Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
August 23
Morning
"The voice of weeping shall be no more
heard."—Isaiah 65:19.
The glorified weep no more,
for all outward a causes of grief are gone.
There are no broken friendships, nor blighted prospects in heaven. Poverty,
famine, peril, persecution, and slander, are unknown there. No pain distresses,
no thought of death or bereavement saddens. They weep no more, for they are
perfectly sanctified. No "evil heart of unbelief" prompts them to
depart from the living God; they are without fault before His throne, and are
fully conformed to His image. Well may they cease to mourn who have ceased to
sin. They weep no more, because all fear of change is past. They know
that they are eternally secure. Sin is shut out, and they are shut in. They
dwell within a city which shall never be stormed; they
bask in a sun which shall never set; they drink of a river which shall never
dry; they pluck fruit from a tree which shall never wither. Countless cycles
may revolve, but eternity shall not be exhausted, and while eternity endures,
their immortality and blessedness shall co-exist with it. They are for ever with the Lord. They weep no more, because every
desire is fulfilled. They cannot wish for anything which
they have not in possession. Eye and ear, heart and hand, judgment,
imagination, hope, desire, will, all the faculties, are completely satisfied;
and imperfect as our present ideas are of the things which God hath prepared
for them that love him, yet we know enough, by the revelation of the Spirit,
that the saints above are supremely blessed. The joy of Christ, which is an
infinite fulness of delight, is in them. They bathe
themselves in the bottomless, shoreless sea of infinite beatitude. That same
joyful rest remains for us. It may not be far distant. Ere long the weeping
willow shall be exchanged for the palm-branch of victory, and sorrow's dewdrops
will be transformed into the pearls of everlasting bliss. "Wherefore
comfort one another with these words."
Evening
"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by
faith."—Ephesians 3:17.
Beyond measure it is
desirable that we, as believers, should have the person of Jesus constantly
before us, to inflame our love towards Him, and to increase our knowledge of
Him. I would to God that my readers were all entered as diligent scholars in
Jesus' college, students of Corpus Christi, or the body of Christ, resolved to
attain unto a good degree in the learning of the cross. But to have Jesus ever
near, the heart must be full of Him, welling up with His love, even to
overrunning; hence the apostle prays "that Christ
may dwell in your hearts." See how near he would have Jesus to be!
You cannot get a subject closer to you than to have it in the heart itself. "That
He may dwell"; not that He may call upon you sometimes, as a casual
visitor enters into a house and tarries for a night, but that He may dwell;
that Jesus may become the Lord and Tenant of your inmost being, never more to
go out.
Observe
the words—that He may dwell in your heart, that best room of the
house of manhood; not in your thoughts alone, but in your affections; not
merely in the mind's meditations, but in the heart's emotions. We should pant
after love to Christ of a most abiding character, not a love that flames up and
then dies out into the darkness of a few embers, but a constant flame, fed by
sacred fuel, like the fire upon the altar which never went out. This cannot be
accomplished except by faith. Faith must be strong, or love will not be
fervent; the root of the flower must be healthy, or we cannot expect the bloom
to be sweet. Faith is the lily's root, and love is the lily's bloom. Now,
reader, Jesus cannot be in your heart's love except you have a firm hold of Him
by your heart's faith; and, therefore, pray that you may always trust Christ in
order that you may always love Him. If love be cold,
be sure that faith is drooping.