“He will address the righteous first,” said her grandmother. “It will not, indeed, be with them a day of wrath. Believers, at the time of their justification (as I explained to you on a former evening), were dismissed with the sentence of ‘not guilty’ pronounced upon them. They are brought before God’s throne, that there they may be ‘openly acknowledged’—receive a public acquittal before men and angels—and listen to that happy, happy sentence, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”
“I can well imagine their joy,” said Emma; “but what next?”
“It will be a sadly different scene, my child. Let the words of Jesus himself tell you of it—you will find them in the 25th chapter of Matthew, 41st verse.”
Emma again turned to the passage, and read, “Then shall He say also to them on the left hand, Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
“After this,” continued the aged lady, “we read no more about the doings of that great day. The court is dissolved—the trial over. We see the golden gates of heaven open to receive happy saints and angels; and the miserable wicked sink down to the regions of despair! This solemn day terminates the kingdom of grace on earth. The kingdom of glory is then completed. The elect are gathered into it from the four quarters of heaven. They ‘enter into the joy of their Lord.’ But this I must reserve speaking to you about, if God spare me, till another Sabbath.”
EIGHTH NIGHT.
Spring once more returned with its green fields and bright sky. The little birds were beginning to raise their earliest notes, as if telling one another how happy they were that winter, with its snow and its storms, was again over, and that the fresh buds were beginning again to appear. The small, old‐fashioned lamp, too, which was filled every Saturday, so as to be ready for the Sabbath evening, was, from the long twilight, no longer required. As the last rays of the setting sun were falling through the latticed window, Emma was found once more at her grandmother’s side.
“I think, my dear,” said the latter, laying aside her spectacles, and drawing her grandchild nearer her—“I think I left off speaking last Sabbath when we were just beginning to talk of the most wondrous and glorious of all Bible subjects.”
“Oh yes,” replied Emma, “you had told me about the doings of the great Day of Judgment, and you were commencing to |Of Heaven.| speak about the glories of heaven, when you thought it would be better to wait till now.”
“Truly, my child,” said her grandmother, “I would require rather to wait till that heaven itself begins, in order to give you any idea of its happiness. We are told that ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.’”