+/^ / ^
ly,/. 4 41 1Z?'?, (   rk  7
0^^^^ /> r




BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
THE PATIENCE OF HOPE.
I volume.  i6mo.  $ I.oo.
TWO FRIENDS.
i volume.  i6mo.  $I.oo.
In Press.
POEMS.
OUR SINGLE WOMEN.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
TICKNOR AND FIELDS, Publishers.




A
PRESENT HEAVEN
ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND
BY
THE AUTHOR OF "THE PATIENCE OF HOPE"
IT TENEO ET TENEOB
BOSTON
TICKNOR AND FIELDS
1864




SIXTH EDITION.
UNIVERSITY PRESS:
WELCH, DITGELOW, AND COMPANY,
CAMBRIDGE.




CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION....   I
II. THE GOSPEL RECEIVED PARTIALLY..    32
III. THE GOSPEL RECEIVED HISTORICALLY..  57
IV. THE GOSPEL RECEIVED PROPHETICALLY.    99
V. THE GOSPEL RECEIVED IMPLICITLY.. 126
NOTES..... 155








"Think not the Faith by which the just shall live
Is a dead creed, a map correct of Heaven,
Far less a feeling fond and fugitive,
A thoughtless gift withdrawn as soon as given;
It is an affirmation and an act
That bids eternal truth be presentfact."
HARTLEY COLERIDGE.








INTRODUCTION.
VERY  man that cometh to God,
darkly as he may feel after, and imperfectly as he may find Him, comes
to Him under the twofold conviction
upon which the Apostle bases the existence of
Faith itself; he must be persuaded "that God
is, and that He is the rewarder of such as diligently seek Him," — a testimony which the
Psalmist confirms even in transposing it, when
he declares, " Verily there is a reward for the
righteous, doubtless there is a God that judgeth
the earth." Thus all approaches to the Supreme
Being, howsoever warped by error or superstition, possess something of the nature of true
religion (re-allegiance), because they testify to
man's belief in a power raised above humanity,
yet still cognizant of its actions and influenced
by its dispositions. And while the human spirit
has proved itself unable without supernatural
1                        A




2         A PRESENT HEAVEN.
help to " retain God " within it, while it has so
often lost the object of faith, it has ever kept
within it an instinct, witnessing to its capacity
for access to the Divine, and reaching out after
a bond that may place it in an assured mutual
relation with that * which it aspires. Natural
religion, and all that goes to make it up, prayer,
propitiatory and deprecatory offerings, a life spent
in accordance with what is believed to be the
Divine pleasure, is the witness on man's part to
his desire for reciprocal communion with that,
which, though unseen, he feels to be above,
around, within him. Revealed Religion is God's
acknowledgment of this inward instinct, to which
it restores its true object, and shows how that
object may be alone apprehended.
I, saith Christ Jesus, am THE WAY. Revelation is the coming forth of the Father to meet
His Son, while He is a great way off; it is as the
spirit of God moving upon the darkened surface
of man's heart and intellect, and saying, "Let
there be light." For no man hath yet by searching found out God; no wish, no yearning of
the human breast, however mighty, could have
brought down Christ from above; no effort, no
agony of the human mind could (as some deem)
have raised Him  up from the depths of individual consciousness.  Our God is one that




A PRESENT HEAVEN.               3
hideth Himself. The field of grace is one with
treasure hid within it, a treasure to which grace
itself must guide us, or God, though indeed
He is not far from any one of us, is among
us as One whom we know not.  We need a
Divine science; a knowledge, as regards spiritual things, to be attained only by the aid of an
Appointed Interpreter, Revelation, standing between the human soul and God, just as natural
science stands between man and nature, enabling
him to understand, to enjoy, yea, to overcome,
that which without this blessed intervention
would have remained a barren mystery.
Through Science, which is but, to speak
plainly, a familiar acquaintance with the things
which immediately surround us, man, in material things, has not so much made as found
himself rich; year after year he goes on enriching himself more amply with the * blessings of
Earth's breast, the fair and fruitful surface, and
with the blessings of her womb, the precious
things shut within the ancient mountains, and
hidden within the lasting hills. And yet, while
the aspect of social life is changed, and its comforts and resources increased a thousand-fold, all
things, none the less, continue as, in the words
of Scripture, " they have been from the begin* Gen. xlix. 25.




4         A PRESENT HEAVEN.
ning"; no fresh blood has been poured within
our outward system, no new energies, no superadded forces, are at work within it; the secret
of the change is a simple one, - while Nature
has remained the same, man has learnt to know
her better. Silence has been broken up, and
separation. He has begun to question this mute
companion, dumb, it was supposed, from  her
birth, and has received for answer A WORLD,
growing wider and richer with every year that
rolls.
And when I consider this, and remember that
our Father, unlike the patriarchal one, has more
than one blessing for His children; when I begin
to compare His two great kingdoms with each
other, and remember that in each we have a
goodly heritage, in each a Friend, the Steward
and Dispenser of God's mysteries, rich in knowledge, in wisdom, and in counsel, I long that we,
and all with whom we are joint possessors and
inheritors, should set ourselves to inquire into
the secrets of grace as diligently as our age is
penetrating into those of nature. These, it is
true, are not to be won, like material acquisitions,
by mere effort and labor, yet it was a wise man
who told us, that "labor was profitable for all
things.'  And in this great spiritual aim, the
work, as the Apostle emphatically expresses it,




A PRESENT HEA VEN.              5
of our salvation, I often think we lose much, by
pursuing it after vague and fanciful processes of
our own devising, rather than by a diligent application of the method provided for us by God
Himself.  Like professed treasure-seekers, we
search about under the guidance of some dream
or impulse, instead of seeking for our wealth
where God has placed it, in the natural riches of
the soil. And in this region it is our own fault if
we proceed uncertainly.  God has been pleased
to leave us, as it were, to guess at the economy
of His outward Providence; through patient investigation, experiment, and inference, we have
to wring out Nature's secrets from her apparently
reluctant grasp, but it is far otherwise with His
revealed economy of grace.  Here we are no
longer workers in the dark, who must compare
and question, examining every step as we go
along, and asking of it with anxiety, " Whither
will this conduct us?"
The very idea of a Revelation precludes, on
the part of those who accept it as such, the
possibility of uncertainty or hesitation; for if we
believe the Gospel to be indeed from God, we
find all that it demands of us, whether by way
of fact or precept, lying within the compass of
two grand yet simple words, - Acceptance and
Obedience. We must accept the Gospel, inas



6          A PRESENT HEAVEN.
much as it makes us aware of all that the
Almighty is to us; we must obey it, inasmuch
as it declares to us all that He would have us to
be to Him.
This seems a very simple, even obvious position, but if granted, it leads on to a question of
vital interest.  Is the Gospel of Redemption
thus accepted among us, not simply believed as
a fact, but believed in as a POWER, an efficacy, a
virtue? received not merely as a standard for
doctrine and a rule of conduct, but as that which
it declares itself to be, a principle having " life
in itself," and the ability to impart the life which
it possesses? Let us a little consider the Gospel
under what may be termed its sacramental character, as being the means by which the life that
is in Christ is conveyed within the soul. To
the faithful receiver the outward letter of Scripture is but the sheath or vehicle of the incorruptible " WORD," by which, as the Apostle testifies,* we are born again unto God. To receive
it, therefore, simply as a revelation of God's will,
a record of His dealings, a book of laws and
statutes and commands, is much the same thing
as if, living in the days when He of whom it
testifies dwelt among us in the flesh, we had
received Him as Moses or Elias, or as one of the
* 1 Peter i. 23.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.               7
prophets, a Teacher sent from God to declare
unto men His will.  The reception which endues " with power to become the sons of God,"
is that which recognizes a higher mission, which
is able to discern that the Gospel of Salvation,
in placing the human soul in union with its
Maker and Redeemer and Sanctifier, supplies
in this union the spring of action, while it proclaims, as did the Law, its appointed rule. What
we need here is a wise simplicity, a childlike
literal spirit, loving and bold enough to take
God at His own word, and to appropriate Him
in all for which that word is our warrant; but
instead of lifting up our gates, and setting the
doors of our souls more wide that this King of
Glory may come in, instead of expanding to
meet the breadth and fulness'of the Gospel, we
show a disposition rather to contract it to fit our
own narrow standard.  Then,* because we bring
no more vessels to hold it, the oil of Divine
grace is stayed. But we seem in general so
little conscious of this, our imperfect reception
of the truths upon which our salvation rests,
that, even in most deeply deploring our deficiencies towards God, we fail to appreciate their
true origin, and make a subject of regretful
wonder of what a more correct estimate of our
* St. Augustine.




8         A PRESENT HEAVEN.
revealed relations with  the Almighty would
place in the light of a simple necessity. We
urge this question upon others in the way of
remonstrance, upon ourselves in the way of self.
condemnation; the preacher asks of his people,
the Christian of his heart, Why does the general standard of our practice fall so far below
the mark of our high calling, as set before us
in Scripture?
And to this there comes one answer, sorrowful and self-upbraiding, -" We fail because we
do not obey the Gospel"; while there remains
a far truer, far deeper witness and accusation
written up against us,-0 that we could see
how  plainly! — " We fail because we do not
believe it."  "I believed," said the Psalmist,
"and therefore have I spoken"; because we
believe, and according to the measure, strength,
and fulness of our belief, will we, as Christians,
speak and act and live. As "the stream can
ascend no higher than its fountain," so it is in
vain to try to live up to the Gospel until we
(to speak familiarly) believe up to it. And this
brings me to the question I have been so long
anxious to consider, Do we —I speak of those
who are Christians in more than in name and
outward profession   so believe it?  Do we
even know enough of its Divine nature and




A PRESENT HEAVEN.               9
efficacy to see that each one of the complaints
so commonly heard among us, whether of poverty, of weakness, of incapacity to serve and
love our Father who is in Heaven, is at the
same time a confession of unbelief in that Gospel in which God has been pleased to make
Himself our own?  For in the things which
concern salvation, to believe is to have. Faith
is not only a spiritual insight, but a realizing
appropriating faculty, through which God, and
with Him, in the words of the Apostle, "all
things, become ours"; for all that God is in
Himself, righteousness and wisdom and strength,
He becomes unto us through Faith. Acceptance of the Gospel, that is, of the exceeding
great and precious promises through which we
become partakers of the Divine Nature, places
us in direct union with God, —the strength,
fulness, and intimacy of this union is maintained
by faith, and must exist in exact proportion to
its measure; and thus, in the words of Scripture, all things become possible to those that
believe, through the power of Him  to whom
belief unites them.  Yet that we have still
much to learn in this matter is betrayed by
another sentiment, often heard among us under
variously modified forms of expression. "Why,"
it is asked, "so much anxiety about points of
1*




10           A PRESENT HEAVEN.
doctrine, when it is the devotion of the heart
and  the  practice of the life upon which  God
has made  salvation  to  depend?   It is these
which constitute the Christian."
" The  tree  is known  by  its fruits";  most
truly so, —but it depends for the maintenance
of those fruits, yea, even for its own existence,
upon its* root in the soil beneath. The Christian life is judged of (and this with the strictest
propriety) by that part of it which is seen, but
it depends upon the part of it which is unseen
for the  hold  which  it takes  and  keeps  upon
God; and to look for works, or the blossoming
and expansion of God within  the life, without
Faith, by means of which the soul is rooted and
grounded in Him, is as little rational, that is, as
little in accordance with things in their true
relation to each other, as it would be to look
in  any  simply  natural operation  for an  effect
detached  from  its producing  cause.  Faith  is
* It is interesting, by way of illustration, to compare what
Lord Bacon tells us of natural growth, "that every vegetable
swells and throws out its constituent parts towards the circumference, both upwards and downwards, and there is no difference
between the roots and branches, except that the root is buried
in the earth, and the branches are exposed to the air and sun,"
(Novum Organum, book ii.,) with what Baxter says of progress
in spiritual life, "I know that every man must grow as trees do,
downwards and upwards at once, and that the roots increase as the
bulk and branches do."




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              11
the Law, upon whose actuating energy God
has made the life which we have in Him to
depend; and we can no more detach what we
do in our lives from what we are in our souls,
than we can separate heat or light from their
essential principles, or expect to enjoy either in
the absence of the conditions in which their
existence is involved.  The disciples showed
they were aware of this by that remarkable
answer, when enjoined by their Master to the
practice of forgiveness, "Lord, increase our
faith"; we might have expected, when a moral
duty difficult to the natural man was in question, the words would have been " increase our
charity"; but in the conviction that obedience
was only practicable through a strength and
virtue that did not reside in themselves, their
prayer was for an increase of the faculty through
which alone the Divine aid can be made available by the soul, and effectual to the supplying
of all its wants.  We also confess that all our
sufficiency is of God, that without Him it is
impossible to please Him.  I long, therefore,
to see Christians, in a deep realization of this
acknowledged dependence, begin to take up the
Gospel under its true and living aspect, as the
means whereby our Creator has been pleased
to impart, not advice and instruction only, but




12        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
Himself unto His creatures; and before we
can do this, we have need to look a little more
closely into what Doddridge calls the God-ward
side of our covenant.
I think we lose much from, beginning, as you
express it in one of your letters, our religion at
the wrong end, concerning ourselves first, and
principally, with the idea of what we are or
ought to be to God, without sufficiently considering the converse, what He is to us. "Acquaint thyself," saith one of old, "with God,
and be at peace"; and the Apostle, speaking
by the same Spirit, tells of a Knowledge through
which grace and peace are multiplied. Yet how
little careful are we to attain to this knowledge,
how little zealous to advance in it, how little,
judging from the modes in which we are accustomed to express ourselves, do we, even in a
speculative sense, know about the work of our
redemption and sanctification, those great things
which God has done for us already, wherein it
becomes us to rejoice!
How few among us, with the beloved Apostle* and his faithful and accepted converts, seem
to be persuaded of the love and good-will that
God hath to us, His children, reconciled in
Christ! Even our best books and preachers
* 1 John iv. 16.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.               13
dwell so little upon the glad tidings  in their
fulness, that I feel justified in asserting that a
Christian speaking among Christians can scarcely
employ the language which Scripture authorizes
the Redeemed of the Lord to use, or express an
interest in the hopes which it has made the
heritage of every sincere believer, without appearing to set forth some strange thing. If he
should venture to speak of a reconciled Father,
a living Saviour, an actual Sanctifier, a present
Heaven, and to speak of all these as being his
own, it will be at the risk of being set down by
his hearers as enthusiastic, possibly as presumptuous; and this, because the grounds of his
confidence will be in so far mistaken that he
will be supposed to be resting upon some particular claim to God's favor as an individual,
instead of simply asserting his title to that its
manifest declaration, in which all his brethren
share.  Yet he boasts of no more direct assurance of pardon than that for which Scripture
gives him warrant in the revelation of a Saviour's death; he asks for no sign or token of
personal acceptance, having in this matter no
other anxiety than to secure his interest in the
already given  manifestation of His Father's
love, the Christ, who is, if they will so have it,
both "His and theirs."
* Note A.




14        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
As Englishmen and Protestants we love our
Bibles, we are zealous for them, if not always
with a zeal according to knowledge, - also jealous for them, inclined to resent every attempt
to restrict the circulation of Scripture, or to
explain away its peculiarities; so that I dare
the more strongly take up my protest against
an unauthorized yet generally current version,
passed about among us from lip to lip, without
question or challenge, than which I dare venture to assert no published version of Scripture,
however mutilated and imperfect, ever fell so
lamentably short of the original. It is in the
very nature of error to be at once vague and
subtle; to insinuate, and, as it were, incorporate
itself wherever it can find entrance, yet all the
while to assume no tangible form  wherein it
may be detected.  Therefore I would that it
were possible to arrest, and, so to speak, condense this pseudo-Gospel; to bid it stand side
by side with the true one, that we may see
what a shrunken, diminished thing it looks,
and learn how far, in favor of these cisterns
of our own which can hold no water, we have
departed from those, living fountains, the lively
oracles of God.
We have fallen, as a people, into a low and
limited view  of God's inner dispensation of




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              15
grace, akin, little as we may ourselves suspect
it, to the Rationalistic interpretation of His
outward polity.  God's Word in the one case,
as God's work in the other, is toned down and
diluted until few of its distinctive and essential
features remain. There is a practical as well as
a speculative unbelief, and it is this which we
have suffered to creep over us. In ordinary
society -I speak boldly, and yet I hope without offence —there are few who deny the Gospel to be true, perhaps fewer still who believe it
to be efficient. To explain myself further,we confess the Gospel to be from God, we give
in our adhesion to the facts that it records, but
when we come to the effectual working of this
Gospel, to the actual living consequences of
those recorded facts, there is an evident stopping short, a "limiting" of God akin to that
of the Israelites,* and arising from the self-same
source, a dulness and slowness of heart to believe the great things which He has done for
our souls, and is even now doing in them. And
while I am writing these words, slowness of
heart, I am reminded that it may be advisable to
point out the distinction between what I am
now contending for, the simple recognition of
Gospel truth, and its spiritual reception, which
* Ps. lxxviii. 41.




16        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
is in itself salvation. This last claims the consent of the heart as well as of the intellect, and,
like all things born, brought up, and nourished *
there, it does not develop its full strength and
perfection in a moment; we may follow our
Lord for years, and find, as the disciples did,
that He has still " many things " left to tell us,
for these things of God are nott taken and
shown to us by Him  who has received that
office, all at once; yea, even in the end we
shall discover that to understand this Gospel in
its breadth and depth and height and fulness,
is at the same time to appreciate that which
the Apostle tells us passes our present knowledge,-the Love which ascended up on high
and brought down this gift for us men that the
Lord our God might dwell among us. To see
God as He is, is the satisfying portion of the
blessed in heaven, and this, to know Him as He
is, is the privilege of the faithful upon earth,one to be attained only through that " unction
from the Holy One by which we understand all
things," — a Divine intuition, imparted in most
cases slowly, and in all, I think, gradually.
Therefore you will perceive that what I am
now saying to myself and others, is not so much
"let us know these things," as "let us learn
* Note B.             f John xvi. 15.




A PRESENT HIEA VEN.            17
them."  If we would be "taught of God," let
us place ourselves under the tutelage He has
appointed.  The Spirit speaks unto us by the
Word; faith comes by hearing. It is precisely
this hearing, which, according to what I shall
venture to call a common-sense view of our
religion, I now claim for the Gospel. I demand
for it, as I might do in behalf of any merely
natural system, that it should be allowed to
speak for itself, and accepted (if accepted at all)
as that which it is self-declared to be. All that
I would say is this, if God has spoken to man, it
must be to some clear and evident purpose, and
in a way to render that purpose availing. His
speaking must be, not in word only, but in
power. Let us see, then, that we turn not in
any wise away from Him that speaketh. If this
message be indeed from our Father, our part as
wise and obedient children is a simple one, - to
believe what He says, to take what He gives, -
simple, but who shall say that it is easy! Hard,
rather, through its very simplicity, to man's
erring spirit, prompt ever to limit, to transfer,
and modify the plainest statement of Scripture,
eager to behold, eager even to endure, some
great thing, solicitous to ask, What shall we
do to work the works of God? forgetful of
that full and final answer, This is the work
B




18        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath
sent.
Yet except we become as little children, we
shall in no case enter the Kingdom of Heaven,
and it is in a spirit emulous of that which in
childhood receives so much, because it receives so
literally, that I would fain approach some of the
traditions most generally received among us,
and compare them with that Gospel of everlasting Truth which, in such measure as they obtain
ground, they go far to render of none effect.
But before I quit this introductory view of my
subject, a sense of its unspeakable importance
impels me to linger yet awhile upon the threshold, and to repeat my intimate conviction that
we shall find, so we do but pierce deep enough,
that inward decay and outward disorder —all
things which, whether in the heart or. in the
community, spring up to trouble and defilehold by one common root, - Unbelief in God's
Word and in His Work. There is a breaking in
and a going out among us, only to be remedied
by our taking up our true position, - that of a
people who have the Lord for their God; and
to this end we must, in the words of the hundredth Psalm, be sure that the Lord He is God,
and be or make ourselves equally sure that
we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              19
of His hand.  We must, now that the Patriarch's dream has become the Christian's reality,
set our feet firmly upon this the lowest round
of the golden ladder that reaches even unto
Heaven.  We must take the first step, FIRST.
There is a significance in the very placing of
these clauses of the petition our Lord left us,
"Thy kingdom  come; Thy, will be done."
God's kingdom must be established within the
soul before His Will can be fulfilled in the life;
and it is from our imperfect realization of this
truth that so many are weak and sickly among
us, and so many sleep the sleep of Formalism,
that brother of spiritual Death, from which it is
scarcely to be distinguished. We mourn over a
Christianity as far degenerated from its primitive Type, " the tree planted by the rivers of
waters," as if it had been (as in Chinese gardening) dwarfed and dwindled of set purpose,
without seeming aware of the presence of the
cold underlying subsoil through which this result
has been effected.  Yet to lament over deficiency and decay is at the same time to acknowledge that such is in great part voluntary;
it is to confess that we have cut ourselves off
from  Him, the source and spring of life and
fulness, who has provided for the abundant*
watering of His garden.
* Ecclus. xxiv. 31.




20        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
God, in revealing Himself to us in His Son,
in communicating Himself to us through His
Spirit, has placed us in a wide and wealthy
place; in this land there is no straitness, neither
scarceness; here we may eat bread and drink
water to the full,-and find honey even in the
stony rock of tribulation. Why are we then a
feeble people, - feeble though numerous? ready
to exclaim, when we read of those who have
gone before us in God's faith and fear, "There
were giants in the land in those days "; instead
of asking why those days should in any respect
be different from these present ones, when God,
now as then the Strength of His people, remains
the same and changes not. If He has in any
degree ceased to work mighty works in and for
us, must not this cessation arise from that which
of old restrained Him?  Because of unbelief,
"He did not there many mighty works "; nay,
one Gospel, going further, emphatically declares
that He could not, " because of unbelief."  And
if the arm  of the Lord be not more openly
revealed among us, may it not be because His
report, God's own report of His own dealings,
has not been believed?  Instead of lamenting
our degeneracy from God's saints and chosen
ones under either Covenant, let us rather examine ourselves to see whether we are really in




A PRESENT HEA VE.              21
that Faith which was once delivered to them,
and through which they, out of weakness being
made strong, " obtained promises," and wrought
the marvels recorded of them.  These were
men of like passions and infirmities with ourselves, only differing from us according to the
measure and proportion of their faith.  They
lived under no clearer dispensation, they enjoyed no fuller privileges, than are and must
remain our own, so long as that Word endures,
" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world "; and there is, therefore, no need,
whatever we of ourselves may choose to imagine, that we should come behind them in any
spiritual grace or gift. To do the first Works,
we have but to return to the first Love, we have
but to seek the first Faith; and to this end we
must lay to our souls this counsel given by the
Spirit to a Church that, declining in belief,
had declined in strength and energy, " Remember, therefore, how thou hast received and
heard."
The Covenant, like the commandment, is
"exceeding broad"; close and intimate, wide
and reaching even unto Heaven, are the relations in which it binds man with his Maker
and Redeemer, yet it enters not into man's unrenewed heart to receive the things which God




22        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
hath prepared for them that love Him. So that
believers have need to say with Achsa, " Thou
hast given me a south land, give me also springs
of water."  God is not the author of confusion,
yet over how  many of our thoughts about
Him -alike over our ideas of what He is to us,
and what He would have us be to Him -does
confusion still reign! Viewing the Gospel under its perceptive aspect, our popular theory
appears to set the character, which it is its object
to mould, before us, just as a work of confessedly unapproachable excellence is placed before
a youthful artist. It is a magnificent outline,
an admirable ideal, which our Master has set
before us to contemplate, but the excellence of
which He never expects us to attain.  This,
indeed, is an acknowledged impossibility; we
must do as well as we can, but need not even
aim at a close resemblance. So much for our
work; in that which we are to be towards God,
He does not, it seems, mean us to be that which
He tells us to be. And even thus with our Faith;
in that which God is to us, we are not to expect Him to be that which He has promised to be.
We are to believe in the Promise, God's Word,
otherwise we shall not be Christians; but we
are not to look for its performance, the Work
that He doeth upon earth, or we shall be en



A PRESENT HEAVEN.              23
thusiasts, expecting what we shall never meet
with. What does this mean?  Even that we
think our God to be altogether such a one as we
are ourselves, -asking for what He does not
expect to receive, promising what He does not
intend to bestow; yet
"His sorrows were in earnest: no vain proffer
Thou madest there, no superficial offer."
The reality of what God has done for us
while we were yet unreconciled may surely be
our warrant for the reality of what He will do
for us now that reconciliation has been effected.
The love that was manifested in Him that died
for our sins, is exerted in Him that even now
liveth for our justification. Christ is the same,
whether His love be shown in dying for us or
in living for us; it is but one Spirit under a
different administration. " Reach hither," then,
He may still say to many a cold and doubting
Disciple, "thy finger, and behold my hands;
and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my
side; and be not faithless, but believing."
The Christian name and profession is, to a
mere professor, something which he carries about
with him, because he does not know what else
to make of it. Perhaps at some future time he
means to make good these title-deeds, to claim
the citizenship they confer; at any rate, they




24        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
may lie beside him dormant. He leaves them
alone for the present.  But there is many a
sincere Christian among us whose position is far
more trying and inconsistent, for to him this
Holy Name and Profession is not a change of
goodly raiment, laid by because unsuited to his
actual wear: he is bidden to the wedding; he
is called to the battle; he knows that garments
are provided for the guests, armor for the
soldiers; yet in this there is less satisfaction
than might have been expected. He does not
move about in his new apparel with ease and
freedom; he asks himself if it was made for
him; he knows that he does not fill his armor;
he will not let go his sword, but he does not
wield it freely; even his wealth embarrasses
him; for while he is haunted by an uneasy
consciousness of its responsibilities, he is little
soothed by the actual reality of its enjoyment.
It is hard to discover what degree of value
Christians attach to those general privileges of
their position which the Apostles place before us
in so. broad and diffused a light. What is it
that we understand by being "in Christ"? and
in how much are we the gainers by being born
into a world which He died to redeem, and
being baptized into a Church which He lives to
sanctify? What precise benefit do we expect to




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                         25
receive from   the  ordinances* which  God  has
appointed for us to walk in? What advantage,
in short, is there  in being a Christian?   Is our
Lord to be among us only as a mighty man that
cannot save?   I sometimes  suspect that much
of our feebleness of spirit may be traced to a
secret reservation of the heart. We are not
minded  to  serve  God  with  our whole hearts,
* I will particularly instance that of prayer, because it is the
one in the practice of which Christians are the most constant,
while they appear the least certain as to its benefits. On this
point every shade of opinion seems to prevail among us; and
amongst these one whose tendency, seldom  very clearly expressed, is to place the advantage of prayer in the effect which
it works upon our own minds, by drawing out our souls to God,
and bringing them into a devout recollection of His presence,
This benefit, which meditation would equally confer, is undoubtedly one of the indirect advantages of prayer; but to place it as
the prominent one is to fall far short of the Scriptural idea of
that communion, through which we make our requests known
to the God who tells that He will both hear and help those who
faithfully call upon Him, -the God whom the Psalmist thus addresses: " O thou that hearest prayer."  To believe in prayer is,
in St. John's words, to have a confidence that, if we ask anything
according to His will, He heareth us, -a confidence which cannot
extend its fulness to our petitions for such blessings as are merely temporal; for in these prayers, sanctioned as they are by our
Heavenly Father, we cannot be sure that the things we ask for
are according to His will, which, in the disposition of earthly af,
fairs, he has not made known to us; but we may rest in this confidence most fully in our requests for spiritual blessings, for on
these points God's will has been revealed; and we know that, in
seeking and coveting all such things, we are only asking for what
He wishes to give us, seeking, not to have our own pleasure, but to
do His. " And this is the Will of God, even your sanctification."
2




26        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
and therefore dare not look to Him to bless and
help us in our whole lives.  We seem to look
upon His promises as things reserved either for
extraordinary Christians, or for ordinary ones,
perhaps, upon extraordinary occasions, - for seasons of imminent distress and difficulty — those
great water-floods in which we all, as if instinctively, turn to God as to a place to flee
unto.  Yet show me the Christian who believes
in and lives by every word which comes out of
the mouth of God, who expects to be answered
in his prayers, to be aided in his deeds, to be
strengthened in his conflicts, by the Saviour in
whom his person is accepted; who, in the simplest affair of every-day life, does God's bidding,
because in His Word He has so commanded
it, and expects His help, because in the same
Word He has promised it; and I will show you
one, like St. Stephen, full of faith and of
power, -a Christian man or woman, who, in
Christ, is and has all things.
We have been told by the greatest of practical
thinkers, that " it is impossible to advance surely
in any course, where the goal is not properly
fixed." Until we set a definite, and, I may also
add, an attainable object before us, as the end
to which our endeavors are directed, there can
be no steady, satisfactory progress; we are but




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              27
spending our strength in vain, and drawing our
bow at a venture. Now, I think, in our religious course we should employ all the appointed
means of grace more steadily, if we set their end
more clearly before us; if we were fully persuaded as to the object we are looking for, living
for, - if we knew exactly what we expected the
Gospel to do for us.
We expect it, of course, to save us; but
when, - in this world or in the future one? to
save us, but from what,- our sins, or only
from the punishment denounced against them?
What is it that we mean by this word, so often
upon our lips, Salvation?  Does it comprehend
all that can make either this world or the next
one desirable, in the restoration to God's favor,
and the recovery of our lost birthright of happiness in Him; or is our idea of it restricted to
that " escaping from Hell and going to Heaven,"
to which it has been so truly said * the mere
ordinary notion of it is limited? I will not
dwell upon the low and servile character with
which thoughts such as these invest an estate
whose essential attribute is liberty; I will but
ask the followers of Him  whose name was
called Jesus, that He might save His people
from their iniquities, if they hate sin because
* Wesley.




28        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
their God hates it, or only because He punishes
it?  Is it from the accursed thing itself, or only
from the consequences of its being found upon
them, that they pray and strive to be delivered?
I will not dwell upon the unworthiness of such
views.  I would only point out their insufficiency. It will go hard with us in the Battle
that is sore against us, if we are to find our foes
in the present, and only to look for our friends
in the future.  The Devil occupies a visible
kingdom, the World holds an open market, the
flesh wages an ever-present warfare; and is not
the Salvation which cometh from the Lord that
which shall, yea, which doth, deliver us from all
of these, a real work, a present work, a conscious work, a far more complete and glorious
work, than hands which hang down are able to
embrace, and eyes looking two ways are able to
behold?  Does not God's Covenant, when read
by its own light, disclose itself as a Covenant,
even in this present time, of life and peace?
If any of us have not yet found it to be so, it
is because in this great matter we have yet
much to learn of God, both in His Word and
in His Work.  To the Law, saith the Prophet,
and to the Testimony. If they speak not according to this word, if the personal experience
of believers does not agree with the outward




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              29
revelation they live under, it is because they
have no light in them.
We have been considering Religion as a Divine science; it is not like the earthly ones in
this, that there is no royal road into its mysteries: none may penetrate into these who have
not placed themselves under devout and diligent
subjection to its laws, — but will not the highway of simple obedience, in which our King
Himself was content to travel, lead us on step
by step, until we enter into the possession of
secrets which make all -outward requirements
easy? " Mysteries are revealed unto the meek."
Is there not such a thing as the gradual growth
of. an affection, which, by placing the heart's
deliberate desire and preference and choice in
God, induces a conformity to His will in all
things, and makes His every command to be
obeyed, not from the pressure of an enforced
law, but through the unfolding of an inward
principle? Is there not a state in which those
who are in Christ attain to that realization of
their privileges which St. Paul desired for his
Galatian converts, those little children for whom,
although they were already born unto God, he
travailed in birth again, until the Son, of whose
Spirit they had received, was " formed in them,"
-until the mind which was in them was also




30        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
the mind which was in Christ Jesus, —until
they were complete in Him, in attainments as
well as in privileges?
We are told that God loveth a cheerful giver:
it is His own blessed characteristic to give bountifully, upbraiding not; may we not, therefore,
believe that He,is favorable to the free and
willing receiver of His goodness? Yet, as the
Israelites were slow to enter upon the Promised
Land, so are we slow to enter upon the Purchased one; we do not "eat the good" of the
land which has been bestowed upon us in Christ,
and through an evil, if unsuspected, heart of
unbelief, a secret distrust in God's loving-kindness, we fall short, as they did, of the rest
which even here He has provided for His people, —a rest, for the want of which no Pisgah
view  can altogether console us.  Too many
among us are like the spies,* we confess that
it is a good land, but exaggerate the difficulties
of attaining it; its old dwellers (the deeplyseated infirmities of the flesh) seem too strong
to be overcome: but as Caleb and Joshua said,
and for this were so singularly blessed by God,
" Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are
well able to overcome it; the Lord is with us."
How long, asks Joshua, are ye slack to possess
* Num. xiii 14.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                      31
the land which the Lord hath given you? In
these very words may Faith now urge, admonish, and encourage us to enter upon far richer
blessings, far ampler privileges, - even those
laid up for us in Christ. And if we, conscious
of our inherent feebleness, should ask, " By
whom  shall Jacob go up, for he is but small?"
we have our answer given us, -
"Not by Might nor by Power, but by my
Spirit, said the Lord."
"I will therefore look to the Lord, who hideth his face
From the house of Jacob; yet will I look to Him;
Should not a people seek their God,
Should they seek instead of the living to the Dead?
Unto the command and unto the testimony let them seek.
If they will not speak according to this word,
In which there is no obscurity,
Every one of them shall pass through the land distressed and
famished."




II.
THE GOSPEL RECEIVED PARTIALLY.
"Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see
the glory of God?"
N assuming unbelief to be the groundwork of practical disobedience, I do
not mean to ignore the presence and
the power of those other opposing
forces, -the enmity of the natural will, the
attractions of the outward world, to which the
transgression of God's law is so often attributed
by the sacred writers; I would only point out
that these are  but secondary causes, merely
symptomatic in their iature, and witnessing to
that which lies beneath them all, "a departing
from the living God," to which all these other
departures may be traced back.  Over the soul
which believes in God the attractive hold of
outward sense is loosened, as in the soul which
through belief has received Him  within itself




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              33
the resistance of inward enmity is overcome.
"The beginning of Faith," saith the Apocrypha, yet herein a true Scripture, " is the cleaving unto God," * and it is only through failure
in this steadfast cleaving that the foes, who
from without or within war against the soul,
are enabled to prevail against it; without the
footing which unbelief gives, they who hate us,
though they may indeed assault us and afflict,
can never become lords over us. In the soul
which Faith has rooted and established in God,
the enemy. asks as vainly as did Archimedes of
this earthly globe, for "a point " wherefrom to
remove it from its steadfastness; so long as it
believes, it remains, with Him unto whom belief unites it, "among the things which cannot
be shaken," - fixed, like the limpet, upon the
Rock of Ages.
There is an attractive power of the world, a
seductive weakness of the flesh, a deep-seated
malignity of the Devil, working through each of
these to our ruin. The world has something to
show, the flesh something to crave, the Devil
something to give, and more to promise; these
are all strong men armed, having mouths speaking, asking, boasting great things, and to all of
these, their allurements, solicitations, and temp* Ecclus. xxv. 12.
2*                       c




34        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
tations, the coming in of Him who is stronger
than they has but one thing to oppose, a weapon,
single, yet mighty and effectual to the pulling
down of all their strongholds, - FAITH, intimate,
adhesive, and reliant in an ever-living and everpresent God.  Baal's prophets are and have
always been many, but this one prophet and
witness of the Lord, even though, like Elijah,
it remain alone, is strong enough to withstand
and to overcome them all; for this is the Victory which overcometh the World, the world
of sense without, the world of sin within us,
even our Faith in Him who hath overcome all
things for and in His people. The world is so
much to us, only because God is so little; let
Faith but once restore the soul to its true centre,
so that, looking at Divine realities from a just
medium, it may see them  in their true and
unspeakable importance, and the power of outward things is weakened, and their overweening charm dissolved, - the enchanter's wand is
broken, and his spell read backward.
We have all, I think, felt it to be thus with
us in moments of peculiar emergency, when
some one overwhelming idea, whether it might
be of God, of judgment, or of eternity, with its
accompanying pressure of self-conscious moral
responsibility, has been flashed out upon the




4 PRESENT IEAVEN.              35
soul in awful distinctness, as we sometimes see
objects thrown into ghastly relief from the very
blackness of the thunder-cloud behind them: at
such moments the things we have most prized
and clung to seem so insignificant that we can
only confess and wonder at the delusion through
which they have ever appeared of value. That
impressions of this intense nature should be
abiding would neither accord with the nature
of true Faith, nor with the performance of the
work which God has given it to do. Yet to
have been their subject even for a moment is to
be convinced that where these awful, and as yet
unseen, realities are felt and appreciated in their
true prominence, and realized in their actual
relation to ourselves, all meaner things will sink
into a lower position.  The shadow will flee
before the Substance, and it is because* we
have not, through faith, laid hold upon this
substance, -because we allow the visible too
much to obscure and exclude the real, that
inward.corruption retains its strength, and outward temptation acquires its power.
Let us consider this a little further. Sin, or
disobedience towards God, is only unbelief in
an outward and visible form; it is the practical
denial of God's existence, the virtual disowning
* See Note C.




36        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
of His authority; the saying in our lives what
we have already said in our hearts, either that
" there is no God," or that, if there be indeed
such an One, "we will not have Him to reign
over us."  To enter into this more fully, we
need but to consider how the lives of us all are
moulded and fashioned from within; to mark
how our conduct, even in the most ordinary
affairs of daily life, is but the expression of our
inner sentiment, an impress corresponding in
every line with the stamp which opinion and
feeling have set upon it. Of the least thoughtful and reflective man among us, we may say,
"that even as he thinketh in his heart, so is
he." His life will be, however unconsciously to
himself, the result and manifestation of certain
principles, be these good or bad or indifferent;
and even those who, according to the common
saying, have "no principle," who are without
any fixed rule or settled basis for action, will
be found to be guided by opinions, however
vague, and to be under the influence of sentiments, however fluctuating. We are accustomed
to smile at the man over whom abstract thought
has gained such an ascendency as to make the
things (however purely intellectual) with which
his mind is daily conversant appear to him in
the light of tangible realities, yet we are all of




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              87
us, without suspecting it, as much under the
Empire of Ideas as he is: it is what we think
about things, what we feel about them, what, in
short, they are to us, that gives them their true
significance.  Even in the case of whatever
may be most palpable and material, it is not
the mere beholding of it with our eyes, or being
made conscious of its presence by any other of
the senses, that makes it real to us; until the
spirit discerns, grasps, and appropriates unto
itself the substance, until the Inner and the
Outward meet and kiss each other, "seeing we
do not perceive, and hearing we do not understand."  What, for instance, is music to those
who, in familiar parlance, do not care about it?
They hear it, but it tells them nothing; it has
no message to deliver, no revelation to impart.
What is the most magnificent scenery the world
can offer to the man or woman who, placed in
the midst of it, is thinking of something else,
whether that "something else" may be the
mightiest or the most trivial affair with which
human thought can be occupied?  Indeed, in
so much do all mortal affairs, from the greatest to "the meanest thing of every day," bear
witness to the power of the unseen over the
visible, that every aim and aspiration that the
human heart can frame is but an unconscious




38        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
confession that Man, according to the degree in
which the conditions of his Being are raised
above those of mere animal existence, does not
live by bread alone; his life is set between. the
spiritual and the material, and the outward
object can only nourish and delight him  in
proportion to its correspondence with the inner
need.
The very mutability of human wishes, the
vanity to which Man is subject, is a proof, if
but a melancholy one, of the dignity of his
nature, and indicates the immeasurable distance
by which he is removed from the inferior races,
which (each one after his kind) love, seek, and
are contented with the objects adapted to their
simple requirements, without versatility or satiety. Instinct is an unerring, unvarying guide:
to have at one time observed an animal's habits
is to know what will at all times make it happy;
but it is more hard to search into and satisfy
what an old Divine has called the covetous, restless, insatiable heart of man; and this because
all men, no less than the just one, live by
Faith,- have all a spiritual element of existence,
have all an ideal standard, be it lowly or lofty,
false or true, with reference to which they are
guided in choice and act. If we would obtain
the key to any man's conduct, we must make




A PRESENT HEA VEN.             39
ourselves acquainted with his Creed,- we must
find out what it is he believes in, if we would
learn what it is he lives for, and in, and by.
Until we have gained the secret of this correspondency, our lives are, as regards each other,
writ in cipher.  Could we but look at outward
things from one common stand-point, all would
be plain and legible, and it is our inability to do
this which makes us such riddles and contradictions to each other; for even those who most
love the world do not love the same world:
they who are serving -the same master serve
him under such different aspects that their aims
are oftentimes as little intelligible to each other
as they are to him who, bent upon a higher object, cares, comparatively speaking, for none of
the things on which their desires are set. The
ambitious man, the covetous one, the pleasureseeker, stare at each other in wonder, perhaps
in pity, while the man who has placed his aim
in every-day comfort and respectability gazes at
all three with an inquiring cui bono? They
who live in the affections cannot understand
how others should place their happiness in the
exertion of the intellect. The purely domestic
character is at a loss to appreciate the charm
with which, to differently constituted minds,
social or political distinction is invested. Fame




40        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
is a shadow, gold is dross, pleasure a bubble,
knowledge vanity and vexation of spirit, to those
who do not care about them; but to the man to
whom any one of these is an object of preference
and deliberate choice, who has (whether wisely
or unwisely) set it before him as his happiness
and final good, the end to which his life and
energies have become the means, it is as the
breath of his nostrils, an indispensable element
of existence, in short, a reality, be its nature
bad or good, its essence palpable or unseen,
The things which men desire, pursue, and believe in, low and trivial and unworthy as they
may be in themselves, are, to the persons whom
they thus influence, "no vain thing, but their
life," —the subtle mainspring of thought and
action, hidden and mysterious, and like that
which it so closely resembles, the principle of
natural vitality, only to be discovered in its
workings.
To understand this —that just according to
the degree in which anything earthly or divine
has become a felt reality, it will make itself a
part of our thoughts and lives-will lead to
the apprehension of a higher Truth.  We shall
find ourselves more able to appreciate the central position in which the system of revealed
religion has placed the faculty through whose




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              41
aid alone the invisible things to which that
system  introduces us can  be seen in their
absolute awfulness and beauty, or recognized in
their unspeakable relative importance to ourselves.  Revelation, as regards our spiritual
Being, places every one of us where, as regards
mere natural existence, Creation set down the
first Father of our Race, in a world where all
that surrounds us is new, and only to be apprehended through the exercise of Faith, the soul's
single yet sufficing sense, -the spiritual eye,
and ear, and touch, and taste, and discerning, —
the appointed medium between the human soul
and Him who gave it; without which it can as
little acquaint itself with God, and with that
inner world wherein with Him  it lives, and
moves, and has its being, as it can learn any-,
thing of His outward world without the aid
and intervention of the bodily senses. Until we
have availed ourselves of this medium, things
that most surely are remain virtually to us as
though they were not. We go on limiting our
notion of the actual to the merely visible until
even our use of the term " spiritual," witnessing as it does to realities more tremendous, and,
so to speak, more real in their essence and opera
tion than any which can come under the cogni.
zance of our material senses, carries with it the




42           A PRESENT HEA VEN.
idea of something shadowy, vague, and impalpable.  Yet the Heaven we hope for, and the
Hell we dread, are  as much realities, though
unseen  ones, as the Earth we tread on.  The
kingdom  of God within us, though  it cometh
not with observation, exists as surely as the
kingdom  of this world without us.  God himself- for the  deeper these  inquiries  go, the
surer do  they  send  us back  upon  that awful
ground and substance of all things, visible and
invisible- is the self-existent source and spring
of all Reality, though no man hath seen, or can
see Him, at any  time; and He is only to be
beholden as in a glass darkly, in such of His
works as have been seen clearly from the foundation of the world.
Let us think of this a little longer; let us
look, by the light of our every-day experience,
a little more closely into  the nature of Belief.
To believe in anything, whether, as in the case
of a truth, we may accept it on the evidence of
soul or reason,* or admit it, being a fact, on the
* It is well to bear in mind that Faith, although it transcends
Reason, is none the less, in the first instance, founded upon it.
Belief, inasmuch as it is a species of mental choice or preference,
presupposes a certain exercise of judgment; and Fdndlon, I remember, illustrates this position by comparing Faith with a guide,
in whom, because we have first satisfied ourselves with regard to
his character and qualifications, we place implicit reliance, and
having let our judgment act once for all in resigning it to him,
follow where he leads without question.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                43
witness of outward sense, or the testimony of
others, is to receive it with that thorough persuasion which will not fail to guide our actions
so far as they may be connected with the fact or
truth in question, with a reference to its acknowledged existence. Belief,* whether its object is connected with this world or the spiritual
one, which fails to embody itself in action, is
such only in name, and stops short of genuine
conviction.  Put a man engaged in business in
possession of tidings immediately affecting the
affair he has in hand, the information he thus
receives will necessarily influence his plan of
action, and will do so in exact proportion to his
confidence in its authenticity, and to the degree
of importance he is.disposed to attach to it, supposing its authenticity to be placed beyond a
doubt. Let us turn this, by way of illustration,
to the one great concern of spiritual life, and we
shall be prepared to meet the remarkable statement of Baxter, who, in his later years, gives,
as the result of a life-long experience among the
souls of men, his firm conviction that the true
cause for the indifference and godlessness of the
great mass of society lies in this, that the careless
and ignorant who compose it do not, in a speculative sense, believe in God or in a future world.
* See Note D.




44        A PRESENT HEA VEN.
And though our full acquiescence in this statement is modified by the knowledge that, man
being the inheritor of a perverted will as well as
of a darkened understanding, the intellect may
retain a sort of petrifying hold upon truths by
which the will remains uninfluenced; though the
course of every-day life shows us that nothing is
more easy even in things of temporal interest than
to see the good, and yet pursue the evil, because
it is preferred, - still of any man of whom it may
be said " that he careth not for God, neither is
God in all his thoughts," it may also, in a certain sense, be affirmed that he does not believe
in Him.  The soul over which the ideas of God,
and judgment, and eternity exert no practical
influence, has never received them within itself
as conscious, felt realities; or a course of action
in correspondence with the awful sense of personal accountability, which, when so received,
they must inevitably awaken, would not so
much have been induced as compelled.  For
acknowledging a Divine revelation to be true,
the facts it unfolds are so confessedly important,
that it would appear hard to accept the facts upon which our eternal weal or woe depends, as we
would accept that of the existence of Aurungzebe or Charlemagne, -a fact truly, but one
which lies apart and remote from us, without




A PRESENT HEAVEN.               45
bearing on our present day, or influence upon
our individual destiny, -something which has
been, and is done with forever.
And farther, let us contrast - excepting the
case of persons whose peculiar studies have
given them a sort of individual interest in such
inquiries -our general reception of any purely
scientific fact, say the discovery of a new planet,
with that which we accord to the establishment
of a point or principle connected with any great
political or social question, or with any of those
subjects of minor yet intimate interest which
bear upon our daily health and comfort, our fortunes, or our affections. And let us remember
that it is among these questions, say rather above,
and yet inclusive of them all, that Christianity
places itself. The Gospel is no historical monument, to be studied or left alone at pleasure:
it does not challenge attention on the score of
its curiosity or interest, but claims it on the
ground of its personal importance to every one
of us. It proclaims itself to be " no vain thing,"
in the sense in which all earthly knowledge,
how excellent and glorious soever, is vanity, but
" the life" of those whom it addresses.  When
it tells us of a God, in whose favor is Life, and
makes known to us the way to obtain that favor,
there is no moment, either of our present or




46        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
future existence, through which the facts it reveals do not send a pulsation: it links itself with
each grain of the sands of time, with each billow
of the ocean of eternity; it has to do with all
that the heart and soul of man can conceive and
execute, endure and enjoy, NOW and FOREVER.
When I think of this Gospel, and consider how,
like Him of whom it testifies, it must of necessity be everything to those to whom it is anything at all, I can perceive a consistency, if a
dreadful one, in the case of the multitudes who
altogether reject and ignore it. To the wicked
" who know not God, neither desire the knowledge of His ways," God is nothing, neither do
they wish to be anything to Him. The language of their hearts, if an unspoken one,'is
none the less, "Depart from us," and their indifference to the great means of salvation is
more than accounted for by their acknowledged
contempt for its end; but it is so far otherwise
with them  to whom the end   even the end
of all faith, the salvation of their souls- is
precious, and desired above all good, that I am
at a loss to understand how many among us, so
esteeming the end, seem yet so inadequately to
appreciate and avail ourselves of the means: in
other words, I cannot learn how it is that the
Gospel has become to us (in the sense which I




A PRESENT HEA VEN.             47
have attached to the word Reality) a less real
thing than the world it has to contend with, and
the sin it has to overcome. We have slipped,
as a Christian people, into a position far below
the one given us by God; and while we are
ready, as I have said, to accuse ourselves of
want of diligence in making our calling and
election sure, is it certain that we have yet, in
the words of the Apostle, seen our calling and
attained to a just appreciation of what, on our
part, is the hope of this calling, and what,
on God's part, is the exceeding greatness of
His power wrought in Christ to us-ward that
believe?
It has been well said, with regard to objects
of temporal interest, that we must know something. of a thing before we can feel any curiosity
respecting it; the very desire for information
on a subject presupposing the presence of an
already awakened  spring of interest.  Now
when I apply this truth to the highest fact it
can concern, and consider of how many things
having to do with the deeper and more intimate:elations of the human soul with God we
" willingly remain ignorant," I cannot but feel
justified in tracing back this ignorance, and the
indifference with which it is twin-born and
twin-existent, to the want of a firm belief in




48        A PRESENT HEA VEN.
those great fundamental truths of Revelation
upon which the fabric of man's salvation rests.
We do not know enough of God to make us
wish to know more, and have yet need of being
rooted and grounded in the first principles of
salvation. For until these are more to us than
matters of (so-called) faith, until they are unto
us matters of life, things not merely to be held
by as traditions, but to be lived upon as facts, 
things that we feel we could not do without, and
to resign our hold upon which would be consciously to let go a portion of our Being, - we
do not truly believe them, we only say that we
do so. We do not believe them — I speak now
of verities which it would shock us, in a dogmatic sense, to doubt  until they have passed
within our souls as principles, and raised up
within those souls the power and energy of their
own life. In these two words, the most solemn
which human lips can frame, " I BELIEVE," lies a
power to ingraft the soul that utters them from
its depths, into the very strength and fulness of
every truth of which they are spoken; and when
I think of this, and recall the great fact whereof
we affirm most constantly that we " believe" it,
I mean the doctrine of the Trinity, I long that
we should pass, as regards it, from the confession
of the lips, which is Orthodoxy, to the confession




A PRESENT HIEA VEN.                   49
of the heart, which is Salvation. For to believe
in One God, the Father of men and spirits, revealed to us in His Son's life, reconciled to us
through  His Son's death, and imparted to us
through  the  agency  of the  life-giving Spirit,
is to live in the sense, to rely upon the strength,
and  to  rejoice  in  the  sweetness of a Divine
relationship.   It is to  know  that we  are  no
longer strangers and foreigners with our God,
but to feel that, in the bonds of this everlasting
covenant, He is in  us, and we  are in  Him,
brought near by the  Son, kept near by  the
Spirit, bound together in a threefold cord which
shall not be quickly broken.
Until we thus learn to realize and draw the full
value from the truths which are most commonly, in the sense of speculative assent, believed
among us, we shall be at a loss to understand
how  it is that the Apostles, speaking unto us
by the Spirit, continually address us as being
already in * possession of certain assured privileges, and urge us, on the ground of that posses* We know that the visible Church of Christ has never exhibited a community without spot or blemish, and we have historical evidence for the imperfection of one Church particularly
addressed by St. Paul. Yet all visible members, save those coming under the awful exclusion of the " except ye be reprobate,"
are exhorted to repentance, to purity, to diligence, as the case
may require, not on the ground of their danger in being without
Christ, but on that of their responsibility as being in Him. "Know
3,~                           D




50            A PRESENT HEAVEN.
sion, to go on to make further privileges, gifts,
and promises our own. The Apostles, speaking
to their converts, do not so much admonish them
as would probably be done in our present religious teaching, upon the ground of responsibility as of capability. They do not so often
say, Because ye know such things, ye ought so
and so to act, as, because ye know and have
received, ye can so walk and please God. They
base their arguments, their exhortations, upon
a foregone conclusion, even the life and death
and rising  again of  our Lord  Jesus, and the
benefits which all those who accept Him have
ye not that ye are members of Christ, Temples of the Holy Ghost,
habitations of God through the Spirit? "
I sometimes wish we were, as a people, more in the habit of
considering our relations with God under what may be called
their covenanted aspect. Salvation in Christ is not only a gift
from God to man, it is also a bond, a living perpetual tie, placing
us in assured relations with the Father, and enabling us to take
up that ancient plea, " Have respect unto the covenant," with all
the energies of the renewed nature. " The writings of the New
Covenant," -how I love this, the title by which the Gospel writings collectively were known to the Primitive Church! It brings
them before us as that which they truly are, the very bonds and
indentures of our fellowship in Christ Jesus. Perhaps we have
lost something by the substitution of the word " Testament," and
yet it is hard to choose; for as conveying the idea of a gift it
bears witness to the freedom of Divine grace, the fulness of Divine love. Also as belonging to Death, it points to that " necessary " death of the Testator upon which the everlasting covenant
between God and man was like the temporary one, established
" not without blood." Gal. iii. 15.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.               51
received, and are even now receiving thereby.
They do not stop in every sentence, as we are
so apt to do in our daily searchings of heart, to
break down the wall of partition, and to feel
after the lurking enmity; they* assume that
these are already taken away and abolished in
Christ; and standing in this Beautiful Gate of
the Temple, His full, finished, and perfect sacrifice, satisfaction, and atonement for the sins of
the whole world, encourage us to advance, by 
this new  and living way, even "within the
Holiest."   Considering  this  deeply, I often
think that, if we felt the Rock under us as
surely as they did, our feet would move more
swiftly on the path of perfection to which they
point, and incline to believe, that the temple of
our hearts and lives is less "fitly framed together" than it was with these* First Builders,
simply because it is not based so firmly upon
the One Foundation; and yet I say this with
diffidence, because I have long been persuaded
that there is no fact with which the Gospel acquaints us in which the generality of Christians
so truly believe, and so sincerely rest their hopes
of acceptance with God, as that of our Saviour's
Atonement. -In many facts resting upon a kindred basis of authority, more particularly such
* Note E.




52         A PRESENT HEAVEN.
as are connected with the nature, office, and
agency of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, His continual indwelling with the Faithful,
and the fellowship which they in whom He abides
enjoy with the Father and the Son, I dare venture to assert that Christians in general do not
believe; at least, if we miy judge from their
habitual modes of thought and expression, these
great and deeply consolatory realities have taken
no apparent hold upon their hearts and lives.
Yet it would be to charge ourselves falsely to
say, that the great doctrine of the Atonement,
the keystone of salvation, is set at naught by us
builders; or that we are guilty of counting this
blood of the everlasting covenant an unhO.or
unhallowing thing.  For while to those whoaare
without, the necessary, the meritorious death of
Christ remains the stumbling-block And stone
of offence, the chosen point of attack, ever
openly assaulted, ever secretly undermined, to
those who are within, the Stone thus set at
naught and rejected is still the head of the
corner: it is still the tried stone, the sure foundation, the Rock whereof Faith speaks, "Set
me upon it, for it is higher than I, * Love's
* " When I," saith our Lord, " am lifted up from the earth, I
will draw all men unto Me." The death of Christ is here set
forth as that which shall most powerfully attract the heart of




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                   53
sure, abiding Pillar of remembrance, whereon
Love's secret is written and graven with a pen
of iron forever. To them who believe, Christ is
precious.  Multitudes among  us live and die
upon no other hope than that sure and certain
one set before us in merits of the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world; and all that
I would say is, that even here, where we most
cordially embrace the fact, we do not, for want
of what I will call a holy and courageous Logic,
accept the conclusion to which it directly leads;
and by thus stopping short, we fail to reach the
breadth, and height, and fulness to which a
single and simple fact like the great one in
question, if implicitly realized, would carry us.
If we would have the Gospel bless us wholly,
we must receive it wholly: we must let our
Lord, the Messenger of the New  Covenant,
make full proof of His Ministry among us;
and  remembering  that a Divine  Sentence is
upon the lips of this Prince,- a Word, whereof
it may be truly said, that "which way soever
man to God, and this because it is the strongest proof of love.
Love kindles and cafts forth love; " We count that," says John of
Wessel, " to be the most lovable which we know to be the most loving."
The love of Christ has achieved the greatest things, and hence
must produce the most powerful effects; it has displayed the
greatest devotedness, and consequently must possess the strongest
attractive power."




54        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
we turn, it will prosper," -let us be careful to
hearken unto all that, in this great matter, the
Lord our God has spoken concerning us; let us
take heed to gather up each crumb of this true
Bread, to wring out the very fulness of this
Heavenly Vine, crushed for us in the winepress of the wrath of Goi.
For to believe in the Atonement, that is, in
the Father reconciled to us in His Son, and in
Him propitious, is to have taken, in the words
of the Psalmist, God for our hope, and also for
our portion in the land of the living; it is to be
made even now  a partaker of the fulness of
Him  who filleth all things, and to enter upon
the present fruition of the gifts which  He,
having ascended up on high, has received for
us men.  In this greatest boon, even that of
the precious blood-shedding of Christ, all lesser
ones are of necessity included. God in giving
us his His Son has given us, with and in Him,
as the Apostle tells us, " all things." To accept
Christ Jesus as the Way, is also to receive Him
as the Life; to rest upon His sacrifice as perfect, is also to believe that it is sufficient, not
only for final reconciliation with God, but for
that actual restoration to His favor, which the
idea of true reconciliation includes. I long that
we should apprehend this essential fact, that




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              55
i God is in Christ, reconciling the world unto
Himself"; because I am convinced that, did we
see the Cross more clearly, the light which
streams from it would make many things plain
that are now perplexing; and because I feel we
have but to weigh this matter in the balance of
Scripture to become aware of how much we are
the losers, by liming the benefits we receive
by our Lord's meritorious death and passion to
an exemption from  the future punishment of
sin. To this, I think, the generally received
estimate of our Saviour's satisfaction is restricted, to a degree which tends to reduce the
crowping Sacrifice to the level of those which
went before and prefigured it.  Our Lord's
Death, the very substance of these things that
foreshadowed it, is invested with a figurative,
and, so to speak, typical character; and this
better hope, by the which we draw nigh unto
God, is brought down to a shadow of good
things to come: if it should be asked when  we
might answer, in the hour of death, and in the
day of judgment, for it seems as if Christians,
in their sincere, yet partial acceptance of their
Lord's merits, waited until then to plead their
efficacy with God. Yet is this Hope set before
us for life as well as for death, not only in the
hour and the cay of which no man knoweth,




56        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
but in every hour and day of this our mortal
life, in all time of our tribulation, in all time of
our wealth, from the sorest pang to the meanest
provocation of every day, may the Christian,
having once laid hold upon it, flee unto it for
refuge. The soul which can say with St. Paul,
"It is Christ that died," has obtained with him
a triumphant answer to evey doubt within, has
found a stronghold from every difficulty without.
Having obtained, through the one Mediator, a
present access to the Father, it finds, in that
access, the supply of all its deeply-felt wants,
the satisfaction of all its yearnings.
Having entered in by the Door, it is "saved,"yea, it may go in and out, and find pasture;for
He who has delivered our souls from death has,
at the same time, delivered our eyes from tears,
and our feet from falling.  "Return, then, unto
thy rest, 0 my soul," may the Christian now
say, "for thy Lord hath dealt bountifully
with thee! He who is become thy
salvation will be also thy shield
and thy song, the strength
of thy life, as well
as thy portion
forever."




III.
TIHE GOSPEL RECEIVED HISTORICALLY.
"Say not in thine heart, Who shall descend into the deep, to bring up
Christ again from the dead? "- ROMANS x. 7.
i   HE Gospel is a history, inasmuch as:I l       it sets before us God manifested in.   the flesh; a power or Agency, in-,~c ~   asmuch as it reveals to us God communicated by the Spirit; and the life-walk and
triumph of Faith consists in maintaining these
two points* in their essential connection, and
thus keeping God - seen under one relation and
felt under the other -"always before it."  I
think a certain deadness of the letter has crept
over us, because, not being as a Christian people
sufficiently at home in our own polity and constitution, we do not so fully as in the Primitive
Age appreciate the vital connection which exists
between the great facts which the Gospel re* See Note E.
3*




58           A PRESENT HEAVEN.
cords and the great principles which, through
those facts, it communicates. We seem to have
in some degree lost what the first builders so
abundantly rejoiced in, a principle of cohesion
between the work done and the work doing;
and thus the events with which the Gospel narrative makes us acquainted, instead of being,
every one of them, "very nigh" to us, bpund
up and interleaved  within  the volume of our
personal experience, have to be fetched, as we
want them, from the remote distance where they
lie, like the bones in the Valley of prophetic
Vision, dry  and  sapless, detached  from  each
other, and from all connection with the life that
we are now  living upon  earth.  When we receive along with each of these facts the sign
which was given unto Moses, and learn that it
is * I AM which hath sent it unto us, a breath of
* True Passion always passes into the Present; we see this in
preaching and in oratory; even in narrative, when a speaker
warms, he leaves the dry historic manner and appears to describe
what is at present passing under his eyes. Herder says that the
poverty and simplicity of the Hebrew verb, which has scarcely
more than one tense, tends to imprint the language with a highly
poetic and prophetic character, because it brings all things within
the present moment. Most languages, he says, that are rich in
tenses, have perfected them through historic writing; but in the
Hebrew record - an inspired poetry, in which history and prophecy meet —the want of exactness is not felt, and the very absence of precision and certainty tends to bring the now into clearer
relief. What one verse in the prophetic writings relates to us-of




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                  59
life is infused within all that has been formal
and historical: across the statements of the letter,
of which, taken singly and apart, we may have
said that " they are very dry," a spirit passes,
they come together,* and behold, "they live,"
and btand up on their feet an exceeding great
army, fight;ng for and with  us in the battle,
which is like the' one recorded in Chronicles,
)oth behind us and before.
The nominal Christian accepts the facts which
Revelation impart>, and even recognizes, though
but in a vague and indeterminate manner, their
bearing and influence upon his spiritual life and
eternal destiny. Ihe confesses, in a speculative
sense, that these things cannot be spoken against:
as I have said, he belioves the Gospel.  The
experimental Christian believes in it.  To him,
the events with which, Unnker either Covenant,
the records of inspiration acquaint him, though
not mere matters of history, are really such in a
deeper and fuller meaning tiai. we are accustomed to attach to the expression, and he studies
them just (to compare spiritual things with ternPast time, the next predicts of the Future. It is as if the last made
the presence of the thing enduring and etemt (f, while the former part
gives the speech the certainty of past timn, aa if it were all already
fulfilled. Thus the ouneaiss of time strengthens the expression
both ways.
* Ezekiel xxxvii. V.




60        A PRESENT IIEA VEN.
poral) in the spirit in which he would investigate
the history of'the country in which he lives, and
with whose constitution his general well-being is
identified.  As the inhabitant of a great and
free country, he cannot but be aware that, under
a different Past, his present condition and future
prospects would be altogether different. Had
not this battle been fought, this invader repulsed,
this immunity obtained, this charter granted, he
would hold at this moment a less favorable position than that which he now occupies. And
thus are the Constitutions of our Christian
Polity based upon a grand historic Past, from
which the Present draws its rich capabilities, the
Future its blissful certainties; upon which, as
upon a foundation which cannot be shaken, the
kingdoms of grace and glory have been established, and without which each of them would
be still, as to earlier ages, no more than a dream,
a hope, a possibility.
The language of the Apostles is that of men
who, knowing wherein and whereby they stand,
feel and rejoice in all the security of their position. To them, the Gospel, as yet written only
in the life and death and rising again of their
Lord, is a power, an energy, in the strength of
which, in the words of the Prophet Isaiah,* they
* I~riah xxvii. 5.




A PRESENT HEA VEIV.            61
lay hold upon God's strength, and act, and prav,
and prevail. For in each event of our Saviour's
life upon earth —that lively Parable, in which
the Almighty, no longer speaking to His people
by words, has seen fit to act out His good will
and pleasure concerning them - they discern
at once the token, accomplishment, and seal of
some peculiar purpose of God, and as such they
accept, feed upon, and rest in it. We must enter
as deeply as they do into the profound and mysterious connection which exists between the
natural and visible life of Christ upon earth, and
the spiritual and hidden life which the faithful
soul enjoys with Him in God, before we can
understand the tenacity with which they fasten
upon every fact of our Lord's history, and
lay upon each event and incident of His life a
detaining grasp, that will not let it go until it
has blessed them. We never find them contemplating the mystery of Redemption as an exhibition of God's power and mercy, to be gazed into
as by the angels with delighted wonder. This,
they say, hath God done, and for us.  They
acknowledge it to be His work, a work wrought
for and in them, perfect, complete, and lacking
nothing. As all that they desire is to be found
in Christ, " in whom are all things, and by whom
all things consist" (or hold together), we never




62        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
find them drawing the distinction between Doctrine and Practice, which we are so apt to make,
or treating of each apart from the other, as if it
were a matter of separate obligation.  They
know too well in how much all that we are or
can be, the newness and fulness of our life in
God, is wrapped up and involved in a Saviour's
accomplished work, to think of detaching either
principle or precept from the fact from which
each draws its life-blood.
Seeing this truth clearly, that God, hath made
Christ unto us wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption, all their teaching leads
back to Him, in whom, as within a burning
focus, the various manifestations of God's power
and mercy, the glory which He hath in Himself,
the grace which He hath evidenced to us, have
been made to converge.  Since all that was
sometime darkness has now become light in the
Lord, in whom it has pleased the Father of men
and spirits that all fulness should dwell, and
through whom, by the Ministration of the Spirit,
He has willed that we should all receive of that
fulness, they are no longer ignorant of God's
feelings towards them, no longer in doubt as to
His purposes. Within this new and living Way
the Creator and His creature have met, been
reconciled, and been united; the Divine Nature




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              63
has come down to meet the human, the human
nature* has been taken up into the Divine.
Therefore, as I have said, the Apostles recognize
a continual parallel between the events of the
life which Christ lived for us, and those of the
life which we live in Him, and find a counterpart for all that He did and suffered in
the natural body which was prepared for Him,
in what is even now being transacted around
and within them in the mystical body, spoken
of as the fulness of Him which filleth all in all.
In all that Christ has wrought for them, they
discern at once the earnest and the surety of
what He is to work in them; and thus, whether
they would inquire concerning the Will or the
Doctrine, their feet find no rest but in growing
to the blessed steps of their Lord's most holy
life upon earth.
All that the servants possess is derived from
the Master, upon whose hand their eyes wait
continually. Without Him, and independently
of the Work which He has done, they are
and can do nothing; yet with Him, and by
favor of what He has accomplished for them,
they can perform  all things.  Therefore they
take their stand upon this word,-Because.
Because, says St. John, the Word was made
flesh and dwelt among us, of His fulnea we




64         A PRESENT HEA VEN.
have all received, and grace for grace. Because Christ, in this body of our humiliation,
has suffered once for sin, St. Paul admonishes
his converts to reckon themselves to be "dead "
unto it; and because He has taken up the same
body into the life and glory which He had with
the Father from the beginning, he exhorts them
to number themselves among those who, with
their risen Lord, "are alive from  the dead."
All their carefulness, their zeal, their holy anxiety for themselves and others, tends to this one
point, that as the life of God hath been made
manifest to them in Christ Jesus, so may the
life of Jesus be made manifest in their mortal
flesh; so that He who hath raised up the body
of their Lord may raise up their spirits in the
newness of the life which is in Him.  Their
sense of assimilation, of identification with Him,
in whom they live, and war, and triumph, takes
sometimes a strength and intimacy of expression * which we, self-withdrawn farther from the
centre of light, and warmth, and blessedness,
are almost at a loss to understand. Unto these
faithful ones, not only each word which their
* As when St. Paul, in holy exultation, says, " I am crucified
with Christ, nevertheless I live "; adding, to carry out the more
fully his sublime meaning, "Yet not, but Christ liveth in me ";
and speaks of " always bearing about in the body the dying" and
the marks "of our Lord Jesus." -2 Cor. iv. 10; Gal. vi. 17.




A PRESENT HEA VEN.             65
Lord hath spoken, but every deed which He
hath wrought, is even as it were bread upon
which they feed, as in a continual Sacrament,
and set before their hearers the food by which
they are themselves nourished, saying, " Take,
and eat. This is the body which was given for
you, -a body of which not a bone must be
broken."   Of all which their Lord has done
and suffered for them in the flesh, they can
afford to lose nothing; for each event of His
History, taken and received by Faith in Him, is
unto them an outward and visible Sign, through
the power and efficacy of which a corresponding
inward and spiritual grace is conveyed within
the believing soul.
Now, to us these facts of our Lord's history,
taken as mere facts, are as real as they were to
the Apostles; we believe as firmly as they did,
that to reconcile man with his Maker, Christ
Jesus took upon Him our human nature, and as
man and for man, lived, suffered, died, rose,
again, and even now liveth at the right hand of
God. With them we also connect these facts
with the spiritual interests of humanity, and confess that it was for our sins that He died, for our
justification that He rose again.  How comes
it, then, that our faith, as compared with theirs,
has declined into a dry speculative conviction, 
E




66           A PRESENT HEA VEN.
the assent of the understanding rather than the
consent of the heart, - binding us in traditionary
adhesion to the doctrines of the Gospel, rather
than rooting us in that effectual belief through
which these very doctrines live, grow, and unfold within the soul, as principles to be exerted,
powers to  be  used, gifts and  blessings to  be
enjoyed?   How  is it that the Gospel, with the
system of Divinely-appointed relations it discloses, has become, as to its practical purpose
and interest, so much less to us than to them?
Can it be that we imagine our interest in it to
be in any way inferior, and the Christ of whom
it testifies to be in some degree less ours than
theirs? Such an inference might be very naturally  drawn from  the  way in  which  we are
accustomed  to  speak  of our own  position  as
contrasted with that of the Apostles, primitive
worthies, and  even  with  that occupied  by the
saints under the  First Covenant.*   Ordinary
* Our attention is frequently drawn from the pulpit to these
chosen servants of God about whom so much, whether by way
of example or of warning, has been written for our learning; but
the mention of them is seldom, I think, accompanied by a sufficiently ample recognition of the different position which we,
the children of the regeneration, occupy towards God, and of
the fuller privileges and higher responsibilities involved in it.
Our present day is the day which the prophets, kings, and righteous men desired to see, and seeing but afar off, through faith,
were glad,- a day whereof the prophecy is fulfilled, that he who




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                 67
Christians of the present day cannot be expected, we say, to feel and act like these eminent persons.  Yet who that looks into this
matter by the light of Scripture does not see
that to be an ordinary Christian,* a Christian
of the present day, is to possess what the elder
saints desired, to be placed where the Apostles
stood-in Christ   with whom  is neither after
nor before, neither beginning of time nor end
of days?  What was enough for the first Christians will prove sufficient for the last, "to be
found in Him," without whom  we can do nothing; and it is certain (however vaguely we may
allow ourselves to speak upon the subject) that
the Apostles, who, like us, neither possessed
nor could possess anything out of their Saviour,
were in the enjoyment of no one privilege which
we, who are baptized with them by one Spirit
into one body, t do not at this moment enjoy,
and must continue to enjoy, so long as that body,
on the Spirit's express testimony, "is filled with
the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.":
In point, therefore, of access, intimacy, and
union, God has put no difference between us
and them; and yet there is a difference, one
is feeble among God's children reconciled in Christ shall be as
David. (Zech. xii. 8.)
* Note F.     t 1 Cor. xii. 13.  t Eph. i. 22, 23.




68        A PRESENT HEA VEV.
of which we are deeply conscious. If God has
set us where He set them, in heavenly places in
Christ, we know that we do not stand like them,
where He has placed us, or possess, with them,
hat He has given us.  Our actual position is
not, like theirs, identical with our recognized one;
and this we feel and deplore keenly, yet none
the less adapt ourselves to an order of things
which we choose to look upon as necessary,
without pausing to ask ourselves a question
which seems to arise very naturally, Is this
Gospel, so little to us, the same as that which
was so much to them?  Have we received it in
its integrity, accepting that which St. Paul was
so zealous to declare, the whole counsel of God
concerning us? or have we all this time been
unconsciously leaving out some part or parts of
the great system the revealed economy of Grace
discloses? It behooves us to lend a deep attention to these questions. Their practical importance is incalculable, for we know that with God
every means must conduce to its appointed end;
nothing has been made or designed by Him in
vain, and though we cannot as yet discern the
whole of His gracious purpose, nor understand
the divinely-constructed machinery by which He
has seen fit to accomplish it, we know enough
of His doings to be aware, that to work per



A PRESENT HEAVEN.                   69
fectly it must work together,* and if any one
part is left to rust and stiffen, its inaction will
necessarily impede the motion of the rest.
The essential difference between us and the
Apostles-in other words, between historical
and experimental belief —appears to consist in
this, that, in connection with the visible facts of
our Lord's history, they recognize, far more
fully and practically than we do, a great invisible fact.  I mean the presence and the power
of the spiritual agency, the dispenser of the
treasury of heaven, to whom  the human soul
must be indebted for all that it can know or
can receive of God, and through whose inward
working  a Saviour's  outward  work  is made
effectual, by being applied, appropriated, and
brought home to the individual heart and conscience.
The Gospel received in the mere letter can
profit us no more than the Law, but will remain,
like it, an external rule, instructing us in many
things, but imparting nothing; its facts, received
as mere facts, and held as such within the mind
in suspension, lie there dormant and undevel* It behooves us rightly to divide the truth, to set it forth in all
its features, to view it in all its bearings, and from every side; for
every doctrine neglected has a fearful avenging power, and will,
yea, and does, reassert itself. - R. A. SUCKLING.




70        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
oped.  They quicken no pulsation, and exercise
no permeating influence.  Though they carry a
principle of life within them, it is one which
cannot germinate of its own accord, or exert its
energy, save with the aid of that Divine auxiliary, so often likened in Scripture to those
elemental influences-the dew, the rain, the
fire, the wind blowing where it listeth —without whose co-operation no natural process can
be accomplished. "It is the Spirit that giveth
life."  Upon this point Scripture speaks plainly;
and even natural reason, if duly exercised, will
enable us to understand how it is that St. Paul
declares that no man, except through the Spirit
of God, can either receive or know anything of
those "things of God " * which it is the peculiar office of that Spirit to impart. For knowledge, whether its object be tangible or spiritual,
earthly or Divine, can only reach the seat of
consciousness within us, through a medium answering to the conditions of its peculiar nature.
A  natural object must be apprehended by the
aid of the natural senses, an idea must be recognized through the exertion of the intellect, a
spiritual truth attained to through the exercise
of a spiritual faculty. In no other way can
any of these obtain that true recognition which
* 1 Cor. iii.




A PRESENT IIEA VEN.            71
makes them  really our own. We shall all be
ready to confess that no exertion of the intellect can realize, no description, however accurate, convey, the true idea of a color, an odor,
a sound, a flavor. To know what these things
are, we must have seen, smelt, heard, and tasted
them; and as with natural so with spiritual
things. Here, also, we must "taste and see ";
taste before we see, taste in order to see. Our
very perception must partake of the nature of
experience, as all that we can gain otherwise is
but vague and conjectural,- a notion about the
thing, not the knowledge of it.
The Apostles speak as men vho have learnt
the full force of this distinction; and we never
find them confounding things natural and spiritual with each other, or expecting to arrive at
the understanding of the latter by means of any
natural faculty or intellectual process.  They
know that through the seeing eye and the hearing ear man is placed in communication with
the outward world of sense; they are aware,
that through the conceptions of his heart and
mind he can hold communion with the inner
world of thought and of feeling, - those " things
of a man " which, as St. Paul testifies, each man
can realize through an exertion of his own selfconsciousness; but when it is " the things of




72        A PRESENT HIEA VEN.
God" that are in question, they rely no longer
upon the natural faculties and powers, knowing
that these are only to be searched out by " the
spirit that is in man, and through the inspiration
of the Almighty that giveth understanding."
It is through this unction from the Holy One
that they know all things; and it is somewhat
remarkable that we never find the Apostles
grounding their confidence upon a privilege to
which we are often disposed to attribute it,- I
mean the fact of their having known our Saviour
in His human person. To those who are conscious of possessing their Lord, it is little merely
to have seen Him; and with them the external
a iew is so merged in the sense of inward realization, that St. Paul, in describing the intimacy
and fulness of the life in which all things are
made new, exclaims, "Yea, though we have
known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth
know we Him no more."  To understand the
bearing of these memorable words, we must
drink so deeply into the spirit in which they are
uttered, as to be able to meet their speaker in
his explicit statement, that no man can say (in a
saving and effectual sense) " that Jesus is the
-Lord but by the Holy Ghost"; and this, because any acknowledgment of Him  that rests
on merely outward evidence must necessarily




A PRESENT HEAVEN.             73
fall far short of that good confession, for the
utterance of which St. Peter's Master pronounced him blessed. That, on the Master's
own testimony, was the expression of a deep
inward conviction wrought by God Himself
upon the soul; and it was not because Christ
had been manifested to St. Peter in the flesh,
but because He had been revealed to him in the
Spirit, that he was able to answer our Lord's
question, " Whom sayest thou that I am?" * in
the words which drew forth this comment:
"Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh
and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but
my Father which is in heaven."  Now it is
evident, upon the warrant of these words, that
the Apostles, to whom we ascribe so many superior advantages, were exactly in our own position in this one respect, that they could know
nothing except they received it from heaven, -
could learn nothing truly, even of Him whose
words they listened to, and whose steps they
followed in, except they were taught it of God.
Without a spiritual enlightenment, even when
they looked upon their Lord, their eyes were
hlden that they should not know Him; without
a spiritual approximation, even when they sat
with Him in the house, and walked with Him in
* Matt. xvi. 15.
4




74        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
the way, they were not really nigh Him. Their
need was as great as is ours of that inner illumination, that internal contact, without which it
would have availed them little that they had
seen with their eyes, and handled with their
hands, of the Word of life; for all this might
have been, and yet have left them without that
knowledge of a Saviour which is life and
peace,- have left them, too, among the number
of those to whom, after having lived in their
presence, and taught in their streets, He will
none the less one day profess, -" I never knew
you."
For it was not every one who saw our Lord
upon earth that saw, with righteous Simeon, His
salvation. While many thronged and pressed
upon Him in the crowd, few really touched Him;
and the Scriptures make it evident, that among
the multitudes who witnessed His mighty and
merciful deeds, were many persons " who seeing
did not understand," and remained in a state of
unbelief not to be overcome by any outward
testimony, even that of a miracle. Yet because
they saw his works, and in some cases were
themselves the subjects of them, they must
have believed in them, as matters of fact, and
must also, on the evidence of such facts, have
believed in Him, as a Being endowed with won



A PRESENT HEAVEN.              75
derful and superhuman powers.  How then was
it that they did not, at the same time, believe to
the saving of their souls? The answer to this
will go far to explain to us how it is that so
many among us believe, and in a certain sense
understand our Bibles, yet, for want of a spiritual insight and appropriation, fail, while we
accept the fact, to receive along with it the lifeimparting principle it encloses. What the Word
spoken (whether by word or sign) was to them,
the Word written is to us, and neither can profit,
so long as it is received in the word only. They
had the fact, and we have its record; and either,
to be made effectual to the heart and conscience
of any one of us, requires to be brought home
to that heart and conscience, by the Spirit of
demonstration and of power.
We love our Bibles, and we think that we
believe them: let us ask ourselves this question,
Can persons believe the Bible who do not believe what the Bible tells them?  In other
words, Can they believe the Bible who do not believe in anything else?  For while we rest in
the Bible, to the exclusion of any other testimony, the Bible itself declares most solemnly
in favor of another Witness, to whom it appeals
as an evidence of its own truth; and if we
believe what the Apostles, speaking through the




76        A PRESENT HEA VEN.
Gospel, tell us, we must also accept the authority
to which they refer us, and to which they were
referred by their Lord: " When the Comforter
is come, whom I will send unto you from the
Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me.
For He shall receive of mine, and shall show it
unto you." *  Now, if they who had been with
their Master from  the beginning, who were
themselves appointed to be His historic witnesses, had yet need of a spiritual Witness,
upon whose evidence and through whose spiritual monitions they were to receive their Lord
more fully, and learn of Him more truly than
they had yet done, how can we afford to dispense with its testimony?  If the facts were
not enough for them, how shall the record of
the facts be enough for us?  "It is the Spirit
that beareth Witness "; and so long as Belief
is based, as might have been with the Apostles,
on the evidence of the senses, or rests, as in
the case of so many among ourselves, upon the
written testimony of others, we are but receiving the Witness of men, the Witness of God
being greater: " And he that believeth hath the
Witness in himself."
Here, then, we find the point of departure
* John xv. and xvi.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.             77
between us and the Apostles. Our belief, compared with theirs, is dead, formal, and historical,
because they have attained to what we too often
miss, —a point of union between the work
done and the work doing. While they rest in
Christ's work, they rejoice in the Spirit's work,
which is unto them tie seal of its perfect accomplishment in their hearts,-the earnest of
grace, and the promise of glory. To them, the
Word spoken from Heaven has been answered
by the work wrought through its efficacy upon
earth; they have found all the promises of God
in Christ Yea, and in Him Amen.  Nothing
has been declared which has not also been confirmed. To the Yea of God —the let it be,
and it was —spoken in our Saviour's accomplished work of deliverance, of which, upon the
Cross, He testified that it was finished, the
Amen     o let it be —has been returned from
the faithful soul, bearing witness to the salvation
wrought within it through the power of the
Yea. Therefore, while we are all doubt and
hesitation, not knowing whether or not we may
appropriate this privilege or claim this promise,
the Apostles use the language of men who know
the certainty of the things wherein they have
been instructed.  What they have seen and
heard is their guaranty, as the Bible is ours,




78        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
for the facts upon which their relations with
God are founded; and when they pass from
these facts to their application to the individual
soul, we find them no less confident, and this
because they have received not only gifts, but
with them that which seems, in the case of any
intelligent Being, essential to the true possession
and use of them; I mean the knowledge that
they are our own.  "We have received," says
St. Paul,* " of the Spirit to know the things
which have been freely given us of God "; and
St. John testifies for himself and his converts,t
that "an understanding has been given them
both to know Him that is true, and they that
are in Him that is true."
As He that beareth record is true, so is He
that beareth witness true also; and having received the faithful and true Witness, God's
testimony to His own Work, they would as
soon think of doubting that which they had
seen, the fact of our Lord's personal existence,
as of doubting that which they have felt, their
own personal interest in Him; they would as
soon think of calling their Saviour's merits in
question, as of hesitating with regard to their
own participation in them.  That they are in
Hiri, is a fact as clearly established as that He
* 1 Cor. ii. 12.      f I John v. 20.




A PRESENT HIEA VEN.            79
is; and this confidence has not been brought
about, as we sometimes imagine, both as regards
them and other eminent Christians, by way of
any extraordinary Revelation, but is founded
upon the evidence which, in the case of any
merely natural event, we should esteem at once
the simplest and the surest,  they know that
the Work is wrought for and in them, simply
because they experience its effects; they feel
that something has been brought about within
their souls which could not have been accomplished but by the presence of a power, the
influence of an agency. Being conscious that
it is not with them as it has been, they compare
the affections, tempers, and desires they now
experience with those which had possession of
them while they yet walked in the darkness of
the natural understanding; they rest, in short,
in a felt and experienced work.
And here I would draw attention to another
deeply interesting fact, and wish to do so the
more particularly, because when a view, however scriptural, fails to obtain general reception,
it is usual to charge it with being unreal, visionary, tending to no practical issue. It becomes,
therefore, very important for us to observe that
the Apostles, boldly as they speak for themseles
and the Churches to which they ministered,




80            A PRESENT HEA VEN.
of conscious possessing, conscious partaking of
Christ, never rest this possession and partaking
upon sensations, impressions, visions, or revelations of the Lord (abundantly as in these last
respects they had whereof to glory), but ground
it upon the turning of the heart to God,* as
evidenced in a renewed affection, a moral renovation, a  spiritual  change.   They  know  that
* Few Christians appear to have enjoyed such abounding, even
overwhelming, manifestations of the Divine presence and favor,
as fell to the share of the heavenly-hearted Brainerd. In youth
he would pass whole days in the wild solitudes of the forest, in a
state of ecstasy, in which he was insensible to the flight of time,
to hunger, and every impression of an outward kind, and during
the whole course of his ardent evangelic life, there were seasons,
not unfrequent, of which, through the abundance of the revelations, he might have said, with the Apostle, that whether they
were passed in the body, or out of the body, was known not to
him, but God. Yet it is recorded that, " There was no sight of
heaven in his imagination, with gates of pearl and golden streets,
and a vast multitude with shining garments; no vision of the
book of life opened with his name written in it: no sudden suggestion of words or promise of Scripture, as then immediately
spoken or sent to him, no new revelations, or strong suggestions
of secret facts. But the way he was satisfied of his own good
estate was by feeling within himself the lively actings of a holy
temper and heavenly disposition, the vigorous exercise of that
divine love which casts out fear." Also, on the subject of his
missionary labors, he says: " I look upon it as one of the glories
of this work of grace among the Indians, and a special evidence
of its being from a Divine influence, that there has been till now
no.visionary notions, trances, and imaginations intermixed with
tho4 rational convictions of sin, and solid consolations which
numbers have experienced, and might I have had my desire, there
had been no appearance of anything of this nature at all."




A PRESENT HEA VEN.             81
they are Christ's by the Spirit which He has
given them,-a Spirit which, being like unto
His own, works in their spirits a holy likemindedness with their Lord.  Without this,
they might possess all gifts, and understand all
mysteries, and yet be nothing. St. Paul's experience works hope, and he knows that this is
a sure and certain hope, a hope that maketh not
ashamed, not because he has been caught up
into the third heaven, and heard in paradise.
unspeakable words not lawful for a man to utter,
but because the love of God is shed abroad in
his heart by the Holy Giost.* St. John knows
that he has passed from  death unto life, not
because, being in the Spirit, he has seen and
talked with angels and with One greater than
they, but because he loves the brethren.t And
just as in our Lord's outward ministry of Redemption, the works that He dia bore witness
of Him that God had sent Him, so in His inner
ministry of Sanctification do signs and wonders
accompany them that believe. And, as in the
case of our Saviour's miracles, the work of
power bore witness to the presence of power,
so is the presence of grace attested by the work
of grace. In each case an appeal is made o
something accomplished - evident - to be seen
* Rom. v. 6.         t 1 John iii. 14.
4*                       F




82        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
and known of all men.  The Spirit as well as
the Word says, " Believe that I am He, for the
very works' sake," for the sake and on the testimony of love, peace, righteousness, and joy in
the Holy Ghost. My works- in their way as
manifest as the works of the flesh which they
displace. " If I do not the works which none
other can do, believe not that God hath sent
me."
It is the peculiar mission of the Holy Spirit
to lead us into the knowledge and certainty of
our happy estate in Christ, -a mission on which
His flame of Comforter seems founded.  " In
that day," says our Lord, speaking of the coming of Him  for whose sake it was expedient
that He himself should leave us, "ye shall know
that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in
you "; * and I think it is greatly because we do
not strive after the realization of this promise,
and seem, indeed (speaking generally), to have
resigned even the expectation of its fulfilment
within us, that our religion has become a heartless, unreal thing, without grasp upon the truths
it professes to embrace.
I know that to speak of things heavenly, just
as we should do of things earthly, on the ground
of simple experience; to testify to a Saviour's
* John xiv. 20.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              83
love as something which has been felt; to rejoice in conscious pardon, conscious renewal,
conscious acceptance in the Beloved, is to transgress the limits of that conventional acceptation
of the Gospel to which Christians are satisfied
to restrict themselves. Such views, it is said,
are likely to lead to error and self-deception.
In short, they are dangerous, -a word which,
being used for the purpose of dismissing the
subject summarily, is rot accustomed to wait
for an answer, or one might be readily found
for it in the fact, that there is no one doctrine
of the Gospel, not even excepting those which
are most essential to salvation, which may not
prove, and has not proved, dangerous, when
forced into undue prominence, by being taken
in isolation from other truths of kindred importance.  Besides, in this case we are not the
judges. An inquiry raised upon any point upon
which God has been pleased to reveal Himself
in the inspired Word, must not proceed upon
merely prudential grounds. The question is not,
Is this (according to our own notions) a safe
view of the subject? but, Is it the scriptural,
the true one? Can we deny it without depriving a large portion of Scripture of its meaning
and coherency, or ignore it without numbering
ourselves among those who handle the Word of




84         A PRESENT HEAVEN.
God deceitfully, and draw on themselves a real
danger, even the judgment pronounced against
those who " diminish aught " from  His inviolable testimonies?  I do not -understand me
well -mean to say, that faith, in order to be
sincere and saving, must necessarily reach the
measure of the confidence I have been speaking
of.  The song of holy trust and triumph in
God, which none but the redeemed can learn,
is most truly " a song of degrees "; and a faith
which effectually secures participation in the
merits of our Lord may yet come short of the
faith which assures of that participation.  I
would only urge, that this clearer perception
should, upon the testimony of Scripture, be
believed in as a possible attainment, and then
prayed for, striven for, lived for; for the holy
gift of assurance is the reward, as an old divine
expresses it, of " exact walking ": it is a treasure imparted only to those who keep faithfully
the good things committed to their charge. It
is God's usury upon His own money.
We should at least, as you say to me in one
of your letters, expect the fulfilment of our Redeemer's so often repeated promise, -the reward
of faith and obedience,* - that He would mani* Our Lord's answer to the question of Judas (John xiv. 22, 23),
taken with the many other sayings in which He makes the abid



A PRESENT HEAVEN.                         85
fest Himself to His people after another manner
than  He  does unto  the world.   Believing  this
promise, should we not be urgent after its accomplishment, in that spiritual revelation of
Christ, which is to the faithful soul the performance of the things in which it has believed on
the  evidence  of  the  outward  word?   As no
man knoweth  the Father but the  Son, and  he
to whom  the  Son will reveal Him, should  we
not pray  that the  Father may  in  the  Son  be
manifested towards us more and more, as nothing short of the sweetness of such a disclosure
can engage our hearts to love and serve Him
with that perfect love which casteth out fear,*
ing in His love, and in that of the Father, dependent on the keeping of the commandment, places obedience before us in a light in
which, I think, we have need to consider it more fully than has
been yet done. I mean as being a direct means of grace, a way
wherein, as by prayer and the other divinely-appointed ordinances, we approach unto God, and draw out our souls after
Him; as a tree, while it lives by its root, breathes and feeds itself through every leaf which the root nourishes. Many disputes
have been raised among men as to the difference between faith
and obedience. It is probable they are identical with God, to
whom obedience, that part of our life in Him which is seen, and
faith, the part which is unseen, are alike open and manifest. It
is evident that an action performed or refrained from, with a reference to the Divine pleasure, is as eloquent unto God as a prayer
or thanksgiving, and as likely to be answered by Him with blessing. For to the eye of love, the deeds and gestures that express
it are as intelligible as its spoken words, and no less acceptable
and sweet.
* St. Bernard.




86        A PRESENT HEA VEN.
" which feels not the burden of the day, which
counts not the cost of the labor, which works
not for wages, being itself the most powerful
motive of action "? And in urging these questions, I am less occupied with what I believe to
be necessary to the salvation of our souls, than
with what I know to be essential * to their comfort. It is upon the Saviour's work, and not
upon the Spirit's witness, that salvation depends.
Yet they are the happiest Christians who, while
they rest in the Day of Redemption, rejoice in
that whereby they are sealed unto it, with joy
unspeakable and full of glory. For without the
witness of the Comforter we can know nothing
of love, and joy, and peace in believing, as
these happy and holy affections depend for their
existence and support upon evidence which it is
His office to impart. Without the security which
this communicates, there can be no sweetness in
love, no foundation for joy, no possibility of
peace; and until we receive this witness we
must live, as so many of us are content to do,
a starved life, joyless, unloving, unassured, as
unworthy of the privileges in which Christianity
places us, as it is of the glorious prospects to
which, on the warrant of those privileges, it
conducts us.  "To them that believe, Christ is
* See Note G.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                        87
precious."   How  comes it, then, that we  are
content to rest the great matter of our personal
interest in Him upon evidence that would not
satisfy us in the case of any temporal possession,
-far. less so in that of any earthly affection, -
content to remain  without the  tokens  of His
presence, without the marks of His love, without the  consciousness  of  His  indwelling  and
abiding?      Christ has given  Himself for us,
* To return again to this saying, "If a man love me, he will
keep my words, and my Father will love him; and we will
come unto him, and make our abode with him," -do they not
attach an unspeakable present reward to faith and obedience, a
prize only to be attained through their joint exercise, though
freedom and acceptance may be won, as by the thief on the cross,
through faith alone? Well may this be called the prize of our
high calling, if it were possible to express in words what that
prize is,- what that promised manifestation,- what that habitual
indwelling, - we might hope to win more of our fellow-creatures
to strive for it; but it is among the things which it is not lawful
(possible?) for a man to utter. There is something in this which
words —even though, like these of Christ's, they be spirit and
they be life -can never fully express. It is a revelation made
by degrees to those who seek it, by a close and humble walk
with God, in prayer and in the keeping of the commandment.
Many sincere Christians, doubtless, fall short of it. Many, indeed, know not that there is such a prize, and have but faint perceptions of anything to be striven for beyond what they already
possess. It seems to me that there is a treasure hid in such sayings as these, " I will manifest myself unto him," " we will make
our abode with him," which few among us even guess at. We
read the words as we might walk over the turf under which there
is hidden gold. It is a great matter, however, to have been made
aware of the existence of the treasure, though we may as yet
have made small way towards taking possession of it.- J. E. B.




88        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
yet we do not know whether He is our own or
not, and we are content to remain in uncertainty. Yet the Good Shepherd, speaking of
the sheep for whom He laid down His life,
and for whom He has taken it again, says, "I
know my sheep, and am known of mine," -the
Church, for which Christ died, and for and in
which He even now liveth, has One within her
that uses no hesitating language. The Spirit
has spoken for the Bride, "My beloved is mine,
and I am  lis."  Where there is uncertainty,
there will be all that coldness and indecision
which has rendered the epithet of the Saxon
king, "the Unready," so mournfully appropriate
to Christians in general. We are weighing our
claims when we ought to be urging them, proving our armor when we ought to be fighting in
it, seeking our Lord, when firmer, truer spirits
would be saying, " I have found Him whom my
soul loveth," and this because we have not been
careful to pierce into the blessedness of that
" mystery" of devout consolation, without which
prayer sinks into an exercise, obedience into
taskwork, and the sacraments are degraded into
a symbol, - Christ in us, the Hope of glory.
And if Christ be indeed within us, if we
are truly among the number of those who love
His appearing, we shall not long remain without




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                  89
a sign of it; it being as natural for Him to impart an evidence of His favor, as it is for the
human soul to require it.  " What sign showest
Thou?" the Jews asked of Him  upon earth, a
question only made objectionable through the
cavilling spirit in which it was uttered, for it is
necessary to the mind of Man, and a part of its
reasonable nature, to seek to establish itself in
the certainty of whatever it would fain confide
in as true, or rest in as desirable. Wherever
interest may be excited or affection awakened, it
will demand some evidence, suitable to the nature
of the object concerned, to show that the affection is reciprocated, the interest assured; and I
think in the case of our dearest interests we are
much the losers, by not acting as simply as we
should do in any affair of common life, and seeking for the proof of our acceptance with God,
exactly where God has bid us look for it. No
man, says our Lord Himself, can do the works
of God, except God be with him; and His
Apostle * repeats the same truth  in another
form of words when he makes the keeping of
the commandment a signt unto ourselves, an
* And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His
commandments...... Whoso keepeth His word, in him verily
is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in Him.
(1 John ii. 3, 5.)
t A sign so sure, so deeply satisfactory in its nature, that I




90            A PRESENT HEAVEN.
evidence of our standing in that grace through
which alone it can be performed. While some,
therefore, altogether ignore the witness of the
Spirit, and others place it in something vague
and intangible, an enthusiastic feeling, an elevated impression, which they are dissatisfied if
they do not find, and finding, scarcely know
whether this is indeed what they have sought
or not, the testimony of God stands sure where
He has placed it. In the witness of affiliation,
sometimes find it hard to understand why we should ask for any
other. I feel a sort of surprise in hearing Christians expressing
a desire for the restoration of the Church's miraculous gifts, or
wishing, as individuals, for visible answers to prayer, or other
sensible consolations of the Spirit. It seems so plain, that the
remaining faithful to Divine grace in that which is least —say
in being able to maintain a truly-loving temper under unjust
provocation - is a fuller, more intimate evidence of continuance'in God's love, than would be shown in the power of raising a
dead body to life, or even in that more coveted power of being
employed by God to raise up a dead soul. " For rejoice not that
the spirits are made subject unto you, but rejoice rather that
your names are written in Heaven."  Let us rejoice in that we
are accepted and renewed in Christ, who has also given us the
earnest of His Spirit, making us of one heart, one way with Him,
to show us that we are indeed His.
Covet earnestly the best gifts. The passive graces, patience,
meekness, self-abnegation, these are the miracles of the New Covenant. While many of the active virtues are merely the natural
energies transfigured and changed into a higher likeness, - the
earthly made to bear the image of the heavenly, - these are most
truly
"u Unfed by Nature's soil."
Their root itself is in Christ, and in Him is their fruit found.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                   91
given in the Spirit of grace and of adoption,
whereby, in the conversion of the heart unto
God, we cry unto Him, Abba, Father; in the
witness of assimilation, given in the mind renewed after Christ's likeness, in righteousness
and true holiness, after the Image in which it
was first created.
And here I might quit a subject which it is
impossible to exhaust, were it not that I desire
to explain myself more fully upon a point connected with it, upon which, as yet, I have only
touched incidentally. I feel that few Christians
will agree in what I have said, upon our equality
with the Apostles in respect of privileges and
capabilities in Christ, and we are slow to believe
in this equality, or to admit the scriptural inferences on which it is founded, from a disposition,
very common, I think, among us, to look upon
the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit as being
something greater and more Godlike than its
ordinary graces: yet it does not require a very
deep examination of Scripture * to prove that
the sanctifying grace still enjoyed by the Church,
and which can never depart from  it, is a richer
* We see that the disciples of our Lord had received from Him
wonder-working powers at a time when St. John expressly tells
us (chap. vii. 39) that the Holy Ghost was not yet given. Yet
the Seventy could then return with joy, declaring that the devils
were subject to them. Compare also with this the twelfth chapter




92          A PRESENT HEAVEN.
and more heavenly gift, containing in it a fuller
participation in the Divine nature, than the miraculous gifts granted to the Apostles, in order
to promote its first establishment. For it is evident that these last may be possessed, as in the
case of Balaam, and many other persons instanced in the Old and New Testaments, without that vital union of the soul with its Maker
which is essential to the communication of the
latter. Balaam saw the vision of the Almighty,
and beheld the star arising out of Jacob, but the
Day-star, as Edwards * observes, never arose in
his heart, —he had an outward revelation, but
no spiritual discovery of Christ.   His knowledge, being  exterior only, wrought no  moral
change within, and, in the midst of extraordinary mental illumination, he remained an infidel
at heart, even while enjoying an outward communion with the God whom  he neither loved
nor honored, nor, except by constraint, obeyed.
The case of this man may be considered in
some degree exceptional, because, under both
Covenants, the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit
of First Corinthians, where St. Paul, after enumerating the various extraordinary gifts then enjoyed by believers, concludes by
saying, " Yet show I unto you a more excellent way," and goes
on to unfold the nature of a grace, - even charity. - See Wes
ley's Thirty-ninlh Sermon.
* Edwards on the Religious Affections.




A PRESENT HEAVEV.                     93
have been in general accompanied by a measure
of grace in proportion; but other instances * are
not wanting to show that these occasional influences of the Holy Ghost are not necessarily attended with that communication of it through
which we become partakers of the Divine Nature, -  a  communication  as far transcending
them  as the permanent exceeds the temporary,
or the essential surpasses the merely accidental.
An over-estimation of the extraordinary workings of the Spirit -sometimes manifested in an
uneasy anxiety for their recall - betrays that we
have not yet arrived at a due appreciation of its
crowning work, the imparting of its own nature
to the human soul, to which these outward endowments subserved merely as means to an end.
And  here  we shall do well to bestow  some
thought on  a wonderful and little understood
text, t "He  that believeth on me, the- works
* Instances such as those of Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, and
Saul, men of irregular lives and unconverted hearts, yet spoken
of as being, at certain times and upon extraordinary occasions,
under the immediate influence of the " Spirit of God," are enough
to prove that a temporary delegation of God's power can be bestowed, without imparting that communication of His Nature
which is inseparable from the lowliest operation of Sanctifying
grace. The New Testament furnishes an eminent example of
this in the case of Caiaphas, who, being High-Priest, prophesied,
in virtue of his office, of the glory of Him whom he was even
then taking counsel to destroy.
t John xiv. 12.




94        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
that I do shall he do also, and greater works than
these shall he do, because I go unto my Father."
In these words, "the works that I do," our
Saviour alludes to His visible miracles exerted
in the Kingdom of Nature, and exhibiting His
rule and sovereignty over it. These, in splendor and variety, were never surpassed by the
Apostles; and as the degree of power over
material things which the Lord of Nature was
pleased to delegate to His first servants was not
long continued to the Church, it has become
evident that the outward Signs and Tokens
which accompanied the founding of our Saviour's
Empire on earth do not form part of the economy by which that empire is sustained, and that
it is not in the Kingdom of Nature, the kingdom
without us, that we are to look for the fulfilment
of the promise. It is, therefore, in Christ's other
kingdom, even the Kingdom of Grace within us,
and in the greater works that belong to it, that
we must expect to see its abundant realization.
Here, through the Spirit of God, acting with
Man's spirit in the sphere of ordinary Christian
exertion, the blind may still receive their sight,
the lepers be cleansed, the spiritually dead be
raised to life; and why are these works greater,
inasmuch as spirit transcends matter, than any
outward miracle even now possible?  Why are




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              95
all things, falling within these boundaries that
God hath appointed, possible to him that believeth? Because, saith our Lord, I go to my Father;
go to receive gifts for men, yea, even for the rebellious, that the Lord their God may dwell
among them; - go to make and to keep open a
Highway for the people whom I have redeemed;
go to pray for them, to strengthen them, to provide them with an indwelling Comforter, -the
Spirit of Truth and of Peace, the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation, the Spirit of Love and of
Power. If ye loved me, or yourselves in me,
ye would rejoice, because I go unto the Father.
Until, therefore, it is proved that the Son is
now less present with the Father than when He
first ascended up to Him, the Spirit less present
with the Church now than when it was at first
bestowed, it seems difficult to discover what advantage, as regards the things that belong to life
and godliness, the primitive age possessed over
our own, or upon what grounds we accustom
ourselves to contemplate the piety, zeal, and love
of the first Christians, as we might look upon
some old master-work in painting or stained
glass, —an excellence rather to be marvelled
at than attained to. Yet we have no need to
envy their privileges and endowments, only to use
our own. They were in possession of no secrets




96           A PRESENT HEAVEN.
to which we have not now  the key; and if we
knew  what the true Gift of God  is, and felt in
how much all of an outward kind that even He
has to bestow upon us, is exceeded by that access to His Presence and union with His Nature, which it lies within the faithful acceptance
and use of our ordinary Christian privileges to
impart,* we should confess that they who have
the Giver have all, and need not mourn over the
withdrawal of any particular gift. We regret
the things which have been taken away, chiefly
through our imperfect recognition of the things
which remain.   Though  miracles, tongues, and
prophesyings have ceased, " now abideth" Faith,
* "One standard of life," says Neander, " applies to all Christians; the difference, as regards the reception of God's truth, between the inspired Prophet and the ordinary believer is one of
degree, not of kind."
And it is surely very instructive to observe how much stress
the Apostles lay upon that which is general, how little upon that
which is peculiar, in their own position in Christ, - how simply
they place their converts just where they stand themselves. As
men before whom a great work has been set by God, they know
that they have been endowed by Him with eminent gifts and
graces, and to this St. Paul occasionally testifies with devout
thankfulness, as when he magnifies his office. Yet even such an
office seems but a small thing to one who, being joined unto the
Lord, knows what it is to be of one Spirit with Him and His.
" There are diversities of operations, but one Lord." It matters
little whether a member's office appears more or less honorable,
whether he be foot or hand, so long as he is of the Body, living on
its fulness, and growing with its growth. " And we," says St.
Paul, " are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones."




A PRESENT HEAVEN.             97
Hope, Charity; * and how much, inasmuch asthe moral is more noble than the material, is a
grace better than a gift! How much does the
House, even Sanctification, or the renewal of
man's body, soul, and spirit unto God, exceed
in glory that by means of which it was builded!
The outward exhibitions of God's providence
are like the strong wind which rends the mountains,- like the earthquake and the fire, they
declare His Majesty and Awfulness, they show
us that the Lord passes by,t but HE HIMSELF
is in the still small voice.
God Himself is there. Does not the knowledge of this, in the fact that the Almighty, in
the communication of the Holy Spirit, imparts
His own nature to the human soul, wonderfully
extend and deepen the sense of our spiritual relations with Him, and give a yet fuller meaning
to our Lord's saying, " Whatsoever ye shall ask
in my name, believing, ye shall #ceive "?
Believing, ye shall receive all things, even God
Himself. For even as earthly fathers, of such
things as they have, give good gifts unto their
children, even so will our Heavenly Father,
because He can bestow nothing greater, impart
Himself to those in whom in His one beloved
Son He is well pleased. God, who so loved the
* 1 Cor. xiii.          t 1 Kings xix.
5                       G




98        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
world that He gave His only begotten Son to
die for it, that the world through Him might be
saved, communicates through the Spirit that
love which was manifested in the Son;* and
this communication is set before us in Scripture
as the great object of prayer -may we not say
that it is the final object of all prayer, the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel St. Paul
spoke of, making its every gift and promise our
own?  And if the gift — that which our Heavenly Father will give to them that ask Himis the object of all prayer, is not its increase -
that which He will make to abound more and
more in them that serve Him- the object of all
endeavor?  While from him that hath notfrom him who possesses not that which is his
own-shall be taken away, gradually perhaps,
but surely, even that which he hath, until the
light that is in him, his portion of the true light
which lightened every man that cometh into
the world, is turned into darkness, -" To him
that hath shall be given, and he shall have
abundance."  He shall receive of gifts without
measure as they are without price. * He shall be
satisfied with the plenteousness of God's house,
and shall drink of its pleasures as out of the
river: " Eat, 0 friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, 0 beloved."
* 1 John iv. 9.




IV.
THE GOSPEL RECEIVED PROPHETICALLY.
"Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring
Christ down from above." —ROM. x. 6.,MONG  the truths which Revelation
makes known to us, there are some
which so directly approve themselves
to our human consciousness, so meet
its inner wants, so satisfy its upward aspirations,
that the soul, cheered by the sunshine they cast
round them, is apt to repose in it with a too exclusive complacency. And among these divinely established facts I know not one to which the
heart of Man, wounded by the sorrows, and
wearied with the troubles of the present life,
has responded with a wider or more universal
consent than has been accorded to the scriptural
testimony upon which the happiness of the dead
who die in the Lord is established.  To the
Voice which has proclaimed them  "blessed,"




100       A PRESENT IIEA VEN.
the Spirit has made answer in a "yea" as fervent as earth ever sent back to heaven.
"Yea, it is well with them, their course is finished,
For them there is no longer any future."
We know that they have passed into a state,
waiting for whose perfection, not only we, who
have the First Fruits of the Spirit, but the
whole of God's natural creation, groan and travail together in pain, —a state wherein they know
even as they are known, and love even as they
are loved,- a state wherein they have arrived
at that full " apprehension" of Christ which His
most favored servants upon earth have confessed
that they must still reach after. Yet I think,
while it is impossible in thought or word or
prayer to dwell with too much delight upon the
coming in of that which is perfect, we should be
careful in doing so to remember that the Promise of the Future, fondly as we are inclined to
rest upon it, is simply contingent upon that
which it only seems to exceed in glory, —the
unspeakable gift vouchsafed to us in the Present.  We must not allow a shadow, although
it be the shadow of good things to come, to
eclipse, even for a moment, the substance of good
things already obtained.  The promise grows
out of the gift; and that gift is " Christ in us,"
out of which the hope of glory, its exceeding




A PRESENT HEAVEN.            101
and eternal weight, unfolds by way of natural
development.
" He that hath the Son hath life ";-a deepened sense of this truth would work within us a
dissatisfaction with the vague impressions which,
upon many points connected with death and the
future state, have too much taken the place of
Gospel realities among us. In explaining what
I now mean, I need only draw your attention to
the manner in which, in those unpremeditated
expressions which reveal our real sentiments far
more clearly than any guarded statement of
opinion, we are accustomed to refer to the separation of the soul and body. As Christians we
permit ourselves, upon this awful subject, to use
language strangely inconsistent with our name
and profession, - language which, if reduced to
its true sense and value, would go far to make it
appear that we had chosen death, not Christ for
our Saviour, and which, even under every allowance for the vagueness of popular expression,
betrays an ignorance of the nature and conditions of spiritual life, that leaves us, in the very
heart of our Christian privileges, in a sort of
Jewish Estate, wherein, as if unsatisfied with
Him who is already come, we seem to be yet
looking for another. Nothing is so common as
to hear Death spoken of as the entrance to a




102       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
better life,* nor is it unusual even from the pulpit to listen to expressions which imply that the
soul, so long as it remains united to its weaker
partner, must inevitably partake of its imperfection, to a degree which draws its capacity for
spiritual attainments and enjoyments within very
narrow limits.
True it is that so long as we continue in the
body we have yet to wait for that body's full redemption,t anticipating which the natural creation and the regenerated spirit of man groan
together, "being burdened."  The " earnest ex-.
pectation" even of the natural heart impels it to
hope and onward looking, far more does that of
the renewed nature urge it upon the thought of
final deliverance from a bondage yet not wholly
broken, a contradiction yet not fully overcome.
He that is dead is freed from sin. Yet we must
never forget that not only Immortality but Life
has been brought to light by the Gospel, and we
ought jealously to guard against whatever tends
to invest it with a promissory, and, so to speak,
prophetic aspect, by transferring its cardinal
benefits to a future period and remote scene of
existence; and thus, by implication, deprives the
meritorious satisfaction of our Saviour - the One
Foundation upon which Scripture authorizes us
* See Note H.          t Romans viii. 23.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                       103
to build up our whole spiritual life - of the nature of a real and  effected  work.*   When we
look to Death to admit us to privileges which
are already conferred upon us in the blood of
reconciliation, we imply that this full, perfect,
and sufficient Sacrifice, like the Legal offerings
which prefigured it, does not contain within it
that which can make the comers thereto perfect.
We take the  Key from  off the shoulder of the
true Eliakim, " who openeth and no man shutteth," whenever we look to death to subdue, as
by some magical process, an enmity which Christ
has already taken away, and to effect a reconciliation which, by One offering, He has perfected
forever.  When we speak  as if we  expected a
merely natural event, such as the dissolution
of our bodily forces, to exert some mysterious
* Wherever there is a transference of the Blessings of the
Gospel to a Future time, as wherever there is a limitation of
them in the Present, there exists, as I observed in my Second
Letter, an unsuspected disposition to bring down the Atonement
from a Reality to a Type, - to reduce it from something done, to
something merely foreshown and promised. Yet it is not, like
the Patriarch, " in a figure," that the Christian must receive that
Lord, who, when he ascended up on high, and led captive our
Race's long Captivity, received for us men, not promises, but
gifts. As He that dwells among us is alive forevermore, so are
all the benefits included in His Work and in His Abiding, real,
living, and immediate, and the Blessings of the New Covenant,
of which He is the Minister, are in the strictest sense as temporal
— that is, as surely our own in this present life - as were the
Blessings of the Elder one.




104       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
influence upon the relations on which the life of
the esoul depends, we only prove that we have
not yet, even in thought, probed to the deepsunken foundation of all spiritual vitality. We
betray the same confusion of spiritual with natural'existence, and the same inability to distinguish between each in its separate province,
which made Nicodemus ask, when urged to enter into a new and higher life, "How can a man
enter a second time into his mother's womb, and
be born?"  Our Lord's answer places the distinction in the clearest light: —
" That which is born of the flesh' is flesh.
That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not, therefore, that I said unto thee, Ye must
be born again."
" That which is born of the flesh is flesh,"a natural process is sufficient for a natural end,
but it can go no farther. A spiritual operation
demands for its accomplishment a spiritual energy. As none can enter into God's natural
kingdom, or partake of the life which belongs to
it, without passing through the appointed channel
of natural birth, so is it, by analogy, with every
one that is born of the Spirit. None can enter
into the kingdom of grace, or become a partaker
of its spiritual life, but by means of the processes
and conditions upon which it has been made to




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                 105
depend.  To set these two states of existencethe life through which man becomes a living
soul, and the life by which he is made a quickened spirit - clearly before us, - to see how, in
the case of each one amongst us, they hold on
their course, together yet distinct, —is to be
aware that neither life nor death, nor any other
creature, that is, any power or energy belonging
to God's natural kingdom, can influence the
spiritual relations to which our renewed existence has been attached.  With regard to the
nature of this renewed life, the Scriptures have
been most explicit, equally so as to the conditions by which it holds. They acquaint us with
a state of being to be attained to, not through
death, but through Him who hath overcome it,
and opened for us the gate of everlasting life;
they unfold to us in its amplest particulars the
character of this eternal life as revealed to us in
the person of Christ Jesus, to whom alone it has
been given to have life in Himself,* and from
whom  all our life is derived.  They set this life
before us in contradistinction to its true antagonist, Spiritual death, or the alienation of the soul
from God, and show us that it is from this death,'
* John v. 26.
t When St. Paul, in the agony of his mental conflict, asks,
Who shall deliver me from the body of this death, the law of sin
which is in my members? he finds an answer in looking to a
5*




106          A PRESENT HEAVEN.
even the darkness and decay, the bondage of corruption to which the natural heart is subject,
that we must pass by spiritual regeneration into
the  life  and  liberty  of the  children  of 0G.
They speak plainly as to the conditions by which
this life is attained to and supported: Faith in
Him  who hath  obtained  it for us.  "He that
spiritual change, not to a natural one; " the law of the Spirit of
Life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and
death."  He does not wait for the dissolution of the flesh to obtain freedom from the bondage of its corruption, but places his
deliverance from it in Him who, coming in the likeness of sinful
flesh, in that flesh overcame sin, and has given unto them that are
in Him the power to overcome it, " even as He also overcame."
We are apt to speak as if it were the natural body which separates the human spirit from its Maker. Yet it is not the flesh, but
that which remains in it, the carnal mind at enmity against God,
which constitutes the only true ground of alienation from Him.
Many things may hide God from us, one thing only can separate
us from Him, unresisted, unrepented sin; and the flesh, though
it may draw a veil between the soul and God's presence, that
light unto which no man living can approach, can oppose no
barrier between it and IHis favor. " They who are in the flesh
cannot please God," by which expression it is evident, from what
follows, St. Paul means, not the remaining in the natural body,
but the continuing in the natural, unrenewed mind, for " Ye," he
says, "are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the
Spirit of God dwelleth in you." Our popular notions respecting
death, and the prevailing disposition to connect the soul's perfection with its separation from the body, seem based upon an
unconscious Manicheism, which, supposing an inherency of evil
in Matter, places it as the antagonist of God. We seem to forget
that, Christ is "the Saviour of the body," as well as the Redeemer of the soul; the Preserver and Sanctifier of the whole Nature, body, soul, and spirit, which, in being made Man, He took
upon Himself forever.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.            107
believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. He
that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but
the wrath of God, the darkness and shadow of
death, abideth on him."
And here, I think, we have especial need of
the work of the Comforter. When we have
received the witness of the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of
God, and; if children, then heirs, our experience
works hope, and gives us, as it were, ground to
stand upon in heaven. They who have received
the Earnest * know enough of the Inheritance,
and of Him  in whom they have obtained it,
to see clearly that spiritual and eternal life are
identical. All renewed life, being one with that
of the Renewer, is one life; the same life,
whether its outward circumstances be more or
less happy, — whether, in short, it be spent in
heaven above, or upon earth below. And to
speak of our present and our future life in
Christ as being in any way separate from each
other, is to draw a distinction which our Lord
Himself is most careful to avoid.  " He that
believeth on me hath everlasting life." On this
point, as you long ago observed to me, the very
wording of. Scripture is guarded; there is no
future employed, it is not "shall have," but
* Eph. i. 14.




108       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
" hath," - hath now everlasting life, - a life begun in Christ; and over a life so begun, it is
evident that no outward accident, such as the
dissolution of the bodily organs, can exert any
empire.  When the breath of man goeth forth,
he turns again to his dust. At the touch of
death, the flower and grass of our natural life
fall away and perish, but the Word of God, and
that which is born of it, endureth forever. Our
spiritual life lies in a region far removed from
the influence of any natural event or change;
it is hid in Christ: and St. Paul proves how
much our future life in Him is but the continuation and expansion of that which, even in the
flesh, we live by the faith of the Son of God,
when he says, " When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him
in glory."
The real life will then be also the visible and
apparent one; and in dwelling upon this, the
manifestation of the sons of God, for which St.
Paul represents the faithful as waiting in earnest
expectation, we learn in what the true blessedness of death consists. Though it cannot, according to the popular phrase, admit us to a
better life, it will give those who have already
attained to the one life- the life which is in
Christ Jesus — a better world wherein to live;




A PRESENT HIEA VEN.           109
it will immeasurably extend and glorify the outward conditions under which the development
of that life will proceed. Our present life in
Christ may be compared to that of the seed; a
hidden life, contending underground against cold
and darkness and obstructions, yet bearing within
its breast the indestructible germ of vitality.
Death lifts the soul into the sunshine for which
a hidden, invisible work has prepared it. Heaven
is the life of the flower.
It is enough for the disciple that he be as his
Master; for the servant that he be as his Lord.
Our present life in Christ is like the life which
He lived upon earth; a life harassed and tempted, sometimes agonized, often sorrowful; a life
wherein He was not' alone, because the Father
was with Him; yet a life which those who loved
Him were none the less called upon to rejoice
when He laid it down, and returned to the
bosom of that Father's love. Our future life
will be like that which He leads there. " Where
I am, there shall also my servant be." While
present with the body, we remain, in a natural
sense, absent from the Lord. Our communion
with Him is only spiritual, and therefore incapable of affording the fulness of content to a
being endowed with both spiritual and natural
faculties. It cannot be with us in the Taber



110       A PRESENT HIEAVEN.
nacle*. as it will be in the House.  Here, one
half of us groans, being burdened, waiting for
the redemption of the body, the final swallowing
up of mortality in life, which is the promised
restitution of all things, admitting both body
and soul and spirit into the glorious liberty of
the children of God.  No marvel, then, that
they who can say with St. Paul, "to live is
Christ," should with him also say, "to die is
gain." No marvel that the soul which has tasted
of the first fruits which are holy, should long to
be where the lump also is holy. No marvel that
the spirit should awaken within the regenerate
soul a desire to depart and to be with Christ,
that its inner consciousness should testify to the
existence of something "far better" than is here
to be enjoyed.  "For he," saith our Saviour,.
speaking of the Comforter, "shall show  you
things to come." And in accordance with these
words, whilst little in the direct letter of Scripture has been told us of the mystery of future
blessedness, much, in this great matter, has been
shown us by way of a spiritual analogy, which
testifies that the recreated world is in all respects foreshown and typified by the regenrerate
soul.  In the mind renewed after the image in
which it was first created, the Divine order is
* 2 Cor. v.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                 111
already begun, - the key-note of the harmony
to which God will in the end reduce all His
works, is already struck.  We often say that
we can know at present nothing about heaven;
and are accustomed to quote in support of this
a text which proves, when taken in connection
with what goes before and follows it, that we
know  or may know  a great deal.  I refer to
1 Cor. ii. 9, 10.
"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
have entered into the heart of man, the things
which God hath prepared for them  that love
Him.
" But God hath revealed them unto us by His
Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea,
the deep things of God."
These words, and those which follow in the
twelfth verse, "Now  we have received of the
Spirit which is of God, to know  the things
which have been freely given us of Him," and,
indeed, the whole tenor of the chapter, make it
evident that the Apostle is not looking beyond
the time that now is. The mystery* with which
his thoughts are occupied is the life of God
* 1 Cor. ii. 7. - " We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery,
even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world
unto our glory; which none of the princes of this world knew;
for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord
of glory."




112      A PRESENT HEAVEN.
within the human soul,- that "preparation of
the heart of man," wherein He reveals Himself
after a manner not to be apprehended by outward sense, or recognized by natural perception.
It is the heaven within us, and not the heaven
above us, that the Apostles would here unfold
to us: he is concerned, not with such things of
God as we have yet to wait for, but with such
as we have already received. " God," he says,
"hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit."
And we know much of heaven, if it be but
in the initials and rudiments, wherein, in the
lively characters of love, peace, joy, and devout
conformity to His will, God's finger has traced
it in the regenerate %oul. We speak more truly
than we are aware of when we say, as we often
do, that we can form no idea of what heaven
really is, until we arrive there. The regenerate
soul is already in heaven, being by the indwelling of the Father, Son, and Spirit in possession
of that which truly constitutes it. To be with
God, in whatever stage of being, under whatever conditions of existence, is to be in heaven.
To be found in Him, a citizen of His lower
kingdom of grace, is to possess that which gives
His upper kingdom its glory; for there, even as
here, " a man's life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesses "; and




A PRESENT HEAVEN.             113
it is not either hearing or seeing, not either having or beholding, that can constitute its joy.
The rainbow round about the throne, in sight
like unto an emerald; the sea of glass mingled
with fire, the gate of pearl, the voice of harpers
harping with their harps; - all these might be
ours, without the capability of imparting a ray
of genuine blessedness. They might pass away,
yet heaven would not pass with them.  For
these are but the accidental properties of heaven.
Its essentials consist in that without which these
wonders and glories a thousand-fold repeated
could convey nothing beyond a momentary gratification of the senses. And happiness, be its
object earthly or Divine, resides in the correspondence between the inner need and its outward satisfaction: it is the answer to the soul's
call, the accomplishment of its desire, the satisfying of its yearning.  "I beheld," saith St.
John, "and a door was opened."  Heaven is
the opening of a door: it is the finding of a
long-sought good, the renewal of a long-lost
communion, the restoration to a favor which is
in itself the fulness of joy.
The Gospel has brought down Heaven into our
souls; God's message of reconciliation has planted within us a germ, out of which He can mould
at will a Universe of Blessedness. I think an
H




114       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
unconscious Materialism mingles largely in the
vague spirituality, or rather indefinitism, of our
ideas with regard to our Future Life: we think,
in a certain sense, too much of the palpable
glories of Heaven, too little of that in which
they consist. It is the Altar which sanctifies
the gold, - the Presence of Him that dwelleth
therein which consecrates the Temple. We
must never, in our contemplations on this great
subject, forget that not only hath He who buildeth
the house "more honor than the house itself,"
but they also for whom it is builded. Yet we
dc so, when, in favor of any of God's outward
works, be it the Heaven which He hath made
for Himself, or the Earth which He hath given
to the children of men, we lose sight of His
work within us, that crowning achievement of
Almighty wisdom and infinite love, which it cost
even God so much to bring to perfection. For
the Heavens, which are God's throne, like our
Earth, which is His footstool, were called out of
nothingness by the simple exercise of the Divine
energy. "He spake, and they were made; He
commanded, and they stood fast for ever." There
was no pang here, no effort: what a word is to
man, such is a world to God, the simple expression of His thought. This visible Temple to
God's praise and glory, the system of which our




A PRESENT HEAVEN.             115
Earth forms part, rose like an exhalation out of
the Sea of His fulness silently, or to such music
as the morning stars, God's eldest-born, made
when they sang and shouted together for joy.
Thus was it with the work of Creation; but
Redemption, as the Psalmist tells us, "cost
more": the foundation of these outer Courts
was laid in harmony; but when God would repair their desolations, and raise up from the dust
His ruined shrine within, it was through the
anguish of a wise and loving Master builder.
Each one of the living stones whereof God's
spiritual house is framed, bears upon it the dint
of His travail, - that travail of the Soul whose
sweat was blood.  And now that the hands*
of Him who laid the foundations of the renovated Temple have also finished it; now that
the headstone thereof has been brought forth
with shoutings of " Grace, grace," let us beware
how we read History for Prophecy, and look to
a future state for blessings which are abundantly
our own in our present one. To do so, augurs,
as I have said, a secret distrust in the efficacy
of the blood of reconciliation, sufficient to save
those who come unto it, even to the uttermost,
-sufficient for our sins, our sorrows, and our
imperfection; the blood of healing as well as of
* Zech. iv. 7, 9.




116       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
Atonement; the sign of freedom as well as of
pardon, procuring us a present, and not, as we
fondly imagine, a future restoration to God's
favor, and making our souls in His sight, as
the Disciples were made in the washing which
prefigured it, " clean every whit."
This, even our Lord's meritorious sacrifice, is
the gate of the Lord, wherein we may even now
enter and be glad, and that to which it conducts,
the fulness of life and joy in Him, is the true
heaven; whether it be found in God's kingdom
of grace below, " which is but glory begun," or
in His kingdom of glory above, "which is but
grace completed."*
The soul, in uniting itself to Christ through
a lively faith, enters of necessity into the immediate fruition of the fulness which is laid up in
Him, - its immediate yet gradual fruition. The
soul's true life has begun. Yet it has need to
be nourished, need to be strengthened.  It is
not all at once made perfect in that love, which
is, to speak truly, but faith grown to its fullest
stature. For when faith has for its object a Being " altogether lovely," it must turn to love in
exact proportion with its own increase.  To
know Him better is to love Him more; and to
this knowledge and this love, it is plain that the
* Archbishop Leighton.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.             117
mere passing out of one phase of existence into
another can never admit us.  It is not death
but faith that must conduct us to heaven; for it
is faith only that can conduct us to love. Death
may, indeed, admit to the immediate presence
of the Almighty, but it is through faith and love
that His presence is made unto us the fulness of
joy. Without a spiritual acquaintance with our
Maker, even in His light our souls would not
see light. We might look upon our Saviour in
His glorified form, as so many of old beheld
Him under His human aspect, without seeing
Him as He is; and the touch which seals up our
eyes to the things of earth cannot endue them
with this spiritual insight. Death's cold hand
cannot draw us nearer God: it is intrusted with
no Gospel. His silent lips, though they may.ofttimes bear on them God's kiss, are charged
with no message of reconciliation.
What we have made God to us in this world,
we shall find Him in the after one; for the outward heaven, think of it as we will, is but the
consummation of that inward one already established in every heart, made through God's
grace, in the communication of His Spirit, a
"partaker in the Divine nature."  It is the
efflorescence of spiritual life in its fullest bloom:
it is the permanent blossoming of the Christian




118        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
graces, buds not wholly expanding here: it is
love, joy, and peace made visible, made perfect,
made perpetual.  To the soul already renewed
after God's likeness, it is but, in the words of
the Psalmist, the "awaking up" to the blissful
sense of a perfect assimilation.  To the heart
already reconciled with its Heavenly Friend, it
is but the consciousness of happiness that has
long been its own: it is only, as a saintly spirit
has expressed it, a transference to the sunshine
of our Father's sensible smiles, -a sunshine that
has been upon it long.
For happiness, let us understand this well, is
as truly our portion here as above; it cannot
fail to fall within the lot of those who have
chosen for their portion Him  whose nature is
One with infinite, unalienable Joy.  God, in
communicating Himself to the soul, of necessity
communicates happiness; and  all sounds in
union with Him have returned * to their central
rest, and are happy in exact proportion to the
closeness and fulness of their union,- happy, in
other words, by so much as they have within
them of God.  The reconciled soul has, there* Our very thirst after happiness, our very search for it through'
unworthy objects, is at once a proof of our descent from God,
and a witness of our tendency towards reunion with Him from
whom we came. See on this subject John Smith's Select Discourses.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                 119
fore, a right to be at all times joyful, because it
possesses a solid, unalienable ground of happiness; but this right it is not at all times able
either to realize or to make good in this world,
wherein the child, although he be heir of all,
differs ofttimes not much from a servant, in respect of the things which  he has to endure.
Bodily and mental infirmities, imperfect views
of the Divine character, above all, the lingerings
of indwelling corruption (that which doth remain within us, though it may reign no longer),
rise like damps and mists to obscure the continual irradiation which would otherwise, in the justified soul, follow upon the simple consciousness
of its own position. Joy is conscious happiness.
We may possess the reality of happiness without the enjoyment of it; we often do so in temporal things, being more rich, more belovedthan we know of; and even thus with the soul
it has already the rich reality, but it needs the'
fuller consciousness; its acceptance is already
complete, its union is already perfect, but of the
fulness of this acceptance, the sweetness of this
union, it seems as yet imperfectly  aware.  It
seems, as you observe in your last letter,* inca* "No one confessed more fully than St. Paul that he was
complete in Christ now; yet he says, speaking of the future
state,' then shall I know even as I am known,' which shows, I
think, that he saw Christ's work as regarded him to be perfect,




120          A PRESENT HEA VEN.
pable, under its present conditions, of attaining
to the perfect apprehension of the things for
which, as St. Paul says, it has been already apprehended of Christ.
Heaven is the perfect recognition, the complete reciprocation, of that Love from which
neither  things  to  come, nor  things  present,
neither Death, nor, as so many among us seem
to imagine, LIFE, can separate us.  " Beloved,"
says St. John, "now are we the Sons of God;
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be,
but we know  that when  He  shall appear we
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He
is."   Heaven  is the becoming conscious of an
already-formed assimilation, the knowing as we
but acknowledges thht his own power of embracing it does not
as yet equal that perfection, for he describes himself, in another
place, as'following after,' that he may apprehend, or lay hold of,
that for which also he is apprehended of Christ. And here lies,
I conceive, the difference between our present and our future
State. On Christ's part, nothing further will be done or required,
only we shall then be quickened to apprehend what has been done
for us, - to lay hold of Christ, to see clearly and to know fully
how fast He had hold of us from the beginning, even before we
knew it; and in this sense it seems to me our union after death
must be more perfect than it can be before it. They to whom
Christ is even now united in bonds that admit of no further perfecting, will be awakened to the full consciousness of their union;
and it will be the difference between a mutual, living recognition
and embrace, and a greeting in which one fully conscious draws
to his bosom the fainting and half-conscious form of his friend."
-J. E. B.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.            121
have so long been known. To the faithful Disciples who walked with their Lord along the
common track, it is but the taking up upon the
Mount, and beholding Him, whom they have so
long loved and followed, "transfigured before
them."  Faith and love are already at home in
Heaven; with all that will meet them there,
they have already, under lowlier aspects, become familiar. If we know what it is to love
God and to be beloved of Him, we shall no
longer speak of Heaven as if it were a place of
which we can at present know nothing. We
shall not be content to let this good land, our
purchased inheritance, float before us in misty
outline, like Fortunate Islands lying far amid
doubtful seas, and to be reached (if ever gained
at all) after the hap of olden mariners, blown
upon them by some propitious gale; for few
among us seem to be so sailing by line and compass, as to know whether we are going there or
not. Yet whither I go, saith the Lord, ye know,
and the Way ye know; if ye know Me, neither
the end nor the way can be unfamiliar.
To acquaint ourselves with Christ is to become acquainted with Heaven. It is to be able
to speak of it, as was said of a Saint of old, as
of a place where we have already been, and
from whence we have but returned upon an
6




122       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
errand. There is no other possession which has
been made our own with so much certainty, no
other place of which, vaguely as we allow ourselves to speak of it, we really know so much.
If we, indeed, know little about Heaven, it is
only because we know little about God, and
Jesus Christ in whom He is revealed; for this,
the true spiritual acquaintance with God, "is
life eternal." Little, it is true, has been made
known to us of the outward constitution of our
future commonwealth, much has been imparted
to us of its inward conditions, and this through
experience,-good things given instruct us in
good things prepared. Love that "prepares"
Many Mansions for us, prepares us for what we
shall find in them. We are so ignorant of the
Divine economy which regulates our everlasting
habitations, that the mere attempt to guess at
what will be there our probable habits, pursuits,
and occupations, involves us in a thousand difficulties and contradictions; and yet, while we
know not how we shall then live, we know in
kind, if not in degree, how we shall then feel.
Here, while the form and outline are strange to
us, the imperishable essence is familiar: we cannot define either the shape or color of this,
God's glorious. Rose, we only know it through
its fragrance, unfolding in the regenerate soul




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              123
of man. We cannot paint this flower, yet love,
and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost convey
within our hearts a subtle sense of its odor, and
instruct us in the highest secrets of Heaven.
And I would once again ask in what, save in
degree only, do the characteristics of renewed
life, under its present conditions, differ from renewed life under its future ones, - in what respect can they essentially vary? Is it not the
same life maintaining its identity under different phases and developments, just as an individual retains his personality, an affection its
strength and sweetness, under outward circumstances of the most varied and dissimilar character?  There are few of us, perhaps, so entirely limited within the circle of the things
that now appear, as not to have sometimes sent
a thought across the visible horizon which bounds
it, and asked if the world which lies beyond is,
after all, even in its outward aspect, so totally
unlike our present one as we are apt to imagine.
Will they differ from each other more than one
star differs from another in glory? and are we
not justified in presuming that, manifold as are
the works of God, they are in all respects pervaded by a certain harmony, the result of that
wisdom in which He hath made them all?
Such questions, only Heaven itself, and the




124       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
light which makes all things manifest, can answer; though analogy can suggest much, it can
determine little; and on all points connected
with the outward frame and constitution of our
future life, the silence of Scripture leaves us
little room to speak particularly: -but when
we come to a question of far deeper practical
import, and ask ourselves in how far, as regards
that which is within, our present life may resemble the future one which grows out of it,
these oracles of God give forth no uncertain
answer.  They  acquaint us with a gradual
moulding and fashioning, the work of no human artificer, through which that which lies
within us, as the statue lies within the rude and
shapeless block, begins even here to assume
the likeness in which it will hereafter attain its
final beauty and perfection.  When they speak
to us of our deliverance from  the power of
darkness and our translation into the kingdom
of God's dear Son, they set before us a state
of being in which love to God is even here the
governing principle of life, the mainspring of
thought and action, as it is with them, His ministers above that do His pleasure, and find in it
their own; a state in which the human will,
like the angelic, attains to such measure of conformity with the Divine law, that it follows on




A PRESENT HEAVEN.             125
the direction of God's Spirit, in the unforced
obedience, which, as the Prophet Ezekiel * witnesses, runs and returns as the appearance of a
flash of lightning: "Whithersoever the Spirit
was to go, thither was their spirit to go; they
turned not when they went."  Our heavenly
Master is not, as the slothful, unfaithful servant
thought Him, "a hard man," commanding and
expecting impossibilities. Whatever God tells
us to do, He also helps us to do. Our Saviour,
who knows whereof we are made, sends us on no
vain errands, sets us upon no unprofitable tasks.
Whatever He makes an object of prayer, is also,
for that very reason, an object of attainment;
and He it is who hath taught and commanded
us, when we pray, to say, -
"Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."
* Ezekiel i. 14.




V.
THE GOSPEL RECEIVED IMPLICITLY.
"The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart;..... for
with the heart man believeth unto righteousness."-ROMANS x. 8 - o.
N  the preceding  chapters we have
I been chiefly occupied with the recog\. nition of Divine truth, but we now
come to consider its reception in the
heart, that measure and degree of faith which is
less conviction than possession, being itself the
substance of things not as yet seen. This faith,
the soul's rich, unborrowed wealth, is not taken
on trust from other men's minds, nor even from
the words and promises of Scripture; it is the
spirit's grasp upon these very words, the heart's
appropriation of these very promises, making
them indeed our own.
What Locke speaks of natural science holds
especially true in  spiritual life, "that a man
only has as much as he really knows and com



A PRESENT HEAVEN.               127
prehends.  What he believes only and takes on
trust from the floating: of other men's opinions
(though these opinions may happen to be true)
is but borrowed wealth, which, like fairy money,
though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it
comes to use." Opinion holds truth in its hand,
experience holds to it by the heart, and to experience only is it given to work within the soul
that intimate persuasion of God's love which
raises it up to the victory which overcomes the
world.  A  living faith is a loving faith; how
can it but believe in the love by which it lives.?
It knows Him  in Whom  it has believed, and
needs no other strength and wisdom than such
a knowledge implies.  It has ceased to confer with flesh and blood. For the allurements
of sense, for the doubts of reason, for the assaults of spiritual wickedness, it has gained one
answer,
"I have found Him Whom my soul loveth."
"To know the love of God as it is in Christ,
to trust in it, to resign one's self wholly to it,
this is believing." But is this degree of belief
easy? is it even possible to man's unaided spirit?
Who that knows his own heart, its darkness, its
bewilderments, its feebleness to good, will ilJu




128       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
be ready to join in the vehement language of
the great Reformer, and exclaim,* "If any one
could indeed believe, then for very joy he would
be able neither to eat, nor drink, nor do aught
else."  Who that compares his heart with the
picture of the renewed heart, as the pencil of the
Holy Spirit has traced its clear, firm outline in
Scripture, will be inclined to cavil at conversion,
-to dispute as to whether it is in most cases
sudden or gradual, initiative or complete, when
he feels that in all cases it is needed?  The
Holy Spirit works upon what it finds, —the
history of conversion varies with that of each
individual soul; thus, there are persons who
need no repentance in the sense of a turning of
the outward life, but in a deeper sense, even
that of the renewing from on high, all need it.
Conversion is the consent of the soul to God. It
is the acceptance of Christ, and, with Him, of
pardon, deliverance, freedom; it is the withdrawal of the soul from its own objects to fix
them  upon those with which the doctrine of
Christ presents it, and which the natural heart
does not, cannot receive. Conversion belongs
to the rationale of spiritual life; it is a fact, at
which, even if it were not revealed, were not
insisted upon, in Scripture, the heart of man
* Note I.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                129
would arrive through its own unanswerable logic.
Place these two side by side, man as he is by
nature, and man as he is seen in Christ.  Bid
these two approach, resemble each other; nay
more, bid them unite, be joined to each other,
not in a mere outward bond, but in spiritual
affinity, as like meets like. Compare the dispositions, the desires, the objects of the natural
heart with those attributed in Scripture to the
mind renewed after Christ's likeness. Is there
resemblance here, is there even analogy?  If
these two, contrary the one to the other, are
indeed to be made one, is there not a miracle
needed, a mighty spiritual and moral change,
such as man has of himself no power to effect,
-and yet a power to invite or to restrain, as
miracles were invited or restrained of old, —a
change which  Scripture sets before us under
many expressions, figurative it is true, yet descriptive of that which is itself as real as all
that is alone real, because alone eternal, as real
as man's misery, as God's mercy; as real as
that Word, the expression of God's unchangeable purpose, which shall endure when Heaven
and Earth shall pass away:
"For as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be
changed:
"But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail."
6*                          I




130       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
When the Apostles declare that, if any man
be in Christ, he is a new creature, when they
speak to us of being dead or alive in Christ, of
putting on the man from  Heaven, they testify
to a change, a passing out of one state into another, a transition as actual as that which takes
place under what, in speaking of the things of
daily life, we should express by a change of situation, a change of feeling. And of this change
the Apostles themselves are, as it were, the
unconscious witnesses; they know that they have
passed from death unto life, know it far more
fully than even they can express in words.
They know it, not only for themselves, but for
the weakest of their brethren "yet without
strength."  The consciousness of "being in the
Lord," partakers in the fellowship of His sufferings, in the power of His resurrection, bound
up with Him forever in the bundle of life, runs
like a thread of fire through all their writings.
Even while they are unfolding statements of
doctrine, or settling questions of morals, the hidden flame breaks forth, the secret consciousness
glows into open exultation, " Who shall separate
us from  the love of Christ?"  Through the
whole of some Epistles, -we may particularly
instance the Ephesians and Colossians, -there
is a perpetual rise and overflow of that deep and




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              131
sober joy, which, alike in natural and spiritual
things, wells but from one spring, the conscious
possession of a good, ever present and all-satisfying to the heart.  It is "in the Lord" that
they rejoice and endure, labor and take rest,
make war and triumph.  Their very life, as
they express it, is hid in Christ; nothing that
belonged to it, sin only excepted, is extinguished,
all is transferred, - affections, interests, joys,
and sorrows, these had a sweetness, a glory of
their own, but it is now transfigured into a
higher likeness; all these earthly have been
made to bear the image of the heavenly.  Old
things are passed out of the soul's life,
"Behold, all things are become new."
And sadness as well as joy has its intuitions.
We —I speak of all faithful and mourning
Christians —have been instructed through our
very need in what the Apostles learnt through
fulness; poverty, distance, alienation, these states
have also their deep experiences, bringing truth
home into the soul.  I believe in conversion
because our Lord has said, "Except ye be converted, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."
I would believe in it, if He had not said this,
because I know and feel within myself that I
cannot enter it without such a change. There




132        A PRESENT HEAVEN.
is mystery, but no marvel in the prophetic annunciation, " Ye shall not all sleep, but ye shall
all be changed."  Who shall enter upon a new
Being without being fitted for it?  Does the
butterfly soar without wings? — long fashioned
in secret, though they be long hidden. I claim
a new heart and a new spirit, because God has
promised them.  I would claim  them  even if
they had not been promised by God, because
God has given me laws which I cannot keep,
but with other aids, other light, other strength
than that which Nature furnishes, -because he
has given me promises exceeding great and precious, which without these I cannot enter upon,
cannot even desire.  For how,* saith the Almighty, speaking to man at the mouth of His
prophet,
"Shall I place thee among sons,
And give unto thee the land of Desire,
The inheritance of the Glory of the Nations?"
Even by making us fit to enter upon the joy which
He has prepared.  "Thou, He says, shalt call
me My Father, and shalt not turn aside from
following me."
The son's heart secures the son's portion, the
inheritance is entailed upon the love. All that
is won, all that is lost in spiritual life, is lost, is
* Jeremiah iii. 19.




A PRESENT HEA VEN.                 133
won through the heart.* Here it is, in the will,
the intellect, the affections, in that which within
us is human, distinguishing man as man from
that which  is simply  animal and  instinctive,
that Christ has received a kingdom from His
Father.  When  He  comes into  man's heart,
into that which inquires, which reasops, which
loves, which  suffers, He comes unto His own,
unto that which He has made His own through
the closest ties of affinity, the deepest experiences of anguish. " Behold, He himself took our
infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." He comes
unto that which He alone understands in all its
depths, its windings, its intricacies.
One man may understand another man, Christ
understands Humanity as a who. e but how
shall Humanity understand Him'  How  shall
Man, even in his own limited measure, apprehend that for which he himself has been apprehended of Christ?  When the intellect would
lay hold on these overwhelming facts,- a fallen
world, a manifested, suffering, dying God, a spiritual Presence still living and working among
us, —when it would strive to make these facts
* Look diligently what thou lovest, what thou fearest, wherein
thou rejoicest or art saddened, and under the rags of conversion
thou wilt find a heart perverted. The whole heart is in these
four affections, and of these I think we must understand that
saying, Turn to'the Lord with all thy heart. - ST. BERNARD.




134       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
intelligible to itself, would endeavor to connect them  with each other, they elude it, widening with its grasp, they escape from it on
every side.  Hence is it that the strain, so to
speak, of salvation, has not been laid by God
upon our acquiescence in any minutely developed theory, even of Truth itself, but upon
love for one living Person, upon belief in one
crowning act.
Hence is it that, as earthly interests recede,
and eternal verities press and advance upon the
soul, the Cross comes into the solemn foreground
of spiritual life, and that Prayer of Moses, the
Man of God, becomes so frequent on Christian
lips, show thy servants thy work!  Not that our
saving interest in Christ depends upon the clearness of our spiritual vision, for it is with the
heart man believeth unto righteousness, and the
heart may be deeply influenced by the very
work with regard to which its views remain
confused and imperfect.*  But the fuller creed
makes the richer life; if a little faith has an
open door set before it which no man can shut,
an ample faith sets our feet in the "large pastures" that lie beyond it.  And as the grasp
of faith tightens, its hold widens. If Christ
could say, when one had but lightly touched
* Note K.




A PRESENT tEAVEN.             135
the hem of His garment, " I perceive that virtue is gone out of me," if every spiritual approach to Him be as the drawing forth of life
and strength, flowing out from Him to us, how
is it when Faith has made its great, all-inclusive
seizure, when it has laid hold upon the Tree
whose every leaf is given for the healing of the
nations?  Fear not, ye who seek Jesus who was
crucified. Other seekers, other followers, may
after a while turn back and walk no more with
Him, but they who have gone to Him that they
may also die with Him, can never be offended
by word or deed of His.
It is the Cross that intensifies, that glorifies
life, that opens up depth after depth in the Human and in the Divine Natures, and bridges over
the depths it has disclosed. Here only, at the
foot of the Cross, can man really die, —here
only, with his loving, his suffering Lord, can he
lay down his life that he may receive it again in
Him. And while the precepts of Christ are
reformative, the death of Christ is regenerative;
it has cast a seed into the bosom of humanity,
the germ of a new, ever progressive life,-a
seed over which Christ himself watches, and
whose expansion in the heart, the bursting of a
heavenly midnight-blooming flower, is conversion. Faith in this great miracle makes all




136       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
other miracles possible.  Show  Thy servants
Thy work, and their own will be indeed easy, for
"in the blood is the life."  We go on asking,
What shall we do that we may inherit eternal
life? until, through the sudden shining of a
light from heaven, or the gradual dawning of a
day-star within our hearts, we learn that our
part is to live, to die, in the strength of that
which has been already done. "Let him lay
hold of my strength, that he may make peace
with me; and he shall make peace with me."
And it is remarkable that, until through the
Spirit we feel Christ within us as one that is
alive from the dead, the fact of His death seems
to affect us but little. Though no sorrow was
ever like unto His sorrow, it is nothing to those
that pass by - a story often told - an accepted
history. Only to those who believe is Christ
precious, for they only know their Lord in the
fellowship of His sufferings, in the power of
His resurrection. They have looked upon Him
whom  they beforetime pierced, and He has
looked upon them, -a mutual recognition has
been exchanged. When Joseph makes himself
known unto,his brethren, their hard hearts are
smitten.
And not until then, -for true self-renunciation, much as has been written and said about




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                 137
it, is not easy.  No sight, short of that great
one of Sacrifice and Love, can turn the heart
from  its own works, the many works through
which the natural man will naturally seek to
propitiate his Maker, to fix it upon the one work,
through which the spiritual man is aware that
his very imperfection is accepted. For all men
seek  and love their own;  the natural man
cleaves to his own works and efforts, as being part
of that body of self which no man ever yet
hated; and for this natural adhesion there is no
escape save in rising to a state of being wherein
frail, self-seeking mortality is swallowed up in a
Divine life.  Then being made partaker of a
life in which Christ is his own, it becomes natural, and, as it were, an instinct, to love and
cleave to Him. It is the soul's natural life.
The soul that has thus returned to its true
gravitation * has done alike with task-work and
with anxiety, has ceased from that sad complaint,
"Thou hast left me to serve alone."  It is no
longer cumbered with much serving: no longer
solicitous about its work, but about its life, the
life of Christ within it, of which that work is
but the blossoming and expansion. So long as
* All things in nature are moved and brought to their proper
place by their gravity, the light upwards, the heavy downwards,
but the gravitation of the rational soul is love, the first and proper
motive which inclines the will to its object. - John of Gech.




138       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
it is planted beside that River of water, neither
flower nor fruit will fail in their season.  " He
that abideth in me and I in Him, the same
bringeth forth much fruit."
For though it be possible, as appears from St.
Paul's warning, for an unholy heart to obtain
a perception of the salvation which Christ has
wrought, such a perception will be ever unaccompanied by any renewing, vivifying change
of aim and of affection.  The holders of the
Truth in unrighteousness only hold it as a detached thing; it has no hold upon them, nor
root wherefrom to put forth its transformative
energy.  Even in Christ's light they do not see
light, because they do not love it.  Yet this
barren, lifeless faith is not to be opposed, as has
been sometimes attempted, by any doctrine of
Works, dead, save in so far as they flow out of
the fulness of the living Vine. This is to look for
fruit from the tree of self, withered from its very
root. From me, saith Christ, is thy fruit found.
For dead faith and dead works there remains a
common antidote, conversion, that living faith
in a living Saviour which works within us a real
change, t " so that we, beholding his glory, are
changed from glory to glory, even by the Spirit
of the Lord."
* Note L.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.            139
And it is evident that an inward change, a
change in ourselves, is needed before we even
can appreciate our Saviour's outward work.
The dead bury their dead, the living live unto
Him who liveth and was dead, and is alive for
evermore. I would illustrate what I mean by
saying that our Saviour's work, the work of
which He said upon the cross, " It is finished,"
is like a perfect globe, complete in itself as one
of the planets of our system, but we do not see
what it is until the Spirit moves from point to
point of the darkened disk, and all becomes luminous. When He, saith our Lord, the Spirit
of Truth, is come, He shall take of mine, and
show it unto you. Is there not something very
remarkable in this saying and in the words that
follow it, -" He shall not speak of Himself, he
shall glorify Me "? As the Son's work upon
earth was to manifest His Father unto the world,
as He spake not His own words nor followed
out His own will, even so is the Blessed Spirit
occupied only with the words and will of Him
that sent Him. He speaks not of Himself, He
has, as it were, no new thing to impart, but
rather to make all things new, by setting the
things of Heaven before the soul in that light
of Heaven by which alone they can be read
aright.




140         A PRESENT HEAVEN.
There is a spirit in man," a principle of life
within us, wrapped like the fire within the flint,
in sleep and darkness, until the powerful attraction of God's blessed Spirit, "that inspiration
of the Almighty which giveth understanding,"
comes to quicken  it.  For we must remember
that in spiritual things every increase of knowledge, every expansion of love, partakes of the
nature of a manifestation.  It is a discovery of
God unto the soul to which it could never have
attained through its own efforts. Spiritual illumination is the unsealing of the soul's eye, enabling it to behold that which actually exists.
"The lightning's flash did not create
The lovely prospect it revealed,
It only showed the real state
Of what the darkness had concealed."
Also must we guard against an idea which is
apt to mix itself in our conceptions of God's
dealings with man, -I mean  that of looking
upon them, whether general or individual, as
being  connected with  some change in  Him.*
Known unto God are all His works from  the
* It is not God, but Man, that is changed by our Saviour's
death; it is not necessary for our reparation that a change be
wrought upon Him, but upon us, seeing that it is not God, but
Man, that has lost His goodness. Christ came into the world, not
to make God better, but to mnke us better; nor did he die to
make Him more disposed to do good, but to dispose us to receive
it. - Baxter.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.            141
foundation of the world. He loved the world
before He made known that love in its crowning
manifestation. What is the life and death of
Jesus Christ but the showing, what is the Gospel but the telling, of this love? -a love from
the beginning yearning over its object, yet withdrawing from it as Joseph did from his brethren,
- a love revealing itself at long intervals, in
dark utterances, speaking to man through the
cloud and the fiery pillar, yet now showing us
plainly of the Father in the intelligible language
of a deed,' " Greater love than this hath no
man, that a man lay down his life for his
friends."
So hath God loved the world, keeping back
some better thing in store, reserving Love's
final proof, its blest Epiphany, until the fulness
of His own time came in; even so He loves
the soul before, through "loving-kindness," He
so imparts that love as to enable the soul to
return it. For until we have felt God to be
loving, we cannot acknowledge Him to be love.
St. John tells us explicitly, He that loveth not
knoweth not God. The knowledge of God as
described to us in Scripture is no cold, intellectual estimate of His perfections, but rather
that intimate delighting in them, that powerfully felt attraction, which makes the very




142       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
expressions of knowledge and love as applied
to man's communion with his Maker interchangeable. We often say of earthly things,
"That we must love them ere we know
That they are worthy to be loved."
We may confess of many things and of many
people that they are indeed lovely and desirable, but what are they to us until the heart has
taught us at once our own need and their exceeding worth and value?
And even thus, though after a manner unrecognizable to human sense, we need to be
"'drawn" to God. He whom no man hath
seen, nor can see at any time, can only become
the delight and desire of the soul, according to
the degree in which He is pleased to reveal
unto it His beauty, and impart unto it the sense
of His satisfying goodness. We can only love
God according to the measure in which we
know  and are known of Him. But is this
measure a fixed one?
Surely, far otherwise; yet it is no uncommon
thing to hear well-disposed people lament their
own conscious deadness and deficiency, in terms
which imply that they look upon this holy
affection rather in the light of a natural faculty,
which one person may be so happy as to possess
and another be innocently devoid of, than as a




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                     143
state of being to be attained to through the improvement of a supernatural gift. Yet if fixed
principles of attraction and repulsion are as
unceasingly. at  work  within  God's  spiritual
kingdom as within His natural world,* — if
there is a  correspondency  between  the manifestation of God's love and our " continuing"
in what has been already imparted, it is evident
that all who truly wish to love God better may
do  so.   Our  Saviour, that great master of
Love's  secrets, that Divine  expounder of its
Sentences, has not placed its essence, its expression, in things to which man's feeble, oppressed nature is not at all times equal; in
tears, in aspirations, in passionate outpourings
of the spirit; He has not sent us to the heaven
of fervent rapture when we would bring Him
down from  above, neither to the Deep  of anguish and tribulation when we would raise Him
once more from the dead in our cold, decaying
* An analogy for what is here intended may be found in the
causes which prevent vegetation in the desert. (See Humboldt's
Aspects of Nature.) Vast sandy plains are dry because little rain
falls upon them, and little rain falls upon them because they are so
dry, columns of heated air rushing up to disperse the vapors that
would otherwise descend. Because there is no moisture beneath,
there is no rain from above. Often, doubtless, would God send
a gracious rain upon His inheritance and refresh it when it is
weary, were not the clouds ready to break in fatness stayed by
aridity below.




144       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
hearts. But He has bid us keep within the
way, the way within which "no wayfaring
man" of humble and sincere heart "ever yet
erred," grievously as his course might be beset
and hindered. He has said, "If ye love me, ye
will keep my commandments."  We are surely
too much in the habit of looking upon this especial gift of God's Spirit, "this unction from the
Holy One, through which we understand all
things," as a mere affair of temperament, confounding it with that, in which, as in a soil
more or less favorable, it takes root, - the
degree of religious receptivity, which varies so
much in different individuals, even in different
races of men. Yet spiritualized conceptions,
fervid feelings, all which we include within the
depth and range of susceptibility to devout impressions, are but the element through which
the flame diffuses itself; did it consist in these,
it would be a phosphorescence, lacking the hidden principle of heat which makes it indeed "a
fire," substantive and real as the object upon
which it feeds.
"To him  that hath shall be given, and he
shall have more abundantly."  We have here a
sure word of promise; a prophecy fulfilling
itself in the Christian life so constantly, so quietly, that its accomplishment cometh not with




A PRESENT HEAVEN.               145
observation. Since our Lord, in taking our nature upon Himself, drew it back with Him into
the bosom of His Father's love, there has arisen
a bond between our common Humanity and
God, even the bands of love, the cords of a
man, which we as individuals may tighten or
relax. You speak, in one of your letters, "of
a self-regulation upon God's Law, which, in its
co-operation with the purifyirig grace of His
Spirit, is as the cleansing of the dust from the
soul's windows, letting the sun's rays stream in
and penetrate its remotest corners, - or like
the deepening of the channel of a river by
clearing away its stones and mud, which is followed by a fuller rush of waters."*  St. Peter
speaks plainly of the Holy Spirit as that which
God hath given to those who obey Him,t and
how many are the Scriptures which make us
aware that there are, on our'part, endeavors
of which the Lord is mindful, attitudes to which
He is ever favorable, mental characteristics, in
themselves so pleasing to Him that He has said
of the place where they are found, " Here will
I dwell, for I have a delight therein."
And hence there arises within the renewed
* To this point tends the Prophet's admonition, "Sow in righteousness, reap in mercy."
t Acts v. 32.
7




146       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
soul a secret, continual thirst, at once after holiness and after grace.  "Let thy garments be
always white, neither let thy head lack ointment."  It covets earnestly these best gifts,
these holy dispositions, both as marks of the
Divine favor and improvable pledges of its
countenance.  For these jewels have an inherent magnetism, attracting even while they
adorn; each fits the soul for that which it
draws down upon it, a further communication
of Divine Favor. In the Beatitudes we see
this correspondency  drawn  out in  strongly
marked antithesis, but all Scripture witnesses
to it, making us aware of a sure connection between Faith and the putting forth of Almighty
power; between purity and the seeing of God;
meekness and the indwelling of His Spirit;
between the denying for conscience' sake of
earthly desires, and the implanting of heavenly
affections; between the dedication of the heart
to God, and the enlightenment of the mind by
Him.
And blessed is he who in any one of these,
even in that which is least, has been found faithful to that which he has received of God! For
as with the gifts, so it is with the Giver who is
to be desired above them all. In the soul that
would receive Him there must be a preparedness,




A PRESENT HEAVEN.              147
-an  unwrought conformity  to  which  the
Psalmist confesses in inquiring, "When wilt
thou come unto me?  I will walk in my house
with a perfect heart."   My times, he would
say, are in Thy Hand; I must wait for a season
of refreshing, yet he waits in an  outward
obedience of which the life-pulse is an inner
consciousness that the Lord is good to them
that wait for Him, to the soul that diligently
seeketh Him.
"We wait, 0 Lord, for thy loving-kindness
in the midst of thy temple." There is so much
in the Gospel that peculiarly addresses itself to
transgressors, that we are apt, in the attractive
tenderness of its appeals to such as are ignorant
and " out of the way," to lose sight of the fact
that through its blessed revelations light has
sprung up for the righteous, and joyful gladness
for them that are true of heart. Thou meetest,
saith  the  Prophet, him  that rejoiceth  and
worketh righteousness, those that remember Thee
in their ways.  And it is surely remarkable
that the earliest manifestations of the consolation for which Israel waited were vouchsafed
to " Israelites indeed." The first droppings of
the shower of freenesses fell not upon the dwellers in the wilderness, but upon a field which
the Lord had already blessed, upon just and




148          A PRESENT HEA VEN.
devout persons walking in the ordinances of the
Lord blameless, living up to the light which
they  then   enjoyed.   Such  were  Mary  and
Joseph, Zacharias and Elisabeth, Simon and
Anna the Prophetess; such too in the Gentile
world was he to whom the words whereby that
world should be saved were first declared. The
prayers and alms of the good Cornelius * had
already come up as a memorial before God, and
* In how many of these righteous persons was that question of
the Prophet's answered, " Do not my words do good to him that
walketh uprightly? " Among these humble askers and seekers,
flowing quietly along in the channel Where they were to beovertaken by the waters of grace, the Eunuch of Queen Candace
seems an affecting instance; and how much may we learn of
God's attitude towards such righteous waiting souls, from the
few words which the Spirit spake unto Philip, " Go and join thyself to that chariot." Go and join thyself! There sat that honest, God-fearing, but still ignorant man, reading Esaias. The
whole account is full of a heavenly poetry, -how he diligently
read the passage, " He was led as a lamb to the slaughter "; and
then his question, showing such total darkness on the subject,' Of whom spake the Prophet this; of himself, or of somb other
man? " -a simple, honest question, to which God sent the answer,
and with it, His eternal salvation. Who knows how long the
Ethiopian may have served the true God; he had come a long
way to visit the Temple, the place where He dwelt.
Have you ever seen your servants sitting down on a Sunday
afternoon to read " a lesson," perhaps from a religious book which
they do not understand, in perfect good faith that the lesson does
them good? I feel a yearning over such, -a desire that they
should possess the unknown good they ignorantly hope for, - as
St. Paul declared to the Athenians the unknown God whom they
ignorantly worshipped.- J. E. B.




A PRESENT HEAVEN.             149
in the joy of those glad tidings which reached
him, that unto the Gentiles also was granted
repentance unto life, was mixed a peculiar personal encouragement, like that which was of old
extended to one greatly beloved. "Fear not,"
said the angel commissioned to impart so many
wonders unto Daniel, "for from the first day
that thou didst set thy heart to understand and
to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words
were heard, and I am come for thy words."
And even now, though it be no longer sent
to us by the hand of saint or angel, the keeping
of the commandment hath great reward. Many
anxious and honest Christians may be yet consciously far from the spiritual haven where they
would be. Let such be consoled in remembering that the Father who draws us unto Christ
beholds us, yea, sets forth to meet us "while
we are yet a great way off." A great way off,
and' yet upon the way, — herein lies all the
difference between resistance and returning, between the temper to which God inclines and
that against which He fights with the sword of
His mouth. We may be far as yet from the
robe and ring, from the kiss of perfect reconciliation, still farther from the hearing of that
saying, " Son, thou art ever with me, and all that
I have is thine," yet we may be in the way that




150       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
leadeth to a kingdom.  Of this, we can have
no more affecting instance than the case of the
Disciples. How much they loved their Lord,
how little they understood Him! They seem,
like the multitudes who marvelled at the gracious words that came out of His mouth, to have
felt an attraction towards His teaching, without
perceiving its tiue import; for how little while
their Lord was with them  do they appear to
have caught of His Spirit, or to have become
aware of the nature of His appointed work!
This is shown in so many parts of the, sacred
story, that it would be but tedious to multiply
instances to prove that it was upon a kingdom
of this world, and the power and glory belonging to such, that their desires were set, their
requests founded, - desires yet to be fulfilled,
requests yet to be granted far more fully than
they were then capable of realizing.  " Ye shall
indeed drink of my cup."  Their faith, though
imperfect in its scope, was sincere in its nature,
and it did not lose its reward. They trusted
that it was He who should redeem  Israel, and
having an eye to Him, they were lightened,
and their faces were not ashamed.
And so will it be with us. They who, continuing faithful to Divine Grace, however partially communicated, serve God with their whole




A PRESENT HEAVEN.             151
lives, will never fail of that one reward, the
greatest which even He has to bestow, the being made able to love Him  with their whole
hearts. If we follow our Lord's footsteps humbly and patiently along the common road, He
will take us, as He did the three favored
Disciples, with Him upon the Mount, and show
us Moses and Elias, the hard sayings of the
law, the deep enigmatical oracles of life, transfigured in Himself. Our eyes will be no more
holden, and the exclamation of our souls will
be, "Hast Thou been so long time with me,
Lord, and I have not known Thee?"
Do you remember Bunyan's quaint and beautiful description of the Land of Beulah, a country situated on this side of the River of Death,
where the sun shineth night and day, and where
Pilgrims may rest and rejoice safely, their King
having brought them to His Banqueting House,
where His banner over them  is love?  The
heart, as it advances in Christ, seems to reach
out towards this inward Millennium, this Messianic reign of rest and fulness, the kiss of righteousness and peace within the soul. It wearies
of that order of things in, which there is a continual effort, —a struggle, a Law in the members warring against the Law  of God, and
desires to escape from it into the freedom* to
* See Note M.




152       A PRESENT HEAVEN.
which Christ has called us, the state in which
this law is no more coercive, having become the
law of these very members, the principle by which
they naturally act. A state whose characteristic
is not Law, but the liberty which exists under
such a law as that, which "being perfect" is
endued with power to "convert" the soul.
And if we pass but slowly into this liberty,
if, as you say, some of those who we may hope
arrive at the Holy City in safety seem to miss
the Land of Beulah on their way, —to know
much of the conflicts and struggles incident to
our Christian calling, little of its rest and satisfaction, — this need scarcely be wondered at,
"for there are many adversaries."  The principle of Life within us has much to contend
with from  inward and outward hinderance, 
the imperishable seed lives in many a spiritual
conception, many a heavenly disposition that is
not yet strong enough to detach itself from
earthly obstructions, so that, lifted into a region where it feels the sunshine of love upon
its leaves, it bursts into flower and fragrance.
Yet, while we were yet without strength, Christ
died for the. ungodly.  Decay, infirmity, circumstance, all that under which we do and
must groan, being burdened,- what matter if
these overcome us, so that we overcome them
through Him  who loveth us.  "A troop shall




A PRESENT HEAVEN.                     153
overcome Him," it was spoken of Gad, "but
He shall overcome at the last."   Much  bloom,
much sweetness, much usefulness, may be trampled out of our hearts and lives, without any
moral cession, - this alone can separate us from
the love of Christ; comforted or uncomforted,
so long as our hearts, our wills, are steadfast, we
can still be His sad, true lovers. The blossom
of early hope falls off, the fruit of performance
does not ripen perfectly; it is the green initial,
the will, that which we would fain be, which
Christ looks for, and, coming, desires to find.
Of many a rooted  and  grounded  soul the
bloom-time lies possibly beyond the grave. Yet
the Believer must be ever solicitous of victory; *
- ever desirous to win, t to hold his ground in
a humble way, to let the enemy gain no advantage.   We  should  love, we  should  ardently
aspire to, the  lowly,  sorrowful  triumphs  of
Christ, the  calm  persistence  in known  duties,
* "It was spiritual death which Christ conquered, so that at
the last it shall be swallowed up,- mark the word, - not in life,
but in victory. As the dead body shall be raised to life, so also
shall the defeated soul to victory, if only it has been fighting on
its Master's side, has made no covenant with death, nor itself bowed
its forehead to its seal. Blind from the prison-house, maimed
from the battle, or mad from the tombs, their souls shall surely
yet sit astonished at His feet who giveth peace." - RUSKIN.
t Often, says De Maistre, in a real battle, the losses on either
side seem equal. Who does win 9 He who keeps possession of the
ield. 




.154        A PRESENT HEAVEN
the readiness to begin all over again, —to see
the cherished plan, even the cherished prayer,
defeated. Death, the death of hope, of endeavor, will yet be swallowed up in victory; —
"Thy dead men shall live,
With my dead body shall they arise."
Christ's final Triumph is secure, and with Him
the triumph of all that has been indeed His.
When St. Paul predicts that Christ shall reign
until He have subdued all things under His feet,
He adds emphatically, " Now the last enemy
that shall be destroyed is -Death."  It is impossible that these words should be spoken of natural dissolution only. They refer to the whole
of that dark empire of which the death of the
body is but a part, and of this as a whole Christ
is the conqueror. Benold, let us therefore go
to Him that we may also die with Him; let us
die with Him, that we may also live with Him;
let us suffer with Him, that we'may also reign
with Him; let us not in word, in thought, in life,
deny Him who abideth faithful, who cannot deny
Himself.
"And on His Head were many crowns.
"And He was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood;
"And the armies which were in Heaven followed Him,clothed in fine linen, white and clean."
f




NOTES.
C-MOi








NOTES.
NOTE A. -Page 13.
AY  we not say that the Gospel —the
simplest sense of a word being always its
truest one-is considered and preached
too little in its primary meaning, " glad
tidings"?  The characteristic office of, an evangelist,
as distinguished from that of a teacher, is that of a
herald or proclaimer. He is one who bringeth good
tidings. In classical language (see Olshausen, Vol. I.
p. 3) the word Evangelium was also used to signify
a reward ori present given to a person bringing a
piece of good news, making him  a sharer in the
gladness he imparted. Thus, while the Gospel, like
Him of whom it testifies, places its work before it, it
also brings its reward with it (Isa. xl. 10, and lxii.
11), being its own and exceeding great reward. The
Gospel is a gift,- one of those which our Lord,
having ascended up on high, received for us men,an acquisition, a blessing making rich, a thing to be




158                 NOTES.
rejoiced over, —good news, in short, and to be welcomed as such, and not good advice only. See on this
subject a beautiful tract, "The Ship of Heaven."
NOTE B.-Page 16.
W     E may apply to Faith what St. Augustine
says of its companion: -" Is love made
perfect the moment it is born? so far from it, it is
born in order that it may be brought to perfection.
When it has been born, it is nourished; when it has
been nourished, it is strengthened; when it has been
strengthened, it is made perfect. When it has arrived at perfection, it says,'I desire to depart and to
be with Christ.'"
NOTE C.- Page 35.
NT" OW, without Faith we cannot be saved, for
IN~  we cannot rightly serve God unless we love
Him, and we cannot love Him unless we know Him,
neither can we know God unless by Faith. Therefore, salvation by Faith is only, in other words, the
love of God by the knowledge of God, or the recovery
of the image of God by a true spiritual acquaintance
with Him.
" Would you then be freed from the bondage of




NOTES.                   159
corruption? would you grow in grace, in grace in
general, or in any grace in particular? If you would,
your way is plain. Ask from  God more faith; beg.of Him, morning, noon, and night, while you walk
by the way, while you sit in the house, when you lie
down, and when you rise up, -beg of Him simply
to impress Divine things more deeply on your heart,
- to give you more and more of the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." -
JOHN WESLEY.
NOTE D.-Page 43.
A N  idea, according to the vigor with which it is
conceived or realized, will quickly or slowly
prepare for itself a body, and pass into a fact. When
once it has established its empire within the mind, it
will not be long in bringing outward things under its
jurisdiction.
" J'entends, par la foi, cette confiance dans la verit6
qui fait que non'seulement on la tient pour vrai, et
que l'intelligence en est satisfaite; mais qu'on a confrance dans son droit de regner sur le monde, de
gouverner les faits, et dans sa puissance pour y
rdussir.
" C'est dans ce sentiment qu'une fois entre en possession de la verite, l'homme se sent appele h la faire
passer dans les faits exterieurs, h les reformer, a les
rdgler selon la raison." — GUIZOT.




160                NOTES.
NOTE E. -Pages 51, 57.
"     R ELIGION  stands upon two pillars, namely
what Christ did for us in His flesh, and what
He performs in us by His Spirit. Most errors arise
from an attempt to separate these two." - NEWTON.
NOTE F. —Page 67.
VW7        E may learn something by considering the
sense in which the Apostles use the word
Saint; as when St. Paul addressed a whole Church,
"Even all that be at Rome," as having received
grace and apostleship, called to be Saints; and thus
opens another epistle, " To the Church of God which
is at Corinth, called to be Saints, with all who in
every place call upon the "Lord Jesus, both theirs and
ours." The word as they employ it confers no peculiar distinction; it is not, as it has become with us, a
Title of Honor, but the badge of simple citizenship in
Christ, being applied to all who remain faithful to the
spiritual relations in which they have been placed by
Him.
It is a Family Name, not acquired, but inherited,
and as such testifies, not to eminence of personal
grace, or loftiness of individual achievement, but to
union with the Holiness of which they who bear it
have been made partakers. To be a Saint, in the




NOTES.                   161.
sense in which they use the word, is to be, not such
a one as some Christian men and women raised
up by God for'especial ends have been, but such a
one as all Christian men and women may be. To be
a Saint is simply to be a man in Christ; it is the
growing up unto Him who is our Head in all things,
it is the feeding upon the Bread which came down
from Heaven, through privileges which are open, and
through duties which are common to all.
When we restrict the idea of Saintship to those
eminent spirits, the burning and shining lights in
which we are permitted from time to time to rejoice,
we betray that our notion of sanctity is placed rather
in things accidental to the renewed character, than in
that which is its essence. Zeal, fervor, learning,
and eloquence devoted to the holiest purposes; the
power of subjecting men's spirits, or of calling down
upon them the refreshing from above, - these things
do not make the Saint, they only adorn him. These
are but the gifts laid upon the altar.  "It is the
altar which sanctifies the gift," and of that altar all.
are partakers.
To recognize the privileges of our high yet common calling is to understand that a man is not a
Saint in virtue of anything which separates him from
his Brethren,- -which throws him as it were into
relief from  the general household of faith,- but
through that which unites him  to them  all.  And
when I think of this, I feel that our present need is
not so much of the signs of an Apostle, wrought
K




162                NOTES.
among us in signs and wonders, in mighty and merciful deeds, as of a more general partaking in those
covenanted blessings, given under the usual economy
of grace, to every man to profit withal. We may be
able to number few men of mark and feature, we
have among us but " few names."  Yet need we go
round our Zion, counting up her towers and telling
over her spiritual bulwarks? It is enough for us,
looking to her sure foundation, to be able to say that
"This man was born in her "; sufficient to know that
the Highest doth even now inhabit her. The times
and the seasons are in God's hands; for aught we
know, it may not fall within his plan that individual
gifts should be as conspicuous as in earlier ages; diffusion of light may in some degree interfere with its
concentration, and will at any rate cause it to appear
less splendid. There are peculiar manifestations, even
as the Apostle tells us, but one Lord; diversities of
gifts, worthy of being coveted earnestly, yet one inclusive of them all, the living membership in Christ,
in which his people, whatever they may keep or lose,
have still all things in common.
NOTE G.- Page 86.
ST. PAUL speaks of being able to comfort such
of his converts as were in trouble, with the comfort wherewith he himself was comforted of God




NOTES.                   163
Who can impart anything that he has not first received?  And where are the souls that have such
especial need of being established in the everlasting
consolations of God, as those "sons of consolation,"
the Levites of the better covenant, who are continually called upon to administer it to others? As
the Apostles spoke of themselves as "witnesses,"
chosen before of God, to declare among the people
the things which they had heard and seen, so should
their successors, called with*a like holy calling unto
a like holy office and ministry, be able to speak of
the things concerning the kingdom of God, as of that
which they do know, and to testify of them as of that
which they have seen.  The spiritual husbandman,
laboring in his Lord's vineyard, must be first a partaker of its fruits (2 Tim. ii. 6), and should be able
to speak of the good country where they grow as of a
land with which he is familiar. The Gospel of salvation should not fall from his lips like an historic narrative, -it is not a book which he is reading, but a
story which he is relating out of the intimacy of personal experience. " We are his witnesses in these
things."  "   come hither," says the Psalmist, "and
I will tell you what God hath done for my soul."See on this subject two tracts published at Leeds,
1854: " Authorities for the Certainty of Grace," by
the Rev. R. Collins; and " Renewal or Conversion,"
by the Rev. R. Aitkin.




164                 NOTES.
NOTE H.-Page 102.
"T    HE Spirit of God yet causes men to hope
that a world will come; the better one,
they call it, perhaps they might more wisely call
it the real one. Also I hear them speak continually
of going to it, rather than of its coming to them,
which again is strange; for in that prayer which
they had straight from the lips of the Life of the
world, there is not anything about going to another
world,-only something of another world coming
into this, or rather not another, but the only government, that government which will constitute a World
indeed, new heavens and a new earth. Earth no
more without form and void, but sown with fruits of
righteousness; Firmament no more of passing cloud,
but of cloud risen out of the crystal sea; cloud in
which, as He was once received up, so He shall again
come with power." - RUSKIN.
NOTE I.-Page 128.
T. PAUL saith, "The spirit will give itself up
to God, and trust in Him and obey, but reason,
flesh and blood, will resist, and cannot upward rise."
Therefore must our Lord God bear with us. One
person asked, " Wherefore doth not God impart full
knowledge?"  Dr. Martin replied, "If any one




NOTES.                  165
could indeed believe, then for very joy he would be
able neither to eat nor drink, nor do aught else." —
LIFE OF LUTHER.
NOTE K.   Page 134.
VWV   E must not insist upon any routine in religious experience, as the spiritual discipline to which believers are subjected varies with the
probation of outward life. To the sinful and ignorant
the awakening to God is as the coming in of light,
making them to see their ways and to loathe themselves for their doings which were not good; to
others, already in the way, it is the discovery of
love, Thou meetest him that worketh righteousness,
those that remember thee in thy ways.
The work of the Holy Spirit includes both teaching and training; it has not only to enlighten the
intellect to apprehend Divine truth, but also to guide
the heart into its ways. Some believers seem from
the first taught of God to look to the work of Christ;
a deep conviction of sinfulness, a sense of impending
danger, draw them to Him as to a Saviour. Having
been filled with their own ways, and having tasted of
the bitterness they led to, they experience deep sorrow, and with it that peculiar joy of the pardoned
soul, unlike, as you say, to any other, in its union of
deep sorrow with grateful love and joy. To such
spirits the work of their Lord is precious, they




166                  NOTES.
feel their need of it at every step, yet they have
still a training, sometimes a very severe one, to go
through, — a will to be subdued, affections to be
purified. To others, the discipline comes first, they
are drawn to our Lord through a yearning after
moral perfection, which leads them to seek the excellency which shines nowhere so brightly as in Him.
They seek Him in ordinances, through duties. He is
for them, perhaps for a long time, a Prince rather
than a Saviour, yet all the while the Will of God is
instructing them  in the doctrine.  Though at this
stage they are little able to be the guides and comforters of others, their own feet stand firm, and when
a clearer light dawns, it finds them upon the path on
which, like early travellers, they have set forth before the breaking of the day, - the path on which no
true wayfarer, though he might walk on it long in
darkness, ever yet erred.  We may compare the
hearts of these just persons to a fair, well-ordered
room, with the fire on the hearth laid ready for kindling.  We are conscious of a chillness in the atmosphere, for the Master has not yet come, but all is
prepared for Him, and for the touch of the living
coal that will light up all into a steadfast glow.




NOTES.                   167
NOTE L. -Page 138.
A   REAL though not as yet a complete change;
one which may be illustrated through that
which in the Persian fable passes over the clay
which the rose has permeated. It has gained a real
sweetness, though independent of its fragrant companion it would be, what in a certain sense it even
now remains, " a miserable piece of clay."
"Christ," says Baxter, "is not such a physician
as to perform  but a supposed or reputative cure.
He came not to persuade His Father to judge us to be
well because He himself is well, or to leave us uncured,
persuading God that we are cured. Never did the
blessed Son of God intend in His dying or merits to
change the Holy Nature of His Father, and to cause
Him to love that which is unlovely, or to reconcile
Him to that which, as He is God, He abhorreth. We
must bear His image, and be holy as He is holy, before He can approve us or love us with complacency.
This is the work of our Blessed Redeemer, to make
man fit for God's approbation and delight. He regenerateth us that He may sanctify us and fit us for
our Master's use."
Children talk of repeating things by heart. Is
there not such a thing as living by heart? " Ye shall
know the truth," saith Christ, "and the truth shall
make you free." Obedience, long persevered in, will
grow less and less conscious, and Christ will become,




168                 NOTES.
in a simple and literal sense, the life of them that believe. This state is so far assimilated to that of
Heaven, that its guiding principle is in a less degree
faith than love, a confidence less founded upon that
which is still unseen, than built up upon that which is
known and loved. A state, in which the soul's converse is not framed like a speech acquired by rules
and study, but is idiomatic, the natural expression of
natural feelings. Yet even this has been acquired.
As in the fine arts, we must work by rule until we
are able to work without it.  May not a habit of the
soul be formed, as well as a habit of the eye or hand,
when the outward rule has passed into an inward
law, working out in that soul an obedience " so universal, so subtle, and so glorious, that nothing but the
heart can keep it." *  The true artist is not thinking
(consciously) of his rules, yet keeps theji all. Is
there not a state corresponding to this in spiritual
life, one in which wisdom reveals herself to such of
her true lovers as have sought her from " the flower
to the grape? "-  when her glorious classics, first
learnt, as at school, as a hard and distasteful lesson,
studied faithfully, but as a task —often, perhaps,
wept over- are taken up, not by constraint, but
willingly, their difficulties explained, their beauties
appreciated, as a bosom-book, "guide, companion,
and familiar friend."
* Ruskin.




NOTES.                   169
NOTE M.-Page 151.
SPIRITUAL freedom is not founded upon lawlessness, but upon obedience, as St. Bernard
says, to a better will than our own; it is not freedom
from law, but freedom from  that within ourselves
which makes it felt as a constraint, —the rejoicing
freedom  which loves the authority it lives under.
There seems much profit in considering the nature
of true spiritual recreation, little in endeavoring to
trace out its attainable degree. Some pious thinkers
have fixed this at a limit which, although it may not
want the support of an isolated passage of Scripture,
is opposed to its general tenor, and also contradictory
to a deep-seated instinct which assures us that perfection, if' here attainable, would involve a latent
imperfection from  which the soul shrinks. Under
our present conditions of being, we feel that we need
that sense of dependence upon God which a consciousness of frailty inspires; where without this
would be the adoring humility, the tender, implicit
reliance upon a better righteousness than our own?
The perfection of which our nature is capable is not
that of a state complete in itself, wrought out and
established within the soul at once and forever.
The very life of the renewed soul is relative; its
beauty and strength derived.
" Thou sowest not yet that thing which shall be, but
bare grain," a seed with which the Divine Husband8




170                NOTES.
man has long patience, but whose growth both to the
anxious and the scornful eye seems tardy, thin, and
too often blighted with the east wind.  Christ is content to be for a while in the world and in the heart
the smallest of seeds, content to be a grain of corn,
which, falling into the dry and long-drawn furrow,
upon the beaten path, the wind-swept common, lives,
but often as " dying." He who was Himself rejected
seems to be satisfied with that which man despises.
Man asks for that which is absolute; limited results,
partial triumphs, do not satisfy him. Hence we find
the unbeliever demanding what the Christian desires,
and refusing to believe in any change, unless that
change be thorough, and so to speak magical.
" Our position is briefly this," says a writer in the
Westminster Review (January, 1852). "We believe
in intellectual conversion, and, to a certain extent, in
gradual modification of the moral nature; but it is in
defiance of all sound psychology to believe in a sudden moral conversion following upon an intellectual
conversion. Once let a man arrive at maturity with
any distinctive character, and it is idle to think that
he will change it. Physiology will teach us that it
is impossible. Sorrow turning his thoughts inwards,
or calamity shattering his pride and confidence, may
effect great changes in the outward manifestations,
but they will not alter the inward nature. They
may make the irreligious soul fanatical, they will
not make it religious; they may make pride ape
humility, they will not make the spirit humble.




NOTES.                  171
There may be repentance, there may be sorrowing,
remorse, but there cannot be change. (?)  We may
make vows in anguish over remembered sins, and
keep our vows as far as regard overt acts, but the
nature which originally moved us along the path of
crime remains unchangeable, unchanged.  The notorious sinner metamorphosed into a saint is only a
change of attitude, not a change of being. A man
may change his convictions, his views, his deepest
and most settled opinions, but he cannot change his
temperament, his passions, his moral nature. Intellectual conversion is not co-extensive with and coercive of moral conversion, the organic qualities of the
mind (of which certain tempers are the outward
manifestations) cannot be constituted anew."
Yet a man who has experienced sorrow and repentance, whose views, convictions, deepest and most
settled opinions, are altered, is surely a changed man,
however far from being a perfect one. Opinions like
the foregoing seem founded upon ignorance of the
field in which Divine grace works, the will of man;
conversion is not a change of nature, but a change of
will, of aim, and affection. Christians, as well as unbelievers, need Neander's warning to beware " of
that lifeless supernaturalism which views all Divine
communications rather as overlying the mind than as
incorporating themselves with its natural psychological development,"- we must consider them, according to our Lord's figure, as seed growing with
the mind, and also suffering with it from checks and
bligh




172                   NOTES.
"'In Jesus Christ," he says, "the actual and the
ideal meet truly." He is all that He means, all that
He claims to be; but it is far otherwise with His fol
lowers, in whom the fact falls short, the outline
is ever incompletely filled.  Christianity
in the world conforms to the conditions
that limit Humanity, humbling
itself, even as Christ did,
in  being found  in
fashion  as  a
man.
Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.