Come ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish, Come, to the mercy-seat, fervently kneel; Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish, Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal. Joy to the comfortless, light to the straying, Here see the bread of life; see waters flowing CHAPTER IV. Faretastes of Beaven. A trance of high and solemn bliss, Death is an empty name. WILSON. THE Christian, in the progress of his history, passes through three modes, or conditions of life-the life of nature, the life of grace, and the life of glory. Or, to express the same idea in another form, he lives first in sense, then in faith, and at last in fruition. The present earthly life of the Christian is prevailingly the middle one of these three, that of faith"We walk by faith." This middle life of faith is, however, a mixed life; it reaches back and includes the life of sense; and it reaches forward and includes the life of glorious heavenly fruition, in the way of prelibation. As the life of faith, reflecting back, sanctifies the life of sense, so it reaches also forward as the dawning life of glory. The life of faith does not destroy the life of sense or nature, but fulfils it. In like manner the life of faith is itself taken up and included at last in the life of glory, the substance of which it already has as its foundation." It is therefore the Christian's happy privilege, though he still lives under the conditions of sense and faith, to live also Quite on the verge of Heaven. From that mysterious border-land of faith, where earth merges into Heaven, he sees, in the blissful tremblings of hope, from the spiritual orient, the glad gleams of the eternal morning. Heaven comes down his soul to greet. This we call the foretaste of Heaven. "It is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession." By foretastes of Heaven we do not merely mean something of a joyous nature which is promised us, and which gives us pleasure in the way of hope; but we mean, by that word, something actually introduced into the life of the soul, which exists there as the very substance of what we hope for. We speak not of a distant Heaven, to be gazed at, but of a present Heaven dawning in the soul. It is not a seeing beforehand, but a tasting beforehand. It is a "glory reThat is an amazing vealed in us," not merely to us. truth, and one which belongs to the deepest life of Christianity, which is so happily expressed in the hymn: The men of grace have found Glory begun below; Celestial fruits on earthly ground The hill of Zion yields A thousand sacred sweets, Before we reach the heavenly fields, Or walk the golden streets. The grapes of Eschol, which the messengers brought over the Jordan into the camp of Israel in the wilderness, and which were tasted by them there, were a foretaste of the fruits of Canaan, because they were the same as they should eat when once they should be actually in the good land. So a foretaste of Heaven, in the heart of a saint, is the real life of Heaven, which he, through the organ of faith, receives into his soul, affording to it-less in quantity, but the same in kind—a taste of that bliss which shall, in a little time, be his own without measure. tures. This idea of the life of Heaven reaching over into time, and becoming the inheritance of the saints in the way of foretaste, is variously set forth in the ScripThe heirs of Christ are said to receive part of their inheritance in this life. The part which they receive is called "the first fruits of the spirit." What were first fruits? They were the same in kind as the harvest. They were the first which ripened-a part of the harvest, and a pledge of the rest. So the first fruits which the spirit ripens in the hearts of the saints on earth are the same in kind as those of the full and final harvest which He will ripen in the complete perfection of the heavenly life. This identity of the first fruits and the harvest is thus strongly asserted by the Apostle: "If the first fruits is holy, the lump is also holy and if the root is holy, so are the branches." As roots and branches are under the power of one life, so grace on earth and glory in Heaven are but the lower and higher phases of the same life. Grace is glory in the bud. Another word which is used in the Scriptures to set earnest is a part pledge of the rest. forth the same idea, is the word "earnest." An of something given before as a Earnest-money, for instance, is a part of the price paid upon a purchase. The earnest pays part, and pledges the rest. When the saint receives the earnest of the spirit in his heart," (2 Cor. i. 22), he has part of the "purchased possession" already; and at the same time also a pledge of the rest. In the part which he has, there is sealed to him the rest, "by that Holy Spirit of promise." When the spirit begins to ripen its first fruits in your heart, then "look up, and lift up your heads: for your redemption draweth nigh." Let every one, who is conscious of the beginnings of true grace in the heart, as fruits of the Spirit, learn this joy-inspiring parable: "Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of yourselves that summer is now nigh at hand. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the Kingdom of God is nigh at hand." Having now defined the Scriptural idea of the nature of heavenly foretastes, it is farther necessary to examine what is the basis or medium in which they are realized the organ in the saint by which they are received-and the factor, or agent, who effects the blessed realization. The medium is Christ, the receptive organ is faith, and the operative agent is the Holy Spirit. All these are embodied in one declaration of the Apostle: "In whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession." Eph. i. 13, 14. |