“The World to Come” was for a long time one of those favourite pieces which occupied a place upon our forefathers’ book-shelves, and especially charmed the dwellers at home in those times and places when and where there were no Sabbath evening services; it belongs to that era when Christian people found their spiritual pleasure and refreshment in Baxter’s “Saint’s Everlasting Rest,” to which work it bears no inconsiderable resemblance. Southey, in his “Life of Watts,” in which, like Johnson, he lays aside all his acerbity against Watts and Dissenters, appears to dwell with much pleasure on this book. Probably most of our readers are now unacquainted with it; and, if so, they have to learn how much there is in these two volumes of suggestion and instruction. Watts was fond of dwelling in imagination upon, and dilating with his pen over, the conditions of the world to come. The work first appeared in two volumes, although the second was not published until the year 1745, when Watts was drawing near to the period of his own entrance into that kingdom, upon whose conditions he had speculated so largely and interestingly. Some portions of this work soon found their way into other languages; his piece on “The End of Time” was translated, as a tract, into most of the tongues of Europe; an edition is now circulating, or was a short time since, in modern Greek, on the shores of the Levant; and none of the prose works of Watts have perhaps obtained so large an acceptance, or produced, on the one hand, more serious impressions, and, on the other, more quieting and comfortable consolation.
The work has the characteristic of the times in which it was written—diffuseness; but here, if sometimes there is an indulgence in those fancies and colourings of speech of which we become impatient now, we find some of the best illustrations of that happy power of illumination and imagination which we should expect to abound in the works and sermons of such a poet as Watts. The poet and the metaphysician meet, and mutually aid each other in the attempt to enter upon the mysteries of the unseen world; his ideas, perhaps, do not differ greatly from those which are ordinarily entertained amongst us. Franke, the well-known German pietist, was the means of the translation of a portion of the work in Geneva, and the translator said, in introducing the work, that “the preacher had taken occasion of flying with his thoughts into the blessed mansions of the just, and had given not only a very probable and beautiful idea of the glory of a future life in general, but also an enumeration of the many sorts of enjoyments and pleasures that are to be met with there.”
But Watts’ “World to Come” is not limited to the work that bears that title. His thoughts perpetually hovered round that fascinating theme. He was constantly, as we find in many of his pieces, engaged in attempts to understand the nature of metaphysical substance. Though from Revelation we can only gather that “we know not what we shall be,” yet there are precious hints from which we may obtain all that is sufficient for comfort and for light, especially in the Great Teacher’s promise that “where I am there shall also My servant be,” and the assurance of His apostle that “we shall see Him as He is.”
It would not be uninteresting to group together all Watts’ words from his various works illustrating his conception of “The World to Come,” his conjectures concerning the mode of our immortality; thus he presents to us—
THE BRAIN BOOK.
“We may try to illustrate this matter by the similitude of the union of a human soul to a body. Suppose a learned philosopher be also a skilful divine and a great linguist, we may reasonably conclude that there are some millions of words and phrases, if taken together with all the various senses of them, which are deposited in his brain as in a repository, by means of some correspondent traces or signatures; we may suppose also millions of ideas of things, human and divine, treasured up in various traces or signatures in the same brain. Nay, each organ of sense may impress on the brain millions of traces belonging to the particular objects of that sense; especially the two senses of discipline, the eye and the ear; the pictures, the images, the colours, and the sounds, that are reserved in this repository of the brain, by some correspondent impressions or traces, are little less than infinite; now, the human soul of the philosopher, by being united to this brain, this well-furnished repository, knows all these names, words, sounds, images, lines, figures, colours, notions, and sensations. It receives all these ideas; and is, as it were, mistress of them all. The very opening of the eye impresses thousands of ideas at once upon such a soul united to a human brain; and what unknown millions of ideas may be impressed on it, or conveyed to it in successive seasons, whensoever she stands in need of them, and that by the means of this union to the brain, is beyond our capacity to think or number. Let us now conceive the Divine Mind or Wisdom as a repository stored with infinite ideas of things present, past, and future: suppose a created spirit, of most extensive capacity, intimately united to this Divine Mind or Wisdom: may it not by this means, by Divine appointment, become capable of receiving so many of those ideas, and so much knowledge, as are necessary for the government and the judgment of all nations? And this may be done two ways, viz., either by the immediate application of itself, as it were by inquiry, to the Divine Mind, to which it is thus united, or by the immediate actual influences and impressions which the Divine Mind may make of these ideas on the human soul, as fast as ever it can stand in need of them for these glorious purposes. Since a human brain, which is mere matter, and which contains only some strokes and traces, and corporeal signatures of ideas, can convey to a human soul united to it many millions of ideas, as fast as it needs them for any purposes of human life; how much more may the infinite God, or Divine Mind or Wisdom, which hath actually all real and possible ideas in it in the most perfect manner, communicate to a human soul united to this Divine Wisdom, a far greater number of ideas than a human brain can receive; even as many as the affairs of governing and judging this world may require. This may be represented and illustrated by another similitude, thus: suppose there were a spherical looking-glass or mirror vast as this earth is; on which millions of corporeal objects appeared in miniature on all sides of it impressed or represented there, by a thousand planetary and starry worlds surrounding this vast mirror; suppose a capacious human spirit united to this mirror, as the soul is to the body: what an unknown multitude of ideas would this mirror convey to that human spirit in successive seasons! Or, perhaps, this spirit might receive all these ideas at once, and be conscious of the millions of things represented all round the mirror. This mirror may represent the Deity; the human spirit taken in these ideas successively, or conscious of them all at once, may represent to us the soul of Christ receiving, either in a simultaneous view, or in a successive way, unknown myriads of ideas, by its union to Godhead; though, it must be owned, it can never receive all these ideas which are in the Divine Mind.”
And thus he endeavours to image to his mind the worlds:
EARTH, HEAVEN, AND HELL.
“I have often tried to strip death of its frightful colours, and make all the terrible airs of it vanish into softness and delight; to this end, among other rovings of thought, I have sometimes illustrated to myself the whole creation as one immense building, with different apartments, all under the immediate possession and government of the great Creator. One sort of these mansions are little, narrow, dark, damp rooms, where there is much confinement, very little good company, and such a clog upon one’s natural spirits, that a man cannot think or talk with freedom, nor exert his understanding, or any of his intellectual powers with glory or pleasure. This is the Earth in which we dwell. A second sort are spacious, lightsome, airy, and serene courts open to the summer sky, or at least admitting all the valuable qualities of sun and air, without the inconveniences; where there are thousands of most delightful companions, and everything that can give one pleasure, and make one capable and fit to give pleasure to others. This is the Heaven we hope for. A third sort of apartments are open and spacious too, but under a wintry sky, with perpetual storms of hail, rain, and wind, thunder, lightning, and everything that is painful and offensive; and all this among millions of wretched companions cursing the place, tormenting one another, and each endeavouring to increase the public and the universal misery. This is Hell.
“Now what a dreadful thing it is to be driven out of one of the first narrow dusky cells into the third sort of apartment, where the change of the room is infinitely the worst! No wonder that sinners are afraid to die. But why should a soul that has good hope, through grace, of entering into the serene apartment, be unwilling to leave the narrow smoky prison he has dwelt in so long, and under such loads of inconvenience? Death to a good man is but passing through a death entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father’s house into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining. Oh may the rays and splendours of my heavenly apartment shoot far downward, and gild the dark entry with such a cheerful beam as to banish every fear, when I shall be called to pass through.”