The Saints' Everlasting Rest
Richard Baxter, the Puritan author of one hundred and sixty-eight volumes, of which "The Saints Everlasting Rest" was, and is, the most popular, was born in 1615 during the reign of James I., and died in 1691, soon after the accession of William III. His lifetime, therefore, was coincident with the troubles of the Stuart House. For fifty years Baxter was one of the best known divines in England. Throughout, his was a moderating influence in politics, the Church, and theology. His best known pastorate, one of extraordinary success, was at Kidderminster, between his twenty-sixth and forty-fifth years, and there, in an interlude of ill-health of more than customary severity--for all his life he was ailing--he wrote, anticipatory of death, "The Saints Everlasting Rest." The book, which was dedicated to his "dearly beloved friends the inhabitants of the Borrough and Forreign of Kederminster," was published in 1650 and had an immediate and almost unparallelled success. Twenty thousand copies were sold in the year after publication, and various editions are now in circulation. The saintliness of this broad-minded divine's character emerges unsullied from an age of contentious bigotry.
I.--The Nature of Rest
"There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God."
--Heb. iv, 9.
It was not only our interest in God and actual fruition of Him which was lost in Adam's covenant-breaking fall, but all spiritual knowledge of Him, and true disposition towards such a felicity. Man hath now a heart too suitable to his low estate--a low state, and a low spirit. And when the Son of God comes with tenders of a spiritual and eternal happiness and glory, He finds not faith in man to believe it; but, as the poor man would not believe that any one man had such a sum as a hundred pounds--it was so far above what he possessed--so no man will hardly now believe that there is such a happiness as once he had, much less as Christ hath nowprocured.
The Apostle bestows most of his epistle against this distemper, and clearly and largely proves that the rest of Sabbaths and Canaan should teach men to look for further rest, which indeed is their happiness. What more welcome to men under personal afflictions, tiring duty, successions of sufferings, than rest? What more welcome news to men under public calamities, unpleasing employment, plundering losses, sad tidings, than this of rest?
Now let us see what this rest is. Though the sense of the text includes in the word "rest" all that ease and safety which a soul hath with Christ in this life--the rest of grace--yet because it chiefly intends the rest of eternal glory I shall confine my discourse to this last.
Rest is the end and perfection of motion. The saints' rest, here in question, is the most happy estate of a Christian having obtained the end of his course.
May we show what this rest containeth. Alas! how little know I of that whereof I am about to speak. Shall I speak before I know? If I stay till I clearly know I shall not come again to speak. Therefore will I speak that little which I do know of it rather than be wholly silent.
There is contained in this rest a cessation from motion or action. When we have obtained the haven we have done with sailing; when we are at our journey's end we have done with the way. There shall be no more prayer because no more necessity, but the full enjoyment of what we prayed for. Neither shall we need to fast and weep and watch any more, being out of the reach of sin and temptations. Nor will there be use for instructions and exhortations; preaching is done; the ministry of man ceaseth; sacraments useless; the labourer called in because the harvest is gathered, the tares burned, the work done.