(VIEWS OF DEATH AND HEAVEN—ASPIRATIONS.)
M ISTRESS,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—If death, which is before you and us all, were any other thing than a friendly dissolution, and a change, not a destruction of life, it would seem a hard voyage to go through such a sad and dark trance,[456] so thorny a valley, as is the wages of sin. But I am confident the way ye know, though your foot never trod in that black shadow. The loss of life is gain to you. If Christ Jesus be the period, the end, and lodging-home, at the end of your journey, there is no fear; ye go to a friend. And since ye have had communion with Him in this life, and He hath a pawn or pledge of yours, even the largest share of your love and heart, ye may look death in the face with joy.
If the heart be in heaven, the remnant of you cannot be kept the prisoner of the second death. But though He be the same Christ in the other life that ye found Him to be here, yet He is so far in His excellency, beauty, sweetness, irradiations, and beams of majesty, above what He appeared here, when He is seen as He is, that ye shall misken Him, and He shall appear a new Christ. And His kisses, breathings, embracements, the perfume, the ointment of His name poured out on you, shall appear to have more of God, and a stronger smell of heaven, of eternity, of a Godhead, of majesty and glory, there than here; as water at the fountain, apples in the orchard and beside the tree, have more of their native sweetness, taste, and beauty, than when transported to us some hundred miles.
I mean not that Christ can lose any of His sweetness in the carrying, or that He, in His Godhead and loveliness of presence, can be changed to the worse, betwixt the little spot of the earth that ye are in, and the right hand of the Father far above all heavens. But the change will be in you, when ye shall have new senses, and the soul shall be a more deep and more capacious vessel, to take in more of Christ; and when means (the chariot, the Gospel, that He is now carried in, and ordinances that convey Him) shall be removed. Sure ye cannot now be said to see Him face to face; or to drink of the wine of the highest fountain, or to take in seas and tides of fresh love immediately, without vessels, midses, or messengers, at the Fountain itself, as ye will do a few days hence, when ye shall be so near as to be with Christ (Luke xxiii. 43; John xvii. 24; Phil. i. 23; 1 Thess. iv. 17).
Ye would, no doubt, bestow a day's journey, yea, many days' journey on earth, to go up to heaven, and fetch down anything of Christ; how much more may ye be willing to make a journey to go in person to heaven (it is not lost time, but gained eternity) to enjoy the full Godhead! And then, in such a manner as He is there! not in His week-day's apparel, as He is here with us, in a drop or the tenth part of a night's dewing of grace and sweetness; but He is there in His marriage-robe of glory, richer, more costly, more precious, in one hem or button of that garment of Fountain majesty than a million of worlds. Oh, the well is deep! Ye shall then think that preachers, and sinful ambassadors on earth, did but spill and mar His praises, when they spoke of Him and preached His beauty.
Alas! we but make Christ black and less lovely, in making such insignificant, and dry, and cold, and low expressions of His highest and transcendent super-excellency to the daughters of Jerusalem. Sure I have often, for my own part, sinned in this thing. No doubt angels do not fulfil their task, according to their obligation, in that Christ keeps their feet from falling with the lost devils; though I know they are not behind in going to the utmost of created power. But there is sin in our praising, and sin in the quantity, besides other sins. But I must leave this; it is too deep for me. Go and see, and we desire to go with you; but we are not masters of our own diet.[457] If, in that last journey, ye tread on a serpent in the way, and thereby wound your heel, as Jesus Christ did before you, the print of the wound shall not be known at the resurrection of the just. Death is but an awesome step, over time and sin, to sweet Jesus Christ, who knew and felt the worst of death, for death's teeth hurt Him. We know death hath no teeth now, no jaws, for they are broken. It is a free prison; citizens pay nothing for the grave. The jailor who had the power of death is destroyed: praise and glory be to the First-begotten of the dead.
The worst possible that may be is, that ye leave behind you children, husband, and the church of God in miseries. But ye cannot get them to heaven with you for the present. Ye shall not miss them, and Christ cannot miscount one of the poorest of His lambs. No lad, no girl, no poor one shall be a-missing, ere[458] ye see them again, in the day that the Son shall render up the kingdom to His Father.
The evening and the shadow of every poor hireling is coming. The sun of Christ's church in this life is declining low. Not a soul of the militant company will be here within a few generations; our Husband will send for them all. It is a rich mercy that we are not married to time longer than the course be finished.
Ye may rejoice that ye go not to heaven till ye know that Jesus is there before you; that when ye come thither, at your first entry ye may feel the smell of His ointments, His myrrh, aloes, and cassia. And this first salutation of His will make you find it is no uncomfortable thing to die. Go and enjoy your gain; live on Christ's love while ye are here, and all the way.