———
Glory Which Awaits the Soul.
We shall not always be as we are today — contracted and hampered because of our little knowledge and our slender faculties and dull perceptions. Our ignorance and prejudice shall vanish. What a man will become we can scarcely tell when he is remade in the image of God, and made like unto our divine Lord, who is the first-born among many brethren.” Here we are but in embryo. Our minds are but the seeds, or the bulbs, out of which shall come the flower and glory of a nobler manhood.
Your body is to be developed into something infinitely brighter and better than the bodies of men here below; and as for the soul, we can not guess to what an elevation it shall be raised in Christ Jesus. There is room for the largest expectation here, as we conjecture what will be the full accomplishment of the vast intent of eternal love, an intent which has involved the sacrifice of the only-begotten Son of God. That can be no mean design which has been carried on at the expense of the best which Heaven itself possessed. — SPURGEON.
The Glory of Heaven.
We are told that “eye hath not seen, neither hath ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” Yet the eye has seen wonderful things. There are sunrises and sunsets, Alpine glories and ocean marvels which, once seen, cling to our memories throughout life; yet even when Nature is at her best she can not give us an idea of the supernatural glory which God has prepared for His people. The ear has heard sweet harmonies. Have we not enjoyed music which has thrilled us? Have we not listened to speech which has seemed to make our hearts dance within us? And yet no melody of harp nor charm of oratory can ever raise us to a conception of the glory
which God hath laid up for them that love Him. As for the heart of man, what strange things have entered it! Men have exhibited fair fictions, woven in the loom of fancy, which have made the eyes to sparkle with their beauty and brightness; imagination has reveled and rioted in its own fantastic creations, roaming among islands of silver and mountains of gold, or swimming in seas of wine and rivers of milk; but imagination has never been able to open the gate of pearl which shuts in the city of our God. No, it hath not yet entered the heart of man.
— SPURGEON. The Glory of the Resurrection.
The body is to be changed. What alteration will it undergo? It will be rendered perfect. The body of a child will be fully developed, and the dwarf will attain to full stature. The blind shall not be sightless in Heaven, neither shall the lame be halt, nor shall the palsied tremble. The deaf shall hear, and the dumb shall sing God’s praises. We shall carry none of our deficiencies or infirmities to Heaven. As good Mr. Ready-to-Halt did not carry his crutches there, neither shall any of us need a staff to lean upon.
There we shall not know an aching brow, a weak knee or a failing eye.
“The inhabitant shall no more say: ‘I am sick.’” And it shall be an impassive body — a body that will be incapable of any kind of suffering.
No palpitating heart, no sinking spirit, no aching limbs, no lethargic soul shall worry us there. No, we shall be perfectly delivered from every evil of that kind. Moreover, it shall be an immortal body. Our risen bodies shall not be capable of decay, much less of death. There are no graves in Glory.
Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for their bodies shall rise never to know death and corruption a second time. No smell or taint of corruption shall remain upon those whom Jesus shall call from the tomb. The risen body shall be greatly increased in power. It is “sown in weakness,” says the Scripture; but it is “raised in power.” I suppose there will be a wonderful agility about our renovated frame. Probably it will be able to move as swiftly as the lightning flash — for so do angels pass from place to place — and we shall in this, as in many things else, be as the angels of God. Anyhow, it will be a ‘glorious, body,’ and it will be “raised in glory.”
So the whole of our manhood shall participate of that wonderful depth of bliss which is summed up in the word is “glory.” — SPURGEON.
The Glory of God’s Presence.
In Heaven we shall dwell in the immediate presence of God. We shall dwell with Him in nearest and dearest fellowship. All the felicity of the Most High will be our felicity. The blessedness of the triune Jehovah shall be our blessedness for ever and ever. Did you notice that our text says: “He hath called us unto His glory?” This outshines everything. The glory which the saints will have is the same glory which God possesses, and such as He alone can bestow. — SPURGEON.
—————
GOD.
———
God a Person.
In our highest moments we instinctively speak of a Someone — not merely of a Somewhat. Richter says that when a child first witnesses a thunderstorm, or when the greatest objects of Nature — such as the Alps, the Himalayas or the ocean — come before the mind for the first time, then is the moment in which to speak of God; for the sublime everywhere awakens the thought, not merely of a Somewhat, but of a Someone behind it. Not a Somewhat merely, but a Someone walks on Niagara’s watery rim.
The farther up you ascend the Alps, if your thoughts are awake, the nearer you come to anticipated communion, not only with Somewhat but with Someone higher than the Alps or than the visible heavens that are to be rolled away. There are in the midnights on the ocean voices that the waves do not utter. I have paced to and fro on the deck of a steamer midway between England and America, and remembered that Greenland was on the north and Africa and the Tropic Islands on the south, in the resounding, seething dark, and my home behind me, and the mother isle before me.
Lying on the deck and looking into the topgallants and watching them sway to and fro among the constellations, and listening to the roll of the great deep, I have given myself, I hope, some opportunity to study the voices of Nature there; but I assure you that my experience has been like that of every other traveler in the moments when the sublimities of the sea and the stars have spoken loudest. A Somewhat and a Someone greater than they spoke louder yet. The most audible word uttered in that midnight in the center of the Atlantic was not concerning Africa, America, England or the tumbling icebergs of the North, but of the Someone who holds all the immensities and the eternities in His palm as the small dust of
the balance. — JOSEPH COOK.
God’s Highest Glory.
Salvation is God’s highest glory. He is glorified in every dewdrop that twinkles to the morning sun. He is magnified in every wood bower that blossoms in the copse, although it live to blush unseen and waste its sweetness in the forest air. God is glorified in every bird that warbles on the spray; in every lamb that skips the mead. Do not the fishes in the sea praise Him? From the tiny minnow to the huge leviathan, do not all creatures that swim the water bless and praise His name? Do not all created things extol Him? Is there aught beneath the sky, save man, that does not glorify God? Do not the stars exalt Him., when they write His name upon the azure of Heaven in their golden letters? Do not the lightnings adore Him when they flash His brightness in arrows of light, piercing the midnight darkness? Do not thunders extol Him when they roll like drums in the march of the God of armies? Do not all things exalt Him, from the least even to the greatest? But sing — sing, O Universe! Till thou hast exhausted thyself, thou canst not afford a song so sweet as the “Song of Incarnation.” Though Creation may be a majestic organ of praise, it can not reach the compass of the golden canticle — Incarnation! There is more in that than in creation, more melody in Jesus in the manger than there is in worlds on worlds rolling their grandeur round the throne of the Most High.
— SPURGEON. The Glory of God.
The Glory of God! How shall I describe it? I must set before you a strange Scriptural picture. Mordecai must be made glorious for his fidelity to his king, and singular is the honor which his monarch ordains for him. This was the royal order: “Let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head; and let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king’s most noble princes, that they may array the man withal whom the king delighteth to honor, and bring him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim before him: ‘Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honor.’” Can you not imagine
the surprise of the Jew when robe and ring were put upon him, and when he found himself placed upon the king’s horse? This may serve as a figure of that which will happen to us; we shall be glorified with the glory of God. The best robe, the best of Heaven’s array, shall be appointed unto us, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. — SPURGEON.
The Great Problem.
No one need turn away from the idea of a God because the thought seems hopeless in its vastness and many-sided mystery, for there is no other thought which promises any smoother way for logic or any more peace for the heart. We can not escape the problem contained in man and the world.
Man and the world are both here. — SWING. God Great by What He Gives.
God is great not only in what He has, but in what He gives away. He owns all the colors, but they are poured out upon the world for us. The clouds catch some, the rainbow some, the flowers some, the human cheek some tint; but they are all for us as well as the Creator. God owns the sun, but what does He do with the extra sunbeams? Ask our world on this day of Spring. Ask all the human beings who live on this planet. Ask the birds and the dumb animals, and they will say that the sunbeams are for God and us. The sea is His and ours. The midnight sky is for Him and us. We need not the old times to come back and create more love of gold, but we pray for the days to come when human goodness and beauty will be, like God’s colors and light, poured out for all in great profusion. — SWING.
God Not Dead.
At one time I was sorely vexed and tried by my own sinfulness, by the wickedness of the world, and by the dangers which beset the Church. One morning I saw my wife dressed in mourning. Surprised, I asked her who had died. She replied: “Do you not know? God in Heaven is dead.” I said to her: “How can you talk such nonsense, Katie? How can God die? He is immortal, and will live through all eternity.” “Is that really true?” she asked. “Of course,” I said, still not perceiving what she was aiming at;
that He can never die.” “And yet,” she said, “though you do not doubt that, you are still so hopeless and discouraged.” Then I observed what a wise woman my wife was, and mastered my sadness.
— MARTIN LUTHER. God Dismissed from Human Thought.
It would be an alarming experiment if the King of Kings were to be dismissed from the minds of the people of this country, for the notion of such an infinite Being is the ideal by which society measures not only its duties, but also its greatness and its hopes. The Deity is the storehouse in which humanity treasures up all its best thoughts. The storehouse can never become full; for, however wise and kind society may become, the name of God opens to receive all the human conceptions of good. This God has always beckoned man on and on. Whether Moses, Daniel, Isaiah, Plato or Paul lifted the eye to Heaven, each saw a Being far beyond the knowledge or goodness of self. Wonderful treasurer of our world! He casts away our dross and retains all our gold! His angels bear man up, lest he dash his foot against a stone. Cities have fallen. Their ruins adorn and solemnize the old East. The temples have fallen where the Jewish and Greek statesmen began their speeches with prayer, but the God whom they worshipped gathered up all their moral beauties and bore them onward toward the Christian period without loss. — SWING.
Why Not Accept God?
Why not most cordially espouse the assumption of a Deity? The greatness of such a Being is no hindrance to faith, for the universe does not teach anything else than greatness. Having seen the ocean in peace and in storm, having seen the sun and moon encompass our earth as marvelous lamps, having learned that the sun has been flinging out light and heat for millions of years, having learned that there are millions of such suns, perceiving that man is a mind that can study such a universe and can trace, measure and weigh these distant orbs, the heart need not expect the God of such a scene to pass alone in the likeness of a man or a bird, or even an angel with wings. How can the mind turn from a half-hour of thought in
astronomy, in whose heavens are seen gigantic worlds whirling in space like insects in a sunbeam; orbs a million miles in diameter and lighting up systems as an electric lamp lights up a little library or bedchamber; orbs in the light of which a moral and thinking form of life can read a book at the distance of 95,000,000 miles from the lamp? How turn from globes which run 50,000 or 100,000 miles an hour, and yet carry gently the trembling dewdrop and the waking or sleeping forms of life; orbs which perhaps support a human race on their bosom, and never change their speed a second in a thousand years? How turn from these things and expect God to be anything like the ruler of a city or a sacred cow of the East or the sacred reptiles of old Egypt? It is necessary that the Creator of such a stupendous scene should transcend all thought and move before man a perpetual depth and height wholly immeasurable. — SWING.
God Beyond Philosophy.
In its sublimest research, philosophy
May measure out the ocean-deep — may count The sands or the sun’s rays — but God! for Thee There is no weight nor measure. None can mount Up to Thy mysteries. Reason’s brightest spark, Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark;
And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high, Even like past moments in eternity.
G. R. DERZHAVIN. God Unchanging.
When we have looked on the pleasures of life, and they have vanished away; when we have looked on the works of Nature, and perceived that they were changing; on the monuments of Art, and seen that they would not stand; on our friends, and they have fled while we were gazing; on ourselves, and felt that we were fleeting as they — we can look to the throne of God. Change and decay have never reached that. The waves of an eternity have been rushing past it, but it has ever remained unshaken.
The waves of another eternity are rushing toward it; but it is fixed, and can never be disturbed. — F. W. P. GREENWOOD.
When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through Nature — when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world’s creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation — I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all.
— FARADAY. The Nature of God.
A little child has never gone out of its native village. Its father has been a sailor. The child says to him “Father, what is the ocean?” “Oh, my child,”
says the father, “the ocean — why, suppose that little brook there were to widen, and widen, and widen, till it reached away beyond that hill; and then suppose it were to widen, and widen, and widen, till it reached away beyond the mountain; and then suppose it were to reach farther and farther, till you could not see the banks of it. That would be the ocean.”
“What, father! As big as that?” “Oh, my child, it is a thousand times bigger than that.” “Well, father, what is a storm on the ocean?” The father takes a pail of water, and sets it down, and oscillates it until the waves roll from side to side, and then he says: “That is it, on a small scale, my child.
It gives only a hint of what a storm on the ocean is.” The child will have a very limited conception, I take it, of such a storm from what he sees in the pail. But every drop of that water in the pail is like the water of the ocean;
and every one of its waves, in its curves, its motions, its laws, represents the most gigantic waves of the sea. Thus the lowest experiences in human nature — of love, of pity, of fidelity and of truth, small in us — are of the same essential quality as they are in God. They are vaster in God; they are in Him inconceivable in magnitude, in intensity, in fruitfulness and in beauty. But we have the root-notion; and it is not an unfair interpretation which our imagination gives.
— BEECHER.