LECTURE XIV.

THE

LAND BEULAH AND THE RIVER OF DEATH.

Gradual progress of the Pilgrims from strength to strength.-Their enjoyment in the Land Beulah.-Similar experience of Dr. Payson.-Beauty and glory of the close of the Pilgrim's Progress.-Fear of Death by the Pilgrims.-Bunyan's own experience.-Why Death is the King of Terrors.-Dying is but going home for the Christian.-Death-beds of believers and unbelievers contrasted.-Christian instances in Fuller, Pearse, Janeway, Payson, and others.-Blessedness of such a death.-Necessity of a preparation for it in life. What constitutes the Land Beulah.-Sweetness and preciousness of a close walk with God.— Solemn lesson from the fate of Ignorance.-No safety but in Christ.

WE are come now, in our pilgrimage, as far as to the Land Beulah. Would that we were all there in reality, and could abide there while we stay this side of the River of Death! But the Land Beulah, lovely as it is, is only one stage in our pilgrimage, and that a very advanced stage. And it is observable how Bunyan makes his pilgrims go from strength to strength, by a gradual progress, from one degree of grace, discipline, and glory to another, in accordance with that sweet scripture image, "The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.' So the pilgrims go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appearing before God. They first, from the House Beautiful, had a view of the Delectable Mountains; then from the Delectable Mountains, they had a view of the Celestial City; then in the Land Beulah, they even meet with the inhabitants of that City. In this land they also hear voices coming out of the City, and they draw so near to it that the view of its glory is almost overpowering. Would to God that we all did better know the meaning of these images by our own blissful experience; for certainly the imagination alone cannot interpret them to us. A very near, deep, blissful communion with God is here portrayed, and that beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, by which daily the soul is changed more and more into the same image. Here the ministering spirits that do wait upon us are more frequent and full in their companies. Here the Spirit of adoption is breathed over the soul, and it walks and talks with Christ, almost as Moses and Elias in the mount of transfiguration. No other language than that of Bunyan himself, perused in the pages of his own sweet book, could be successful in portraying this beauty and glory; for now he seems to feel that all the dangers of the pilgrimage are almost over, and he gives up himself without restraint so entirely to the sea of bliss that surrounds him, and to the gales of heaven that are wafting him on, and to the sounds of melody that float in the whole air around him, that nothing in the English language can be compared with this whole closing part of the Pilgrim's Progress, for its entrancing splendour, yet serene and simple loveliness The colouring is that of heaven in the soul, and Bunyan has poured his own heaven entranced soul into it. With all its depth and power, there is nothing exaggerated, and it is made up of the simplest and most scriptural materials and images. We seem to stand in a flood of light poured on us from the open gates of Paradise. It falls on every

leaf and shrub by the way-side; it is reflected from the crystal streams, that between grassy banks wind amidst groves of fruit-trees into vineyards and flower-gardens. These fields of Beulah are just below the gate of heaven; and with the light of heaven there come floating down the melodies of heaven, so that here there is almost an open revelation of the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

"When

During the last days of that eminent man of God, Dr. Payson, he once said, I formerly read Bunyan's description of the Land of Beulah, where the sun shines and the birds sing day and night, I used to doubt whether there was such a place; but now my own experience has convinced me of it, and it infinitely transcends all my previous conceptions." The best possible commentary on the glowing descriptions in Bunyan is to be found in that very remarkable letter dictated by Dr. Payson to his sister a few weeks before his death. "Were I to adopt the figurative language of Bunyan, I might date this letter from the land Beulah, of which I have been for some weeks a happy inhabitant. The Celestial City is full in my view. Its glories have been upon me, its breezes fan me, its odours are wafted to me, its sounds strike upon my ears, and its spirit is breathed into my heart. Nothing separates me from it but the River of Death, which now appears but as an insignificant rill, that may be crossed at a single step, whenever God shall give permission. The Sun of Righteousness has been gradually drawing nearer and nearer, appearing larger and brighter as he approached, and now he fills the whole hemisphere; pouring forth a flood of glory, in which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun; exulting, yet almost trembling, while I gaze on this excessive brightness, and wondering with unutterable wonder, why God should deign thus to shine upon a sinful worm."

There is perhaps, in all our language, no record of a Christian's happiness before death, so striking as this. What is it not worth to enjoy such consolations as these in our pilgrimage, and especially to experience such foretastes of heaven as we draw near to the River of Death; such revelations of God in Christ as can swallow up the fears and pains of dying, and make the soul exult in the vision of a Saviour's loveliness, the assurance of a Saviour's mercy. There is no self-denial, no toil, no suffering in this life which is worthy to be compared for a moment with such blessedness.

It is very remarkable that Bunyan has, as it were, attempted to lift the veil from the grave, from eternity, in the beatific closing part of the Pilgrim's Progress, and to depict what passes, or may be supposed to pass, with the souls of the righteous, immediately after death. There is a very familiar verse of Watts, founded on the unsuccessful effort of the mind to conceive definitely the manner of that existence into which the immortal spirit is to be ushered.

In vain the fancy strives to paint

The moment after death,

The glories that surround the saint
In yielding up his breath.

The old poet, Henry Vaughan, in his fragment on heaven in prospect, refers to the same uncertainty, in stanzas that, though somewhat quaint, are very striking.

Dear, beauteous Death, the jewel of the just,
Shining no where but in the dark,
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark!

He that hath found some fledg'd bird's nest, may know

At first sight if the bird be flown,

But what fair field or grove he sings in now

That is to him unknown.

And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams

Call to the soul when man doth sleep,

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.

Indeed, our most definite view of that glory is but a glimpse, a guess, a look as through a dim glass darkly, and what we know of the intermediate or immediate state of untabernacled souls is but little and in part. Perhaps the most general conception is that of an immediate, instantaneous transition into the vision and presence of God and the Lamb. But Bunyan has with great beauty and probability brought in the ministry of angels, and regions of the air, to be passed through in their company, rising, and still rising, higher and higher, before they come to that mighty mount, on which he has placed the gates of the Celestial City. The angels receive his Pilgrims as they come up from the River of Death, and form for them a bright, glittering, seraphic, loving convoy, whose conversation prepares them gradually for that exceeding and eternal weight of glory, which is to be theirs as they enter in at the Gate. Bunyan has thus, in this blissful passage from the River to the Gate, done what no other devout writer, or dreamer, or speculator, that we are

aware of, has ever done; he has filled what perhaps in most minds is a mere blank, a vacancy, or at most a bewilderment and mist of glory, with definite and beatific images, with natural thoughts, and with the sympathizing communion of gentle spirits, who form, as it were, an outer porch and perspective of glory, through which the soul passes into uncreated light. Bunyan has thrown a bridge, as it were, for the imagination over the deep, sudden, open space of an untried spiritual existence, where it finds ready to receive the soul that leaves the body, ministering spirits, sent forth to minister unto them who are to be heirs of salvation.

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These ministering spirits he can describe, with the beauty and glory of their form and garments, and the ravishing sweetness of their conversation; he can also describe the feelings of the pilgrims in such company, and their glorious progress up through the regions of the air to their eternal dwelling-place. He can image to us their warm thoughts about the reception they are to meet with in the City, and the blessedness of beholding the King in his beauty," and of dwelling with such glorious company for ever and ever; but Bunyan goes no farther; he does not attempt to describe, or even shadow forth their meeting with the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb in that Celestial City. This would have been presumption. He has gone as far as the purest devotion and the sweetest poetry could go, as far as an imagination kindled, informed, and sustained by the Holy Scriptures, could carry us; he has set us down amidst the ministry and conversation of angels, at the Gate of the City, and as the Gate opens to let in the pilgrims, he lets us look in ourselves; but farther nor revelation nor imagination traces the picture. But in all the untrodden space which Bunyan has thus filled up, he has authority as well as probability on his side. For our blessed Lord said of the good man Lazarus, that when he died he was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom, that is, into the abode of the blessed. It is not said that the instant Lazarus died he was with Christ in glory, but the mind has an intermediate transaction, a passage, a convoy, to rest upon; "he was carried by angels; there is time occupied, and a passage from this existence to the sight of God and the eternal life of glory, which passage Bunyan has filled up with the utmost probability, as well as with an exquisite warmth and beauty of imagery, which finds no rival in the language. The description comes from the heart, and from an imagination fed, nourished, and disciplined by the Scriptures; and this is the secret of its power, the secret of the depth and heavenly glow of its ravishing colours, and of the emotions with which it stirs the soul even to tears. For it is almost impossible in a right frame of heart, to read this description without weeping, especially that part of it where Christian and Hopeful pass the River of Death together. How full of sweet feeling and Christian wisdom is this passage! How gentle, and tenderly affectionate are Hopeful's efforts to encourage his fainting brother! And how instructive the fact that here the older and more experienced Christian of the two, and that soldier in the Christian conflict who had the most scars upon him for Christ, should be the one to whom the passage of the River of Death was most difficult-instructive as showing us that safety does not depend upon present comfort, but upon Christ, and that it is wrong to measure one's holiness and degree of preparation for death by the degree in which the fear of death may have departed. The pilgrims, especially Christian, began to despond in their mind when they came to the River. Notwithstanding_that the angels were with them, and though they had been for many days abiding in the Land Beulah, and though they were now in full view of the Celestial City, and though they heard the bells ringing, and the melodious music of the City ravishing their hearts, yet were their hearts cast down as they came to the borders of this river, and found no means of being carried across it.

For timorous mortals start and shrink,

To cross that narrow sea,

And linger, shivering on the brink,
And fear to launch away.

They looked about them on this side and on that, and inquired of their shining seraphic companions if there were no other way of getting over the river, and they must go into it: and when told there was none, they were at a stand. With all the glory before them, it was death's cold flood still. The fear of death is not always taken away, even from experienced and faithful Christians, nor is the passage without terrors. Christian had much darkness and horror, while to Hopeful there was good ground all the way. Christian was wrong when he said, If I were right, He would now arise to help me; for he

had, as Hopeful told him, forgotten that it was of the wicked that God saith, "There are no bands in their death." However, it is observable that Christian's darkness did not last quite over the River. The Saviour was at length revealed to him, the clouds and darkness fled away, the evil spirits, and the shades of unbelief that had invited and strengthened their temptations, were subdued and put to flight for ever, and the Enemy after that was as still as a stone, and the rest of the River was but shallow.

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Brother, I see the gate," Hopeful would say, while Christian was sinking, "and men standing by to receive us." But Christian would answer, "It is you, it is you, that they wait for; you have been hopeful ever since I knew you." And so have you," said he to Christian. What affecting simplicity, and faith and love in this last, stern, dark scene and conflict of their pilgrimage! The great Tempter and Accuser of the saints was busy now with Christian, as he had been under the form of Apollyon, and in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. But this was his last opportunity for ever, and his last desperate assault.

If Bunyan, throughout this work, had been unconsciously throwing into his delineation of Christian's character the features of his own religious experience, we may suppose that he drew this death-scene also with a foreboding that his own soul would have to experience in the last mortal hour, another fearful conflict with the Adversary. But could he have returned into life, to paint the conclusion of his own passage of the River of Death, there would have been little or no gloom in the colouring, for his own death was full of peace and glory; his forebodings, if he had them, were never realized. We may suppose that in general the children of God find this passage much easier in reality than they had anticipated; but it is only because Christ is with them: he is with them in death, by a manifestation not granted in life, because not necessary. Yet, if there were as great conflicts to pass through in life, there would be as great and sustaining manifestations of the Saviour. In life and in death he knoweth how to succour them that are tempted. To those who live by the grace of Christ during life, dying grace will be vouchsafed in a dying hour; for he hath said, My grace is sufficient for thee."

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It is appointed unto all men once to die, and after that the judgment." It is this judgment which sinful men dread; it is this which makes Death the KING OF TERRORS. The future is indeed an unknown region, but the judgment is as certain as the present life, and even beyond the judgment the sinner's conscience and the Word of God combined, fill the unknown future with definite scenes and images. The elements of retribution are there, and also the subjects of retribution, living, moving, acting, speaking, suffering. Our blessed Lord, in that mighty spiritual drama of the rich man and Lazarus, has raised before us, as it were, a vast, graphic, living transparency, where the glories of heaven and the terrors of hell flash upon the soul. Death stands between the sinner and the eternal world; death hands him over to the elements of eternal retribution. The agonized conscience, not sprinkled with the blood of Christ, sees the fires of eternity glimmering through the grim monarch's shadowy skeleton form, as it rises and advances on the soul's horizon. Death, in such a case, is the KING OF TERRORS. He marshals them at pleasure. He has but to stand before the frame of the unprepared mortal, and he curdles the blood and blanches the cheek, even of the atheist. He has but to touch the frame of the boldest of God's enemies, and they are brought into desolation as in a moment; they are utterly consumed with terrors. The poet of The Grave has depicted, in a powerful and never-to-be-forgotten passage, the terrors of the unprepared soul in such a moment.

How shocking must thy summons be, O death!
To him that is at ease in his possessions;
Who, counting on long years of pleasure here,
Is quite unfurnished for that world to come!
In that dread moment, how the frantic soul
Raves round the walls of her clay tenement,
Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help,
But shrieks in vain! How wishfully she looks
On all she's leaving, now no longer hers!
A little longer, yet a little longer,

O might she stay to wash away her stains,
And fit her for her passage! Mournful sight!
Her very eyes weep blood; and every groan
She heaves is big with horror. But the Foe,
Like a stanch murderer, steady to his purpose,

Pursues her close through every lane of life,
Nor misses once the track, but presses on,
Till, forced at last to the tremendous verge,
At once she sinks to everlasting ruin !

This is indeed dreadful. And yet, let Christ come in, let Christ stand by the King of Terrors, and there comes a death of which there is no fear, no terror connected with it. There are souls, on whose horizon, though Death's skeleton form comes striding, the light from eternity does but invest the form with glory. It is rather like the light of a clear sunset seen through the bars of a prison window, or through the foliage of a tree in the horizon. It is no more Death the Skeleton, but Death the Angel, a messenger of peace, mercy, love, glory. There are souls that welcome him, for he opens the prison door, out of which they are to pass into a world of light; out of a prison of flesh, sin, fear, doubt, and bondage, into a celestial freedom in the perfection of holiness; into love, praise, and blissful adoration, without any mixture of sin, any cloud or shadow of defilement, or any thing for ever and ever to mar or change the perfect peace and blessedness of the soul. To such souls, Death is but the Messenger, to take them before the throne of God in his likeness, to present them "without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.' Death is life to such; it is the being born out of a state of sinfulness, darkness, and wretchedness in fallen humanity, into a condition of purity, light, and happiness, in a City where the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. There is no future terror, of which Death is King, in such a case. Dying is but going home. It was such a death of which Paul spake, when he said that he desired "to depart and to be with Christ." He was not then contemplating any images of terror. The future was to him filled with a glory, towards which his soul was pressing, and into which death was to introduce him.

If you, O Man! of Death are bound in dread,

Come to this chamber, sit beside this bed.

See how the name of Christ, breathed o'er the heart,
Makes the soul smile at Death's uplifted dart.

The air to sense is close that fills the room,

But angel forms are waving through the gloom;
The feeble pulse leaps up, as 'twould expire,
But Christ still watches the Refiner's fire.

Life comes and goes, the spirit lingers on;
'Tis over! No! the conflict's not quite done;
For Christ will work, till of life's sinful stain
No spot nor wrinkle on the soul remain.

He views his image now! The victory's won!
The last dark shadow from his child is drawn.
The veil is rent away. Eternal Grace!
The soul beholds its Saviour face to face!

Is this Death's seal? Th' impression, O how fair!
Look, what a radiant smile is playing there!
That was the soul's farewell: the sacred dust
Awaits the resurrection of the just.

Call not the mourners, when the Christian dies,
While angels shout him welcome to the skies.
Mourn rather for the living dead on earth,

Who nothing care for his Celestial Birth.

Death to the bedside came, his prey to hold,

All he could touch was but the earthly mould :-
This to its native ashes men convey ;-

The freed Soul rises to eternal day!

And yet, in itself, Death is the self-same thing to the righteous as to the wicked. It is the same painful, convulsive separation between soul and body, sometimes attended with greater suffering, sometimes with less, but always constituting the supreme last strife of agony endurable in this mortal tenement. But what an infinite difference, when all the circumstances of death, all forms and processes of disease, every kind and degree of pain and suffering, are ordered by the Saviour for the good of the soul; when he sits