Our Present Life vs. Immortality.
By H. I. FARNUM.
WHAT is our life? A brief existence checkered with anomalies, made up of lights and shadows, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, happiness and misery. In its spring-time hope is buoyant, all the world looks beautiful, and life itself appears a glorious thing. The blue arch above is pure and bright, the green earth on which we tread seems animate with beauty, while bright blossoms emit their fragrance, and verdant fields and groves are resonant with song. Thoughts of change and decay mingle not their shadows with our earliest joys. Would that it were thus in the happiness of later years. But alas! even in youth, faded flowers and withered hopes are wet with tears, and we learn too soon the frail and fleeting nature of the world of life and beauty around us. And then, as summer drinks up the freshness of spring, as the autumn breeze whispers of change and decay, and the blast of winter tells of death, the shroud, and the narrow house; so, as life advances, we become acquainted with toil, and care, and weariness, and disappointment, sorrow, and human suffering. You bright orbs, still brilliantly shine; but oh! we realize that they look upon a world of graves, and we know that rude storms will shroud their light. The trees don their freshest verdure, but soon the falling leaf reminds us of our mortality. The flowers open their petals as gaily as ever; but we know that their loveliness will soon be lost in death. We learn that all these are but emblems of human life. Our hopes flee like the dewdrops of morning; the beings we love fade like the falling leaf, or wither as withers the morning flower when chilled by an untimely blast. The warm spring showers and sunshine waken the leaves and blossoms; but, alas! they bring not back our lost treasures. We have seen them, cold and silent, borne across the plain, laid away in the earth, and the cold sods heaped above them; and now, perhaps, only a mound of flowers or a drift of snow, around which sad memories cluster, tells where they rest. And is this all of life? Is this the consummation of life's struggles? the only goal of all our toils, our prayers, our tears, and our hopes? Is this all of life? Infidelity and unbelief answer, “This is all of life;” but Hope says, Nay; and Revelation loudly answers, Nay; for life and immortality are brought to light through the gospel. Those that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. If our life is hid with Christ in God, when he who is our life appears, we shall appear with him in glory. And again, “For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” Then will be realized that for which we have lived, prayed, toiled, wept, and suffered—redemption through the blood of Jesus, an eternal weight of glory, the gift of God, even immortality and eternal life. No doubts or fears will then intrude themselves upon our happiness. No false hopes will deceive. No tempter will lure to stray. No unkindness will there be to chill and wound us. No weariness will be there, no pain, no sorrow, no human agony to oppress, no death, no graves. No pallid forms will ever be hid in the new earth's soil. Clouds will nevermore shadow “yon pure cerulean arch.” The new earth's verdure will know no decay, its flowers, no blight. The beings we love will not flit around us like shadows and then vanish away, but dwell in our presence forever. And He, who in infinite love yielded up his life for us, while we were yet aliens from, and enemies against, him, will dwell with us and be our God, and we shall be his people. Vain are all our efforts to catch a glimpse of the crowns, the harps, the robes, the mansions, in preparation for the redeemed; for “Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things that God hath prepared for those that love him.” “I will haste my flight and speed me away,
To the evergreen hills of that beautiful clime,
Where the leaves of the forest never decay,
Beyond the frosts of time.” Our mortal existence is brief. Is it too much that we forego the pleasures of sin, and devote all its little span to the service of Him who shed his blood in agony, and tasted death, that we, poor sinners, might obtain salvation from our sins, and thus become the recipients of the wonderful gifts of God? “Oh! ’twere sweet to toil in sadness,
Oh! ’twere well the cross to bear,
If, at last, in joy and gladness,
We may rest forever there.”