The Patriarchs: Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.Bellett, J. G. (John Gifford)
Religion
The Patriarchs: Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.
Bellett, J. G. (John Gifford)
Bible -- Biography; Patriarchs (Bible)
I have found it well at times to ponder this, and to learn something of
that moral element that is to be the air of heaven. Scriptures which I
have already noticed test and prove the purity of that air. The
millennial atmosphere both in heaven and on earth will indeed be ever
fresh, laden with balmy fragrance. If we are now wearied with our own
selfishness, and with the tempers of "hateful and hating" human nature,
we must long for a change of air, such as the land of the glory is said
to know, the land of the voice of the turtle. If the brightness of those
regions, or the scenery of the place, have its attraction (and what
heart can conceive it?), what must be the atmosphere of it to our happy
souls, where social life, through all its relations, as between heaven
and earth, and as between Jerusalem, the land of Israel, and the most
distant islands, moves and kindles continually with the most generous
and delicate affections.
It is not that nature will be triumphed over merely; nature will not be
there; at least, not in the heavens which we are approaching. We shall
not have to speak of saints carrying themselves towards each other in a
good spirit. Such security is well in its place, and while we sojourn in
our "vile bodies." But there the element itself will be good. The
fervent currents of pure and happy minds, flowing from each to all, will
form it.
The moral dignity and beauty, the various and yet consistent perfections
that will animate us then, will all be bright and lovely before the
divine mind. God shall survey the work of His fingers through the
different spheres of glory, and rest with delight in it.
It is a thought much to be cherished, that our eternal ways will thus be
the divine delight, and more than make up to God (I speak again after
the manner of men) for the grief which, by us and in us, His Spirit is
now so continually put to.
Such will be the _moral_ enjoyments in the realms of glory; no small
part of that banquet at which the Lord will seat His guests, when He
comes forth and girds Himself to wait upon them. Luke xii. 37. We may be
but little able to comprehend the glory itself, but we can appreciate
these moral characteristics of the heaven we are reaching.
While still here, in the conflicts of flesh and spirit, we are, in some
sense, under the guardianship of _conscience_, that principle which
judges of "good and evil." But conscience will not keep heaven in order.
Our _passions_ and our _righteousness_ will there be one. Little do we
now advance in a heavenly direction by the gracious current of
affections. But what bliss, when the very energy which bears us
_speedily_ will also bear us _rightly_ onward—-when the very gale which
fills the sails will regulate the rudder; the passion that engages and
delights the soul being the very rule and measure of all that is worthy
of the presence of God!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive