| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 6 |
Page 4 |
Death only sweeps away the limitations, breaks down the walls, shatters the crust of mortality, washes out the stains, and then life expands into perfect freedom, fullness, joy and power. The translation of a Christian life from earth to heaven is but like the removal of a tender plant from a cold northern garden, where it is stunted and dying, into a tropical field, where it puts out most luxuriant growths and covers itself with splendor.
There ought to be wondrous comforting power in the truth of immortality for those who carry here the burdens of sickness, infirmity or deformity; and there are many such. Many lovely bodies are full of disease; they stagger under life’s lightest burdens. Then there are many who carry imperfect bodies, and old age comes to the strongest and the fairest, stealing away the strength and touching the loveliness, and it fades. But the resurrection body will be for ever free from disease and pain. There will be no decrepitude, no bowed forms, no pale cheeks, no wasting or decay. How pleasant it is to the old to know that they will get back their bodies with all the marks of age removed, and will begin life again with all the glow of immortal youth! I believe it is Swedenborg who says that in heaven the oldest angels are the youngest. A deep truth lies here. Not only does age leave no marks or traces of wasting, but the immortal life is a growth ever toward youth and freshness of existence rather than toward senescence and decay.
There is another bearing which the truth of immortality must have upon the life that truly realizes it. It is in the intensifying of all its best activities and powers. If there were to be no life after this brief existence, why should we deny ourselves and spend our strength in serving others? Why should we sacrifice our own ease and comfort for the sake of those who are degraded and unworthy? How cold and hard all duty seems without this motive! But when this truth of immortality comes and touches these austere duties, how they begin to glow! The certainty of a hereafter bright with all manner of rewards and joys is a wondrous inspiration. No matter that there is no apparent result when we toil and sacrifice; that the word we speak seems to float away into oblivion; that the impression we seek to make on a life fades out while we gaze. Somewhere in the long years to come we shall find that not the smallest deed done for Christ, or the feeblest word spoken, or the faintest touch given, has been in vain. In the highest sense – higher than then the old artist dreamed of – do we work for eternity. In a truer and deeper way than we know, and in remoter ages than we can count, shall we find our songs from beginning to end in the hearts of our friends. In frescoing, when the artist lays on his colors they sink away and leave no trace, but they reappear by and by in beauty. So we touch lives today and there is no impression that we can see. The very memory seems to fade out. But in eternity it will be manifest. The brightest clouds in the glowing west lose their splendor while you gaze, but work done in human souls will appear in unfading hues, brightening for ever.
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