The Saints' Everlasting Rest - Richard Baxter

travels to heaven! If our bodies are suited to the air and climate we most live
in, his understanding must be fuller of light who lives with the Father of
lights. The men of the world that dwell below, and know no other
conversation but earthly, no wonder if their "understanding be darkened,"
and Satan "take them captive at his will." How can worms and moles see,
whose dwelling is always in the earth? While this dust is in their eyes, no
wonder they mistake gain for godliness, sin for grace, the world for God,
their own wills for the law of Christ, and, in the issue, hell for heaven. But
when a Christian withdraws himself from his worldly thoughts, and begins to
converse with God in heaven, methinks he is, as Nebuchadnezzar, taken
from the beasts of the field to the throne, and "his reason returneth unto
him." When he has had a glimpse of eternity, and looks down on the world
again, how doth he charge with folly his neglects of Christ, his fleshly
pleasures, his earthly cares! How doth he say of his laughter, It is mad; and
of his vain mirth, What doeth it? How doth he verily think there is no man in
Bedlam so truly mad as wilful sinners, and unworthy slighters of Christ and
glory! This makes a dying man usually wiser than others, because he looks
on eternity as near, and hath more heart-piercing thoughts of it than he ever
had in health and prosperity. Then many of the most bitter enemies of the
saints have their eyes opened, and like Balaam, cry out, "O that I might die
the death of the righteous, and that my last end might be like his!" Yet let the
same men recover, and lose their apprehensions of the life to come, and how
quickly do they lose their understanding with it! Tell a dying sinner of the
riches, honors or pleasures of the world, and would he not answer, "What is
all this to me, who must presently appear before God, and give an account of
all my life?" Christian, if the apprehended nearness of eternity will work
such strange effects upon the ungodly, and make them so much wiser than
before, O what rare effects would it produce in thee, couldst thou always
dwell in the views of God, and in lively thoughts of thy everlasting state!
Surely a believer, if he improve his faith, may ordinarily have more
quickening apprehensions of the life to come, in the time of his health, than
an unbeliever hath at the hour of his death.
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