INVISIBLE WALLS | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 28, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 17.

INVISIBLE WALLS.

The common idea of a wall is of a solid structure settled upon strong foundations, for the protection or custody of those within and the repulsion of those without unless they enter by permission through the door. No wall has yet been built high, deep, and thick enough to prevent its being scaled, pierced, or demolished. From all old prisons there have been some escapes. All ancient fortified cities have been thrown down and all forts undermined.

The most separating walls are invisible. They are built, not of rock, but of thoughts, feelings, and purposes. . . .

Two sit in the same pew, the husband and his wife. They gaze with love upon the children whom God has given them. The hour comes when the holy communion is administered. One proceeds reverently to the place appointed, in remembrance of Jesus, to show forth His death “till He come.” The other moves not, but tarries until rejoined. An invisible wall separates that husband from his wife. It is as high as heaven, it is as deep as hell, yet no eye sees it.

To the Christian the thought of God is more absorbing than that of wife or child, of home, country, wealth, even of health and wisdom. If piety be genuine, deep is the anguish of spirit of the communicant, who feels the separation far more than the partner of his domestic joys. This invisible wall will part them forever; for unless the one who is on the impenitent and unspiritual side shall transcend or penetrate it, every qualification for admission into Christ’s kingdom will be wanting. The Christian who can realize this knows the meaning of St. Paul’s agony when he was in continual heaviness because of his kinsmen who were rejecting Christ; and the other, unless past feeling, would inwardly say, Can I bear such separation of heart and spirit longer?

At times there is an appalling consciousness of these invisible walls. When death seizes and bears away a child loved fully as much by the one without as by the one within the kingdom, they betake themselves to different sources of consolation. Prayer and the Word are the cordials of the believer; absorption and stoicism, the only resort of the other in grief.

But when the parent stem is touched, and the wife or the husband approaches the river which has no outer shore that the eye can see, and the waters are chill, and all the mutually-shared enjoyments and thoughts of life seem impertinences, there is silence, embarrassment, or inconsolable grief where there should be sympathetic speech, community of feeling, and undying hope.

An invisible wall stands between every sinner and God. When Benedict Arnold was meditating his treachery, he moved to and fro as before among his compatriots, but the invisible wall was there. So he who looks at the earth for comfort, whose ambitions are bounded by self, to whom God speaks, but who perceives it not, who has not received divine forgiveness, even tho God in His ever-present Spirit, by which all things exist and cohere, be in every atom of his body and every activity of his spirit, is separated from Him in thought, feeling, and purpose. It is to break down this invisible wall that Christ came to seek and to save that which is lost; His whole work is an at-one-ment. Every word He uttered, all the miracles that He performed, each sigh that He breathed, meant but this: “The invisible wall must disappear. God and man, now discordant, shall be united. I am the Expiation, the Propitiation, the Mediator. Be ye reconciled to God.”

At this time many churches are thronged and earnest appeals are heard. The invisible wall runs all through the assemblies in every direction. Here it separates parents from children, and there husbands from wives; hence at the end, unless there be changes, “one shall be taken, and the other left.” In some instances it may separate the seemingly fervent preacher from the pious of his flock. Hence it is that the preaching of the Gospel is to the believer the savor of life unto life, and to the other a savor of death unto death.

Palpable walls do not seriously obstruct the true end of life. True success can be achieved against every obstacle, but the invisible and the impalpable may resist all angels of mercy. Happy he who is divided by such a wall from sin, the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is then his rampart, and nothing that men or devils can contrive against him will work his ruin; for “he looks not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.”—Christian Advocate.