The Dead Are The Living

        I have seen one die - the delight of his friends, the pride of his kindred, the hope of his country: but he died! How beautiful was that offering upon the altar of death! The fire of genius kindled in his eye; the generous affections of youth mantled in his cheek; his foot was upon the threshold of life; his studies, bis preparations for honored and useful fife, were completed; his breast was filled with a thousand glowing, and noble, and never yet expressed aspirations; but he died! He died; while another, of a nature dull, coarse and unrefined, of habits low, base, and brutish, of a promise that had nothing in it but shame and misery - such an one, I say was suffered to encumber the earth. Could this be, if there were no other sphere for the gifted, the aspiring, and the approved, to act in? Can we believe that the energy just trained for action, the embryo thought just bursting into expression, the deep and earnest passion of a noble nature, just swelling into the expansion of every beautiful virtue, should never manifest its power, should never speak, should never unfold itself? Can we believe that all this should die; while meanness, corruption, sensuality, and every deformed and dishonored power should five? No, ye goodly and glorious ones ! ye godlike in youthful virtue! - ye die not in vain: ye teach, ye assure us, that ye are gone to some world of nobler life and action.

       I have seen one die; she was beautiful; and beautiful were the ministries of life that were given her to fulfill. Angelic loveliness enrobed her; and a grace as if it were caught from heaven, breathed in every tone, hallowed every affection, shone in every action - invested, as a halo, her whole existence, and made it a light and blessing, a charm and a vision of gladness, to all around her: but she died! Friendship, and love, parental fondness, and infant weakness, stretched out their hand to save her; but they could not save her: and she died! What! did all that loveliness die? Is there no land of the blessed and the lovely ones, for such to live in? Forbid it, reason, religion! - bereaved affection, and undying love! forbid the thought! It cannot be that such die in God's counsel, who live even in frail human memory, forever! Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D.

Death Is Life

        Then familiarize your mind with the inevitable event of death. Think of it, as life! Gloomy though the portal seems, death is the gate of life to a good and pious man. Think of it therefore, not as death, but as glory - going to heaven and to your father. Regard it in the same light as the good man who said when I expressed my sorrow to see him sinking into the grave, "I am going home." If you think of it as death, then let it be as the death of sin; the death of pain; the death of fear; the death of care; the death of Death. Regard its pangs and struggles as the battle that goes before victory; its troubles as the swell of the sea on heaven's happy shore; and yon gloomy passage as the cypress-shaded avenue that shall conduct your steps to heaven. It is life through Christ, and life in Christ; life most blissful, and life evermore, How much happier and holier we should be if we could look on death in that light. I have heard people say, that we should think each morning that we may be dead before night; and each night that we may be dead before morning! True: yet how much better to think every morning, I may be in heaven before night; and every night that the head is laid on the pillow, and the eyes are closed for sleep, to think, next time I open them it may be to look on Jesus, and the land where there is no night, nor morning; nor sunset, nor cloud; nor grave nor grief; nor sin, nor death, nor sorrow; nor toil, nor trouble; where "they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them." Rev. Dr. Guthrie.

Heaven Is Full of Children

Grandson and grandmother read
together.

        Think it, at least, highly probable, that where our Lord says, 'Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not for of such is the kingdom of heaven,' He does not only intimate the necessity of our becoming like little children in simplicity, as a qualification, without which (as he expressly declares in other places) we cannot enter into his kingdom, but informs us of a fact, that the number of infants, who are effectually redeemed unto God by His blood, so greatly exceeds the aggregate of adult believers, that, comparatively speaking, His kingdom may be said to consist of little children. As if the full import of what He had said to his disciples was, think not that little children are beneath my notice; think not that I am a stranger to little children; suffer them to come to me, and forbid them not. I have often been in their society; I love their society; the world from which I came, and to which I go, is full of little children.

"Flowers that once had loved to linger

In the world of human love,

Touch'd by death's decaying finger

For better life. above!

O! ye stars! ye rays of glory!

Gem-lights in the glittering dome!

Could ye not relate a story

Of the spirits gather'd home?" 

The Many Mansions

       As one of the many mansions is the destined future Heaven of the redeemed human race, the other numerous mansions must be other heavens, severally allotted to those armies of angels over all of whom, though each army be immediately subjected to its own special commander, the great archangel presides, and is thence congruously revealed as the Captain of the Host of Jehovah.
       But the particular mansion allotted to the redeemed human race, is this very planet of ours when the dissolved first earth shall have passed away so far as its present organization is concerned, and shall have been succeeded by a new earth framed out of the present dissipated materials.
       Hence, if our future heaven be one of the innumerable orbs which are all the handiwork of the Almighty Creator, analogy requires that the other heavens should be the other orbs: and thus we have a consistent explanation of the many mansions which our Lord declares to be in the House of His Heavenly Father. - by Farber

• Father's House - Many Mansions!
• What does the term "mansion" mean in John 14:2?
• What Does "Many Mansions" Really Mean?

"Many Mansions" sung by Moe Bandy

The Immortal Life

 The Immortal Life

The insect bursting from its tomb-like bed --
The grain that in a thousand grains revives --
The trees that seem in wintry torpor dead --
Yet each new year renewing their green lives;
All teach, without the added aid of Faith,
That life still triumphs o'er apparent death!

But dies the insect when the summer dies;
The grain hath perished, though the plant remain;
In death, at last, the oak of ages lies;
Here Reason halts, nor further can attain,
For Reason argues but from what she sees,
Nor traces to their goal these mysteries.
 

But Faith the dark hiatus can supply --

Teaching, eternal progress still shall reign:
Telling (as these things aid her to espy)
In higher worlds that higher laws obtain;
Pointing, with radiant finger raised on high,
From life that still revives, to life that cannot die.

 

The caterpillar transformed...

Journey To Heaven

        Our highest aspiration must wait. We are here to get through the world. Life is a road where we camp for a night on a journey to the golden gate and the setting sun; a traveler who sets up his tent at dark  does not plant corn or put out a grape-vine, if when the morning comes he expects to pull his tent down and march on. Men are born upon the shore of one ocean; by traveling lightly and never losing a moment, and marching bravely on, through forest, over desert, mountain and river, the traveler can  reach the other ocean in time to catch the little boat that slips out into the dark, and sails out of sight with God alone. But the traveler must not expect to plant harvests and grow vineyards while out upon his march. Yonder lie the happy hills of God. There no winter falls, there the summer sheds its warmth always upon the violet beds. There youth is perfect and beauty is eternal. There every ambition will be perfected, every dream realized; every hope turned to fruition, and the soul is a tree  waving its fruit and casting down its purple vintage at the feet of the God of the summer. - N. D. Hillis.

"Closer to Heaven" from Faithborne Journey