Tearless Eyes by Albert Barnes

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 5, 1862

Tearless Eyes.

By Albert Barnes

“God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” The expression is one of exquisite tenderness and beauty. The poet Burns said that he could never read this without being affected to weeping. Of all the negative descriptions of heaven, there is no one perhaps that would be better adapted to produce consolation than this. This is a world of weeping—a vale of tears. Who is there of the human family that has not shed a tear? And what a change it would make in our world, if it could but be said that henceforward not another tear would be shed, not a head would ever be bowed again in grief! Yet this is to be the condition of heaven. In that world there is to be no pain, no disappointment, no bereavement. No friend is to lie in dreadful agony on a sick-bed; no grave is to be opened to receive a parent, a wife, a child; no gloomy prospect of death is to draw tears of sorrow from the eyes. To that blessed world, when our eyes run down with tears, we are permitted to look forward; and the prospect of such a world should contribute to wipe away our tears here—for all our sorrows will soon be over. Amidst the trials of the present life, when friends leave us, when sickness comes, when our hopes are blasted, when calumnies and reproaches come upon us, when—standing on the verge of the grave and looking down into the cold tomb—the eyes pour forth floods of tears, it is a blessed privilege to be permitted to look forward to that brighter scene in heaven, where not a pang shall ever be felt, and not a tear shall ever be shed.—Albert Barnes.