THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE HOLY DEAD
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Write this down:
Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit,
they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from all their toils and trials;
for their works (good deeds) follow them!" Rev. 14:13
The beautiful vision we last considered, was intended, as
we found, to be one of comfort and consolation for the Church in a season of
environing darkness and trouble. It is followed immediately by a succession
of three angel-voices. The first, is that of the bearer of the everlasting
Gospel, as he speeds his way in mid-heaven to the nations of the earth, with
the wide commission to preach the glad tidings to every nation and kindred
and tongue and people. The second, intimates the fall of the mystic Babylon.
The third, in tones louder still, issues a proclamation of warning to all
abettors of the great anti-christian apostasy; to come out from among them,
that they do not be partakers of her plagues.
It is at the close of these three, that the words which
head this chapter come in, like another of those sweet, solitary strains of
heavenly music we have noted more than once in the preceding pages. One
resplendent and dreadful picture after another had just been passing before
the eye of the Apostle; the scroll had its alternating dark letters,
and its illuminated coloring. But there was something now which could
not be delineated by symbol. It is a Divine revelation, addressed,
not to the eye, but to the ear. Moreover, it was one of such
sacred importance as to demand immediate transcription. Other words—other
picturings and figures—might be safely left to memory; but this, dictated by
a heavenly voice on the spot, must on the spot too be committed to
writing. The roll of apocalyptic thunders is suddenly hushed, and thus
is the silence broken—And I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Write this
down: Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the
Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from all their toils and
trials; for their works (good deeds) follow them!"
It is vain to inquire from whom this voice proceeded.
This is left indeterminate. It may possibly have come from one of the
twenty-four elders of chapter 7; possibly it may have emanated from the
Great Covenant Angel Himself—the Majestic Being standing on the sea and the
earth, with 'the little book' in His hand. More probably it may have been
uttered by one specially delegated from the ranks of the ministering
spirits, who are sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation—some
heavenly Barnabas—some "Son of Consolation" dispatched on an errand of
comfort to the lonely isle and its lonely prisoner. Be he, however, who he
may, his voice has become loud as the sound of many waters: for the brief
utterance, wafted like a chime from the bells of the Upper Sanctuary, has
awakened chords of responsive harmony in ten thousand, thousand aching and
sorrowing hearts in every age of the world.
Nor need we pause too curiously to ascertain the precise
meaning and import of the term here used, "from now on." It may simply
indicate, that, from the moment of death, when the spirit is emancipated
from its earthly fetters, that blessedness begins; or, as in the verse
immediately preceding, John speaks of "the patience or endurance of the
saints" in the midst of their persecutions, it might be designed, in the
first instance, as a special word of hope and comfort to those who had the
prospect of suffering and martyrdom. But it was by no means restricted to
such. It is a message intended and adapted for all time and for all
places—wherever there are weeping eyes and bleeding hearts—wherever there is
a Christian's deathbed—a Christian's funeral—a Christian's grave.
Let us consider these two points: I. The Beatitude,
"Blessed are those who die in the Lord." And II. Its divine ratification,
"Yes, says the Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from all
their toils and trials; for their works (good deeds) follow them!"
I. "Blessed are those who die." Startling words are
these, viewed by themselves and apart from the Gospel. "Blessed are
those who die!" How the death-chamber belies the utterance—refuses to
countersign the strange benediction! Where is the blessedness in the
spectacle of that inanimate clay—that mute and voiceless marble—that
moldering and shattered casket from which the glory has departed? Does it
not seem a cruel mockery—a parody on the sacred words? That eye which
once beamed affection now rayless—that hand which once gave and
returned the grasp of tender love, or that smoothed the wrinkles from the
brow of care or sorrow, now powerless—that intellect with its varied
resources—the memory with its garnered treasures—the heart
with its divine sympathies—all now dull, pulseless, unresponsive as the
unfeeling stone!
Do you call the flower 'blessed,' that yesterday
was swinging its tiny censers with their fragrant perfumes, but which today,
nipped by the frost, or battered by the hail, hangs shriveled on the branch
or has fallen on the ground? Do you call the giant oak, the ancestral
monarch of the forest 'blessed,' when it lies prone on the sward with
upturned roots, wrenched from its old moorings by the sweep of the pitiless
tempest? Do you call the sculptor's breathing marble 'blessed,' which
had just received the last delicate strokes of his chisel, but which, by
unfortunate accident, strews in a hundred fragments the floor of his studio?
Then, but not until then, can you pronounce 'blessed' that apparent
destruction of all that is fair and lovely in life—that cruel severance
of dearest ties and fondest associations—the eclipse and extinction of some
orb of love, some familiar star, which has risen and set, gleamed and
gladdened in the little firmament of our being ever since memory did its
work!
And then follow that procession to the narrow house
appointed for all living—while the bright jewel is gone, the very
casket, broken and mutilated, must be buried out of our sight. Not the
altar-fire only is quenched, but the shrine itself must be demolished. The
green sod or the silent stone is all that is left to memorialize the 'loved
and lost.' No! no! call it not 'blessed.' There can be no gladness—no
jubilee here. Stop the music of pipe and tabret—call in the hired
minstrels—muffle the drum—put on sackcloth—sit in dust and in ashes—say,
'Ah, my brother!' or, 'Ah, sister!' Do not mock the dead—Do not mock the
living, with the mis-timed utterance of 'blessed.' It is not the scene or
occasion for beatitude and benediction.
Death!—it is a dark, cruel, ruthless, repulsive thing—a
cold, frigid destructive avalanche coming sweeping down amid the warm
heart's affections—making earth's smiling valleys scenes of desolation and
ruin. It is an anomaly in God's universe. It is a dreadful and awful thing
to die!
The ship has sailed to the silent land, we know
not where. No sign, no look of affection can be returned as we wave the
tearful adieu. There is no retracing of the voyage; no homeward-bound vessel
from these distant mysterious shores. We need not hoist the signal from the
watch-tower; love need not light its beacon to greet the lone wanderer. Weep
sorely for him who goes away—for he shall return no more, nor see his native
country.
Such is nature's cold philosophy—nature's sad soliloquy,
uncheered and unillumined by the Gospel. Such, too, is the sad musing
of many to whom that Gospel has never come in its quickening and
enlightening power—to whom the present world is their "be all and end all."
It is the Christian alone, who, under the teachings of a diviner philosophy,
can utter through tears, as he stands by the grave of those who have fallen
asleep in Jesus, "Blessed are those who die in the Lord."
We cannot pause now to investigate the pregnant meaning
of that brief description of the Christian character here given, "who die
in the Lord." Those who have been privileged to stand by a believer's
death-bed will know what the phrase means better than by words. It implies
vital union with Christ; the acceptance of Him as a Savior—alike from the
guilt and the power of sin; and the reality of which union has
been evidenced by the testimony of a holy life. It is effected not by
the application of the outward baptismal sign; not by sacramental act, or
efficacy, or ritual; not by the holding up of the crucifix before the face
of the dying, nor muttering prayers and incantations over the casket of
the dead—neither does it consist in the badge and shibboleth of any
ecclesiastical party, nor in the mere religious utterances of the last hour,
to which the whole previous life is in painful contrast. It is not the
transient ecstasy of frame and feeling; not the bidding farewell to the
world, and an avowed resignation to leave it when nothing else remains;
a willingness to loosen the cable when the vessel is already drifting from
its anchorage into infinite darkness. Far less is it the sinful, morbid
desire—dictated often by wounded pride, or disappointed ambition, or
faithless friendship—to be done with the world, and become oblivious
to its ingratitude and wrongs—saying, with the fugitive Prophet of Carmel,
"It is enough—take away my life;" or, with the peevish Prophet of Nineveh,
"It is better for me to die than to live."
But it is the calm, peaceful resting at the close of
life, on the work and merits of a Savior, long ago found and long ago
precious. It is Paul's noble and triumphant affirmation, "To die is
gain," grounded on the antecedent testimony, "For me to live is
Christ." The sublime consciousness that he was "in the Lord," gave him a
noble indifference alike to living or dying; it made him content either
for a while with the distant vision of heaven, or to be ushered at once into
the full fruition. It mattered not whether Christ were magnified in his body
by life or by death. He could say, with heroic calmness and
complacency, "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we die, we
die unto the Lord; whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's." Oh!
to him, and to all such, the last Enemy is robbed of his terrors!
What to the unsaved sinner is the gloomy portico leading to the grave, is to
the Christian the vestibule of Heaven. The life of faith in the Son
of God encircles, like a crown of glory, his dying head.
Neither is it of any moment where or how that
death may come. It may be the long tedious experience of months and years,
when pin by pin of the earthly tabernacle is taken down—the wasting
consumption, the gradual decay. Or it may be with the speed and suddenness
of the lightning-flash. It may be in the stillness and quiet of the
home-chamber, surrounded with loving eyes and familiar voices; or it may be
in some far-off Patmos isle—or in the hut of the settler—or in the cabin on
the lone sea—or in the dungeon's darkness—or at the martyr's fire—or amid
the shout and shell of battle. It signifies not—the Gospel requiem is the
same wherever sounded. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of
His saints." "Blessed are those who die in the Lord."
II. But this angel-utterance is ratified by a Divine
voice, "Yes, says the Spirit." The Divine Spirit of God sets His seal to the
beatitude; and He assigns a twofold reason for the blessedness which
had just been pronounced on the holy dead.
(1.) "They rest from their labors." Many
are the scriptural symbols employed to illustrate the future glory and
happiness of Heaven. It is spoken of as a mansion, a city, a kingdom, a
temple. But no figure comes home with such power and beauty and
appropriateness as that of rest. It is the weary husbandman
having gathered in his implements, and stored the fruit of his spring and
summer toils. It is the weary laborer at the end of life's long week
enjoying the calm of the eternal Sabbath. It is the warrior having
ungirded his stained and dust-covered armor on the banks of the river of
life, and exchanged the weapons of conflict for the festal palm and the
victor's crown. It is the weary bird now no longer beating its wings
against the bars of its cage, as it caught up the notes caroled in the far
country, and warbled its pensive earth-song, "Oh, that I had wings, . . .
for then would I flee away and be at rest!"
Sin and suffering together have converted this fair earth
into a place of wailing and unrest, and made the spirit long for a world
where these are felt and feared no more. Not that the Christian desires
heaven as a place of exemption from the holy activities of his being.
No! if we hear of "the Divine gift of rest," there is "a divine gift of
work" too. Work, consecrated work, even on earth is happiness; and the
higher the consecration, the higher will be the satisfaction in the
unresting occupations of the glorified. The believer longs only for
cessation from that which impedes his activities here; and the absence of
which would enable him to continue a rejoicing laborer in that world where
the cry is never heard, "Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?"
There he will be enabled to serve God without
interruption. No baffled labor; no crushing disappointments; no wearing
anxieties; no treachery of tried and trusted friends; no silent, secret
griefs, which, unknown to the world, take from life its sweetest
ingredients; no evil heart of unbelief, no failure of cherished plans and
brilliant hopes; no sickness, laying its paralyzing hand on successful toil,
and crippling the warrior on the very eve of conquest. But rather, the
bud stymied on earth will expand into the full blossom; those cut
off in the midst of their days will be permitted to complete the unfinished
and unfulfilled purpose, and, unclogged by all material hindrances, to go
forth in endless missions and ministries of loving service. It will be "the
rest without a rest"—the rest from sin, and the rest
in God. "Blessed" are such dead! "This is the rest with which you may
cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing."
(2.) A second element in the blessedness of the holy dead
here given is, that "their works (good deeds) follow them." "Not," says an
old divine, "that their works go before them in order to win
God's favor." But they follow after them, alike as the tests and
evidences of their vital living union to Christ, and as the grounds on
which will be apportioned the nature and degree of their eternal recompense.
For we must never, for the support and vindication of one
great Bible declaration, nullify and contradict another. While the title
to heaven is altogether apart from ourselves, secured as a free gift of
grace in Christ—the purchase of His dying love; yet every good deed done by
His people as the fruit of their faith, will have its corresponding
reward. As in the material skies, 'one star differs from another star in
glory,' so will believers have their different spheres assigned them in the
firmament of eternity—some describing a nearer, some a more distant orbit
relative to the great central throne. There will be the inheritor of five,
and the inheritor of ten cities; the possessor of the five talents, and the
possessor of ten; those who will shine as the brightness of the skies; those
who will have a crown of surpassing glory round their brows, even "as the
stars forever and ever."
It is not, however, the doer of great works and
gigantic or brilliant deeds who alone is to have this glorious
recompense—he who out of his abundance can give the golden tribute to the
cause of Christ, or bear in a jeweled cup the offering of love to His
people; but the poor, the humble, the lonely, the bedridden, who have
glorified their Savior by meek submission and patient bearing of the cross;
who had nothing to give but the two mites, or the cup of cold water, and
that, too, from an earthen pitcher; yet valued and recompensed by Him who
accepts the deed according to what a man has, not according to what he has
not.
Nor must we exclude from the words their significant
meaning with reference to this world, as well as to the next. For
even here, the works of the holy dead follow them. When a
Christian dies—when the lips are closed and the voice silent, and the
sods of the churchyard cover him—that is not the last of the man in the
living sphere of living being, which in one sense he has left. He lives
on! There is a presence and influence more real, more deathless,
than the mere bodily frame. Like the glow of the descending sun lighting up
the Alpine peaks long after the orb itself has sunk behind the visible
horizon, so the works of the holy and the good linger behind
them. They have an earthly as well as a heavenly immortality.
The friend you loved is sleeping the long sleep
where "the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." Men say
of him, as they miss him on the street, or in the busy mart, or in the house
of God, "He is gone!" No, not so! Do not call the sacred spot where his
ashes lie—do not call regarding him, "the land of forgetfulness."
His words and works are still among us. There is a speech of the dead,
the language of undying memories. The outward features have perished,
but the spirit is indestructible. Mind cannot die. Holy deeds know no
death-bed, no grave, no corruption. "The righteous shall be had in
everlasting remembrance."
How many there are whose only "blessed life" is the life
of sense—the life of selfish and sensuous pleasure—the life of glitter and
display and superficial gaiety! In such, there is nothing glorious to
"follow;" and even those things which are objects of honorable
aspiration—lands, houses, riches, titles, diadems—the accidents of
existence, not its realities—cannot be ferried across the dark river!
Then it will be said to every votary of the present and the perishable
world, who has no inheritance in anything that is higher and better, "Your
gold perishes with you!" "Remove the diadem, take off the crown!" "The
fashion of this world passes away!"
Let us ask, What anticipations have we regarding
our own departure? Can we contemplate that hour with calm emotion? Can we
echo and anticipate regarding it and ourselves the words before us? or are
we content to leave it an unsolved problem until the unwelcome hour
arrives? Certain on everything else, are we all uncertainty on
this?—heedless, it may be, whether the works following will be the trail of
light, or the shadows of darkness, and the legacy we
bequeath, that of blessings or of curses.
There is nothing, surely, more calculated to rouse from
the perilous dream of indifference, to the hopes and hazards of eternity,
than to bear about with us the realizing sense of this aspect of a
limitless future—as the perpetuation and expansion of present
character, the prolongation of present tastes and habits.
The works of earth, "following" like the wake of a
vessel, will have their completion in the world beyond. Earth is the
germ, the seed-plot of immortality; the child of time, is the father
of the full-grown manhood of eternity. Every passing hour of the
present life is gathering and shaping that endless futurity; these
transient moments we now value so little, are molding everlasting
destinies; the words we utter today will go echoing on forever; the
deeds done today will be the architects of our bliss or woe, and will
outlast millenniums!
And if such be the case, then it is plain that
character is not a thing that can be formed and extemporized on a death-bed.
Character is the epitome of the life—the steady glow of its
morning, noon, and evening hours; not the mere watery gleam and burst of
sunshine at the close. We dare not, indeed, limit the grace of God; we dare
not close the doors against the peradventure of a death-bed repentance; and
yet we never can sufficiently lift up the voice of warning against the
awful deception of which thousands are guilty, who flatter themselves
that a few hours of penitence, just when the sand-glass is at its final
grain, will reverse a guilty past—that a few tears then, will wipe out what
has been engraved on the life as with an iron pen and lead in the rock
forever! Oh, "live in the Lord" if you would "die in the
Lord!"
And if these words we have been pondering have to any a
more sacred meaning, if they sound fresh in your memories, as you may have
lately stood by the solemn death-bed or solemn grave, the lines chiseled
with tears on your heart of hearts—take them from the unknown heavenly
Voice of the Vision as a special parable of consolation. I repeat, it is
beautiful to find in the very midst of a Book of strange and portentous
figures—amid its voices of thunder, and flashes of fire, and smoke of
darkness—this gleam of heavenly sunshine—an olive branch of comfort, borne
to the lonely exile and lonely heart in the midst of the storm.
What can more touchingly evidence God's tender interest,
alike in His dying people and in those who are mourning their departure,
than when He thus hushes the tempest's breath, that this balm-word may fall
first on the ears of the Island Prisoner, and through him on the ears of a
whole weeping world? Yes, believer! "Blessed are your dead." "They have
entered into peace; they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his
uprightness." Kindle around their graves lamps of fire; not the lamps which
superstition places around the shrines of the departed, but the holy
lights which they themselves kindled—the lights of faith, and love, and
patience, and submission, and meek bearing of injuries, and close walk with
God. They have joined the ranks on the distant shore, and beckon you to
follow. Do not be disobedient to the Heavenly Vision. Grasp up these torches
as sacred legacies they have left you, to bear you on in your darkened way.
And if their bright example has taught you how to live, let it tune your
lips also to the prayer, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my
last end be like His!"