But there is one kind of sorrow and desire for departed friends which, in its consequences, is greatly to be deplored. Some refuse to become decided Christians, because their friends, they think, were not believers in the faith which these surviving friends are now persuaded is the truth. To embrace this truth, as essential to salvation, it is felt, will be to condemn these departed friends; and some have, in so many words, declared that they preferred to share the fate of their companions, or children, who gave no evidence of having accepted the gospel, as it is now viewed by these survivors.
How sad would be such a catastrophe as this: The departed friend, in the secret exercises of his mind, and by the good Spirit of God, may have been, at the last hour, prevailed upon to accept the offers of salvation by a crucified Redeemer. He gave no intimation of this, owing, perhaps, to bodily weakness, or to fear and distrust; but, through infinite mercy, he was saved by faith in the Lamb of God. The surviving friend, persuaded of the truth, refuses to comply with it, and loves the departed friend more than Christ, or truth and duty; and then, dying, finds that the departed friend is saved, through that very faith, which the other refused from idolatrous attachment to the departed; and now they are separated; whereas, had the survivor forsaken all for Christ and the truth, he would have had a hundred fold in this world, and, in the world to come, would have found that friend whom he would, as it were, have forsaken for Christ's sake and the gospel's. It is safe, it is best, for each of us to do his duty, to walk by the light afforded us, and not to make a creature our standard, nor our chief good.
If we meet certain of our friends at the end of their search after pleasure, having forgotten their God and Saviour, and see them disappointed, and utterly destitute of any thing to make them happy forever, and all because they would not forego their chase after unsatisfying pleasure,—there is many a faithful Christian friend, whose example and advice they disregarded, who could then reply, "Did I not say unto you, Go not?"
In the name of some unspeakably dear to you, we say, "We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you; come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel."
Our friends, who have gone to heaven, ought not to be invested, in our thoughts, with such melancholy associations as we are prone to connect with them. To die is gain. Trouble, and sorrow, and the dark river, interpose between us and heaven; but in the prospect which has opened before the eye of the redeemed spirit, there is nothing but widening and brightening glory. We must not seek for consolation at their departure by bringing them back, in our thoughts, to our dwellings, but by going forward, in faith, ourselves, to their dwelling. There is much to encourage and help us in doing so, in the following lines, which may be read with profit upon each anniversary of a friend's departure to heaven, until surviving friends read them at the returning anniversaries of our own entrance into the joy of our Lord:—
"A Year in Heaven.
A year uncalendared; for what
Hast thou to do with mortal time?
Its dole of moments entereth not
That circle, mystic and sublime,