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Concerning Going to Heaven.

BY C. H. SPURGEON.

HAVE heard persons express their unwillingness to go to heaven if it is to be all psalm-singing and holy talking. Surely, there was no need for them to decline to enter until they had been asked to do so. Holy Scripture invites all men to holiness, but I know of no passage in which it presses any ungodly man to enter heaven: there will be time enough to invite men to glory when they have accepted grace. Yet the refusal of the heavenly inheritance is sometimes heard, coupled with reasons for it. Thomas Brooks mentions a woman who lived near Lewes, in Sussex, who was ill, and therefore was visited by one of her neighbours, who to cheer her told her that if she died she would go to heaven, and be with God, and Jesus Christ, and the saints and angels. To this the sick woman in all simplicity replied, "Ah, mistress, I have no relations there! Nay, not so much as a gossip or acquaintance; and as I know nobody, I had a great deal sooner stop with you and the other neighbours than go and live among strangers." It is to be feared that if a good many were to speak their thoughts they would say much the same. One said to me only the other day, "What a dreadful thing it is to die and go 'you know not where'!" To whom I answered, "Yes, indeed; but to a Christian it is not so; he knows well enough where he is going." That may be," said the person who addressed me, "but still it is even to a Christian an unknown land." Her surprise was great when I demurred to this, and said that dying was going home to our own Father, to our Elder Brother, to our Husband, to our friends, and to the place where our life already is. This is the truth, and those who commune with God understand that it is so; but to the uninstructed in divine things the glory-land is a place as unknown as the dark continent of Africa used to be.

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There is a story floating about of a farmer in his last days being visited by the clergyman of the parish, who discoursed to him very sweetly concerning the happy land, and the celestial city, with its gates of pearl and its streets of gold. "Thank you, Sir," said the farmer, "it is a fine country, no doubt, but Old England for me! Old England for me!" He would probably have been better pleased with some English edition of a Mahometan Paradise, where roast beef and foaming tankards would abound on every side. He was not, however, the only true Briton who would make the same choice if he thought himself at all likely to get it.

We do not know that this true son of John Bull was much more out of the running than a certain popular authoress, who dreamed some time ago about "Gates Ajar." Her maunderings are far more wild in her later book, where she pictures a soul "Beyond the Gates." Therein the glorified one is represented as saying, "The grass was softer than eider of the lower world; and lighter than snow-flakes the leaves that fell from low-hanging boughs about me. Distantly I heard moving water; and more near, sleepy birds. . . . . I felt infinite security. I had the blessedness of a weariness which knew it could not miss of sleep. Dreams stole upon me with motion and touch so exquisite that I thought, 'Sleep itself is a new joy; what we had below was only a hint of the real thing,' as I sank into deep and deeper rest."

....

"When I waked, I was still alone. There seemed to have been showers, for the leaves and grass about me were wet; yet I felt no chill or dampness, or any kind of injury from this fact. Rather I had a certain refreshment, as if my sleeping senses had drunk of the peace and power of the dew, which flashed far and near about me. The intense excitement under which I had laboured since coming to this place was calmed. All the fevers of feeling were laid. I could not have said whether there had been what below we called night, or how the passage of time had marked itself; I only knew that I had experienced the recuperation of night, and that I sprang to the next duty or delight of existence with the vigour of recurring day. As I rose from the grass, I noticed a fourleafed clover, and remembering the pretty little superstition we used to have about it, I plucked it, and held it to my face, and so learned that the raindrop in this new land had perfume, an exquisite scent, as if into the essence of brown earth, and spicy roots, and aromatic green things, such as summer rain distils with us from out a fresh-washed world, there were mingled an inconceivable odour drawn out of the heart of the sky. Metaphysicians used to tell us that no man ever imagined a new perfume, even in his dreams. I could see that they were right, for anything like the perfume of clover after a rain in heaven had never entered into my sense or soul before. I saved the clover 'for good luck,' as I used to do."

It is clear that multitudes have no preparation for abiding with God for ever, for they are not yet capable of forming even a faint conception of it. Because eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, therefore these people conclude that nothing of heaven can be known, and truly by them it cannot be; but to the spiritual, heaven is revealed by the Spirit of God, its life is already commenced in them, its King already reigns over them, its Light has already shone upon them: its worship they have commenced, its communion they are enjoying, its joy they have foretasted. Heaven is as suitable for a saint as a lock is fitted to receive its key; and as the fashion of a lock might be inferred from the key, so may the glorious state be guessed at from the gracious man. He has, moreover, sips of sweetness, which give him no merely fanciful notion of the hill-country, and he knows somewhat of what the full-blown flower must be as he gazes at the beauty of the bud; but he looks not that in the revelation of the glory the invisible should be only a reproduction of the visible; for he knows that the spiritual exceeds the natural even as the heaven is above the earth.

I sat once at the bedside of one who had caught the true idea that the future will bear a distinct relation to the present, for she said to me, "Sir, I think I shall be allowed to share in the holy worship of God, for it was ever my delight. I do not think I shall be shut up with the wicked, for I was always weary of ungodly society. I hope I shall be gathered with the people of God, for these many years to be with them has been my chief delight. Dear Sir, I feel sure that the Lord will let us go with our own company." I was quite of her mind. The fact is, men depart from God in this life, and their future is to continue moving in that direction, for the Judge will say, "Depart"; but as for those who have been coming to the Lord, their future will be a continued advance in the same course, for their Lord will say, "Come, ye blessed."

TH

The Prodigal Son.*

A SERMON BY CHRISTMAS EVANS.

HE description of the prodigal shows how soon, how easily and completely, man, when competent to act, departs from God. Impressed by the portraiture, lo! I see him seeking a travelling-car to take away his goods and chattels. He finds horses and chariots, men and maid-servants, for he is about to leave his father's hearth, and bid him farewell. The elder brother was standing by, neatly dressed, with a staff in his hand; but the younger was very showily arrayed, had on a pair of yellow-topped boots, looked a grand gentleman, and held out one finger to bid his father" Good-bye." This is the description of one who has lost his reason, and follows his wicked inclinations. The wicked through the pride of his countenance will not seek after God," will not pray to him, or depend on his wisdom and love, but in his insanity will set up for himself.

While thus he was, as regards his father's house, dead and lost, "He went into a far country." Profligacy is indeed a far country, far from God, without faith, or the fear of God, or solemnity, or sacred song; a land where dead souls dwell, a land through which runs the broad road which leads to destruction. The ungodly "go astray from the womb," even before reading the heavenly book that tells of the far country, that describes how it was once drowned with water, and at another time how part of it was burned up with sulphureous fire from heaven. Besides, its climate is so fiercely hot that it destroys and burns up its produce; and sometimes so cold that it buries its population under mountains of frost and eternal snow. Its language was the language of hell, its customs were the lusts of Satan, who was its gigantic god. Its chief merchandise was in the exchange of the bodies and souls of men; these were the principal articles of commerce that passed through its ports, and it received from hell foolish and hurtful desires in their place. . . . The system of slave traffic flourished very richly there. The young man was insane to waste his substance in a land so scarce of provision, and so utterly barren of happiness. "His understanding was darkened." His mouth was a sepulchre, in which godliness and all holy things were buried. There was joined to the root of his tongue a bag, containing the poison of asps, so that he poisoned men by his tongue in his evil communications; and there was a flame at the point of his tongue, that set "the course of nature on fire," even with the fire of hell. His hands wrought mischief, and his feet were swift to shed blood. He was insane to direct his course to a land called "the far country," far from God, happiness, and heaven. It was so far that no one of himself has ever found the way back to his Father's house; but it was not so far but the Father could send famine and distress into it, and even run there to embrace the prodigal.

Has no one ever returned? Oh, yes; millions, millions! but not without the Father drawing them. In order to open a new way from this far country, God sent his Son to assume the nature of its inhabitants, and by virtue of the sacrifice that he gave on the tree in this very country he opened a way through the evil that shut men out from their Father's house.

The young man "spent his substance in riotous living." He devoted the

* This was one of Christmas Evans's most noteworthy sermons. He preached it on his last tour in South Wales, on which tour he died. The only departure from the Welsh is the substitution of a few verses of English poetry for Welsh.-E. M.

These notes are very welcome, but we judge them to be only notes. We beg our readers to peruse them carefully, and by the use of a little imagination they can fill up the gaps, and form some idea of how the glorious Welshman carried all before him. We have altered a word or two to make the sense clear. The sermon contains some of the finest touches which have ever come before us. It is grand even in this fragmentary state.-C. H. S.

strength of his body, and all his mental faculties, and possessions, to enliven Vanity Fair—that is, he gave himself up to the vices of the age; drunkenness, uncleanness, fighting, and Sabbath desecration.

Then the law, as a mighty famine, goes forth to lay hold of the sinner. When God would subdue a proud city, he does it by sending the sword, the famine, or the plague. The gospel has its sword, fire, and famine, which even Saul of Tarsus cannot withstand. The law raises the famine, and gradually increases it, until the sinner goes seeking through the far country for the bread of hope. He is described as setting out like a gentleman, then he becomes indigent, and seeks bread; but he had to know that the region of the law was a poor place in which to beg, because “it hath dominion over a man till he is dead." He could not sing for a living, like some poor English in our towns; nor sell matches from door to door. The law was, "He that will not work neither shall he eat." Every door was shut against him. He offered to work for a citizen of that country, that is, the preacher of the law as a covenant of works; but the law followed him, and no bread could be had for works of the law unless perfect; and the law would have written out his notice of removal to the House of Correction, in the parish of Sinai, where thousands of these wandering wretches have been sent, since the days of Cain, who was the first to die there. Now every hope of the bread of life was gone, he was almost distracted through his sin, seeing nothing but perdition in his heart, life, and conduct, while without any means of making an atonement for his sins. Lively conviction, produced by the Spirit of God, brings a man into a state of utter despair. Beer and spirits cannot drown such convictions. There was a famine of every article necessary to support a godless life. Conviction of sin is likened to the pangs of childbirth-and why? Because the termination of it is a matter of either death or life. But he would break his hunger by the deeds of the law; he would, in other words, get a living by work. It was not to a citizen of the towns where he had been spending his money, and his life, he repaired, but to the cities of strict morality, where the Scribes and Pharisees, and rulers of the parish church, lived in the days of Christ. Though the city he visited feigned to be a godly place, yet it belonged to the "far country."

The certain citizen to whom he applied was a figure of the legal preacher, the swine are the figure of his disciples: they tread the pearl of great price under their feet, and slight the doctrines of grace, and the atoning work of Christ, and the strength and life contained in them. Methinks I see him standing by the swine troughs! Others filled themselves, he could not. The husks would not do for him. He was a perfect picture of misery. An old shoe and stocking on his foot, an old cap on his head, like the turban of a Turk, recently picked from the dunghill, and a ragged one-armed coat on his back. While he stood there, death and starvation were depicted in his countenance. Nothing was to be heard but the munching of the swine as they ate their food, when lo! a letter from his father, borne as with the wind, came into his bosom. His father told him he was still alive, and rich. When this letter came it brought to mind many familiar circumstances; and trembling, he feared to venture to open it, lest his father should be found to swear in his wrath, that he should never come back. Some have feared to read a chapter, or pray, lest some evidence should start up that they have been rejected, or have committed the unpardonable sin. With tears he ventured to open it in the dark pass of death, when the sun of hope was setting, and there was no prospect of its ever rising again. At this juncture the gospel gave forth its commanding voice in demonstration of the Spirit and power, which brought to mind with irresistible force the thought that his Father was alive, and that there was bread at home, "enough and to spare." Now the sun of hope rose upon his soul, for by faith his Father's house drew nearer to him, with its amplitude of stores and open bounty. Faith in his Father wrought in his soul a feeble hope, and the fountains of repentance welled up in his mind, and streamed forth in the spirit of prayer. His faith in the bread and the sufficiency