p. 111 | CLUSTERS OF ESCHOL

Publishing Committee · Rochester, N. Y. · Nov 14, 1854

CLUSTERS OF ESCHOL.

IN some hour of solemn jubilee, The massy gates of Paradise are thrown Wide open, and forth come, in fragments wild, Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies, And odors snatched from beds of amaranth, And they that from the crystal river of life Sprung up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales! The favored good man in his lonely walk Perceives them, and his silent spirit drinks Strange bliss, which he shall recognize in heaven. COLERIDGE

A traveler, after a long journey when he is weary and faint, and sits down, if he sees the town before him, it puts life into him, and he plucks up his feet and resolves not to be weary till he be at his journey's end. O, look at the crown and white robe set before you, and faint if you can: get on the top of Mount Nebo,—look on the land of promise,—those good things set before you; taste the grapes of Canaan before you come to Canaan. NALTON.

All superior minds are enterprising. They are marked by an activity which conceives and attempts greater things than the surrounding multitudes. Their spheres of effort may be various, their powers unlike, their measures of success very diverse, yet all minds which impress themselves upon others, and accomplish much for good or evil, are characterized by a forth-putting energy and courage. Little souls are timorous. They venture nothing; they do not aspire; they do not grow! for they shrink within themselves, listless and inactive.

Among those sent from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land of promise, were Caleb and Joshua, men of true enterprise, and their subsequent career showed them possessed of a persevering and sanctified energy. They never lost the impressions of their visit to the goodly land; the beauty of its prospects, and the security of the covenant of Jehovah's pledge of possession to them. "And they came unto the brook Eschol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bore it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates and of the figs; and they said, We came unto the land, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it." Are not we in the wilderness? is not Canaan before us? are not clusters of Eschol presented to us? Shall we not taste of the same and quicken our steps toward the Better Land?

Older and discerning Christians remark an unusual spirit of worldliness in the churches. It is feared by judicious fathers and mothers in Israel as well as by younger Calebs and Joshuas, that there are tokens of defection; evidences of a desire to return to Egypt; and that idolatry, in the form of covetousness, is stealing upon the hearts of the people of God. Well may they tremble for the sacramental host when they find Aaron sanctioning the dance around some golden calf, and witness such ingratitude for deliverance, such readiness in yielding to the seductions of neighboring idolaters; when they hear, too, such complaints of the weariness of the way, and the absence of Egyptian luxuries; and behold such reluctance to go forward at God's command, and take possession of the promised land. Strange it is and deplorable, that fugitives, under the sanction of God's own right arm, should sigh for a return to bondage and darkness!

The worldly spirit deals with things present. It is not far-reaching or far-sighted, but its range is bounded by the horizon of time. It has no wings; it is of the earth, earthy. Whence comes the manna? why gushes water from the rock? whither guides the pillar of cloud and of fire?—are questions it never asks. It knows not how to soar; how to anticipate and trust; how to see him who is invisible, and to repose under the shadow of his wings unmindful of the wilderness, and unalarmed by foes.

But the heavenly-minded man walks by faith,—that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And, among the great varieties which hold possession of his soul, no one has a firmer lodgment than that of the saint's everlasting rest. All the circumstances of his present journey, all his remembrances, point to a Better Land, that is a heavenly. But most of all, the word of the Lord hath settled it. Did he not swear unto Abraham, "I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession?" In the horror of great darkness that fell upon him, did not a smoking furnace and a burning lamp pass between the cloven pieces, to ratify the covenant?

"Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying, in David, To-day, if ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. There remaineth, therefore a rest to the people of God." O, yes, in every assurance of the covenant-keeping Jehovah; in every believing aspiration of patriarchs and prophets; in every mystery and miracle from Messiah's incarnation to his ascension; in every teaching and motion of the Holy Spirit, in his word and in the souls of the sanctified on earth, there is a pledge of Canaan to come. The spiritually-minded know this. They know that if they are Christ's, then are they Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. Heaven is to them no mere poetic sentiment; no speculative conjecture, or philosophical deduction; no traditionary record; but an assured certainty. Though not having received the promises, they have seen them afar off. The heavenly-minded man has heavenly things in mind. The objects and occupations of the world above are not mere matters of record in the Bible, themes suggested as his eye lights upon Baxter's Saint's Rest,—interesting subjects upon which he once heard a lecture,—items of pantology, about which he has no doubt, and as little thought; they fill his mind,—they are present to his eye; they are home acquaintances. Fully persuaded of their existence, and expecting presently and personally to enjoy them, he often turns to the directory of Canaan, which inspiration supplies. He passes round by the ascent of Akrabbim, he goes up from Kadesh Barnea, he traverses the valley of Eschol and Jordan, he surveys Carmel and Hermon, and that goodly mountain, Lebanon; he wanders over the clad hills, and among the palm-groves and olive orchards, till he seems naturalized and domesticated there.

Yet, our conceptions of heaven are modified by our temperament, condition and habits. Robert Hall, a sufferer from the first to the last hour of his pilgrimage, remarked, "My chief conception of heaven is rest." "Mine," replied the amiable Wilberforce, "mine is love—love to God, and love to every bright and happy inhabitant of that glorious place." Both were right, and both will also find, what they likewise knew on earth, that the Lord Jesus Christ is the chief charm and glory of that world. No believer can meditate intelligently, for any length of time, upon heavenly objects, without having his thoughts drawn to the person of the King of kings, and Lord of lords. He it was who came down from heaven. He it is whom God raised from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all." He, the way, the truth and the life—He, the Alpha and Omega of all gracious manifestations, and all sanctified aspirations—the bond, the harmonizer of eternity and time, of the infinite and the finite, of the divine and the human—he, in every believer the hope of glory, must, to all saints, seem the chiefest among ten thousand, the one altogether lovely. "Blessed," do they cry, "blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

"I in them, and they in me!" O, the mystery of that mutual indwelling! "I will dwell in them." O, the condescension of Immanuel, to convert a child of the dust into a temple for himself; to come and sojourn, ay, be a tent companion with him! "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man will hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." And when Christ comes he always brings heaven with him. Whoever sups with him feeds upon hidden manna, the true bread which cometh down from heaven. But, to commune thus with Christ, to call him elder brother, to find he is not ashamed to call us brethren, is not that to be heavenly minded? It is heaven in the heart; it is glory begun; it is salvation anticipated. "Whom, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory; receiving the end of your faith even the salvation of your souls."

Others are "of the world;" they think of the world, speak of the world, live for the world; whose minds the god of this world hath blinded. True, in the midst of this intense worldliness, there may be abundant discourse, poetic or speculative, about heaven, which, at best, has only an aesthetic influence, and has nothing to do with sanctification. But that occupation with celestial themes, which the Holy Spirit fosters, has a mighty assimilating power. By it the soul is elevated and ennobled. Its field and its powers of vision are enlarged, and the relative proportions and value of things seen and unseen are more clearly appreciated, and practically felt.

Worldly-minded men are like common pendulums, that feel every disturbing influence; the heavenly-minded man is like that of Foucault; though connected with the earth, and moving with it, still it keeps faithfully and majestically to its own independent plane of vibration, while surrounding objects rotate continually. Yea, more: "His hand the good man fastens on the skies. Bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl."—Selected.