A REVELATION ON
ETERNITY
Life is real! Life is
earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art,
to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the
soul.
--Longfellow.
While Edwin was still
laboring among the stones in the field of grass, this thought
came suddenly to his mind:
"If I should be so
unfortunate as to die before I receive the assurance that I am
going to heaven and I should happen to find myself in hell,
how long would I have to be there? And how hot would be that
fire that I have heard so much about from profane tongues?
Would there be any ending or wearing away of eternity? and
would the suffering after a while be less severe? or would it
go right on just the same forever and ever?"
As his desire to know
these things increased, he was willing to lay aside his
thoughts concerning how he was to get the assurance that he
was going to heaven, and as he passed from one heap of stones
to another, he became sorely troubled. He longed for a friend
to whom he could go for help, but no one was suggested to his
mind. Even his friend Frank Kauffman, he was sure, could not
enlighten him; for to none of the questions he already asked
upon these subjects had he received satisfactory answers.
Then suddenly, as though
he had passed into the great beyond, everything about him
appeared to be changed. He seemed to have died and passed into
hell, and the flames, as they rose in imagination about him,
were penetrating every fiber of his being, and he cried out in
his distress. But as though the vision had been only to teach
him of the reality of that place of torment, Edwin felt
himself caught up, as it were, and he was seemingly suspended
in an endless space with the eternal realities of life opened
up for him to view. For miles and miles nothing but space
appeared to stretch before, above, and around him, with the
glaring flames that he had just left but a short distance
behind him.
Then the scene was
changed, and he saw before him a great and high mountain of
sand, and the thought of the impossibility of counting the
grains was suggested to his mind. Again the scene changed, and
each grain in the mountain seemed to be a year, and the grains
as years began to form themselves into one continuous straight
line, so long that the distance could not be measured by the
human eye, for there was no end. Once more there was a change.
The line of years took the form of a great measuring-rod, and
strength was given Edwin to grasp the rod and to try to
measure the duration of hell-fire; and he tried to see if in
eternity there could be any possible way of forgetting the
past. Twice with the immense rod he measured into the sea of
Forgetfulness, but before the third measurement was taken, he
saw from a backward glance that hell was no farther away from
him than it had been at the first. In great distress Edwin
dropped the rod, and the vision passed away.
When he realized that he
was still in the field of grass and was on time's side of
eternity, he was very glad indeed. Through the vision he was
convinced of two things--that hell and its torments were
certain, and that eternity was without end--and he was filled
with a new determination and zeal to do everything in his
power to obtain an assurance within himself that he was really
on the road to the better world.
How sad that Edwin could
not have gone directly to Jesus as some did in olden time and
have heard him explain that to enter heaven one must be born
again.
"The wind bloweth where it
listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not
tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one
that is born of the Spirit." "Except a man be born again, he
can not see the kingdom of God." (John 3:8,3).