that the eye of the glorified body may not be itself a telescope, increasing in its capability with the progress of its being.
We may have some view of what the glorified body must necessarily be, in thinking of it as a fit companion to the glorified spirit. The soul having been in heaven for ages, and having grown in all spiritual excellence, the body, to be a help to such a spirit, to be an occasion of joy, and not of regret, must, of course, be in advance of our present corporeal nature. What must the body of Isaiah, and of David, be, at the resurrection, to correspond with the vast powers and attainments of those glorified spirits? We could not believe, certainly we could not see, how these bodies of ours could be made capable of such union, were it not that, in the man Christ Jesus, we see our corporeal nature capable of such transformation as to make it compatible for his human mind, and indwelling Deity, to receive it into their ineffable union.
All this being so, we may, in some measure, conceive of the feelings with which the souls in heaven anticipate the resurrection; and we cease to wonder why Paul speaks of his resurrection as the great object of his desire--not merely to be in heaven, but, being in heaven, with Christ, to be in possession of a completed nature, like Christ's.
From the grave where it was sown in corruption, it will come forth in incorruption; sown in dishonor, it will be raised in glory; sown in weakness, it will be raised in power; sown a natural body, it will be raised a spiritual body. It was "bare grain" when it fell into the earth; but the corn, with its stalk, and leaves, and the curious ear, with its silk, and its wrappings, the multiplication of the "bare grain" into such a product, are an illustration of the apostle's words,--"Thou sowest not that body that shall be;" hence, he argues, say not, incredulously, "How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come?" God giveth the grain a body as it hath pleased him; he can do the same with regard to that part of man's nature which is committed for a while to the earth. Let not the natural difficulties connected with this subject make us sceptical. There are no more difficulties connected with a grave than with a grape vine. Those distant twigs, on that dry vine, begin to bud and blossom; grapes form upon them; it is filled with clusters. Is there any thing in the resurrection more strange than this? Twice, inspiration says to a man, "Thou fool!"--once, to a godless, rich man, and, once, to him who is sceptical about the resurrection of the body.
When the glorified spirit and the glorified body meet, the moment when the investiture of the soul with its spiritual form takes place, and the forcible divorce of the soul and body is terminated by new, strange nuptials, there must be an experience which now defies all power of imagination. We may have known, in this world, all the thrilling experiences of which our natures here are capable; we shall also have seen and felt what it is to awake in heaven, satisfied with Christ's likeness; and all the new-born joys of heavenly sensations will have seemed to leave us nothing to be experienced which can bring a new rapture to the heart; yet when the body is raised, and the triumphant spirit comes to put it on afresh, it will be an addition to all the past joys of the heavenly state. As we look on one another, and see, in each other's beauty and glory, an image of our own; as we remember how we visited the graves of loved ones, and what thoughts and feelings we had there, and then see those graves yielding forms like Christ's; as we see the Saviour's person mirrored in ours on every side, and behold the living changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, there will be an exceeding great joy, such, perhaps, as the universe had never before known. But to each of us the most perfect joy will be his own consciousness, existence being then a rapture such as we never experienced. Then the bird is winged, the jewel is set in gold, the flower blooms, the harp receives all her strings, the heir is crowned. No wonder that Paul said, looking through and beyond heaven, "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead."
Perhaps we now think of the last day with dread, as a day of consternation. It is not always that we can think of the heavens on fire, the earth dissolved, the dead arising, and the judgment proceeding, without some feeling of dismay. But in heaven, we shall long have anticipated that day as the day of our complete triumph. The grave will, till that time, have imprisoned one part of our nature. The curse of the law will not have passed away entirely, and in every respect, till all which belongs to us is redeemed from every natural, as well as moral, consequence of sin. It will be an expectation of unmingled joy to see this accomplished. The approach of the day will fill us with more pleasure than the arrival of any other wished-for moment. We shall come with Christ to judgment. "Them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." We shall have a part in the glory of Christ, and be associated with him; for, "Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?" "Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" What curious interest there will be to receive back from the dust of the earth the dishonored, corrupted, mouldered, wasted, perished body. In the Saviour, even, we shall not have seen all the wonders of the resurrection from the dead; for, "He whom God raised saw no corruption;" but we shall be raised from corruption. To be clothed upon with that house which is from heaven, to be a completed, perfected human being, will be, up to that time, the greatest possible manifestation to us of divine wisdom and power.
The new body will bring with it sources of enjoyment which will be a vast addition to the previous happiness of heaven. There will be perfect satisfaction in every one with his own body--no consciousness of defects, of deformity, of weakness. Comparisons of ourselves with others will not excite dissatisfaction and envy; every one will be perfect of his kind, and will differ in some things from every other, and will be an object of love and admiration with all. We are astonished here with the intellectual, oratorical, vocal powers of others, with their knowledge, their talent, their skill; but there we shall no doubt be filled also with astonishment at our own powers and acquisitions, and thus we shall be more capable of appreciating and enjoying the endowments of others. God is pleased to raise up one and another, from time to time, with great powers to charm their fellow-creatures; and thus he would lure us on to heaven, teaching us how much we can enjoy, and how much we shall lose if we are not saved. Those who are deprived of very many intellectual and social pleasures here, which they could appreciate as well as their more favored friends, will soon have it made up to them. By the likeness of their glorified nature to the human nature of Christ, they are to be intimately associated with him forever. This, of itself, is an assurance and pledge, that their heavenly happiness will not be measured by their relative inferiority to their brethren in this world. To a benevolent mind it is a great joy to think of good people, who are deprived, in this world, of education and culture, entering upon a career of boundless knowledge, rising to the highest pitch of mental development, and enjoying it all the more for their former disadvantages in their probationary state. "And, behold, there are last which shall be first." Distinctions made here by knowledge will be transient, like gifts of prophecy, and tongues; for it is in this sense that it is said, "whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." And when we look upon those dear children of God who have long suffered under bodily deformity, and "have borne, and have had patience, and have not fainted," we love to think of their glorified bodies, and of that rich zest in the possession of them which will be both the natural consequence, and the gracious reward, of their patience; nay, we love to think that some special, personal beauty, some peculiar grace and glory, may be given them by Him who so delights in compensatory acts in nature, in providence, and in grace.
Was it not the object of the transfiguration, in part, to give the human soul of Christ such an idea of his future glory in heaven, as to strengthen him for his agony and death? Yes; for the heavenly visitants "spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." That anticipation of his glorified nature was a part of "the joy set before him." Let Christ on Tabor, and faith, do for us, with regard to present bodily sorrows and sufferings, that which the transfiguration did for Jesus in the days of his humiliation. "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself."
Through the long interval of death and the separate state, the anticipation of the last day and of the resurrection will, no doubt, be to the wicked a predominant source of terror. While the joyful anticipations of it, in heaven, will be like the advancing steps of morning, when there begin to be signs, in the tabernacle for the sun, of that bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and of that strong man rejoicing to run a race, and every thing will be astir with the notes of preparation for that day, for which all other days were made, the approach of it will be, to the lost, a deepening gloom, its arrival the settling down of interminable night. Instead of entering into their bodies with transport, as the righteous do, they will each be like a prisoner removed from one jail to another with new bars and bolts. If it be not unreasonable to suppose that the appearance of the body will conform to the character, and if the bodies of Isaiah, and Paul, and John must be seraphic, to correspond with their experience and attainments, what must the bodies of the wicked be! They will have spent centuries in sinning, and suffering, debased in every part, the image of God supplanted by the image of him whose service they preferred to that of a holy God and Saviour. What a moment will that be, when the sinner's grave is opened by the last trumpet, and a hideous form rises to receive a frantic spirit! "The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels." "As, therefore, the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." There will be separations at the graves of those who lay side by side in death; many a tomb will yield up subjects both for heaven and for hell; the differences in character, between the regenerate and unregenerate, will there be made conspicuous in the correspondence of the risen body to the soul, according as the soul shall have arrived at the grave from a state of joy or of woe. Arrests will be made, there will be forcible detentions, overpowering strength, disregard of entreaties, remorseless rendings asunder of families, unclasping of embraces, and an indiscriminate mixture of all classes among the wicked, indicated by the command, "Bind ye the tares together, in bundles, to be burned." Nor will this be worse for holy angels to witness, than it was to see those sinners turn their backs on the Lord's supper, year after year. They could treat their Saviour's dying agonies, and his blood, with perfect neglect and contempt, through their love of the world and sin; now they eat the fruit of their own way, and are filled with their own devices. Our treatment of the Saviour will return upon our own heads. What a change will be made in the ideas which many sentimentalists had of holy angels, when they see them executing the terrible orders of their King! and what an illustration it will give of the severity of justice,--the rigors of its execution being compatible with the pure benevolence of holy angels, because of God. We are constantly admonished that the punishment of the wicked will be a great part of the proceedings on that day. It is called "the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." "Behold, the Lord cometh, with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment."
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All this serves to invest the death of a dear Christian friend, in our thoughts, with inexpressible peace and comfort. He, with his Redeemer, can say, "My flesh, also, shall rest in hope." If we are confident that a friend is gone to be with Christ, death is, even now, swallowed up of life; and now the thought of what the soul is to inherit, both before and after the resurrection, and its contrast with the experience of the lost, should make us joyful in tribulation. True, we cannot, by any artifice or illusion, make death itself cease to be a curse. Full of beauty and consolation as it may be,--nay, we will call it triumphant,--yet nothing saddens the mind, for the time, more than the sight of true beauty. In heaven things beautiful will not make us sad; nor will the remembrance of a past joy, which so inevitably has that effect upon us here. We are beholding a sunset. Day is flinging up all its treasures, as though it were breaking to pieces its pavilion forever and scattering the fragments; and now, when all seemed past, one more flood of glory streams over the scene, but only for a moment; then comes a last touch of pathos, here and there, like a more distant farewell, a whispered good night. Have tears never come unbidden, do we never feel sad, at such a time? Is not the whole of life, past, present, and to come, then tinged with sombre hues? and all because the dying day expires with such beauty and peace. Not so when a storm suddenly brings in night upon us. Then we are nerved and braced; we hear no minor key in the voice of the departing day. It is perfectly natural, therefore, to weep over our dead, even when every thing in their departure is consolatory and beautiful. It is interesting to observe that it was even when he was on his way to raise the dead body of his friend, and thus to comfort the weeping sisters, that "Jesus wept."
Let us more and more love the Christian's grave. Angels love it. Two of them sat in the tomb where the body of Jesus had lain--they loosed the napkin that was about his head, and "wrapped" it "together in a place by itself;" and when Jesus had left the place, instead of following him, they lingered, to comfort the weeping friends on their arrival at the sepulchre. Can it be Michael, guardian of the dead Moses and his grave, on "the great stone" which has been rolled "from the door of the sepulchre"? Is he thinking how he will one day hear the command, "Take ye away the stone" which covers all who sleep in Jesus? As the cross is hallowed by the death of the Son of God upon it, the grave is hallowed for the believer through the Saviour's burial. There are three places which must possess intense interest for a glorified friend. One is his home; another is his seat in the house of God; and another is his grave. Let us cherish it. We do well to visit such a spot. Sometimes approaching it with sadness and fear, we go away with surprising peace; looking back for a last view of the stone, and feeling towards the spot as we do when we are leaving little children in the dark for the night, unutterable love, we find, has cast out fear. Those graves are treasures which heaven has made sure, "sealing the stone, and setting a watch." Of those who still live, we are not certain that, in the providence of God, they will henceforth be an unmingled source of comfort; but they who are in those graves are garnered fruits, are finished works, are each like the rod of Aaron laid up in the ark, which "bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds." All else which is dear to us on earth may seem changeful, or changed; the property may have disappeared, the home may have been broken tip, the plighted faith and love may have been recalled; the whole condition of life may have been altered: but we visit that burial spot, and there is permanence; that fast-anchored isle has defied the surges and roaring currents; the grave seems beautifully constant; it has not betrayed our confidence; it is not weary of its precious charge; it has kindly staid behind to permit and encourage our griefs when all else may have fled. The winter's snows have fallen, the tempests have beaten, there; and now, this April or May morning, it is as steadfast and quiet as when the slumber there began.
Great honor is paid to the dead in giving them precedence to the living at the last day. "The dead in Christ shall rise first," that is, before the living are changed;--they shall rise, and after that, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, the living will be transformed; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. This is said in order to comfort those who mourn the death of Christian friends,--intimating such care on the part of their Redeemer, that the apostle is directed to tell us "by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive, and remain to the coming of the Lord, shall not" have precedence of "them that are asleep." It is declared that the change of the living will be effected "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." This must be a matter of pure revelation; for it could not have been foretold, from any apparent probabilities, whether it would happen instantaneously or by degrees. It is suited to impress the mind with the power and majesty of Christ, inasmuch as this is to be one of the great acts connected with his second coming, and as really an exercise of his omnipotence as the raising of the dead. For he is "Lord both of the dead and of the living."
"And the sea shall give up the dead that are in it." Many a form of a believer is waiting there for the redemption of the body. Nor has it escaped the eye of the great archangel. Wrapped in its rude shroud, or decomposed and scattered, or in whatever way seemingly annihilated, personal identity still attaches to it, and the all-seeing eye watches every thing which is essential to that identity, as easily as though the body were in the grave with kindred dust. That the power of God in the resurrection may be fully illustrated, and that some may be preeminent witnesses in their own persons of that mighty power, perhaps it will appear that they were permitted, for that purpose, to be devoured, or to dissolve and to waste away in the sea. If they who came out of great tribulation are arrayed in white robes among the righteous, we may look for some special sign of glory and joy in those who receive their bodies, not from the sheltering grave, but from the sea, and from the very frame of nature, into which their bodily organization will, in one way and another, have been incorporated. O the unspeakable wonders and raptures connected with the resurrection, both as it relates to our own experience, and to the illustrations which the resurrection will afford, of the divine wisdom and power. No wonder, we say, that Paul esteemed it the height of Christian privilege, that he, as a redeemed human being, "might attain unto the resurrection of the dead."
It is an innocent fancy, if it be not worthy of a better name, that the great attention which has been given of late years to new cemeteries, now in such contrast to the old graveyards, whose reckless disorder so perfectly expressed abandonment to sorrow and unresisting surrender to the last enemy, is a symptomatic token of growing faith in the great, general heart of the Christianized part of the race, with regard to that consummation of all things, the resurrection of the dead.
As at sea there is, within certain degrees of latitude and longitude, an uphill and a downhill, made by the convexity of the globe, we, perhaps, may have reached the meridian of the great voyage, and may have begun to feel the inclination which will set us forward more swiftly to the end. The power of the great consummation will be waxing stronger and stronger. Men are looking to the cemeteries as places where great treasures went down, or were abandoned, and they begin to think that some great restoration awaits them. These costly and beautiful cemeteries, which men are preparing, are like Hiram's contributions to the building of the temple; they foretell some great thing; they have a look not only of expectation, but of design, not merely of faith, but of hope. With a truly liberal regard to the decoration of those burial places with costly works of general interest, in the department of art, we shall do well to make provision, by statute, for the perpetual repair and preservation of every enclosure, and every grave, the whole body corporate thus pledging itself, as far as possible, to each incumbent, that his last resting place shall be the care of the perpetuated fraternity to the end of time.
And when the prophecies are accomplished, and the stone cut out of the mountain without hands has filled the earth, and the apostasy which is to follow the general prevalence of religion, has deluged the world with blood, and Satan, loosed a little season, is triumphing in his maddened career, and the graves are full, and the souls under the altar, with their importunate cry, can no longer wait for the avenging arm,--then shall be seen the sign of the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.
As we commit a Christian friend to the earth, and as we visit his resting place, let us think that now, the anticipation of the rising from the dead is, to him, the great object of personal expectation and hope. The time is not far distant, when, in heaven, we, in like manner, shall be filled with that expectation, as we look down upon the places where our bodies await the signal of the resurrection.
Let not the image of our friends, as sick and in pain, occupy our thoughts. "For the former things are passed away." Their language, as they call back to us, is, "As dying, and behold, we live."
We who have children and friends that sleep in Jesus, and who expect ourselves to be, with them, and with one another, children of the resurrection, will soon know each other in the presence of Christ. We shall have become reunited in the presence of each other to our loved and lost ones. The great question then will be, How did we fulfil God's special and benevolent designs in our trials? If we revisit scenes of deep affliction where death and the grave usurped their dread power over us for a season, we shall remember our misery as waters that pass away. In hope of this, we will patiently and joyfully labor and suffer. "The night is far spent; the day is at hand."
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On a pleasant morning in April, three months from the time of her decease, the mortal part of the dear child whose name gives this book its title, was removed from its temporary resting place in the city, to her grave in the family cemetery. As the hands of her father, which baptized her, laid her to rest in her sweet and peaceful bed, and the simple stone, with her chosen "lilies of the valley and rose buds" carved on it, was set up,--the gift of one whose consanguinity was made by him the delicate ground of claim to do this touching and abiding act of love,--it seemed as though, in some sense, there had already been brought to pass the saying which is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory."
But in the night, a gentle April shower fell; and as the thoughts were carried by it, spellbound, from the chamber where she was born, to her newly-made grave,--that night being the first of her sleeping there,--it seemed very plain that, though Death had been conquered, the Grave still kept possession of the field.--Christ "will be thy destruction," O Grave, as he has been "thy plagues," O Death! The early rain seemed to have made good haste in visiting the fresh mound and the flower seeds already placed there, conspiring with them to cover the grave speedily with emblems of the resurrection, as though, with confident boast and exultation, they would, beforehand, say, "Where is thy victory?" Simple thoughts and fancies, which we hardly dare utter, have wonderful power, in great sorrows, to change the whole current of the feelings; for while that soft shower was heard, falling on the grave, it seemed as if a heavenly watcher was in care of the place; and so, leaving them together, it was easy and pleasant to fall asleep.
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And now, seeing that there is not one experience in this volume which is not, or may not be, enjoyed, and surpassed, by every dying saint, and by surviving friends, and as the narrative is thus saved from all just thought either of ostentation, or of setting forth a discouraging standard of experience, may the book find protection from those who, knowing the innocent weaknesses, and, at the same time, the blessedness, of those who mourn, will kindly appreciate the motives with which it is written. For more than a year the narrative has been laid by, from indefinable reluctance at the thought of publication. But this affliction, which was, at first, like the bulb of the hyacinth with its white, pendulous roots in water,--those symbols of hope and pledges of growth,--has now bloomed and become fragrant with such comforts and consolations, that we venture to set the plant in our window, perchance it may meet the eye of one and another as they walk and are sad. Perhaps it may, here and there, win love and praise for Jesus. "He hath done all things well."
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Catharine, by Nehemiah Adams