August 29

Ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. - 1 Peter 1:8.

WHAT is heaven? There is no term by which heaven is so frequently expressed in the Scriptures as the word glory. The radical idea of glory is brilliancy; the second idea is excellency displayed. Heaven is called glory, because it is a state of brilliancy, and because it is calculated to develop and display every kind of excellency,-natural excellency, moral excellency, spiritual excellency, divine excellency. It is, therefore, preeminently called glory. And here we are told that this joy is “full” of it. Christians are not yet, indeed, arrived at heaven,-that is, locally and personally; yet the apostle makes no scruple to say, “Ye are come unto the heavenly Jerusalem;” and he says to the Ephesians, “Ye are quickened together with Christ, and raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places.” Christians are not in heaven as yet, but they know that they are sometimes by their own enjoyments reminded of the experience of Jacob:-“This is none other than the gate of heaven.” Before they live there, they are rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.

“The men of grace have found

Glory begun below.”

They have heaven in the taste, they have heaven in their eye, they have heaven in the first-fruits, they have heaven in their Forerunner who has gone, and as he entered heaven said, “I am come, and all my people are coming after me,” and so took possession of it in our name and holds it for our sakes. Hear David: “Let the saints,” says he, “be joyful in glory; let them sing aloud upon their beds.” How can they “be joyful in glory” while they are here on earth? Christians can explain this. And let us refer this for a moment to the dying experience of believers, for it is indeed in the dying chamber that we have most peculiarly witnessed this joy, which is so “full of glory.”

It would not have been safe for the Christian to have been indulged with it earlier: it would have unhinged him too much from all his present connections, and have rendered him too indifferent to things around, which had various claims upon him. But now he can bear to be raised above the love of life and the fear of death; now his apprehensions have no purpose further to answer, and therefore they are allowed to die away; and now through the crevices of the falling tabernacle some rays of glory beam in; now he is near enough that blessed world to hear some of the songs and shoutings there; now he can turn round his pallid countenance, and say to the friend who is by,-

“Jesus can make a dying bed

Feel soft as downy pillows are,

While on his breast I lean my head

And breathe my life out sweetly there.”

And he can even sing,-

“As I hare tasted Canaan’s grapes,

So now I long to go

Where my dear Lord the vineyard keeps,

And all the clusters grow.”

We have witnessed an elevation of sentiment and a strength of language in persons in their dying hours, far beyond their ordinary feelings and speech,-even in persons who have been entirely destitute of education, and whose low, grovelling, enslaving employments have hardly allowed them to rise up into any thing intellectual, or to exercise the power of reflection; we have witnessed in them a refinement of taste such as never was inspired by learning or philosophy; even these we have heard to say,-

“I’d part with all the joys of sense,

To gaze upon thy throne.”

“As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness.”