SERMON XXXVII.
HEAVEN OPENED.

TRINITY SUNDAY,

REV. iv. 1.

"I looked, and behold a door was opened in Heaven."

WHEN we were little children, and first began to look upwards and around us, and wonder at the meaning of what we saw, I suppose one of our first thoughts was, to imagine what might be in the infinite deep of the blue sky, and to wish that we had eyes to see beyond it. We naturally asked ourselves, and others, who and what there is in that vast space, where our sight loses itself as soon as we begin to gaze. Our earliest notion indeed, when we were quite infants, was that we could even touch the firmament: thus little children will sometimes reach after the moon, and cry to have it given them; and it is only by slow degrees that we learn how very far distant we are from those heavenly things. By degrees only do we learn how completely sin has separated between us and our God: what a deep gulph is fixed between the glorious and happy place, and such as we were at our birth. At first we feel as if we could touch it: it seems to us no such very hard thing to be good and to please God. Bye and bye sad and shameful experience convinces us more and more that we were born in sin, the children of wrath: we feel more and more our distance from heaven, and long more and more to have the door opened, and look in and see who is there, how they are employed, and what hope there is of our joining them.

By nature the door of heaven is shut against us, because we are sinners, and nothing unclean can enter there. We cannot even look in, for our very looks are defiled and partake of sin. Our thoughts and imaginations grovel on the earth: they have no wings to mount up so high. Yet who can be quite contented with what he sees and experiences here? Which of us, in his better moments at least, has not longed for something better? Who has not now and then felt the longings of his childish days returning upon him, and wished that he might see heaven opened, and obtain some glimpse of a more perfect happiness than any which he has yet known? Surely those plaintive verses of the Psalm do but express what passes, from time to time, in every soul of man. "Oh that I had wings like a dove; for then would I flee away, and be at rest. Lo then would I get me away far off and remain in the wilderness." And then the thought comes grievously over us, "It might be so, were it not for our many sins, and for the deep corruption which hangs about us; but now we are bowed down more or less by this body of death, who shall raise us up? Who can untie our chains, which in too many parts of our behaviour we have been wilfully forging for ourselves?"

To these sad fears and misgivings, whether of the natural unregenerate man, or of one who has sinned against grace and is trying to repent, God gives us in His Holy Gospel a very blessed yet aweful answer. While we go about, thus weary and heavy laden, let us, though our eyes fail in the endeavour, let us still keep looking upwards, and in our measure we shall receive the same mercy, which Christ bestowed on His own beloved disciple. A door will be opened to us in heaven, that we may see something of the great unspeakable wonders of that glorious and happy place. Nay, this door has been opened to us: it stands continually open: it is not shut night nor day: if we had tried steadily to lead Christian lives, we should not need but to shut our eyes, and fall on our knees, and say the Lord's prayer, or use any other good and holy act of devotion, with a devout and attentive heart, and presently some one or more of the invisible things would be more or less brought before us, some of the wonders which shall hereafter be, or which now are, but out of sight, would be made present to us, for our warning or our comfort, or both.

To believing and penitent eyes, I say, the Gospel opens the door of heaven, and when they raise their eyes that way, and humbly look in, what is it they see?

The first look shews them Almighty God on His throne; as the Evangelist goes on to describe it: ."Behold a throne was set in heaven, and One sat on the throne." God's Holy Spirit helps those who try to muse on Him in earnest: helps them to forget for a while those ordinary things which they see, and to fix their minds on Him Who is Invisible: Whom no man hath seen, nor can see, Who yet is close to each of us at every moment: Who is above all, yet through all, and in all. We behold Him with the eye of faith sitting on His throne in heaven, surveying and ordering all the things which He hath made, and we feel that, while He thus seeth all things, His Countenance is towards us individually, watching what we say, do, or think, as exactly as if there were no being besides for Him to regard. We tremble before His Almightiness, we are dazzled by His unspeakable light and purity, we say in the deep of our hearts, as one said of old, "Who can stand before this holy Lord God?" Yet, while our hearts are thus overwhelmed with awe, He helps us, in proportion to our true devotion and penitence, to rejoice in the midst of our trembling: to rejoice and give thanks for "His Name, which is great, wonderful and holy:" to be comforted in our sorrow and fear, and even amid the reproofs of our conscience, by the feeling that the great Father of all has not quite hid His face from us. He permits us to feel that we are not left alone in the world, not left to be the sport of blind chance or evil spirits: that He is with us, and offers to hold us with His Right Hand, if we will but cling to it. He yet allows us to be in some sort aware of His Presence, to call Him, however unworthily, by the gracious name of Father, to turn ourselves, however imperfectly, towards Him in all our troubles and perplexities.

This is what He vouchsafes to shew us on our first look into the door of heaven. Now let us look again, beseeching Him to fill our hearts with His glory and His greatness, that we may not look altogether unworthily. As the first look into heaven shews us One God sitting upon His throne, so the second, if so it please Him, may shew us in that One God, the Three Divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; distinct as Persons, yet in Nature undivided; of one Substance Power and Eternity, yet so differing from one another, as that "the Father," the first Person, "is of none, neither made, nor created, nor begotten; the Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten: the Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding." This most Holy Trinity, we understand by faith to be reigning evermore in heaven, and evermore present in all the works of God. The manner how, none can understand, not the wisest: but the truth and certainty, that so it is, all may believe, even the simplest: and great indeed, and unspeakable is the help and comfort which the faithful humble Christian derives from the contemplation and worship of this adorable Trinity. To an unbeliever or a scoffer, or to a mere worldly person, it cannot be explained: on such matters the most charitable way is to say as little as possible to such men: but the less men speak of them the more they will naturally think: for this doctrine of the Holy Trinity is like the secret of some great king, which, being made known by special favour to some holy and humble servant of his, fills that servant's heart, so that he cannot get it out of his recollection: and the less he is permitted to speak of it, the more he thinks of it, night and day. And the thought has a special power to keep him out of mischief: he considers with himself, that this Blessed Trinity is not Only reigning in heaven, but also, by the grace of Holy Baptism, abiding in each one of our hearts. God has trusted us with this aweful secret: if we are not quite hardened, surely we must feel that we never can do enough to acknowledge this miraculous loving-kindness; we must feel that the Holy Trinity, abiding in us, and known to be so, is a seal and safeguard against all the enemies of our souls: according to the saying of the wise man: "The Name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it, and is safe."

As the first look into the open door of heaven shewed us the One God sitting on His throne, and the second, the Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Trinity of Persons, so the third may reveal to the eye of faith the Holy Manhood and Humanity of Jesus Christ, taken into God, and exalted to the Father's Right Hand. For thus we read in the continuation of S. John's vision: "I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne stood a Lamb, as it had been slain." It was, I suppose, the same sight as appeared to the blessed S. Stephen, when he was in the act of his martyrdom: "heaven opened, and Jesus the Son of Man standing on the Right Hand of God." What these great saints and martyrs saw thus openly in this vision, God in His great mercy permits all humble and penitent Christians to see by faith, when they pray to Him attentively. Only kneel down with a true heart, either in Church or at home, and say the good prayers which you have learned from those who are set over you, especially at the end, when you say, "Through Jesus Christ our Lord," and He permits you to look in, as it were, at the door of heaven, and see the great High Priest, Jesus Christ the Son of God, ever living to make intercession for you. To this you may turn, with this you may comfort yourself, on this you may depend, when your heart is in heaviness. Here, in this lower and outer world, you may have no place to flee unto; you may feel as if no man cared for your soul. But there is One within the veil, "Who knows all and cares for all. He can be touched with a feeling of your infirmities, for He was Himself made in all points like as you are, sin only excepted. Only, if you would preserve and improve this unspeakable comfort, take care that you pray in faith, nothing wavering: take care and be not double-minded, but resolve with your whole heart that you will not again wilfully offend Him.

And as a great earnest and encouragement to the devout worshippers of Jesus Christ, behold what He allows us to see in the next look, which we are today invited to direct within the everlasting gates. The great High Priest Himself is not the only child of Adam Whom we by faith may behold in heaven: but with Him, and beneath Him, and wholly, and only for Him, we see those who are called His saints: the best, and most favoured, and most severely tried, of those who had served Him here on earth: in some sense or other, the Scripture represents them as even now rejoicing with Him in heaven. For S. John saw "round about the throne four and twenty seats, and upon the seats four and twenty Elders sitting, clothed in white raiment, and on their heads crowns of gold." These four and twenty are not Angels, for they were heard praising our Lord as follows, "Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy Blood." They are therefore holy souls, redeemed by Christ's Blood: and the number of twenty-four seems to signify that they are the saints first of the Jewish, and afterwards of the Christian Church: the first twelve answering to the twelve tribes, the second to the twelve Apostles. All these, brethren of our own, and naturally and originally weak and sinful as we are, we may now think of as making part of the blessed company of heaven, and joining with the Holy Church throughout all the world in most high praise and honour, offered day and night to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Our Church instructs us so to think of the saints in heaven, in the hymn called the Te Deum, which we use every day in the morning service. "The glorious company of the Apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs, praise" and acknowledge the Three Persons in One Godhead: "the Father, of an infinite Majesty; His honourable, true, and only Son; also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter."

And this goes on day and night, they are never weary of their holy and happy work. With them it is not as with the best of men on earth, to have heaven's door opened, and see into those blissful abodes, now and then only, by rare glimpses, seldom coming and soon gone; but those favoured spirits have no door between them and the glory of their God and Saviour; they behold Him with open face, in His Light they see light, they are satisfied with the plenteousness of His house, and He gives them "drink of His pleasures as out of a river;" out of the well of life, which can never fail.

These are the great and blessed things which Almighty God permits us dimly to behold, whenever by devout meditation we are enabled to look in for a moment at the door which His Son has opened for us in heaven: the Lord of all sitting on His throne; the Holy Blessed and Glorious Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: Jesus Christ, the Son of God Incarnate, as a Lamb, which had been slain, standing "at His Father's Right Hand to succour all them that suffer for Him;" and round about Him the chief of His saints, the first fruits of His redeemed. All this and more He permits and invites us to behold, with our mind's eye, in the times of solemn prayer, and at all times when we are able and willing to give ourselves up to such high and holy thoughts.

Why is it that we too commonly find so little in ourselves to answer to this gracious invitation? It would seem as if we had but to shut our eyes to the world, and this glorious Vision would presently appear; being, as it is, always close to every one of us, had we but sight to behold it. But in the first place, we are unwilling to shut our eyes; too generally there is something or other here, to which we so cling that we will not give up the sight of it, no, not for those sights which make the saints blessed in heaven. And next, when we are at length brought to make such an endeavour, when we do in earnest try to think only of heaven, we find too surely the visions of this world still haunting us: our works, our diversions, our cares, our friends, our companions, keep flitting across our minds, like so many earthly clouds, and will not leave us alone, to meditate peaceably on those joys and glories. In a word we must be pure in heart, in order to see God. We must labour and pray continually to be disengaged, in heart at least, from these lower matters, if we would taste and see how gracious the Lord is, and how good and blessed a thing to be always in His Presence. "Every man that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as He is pure." Without such endeavours, real, hearty, and persevering, any pleasure we may seem to feel in meditating on God and on everlasting joy, will prove but a dangerous dream, perhaps even a snare of the Evil one. This way, therefore, let all our care be turned; to keep our hearts and fancies pure, that when we have leisure we may be free to look in at the door of heaven; and when our earthly work ceases, we may turn ourselves of course that way, and never turn back again.

Now to the Holy Blessed and Glorious Trinity &c.

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