Heaven

Only the Good Would be Happy in Heaven. — Some of you could not be happy if you were allowed to enter that heaven. If you could be admitted between those pearly gates which forever exclude pollution, sin, and shame, you could not be happy there. Shall I tell you whyf It is a land of spirit, and you have neglected your spirit; some of you even deny that you have a spirit, and I do not wonder that you say so, because I do not suppose that you have ever exercised it; but let a man who has delighted to commune with the Holy Spirit enter into the spirit-world, and he will be in his element! Besides, the world to come is a holy world; the engagements of disembodied spirits are all pure and lovely. What will that man do who loved drunkenness, who indulged in unclean habits? He will be out of his element. If he could be in heaven, as Whitfield used to say, he would ask God to let him out, and would run into hell for shelter, for heaven would be a dreadful place to an ungodly man. There is a dream which is told (I tell it not for the dream.

but for the moral of it) of a young woman who imagined that she was in heaven unconverted, and thought she saw upon the pavement of transparent gold multitudes of spirits dancing to the sweetest music. She stood still, unhappy, motionless, silent, and when the King said to her, “Why do you not partake in the joy?” she answered, “I cannot join in the dance, for I do not knew the measure; I cannot join in the song, for I do not know the tune;” then said he in a voice of thunder, “What dost thou here?” And she thought herself cast out for ever. Ah, dear hearer! heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. If you do not learn heaven’s language on earth you must know you cannot learn it in the world to come.

Not Yet Due in heaven. — Whitefield and a company of ministers were talking together and expressing their de sire to go to heaven. Good Mr. Tennant was the only man who differed from them. He said he did not wish to die; and he thought that if his brother Whitefield would but consider for a time, he would not wish to be gone either; for, he said, if you hire a man to do a day’s work, and he is saying all the day, “I wish it were evening; I wish it were time to go home,” you would think, “What a lazy fellow he is; “and you would wish you ’ / had never engaged him.” So,” he said, “I am afraid it is nothing but our idleness that often prompts us to desire to be away from our work.” If there be a soul to win, let me stop until I have won it. Truly, some of us might summon up courage enough to say,” I would fain barter heaven for the glory of Christ, and not only wait twenty years out of heaven if I may have twenty years of glorifying him the better, but wait out altogether if I may outside heaven sing to him sweeter songs, and honor him more than I can inside its walls; for outside heaven shall be heaven to me if it shall help me to glorify my

Lord and Master the better.” You have heard, I dare say, that anecdote of good Mr. Whitefield, in his early ministry, lying down, as he thought, to die, in a high fever, and a poor negro woman sitting by his side and tending him. In his sad moments, Whitefield thought of dying; but the black woman said, “No, Master Whitefield, you are not to die yet: there are thousands of souls to bring to Christ; so keep up your spirits, for you must live, and not die; your Master has yet a work for you to do.”

No Strife in Heaven. — An old Scotch elder had been disputing with his minister at an elders’ meeting. He said some hard things, and almost broke the minister’s heart. Afterwards he went home, and the minister went home too. Next morning the elder came down, and his wife said to him, “Eh, Jan! ye look very sad this morning. What’s the matter wi’ ye?” “Ah!” said he, “you would be sad, too, if you had had such a dream as I’ve had.” “Weel, and what did ye dream about?” “Och! I dreamed I had been at an elders’ meeting, and I said some hard things and grieved the minister; and as he went hame I thought he died and went to heaven. A fortnight after, I thought I died, and that I went to heaven, too. And when I got to the gates of heaven, out came the minister and put out his hand to take me, saying, ‘Come alang, Jan, there’s nae strife up here, and I’m happy to see ye.’” The elder went to the minister to beg his pardon directly, but he found he was dead; and he laid it so to heart that within a fortnight the elder himself departed. And I should not wonder if he did meet the minister at heaven’s gates, and hear him say, “Come alang, Jan! there’s nae strife up here.” It would be good for us to recollect that there is no strife up there. Glorified saints have not strife among them selves; and we should love one another more in brotherly kindness if we thought more of heaven and more of our blessed Jesus.

Recognition of Friends in Heaven. — I always thought that a quietus to the question which the wife of old John Ryland asked: “Do you think,” she said, “you will know me in heaven?” “Why,” said he, “I know you here; and do you think I shall be a bigger fool in heaven than I arn on earth1?”* The question is beyond dispute. We shall live in heaven with bodies, and that decides the matter. We shall know each other in heaven; you may take that for a positive fact, and not mere fancy.

Memory of Earth’s Mercies a Joy in Heaven. — I think Dr. Watts is right when he says that we shall “with transporting joys recount the labors of our feet.” It is rather a small subject, and probably we shall far more delight to dwell on the labors of our Redeemer’s hands and feet; but still we shall remember all the way where by the Lord our God led us, and we shall talk to one another concerning it. In heaven we shall remember our happy Sabbaths here below, when our hearts burned within us while Jesus himself drew near. Since Jesus speaks after he has risen of the things that he said while he was with his disciples, we perceive that the river of death is not like the fabled Lethe, which caused all who drank thereof to forget their past. We shall arise with a multitude of hallowed memories enriching our minds. Death will not be oblivion to us, for it was not so to Jesus. Rather shall we meditate on mercies experienced, and by discoursing thereon we shall make known to principalities and powers the manifold wisdom of God.

The Rewards of Heaven. — Here comes Whitfield, the man who stood before twenty thousand at a time to preach the gospel, who in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America has testified the truth of God, and who could count his converts by thousands, even under one sermon! Here he comes, the man that endured persecution and scorn, and yet was not moved — the man of whom the world was not worthy, who lived for his fellow men, and died at last for their cause; stand by angels and admire, while the Master takes him by the hand and says, “Well done, well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord! “See how free grace honors the man whom it enabled to do valiantly. Hark! Who is this that comes there? a poor thin-looking creature, that on earth was a consumptive; there was a hectic flush now and then upon her cheek, and she lay three long years upon her bed of sickness. Was she a prince’s daughter, for it seems heaven is making much stir about her? No, she was a poor girl that earned her living by her needle, and she worked herself to death! — Stitch, stitch, stitch, from morning to night! and here she comes. She went prematurely to her grave, but she is coming, like a shock of corn fully ripe, into heaven; and her Master says, “Well done, thou good and faithful serv ant, thou hast been faithful in a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” She takes her place by the side of Whitfield. Ask what she ever did, and you find out that she used to live in some back garret down some dark alley in London; and there used to be another poor girl come to work with her, and that poor girl, when she first came to work with her, was a gay and volatile creature, and this consumptive child told her about Christ; arid they used, when she was well enough, to creep out of an evening to go to chapel or to church together. It was hard at first to get the other one to go, but she used to press her lovingly; and when the girl went wild a little, she never gave her up. She used to say, “0, Jane, I wish you loved the Savior; “and when Jane was not there she used to pray for her, and when she was there she prayed with her: and now and then when she was stitching away, read a page out of the Bible to her, for poor Jane could not read. And with many tears she tried to tell her about the Savior who loved her and gave himself for her. At last, after many a day of hard persuasion, and many an hour of sad disappointment, and many a night of sleepless tearful prayer, at last she lived to see the girl profess her love to Christ; and she left her and took sick, and there she lay till she was taken to the hospital, where she died. When she was in the hospital she used to have a few tracts, and she used to give them to those who came to see her; she would try, if she could, to get the women to come around, and she would give them a tract. When she first went into the hospital, if she could creep out of bed, she used to get by the side of one who was dying, and the nurse used to let her do it; till at last she got too ill, and then she used to ask a poor woman on the other side of the ward, who was getting better, and was going out, if she would come and read a chapter to her; not that she wanted her to read to her on her own account, but for her sake, for she thought it might strike her heart while she was reading it. At last this poor girl died and fell asleep in Jesus; and the poor consumptive needle-woman had said to her,” Well done n — and what more could an archangel have said to her? — “she hath done what she could.”