303. Employments of Heaven

Employments of Heaven

Eze_1:1 : ’93Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened.’94

Ezekiel, with others, had been expatriated, and while in foreign slavery was standing on the banks of the royal canal, which he and other serfs had been condemned to dig by the order of Nebuchadnezzar’97this royal canal in the text called the river of Chebar’97the illustrious exile had visions of heaven. Indeed, it is almost always so that the brightest visions of heaven come not to those who are on mountain-top of prosperity, but to some John on desolate Patmos, or to some Paul in Mamertine dungeon, or to some Ezekiel standing on the banks of a ditch he had been compelled to dig’97yea, to the weary, to the heart-broken, to those whom sorrow has banished. The text is very particular to give us the exact time of the vision. It was in the thirtieth year, and in the fourth month, and on the fifth day of the month. So you have had visions of earth you will never forget. You remember the year, you remember the month, you remember the day, you remember the hour. Why may not we have some such vision this morning?

The question is often silently asked, though perhaps never audibly propounded, ’93What are our departed Christian friends doing now?’94 The question is more easily answered than you might perhaps suppose. Though there has come no recent intelligence from the heavenly city, and we seem dependent upon the story of near nineteen centuries ago, still I think we may, from inference, decide what are the present occupations of our transferred kinsfolk.

After God has made a nature, he never eradicates the chief characteristics of its temperament. You never knew a man phlegmatic in temperament to become sanguine in temperament. You never knew a man sanguine in temperament to become phlegmatic in temperament. Conversion plants new principles in the soul, but Paul and John are just as different from each other after conversion as they were different from each other before conversion. If conversion does not eradicate the prominent characteristics of the temperament, neither will death eradicate them. You have, then, only by a sum in subtraction and a sum in addition, to decide what are the employments of your departed friends in the better world. You are to subtract from them all earthly grossness and add all heavenly goodness, and then you are to come to the conclusion that they are doing now what they did on earth in their best moments.

The reason that so many people never start for heaven is because they could not stand it if they got there, if it should turn out to be the rigid and formal place some people photograph it. We like to come to church, but we would not want to stay here to next Christmas. We like to hear the ’93Hallelujah Chorus,’94 but we would not want to hear it all the time for fifty centuries. It might be on some great occasion it would be possibly comfortable to wear a crown of gold weighing several pounds, but it would be an affliction to wear such a crown for ever. In other words, we run the descriptions of heaven into the ground, while we make that which was intended as especial and celebrative to be the exclusive employment of souls in heaven. You might as well, if asked to describe the habits of American society, describe a Decoration Day, or a Fourth of July, or an autumnal Thanksgiving, as though it were all the time that way.

I am not going to speculate in regard to a future world, but I must, by inevitable laws of inference and deduction and common sense, conclude that in heaven we will be just as different from each other as we are now different, and hence, that there will be at least as many different employments in the celestial world as there are employments here. Christ is to be the great love, the great joy, the great rapture, the great worship of heaven; but will that abolish employment? No more than loves on earth’97paternal, filial, fraternal, conjugal love’97abolish earthly occupation.

In the first place, I remark that all those of our departed Christian friends who on earth found great joy in the fine arts are now indulging their tastes in the same direction. On earth they had their gladdest pleasures amid pictures and statuary, and in the study of the laws of light and shade and perspective. Have you any idea that that affluence of faculty at death collapsed and perished? Why so, when there is more for them to look at, and they have keener appreciation of the beautiful, and they stand amid the very looms where the sunsets and the rainbows and the spring mornings are woven? Are you so obtuse as to suppose that because the painter drops his easel and the sculptor his chisel and the engraver his knife, that therefore that taste, which he was enlarging and intensifying for forty or fifty years, is entirely obliterated? These artists, or these friends of art, on earth worked in coarse material and with imperfect brain and with frail hand. Now they have carried their art into larger liberties and into wider circumference. They are at the old business yet, but without the fatigues, without the limitations, without the hindrances of the terrestrial studio. Raphael could now improve upon his masterpiece of Michael the Archangel, now that he has seen him, and could improve upon his masterpiece of the Holy Family, now that he has visited them. Michael Angelo could better present the Last Judgment after he has seen its flash and heard the rumbling battering-rams of its thunder. Exquisite colors here, graceful lines here, powerful chiaroscuro here; but I am persuaded that the grander studios and the brighter galleries are higher up by the winding marble stairs of the sepulchre, and that Turner, and Holman Hunt, and Rembrandt, and Titian, and Paul Veronese, if they exercised saving faith in the Christ whom they portrayed upon the canvas, are painters yet, but their strength of faculty multiplied ten-thousand fold. The reason that God took away their eye and their hand and their brain was that he might give them something more limber, more wieldy, more skilful, more multiplitant. Do not, therefore, be melancholy among the tapestries, and the bric-a-brac, and the embroideries, and the water-colors, and the works of art which your departed friends used to admire. Do not say: ’93I am sorry they had to leave all these things.’94 Rather say: ’93I am glad they have gone up to higher artistic opportunity and appreciation.’94 Our friends who found so much joy in the fine arts on earth, are now luxuriating in Louvres and Luxembourgs celestial.

I remark again that all our departed Christian friends who in this world were passionately fond of music are still regaling that taste in the world celestial. The Bible says so much about the music of heaven that it cannot all be figurative. The Bible over and over again speaks of the songs of heaven. If heaven had no songs of its own, a vast number of those of earth would have been taken up by the earthly emigrants. Surely the Christian at death does not lose his memory. Then there must be millions of souls in heaven who know ’93Coronation,’94 and ’93Antioch,’94 and ’93Mount Pisgah,’94 and ’93Old Hundred.’94 The leader of the eternal orchestra need only once tap his baton, and all heaven will be ready for the hallelujah. If heaven should ever get out of music, Thomas Hastings and Lowell Mason and Bradbury would start up a hundred old magnificent chorals. But what with the new song that John mentions, and the various doxologies alluded to, and the importation of sublimer harmonies, a Christian fond of music, dying, will have an abundance of regalement. What though the voice be gone in death, what though the ear be fallen in dissolution, are you therefore to conclude that the spirit will have no power to make or catch sweet sounds? Cannot the soul sing? How often we compliment some exquisite singer by saying: ’93There was so much soul in her music.’94 In heaven it will be all soul, until the body after a while comes up in the resurrection, and then there will be an additional heaven. Cannot the soul hear? If it can hear, then it can hear music. Do not, therefore, let it be in your household, when some member leaves for heaven, as it is in some households, that you close the piano and unstring the harp for two years, because the fingers that used to play on them are still. You must remember that they have better instruments of music where they are. You ask me ’93Do they have real harps, and real trumpets, and real organs?’94 I do not know. Some wiseacres say positively there are no such things in heaven. I do not know, but I should not be surprised if the God who made all the mountains, and all the hills, and all the forests, and all the metals of the earth, and all the growths of the universe’97I should not be surprised if he could, if he had a mind to, make a few harps and trumpets and organs.

Grand old Haydn, sick and worn out, was carried for the last time into the music hall, and there he heard his own oratorio of the ’93Creation.’94 History says that as the orchestra came to that famous passage, ’93Let there be light!’94 the whole audience rose and cheered, and Haydn waved his hand toward heaven, and said: ’93It comes from there.’94 Overwhelmed with his own music, he was carried out in his chair, and as he came to the door he spread his hand toward the orchestra as in benediction. Haydn was right when he waved his hand toward heaven and said, ’93It comes from there.’94 Music was born in heaven, and it will ever have its highest throne in heaven; and I want you to understand that our departed friends who were passionately fond of music here, are now at the headquarters of harmony. I think that the grand old tunes that died when your grandfathers died, have gone with them to heaven. When those tunes died, they did not stay on earth, and they could not have been banished to perdition, and so I think they must be in the corridors of alabaster and Lebanon cedar.

Again, I remark that those of our departed Christian friends who in this world had very strong military spirit are now in armies celestial and out on bloodless battle. There are hundreds of people born soldiers. They cannot help it. They belong to regiments in time of peace. They cannot hear a drum or fife without trying to keep step to the music. They are Christians, and when they fight, they fight on the right side. Now, when these, our Christian friends who had natural military spirit, entered heaven, they entered the celestial army. The door of heaven hardly opens but you hear a military demonstration. David cried out: ’93The chariots of God are twenty thousand.’94 Elisha saw the mountains filled with celestial cavalry. St. John said: ’93The armies which are in heaven followed him on white horses.’94 Now, when those who had the military spirit on earth entered glory, I suppose they right away enlisted in some heavenly campaign, they volunteered right away. There must needs be in heaven soldiers with a soldierly spirit. There are grand parade days when the King reviews the troops. There must be armed escort sent out to bring up from earth to heaven those who were more than conquerors. There must be crusades ever being fitted out for some part of God’92s dominion’97battles, bloodless, groanless, painless; angels of evil to be fought down and fought back. Other rebellious worlds to be conquered. Worlds to be put to the torch. Worlds to be saved, Worlds to be demolished. Worlds to be sunk. Worlds to be hoisted.

Besides that, in our own world there are battles for the right and against the wrong, where we must have the heavenly military. That is what keeps us Christian reformers so buoyant. So few good men against so many bad men, so few churches against so many grog-shops, so few pure printing presses against so many polluted printing presses; and yet we are buoyant and courageous, because while we know that the armies of evil in the world are larger in numbers than the army of the truth, there are celestial cohorts in the air fighting on our side. I have not so much faith in the army on the ground as I have in the army in the air. O God! open our eyes that we may see them. The military spirits that went up from earth to join the military spirits before the throne’97Joshua and Caleb and Gideon and David and Samson, and the hundreds of Christian warriors who on earth fought with fleshly arm, and now having gone up on high are coming down the hills of heaven ready to fight among the invisibles. Yonder they are’97coming, coming. Did you not hear them as they swept by?

But what are our mathematical friends to do in the next world? They found their joy and their delight in mathematics. There was more poetry for them in Euclid than in John Milton. They were as passionately fond of mathematics as Plato, who wrote over his door, ’93Let no one enter here who is not acquainted with geometry.’94 What are they doing now? They are busy with figures yet. No place in all the universe like heaven for figures. Numbers infinite, distances infinite, calculations infinite. The didactic Dr. Dick said he really thought that the redeemed in heaven spent some of their time with the higher branches of mathematics.

So of our transferred and transported metaphysicians. What are they doing now? Studying the human mind, only under better circumstances than they used to study it. They used to study the mind sheathed in the dull human body. Now the spirit is unsheathed’97now they are studying the sword outside the scabbard. Have you any doubt about what Sir William Hamilton is doing in heaven, or what Jonathan Edwards is doing in heaven, or the multitudes on earth who had a passion for metaphysics, sanctified by the grace of God? No difficulty in guessing. Metaphysics, glorious metaphysics, everlasting metaphysics!

What are our departed Christian friends who are explorers doing now? Exploring yet, but with lightning locomotion, with vision microscopic and telescopic at the same time. A continent at a glance. A world in a second. A planetary system in a day. Christian John Franklin no more in disabled Erebus pushing toward the North Pole; Christian De Long no more trying to free blockaded Jeannette from the ice; Christian Livingstone no more amid African malarias trying to make revelation of a dark continent; but all of them in the twinkling of an eye taking in that which was unapproachable. Mont Blanc scaled without alpenstock. The coral depths of the ocean explored without a diving-bell. The mountains opened without Sir Humphrey Davy’92s safety lamp.

What are our departed friends who found their chief joy in study doing now? Studying yet, but instead of a few thousand volumes on a few shelves, all the volumes of the universe open before them’97geologic, ornithologic, conchologic, botanic, astronomic, philosophic. No more need of Leyden-jars, or voltaic-piles, or electric batteries, standing as they do face to face with the facts of the universe.

What are the historians doing now? Studying history yet, but not the history of a few centuries of our planet only, but the history of the eternities’97whole millenniums before Xenophon or Herodotus or Moses or Adam was born. History of one world, history of all worlds.

What are our departed astronomers doing? Studying astronomy yet, but not through the dull lens of earthly observatory, but with one stroke of wing going right out to Jupiter and Mars and Mercury and Saturn and Orion and the Pleiades’97overtaking and passing swiftest comet in their flight. Herschel died a Christian. Have you any doubt about what Herschel is doing? Isaac Newton died a Christian. Have you any doubt about what Isaac Newton is doing? Joseph Henry died a Christian. Have you any doubt about what Joseph Henry is doing? They were in discussion, all these astronomers of earth, about what the aurora borealis was, and none of them could guess. They know now; they have been to see for themselves.

What are our departed Christian chemists doing? Following out their own science, following out and following out forever. Since they died they have solved ten thousand questions which once puzzled the earthly laboratory. They stand on the other side of the thin wall of electricity, the wall that seems to divide the physical from the spiritual world, the thin wall of electricity, so thin the wall that ever and anon it seems to be almost broken through’97broken through from our side by telephonic and telegraphic apparatus, broken through from the other side by strange influences which men in their ignorance call spiritualistic manifestations. All that matter cleared up. Agassiz standing amid his student explorers down in Brazil coming across some great novelty in the rocks, taking off his hat and saying: ’93Gentlemen, let us pray; we must have divine illumination; we want wisdom from the Creator to study these rocks; he made them; let us pray’94’97Agassiz going right on with his studies forever.

But what are the men of the law, who in this world found their chief joy in the legal profession’97what are they doing now? Studying law in a universe where everything is controlled by law, from flight of humming-bird to flight of world’97law, not dry and hard and drudging, but righteous and magnificent law, before which man and cherub and seraph and archangel bow. The chain of law long enough to wind around the immensities and infinity and eternity. Chain of law. What a place to study law, where all the links of the chain are in the hand!

What are our departed Christian friends who in this world had their joy in the healing art, doing now? Busy at their old business. No sickness in heaven, but plenty of sickness on earth, plenty of wounds in the different parts of God’92s dominion to be healed and medicated. I should not wonder if my old friend Dr. John Brown, who died in Edinburgh’97John Brown, the author of ’93Rab and His Friends’94’97John Brown, who was as humble a Christian as he was skilful as physician, and world-renowned author’97I should not wonder if he had been back again to see some of his old patients. Those who had their joy in healing the sickness and the woes of earth, gone up to heaven, are come forth again for benignant medicament.

But what are our friends who found their chief joy in conversation and in sociality doing now? In brighter conversation there and in grander sociality. What a place to visit in, where your next-door neighbors are kings and queens. You yourselves kingly and queenly. If they want to know more particularly about the first Paradise, they have only to go over and ask Adam. If they want to know how the sun and the moon halted, they have only to go over and ask Joshua. If they want to know how the storm pelted Sodom they have only to go over and ask Lot. If they want to know more about the arrogance of Haman, they have only to go over and ask Mordecai. If they want to know how the Red Sea boiled when it was cloven, they have only to go over and ask Moses. If they want to know the particulars about the Bethlehem advent, they have only to go over and ask the serenading angels who stood that Christmas night in the balconies of crystal. If they want to know more of the particulars of the crucifixion, they have only to go over and ask those who were personal spectators while the mountains crouched and the heavens got black in the face at the spectacle. O! what a place to visit in. If eternity were one minute shorter it would not be long enough for such sociality.

Think of our friends, who in this world were passionately fond of flowers, turned into Paradise! Think of our friends who were very fond of raising superb fruit turned into the orchard where each tree has twelve kinds of fruit at once, and bearing the fruit all the year round!

What are our departed Christian friends doing in heaven, those who on earth found their chief joy in the Gospel ministry? They are visiting their old congregations. Most of those ministers have got their people around them already. When I get to heaven’97as by the grace of God I am destined to go to that place’97I will come and see you all. Yea, I will come to all the people to whom I have administered in the Gospel, and to the millions of souls to whom, through the kindness of the printing press, I am permitted to preach every week in this land and other lands’97letters coming from New Zealand and Australia and uttermost part of the earth, as well as from near nations, telling me of the souls I have helped’97I will visit them all. I give them fair notice. Our departed friends of the ministry engaged in that delectable entertainment now.

But what are our departed Christian friends who, in all departments of usefulness, were busy, finding their chief joy in doing good’97what are they doing now? Going right on with their work. John Howard visiting dungeons; the dead women of Northern and Southern battlefields still abroad looking for the wounded; George Peabody still watching the poor; Thomas Clarkson still looking after the enslaved’97 all of those who did good on earth busier since death than before. The tombstone not the terminus, but the starting-point.

What are our departed Christian friends, who found their chief joy in studying God, doing now? Studying God yet! No need of revelation now, for unblanched they are face to face. Now they can handle the omnipotent thunderbolts just as a child handles the sword of a father come back from victorious battle. They have no sin, nor fear, consequently. Studying Christ, not through a revelation, save the revelation of the scars, that deep lettering which brings it all up quick enough. Studying the Christ of the Bethlehem caravansary, the Christ of the awful massacre with its hemorrhage of head and hand, and foot and side’97the Christ of the shattered mausoleum’97Christ the sacrifice, the star, the sun, the man, the God.

But hark! the bell of the cathedral rings’97the cathedral bell of heaven.

What is the mater now? There is going to be a great meeting in the temple. Worshipers all coming through the aisles. Make room for the Conqueror. Christ standing in the temple. All heaven gathering around him. Those who loved the beautiful, come to look at the Rose of Sharon. Those who loved music, come to listen to his voice. Those who were mathematicians, come to count the years of his reign. Those who were explorers, come to discover the breadth of his love. Those who had the military spirit on earth sanctified, and the military spirit in heaven, come to look at the Captain of their salvation. The astronomers come to look at the Morning Star. The men of the law come to look at him who is the judge of quick and dead. The men who healed the sick, come to look at him who was wounded for our transgressions. All different, and different forever in many respects, yet all alike in admiration for Christ, in worship of Christ, and all alike in joining in the doxology: ’93Unto him who washed us from our sins in his own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God, to him be glory in the church throughout all ages, world without end!’94 Amen.

To show you that your departed friends are more alive than they ever were, to make you homesick for heaven, to give you an enlarged view of the glories to be revealed, I have preached this sermon.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage