A Good Woman Promoted
“I go to prepare a place for you.” — John xiv., 2.
AMONG the most startling stories ever recited are those connected with the adventures of the Western emigrant. In the days before the rail train showered its sparks upon the darkness of the wilderness, people put out on foot, or in slow and cumbrous wagons, from their Eastern homes, and in the wild thickets of the Far West sought to clear for their families a home. Ofttimes leaving their tender little ones in the New England village, with blanket and gun and axe, they dared the forest, terrible with bear’s bark and panther’s scream, and the war-whoop cry of scalping savages. After a while the trees were felled, and the under-brush was burned, and the farm was cleared, and the house was built. Then word came back here saying that every thing was ready. The family would get into the wagon and start on at slow pace for a very long journey. After a while, some evening-tide, the shout of recognition was heard, and by the fire of the great back-log the newly-arrived would recount the exciting experiences of the way. Well, my friends, we are all about to become emigrants to a far country. This is no place for us to stay. Our older brother, Jesus, he of the scarred brow and the blistered feet, has gone ahead to build our mansion and to clear the way for us; and he sends a letter back, saying be has it all ready, and I break the seal of that letter and read to you these words, “I go to prepare a place for you.”
I might put it in another shape. A young man resolves to build a home for himself. He has pledged himself in one of the purest of earthly attachments. He toils no more for himself than for the one who will share with him the results of his industrious accumulation. After a while the fortune is made, the house is built, the right hands are joined, the blessing is invoked, the joy is consummated. So Jesus, the Lover of our souls, has been toiling to make a place for us. He is fitting up our mansion, and is gathering around it every thing that can possibly enchant the soul, and after a while he will say”, “It is all ready now,” and he will reach down his hand, and take up to his fliir residence “the Church, which is the Lamb’s wife.” “I go to prepare a place for you.”
“But,” says some one, “that implies that heaven is a place. I have heard a great many people say it was merely a condition, and that wherever the souls of the righteous are, there is heaven.” Absurd idea! Christ ascended to heaven, and there must have been a heaven to go to. Elijah went up to heaven, and there must have been a heaven for him to go to. The Bible was not written merely for philologists and hair-splitters, but for common-sense people; and the plain reading of my text implies not only that heaven is a condition, but that it is a glorious locality. “I go to prepare place for you.”
Where is heaven? It is the question which every intelligent Christian sometimes asks, and he especially asks it in time of bereavement. When his loved ones go away from him, you say they are in heaven; but he says, “Where is heaven?” You know there are a great many theories in regard to it. The Mohammedans think that the good Moslems, as soon as they leave this life, come to a fragrant pool of water fed by streams from paradise. They drink out of that fragrant pool, and their thirst is assuaged. Then they go into paradise, and the trees have bells hanging on the branches, chiming whenever the air strikes them. They gaze upon the tree of life, which they say has so broad a shadow that it takes a swift horse one hundred years to race across it. They think that there is a river made up of wine and honey, flowing between banks of camphor, over beds of musk. They suppose that every spirit that goes into the future world has many attendants with baskets and with chalices of pure gold. They suppose that the inhabitant of the future world sits down to a great banquet without any satiety, so that, after a hundred years of eating and drinking, the appetite is as good as at the moment the soul sat down. That is the Mohammedan heaven.
The Hindoo thinks that heaven is all around about — merely a change of body. A vulture dies, and his spirit enters a man; the man dies, and his spirit enters the vulture, and after a great many transmigrations of the soul, it is absorbed in the spirit of the great Brahm. Our forefathers thought heaven to be a place of pastimes, heroic strife, and great banqueting; spirits would fight and be wounded, and then come to the celestial streams and wash off their wounds, and they would be well again; then they would sit down at a banquet and drink wine out of the skulls of their enemies, and rise up and romp, and dance and play.
The aborigines of our own country think heaven to be beyond the great mountains. After you get beyond the great mountains, there is a great river; and after you have passed that great river, there is a vast country; and after you have passed that wide country, there is a world of water; and in that world of water there are a thousand isles, beautiful with streams and trees, and there are buffolo and deer there; and all the departed red man has to do is to whistle up his dogs and go a-shooting to all eternity.
I mention these things because I want you to know it is impossible for a man to get any idea of heaven without the Bible, and to kindle in your soul a feeling of gratitude to God that you have this Lamp, not only for your pathway here, but to throw its glories upon the world that is to come. There is, however, among Christian people great difference of opinion as to where heaven is or will be. Some of the best Christian people think that this world is to be the final residence of the righteous. I can see how God could take all the rigors out of our climate, and all repulsions out of our world, and make it fair, and bright, and beautiful, and fit for eternal occupancy. But I can not adopt the theory. It seems to me the world is not large enough for heaven. Considering all the myriads that have gone, and all the myriads that are to go, there would not be room enough on the continents and on the seas for such a great host. Besides that, heaven is already in existence. Tens of thousands of people have gone into it. It can not be that all our departed friends are floating about in space waiting for our world to get filled up, in order that they may have a heaven. Oh no. They are there now. Christ said, “I go to prepare a place for you;” and if, eighteen centuries ago, he began the work, I think it is done now. Besides that, the Bible declares that the world, and all the things that are therein, will be burned up; and if a thing is burned up, you can not repair it, and you can not make it a fit residence for the righteous. If it is first destroyed, it will be an entirely new world. Besides that, the elements of dissolution are already in our world. I refer not to the coal-mines in the South, which have been twenty years on fire. I refer not to the vapors coming up from the hot springs, showing great heat underneath, but to the common geological idea that the centre of this world is already on fire. Besides, there is all about a subtle fluid which, if decomposed or set loose from other com-binations, would shatter this world into pieces so small that nothing but the eye of the infinite God could find the splinters of the wreck. It would destroy mountains and seas and air. So it will require no omnipotent pry to lift up the mountains in the last day. It will not require the blast of the red-hot furnace of God’s indignation to set the sea on fire. It will not require the grip of Almightiness to pull down the pillar of this world. God has only to take his hands off it, and it is gone. The mere cessation of operation on God’s part would be the cause of the wreck. Besides that, other worlds have burned. Fifteen hundred stars have disappeared. The astronomer, through his telescope, again and again has seen the conflagration of a world. Why not our world burn up? Ay, I adopt the theory that Peter declares in his epistle when be says, “The world and all that is therein shall be burned up.”
There are other Christian people who suppose that each sun is to be the heaven of the surrounding syst&m. You know that there are sisterhoods of worlds that join each other in bands of light around some great central orb, and Christian people have supposed that these surrounding worlds were merely schools in which souls went to be prepared for the central light, the central sun; and there is a
Bible intimation that is not at all inconsistent with that idea; for, while planets have day and night, and heat and cold, showing the possibility of growth and dissolution, the sun has no night, and that corresponds with the Bible statement about heaven, “There shall be no night there.” Still, I reject the idea, because if the sun of each system were the heaven of the system, we should have a multitude of paradises, and the words of my text could not be true, “I go to prepare a place” — that is, one place — “for you.”
There is one other theory consonant with the Bible and consonant with science, and I like any thing that is proved by both those books, or is not inharmonious with either of them. Modern discovery shows that the planets go around the sun, and that the sun and the planets — indeed all the celestial systems — go in one direction and in one circle, all going around about some one great central world; a world vast beyond all astronomical calculation; a world vast enough, by power of gravitation, to wheel the whole universe around it. As our sun — our little sun — is five hundred times larger than the earth and the planets, thus wheeling them around it, so, then, I suppose, the great central world of which I speak is five hundred times larger than all the other worlds put together, so as to wheel them around it. You must believe in the existence of such a central world, unless you reject all scientific exploration and deduction. That world, stupendous beyond arithmetic, beyond words, beyond imagination, I believe is heaven. From all parts of the universe the souls of the dead will fly to that centre. That shall gather up all the resources and splendors and glories that God ever created or redeeming love ever achieved. Gradually the worlds will expire; not only ours, but those and these, and, finally, all save
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two — the one great central world of wbicli I speak, and a world of darkness; the first the residence of the righteous, the other the abode of the wicked. You say this theorymakes heaven a great way off. No! No! We calculate distance by the time taken to traverse it, and the departed spirit will not take the millionth part of a second to get there.
But here I Lave to tell you that I do not much care where heaven is. All I want is to get there myself, and get these people there. Christ is there, and the angels of God are there, and all my Christian kindred who have departed are there.
“No grief can turn that day to night,
The darkness of that hmd is light.”
Into that world how many of our loved ones have gone! We have sent delegations into it. This morning I wish to speak more especially of one who went out from among us — a Christian woman known all the world over. She has just entered into that glorious world, that vast world, that world where Christ is. Among the Hannah Moores, and the Charlotte Elizabeths, and the Mrs. Adoniram Judsons, and the Mrs. Fletchers, Phebe Palmer has taken her place, radiant as any of them — perhaps more radiant than all of them. It seems to me she must have had a very easy entrance. She did not have to crowd throuo;h. When half and -half Christians come up to the gate of heaven, methinks they have to squeeze in; that the gate grazes them on both sides or closes behind them, catching the skirts of their garment. Not so with her. An abundant entrance was administered unto her. I think a mandate went forth, “Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates, and let her come thronoli.” Ob, I should have liked to have stood somewhere near the gate, to have heard the multitudinous shout that greeted her from all the armies of the saved!
I can not, as a minister of the Most High God, allow such a life to be passed and such a death to be witnessed without, as far as I may, prolonging the echo.
I admired her as the discoverer of what is called, rightly or wrongly, “the higher life.” Columbus no more certainly discovered our New World than Phebe Palmer discovered that new world of light, and love, and joy, and peace which she spoke of. Columbus did not create this New World; he only pointed it out. Phebe Palmer did not create “the higher life;” she only exhibited it. She showed to the Church of God that there were mountain-peaks of Christian satisfaction that it had never attained, and created in the souls of us who have not reached that elevation a longing for the glorious ascent. For thirty-seven years — longer than the life, perhaps, of the majority of people present to-day — every Tuesday she had a meeting, the sole object of which was the elevation of the standard of Christian holiness; and there were hundreds of Christian ministers who came in, and sat down at her feet, and got her blessing, and went out stronger for Christian combat. It was no rare thing, in her evangelistic meetings in the United States and Europe, to have ministers of the Presbyterian Church, and the Baptist Church, and the Methodist Church, and the Episcopal Church, and all the churches, coming and kneeling down at the altar, bemoaning their unbelief and their coldness, and then rising up, saying, “I have got it — the blessing.” Some caricatured, and said there was no such thing as “a higher life” of peace nnd Christian satisfaction; but’ she lived long enough to see the whole Christian Church waking up to this doctrine, and thousands and tens of thousands coming on the high table-land where once she stood, she herself having passed on now, higher up, that she may still beckon us on, crying, “Up this way! Up this way!” Glorious soul of Pbebe Palmer! Synonym of holiness unto the Lord!
I am also amazed at the number of conversions under her ministry. She was as far removed as possible from those females who go through the land bawling about their rights, neglecting their home duties, having their husbands hold their hats and shawls while they make speeches in behalf of their rights of suffrage, or in behalf of a seat in Congressional halls — those restless women, marriage to whom would be pandemonium. As far as the north pole is from the south pole, Phebe Palmer was from all them. Always accompanied by her husband, she went out to serve Christ, and she wanted no higher right than this, the grandest right ever given to man or woman — the right to commend the Lord Jesus Christ to a dying world. Modestly and in Christian consecration she went forth to serve God. It will take eternal ages to tell the story of her evangelistic labors. Newcastle, Sunderland, Penrith, Macklesfield, Darlington, Isle of Wight, still feel her overmastering influence. In her Christian meetings a young man rose up, and said, “Why, I have got a new nature;” and a timid woman exclaimed, “Do you think Christ will have me?” and the evangelist put her arms around her neck, and said, “Yes, Jesus will have you.” And another cried out, “Oh, what a fool I have been all my days, to reject Christ.” And the Duke of Wellington’s blind soldier, seventy years of age, both eyes put out in battle, was led by a little child to the communion-rail, and while prayer was being oflfered, on his blasted vision eternal light broke in. And the soldier in the Queen’s employ, drafted for India, stood up in the meeting, in the red-jacket uniform, and said, “Pray for me, wherever I go, that I may be faithful. You look at my red jacket; but if ^ow could see under it, you would see a white and blood-washed robe.” At Windsor the musicians of the Queen’s band, instruments under arm, stopped and looked and listened, and then and there heard the voice of Christ from this woman’s lips, and took Christ with them back to the palace. And the police that stood at the door, too, listening, even they surrendered themselves to the Lord who bought them. Places of iniquity cowered before her. At North Shields, a man who kept intoxicating liquors for sale, said, “I don’t know why Dr. and Mrs. Palmer came here to bother me. Before they came to this place, I used to draw off half a barrel of beer every night for my customers. Now I scarcely draw off a quart.” Sixty souls saved one night in Sunderland under her work. Six hundred souls brought to God at her call in Manchester. One thousand souls, through her, finding redeeming love at Madeley. Three thousand four hundred and forty-four brought to God in the district of Newcastle. Twenty-five thousand souls saved under the instrumentality of Phebe Palmer! What a record for earth and heaven! What an array for the judgment-day! What a doxology for the one hundred and forty and four thousand! What a mountain of coronets flung down at the feet of Jesus!
I am amazed, also, at her power of prayer. We dabble in it once in a while, but do.not know much about the art. Phebe Palmer got what she asked for, because she knew
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how to ask. Sailing up toward Liverpool with her husband, she prays God that some one may meet them on the beach, and welcome them to England. Coming up by the shore there is a man in the garb of a minister, standing. She says, “There is the man who has come to welcome us to England.” The boat strikes the dock, and the minister steps on board, and says, “Is this Dr. and Mrs. Palmer? Welcome to the shores of old England!” Worn out physically with her Christian exertions, she asks for strength. God gives it to her. Laboring in some place amidst great obstacles, she asks that that night a great multitude may be saved; and a multitude press into the side-room, repenting, praying, believing, rejoicing. On the way home from England, a man fiills overboard. She sees him floating almost a mile away. She cries mightily unto God for that man’s rescue, saying, “Save him, and I will point him to Christ, and I will try to have him become a Christian.” And she prayed in an agony that he might be saved, and, by what seemed a miraculous effort, he was saved and brought on deck, and the evangelist did her work with him. Starting with the safe belief that the Lord never lies, she found out the secret of all-prevailing and all-conquering prayer. O Thou who hearest prayer, teach us how to pray! I believe that one hundred Phebe Palmers would bring the millennium to-morrow morning.
But the shepherdess, crook in hand, has gone home to rest by the still waters. The loving wife, the gentle sister, the Christian mother, the flaming evangelist, is dead. One would have supposed that, after so useful a life, the Lord would have allowed her to pass off easily. No. Ten weeks of great anguish, a complication of diseases adding pnng to pang. It seemed as if Christ had said, “Now, on this death-bed, I will demonstrate that my grace is sufficient for every thing, and can bear up under every thing.” It seemed as if Christ had said, “Now, here is a royal gem for a royal place. I have been fifty years busy with it, polishing it and polishing it, and now only a few more cuttings of the chisel and a few more raspings of the file, and it will be as rare a gem as was ever prepared in all the centuries. Ten weeks of pain are nothing before an eternity of jubilation 1” At half-past two o’clock on the afternoon of November 2d, God put up his tools and said, “The work of polishing is done. Let her go now .^”
I open to you to-day another classic. There is no need of your going back any more to saintly death-beds in the last century, when we have had such an exit here. It seems as if the clouds were only now parting. I hear the rumbling of the vanishing wheels. We stand in the light of the opening of the King’s gate as she went in. Hear the story of her dying raptures. It seems to have all the quietness of a pastoral, and yet to be blood-stirring as a battle-march. Her life was a song; her death a “Hallelujah Chorus.” In her last sickness she said, “I am fully saved. I have not a single doubt. Hallelujah to God and the Lamb! I am within speaking distance of my home in paradise. You have been the kindest of husbands to me,, and our love has been abiding, and it shall abide forever.” And when blindness came, and she could not see at all, she said, “Oh, what sweet nurses I have! Jesus was left all alone.” When they read to her the promises, she said, “Put my name in those promises.” And ever after that, when the promises were read, it was with the name of Phebe Palmer attached to them. She said, “Hallelujah!
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precious Jesus! I pass through the valley, but without the shadow, trusting in Christ. Ob, so weary! How I should like to go! But Thy will, not mine, be done. I thought, before this, the light of eternal day would dawn upon me, but it has not yet dawned.” When a daughter said, “Do you see me, ma?” she said, “I see no one but Jesus, but I shall soon see the King in his beauty. Glory be to the Father! Glory be to the Son! Glory be to the Holy Ghost!” When they bathed her fevered hands, she said, “I shall soon bathe my hands in the life-giving waters.” On the last morning, as she woke up, she said, “I thought I saw the chariot! So glorious!- glorious! ‘0 death I where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory? Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the” victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!’ “Then she pronounced the apostolic benediction — a benediction for her husband, for her children, for the Church universal, and for the world whose redemption she had tried to hasten — “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the love of the Holy Ghost, be with you all forever. Amen.” And Pbebe Palmei was dead!
No, no, no — not dead. She lives! she lives! It seems to me as if I could almost see her standing this morning on the battlements of heaven, waving the triumph, calling down to us through this sweet Sabbath air; and I wave back to her. Hail, ransomed spirit! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
0 bereft souls! be comforted. To have had such a wife, and such a sister, and such a mother, is enough honor for one family. Let her memory be to you both exultation and inspiration. Be sure 3’ou get on the road she traveled, that you may come out at the same glory. She
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will be waiting for yon, waiting at the foot of the throne, waiting under the trees of life, waiting on the banks of the river, and some day she will cry out, “My husband’s coming! my sister’s coming! my child’s coming. Stand back, ye blessed ones, and let me welcome them in.” And the grief of the afternoon of November 2d will be swallowed in the joy of the heavenly reception. Oh, how like old times it will be to get mother back again, sweeter than when you sat upon her lap in infancy, and nestled in her arms, and looked up into her loving face as she leaned over your cradle. But it will be mother without the shortness of breath. Mother without the weary limbs. Mother without the paroxysm of distress. Sainted mother! Glorified mother! Enthroned mother!
Blessed be God that so many of us have mothers in heaven. They may not have moved in as celebrated a sphere as yours; but they were just as dear to us, and their tenderness breaks upon us to-day in a flood that overflows the banks, and we rejoice at the prospect of flinging ourselves into their arms when, tired out with the work of life, we go home. Alas for any man that misses heaven, when he has a Christian mother there!
Oh that the name of Phebe Palmer might be one of the watch-words to rouse up the Church universal! The Methodist Church can not monopolize her name. She belonged to that Church, she lived in it, she died in it, she loved it; but you can not build any denominational wall high enough to shut out that light from our souls. She i? mine. She is yours. She belongs to all earth, and all heaven. Eternal God! let the story of her life and death thrill all nations!
Then, when our hands get hot with the last fever, may
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we go lip to cool them in the fountains; nnd, when our physical eye-sight fails in death, may we see “the King in his beauty;” and when it is our time to go, let there be a chariot to fetch us home!
Until then, departed spirit, farewell! We can afford to wait for such a grand reunion. Farewell! Farewell! And now may the God who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you faithful in every good work to do his will.