C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Heaven
Heaven—it is God’s throne. The earth—it is His footstool.
Heaven, the treasury of everlasting joy!
The redeemed shall walk there.
There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.
I cannot be content with less than heaven.
There’s nothing true but heaven.
Beyond the clouds and beyond the tomb.
All places shall be hell that are not heaven.
Heaven, the widow’s champion and defence.
There is another, and a better world.
Heaven means to be one with God.
The love of heaven makes one heavenly.
Infinite in degree, and endless in duration.
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.
Nothing is farther than earth from heaven; nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.
Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven.
Think of heaven with hearty purposes and peremptory designs to get thither.
As much of heaven is visible as we have eyes to see.
One should go to sleep as homesick passengers do, saying, “Perhaps in the morning we shall see the shore.”
Every Christian that goes before us from this world is a ransomed spirit waiting to welcome us in heaven.
No fountain so small but that heaven may be imaged in its bosom.
Dreams cannot picture a world so fair; sorrow and death may not enter there.
In a better world we will find our young years and our old friends.
Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.
There is but one way to heaven for the learned and the unlearned.
The heaven of poetry and romance still lies around us and within us.
Heaven is a place of restless activity, the abode of never-tiring thought.
The ascent from earth to heaven is not easy.
There I’ll rest, as after much turmoil a blessed soul doth in Elysium.
Heaven’s above all; and there be souls that must be saved, and there be souls that must not be saved.
I change my place, but not my company. While here I have sometimes walked with God, and now I go to rest with Him.
Perfect purity, fullness of joy, everlasting freedom, perfect rest, health and fruition, complete security, substantial and eternal good.
The net of heaven is very wide in its meshes, and yet it misses nothing.
Think how completely all the griefs of this mortal life will be compensated by one age, for instance, of the felicities beyond the grave.
In short, heaven is not to be looked upon only as the reward, but as the natural effect, of a religious life.
They had finished her own crown in glory, and she couldn’t stay away from the coronation.
Heaven is endless longing, accompanied with an endless fruition—a longing which is blessedness, a longing which is life.
Do we not hear voices, gentle and great, and some of them like the voices of departed friends—do we not hear them saying to us, “Come up hither?”
The joy of heaven will begin as soon as we attain the character of heaven, and do its duties.
An everlasting tranquility 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.
He who seldom thinks of heaven is not likely to get thither; as the only way to hit the mark is to keep the eye fixed upon it.
The loves that meet in paradise shall cast out fear; and paradise hath room for you and me and all.
Heaven’s gates are not so highly arched as princes’ palaces; they that enter there must go upon their knees.
It is impossible to have a lively hope in another life, and yet be deeply immersed in the enjoyments of this.
The generous who is always just, and the just who is always generous, may, unannounced, approach the throne of heaven.
Heaven hath many tongues to talk of it, more eyes to behold it, but few hearts that rightly affect it.
If the way of heaven be narrow, it is not long; and if the gate be straight, it opens into endless life.
Ah, what without a heaven would be even love!—a perpetual terror of the separation that must one day come.
I must confess, as the experience of my own soul, that the expectation of loving my friends in heaven principally kindles my love to them while on earth.
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.”
Our souls, piercing through the impurity of flesh, behold the highest heaven, and thence bring knowledge to contemplate the ever-during glory and termless joy.
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.
Heaven is the day of which grace is the dawn; the rich, ripe fruit of which grace is the lovely flower; the inner shrine of that most glorious temple to which grace forms the approach and outer court.
If our Creator has so bountifully provided for our existence here, which is but momentary, and for our temporal wants, which will soon be forgotten, how much more must He have done for our enjoyment in the everlasting world!
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.
There are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand so near the vale that separates mortals from the immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear the beatings, and feel the pulsations of the heart of the Infinite.
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?
What, after all, is heaven, but a transition from dim guesses and blind struggling with a mysterious and adverse fate to the fullness of all wisdom from ignorance, in a word, to knowledge, but knowledge of what order?
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!
The joys of heaven are without example, above experience, and beyond imagination—for which the whole creation wants a comparison; we, an apprehension; and even the Word of God, a revelation.
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.
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.
Heaven is not to sweep our truths away, but only to turn them till we see their glory, to open them till we see their truth, and to unveil our eyes till for the first time we shall really see them.
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.
Some people think black is the color of heaven, and that the more they can make their faces look like midnight, the more evidence they have of grace. But God, who made the sun and the flowers, never sent me to proclaim to you such a lie as that.
Perhaps God does with His heavenly garden as we do with our own. He may chiefly stock it from nurseries, and select for transplanting what is yet in its young and tender age—flowers before they have bloomed, and trees ere they begin to bear.
The poets fabulously fancied that the giants scaled heaven by heaping mountain upon mountain. What was their fancy is the gospel truth. If you would get to heaven you must climb thither by putting Mount Sion upon Mount Sinai.
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.
In our father’s 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!”
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 welcome us, when we should arrive. And so they do. Not sorrowfully, not anxiously, but lovingly, they wait to bid us welcome.
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.
It may be that at this moment every battlement of heaven is alive with the redeemed. There is a sainted mother watching for her daughter. Have you no response to that long hushed voice which has prayed for you so often? And for you, young man, are there no voices there that have prayed for you? And are there none whom you promised once to meet again, if not on earth, in heaven?
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.”
If I am allowed to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blessed, I should imagine it by the orange-grove in that sheltered glen on which the sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are, at the same time, loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Such objects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become one eternal feeling.
If one could look a while through the chinks of heaven’s door, and see the beauty and bliss of paradise; if he could but lay his ear to heaven, and hear the ravishing music of those seraphic spirits, and the anthems of praise which they sing, how would his soul be exhilarated and transported with joy.
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.
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.”
Blessed is the pilgrim, who in every place, and at all times of this his banishment in the body, calling upon the holy name of Jesus, calleth to mind his native heavenly land, where his blessed Master, the King of saints and angels, waiteth to receive him. Blessed is the pilgrim who seeketh not an abiding place unto himself in this world; but longeth to be dissolved, and be with Christ in heaven.
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.
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.
Yes, thank God! there is rest—many an interval of saddest, sweetest rest—even here, when it seems as if evening breezes from that other land, laden with fragrance, played upon the cheeks, and lulled the heart. There are times, even on the stormy sea, when a gentle whisper breathes softly as of heaven, and sends into the soul a dream of ecstasy which can never again wholly die, even amidst the jar and whirl of daily life. How such whispers make the blood stop and the flesh creep with a sense of mysterious communion! How singularly such moments are the epochs of life—the few points that stand out prominently in the recollection after the flood of years has buried all the rest, as all the low shore disappears, leaving only a few rock points visible at high tide.