545. The New Earth; or, the World As It Will Be

The New Earth; or, the World As It Will Be

2Pe_3:13 : ’93A new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Down in the struggle to make the world better and happier we sometimes get depressed with the obstacles to be overcome and the work to be accomplished. Will it not be a tonic and an inspiration to look at the world as it will be when it has been brought back to paradisaical condition? So let us for a few moments transport ourselves into the future and put ourselves forward in the centuries, and see the world in its rescued and perfected state, as we will see it if in those times we are permitted to revisit this planet, as I am sure we will. We all want to see the world after it has been thoroughly Gospelized and all wrongs have been righted. We will want to come back, and we will come back, to look upon the refulgent consummation toward which we have been on larger or smaller scale toiling. Having heard the opening of the orchestra, on whose strings some discords traveled, we will want to hear the last triumphant bar of the perfected oratorio. Having seen the picture as the painter drew its first outlines upon canvas, we will want to see it when it is as complete as Reuben’92s ’93Descent from the Cross,’94 or Michael Angelo’92s ’93Last Judgment.’94 Having seen the world under the gleam of the star of Bethlehem, we will want to see it when, under the full shining of the Sun of Righteousness, the towers shall strike twelve at noon.

There will be nothing in that coming century of the world’92s perfection to hinder our terrestrial visit. Our power and velocity of locomotion will have been improved infinitely. It will not take us long to come here, however far off in God’92s universe heaven may be. The Bible declares that such visitation is going on now. ’93Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation?’94 Surely, the gates of heaven will not be bolted, after the world is Edenized, so as to hinder the redeemed from descending for a tour of inspection and congratulation and triumph.

You know with what interest we look upon ruins’97ruins of Kenilworth Castle, ruins of Melrose Abbey, ruins of Rome, ruins of Pompeii. So this world in ruins is an enchantment to look at, but we want to see it when re-built, re-pillared, re-towered, re-altered, re-dedicated. The exact date of the world’92s moral restoration I cannot foretell. It may be that through mighty awakenings it will take place in the middle of the near-by twentieth century. It may be at the opening of the twenty-first century, but it would not be surprising if it took more than one hundred years to correct the ravages of sin which have wrought for six thousand years. The chief missionary and evangelistic enterprises were started in this century, and be not dismayed if it takes a couple of centuries to overcome evils that have had full swing for sixty centuries. I take no responsibility in saying on what page of the earthly calendar it will roll in, but God’92s eternal veracity is sworn to it that it will roll in; and as the redeemed in heaven do as they please and have all the facilities of transit from world to world, you and I, my hearer or reader, will come and look at what my text calls ’93A new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.’94

I imagine that we are descending at that period of the world’92s complete Gospelization. There will be no peril in such a descent. Great heights and depths have no alarm for glorified spirits. We can come down through chasms between worlds without growing dizzy, and across the spaces of half a universe without losing our way. Down and farther down we come. As we approach this world we breathe the perfume of illimitable gardens. Floralization that in centuries past was here and there walled in, lest reckless and dishonest hands pluck or despoil it, surges its billows of color across the fields and up the hillsides, and that which was desert blossoms as the rose. All the foreheads of crag crowned with flowers; the feet of the mountains slippered with flowers. Oh, this perfume of the continents, this aroma of hemispheres. As we approach nearer and nearer we hear songs and laughter and hosannas, but not one groan of distress, not one sob of bereavement, not one clank of chain.

Alighted on the redeemed earth, we are first accosted by the spirit of the twenty-first century, who proposes to guide and show us all that we desire to see. Without his guidance we would lose our way, for the world is so much changed from the time when we lived in it. First of all, he points out to us a group of abandoned buildings. We ask this spirit of the twenty-first century, ’93What are those structures whose walls are falling down and whose gates are rusted on the hinges?’94 Our escort tell us: ’93Those were once penitentiaries filled with offenders, but the crime of the world has died out. Theft and arson and fraud and violence have quitted the earth. People have all they want, and why should they appropriate the property of others, even if they had the desire? The marauders, the assassins, the buccaneers, the Herods, the Nana Sahibs, the ruffians, the bandits are dead, or, transformed by the power of the Christian religion, are now upright and beneficent and useful. Prisons are of no more use in this world, except as places to be visited by curiosity seekers, as farther back in the annals of time tourists visited the fortress where the prisoner of Chillon was incarcerated, or Devil’92s Island, where Dreyfus endured four years of cruelty.’94

After passing on amid columns and statues erected in memory of those who have been mighty for goodness in the world’92s history, the highest and the most exquisitely sculptured those in honor of such as have been most effectual in saving life or improving life, rather than of those renowned for destroying life, we come upon another group of buildings that must have been transformed from their original shape and adapted to other uses. ’93What is all this?’94 we ask our escort. He answers: ’93Those were almshouses and hospitals, but accuracy in making, and prudence in running machinery of all sorts, have almost abolished the list of casualties, and sobriety and industry have nearly abolished pauperism, so that those buildings, which once were hospitals and almshouses, have been turned into beautiful homes for the less prospered; and if you will look in you will see the poorest table has abundance and the smallest wardrobe luxury and the harp waiting to have its strings thrummed, leaning against the piano, waiting for its keys to be fingered. Yes; we have on the shelves of our free libraries the full story of dispensaries and crutches and clinics and surgery, and what a time of suffering there must have been on those battlefields of Sedan and Gettysburg and South Africa one or two hundred years ago. We can hardly believe now that the science of wholesale murder and multiform assassination was so popular that in the United States in four years five hundred thousand men on one side went forth to put to death five hundred thousand men on the other side.

’93Hospitals and almshouses must have been a necessity once, but they would be useless now. And you see all the swamps have been drained. The sewerage of the great towns has been perfected. And the world’92s climate is so improved that there are no pneumonias to come out of the cold or rheumatisms out of the dampness or fevers out of the heat. Consumptions banished. Pneumonias banished. Diphtheria banished. Ophthalmia banished. Neuralgias banished. As near as I can tell from what I have read, our atmosphere of this century is a mingling of the two months of May and October of the nineteenth century.’94

And we believe what our escort says, for as we pass on we find health glowing in every cheek, and beaming in every eye and springing in every step and articulating in every utterance and you and I whisper to each other as our escort has his attention drawn to some new sunrise upon the morning sky, and we say, each to the other, ’93Who would believe that this is the world we lived in over a hundred years ago? Look at those men and women we pass on the road! How improved the human race! Such beauty! Such strength! Such gracefulness! Such geniality! Faces without the mark of one sorrow! Cheeks that seem never to have been wet by one tear! A race sublimated! A new world born!’94

But I say to our escort: ’93Did all this merely happen so? Are all the good here spontaneously good? How did you get the old shipwrecked world afloat again, out of the breakers into the smooth seas?’94 ’93No, no,’94 responds our twenty-first century escort. ’93Do you see those towers? Those are the towers of churches, towers of reformatory institutions, towers of Christian schools. Walk with me, and let us enter some of these temples.’94 We enter, and I find that the music is in the major key, and none of it in the minor, Gloria in Excelsis rising above Gloria in Excelsis. Tremolo stop in the organ not so much used as the trumpet stop. More of Ariel than of Naomi. More chants than dirges. Not a thin song, the words of which no one understands on the lip of a soloist, but mighty harmonies that roll from outside door to chancel and from floor to groined rafter, as though Handel had come out of the eighteenth century into the twenty-first, and had his foot on the organ pedal, and Thomas Hastings had come out of the early part of the nineteenth century into the twenty-first and was leading the voices. Music that moves the earth and makes heaven listen.

But I say to our twenty-first century escort: ’93I cannot understand this. Have these worshipers no sorrows, or have they forgotten their sorrows?’94 Our escort responds: ’93Sorrows! Why, they had sorrows more than you could count, but by a divine illumination that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries never enjoyed; they understand the uses of sorrow, and are comforted with a supernatural condolence, such as previous centuries never experienced.’94

I ask again of the interpreter: ’93Has death been banished from the world?’94 The answer is, ’93No, but people die now only when the physical machinery is worn out, and they realize it is time to go and that they are certainly and without doubt going into a world where they will be infinitely better off and are to live in a mansion that awaits their immediate occupancy.’94 ’93But how was all this effected?’94 I ask our escort. Answer: ’93By floods of Gospel power. You who lived in the nineteenth century never saw a revival of religion to be compared with what occurred in the latter part of the twentieth and the early part of the twenty-first century. The prophecy has been fulfilled that ’91a nation shall be born in a day’92; that is, ten or twenty or forty million people converted in twenty-four hours. In our church history we read of the great awakening of 1857, when five hundred thousand souls were saved; but that was only a drop of the coming showers that since then took into the kingdom of God everything between the Atlantic and the Pacific, between the Pyrenees and the Himalayas.’94 The evils that good people were in the nineteenth century trying to destroy have been overcome by celestial forces. What human weaponry failed to accomplish has been done by omnipotent thunderbolts.

As you and I see in this terrestrial visitation of the coming centuries that the church has, under God, accomplished so much, we ask our escort, the spirit of the twenty-first century, to show us the different kinds of churches. So we are taken in and out of the churches of different denominations, and we find that they are just as different in the twenty-first century as they were different in the nineteenth, when we worshiped in them. There is unity in them as to the great essentials of salvation. But we enter the Baptist church and it is baptismal day and we see the candidates for membership immersed. And we go into a Presbyterian church and see a group of parents around the baptismal font holding up their children for the christening. And we enter the Episcopal church and hear the solemn roll of her liturgies and her ministers are gowned and surpliced. And we enter the Lutheran church and we hear in the sermon preached the doctrines of the greatest of German reformers. And we go into the Methodist church just in time to sit down at a love-feast and give audible ’93Amen’94 when the service stirs us. At least fifty kinds of churches in the twenty-first century, as there were one hundred and fifty different kinds of churches in the nineteenth century.

’93O spirit of the twenty-first century, will you not show us something of the commercial life of your time?’94 He answers, ’93To-morrow I will show you all.’94 And on the morrow he takes us through the great marts of trade and shows us the bargain-makers and the shelves on which the goods lay, or the tierces and hogsheads in which they are contained. I notice that the fabrics are of better quality than anything I ever saw in our nineteenth century, for the factories are more skilful, and the wheels that turn and the looms that clack and the engines that rumble are driven by forces that were not a century ago discovered.

The prices of the fabrics indicate a reasonable profit, and the firm in the counting-room and the clerks at the counter and the draymen at the doorway and the errand-boy on his rounds and the messenger who brings the mail and the men who open the store in the morning, as well as those who close it at night, all look as if they were satisfied and well treated. No swallowing up of small houses of merchandise by great houses. No ruinous underselling until those in the same line are bankrupt, and then the prices lifted. No unnecessary assignment to defraud creditors. No overdrawing of accounts. No abscondings. No sharp practise. No snap judgments. But the manufacturer right in his dealings with the wholesaler and the wholesaler with the retailer and the retailer with the customer. No purchasing of goods that will never be paid for. All right behind the counter. All right before the counter. No repetition of what Solomon describes, when he writes: ’93It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer; but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth.’94 ’93O spirit of the twenty-first century, how glad I am that you showed us these stores and factories and places of bargain and sale! It was not always so in the nineteenth century, when we were earthly residents. Many of those merchants who are good at ciphering out other rules in arithmetic never could cipher out that sum in the rule of Loss and Gain, ’93What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’94

’93But what is yonder row of buildings, majestic for architecture?’94 The spirit of the twenty-first century says: ’93Those are our legislative halls and places of public trust, and if you would like it I will show you the political circles, the modes of preferment, the styles of election, the character of public men in this century.’94 ’93Thank you,’94 I reply. ’93I can easily understand how Gospelization would improve individual life and social life and commercial life, but I would like to see what it can do for political life.’94 ’93Let me tell you,’94 says the spirit of the twenty-first century, ’93that I have read about political chicanery and corruption of more than a hundred years ago’97the nineteenth century, in which you lived here’97but the low political caucus has gone from the face of the earth and the stuffed ballot-box and the bribery by money and by promise of office and the jobs got through legislatures and congresses by lobbyists. We have nothing like a Credit Mobilier scandal, or those harbor and river appropriations’97the most of which never improved the harbors or rivers’97or speeches to kill time and prevent a vote, or promotion to high place of political accidents, and the only bosses we have now, boss because they have more brain and purity than those who are bossed. The money barrel to buy votes and to decide who shall be elected did not roll into this century. All those in high office in township, State and nation are men superior for intelligence and sagacity and moral equipment and fitness for the posts they occupy. All intrigue and Machiavelism and temporization are gone. The last corrupt judge of election was buried fifty years ago, the preacher officiating at the obsequies taking for his text Pro_10:7 : ’91The name of the wicked shall rot’92; or Jer_22:19 : ’91He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.’92 Our laws are good and well executed. Men do not in our century have to wade chin deep through moral slush in order to gain office. The word ’91politics,’92 which in your century, the nineteenth, often stood for chicanery and falsehood and Billingsgate and moral turpitude and filth, now stands for honor and justice and truth and righteousness. Such men as were in your Congresses and Parliaments and Reichstags pointed out as exceptions of statesmanship and patriotism and public-spiritedness and eloquence and moral power would not be pointed out now, for all our public men are thus characterized. Politics has been swept, garnished, glorified, ennobled, until nothing more is to be desired. Walk through all aldermanic councils and sheriffalities and gubernatorial rooms and presidential mansions, and find the truth of what I, the spirit of the twenty-first century, tell you, who were of the nineteenth century, and now come down on terrestrial visitation.’94

As in company with our escort we pass down from the heights on which these buildings stand, I see a dismounted cannon planted on the side of the hill and I go to examine it and I read the inscription, cut in letters of bronze, ’93This is the last gun that was fired in the last battle of the last war that will ever be fought. Presented by the last regiment of war just before disbanding.’94 Then I look up, and our escort says: ’93Do you see that large structure on our right? That was a fortress, but now it is a college and instead of guns aiming out of the portholes are looking the students of a higher literature and a wiser science and a grander civilization than the world ever before imagined. And those students are taught by a professorate of men as renowned for piety as for science. Arch’e6ologist’92s hammer and geologist’92s crowbar and chemist’92s laboratory and explorer’92s journey, have joined in a confirmation of the truth of the Holy Scriptures until there is not an unbeliever in all the earth. The astronomer through his telescope has seen the Morning Star of the Redeemer and the geologist has found the Rock of Ages and the geometrician has demonstrated that heaven is the city which ’93lieth four square, and the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.’94

’93What!’94 I say to our escort, ’93no skeptics? No infidels? No agnostics?’94 His reply is: ’93Absolutely none. The last fool who ’91said in his heart there is no God,’92 was buried a half-century ago, without any liturgical service, although perhaps a quartet of unbelievers may have stood around the casket and sung a verse or two out of the gloom of Poe’92s ’91Raven’92:

’93Perched above his chamber door’97

Only this, and nothing more.’94

’93Well,’94 I say to our escort, ’93where are Tom Paine’92s Age of Reason and Ingersoll’92s Mistakes of Moses and David Hume’92s and Voltaire’92s celebrated tirades against the Bible?’94 ’93I never heard of them,’94 says our escort. ’93What are you talking about? A bigger bonfire of books than that which in apostolic time was kindled in the streets of Ephesus was lighted in all our cities, and the corrupt literature of the world turned into ashes many, many years ago. I saw the last leaf curl up in the flame and scatter.’94 In response to my question as to what had brought all this change’97obliterated all the evil and fully inaugurated all the good’97our escort, the spirit of the twenty-first century, tells me that Gospelization had directly or indirectly done it. It was a practical Gospel that not only changed the heart, but made the man honest. A practical religion, which did not expend all its energy in singing ’93Fly abroad, thou mighty Gospel,’94 but gave something to make it fly.

The good work was helped on by the fact that it became a general habit among millionaires and multimillionaires to provide churches and schools and institutions of mercy, not to be built after the testators were dead, but built so that they might be present at the laying of the corner-stone and at the dedication, and leave less inducement for the heirs-at-law to prove in Orphans’92 Court that when the testators made their last will and testament they were crazy. The telegraphic wires in the air and the cables under the sea thrill with Christian invitation. Phonographs charged with Gospel sermons stand in every neighborhood. The five thousand million of the world’92s inhabitants in that century are five thousand million disciples.

’93But,’94 I say to our escort, the spirit of the twenty-first century, ’93you have shown us much of the world emparadised, but what about international conditions? When we lived on earth it was a century that bled with Marengo and Chalons and Lodi-Bridge and Lucknow and Solferino and Leipsic and Waterloo and San Juan.’94 Our escort replies: ’93Come with me to this building of white marble and glittering dome.’94 As we pass up and on we are taken into a room where the mightiest and best representatives of all nations are assembled to settle international controversies. As we enter I hear the presiding officer opening the Council of Arbitration, reading the second chapter of Isaiah: ’93They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’94 Questions which in our long-past nineteenth century Caused quarrel and bloodshed, as when Germany and France were deciding about Alsace and Lorraine, as when the United States and Spain were deciding about Cuba’97such questions in this twenty-first century settled in five minutes, one drop of ink doing more than once could have been accomplished by a river of blood.

But we cannot stay long in this hall of arbitration, for it is almost time for us to retrace our way heavenward. This voluntary exile must soon end. And passing out of this hall of arbitration, we go through a national museum, where we are shown, among the curiosities, an Enfield rifle, a howitzer, a Hotchkiss shell, an ambulance’97curiosities to that age, but, alas! no curiosity to us of the nineteenth century, for some of our own kindred went down under their stroke, or were carried off the field by those wheels.

’93But,’94 I say to our escort, the spirit of the twenty-first century, and you and I say to each other, ’93we must go home now, back again to heaven. We have stayed long enough on this terrestrial visitation to see that all the best things foretold in the Scriptures, and which we read during our earthly residence, have come to pass, and all the Davidic, Solomonic and Paulinian and Johannean prophesies have been fulfilled, and that the earth, instead of being a ghastly failure, is the mightiest success of the universe. A star redeemed! A planet rescued! A world saved! It started with a garden and it is going to close with a garden. What a happiness that we could have seen this old world after it was righted and before it burned, for its internal fires have nearly burned out to the crust, according to the geologist, making it easy for the theologian to believe in the conflagration that the Bible predicts. One element taken from the water and that will burn and another element taken from the air and that will burn and surrounding planets will watch this old ship of a world on fire and wonder if all its passengers got safely off. Before that planetary catastrophe, hie us back to heaven. Farewell, spirit of the twenty-first century. Thanks for your guidance! We can stay no longer away from doxologies that never end, in temples never closed, in a day that has no sundown. We must report to the immortals around the throne the transformations we have seen, the victories of truth on land and sea, the hemispheres irradiated, and Christ on the throne of earth, as he is on the throne of heaven.’94

And now you and I have left our escort as we ascend, for the law of gravitation has no power to detain ascending spirits. Up through immensities, and by stellar and lunar and solar splendors, which cannot be described by mortal tongue, we rise higher and higher, till we reach the shining gate as it opens for our return, and the questions greet us from all sides: ’93What is the news? What did you find in that earthly tour? What have you to report in this city of the sun?’94 Prophetic, apostolic, saintly inquiry. And standing on the steps of the house of many mansions, we cry aloud the news: ’93Hear it all ye glorified Christian workers of all the past centuries! We found your work was successful, whether on earth you toiled with knitting needle or rung a trowel on a rising wall or smote a shoe last or endowed a university or swayed a scepter; whether on earth you gave a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, or at some Pentecost preached three thousand souls into the kingdom. In that world we have just visited the deserts are all abloom, and the wildernesses are bright with fountains. Sin is extirpated. Crime is reformed. Disease is cured. The race is emancipated. ’91The earth is full of the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea.’92 Let the harpers of heaven strike the glad tidings from the strings of their harps and the trumpeters put them in the mouth of their trumpets and the orchestras roll them into the Grand March of the Eternities and all the cathedral towers of the great capital of the universe chime them all over heaven.’94

And now I look up and see the casting down of the bejeweled and radiant crowns at the sacred feet of the enthroned Jesus. Missionary Carey is casting down before those feet the crown of India saved. Missionary Judson is casting down the crown of Burmah saved. Missionary Abeel casting down, the crown of China saved. David Livingstone casting down at those feet the crown of Africa saved. Missionary Brainerd casting down the crown of this country’92s aborigines saved. Souls that went up from all the denominations of America in holy rivalry seeking which could soonest cast down the crown of this continent at the Saviour’92s feet, and America saved.

But often you and I who were companions in that expedition from heaven to earth, seated on the green bank of the river that rolls through the paradise of God, will talk over the scenes we witnessed in that parenthesis of heavenly bliss, in that vacation from the skies, in our terrestrial visitation’97we who were earthly residents in the nineteenth century, escorted by the spirit of the twenty-first century, when we saw what my text describes as ’93a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage