The Pen of Heaven by Thomas Guthrie

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 23, 1858

The Pen of Heaven.

By Thomas Guthrie

BY THE REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE, D. D.

"I will . . . cause you to walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments and do them." Eze. xxxvi, 27.

THE day grows yet more solemn. Its solemnity reaches its highest point, and culminates in the momentous issues of judgment. It is God's day of settlement with a world that has a long credit. It is the winding up of this earth's bankrupt estate, and each man's individual interest. It is the closing of an open account that has been running on ever since the Fall. It is the day when the balance is struck, and our fate is heaven or hell; and what invests my text with solemn and sublime importance is this, that by the manner in which we have walked in these statutes and kept these judgments and done them, shall our destiny be determined.

The most common action of life; its every day, every hour, is invested with a solemn grandeur, when we think how they extend their issues into eternity. Our hands are now sowing seed for that great harvest. We shall meet again all we are doing and have done. The graves shall give up their dead, and from the tombs of oblivion the past shall give up all that it holds in keeping, to be witness for or witness against us. O think of that, and in yonder hall of the Inquisition see what its effect on us should be. Within those blood-stained walls, for whose atrocious cruelties Rome has yet to answer, one is under examination. He has been assured that nothing he reveals shall be written for the purpose of being used against him. While making frank and ingenuous confession, he suddenly stops. He is dumb—a mute. They ply him with questions, flatter him, threaten him; he answers not a word. Danger makes the senses quick. His ear has caught a sound; he listens; it ties his tongue. An arras hangs beside him, and behind it he hears a pen running along the pages. The truth flashes on him. Behind that screen a scribe sits committing to the fatal page every word he says, and he shall meet it all again on the day of trial.

Ah! how solemn to think that there is such a pen going in heaven, and entering on the books of judgment all we say or wish, all we think or do. Would to God we heard it—every where, and always heard it! What a check! and what a stimulus! Are we about to sin, how strong a curb; if slow to duty, how sharp a spur! What a motive to pray for the blood that blots out a guilty past, and for such grace, as in time to come shall enable us to walk in God's statutes, to do them. "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men."