There is one more reason why I am disposed to accept this doctrine of future recognition; that is, so many in their last hour on earth have confirmed this theory. I speak not of persons who have been delirious in their last moment and knew not what they were about, but of persons who died in calmness and placidity, and who were not naturally superstitious. Often the glories of heaven have struck the dying pillow, and the departing man has said he saw and heard those who had gone away from him. How often it is in the dying moments parents see their departed children and children see their departed parents. I came down to the banks of the Mohawk River. It was evening, and I wanted to go over the river, and so I waved my hat and shouted, and after awhile I saw some one waving on the opposite bank, and I heard him shout, and the boat came across, and I got in and was transported. And so I suppose it will be in the evening of our life. "We will come down to the river of death and give a signal to our friends on the other shore, and they will give a signal back to us, and the boat comes and our departed kindred are the oarsmen, the fires of the setting day tingling the top of the paddles. Oh, have you ever sat by such a deathbed ? In that hour you hear the departing soul cry. "Hark! look!" You hearkened and looked. A little child, pining away because of the death of its mother, getting weaker and weaker every day, was taken into the room where hung the picture of her mother. She seemed to enjoy looking at it, and then she was taken away, and after awhile died In the last moment that wan and wasted little one lifted her hands, while her face lighted up with the glory of the next world, and cried out "Mother!" You tell me she did not see her mother? She did. So in my first settlement at Belleville a plain man said to me, "What do you think I heard last night? I was in the room where one of my neighbors was dying. He was a good man, and he said he heard the angels of God singing before the throne. I haven't much poetry about me, but I listened and I heard them too." Said I, "I have no doubt of it." Why, we are to be taken up to heaven at last by ministering spirits. Who are they to be? Souls that went up from Madras, or Antioch, or Jerusalem? Oh, no, our glorified kindred are going to troop around us. Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage, D. D.
There is a Reaper whose name is Death, And with his sickle keen, He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, And the flowers that grow between. “Shall I have naught that is fair?” said he, “Have naught but the bearded grain? Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me, I will give them all back again.” He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes; He kissed their drooping leaves; It was for the Lord of paradise He bound them in his sheaves. “My Lord hath need of these flowerets gay,” The reaper said, and smiled; “Dear tokens of the earth are they, Where he was once a child. “They shall all bloom in fields of light, Transplanted by my care, And saints upon their garments white, These sacred blossoms wear,” And the mother gave in tears and pain The flowers she most did love; She knew she should find them all again In fields of light above. Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath, The reaper came that day; ‘Twas an angel visited the green earth, And took the flowers away!
Then come the climax and the crisis. A climax is the climbing to
the top rung of the ladder. A crisis is the meeting place of possible
victory and possible disaster. A single step divides between the two —
the precipice-height, and the canon's yawning gulf.
It was a climax of opportunity; and a crisis of action. God's
climax of opportunity to man. Man's crisis of action. God made man
sovereign in his power of choice. Now He would go the last step and give
him the opportunity of using that power and so reaching the topmost
levels. God led man to the hill of choice. The man must climb the hill
if he would reach its top.
Only the use of power gives actual possession of the power. What
we do not use we lose. The pressure of the foot is always necessary to a
clear title. To him that hath possible power shall be given actual
power through use.
This opportunity was the last love-touch of God in opening up the
way into the fullness of His image. With His ideal for man God went to
His limit in giving the power. He could give the power of choice. Man
must use the power given. Only so could he own what had been given. God
could open the door. Man must step over the door-sill. Action realizes
power.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil was the tree of choice.
Obedience to God was the one thing involved. That simply meant, as it
always means, keeping in warm touch with God. All good absolutely is
bound up in this — obeying God, keeping in warm touch. To obey Him is
the very heart of good. All evil is included in disobeying Him. To
disobey, to fail to obey is the seeded core of all evil.
Whichever way he chose he would exercise his God-like power of
choice. Whichever way he chose, the knowledge would come. If he chose to
obey he would know good by choosing it, and evil by rejecting it. He
knew neither good nor evil, for he had not yet had the contact of
choice. Knowledge comes only through experience. In choosing not to
obey, choosing to disobey, he would know evil with a bitter intimacy by
choosing it. He would become acquainted with the good which he had
shoved ruthlessly away.
With the opportunity came the temptation: God's opportunity;
Satan's temptation. Satan is ever on the heels of God. Two inclined
planes lead out of every man's path. Two doors open into them side by
side. God's door up, the tempter's door down, and only a door- jamb
between. Here the split hoof can be seen sticking from under the cloak's
edge at the very start. Satan hates the truth. He is afraid of it. Yet
he sneaks around the sheltering corner of what he fears and hates. The
sugar coating of his gall pills he steals from God. The devil bare-faced, standing only on his own feet, would be instantly booted out at
first approach. And right well he knows it.
A cunning half- lie opens the way to a full -fledged lie, but
still coupled with a half-truth. The suggestion that God was harshly
prohibiting something that was needful leads to the further suggestion
that He was arbitrarily, selfishly holding back the highest thing, the
very thing He was supposed to be giving, that is, likeness to Himself.
Eve was getting a course in suggestion. This was the first lesson. The
school seems to be in session still. The whole purpose is to slander
God, to misrepresent Him. That has been Satan's favorite method ever
since. God is not good. He makes cruel prohibitions. He keeps from us
what we should have. It is passing strange how every one of us has had
that dust in his eyes. Some of us might leave the ''had "'out of that
sentence.
See how cunningly the truth and the lie are interwoven by this
old past-master in the sooty art of lying. "Your eyes shall be opened,
and ye shall be as God knowing good and evil." It was true because by
the use of this highest power of choice he would become like God, and
through choosing he would know. It is cunningly implied with a sticky,
shameful cunning that, by not eating, that likeness and knowledge would not
come. That was the He. The choice either way would bring both this
element of likeness to God in the sovereign power of choice, and the
knowledge.
Then came the choice. The step up was a step down: up into the
use of his highest power; down by the use of that power. In that wherein
he was most like God in power, man became most unlike God in character.
First the woman chose: then the man. Satan subtly begins his attack
upon the woman. Because she was the weaker? Certainly not. Because she
was the stronger. Not the leader in action, but the stronger in
influence. He is the leader in action: she in influence. The greater
includes the less. Satan is a master strategist, bold in his cunning. If
the citadel can be gotten, all is won. If he could get the woman he
would get the man. She includes him. She who was included in him now
includes him. The last has become first.
She was deceived. He was not deceived. The woman chose unwarily
for the supposed good. The man chose with open eyes for the woman's
sake. Could the word gallantry be used? Was it supposed friendship? He
would not abandon her? Yet he proved not her friend that day, in
stepping down to this new low level. Man's habit of giving smoothly
spoken words to woman, while shying sharp-edged stones at her, should in
all honesty be stopped. Man can throw no stones at woman. If the woman
failed God that day, the man failed both God and the woman. If it be
true that through her came the beginning of the world's sin, through
her, too, be it gratefully and reverently remembered, came that which
was far greater — the world's Savior.
The choice was made. The act was done. Tremendous act! Bring your
microscope and peer with awe into that single act. No fathoming line
can sound its depth. No measuring rod its height nor breadth. No thought
can pierce its intensity. That reaching arm went around a world.
Millenniums in a moment. A million miles in a step. An ocean in a drop.
Volumes in a word. A race in a woman. A hell of suffering in an act. The
depths of woe in a glance. The first chapter of Romans in Genesis
three, six. Sharpest pain in softest touch. God mistrusted — distrusted.
Satan embraced. Sin's door open. Eden's gate shut.
Mark keenly the immediate result that came with that intense
rapidity possible only to mental powers. At once they were both
conscious of something that had not entered their thoughts before. To
the pure all things are pure. To the imagination hurt by breaking away
from God, the purest things can bring up suggestions directly opposite.
Through the open door of disobedience came with lightning swiftness the
suggestion of using a pure, holy function of the body in a way and for a
purpose not intended. Making an end of that which was meant to be only a
means to a highest end. Degrading to an animal pleasure that which held
in its pure hallowed power the whole future of the race. There is
absolutely no change save in the inner thought. But what a horrid
heredity in that one flash of the imagination! Every sin lives first in
the imagination. The imagination is sin's brooding and birth-place. An
inner picture, a lingering glance, a wrong desire, an act — that is the
story of every sin. The first step was disobedience. That opened the
door. The first suggestion of wrong-doing that followed hot on the heels
of that first step, through that open door, struck at the very \itals
of the race — both its existence and its character. That first suggested
unnatural action, with its whole brood, has become the commonest and
slimiest sin of the race.
Here, in the beginning, the very thought shocked them. In that
lay their safety. Shame is the recoil of God's image from the touch of
sin. Shame is sin's first checkmate. It is man's vantage for a fresh
pull up. There are only two places where there is no shame: where there
is no sin; where sin is steeped deepest in. The extremes are always
jostling elbows. Instantly the sense of shame suggested a help. A simple
bit of clothing was provided. It was so adjusted as to help most.
Clothing is man's badge of shame. The first clothing was not for the
body, but for the mind. Not for protection, but for concealment, that so
the mind might be helped to forget its end suggestions. It is one of
sin's odd perversions that draws attention by color and cut to the
race's badge of shame. It would seem strongly suggestive of moral
degeneracy, or of bad taste, or, let us say in charity, of a lapse of
historical memory.
Mark the sad soliloquy of God: "Behold the man has become as one
of us: He has exercised his power of choice." He tenderly refrains from
saying, "and has chosen wrong! so pitiably wrong!" That was plain
enough. He would not rub in the acid truth. He would not make the scar
more hideous by pointing it out. "And now lest he put forth his hand and
take of the tree of life." ''Lest!'' There is a further danger
threatening. In his present condition he needs guarding for his own sake
in the future. "Lest" — wrong choice limits future action. Sin narrows.
With man's act of sin came God's act of saving. Satan is ever on
the heels of God to hurt man. But God is ever on the heels of Satan to
cushion the hurt and save the man. It is a nip-and-tuck race with God a
head and a heart in the lead. Something had to be done. Man had started
sin in himself by his choice. The taint of disobedience, rebellion, had
been breathed out into the air. He had gotten out of sorts with his
surroundings. His presence would spoil his own heaven. The stain of his
sin would have been upon his eternal life. The zero of selfishness would
have been the atmosphere of his home. The touch of his unhallowed hand
must be taken away for his own sake. That unhallowed touch has been upon
every function and relationship of life outside those gates. Nothing
has escaped the slimy contact.
Sin could not be allowed to stay there. Its presence stole heaven
away from heaven. Yet sin had become a part of the man. The man and the
wrong were interwoven. They were inseparable. Sin has such a tenacious,
gluey, sticky touch! Each included the other it could not be put out
without his being put out. So man had to be driven out for his own sake
to rid his home-spot of sin. The man was driven out that he might come
back — changed. Love drove him out that later it might let him in. The
tree of life was kept from him for a time that it might be kept for him
for an eternity.
When he had changed his spirit, and changed sides in the fight
with it started that day, and gotten victory over the spirit now
dominant within himself, those gates would swing again. When the stain
of his choice would be taken out of his fiber it would be his right
eagerly to retrace these forced steps, and the coming back would find
more than had been left. Love has been busy planning the homecoming. The
tree of life has been grown in his absence to a grove of trees. The
life has become life more abundant.
"Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed" a Good Friday Hymn
It is noble faculty of our nature which enables us to connect to
our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness, with what is distant in
place or time; and, looking before and after, to hold communion at once
with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are,
we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the
past or the future. Neither the point of time, nor the spot of earth, in
which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual
enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history; and in
the future by hope and anticipation.
As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and religious
imagination, which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb, which,
amid this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and
to send them with something of the feeling which nature prompts, and
teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, to the
contemplation of the myrids of fellow-beings, with which His goodness
has peopled the infinite space--so neither is it false or vain to
consider ourselves as interested and connected with our forefathers,
through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our posterity;
closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being but links in
the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our humanity,
runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the
past, the present and the future, and terminating at last with the
consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of God. Daniel Webster
