THE RAPTURE OF ST. PAUL. But this error, however long it may have Now, if it be asked, why this name is given 4. There is but one particular more that re- The first has numerous partisans. Their belief is that God had revealed mysteries to St. Paul, but with a prohibition to disclose them to the world; they believe that the apostle, after having been rapt into the third heaven, had received a charge similar to that which was given to St. John, in a like situation, and which is transmitted to us in chap. x. of the book of Revelation, 4th verse, "Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not." Thus it was that the pagans denominated certain of their mysteries ineffable, because it was forbidden to reveal them. Thus, too, the Jews called the name of Jehovah ineffable, because it was unlawful to pronounce it. The second opinion is not destitute of probability. As the soul of St. Paul had no sensible intercourse with his body, during this rap (SER. LXXVII. ture, it is not unlikely that the objects which ourselves to either of these senses. The words searches, respecting the things which St. Paul harm could have ensued. But it is impossible ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, and who conjectures, with all these impious fictions. been said, this singular, but interesting ques-ever efforts may have been made by certain tion, Wherefore is the celestial glory of such a philosophers to prove that we are acquainted nature as to defy description? Why is it "not with beings intermediate between mind and lawful for a man to utter them?" We are go- matter, they have never been able to persuade ing to avail ourselves of this very inability to others of it, and probably entertained no such describe these gloriously unspeakable things, as persuasion themselves. But if all beings which the means of conveying to you exalted ideas are within the sphere of our knowledge be reof them, and of kindling in your souls more ferrible to these two ideas, where is the person ardent desires after the possession of them. who is bold enough to affirm, that there are in This shall be the subject of the second part of fact no others? Where is the man who dares our discourse. to maintain, that the creation of bodies, and that of spirits, have exhausted the omnipotence of the Creator? Who shall presume to affirm, that this infinite intelligence, to whom the universe is indebted for its existence, could find only two ideas in his treasures? SERMON LXXVII. THE RAPTURE OF ST. PAUL. 2 COR. xii. 2-4. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. HAVING presented you with some brief elucidations of the expressions of the text, namely, 1. Respecting the era to which reference is here made; I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago:" 2. Respecting the manner of his rapture; "whether in the body, I cannot tell: or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth:" 3. Respecting the place to which Paul was caught; "paradise, the third heaven:" and, 4. Respecting what he there saw and heard; "unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter:" we proceed to, II. The second general head, namely, to inquire, whether the silence of Scripture on the subject of a state of future happiness, suggests any thing that has a tendency to cool our ardour in the pursuit of it; or, whether this very veil, which conceals the paradise of God from our eyes, is not above all things calculated to convey the most exalted ideas of it. We refer the felicity of the blessed in heaven to three general notions. The blessed in heaven possess, 1. Superior illumination: 2. They are prompted by inclinations the most noble and refined: 3. They enjoy the purest sensible pleasures. A defect of genius prevents our ability to partake of their illumination; a defect of taste prevents our adopting their inclinations; a defect of faculty prevents our perception of their pleasures. In these three respects, the celestial felicity is "unspeakable:" in these three respects, "it is not lawful for a May it not be possible that the blessed in heaven, have the idea of certain beings which possess no manner of relation to any thing of which we have a conception upon earth? May it not be possible that God impressed this idea on the soul of St. Paul? May not this be one of the reasons of the impossibility to which he is reduced, of describing what he had seen? For when we speak to other men, we go on the supposition that they have souls similar to our own, endowed with the same faculties, enriched with the same sources of thought. We possess certain signs, certain words to express our conceptions. We oblige our fellow men to retire within themselves, to follow up their principles, to examine their notions. It is thus we are enabled to communicate our notions to each other. But this is absolutely impracticable with regard to those beings who may be known to the blessed above. There is in this respect, no notion in common to us and them. We have no term by which to express them. God himself alone has the power of impressing new ideas on the soul of man. All that men can do is to render us attentive to those which we already have, and to assist us in unfolding them. Besides, so long as we are upon earth, we have but a very imperfect knowledge of the two orders of beings, to which all our knowledge is confined. Our ideas are incomplete. We have only a very imperfect perception of body, and of spirit. We have, 1. Very imperfect ideas of body. And without entering here into the discussion of the endless metaphysical questions of which the subjects admit, and, in order to convey an example of it, brought down to the level of the meanest capacity, the magnitude of bodies, and their smallness, almost equally exceed our comprehension. We begin with forming to ourselves the idea of a portion of matter; we divide it into minute particles; we reduce it to powder, till the particles become entirely imperceptible to our senses. When the senses fail, we have recourse to imagination. We subdivide, in imagination, that same portion of matter, particle after particle, till it is reduced to such a degree of minuteness, as to escape imagination, as it had eluded the senses. After While we are in this world, we are deficient the senses and the imagination have been in many ideas. Properly speaking, we have stretched to the uttermost, we call in thought ideas of two kinds only: that of body, and that to our aid; we consult the idea which we have of spirit. The combination of those two ideas of matter; we subject it to a new subdivision forms all our perceptions, all our speculations, in thought. Thought transcends imagination the whole body of our knowledge. And what- | and the senses. But after having pursued it to man to utter it." 1. The blessed in heaven possess superior illumination: a defect of genius prevents our participation of it. a certain point, we find thought absorbed in its turn, and we feel ourselves equally lost, whether we are disposed to admit an infinite progression in this division, or whether we are disposed to stop at a certain determinate point. What we have said of the smallness of bodies, holds equally true of their immensity of magnitude. We are able, with the help of the senses of the imagination, and of thought, to increase a mass of matter, to suppose it still greater, to conceive it still exceeding the former magnitude. But after we have acted, imagined, reflected; and, after we have risen in thought to a certain degree of extension, were we disposed to go on to the conception of one still greater, we should at length feel ourselves absorbed in the inconceivable magnitude of matter, as it had cluded our pursuit by its minuteness. So incomplete are our ideas even of matter. And if so, then, whom tumult and noise pursue wherever he goes, is incapable of composed recollection, because carrying always in himself a source of distraction, he becomes incapable of profound reflection upon any one object abstracted from and unconnected with matter. But a philosopher accustomed to meditate, is able to follow up a principle to a degree totally inaccessible to the other. Nevertheless, whatever a man's attainments may be in the art of attention, it must always be contracted within very narrow limits; because we still consist in part, of body; because this body is ever exciting sensations in the soul; because the soul is continually distracted by these sensations; because that, in order to meditate, there is occasion for a great concourse of the spirits necessary to the support of the body, so that attention wearied out, exhausted, does violence to that body; to such a degree, that if, by the aid of an extraordinary concourse of spirits, we should be disposed to exert the brain beyond a certain pitch, the effort would prove fatal to us. The blessed in heaven are not liable to have their attention disturbed by the action of the senses. St. Paul, by means of a supernatural interposition, had his soul, if not separated from the body (for he himself knows not whether his rapture were in the body, or out of the body,) at least emancipated from that continual distraction to which it is subject, in virtue of its union with matter. He could be self-collected, attentive, absorbed of the ob 2. How much more imperfect still is our knowledge of what relates to mind! Who ever presumed to unfold all that a spirit is capable of? Who has ever determined the connexion which subsists within us, between the faculty which feels, and that which reflects? Who has ever discovered the manner in which one spirit is enabled to communicate its feelings and reflections to another? Who has formed a conception of the means by which a spirit becomes capable of acting upon a body, and a body upon a spirit? It is to me then demonstrably certain, that we know but in an imperfect manner, the very things of which we have any ideas at all.jects which God presented to his mind. He The blessed in heaven have complete ideas of these; they penetrate into the minutest particles of matter; they discern all the wonders, all the latent springs, all the subtility of the smallest parts of the body, which contain worlds in miniature, an epitome of the great universe, and not less calculated to excite admiration of the wisdom of the Creator: they traverse that immensity of space, those celestial globes, those immeasurable spheres, the existence of which it is impossible for us to call in question, but whose enormous mass and countless multitude confound and overwhelm us. The blessed in heaven know the nature of spirits, their faculties, their relations, their intercourse, their laws. But all this is inexplicable. Is any one capable of changing our senses? Is any one capable of giving a more extensive range to our imagination? Is it possible to remove the barriers which limit thought? could discern the mutual relation of the designs of eternal wisdom, the harmony of the works of God, the concatenation of his purposes, the combination of his attributes; sublime objects which he could not possibly display to men incapable of that degree of attention, without which no conception can be formed of those objects. Does not this first reason, my beloved brethren, of our apostle's silence on the subject of the heavenly felicity, already produce on your souls, the effect at which this discourse is principally aiming? Has it not already kindled within you an ardent desire to attain that felicity? Soul of man, susceptible of so many ideas, of such enlarged knowledge, of illumination so unbounded, is it possible for thee to sojourn without reluctance, in a body which narrows thy sphere, and cramps thy nobler faculties? Philosopher, who art straining every nerve, While we are on the earth, we discern but very who givest thyself no rest to attain a degree of imperfectly the relations which subsist even be- knowledge incompatible with the condition of tween the things which we do know. Contract- humanity: geometrician, who, after an incredied, incomplete as our ideas are, we should, ne- ble expense of thought, of meditation, of revertheless, make some progress in our research-flection, art able to attain at most the knowes after truth, had we the power of reflecting, of recollection, of fixing our attention to a certain degree, of comparing beings with each other, and thus advancing from those which we already know, to those with which we are hitherto unacquainted. Men are more or less intelligent, according as they are in the habit of being more or less attentive. A man brought up in the midst of noise, in tumult; a man *For a farther illustration of this part of the subject, the Philosophical and Christian reader is referred to the Letters of Euler to a German Princess, Letter 1. vol. i. published by the Translator of this volume, 1794. ledge of the relations of a circle or of a triangle: theologian, who, after so many days of labour and nights of watching, hast scarcely arrived at the capacity of explaining a few passages of holy writ, of correcting, by an effort, some silly prejudice; wretched mortals, how much are you to be pitied! how impotent and ineffectual are all exertions to acquire real knowledge! I think I am beholding one of those animals, the thickness of whose blood, the grossness of whose humours, the encumbrance of that house with which nature loads them, preventing them from moving with fa cility; I think I am beholding one of those animals, striving to move over an immense space in a little, little hour. He strains, he bustles, he toils, he flatters himself with having made a mighty progress, he exults in the thought of attaining the end which he had proposed. The hour elapses, and the progress which he has made is a mere nothing, compared with the immensity of the space still untrodden. Thus, loaded with a body replenished with gross humours, retarded by matter, we are able, in the course of the longest life, to acquire but a very slender and imperfect degree of knowledge. This body must drop: this spirit must disengage itself before it can become capable of soaring unencumbered, of penetrating into futurity, and of attaining that height and depth of knowledge which the blessed in heaven possess. dangers, in bidding defiance to almost inevitable death? In general, what arguments are sufficient to convince a worldling, that the purest and most perfect delights are to be enjoyed in exercises of devotion, in those effusions of the heart, in that emptying us of ourselves, of which the saints of God have given us such warm recommendations, and such amiable examples? These are the things of the spirit of God, which the natural man receiveth not, because they are spiritually discerned," 1 Cor. ii. 14: because he is destitute of that taste, which alone can enable him to relish their charms. Now, my brethren, although the love of God be the principle of all the exalted virtues possessed by the saints in glory, as well as by those who remain still on the earth; although both agree in this general and vague notion, that to love God is the sublimity of virtue; nevertheless, there is a distance so inconceivable, between the love which we have for God on the earth, and that which inspires the blessed in heaven, that inclinations entirely different result from it. Not only from revelation do we derive these ideas, not even from reason, in its present high state of improvement; they were entertained in the ancient pagan world. We find this subject profoundly investigated, I had almost said exhausted in the Phædon of Plato. Socrates considers his body as the greatest obstacle in We know God very imperfectly while we the way of seeking after truth. And this brings are upon the earth, and our love to him is in to my recollection the beautiful expression of a proportion to the imperfection of our knowcertain Anchorite, to the same purpose; exten- ledge. To come to his holy temple, to hearuated, infirm, sinking under a load of years, ken to his word, to sing his praises, to adminon the point of expiring, he breaks out into ister and to partake of his sacramental ordisinging. He is asked, Wherefore singest thou? nances; to pant after a union of which we can"Ah! I sing," says he, "because I see that not so much as form an idea, to practice the wall tumbling down, which hinders me from virtues which our present condition imposes; beholding the face of God." Yes, this body such is the taste which that love inspires; such is a wall which prevents our seeing God. Fall are the particular inclinations which it excites down, fall down, interposing invidious wall: in our souls. After all, how often are those fall down impenetrable wall, and then we shall feelings blunted by prevailing attachment to see God. But to man in his present state, to the creature? How often are they too faint to man loaded with a body like this, the illumina-animate us to engage in those exercises? How tion of the blessed in heaven is among the things which are unspeakable. 2. The blessed in heaven are prompted by inclination the most noble and refined; a defect of taste prevents our adopting and enjoying the same inclinations. All tastes are not similar. Men agree tolerably well in the vague notions of honour, of pleasure, of generosity, of nobility. But that which appears pleasure to one, is insupportable to another; that which appears noble, generous to one, appears mean, grovelling, contemptible to another. So that the idea which you might suggest to your neighbour, of a pleasant and desirable mode of living, might, in all probability, convey to him ideas of life the most odious and disgusting. often do we present ourselves before God, like victims dragged reluctantly to the altar? How often must a sense of duty supply the want of inclination, and hell opening under our feet, produce in our souls the effects which ought to flow from the love of God purely? But, be it as it may, our love, so long as we continue here below, can go no further than this. That complete devotedness to God, those voluntary sacrifices, that sublimity of virtue which refers every thing to God and to him alone, are wholly unknown to us; we have neither ideas to conceive them ourselves, nor terms in which to convey them to the minds of others. The blessed in heaven know God perfectly, and have a love to him proportioned to the perfection of that knowledge, and inclinations Who is able to make a man plunged in busi- proportioned to that love. We know what ness to comprehend, that there is pleasure in- may be impressed on the heart of man, by the expressible in studying truth, in making addi- idea of a God known as supremely wise, as tions to a stock of knowledge, in diving into supremely powerful, as supremely amiable. mysteries? Who is able to persuade a miser, The blessed in heaven take pleasure in exerthat there is a delight which nothing can equal, cises which Scripture describes in language in relieving the miserable, in ministering to adapted to our present capacities. To this their necessities, in sharing fortunes with them, purpose are such as the following expressions, and thus, to use the expression of Scripture,"To cast their crowns before the throne," to draw nigh to a man's "own flesh?" Isa. Iviii. 7. Who is able to convince a grovelling and dastardly soul, that there is joy to be found in pursuing glory through clouds of smoke and showers of iron, in braving instant and certain Rev. iv. 10; "to behold always the face of their father which is in heaven," Matt. xviii. 10, as courtiers do that of their sovereign: to cover their faces" in his presence, Isa. vi. 2; "to sing a new song before the throne," Rev. 66 THE RAPTURE OF ST. PAUL. xiv. 3; to fly at his command with the rapidity of the "wind and of a flame of fire," Heb. i. 7; to "cry one to another, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts," Isa. vi. 3; to burn, to bear the name of Seraphim, that is, burning with zeal. These are emblems presented to our imagination. The thing itself cannot be brought down to the level of our capacity. We are ignorant of the effect, because the cause is far beyond our comprehension. We are strangers to the joy flowing from it, because we want the taste which alone can enable us to relish such delights. Nay more, with the taste which we have upon the earth, such and such a joy of the blessed above would appear the severest of punishments to the greatest of saints among us. The essence of the felicity of saints in glory consists in loving God only, and all other things in reference to God. The sentiments by which they are animated relatively to other beings, are not sentiments of blood, of the spirits, of temperament, like those by which we are actuated here below, they are regulated by order; they refer all to God alone: the blessed above are affected with the felicity and the misery of others, only in so far as these relate to the great moving principles by which they are governed. But that felicity depicted to men upon earth, and applied to particular cases, would appear to them a real punishment. Could a father relish a felicity which he was told he could not possibly share with his child? Could the friend enjoy tranquillity, were he haunted with the thought, that the friend of his heart lay groaning under chains of darkness? Have we so much love for order; are we sufficiently disposed to refer all our inclinations to God, so as to have that taste, which considers objects as amiable and interesting, only as they have a relation to that order, and to that glory of the Creator? And do we not feel, that a felicity relative to a taste which we do not possess, nay, opposite to that which we now have, is a felicity unspeakable. 3. The third notion which we suggested to you, of the heavenly felicity, is that of sensible pleasure. A defect of faculty prevents our perception of their pleasures. Be not surprised that we introduce sensations of pleasure, into the ideas of a felicity perfectly pure, and perfectly conformable to the sanctity of him who is the author of it. Do not suspect that we are going to extract from the grossly sensual notions of Mahomet, the representation which we mean to give you of the paradise of God. You hear us frequently declaiming against the pleasures of sense. But do not go to confound things under pretence of perfecting them; and under the affectation of decrying sensible pleasures, let us not consider as an imperfection of the soul of man, the power which it has to enjoy them. No, my brethren, it is, on the contrary, one of its highest perfections to be susceptible of those sensations, to possess the faculty of scenting the perfume of flowers, of relishing the savour of meats, of delighting in the harmony of sounds, and so of the other objects of sense. If we declaim against your pleasures, it is because you frequently sacrifice pleasures the most sublime, to such as are pitiful and in [SER. LXXVII. significant; pleasures of everlasting duration, because the attachment which you feel for because you regard the creatures through this faculty which we have of receiving agreea- seems to say, "are not such as your present |