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Heaven: Quotations from Burning Words
O rest of rests! O peace serene, eternal! Thou ever livest, and Thou changest never ! And in the secret of Thy presence dwelleth Fullness of joy, forever and forever.— MRS. H. B. STOWE
We are born for a higher destiny than earth; there is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beings that pass before us like shadows will stay in our presence forever.— BULWER LYTTON
When this passing world is done, When has sunk yon, glowing sun, When we stand with Christ in glory, Looking o'er life's finished story, Then, Lord, shall I fully know - Not till then - how much I owe.— ROBERT MCCHEYNE
I cannot be content with less than heaven.— P. J. BAILEY
Heaven is attracting to itself whatever is congenial to its nature, is enriching itself by the spoils of earth, and collecting within its capacious bosom whatever is pure, permanent, and divine.— ROBERT HALL
No wearisome days, no sorrowful nights; no hunger or thirst; no anxiety or fears; no envies, no jealousies, no breaches of friendship, no sad separations, no distrusts or forebodings, no self-reproaches, no enmities, no bitter regrets, no tears, no heartaches; "And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."— BISHOP R. S. FOSTER
No more fatigue, no more distress, Nor sin nor death shall reach the place; No groans shall mingle with the songs That warble from immortal tongues.— PHILIP DODDRIDGE
Christ and His cross are not separable in this life, howbeit Christ and His cross part at heaven's door, for there is no house-room for crosses in heaven. One tear, one sigh, one sad heart, one fear, one loss, one thought of trouble cannot find lodging there.— RUTHERFORD
"A little while," and the load Shall drop at the pilgrim's feet, Where the steep and thorny road Doth merge in the golden street.— W. GLADDEN
After the fever of life - after wearinesses, sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and failing, struggling and succeeding - after all the changes and chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length comes death-at length the white throne of God - at length the beatific vision.— NEWMAN
No aching hearts are there, No tear-dimmed eye, no form by sickness wasted, No cheek grown pale through penury or care, No spirits crushed beneath the woes they bear, No sighs for bliss untasted. And then, the quiet of the green, inland valleys of our Father's land, where no tempest comes any more, nor the loud winds are ever heard, nor the salt sea is ever seen; but perpetual calm and blessedness; all mystery gone, and all rebellion hushed and silenced, and all unrest at an end forever! "No more sea;" but, instead of that wild and yeasty chaos of turbulent waters, there shall be the river that makes glad the city of God, the river of water of life, that proceeds "out of the throne of God and of the Lamb."— ALEXANDER MACLAREN
An everlasting tranquillity is, in my imagination, the highest possible felicity, because I know of no felicity on earth higher than that which a peaceful mind and contented heart afford.— ZIMMERMAN
There fragrant flowers immortal bloom, And joys supreme are given ; There rays Divine disperse the gloom; Beyond the confines of the tomb Appears the dawn of heaven. Selfishness, eager for a heaven of enjoyment, is quite a different thing in the soul from love and purity and truth, yearning together for what is their natural element. The redeemed shall walk there.— WM. MOUNTFORD
What tranquillity will there be in heaven! Who can express the fullness and blessedness of this peace! What a calm is this! How sweet and holy and joyous! What a haven of rest to enter, after having passed through the storms and tempests of this world, in which pride and selfishness and envy and malice and scorn and contempt and contention and vice are as waves of a restless ocean, always rolling, and often dashed about in violence and fury! What a Canaan of rest to come to, after going through this waste and howling wilderness, full of snares and pitfalls and poisonous serpents, where no rest could be found.— JONATHAN EDWARDS
O, land of rest, how near thou art! O, judgment-seat of Jesus, how thin are the clouds that veil thee! Through the rifts of cloudland shine rays from this righteous crown. It is "laid up" for him whose hope can never be satisfied with less than the presence of the King.— STEPHEN H. TYNG, JR
Thither my weak and weary steps are tending; Saviour and Lord! with Thy frail child abide ; Guide me toward home, where, all my wanderings ended, I there shall see Thee, and be satisfied. One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying "Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore.”— H. W. BEECHER
And looking back upon "the sea that brought us thither," we shall behold its waters flashing in the light of that everlasting morning, and hear them breaking into music upon the eternal shore. And then, brethren, when all the weary night-watchers on the stormy ocean of life are gathered together around Him who watched with them from His throne on the bordering mountains of eternity, where the day shines forever - then He will seat them at His table in His kingdom, and none will need to ask, "Who art Thou?" or, "Where am I?" "for all shall know it is the Lord," and the full, perfect, unchangeable vision of His blessed face will be heaven.— ALEXANDER MACLAREN
In our Fathers house it will not be the pearl gate or the streets of gold that will make us happy. But oh, how transcendently glad shall we be when we see our Lord. Perhaps in that "upper room," also, He may show us His hands and His side, and we may cry out with happy Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"— T. L. CUYLER
Oh, heaven without my Saviour Would be no heaven to me; Dim were the walls of jasper - Rayless the crystal sea. He gilds earth's darkest valleys With light and joy and peace; What then must be the radiance When night and death shall cease? -— HELEN L. PARMLEE
To be in heaven is to lean one's head upon the breast of Jesus. You have done it on earth. Then you know what heaven is. To be in heaven is to talk with Jesus, to sit at His feet, to let our heart beat against His breast. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. Jerusalem! my happy home! My soul still pants for thee. Then shall my labors have an end, When I thy joys shall see.— BIBLE
Perhaps heaven may not be so far away as we fancy; and if our eyes were not holden, we should see angels ascending and descending, and blessed spirits thronging all about us.— A. H. K
There is not such a great difference between grace and glory after all. Grace is the bud, and glory is the blossom. Grace is glory begun; and glory is grace perfected. It won't come hard to people that are serving God down here to do it when they go up yonder. They will change places, but they won't change employments.— D. L. MOODY
I change my place, but not my company. While here I have sometimes walked with God, and now I go to rest with Him,— DR. PRESTON
Every Christian that goes before us from this world is a ransomed spirit waiting to welcome us in heaven.— JONATHAN EDWARDS
Beyond! beyond! oh, blest beyond! Oh, heaven, eternal, peaceful, free! Oh, home on high! I haste from bonds To find God's boundless rest in thee; And saints beyond Shall crowd thy gates to welcome me. What we sow here, we reap there! Can it be supposed that the soul will enjoy a reward or endure a retribution for deeds of which it has no recollection? Is the thing possible? Will it enjoy the bliss of heaven, praising Christ forever as its great Saviour, without any remembrance of the sins and sufferings from which He redeemed and saved it? The idea is absurd.— BISHOP R. S. FOSTER
Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes, and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells, and with dying promises that they would wait to welcomes us when we should arrive. And so they do. Net sorrowfully, not anxiously, but lovingly, they wait to bid us welcome.— BISHOP R. S. FOSTER
With Christ, and like Christ, and not love our friends! Impossible! when He loves them so tenderly. Going into the fuller presence of Him whose very name is "Love" can never make our hearts less loving.— A. H. K
I shall know the loved who have gone before, And joyfully sweet will the meeting be, When over the river, the peaceful river, The angel of death shall carry me.— N. A. W. PRIEST
Then re-united to the friends with whom we took sweet counsel upon earth, we shall recount our toil, only to heighten our ecstasy; and call to mind the toil and the din of war, only that, with a more bounding throb and a richer song, we may feel and celebrate the wonders of redemption.— HENRY MELVILL
Blessed loves! how happy they have made us on the earth; what will they be when they have deepened through ages, with no alloy of envy or suspicion or selfishness or sorrow?— BISHOP R. S. FOSTER
What delight will it afford to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils, the combats, and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of God, in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amidst the splendors and fruitions of the beatific vision.— ROBERT HALL
God would never have let us long for our friends with such a strong and holy love, if they were not waiting for us.— WM. MOUNTFORD
They are kings and priests unto God. They wear crowns that flash in the everlasting light. They wear robes that are spotlessly white. They wave victorious palms. They sing anthems of such exceeding sweetness as no earthly choirs ever approach. They stand before the throne. They fly on ministries of love. They muse on the top of Mount Zion. They meditate on the banks of the river of life. They are rapturous with ecstasies of love. God wipes away all tears from their eyes.— BISHOP R. S. FOSTER
Soon shall we meet again, Meet ne'er to sever; Soon shall peace wreathe her chain Round us forever; Our hearts will then repose Secure from worldly woes Our songs of praise shall close Never - no, never! In heaven, knowledge shall be commensurate with the enlarged powers of the glorified soul.— T. L. CUYLER
The joys of heaven are not the joys of passive contemplation, of dreamy remembrance, of perfect repose; but they are described thus: "They rest not day nor night." "His servants serve Him, and see His face."— ALEXANDER MACLAREN
Man has in his power, now developed, nothing more than a mere hint or initial sign of what is to be the real stature of his personality in the process of his everlasting development. We exist here only in the small, that God may have us in a state of flexibility, and bend or fashion us, at the best advantage, to the model of His own great life and character. -— HORACE BUSHNELL
It doth not yet appear what we shall be. We lie here in our nest, unfledged and weak, guessing dimly at our future, and scarce believing what even now appears. But the power is in us, and that power is finally to be revealed. And what a revelation will that be!— HORACE BUSHNELL
Will not this be the description of our future being - "reaching forth unto those things which are before?" I believe that we shall thus live through all the eternities that are before us, growing wiser, nobler, stronger, greater; plunging deeper into God, and being more and more filled with more and more of Him. So we shall move forever as in ascending spirals that rise ever higher, and draw ever closer to the throne we compass and to Him that dwells alone; ever perfect, yet ever growing, for we have an inexhaustible Saviour to absorb into our hearts, and we have hearts that never reach the ultimate bound and term of their indefinite possibility of receiving.— ALEXANDER MACLAREN
Heaven is endless longing, accompanied with an endless a longing which is blessedness, a longing which is fruition life.— ALEXANDER MACLAREN
As we look up into these glorious culminations, how grand life becomes! To be forever with the Lord, and forever changing into His likeness, and, still more, forever deepening in the companionship of His thought and bliss, "from glory to glory," - could we desire more?— BISHOP R. S. FOSTER
We should carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above, where eternity is the measure, felicity the state, angels the company, the Lamb the light, and God the inheritance and portion of His people forever.— JEREMY TAYLOR
Yes, it is a truth that for a good man,-honored, beloved, useful, with all around him that God ever gives to His children here ;- nay, with all that God could give him of earth, it would be "gain" to die. Heaven is a better, a happier, a more desirable world than this is or can be.— ALBERT BARNES,
Beyond the smiling and the weeping, I shall be soon; Beyond the waking and the sleeping, Beyond the sowing and the reaping, I shall be soon! Love, rest, and home - Sweet hope! Lord, tarry not, but come! Heaven is my Fatherland, Heaven is my home.— HORATIUS BONAR
Oh, when shall the night be gone, the shadows flee away, and the morning of that long, long day, without cloud or night, dawn? Rejoice, oh! grieving heart, The hours fly past; With each some sorrow dies, With each some shadow flies, Until at last The red dawn in the east Bids weary night depart, And pain is past.— RUTHERFORD
When the day of toil is done, When the race of life is run, Father, grant Thy wearied one Rest for evermore! When the heart by sorrow tried Feels at length its throbs subside, Bring us, where all tears are dried, Joy for evermore!— C. C. SCHOLEFIELD