Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

same warning in both cases. There are certain fundamental canons of love-making which ought to be written in letters of gold. One is: If love is worth being possessed, it is worth being confessed; for "confession is good for the soul." The other is: Trust to the uttermost the heart that loves you, and that you love; for it is true of all lower loves, as of the one highest, "Thy faith hath saved thee."

Soliloquising thus with silent loquacity till the shadows began to lengthen out the afternoon, I then walked leisurely toward the chestnut tree, whistled on my way thither to give forewarning of my approach, startled a lady and gentleman who sat very close together, and as they rose to meet me, each with an offered hand, I accepted a hand from each, and bound their hands together, their hearts likewise.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

THE VISION OF THE LADDER.

A SERMON FOR THE END OF THE YEAR.

BY THE REV. W. HEATON.

"And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. And be lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it."-Gen. xxviii. 10-12.

Ir is not my custom, my brethren, when I have the opportunity given me of expounding the Word of God, to seize upon such texts a admit of fanciful or mystical interpretations. We all know what a tendency there is, when we are dealing with such texts, to put upon them forced and unnatural meanings, rather than to try to educe from hem the mind of the Spirit of God; and we must all of us have been tieved and shocked from time to time, by hearing such forced and unatural interpretations put upon God's Word, which must be not ony ofensive to all persons of taste, but are altogether opposed to that spilt olreverence with which we ought to regard an inspired record. Thee a, however, some texts, which undoubtedly admit of being thus fancally treated, to which, nevertheless, in our best moments, our though involuntarily recur. Such passages seem almost like messages fro our infancy, and bring with them memories of departed

days-departed never to return: they recall to our recollection the loved teachers of our earliest years, who sought by these and such passages to lead us to an understanding and appreciation of divine truth. Around such passages, does there not seem to be an air of peculiar sacredness? The Bible would seem to be quite a different book if these were blotted from it; and, if nothing else could do it, the remembrances of the past ought to be sufficient to prevent us from dealing with such passages with a light or irreverent hand, or from making them the stages on which to display our own cleverness and ingenuity, rather than a platform for the exhibition of the truth of God. I should like, if I could, to bring out to-day some thoughts which have occurred to me in my meditations on this passage, without falling into the error I have adverted to. Approaching it in a reverent spirit, and with a fall appreciation of the purposes of preaching, that ought surely to be possible.

You are all of you familiar enough with the history of Jacob. It is a beautiful and touching story, and as I read it afresh the other day, it came upon me with a fresh fascination. In the chapter before us, Jacob was placed in circumstances of peculiar peril, and yet of special interest. He was leaving his father's house to escape from the danger in which he was placed through the anger of his elder brother. He was leaving it, likewise, that he might find for himself a wife of the daughters of his mother's family. Thus he was placed in a position that must have caused him both anxiety and hope. There was the anxiety caused by his brother's anger on the one hand; there was the hope of responsive love on the other. It was, in fact, the first great crisis of his life. It was the first time in his life in which he had been left without home-guidance and comfort. True, notwithstanding his faults, he had his father's and his mother's blessing with him. Doubtless, there were in his heart more of the boundings of hope than of the throbbings of anxiety. But he was alone. At the moment at which we find him in these verses, the darkness lay thick around him, and he was in the desert. Then it was that God appeared to him. God-the God of his fathers-spoke to him. He heard those comforting words which made him strong for his life- work: at least, as the result of the words he heard and the vision he saw, we are told that he vowed a vow, saying, "If God will be, with me, and will keep me in the way that I go, and will give me bread to ea and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house ir peace then shall the Lord be my God ;" and, after that, he "wen on h journey."

Now, my brethren, let us look for a moment at this vision wich Jacob saw, and which he saw with such blessed results. 'An he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the topof it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascen ng und descending upon it. I shall not try to show elaborately he suitableness of this vision to Jacob: I shall rather dwell in the lessons

it teaches to us, which were also among the chief ones it taught to him. Those lessons appear to me to be included in the thoughts, -First, of Communication with heaven; second, of Sympathy from heaven; and third, of Progress towards heaven.

Nor

I. The first idea, then, that I find in the text is that of Communi cation with heaven. "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven." It is quite possible that this thought of communication with heaven was a new thought to Jacob. Hitherto his life had been a very different thing from that which it became afterwards. If we turn to the chapters in which the history of his life, hitherto is told, we find not one single incident to show that he had escaped from the characteristic selfishness of his nature. As he lay there, on the ground, in the darkness, he thought probably of his past misdeeds especially of that misdeed which made it necessary that he should flee from his home and his country. only of the past did he think. The future was uncertain, if not dark. He knew not what would be on the morrow. Anyhow, his path lay through the wilderness, and his only companion was his staff. But then, then, in the night vision, the thought of heaven came to him. A noble thought! Nor only of heaven, but of communication with heaven. That ladder-what was it for? Was it for him to climb one day? At least, the ladder was set up on the earth; it rose probably from his very feet; it is scarcely possible to suppose that it did not suggest to him the idea of rising up those steps to the heaven to which it pointed, and which it reached. My brethren, whatever it suggested to Jacob, this is the thought which it suggests at least to us. That ladder was a type of Christ. It was one of the symbols by which the Lord revealed to the fathers the glory that was to come. Do you ask the proof? Hereafter," said Christ to Nathaniel, "hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." Our Lord's désign

66

appears to have been, to foretell the glory of gospel times, in which, through His mediation, heaven should, as it were, be opened, and a free intercourse established between God, angels, and men. Not that there was no communication with heaven before Christ. Through His mediation, which was to come, heaven was already open before He came. Thank God, my brethren, ever since this world began it has been made sacred by communications passing between it and heaven. In the Garden, before the fall, angels, and even God, walked with man. Then no ladder was necessary. Paradise in Eden was but a suburb of the paradise which is above. After the fall, let us be thankful, the ladder was let down. Had no ladder been let down, we must have remained for ever strangers and foreigners to the heavenly city. Up, up on high it might have shone, but it would have been for ever, practically, distant as the sun and inaccessible as the stars. But the ladder was let down, and, ever since, angels have descended to men, and men have ascended to the angels. To the old patriarchs the angels came,

and they talked together as a man talketh with his friend. To Hagar in the wilderness the angel spake, and she called him by his name, "Thou God seest me." The messenger appeared to Abram in Mamre, and he said, "My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant." To Moses likewise the angel appeared in the bush, and Moses said, "I will now turn aside and see this great sight." My brethren, these visits from above have not ceased. Still the ladder is erected, and still on it the angels of God descend. Oh, what would this world have been if it had been shut out from communication with heaven! It is the reflection of the heavenly light that gives it now all its brightness; it is the waftings of the heavenly breezes that give it all its approaches to purity. That Jacob's ladder is the promise of a yet better, a yet happier time. "And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God, out of heaven. . . And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God."

[ocr errors]

II. But another idea which this vision suggests is that of Sympathy from heaven. "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it." To Jacob what a vision must this now have been! There he was, as we have seen, alone in the wilderness; he had travelled, bearing only his staff, full forty miles from his home; he had nothing but the stones of that place for his pillows, as he lay down there to sleep. But, behold, the angels of God! It would have been something to have seen the ladder only. That he should have found in his solitude that heaven was accessible, would have been something to cheer his heart, and to strengthen him for his journey. But not only is heaven accessible from earth, earth is visited from heaven. Scarcely is the ladder let down before it glistens all over with a shining multitude of the heavenly host. Nor are they spectators merely-they are busied about man-they are seen "ascending and descending" the ladder. Why do they thus? My brethren, but for a subsequent revelation it would have been impossible to answer this question. Only through the gospel's clearer light do we learn that the angels sympathise with us. They sympathised with Jacob, though till then he knew it not. Perhaps he even imagined himself forsaken. Above him, indeed, were the stars, but he could find no sympathy in their cold light. Around him stretched the plain that he was crossing, but no voice fell upon his ears: all was still and silent as the grave. But lo, "behold a ladder, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it." There is one text in the later revelation that helps to explain all this. "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation ?" We know, what Jacob did not, that the angels are our ministers. Quite as much as he did do we need the information. For are not we

also travellers? Are not we often solitary? Is it not our lot oftentimes to be weary with our journey, and to long to lie down to sleep? My brethren, it is with a glad heart that I open this volume, which tells me that both in my sadnesses and my wearinesses the angels are my sympathisers. That they are so is no fiction of the imagination; it is a great and glorious reality. To me, at least, it is not a dream merely, that when I have been sad angels have been my comforters, and when I have been weary their hands have spread my pillow, and their wings have fanned my brow. Nor only so. We read in this chapter that the angels of the Lord ascended and descended on the ladder: but the Lord stood above it." We are speaking now of sympathy from heaven; let us not forget the sympathy of the Lord of heaven. "And the Lord said unto Jacob, I am the God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac; and behold I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest; and I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." To Jacob what words must these have been! The ladder was something, the angels were something-the Lord was the most of all. At first, indeed, the patriarch was afraid. "How dreadful," he said, "is this place!" But afterwards, in the morning, he vowed a vow, saying, "If God will be with me, and will keep me in the way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God;" and then he went on his journey. Oh, my hearers, let us be thankful that we, in these days, do not need to be afraid, even for a moment, when God speaks

to us.

We know that all His messages are of love. We know that all His accents are tender and pitiful. That which came as a new revelation to Jacob is familiar in our ears as household words. Let us adapt to our higher light the language of Jacob, and say, "Because God is with us, and keeps us in the way in which we go, therefore the Lord shall be our God;" and let us hopefully and thankfully pursue our journey.

III. The third idea which I have mentioned as suggested by this vision is that of Progress towards heaven. "Behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven." I cannot say that this idea was suggested to the mind of Jacob. As yet probably he had not learned the lesson, that the journey he was now taking was but a part of a longer, grander journey of which each meanest day was a part. But if we ask why it was that the vision appeared to him, why the angels sympathised with him as he was taught they did, the answer is that he was pursuing a journey, which was conducting him, or which might conduct him, to the angel's home. If this thought had occurred to Jacob, with how much of dignity it must have invested him! A lonely wanderer-lonely no longer for did not the angels sympathise with him as with a brother, and did they not gladly descend the ladder that they might cheer him in his progress, and aid him along his way? Whenever, or however, the thought came to him,

« AnteriorContinuar »