XIV.

ON THE PROMISE OF "ETERNAL LIFE" AS THE GREAT REMEDY OF EARTHLY SORROWS.

THERE are woes of no unfrequent occurrence, which miserably baffle each proposal, and strike dumb each voice, of philosophic or worldly consolation, whether from lighter or severer schools; which those do but mock, with solemn or flimsy trifling, who would lull the sufferers into a dream of earthly possibilities, or harden them by a stern theory of pre-established fate.

But the revelation of the Most High God uplifts itself, like a never-setting sun, over the most dark and frowning heights of calamity and hopelessness. Our Saviour, just before his own predicted agony, calmly enjoined his sorrowful disciples, "Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." "I give

XIV. PROMISE OF ETERNAL LIFE. 331

unto my sheep" (he had previously declared) "eternal life, and they shall never perish."

So his most beloved follower, at the close of a long and suffering mission, testifies, "this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life; and this life is in his Son:" while another apostle, once a blasphemer of that holy name, declares, "the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord:" and " our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." What wonder if with such promises, received and embraced in "full assurance of hope," Paul was constrained, amidst his varied martyrdoms, to "reckon the sufferings of this present time not worthy to be weighed against the glory that shall be revealed." *

Would we, however, practically and availingly unite with him and other saints in this most blessed "reckoning,"-would we derive from the promise of Eternal Life that strength in sorrows, and that stimulus to duties, which the reality and magnificence of the prospect should induce,—we must make it a matter, not of nominal or cursory regard, but of heartfelt belief, and of earnest meditation; contemplating, so far as our powers admit, the import of the gift; though it is obvious we must find in it depths and heights that will ineffably surpass them.

* Rom. viii, 18. See Schleusner.

The term " life," without an epithet, is sometimes used in scripture as an emphatical expression for happiness. "He that hath the Son hath life." "I am come that ye might have life.”* The very idea of life, in this its highest sense, as the conscious existence of a moral being unfallen, or perfectly and blissfully restored, is one which, till we are ourselves thus entirely and indefectibly restored, we cannot fully realize. Even apart from that attribute of endless continuance which appears to be in truth inseparable from it, there is something in such a life which must transcend the thought of any not possessing it. The gift of its beginnings does but faintly intimate that perfection of which it is the earnest. Some devout Some devout persons, indeed, have attained, even here, such degrees of this " life," which is "hid with Christ in God," as to "take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches,

"The life which we now live," (writes Bernard,)" is rather death; not life properly, but a death-like life." "There shall we truly live, where life is a lively and a living life." I have tried, at the expense of style, to give something like the force of his own Latin phrases:

"Hæc enim vita qua vivimus, magis mors; nec simpliciter vita, sed vita mortalis." "Ibi vere vivitur, ubi vivida vita est et

vitalis."

Milton has very forcibly expressed the same sentiment in one of his finest sonnets:

"This earthly load

Of death, called life, which us from life doth sever."

'St. Bern. Opp. p. 558.

in necessities, for Christ's sake;" yet we have not found the most eminent among these pronouncing themselves wholly freed from spiritual corruption and paralysis and pain; the marks and remainders of that spiritual "death" from which God's mercy has begun to raise them.

66

How fitly all sinfulness or moral defect is scripturally designated death," we may infer from this; that the term Life describes the highest possession, and sometimes the very being, of the everblessed God, and of Him who is one with the Father. "As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself."

Such were the words of Christ; and his apostle afterwards wrote; "The Life has been manifested, and we have seen [it,] and bear witness [to it,] and we announce to you that Eternal Life, which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us.

These august titles of "the Life," the " Eternal Life," thus ascribed to Him who was with God and was God," correspond also to the most holy and awful name, Jehovah; which denotes essential and eternal existence.

Life, then, is the essence and blessedness of the "only Potentate." He "only hath immortality." It is his to confer the mighty boon, and his free

* 1 John i, 2. Dr. J. P. Smith's version, Scrip. Test. iii. 83.

grace bestows it not only on beings never separated from Him, but on those who, through his beloved Son, are reconciled and reunited to Himself. But it is, I venture to conclude, not possible on earth for the most advanced believers to apprehend, even in speculation, still less experimentally, the perfectness of such a life. How few among us may have enjoyed a single hour, which would equal our own faint conceptions of that pure felicity; reposing, as it were, on one celestial charmed spot amidst the wilderness, from which the sense of sin and infirmity, and fear, and grief, was banished; the fulness of divine communications having, for a little space, utterly superseded or subdued it! Yet we are taught to meditate not on an insulated section, a transitory portion; of that life, but on the boundless expanse of it above and beyond the wilderness. The gospel invites us to pray to "the Father of glory," that He " may give unto us the spirit of wisdom and revelation," that we "may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance."

The contemplation, therefore, of "eternal life,” accompanied by prayer for heavenly light and strength, is a sacred duty and privilege of Christians. And surely the attempt at this will constrain us to prayer; for how are we lost as we commence, and still more as we pursue it.