The Saints’ Everlasting Rest (1650) is a Puritan devotional classic that has gone through many printings over the years. Thomas Erskine was asked to write the introductory essay for the 1824 edition published as part of The Select Chrisian Authors series.
Abstract:
Thomas Erskine’s introductory essay to The Saints’ Everlasting Rest presents Richard Baxter as one of the great Puritan reformers whose deep seriousness, lived experience, and unwavering devotion shaped both his ministry and his writing. Erskine praises Baxter’s spiritual vigor while critiquing two tendencies: his overly detailed depictions of eternal punishment and his occasional blurring of the distinction between God’s free pardon and the believer’s subsequent pursuit of holiness. The essay unfolds into a wide theological meditation on the nature of divine law, the inwardness of true obedience, the fall of humanity, the necessity of God’s forgiving love to restore the heart, and the Christian life as continual dependence on God. Erskine concludes by emphasizing the believer’s longing for the final “rest” that perfects the partial joys of this life, urging readers to meditate on heaven as both a duty and a means of spiritual growth.
We do not arrogate to ourselves so much as to suppose that our commendation can add anything to the authority of such a name as that of Richard Baxter. It is not to commend him, but to render our own series of practical divinity more complete that we introduce his Saints’ Everlasting Rest to our readers. He belonged to a class of men whose characters and genius, now universally venerated, seem to have been most peculiarly adapted by Divine Providence to the circumstances of their age and country. We do not speak only of those who partook in Baxter’s views of ecclesiastical polity, but of those who, under any name, maintained the cause of truth and liberty during the eventful period of the seventeenth century. They were made of the same firm stuff with the Wickliffs and the Luthers and the Knoxes and the Cranmers and the Latimers of a former age. They formed a distinguished division of the same glorious army of reformation. They encountered similar obstacles, and they were directed and supported and animated by the same spirit. They were the true and enlightened crusaders who with all the zeal and courage which conducted their chivalrous ancestors to the earthly Jerusalem fought their way to the heavenly city and rescuing by their sufferings and by their labors the key of knowledge from the unworthy hands in which it had long lain rusted and misused, generously left it as a rich inheritance to all coming generations. They speak with the solemn dignity of martyrs. They seem to feel the importance of their theme and the perpetual presence of Him who is the great subject of it. There are only two things which they seem to consider as realities—the favor of God and the enmity of God, and only two parties in the universe to choose between—the party of God and the party of his adversaries. Hence that heroic and noble tone which marks their lives and their writings. They had chosen their side, and they knew that it was worthy of all they could do or suffer for it.
They were born in the midst of conflicts, civil and religious, and as they grew up, their ears heard no other sounds than those of defiance and controversy. Thus, life was to them in fact and reality that warfare, which is to many of us only its rhetorical emblem. To this is to be attributed that severity of rebuke and sternness of denunciation which we are sometimes almost sorry to meet within their expostulations. But they were obliged to speak loud in order to be heard in those troublous days. They were trained in the language of strife as their mother tongue, and they used that language even in delivering the message of peace. But they did deliver the message of peace. They declared the way of salvation, and they were highly honored and in vincibly supported by Him who sent them.
The agitated state of surrounding circumstances gave them continual proof of the instability of all things temporal and inculcated on them the necessity of seeking a happiness which might be independent of external things. They thus practically learned the vanity and nothingness of life except in its relation to eternity, and they declared to their fellow creatures the mysteries of the kingdom of God with the tone of men who knew that the lightest word which they spoke outweighed in the balance of reason as well as of the sanctuary the value of all earth’s plans and politics and interests. They were upon high and firm ground. They stood in the midst of that tempestuous ocean secure on the Rock of Ages, and as they uttered to those around them their invitations or remonstrances or consolations, they thought not of the tastes but of the necessities of men—they thought only of the difference between being lost and being saved, and they cried aloud and spared not.
There is no doubt a great variety of thought and feeling and expression to be met with in the theological writers of that class, but deep and solemn seriousness is the common character of them all. They seem to have felt much. Religion was not allowed to remain as an unused theory in their heads. They were forced to live on it as their food and to have recourse to it as their only strength and comfort. Hence their thoughts are never given as abstract views. They are always deeply impregnated with sentiment. Their style reminds us of the light which streams through the stained and storied windows of an ancient cathedral. It is not light merely, but light modified by the rich hues and the quaint forms and the various incidents of the pictured medium through which it passes. So, these venerable worthies do not give us merely ideas, but ideas colored by the deep affections of their own hearts. They do not merely give us truth, but truth in its historical application to the various struggles and difficulties and dejections of their strangely checkered lives. This gives a great interest to their writings. They are real men and not books that we are conversing with. And the peace and the strength and the hope which they describe are not the fictions of fancy but the positive and substantial effects of the knowledge of God on their own minds. They are thus not merely waymarks to direct our journeyings; they seem themselves pilgrims traveling on the same road and encouraging us to keep pace with them. In their books, they seem thus still to journey, still to combat, but O let us think of the bright reality—their contests are past, their labors are over; they have fought the good fight, and they are now at rest made perfect in Christ Jesus. They are joined to that cloud of witnesses of whom the world was not worthy, and their names are inscribed in the rolls of heaven, yet not for their own glory but for the glory of him who washed them from their sins in his own blood and whose strength was made perfect in their weakness.
These were the great men of England, and to them under God is England indebted for much of that which is valuable in her public institutions and in the character of her people. They were, indeed, a noble army. They were born from above to be the combatants for truth. They were placed in the gap, and they held their ground or fell at their posts.
In this army, Richard Baxter was a standard-bearer. He labored much as well in preaching as in writing and with an abundant blessing on both. He had all the high mental qualities of his class in perfection. His mind is inexhaustible and vigorous and vivacious to an extraordinary degree. He seizes irresistibly on the attention and carries it along with him, and we assuredly do not know any author who can be compared with him for the power with which he brings his reader directly face to face with death and judgment and eternity and compels him to look upon them and converse with them. He is himself most deeply serious, and the holy solemnity of his own soul seems to envelop the reader as with the air of a temple. But on such a subject, praise is superfluous as it is easy, and we shall rather beg the attention of our readers to some observations on his manner of stating divine truth and on the interesting subject of the work before us.
In the first place, then, there is, perhaps, too little appearance of compassion and too much detail in his descriptions of the punishments after death. The general idea is all that is given in Scripture and even that is rarely insisted on except by our Lord himself as if such a fearful denunciation could only have its right effect when pronounced by the lips of him who is love itself. It is not to the statement of the doctrine that we object to but to the manner of doing it. Whatever men may think or feel on the subject, there can be no doubt that the doctrine does stand in Scripture, and assuredly it does not stand there in vain. We must leave the difficulties with God. The light of the last day will dispel all darkness. In the meantime, it must be stated but let it be stated in Scripture language. Let not man use his own words and far less his own fancy in describing the future punishments of the impenitent, and above all, let him not speak of them as one at ease, and let him not describe God as taking pleasure in the infliction. There can be no real advantage gained by agitating the imagination on such a subject. Even fear, to be useful, ought to have some calmness in it. And it ought to be remembered that men are not made Christians by terror but by love. It is the genial ray of the Sun of Righteousness and not the storm of the divine wrath which compels the sinner to lay down the weapons of his rebellion. The steady conviction that misery intolerable must be forever connected with rejecting the offered mercy of God is the true impression produced by the declarations of the Bible on this matter, and this is a much more efficient and practically useful principle than the terrors of an imagination worked up by a picture of the secrets of that prison house. Our gracious Master who suffered in our stead and whose deep and solemn and tender interests in our welfare could not be doubted, did, indeed, in his discourses always set before men life and death as the solemn alternatives of their choice; but in his mouth, it is still the language of affectionate, though urgent, persuasion, and he does not lift the veil except in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus nor terrify the fancy nor represent God as taking pleasure in the misery of his creatures. He does not even represent this punishment so much under the form of a positive infliction as of the natural result of the operation of evil principles on the soul. “Their worm dieth not, their fire is not quenched.” Whose? Their own—the worm and fire within them. Thus also, in other parts of Scripture, the state of the wicked is represented as the reaping of what they had sown, as eating of the fruit of their own way and being filled with their own devices (Gal. 6:7, 8; Prov. 3:31). And in Psalm 81 punishment is described thus, “Не gave them up to their own hearts’ lusts.” The compassion of God for the miseries which sinners bring upon themselves is also often strongly marked by the Bible. For example, in the tears shed by our Lord over the bloody city, in the divine tenderness exhibited through the whole course of that remarkable history contained in the book of Jonah, and in the duties of a watchman described in Ezekiel 33. “I have no pleasure, saith the Lord, in the death of him that dieth; wherefore turn ye and live.”1 The threatenings of God are all expressions of love. They are the descriptions of the misery of being strangers to God given for this very purpose that we may be persuaded to come into his family and to become fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of faith. God seemed to say in these threatenings, “I cannot bear to lose you or that you should lose such happiness. Behold and see what you are rushing into—a soul at enmity with me must be miserable. Come then and be my friend, and my child.” Detailed and prolonged descriptions of future misery seem calculated to injure our view of the Divine character or to agitate the imagination or, like violent stimulants to the bodily constitution, to lose their effect and to deaden the sensibilities to calmer exhibitions of the truth.
But there is another and a more important charge which has been brought against the writings of this great and good man. It is alleged that he does not always mark with sufficient clearness the distinction between the work of God and the work of man and that he even sometimes gives the idea that we are called on to work out our own pardon as well as our own salvation or spiritual healing. The close appeals which he so frequently makes to the consciences of his readers may perhaps in some degree have given rise to this accusation. A writer who presses so strongly as Baxter does the necessity of a change of heart and character in the Christian needs great caution and accuracy of language in order to avoid expressions which may seem to attribute too much in the work of salvation to human effort. Just as a writer whose great theme is the free grace of the gospel would need to be very much on his guard if he would avoid the charge of Antinomianism. The nature of the subject treated on in the book before us may also have assisted in giving this tone to his instructions. He connects pardon and everlasting rest so much together that he sees them and speaks of them as if they were one and the same thing. Now, though in truth they are parts of the same grand plan, yet the one is the commencement and the other is the consummation of the plan, and the language which is suited to the one is not always suited to the other. Pardon is the starting point of the Christian course. The saints’ rest is the goal. Pardon precedes the race; the saints’ rest crowns it. The pardon is universally and freely proclaimed to all without money and without price, without respect to character or condition as the recompense of the atoning sacrifice of Christ. To this pardon, man cannot add and from it he cannot detract, though he may bar himself from the benefit of it by refusing it admission into his heart. Whereas the saints’ rest is entirely dependent on character. It is, in fact, only another name for a character conformed to the will of God. It is, in a sense, the natural reward of diligence in the cultivation of those principles which are implanted by a belief of the pardon. Diligence, therefore, and exertion ought to be strenuously insisted on in pursuit of the saints’ rest; but we must beware of thinking such thoughts or using such language with regard to the pardon. By doing so, we shall obscure our views both of the love of God and of the evil of sin. Pardon is the medicine; the saints’ rest is the cure accomplished. It is salvation perfected. It is spiritual health. We ought not then to think of laboring for pardon for it is proclaimed as a thing already past and recorded in heaven, but we ought to labor for the saints’ rest for it is a thing future and depends on the perfection of principles which are perfected by labor. We ought not to labor for pardon for it is a medicine already prepared and freely bestowed by the great physician of souls, but we ought to labor for spiritual health in which the saints’ rest consists by continual application to the medicine and by using the Spirit and the strength which it supplies to support us amidst the events which befall us and the duties which we are called to fulfill.
Now, though we are well persuaded that all the parts of divine truth are so linked together that if one part is taught to the soul by the Spirit of God, all the other parts will certainly follow and that, therefore, a partial obscurity or indistinctness of statement in the midst of much surrounding light and perspicuity and power may not materially impede the progress of a heart towards God, yet we do regret that a greater prominence is not given in Baxter’s Works to the doctrine of justification by faith because the peace of the mind and the stability of its hopes and the ardor and confidence of its love must depend on the degree of fulness with which it can look on God as a Father who has forgiven all its iniquities on a ground altogether independent of its own deserving.
This doctrine is in truth the great center of the Christian system which gives to all the other parts their symmetry and just proportion. It, in fact, contains all the rest, and we only know them truly when we know them in relation to it. This doctrine it is which constitutes the grand difference between the religion of God and all the religions invented by men. Human systems always place pardon or the divine favor at the end of the race. They would remove condemnation by just making men cease from sinning. Whereas God makes men cease from sinning by first removing the condemnation. This is a stumbling-block to the world and its philosophers. They argue that as sin is the root from which the condemnation sprung, it would be more reasonable to lay the axe to it than merely to lop the bitter fruit that has sprung from it—and that it is unwise to enfeeble the motives of exertion by giving that in possession which ought to be reserved as the excitement and reward of diligence and obedience.
But the difficulty lies not in the thing itself but in their ignorance of the signification of the terms employed. They do not know the meaning of sin or punishment or obedience or reward. They consider them merely as external things. If we wish a porter to go a mile for us, we make much surer of his going by promising him half a crown on his return than by paying him beforehand. But if we wish to gain the confidence and affection of a man who has prejudices against us, we must begin by substantially proving to him that he may rely on our friendship and services. Now God desires and requires our confidence and affection. Nothing short of this can satisfy Him. It is His great commandment that we should love him with all the faculties of our being, and without this love, the most punctual external conformity to His external commandments is a mere mockery and delusion. He is not obeyed by our going the mile but by our going it out of love to Him. He, therefore, begins not merely by holding out to us a future happiness, though he does that too, but by proving himself worthy of all our confidence and all our affection. Obedience then consists in active love. And this love can only proceed from a sense of God’s excellence and amiableness in general and of his favor in relation to ourselves. Without this belief in a higher or lower degree of his favorable regard towards ourselves, there may be a solemn and distant respect, but there can be no filial love and, therefore, no full obedience.
We are persuaded that an erroneous view of the object of the ten commandments has misled many as to the nature and extent of religious duty in this respect particularly. It is true that the ten commandments were given by God’s voice from heaven, and it is also true that in the last of them, the Legislator claims to himself the sovereignty over the thoughts and intents of the heart as well as over the act of the hand or the word of the lip, but yet it is no less true that they contain rather a list of prohibitions and of the most prominent and overt acts of disobedience to the will of God than a declaration of what that will absolutely is. In human governments laws are considered as restraints upon natural liberty, and therefore, everything which is not forbidden by them is permitted. Thus, a man may, without being amenable to the law, hate the king as much as he pleases if he only avoids the commission of any of those acts which are by statute construed into high treason. It is certain that the ten commandments are very often interpreted in the same way. They are often supposed to permit that which they do not expressly prohibit. And on this subject, we are disposed to think that the error does not so much consist in the misinterpretation of the commandments as in mistaking the purpose for which they were given and in supposing that they were ever intended to convey a full and spiritual view of the duty of man to God. For it ought to be remembered that the ten commandments, besides being a religious rule, formed also a part of a code of civil jurisprudence. Jehovah was not only the God of Israel as well as of all the universe, he was also the political King of Israel, and the law of Moses not only gives a view of the Divine character but also contains the statutes of the state according to which property was determined, and offences were judged and punished. Religion binds the mind. The law of the land binds the body. God is the only judge of faithfulness or rebellion in the first. Man can judge of obedience or disobedience to the second. In the Jewish government these two principles were united—the spirit of religion breathes through the law and yet the acts prohibited are, with the single exception of the injunctions of the tenth commandment, such as the eye of man could judge of and such as required to be proved or disproved before their courts by the testimony of human witnesses. This union, however, did not change or materialize the essence of religion. An Israelite who kept the ten commandments to the letter was innocent and righteous in the eye of the law and of God considered as the political king of the nation, but he might keep them most strictly to the letter and yet stand under a heavy charge of guiltiness before God as the spiritual judge of man. This important distinction between the spiritual religion and the material letter of their law appears, however, to have been very generally overlooked by the Jews—they learned to limit their idea of sin to the mere perpetration of the prohibited overt acts of disobedience—they looked to God only as their temporal king, and they became blind to the embracing universality of his claims upon them as their Creator and Spiritual Judge. And the same error is often committed amongst ourselves without the same apology as the Jews had. There were positive miraculous blessings connected with external obedience under the theocracy which might naturally lead them to lay great stress on this outside righteousness. And God appeared to them as their national lawgiver and judge requiring this external obedience and expressing his approbation of it. But the temporal theocracy is no more. God reveals himself in the Gospel solely in his spiritual relation. And when we think of satisfying him by an external obedience, we do him dishonor, and we degrade his law down to a level with our own Acts of Parliament. The offences prohibited in the ten commandments may be considered as the top branches of that tree of revolt which grows naturally in the heart and brings forth corresponding fruit more or less in the life of every man unrenewed by the Spirit of God. But these branches may be lopped or checked and yet the strength of the poison may remain undiminished in the root and in the trunk. The true and full law of God is not only directed against this pernicious tree in its root as well as its branches, but it also requires that the soil should be occupied by another plant which may bring forth fruit to the glory of God. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, and strength.”2 This is the universal and spiritual law of God, and it was given to the Jews, though it does not make a part of their judicial code. It is contained in that solemn and touching recapitulation of mercies and judgments and obligations and duties which Moses makes to the generation which had been either born or brought up in the wilderness a short time before his own death and their entrance into the land promised to their fathers. In this address, the spirit of the future dispensation breaks forth more distinctly than in that part which was strictly speaking their law.
Judaism was throughout a type of Christianity. The wonderous history of the chosen people—their deliverance from Egypt—their wanderings through the desert—their miraculous support during their long pilgrimage—their separation from other nations—their settlement in Canaan—their visible theocracy were all material emblems of the spiritual kingdom of Christ and of the spiritual history of the children of God in their journey from this vale of sin and sorrow to the rest prepared for them. Even so, their law in all its parts, not merely in its ceremonial but even in its moral precepts, though it embraced and illustrated the principles of the succeeding dispensation, yet was in itself to a great degree, literal and material and external, and the law of the ten commandments bore to the spiritual law of love a relation somewhat analogous to that which the sacrifices of the tabernacle bore to the perfect atonement of Christ. Those who saw in the sacrifices no more than a ceremonial purification from external pollutions or a mode of deliverance from external evils would see no more in the ten commandments than a rule of external obedience. Whilst those who saw under that veil of rites a manifestation of the combined mercy and holiness which constitute the spiritual character of God in relation to sinners—those who saw under it the type of that great atonement on the ground of which the divine justice is even glorified in the pardon of the offenders, such Israelites would also discover the spiritual law of love under the ten commandments and would feel their hearts drawn to its observance. And, in like manner, those who had found out that heart love was the obedience which God required would not rest satisfied until they had also discovered the true meaning of the sacrifices. They would feel assured, that the same principle in the mind of God which prompted him to demand the hearts of his creatures would prompt him also to make such a discovery of his own character as would draw their hearts and make obedience easy and delightful. They would look for something else than mere authority to enforce such a command, and they would find it in the spiritual antitype of all these ceremonies. Christ came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fill them out. They were but sketches and cartoons. He came to fill up their shadowy outlines with all the substance of real action and all the rich coloring of spiritual affections. The ten commandments, taking into account the Christian modification of the fourth, are as binding now as ever they were because the duties contained in them spring out of the eternal relation between God and man, but the most exact adherence to their letter will not defend us from the charge of spiritual delinquency before the searcher of hearts.
When the law of God comes to a man only in the shape of prohibitions, he is apt to consider it as a hard and severe thing and to count his own uneasy submission to it an act of price and merit. He has unwillingly abstained from some indulgence, and he lays up this price of self-denial in his treasury as something on which he may afterwards found a hope or a claim before God. But when the law makes a demand upon our heart, the matter is changed entirely. In the first place, it is evident that he who makes the demand is himself full of affection towards us for what but love could make him desire possession of our hearts? And, in the next place, the idea of merit is altogether thrown out because who is it that can say that he has loved with all his heart? And besides, the very thought of forming to ourselves a claim destroys the fulness of the obedience as it taints the freedom and generosity of love.
A prohibitory law allows a man to think that he has fulfilled duty and even that he has done certain things beyond the requirements of duty or, in other words, supererogatory. But the law of love sets duty, like the horizon, always before us at the utmost extent of vision for love urges to do all that we can do and then thinks all too little.
If the law of God could be truly obeyed by mere self-denial and exertion, then pardon or the expression of divine favor might properly have been reserved and held out as the ultimate reward of diligence. But if the heart is positively required, and if love be the obedience demanded as well as the heaven promised by the Bible, then we must have something to enforce it more cogent than either a command or the expectation of a reward. And this we have in the gift of Christ, which is both the pledge of pardon and the proof of love.
It may appear to some that the argument which has been stated is not of much importance in these Christian days as they are called. But the error which it combats is not confined to any country or to any age. Men still desire to change the spiritual heart-searching God into a temporal king who judges only by the outward act and who is satisfied with pious forms and social integrity. It is this error which has to a great degree unchristianized even the form and profession of the Church of Rome and which, more or less, unchristianizes the religion of Protestants. We may call it Judaism, or we may call it popery, but it is the error of the human heart more openly professed indeed by some than others but prevalent universally under various shapes and names until rooted out by the Spirit of the living God.
It is the knowledge of duty which gives us the knowledge of sin. And a knowledge of the true nature of these two things makes the gospel absolutely necessary to the heart. Sin is the transgression of the first and great commandment—it is a departure of the heart from God. And why does the heart depart from God? Is he not good; is he not gracious; is he not worthy of our highest love and gratitude and confidence? Yes, no one denies this. How then does it come to pass that the heart departs from God? The explanation is that our affections are bound to God only whilst the view of his love and his excellency is present to the mind. Had the tempter dared to assail Adam whilst he was walking with God in the garden and drinking in life and light from his communion with him can we doubt what the result would have been? God is light and walks in light—a light pure and unapproachable by evil, and when Adam walked with him, he also was surrounded by that light and was defended by it as by a shield. It is in the absence of the sun that the glow worm and the ignis fatuus are seen, and it is in the absence of the light of the divine presence that the things of sense and of time assume a false splendor and like the wandering fires of nature lure men to destruction. He who walks in the day stumbles not for he has the light of this world. He sees things as they are. He is not exposed to the delusion of false appearances. He can distinguish between the beaten road and the morays. He walks confidently and safely for it is light which leads him. It is the property of light to make manifest, and the more elevated the kind and the degree of the light is, the greater will be the perfection and the truth of the manifestation. What then must the perfection and truth of that manifestation be which is made by the spiritual presence of the Father of lights, and how great must be the security and confidence of those who walk in it.
In this light Adam walked during the happy days of innocence. And whilst he thus looked on the excellence and the beauty of God, he was irresistibly attracted to him, and he could not sin for the law of love was written on his heart.
The presence of God was thus the source and the security as well as the reward of his continued love and obedience. But he went out from the presence of God—he ceased to contemplate God—and the light of the divine perfections faded from his spiritual vision. In this season of absence or forgetfulness, love abated (for love lives by contemplating what is excellent), the tempter came and Adam fell. Ah! wherefore did he leave that blessed light which was a glory and a defense—which would have scared away the powers of darkness, and guided his steps and kept him from falling? Verily, it is an evil and bitter thing to depart from God. What was his condition now? Alas, how changed! Instead of walking with God as a friend, he dreaded and shunned him as an enemy. His backslidings reproved him, and his own conscience became the dreadful executioner of that sentence which excluded him from the family and favor of God. As he had refused to walk in the light, he was shutout from the light—he had chosen a lie, and he received it for his portion—he had disregarded the smile of Jehovah, and now he could think only of his frown.
Thus, not only did sin become its own punishment, but this punishment became a fruitful source of further sin. It was the contemplation of the excellency and a sense of the paternal favor of God which produced and expanded the principles of holy love and obedience in the heart of Adam. The cessation of this contemplation and the forgetfulness of this paternal favor were the very causes of his fall, and now these causes are fixed upon him—they become the very circumstances of his existence. He cannot contemplate God for he feels himself banished from His presence—he cannot enjoy the sense of his paternal favor for condemnation has been pronounced against him.
Adam’s perfection had flowed from and consisted in this that his affections were powerfully and permanently attracted by the contemplation of the holy love and kindness of God. When this attraction ceased, his perfections ceased. What then must the consequence have been when the divine love and favor were changed into displeasure? Evidently repulsion instead of attraction. It is the smile and not the frown—it is the favor and not the condemnation of God which shows forth love, but it is only His frown and His condemnation which the convicted and unpardoned rebel contemplates—and thus the estrangement of his heart becomes more and more confirmed—darkness is his guide, and it leads him to thoughts and deeds of darkness. These thoughts and deeds he feels call for a further condemnation, and the fear of this removes him still farther from God. There is no limit to this tremendous series but in the riches of divine grace. Perhaps the most overwhelming circumstance in the miserable condition supposed is that even the remaining good of the heart opposes our return to God. All our remaining sense of the excellency of holiness and all the loathing and condemnation of our own pollution which we may yet feel makes us shun the divine presence. The knowledge and approbation of what is right without some view of forgiving love can do little more in the heart of a weak and sinful creature than record and repeat the sentence of condemnation against itself and teach it that any misery is to be preferred to that of looking in the face of an offended God.
Is there not then a true philosophy in that system which would make men cease from sinning by removing the condemnation of sin? Is there not a true wisdom in that religion which would draw men from works of darkness by surrounding them again with heavenly light? And is there not a divine glory in that plan which would overcome evil by good—which would annihilate distance by annihilating fear—and which would expel enmity from the soul by satisfying it with the abundance of grace?
The perfection of a creature does not consist in its own self-possessed powers but in the maintenance of its proper place in relation to its Creator, and the name of that place is Constant Dependence. This place can be held only by affectionate confidence, and this requires a constant sense of the favorable presence and protection of God. Men sometimes puzzle themselves by contrasting the moral strength attributed to Adam with the facility of his fall. But Adam’s strength is only another name for his love to God and that love depended entirely on the view which he took of His character in general and of His relation to himself in particular. Whilst he viewed Him as his omnipresent and ever-gracious Friend, he loved Him or, in other words, he was strong. When he lost this view from any cause, there would be a proportional diminution of his strength. And after his offence, when he viewed Him as his condemning Judge, his love would be changed into fear and estrangement, that is to say, his strength would become weakness.
It must be so—it cannot be otherwise in the nature of things. Love is the obedience of the heart and that is the obedience which God requires. And this love in the heart of a hitherto sinless creature can only proceed from or be maintained by a sense and a continued sense of the holy complacency of God and in the heart of a sinful creature by a sense and a continued sense of the holy compassion of God. This going forth of the heart and the thought towards God is to the spiritual man what his locks were to the unshaven champion of Israel. It is the channel through which the omnipotent God communicates himself to his children. Whilst this channel continues unbroken and uninterrupted, all is safe. But when a created thing is permitted to interpose itself between the soul and the face of God, the charm is broken—the divine current ceases to flow in—he who before was strong becomes weak and those Philistines who had often fled before him now put out his eyes and make him grind in their prison.
“Abide in me” says the Head of the redeemed family, “and I will abide in you.” Thus, shall ye bring forth much fruit and thus shall ye “ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” To this object, therefore, ought Christian effort mainly to be directed for here the Christian’s strength lies and here only. Here only he finds an object which will satisfy and sanctify every faculty of his being. His moral sense, his affections, and his desire of happiness are here filled and captivated. How different this from the effort of the world’s morality! The world’s morality, even in its highest strain, is mere self-denial and a painful struggle against nature. It is, however, a noble struggle. And, assuredly, when we look at those who unaided by the light of revelation have trod this uphill path and who by the strong effort of an upright will have quelled the passions and feelings which rebel against truth and reason, we cannot but admire them and little do we envy those who can refuse them this tribute. But though it is a noble spectacle, it is yet a melancholy one. It is an unequal warfare. The citadel is betrayed; the heart is in the hands of the enemy. The conqueror is unhappy even in his victory for what has he achieved? He has not really overcome his antagonists. He has only prevented their eruption. He has imprisoned them in their own favorite residence—his inmost heart where they feed on his very vitals. On the Christian system, the case begins at the heart, and the moral progress is a healthy progress of the whole man and not a temporary submission of one part of the mind to another.
There is no self-denial in the character of God. It is his delight to do that which is good. Neither would there be any self-denial in our virtue if we perfectly loved God because that love would find its highest gratification in a conformity to the will of God. But how are we to grow in this love? How is our holiness to be purged from self-denial? No otherwise than by abiding in the view of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. This rule differs only in words from the apostolic precept, “Pray without ceasing.” It embraces the whole armor of God and gives peace as well as security. The heart must be directed towards God, the Father of mercies, and then, even in this prison, although we may still feel our fetters, our locks will begin to grow like Samson’s and however we may groan under the burden of life and remaining corruption, yet shall we like him also triumph at our death and be made more than conquerors through him that loved us.
For it is not till after death that we are to expect unmixed happiness. Our moralists need not be apprehensive that Christianity, by the greatness of his present gifts, extinguishes hope for the future. There is something kept in reserve to animate exertion and to reward perseverance. The gospel does not expend all its treasures in this life. Great indeed, and unspeakable are the blessings which it bestows even here, but they are not given without alloy—they serve but as foretastes to excite our longings for the joy set before us. The Gospel teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. And it teaches this only by directing our thoughts not only back to the cross and to the pardon which was there sealed and around us to that mercy which continually embraces those who trust in the cross, but also forwards to the blessed hope of the Savior’s appearing and to the rest which remains for the people of God. Yes, every sin is full of sorrow and every day on earth is full of sin. Man also “is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”3 And although the believer does feed on angels’ food, and although the blessed Spirit does comfort his heart by the disclosures of that love which passes understanding, yet is he often made to feel the length of the way and the barrenness of the land. And often does his evil heart of unbelief grieve that Comforter and tempt him to depart. He feels that he daily wounds the love that bled for him and that is bitter even in the midst of forgiveness. He also sees God dishonored and his law trampled on by is fellow creatures. And thus, he is taught that this is not his rest and that he has no abiding city here. These things made the Psalmist say, “Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest,”4 They drew from Jeremiah that plaintive cry, “Oh that I had, in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people and go from them.”5 And they even forced Elijah, a man destined to enter heaven by another gate than that of death to request for himself that he might die. Now all these men had much enjoyment of God in this world as we read in other parts of their history, but the vast disproportion between their enjoyment of Him here and their expected enjoyment of Him in the other world made them as well as the saints under a clearer dispensation feel and confess that presence in the body is absence from the Lord.
And yet future glory is not desired by a Christian as an entirely new and hitherto unknown thing but as the full accomplishment of a blessedness already begun though too much impeded here by corruption within and sorrow without. Christianity was not an entirely new thing to pious Jews, but yet its light so far excelled that of their introductory dispensation as to make it appear but darkness in the comparison. They saw it afar off, but the prospect was so dim that Isaiah calls it, “that which eye had not seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived”.6 Even so we may say of Christian joy as we must confess of Christian character in this life that it has no glory by reason of the glory that excels. We can place no limits to that future glory but in the will of Him whose goodness and power are equally unlimited.
That family which God hath adopted in Christ Jesus for their spiritual good He has subjected in this world as He did the Captain of their salvation to affliction. They are, however, supported under it by the assurance that as they are joint heirs with Christ in suffering, they shall be so also with him in glory. The anticipation of that glory is a characteristic feature of the family. Whilst they remain on earth, their eyes are fixed on it, and their earnest expectation waits for its perfect development in the full manifestation of their privileges as the sons of God. As the Gospel was the same in kind from the first promise of the woman’s seed in Eden until the day of Christ’s ascension from mount Olivet and only varied in the degree and clearness of its revelation, so also the character and joy formed upon it and by it must be the same in kind forever and will only vary in the degree of its development. This accounts for the same name being sometimes given to different stages in the process. Thus, in one place we are told that believers have already received the charter of adoption in that revelation which addresses them as children and authorizes them to speak of God as their Father. And, at the distance of a few verses, these same believers are described as waiting for the adoption, viz. the redemption of their body. The resurrection is here called the adoption because it is the concluding step in the process of adoption; it is that act of omnipotent mercy by which the last trace of condemnation shall be obliterated—by which this mortal shall be clothed with immortality and this corruptible with incorruption. There is but one joy and one adoption, but they contain the principle of infinite expansion and enlargement. The light of revelation enables us to trace their progress till the morning of the resurrection when the risen saints shall sit down with Christ upon his throne, and there it leaves them, hid in the future eternity.
Then their joy shall be full, they shall ever be with the Lord—they shall be made pillars in His temple and go no more out. But still the principle of progress will be in action. The joy which fills them will expand their capacity of enjoyment, and their increasing capacity will be filled with an increasing joy. Their joy will increase because their powers and capacities of comprehending and loving God will increase, but still the great object itself, the source of all their joy, remains eternally the same the character of God revealed in Christ Jesus.
It is sweet to look forward to the restitution of all things—to think of a world where God is entirely glorified and entirely loved and entirely obeyed—where sin and sorrow are no more—where severed friends shall meet never again to part—where the body shall not weigh down the spirit but shall be its fit medium of communication with all the glorious inhabitants and scenery of heaven—where no discordant tones or jarring feelings shall interrupt or mar the harmony of that universal song which shall burst from every heart and every tongue to Him who sitteth upon the throne and to the Lamb. And it is not only sweet but most profitable to meditate on these prospects. It is a most healthful exercise. It brings the soul into contact with that society to which it properly belongs and for which it was created.
The world thinks that these heavenly musings must unqualify the mind for present exertion. But this is a mistake arising from an ignorance of the nature of heaven. The happiness of heaven consists in the perfection of those principles which lead to the discharge of duty, and therefore, the contemplation of it must increase our sense of the importance of duty. That happiness as has been already observed is not entirely a future thing but rather the completion of a present process in which every duty bears an important part. The character and the happiness of heaven, like the light and heat of the sun beams, are so connected that it is impossible to separate them, and the natural and instinctive desire of the one is thus necessarily linked to the desire of the other. Full of peace as the prospect of heaven is, there is no indolent relinquishment of duty connected with the contemplation of it for heaven is full of action. Its repose is like the repose of nature—the repose of planets in their orbits. It is a rest from all controversy with God—from all opposition to his will. His servants serve Him. Farewell, vain world! no rest hast thou to offer which can compare with this. The night is far spent; soon will that day dawn, and the shadows flee away.
The Saints’ Everlasting Rest was written on a bed of sickness. It contains those thoughts and feelings which occupied and fortified and animated the author as he stood on the brink of eternity. The examples of heavenly meditation which he gives really breathe of heaven, and the importance of such meditation as a duty and as a means of spiritual growth is admirably set forth and most powerfully enforced. And is it not a most pernicious madness and stupidity to neglect this duty? Is it not strange that such prospects should excite so little interest? Is it not strange that the uncertainty of the duration of life, and the certainty of its sorrows do not compel men to seek refuge in that inheritance which is incorruptible, undefiled, and which fads not away? Is it not strange that the offers of friendship and intimate relationship which God is continually holding out to us should be slighted, even in competition with the society of those whom we cannot but despise and reprobate? Is it not strange that we should, day after day, allow ourselves to be duped by the same false promises of happiness which have disappointed us just as often as they have been trusted? O let us be persuaded that there is no rest in created things. No; there is no rest, except in Him who made us. Who is the man that can say he has found rest elsewhere? No man says it. May God open our hearts as well as our understandings to see the that we may practically know the insufficiency and hollowness and insecurity of all earthly hopes and that we may be led in simplicity and earnestness to seek and so to find our rest in Himself.
T E.
Edinburgh. February 1824
Leave a Reply