A comfortable adjunct of this rest is the fellowship of the blessed saints and angels of God. Oh, when I look in the faces of the precious people of God, and believing, think of this day, what a refreshing thought is it! Shall we not there remember, think you, the pikes which we passed through here; our fellowship in duty and in sufferings; how oft our groans made as it were one sound, our conjunct tears but one stream, and our conjunct desires but one prayer. And now all our praises shall make up one melody, and all our churches one church; and all ourselves but one body; for we shall be one in Christ, even as He and the Father are one.
It is a question with some whether we shall know each other in heaven or no. Surely there shall no knowledge cease which we now have, but only that which implieth imperfection! And what imperfection can this imply? Nay, our present knowledge shall be increased beyond belief. It shall be done away, but as the light of candles and stars is done away by the rising of the sun, which is more properly a doing away of our ignorance than of our knowledge. Indeed, we shall not know each other after the flesh; nor by stature, voice, colour, complexion, visage, or outward shape, but by the image of Christ and spiritual relation, and former faithfulness in improving our talents we shall know and be known.
Again, a further excellence is this--it will be unto us a seasonable rest. When we have passed a long and tedious journey, and that through no small dangers, is not home then seasonable? When we have had a long and perilous war, and have lived in the midst of furiousenemies, and have been forced to stand on a perpetual watch, and received from them many a wound, would not a peace with victory be now seasonable? Some are complaining under the pressure of the times--weary of their taxes, weary of their quarterings, weary of plunderings, weary of their fears and dangers, weary of their poverty and wants, and is not rest yet seasonable? Some of us languish under continual weakness, and groan under most grievous pains, weary of going, weary of sitting, weary of standing, weary of lying, weary of eating, weary of speaking, weary of waking, weary of our very friends, weary of ourselves. Oh, how oft hath this been mine own case--and is not rest yet seasonable?
A further excellence is that this is a suitable rest. Gold and earthly glory, temporal crowns and kingdoms could not make rest for saints. Such as their nature and desire such will be their rest.
It will, too, be absolutely perfect and complete--as there is no mixture of our corruption with our graces, so there will be no mixture of our sufferings with our solace. We shall know which was the right side and which the wrong. Then shall our understandings receive their light from the face of God, as the full moon from the open sun when there is no earth to interpose betwixt them. It is a perfect rest from perplexing doubts and fear, from all sense of God's displeasure, from all the temptations of Satan, the world, and the flesh. And it is an eternal rest. This is the crown of our crown. Mortality is the disgrace of all sublunary delights. But, O blessed eternity, where our lives are perplexed by no such thoughts, nor our joys interrupted by any such fears! Our first paradise in Eden had a way out, but none in again; but this eternal paradise hath a way in, but no way out again. The Lord heal our carnal hearts lest we enter not into His eternal rest because of our unbelief.
BOOK OF THE DEAD
This is probably the oldest religious book in the world. Properly speaking, indeed, it is no book at all, but rather a collection of hymns and litanies which have no more connection with each other than the Psalms. Like the Psalter, too, this so-called book has grown by degrees to the magnitude which it now usually assumes in European and other libraries--175 chapters of varying sizes. Its Egyptian name is "The Book of the Coming Forth by Day" (Renouf), or "The Coming Out of the Day" (Naville); the latter being probably more correct, "day" in this connection denoting man's life with its morning and evening. The hymns in this collection are supposed to be recited by the deceased person with whose body they were commonly buried, and by the recital of these and other sacred texts the departed was believed to be protected against injury in his journey to the underworld, and also to have secured for him a safe return in the form of a resurrection. It was Lepsius, the great German Egyptologist, who gave this compilation the name "Book of the Dead." Even this name, however, though more correct than any other, gives by no means an adequate account of that for which it stands. This, and other summaries of the sacred books of the East appearing in THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS present in quite original ways the systems and philosophies of the great non-Christian religions.