I. The silence of meditation. There is a blessing, which we know not yet, in thought. In this busy human life it is hard to think. “The world is too much with us.” It drowns the “still small voice” of God. But in heaven thought will no more be disturbed. There will be no unsolved perplexities, no distracting fancies. The plan of Creation and Redemption will be unfolded. The discords of earth will be resolved in the celestial harmony.
II. The silence of adoration. When we see God as He is, we shall praise Him as we ought. The cloud which spreads between Him and us shall be done away. We shall enter into that rapture of worship which finds no voice in words. Our soul will lose itself in the infinite bliss of communion with Him who is its Father and its God.
III. The silence of fruition. All the voices of earth are only so many cryings for something that is not of earth, but of heaven. They are expressions of a Divine dissatisfaction with the limitations of our human life. Is there not something that we all desire and cry out for--to be rich, perhaps, or successful, or happy, or good? And will it not always be a desire, never fulfilled? Could the dearest wish of our heart be granted to-day, another wish, still dearer, would arise to-morrow. Every new day dawns with a fresh purity upon our lives, but in the evening it is stained with failure and sin. We are always sighing for a holiness which is always unattained and unattainable. Nay, the blessings which God gives us do not last long. Over all our life there hangs the shadow of death. We are always dreading to speak that saddest, tenderest word on earth, “Farewell.” There is “silence in heaven,” because there is no loss nor any boding fear of parting still to come. They who live in the Divine Presence are sheltered from the storms of time. They are safe for ever and ever. (J. E. C. Welldon, M. A.)
Thirty minutes in heaven
I. God and all heaven then honoured silence. The full power of silence many of us have yet to learn. We are told that when Christ was arraigned “He answered not a word.” That silence was louder than any thunder that ever shook the world. Ofttimes, when we are assailed and misrepresented, the mightiest thing to say is to say nothing, and the mightiest thing to do is to do nothing.
II. Heaven must be an eventful and active place. It could afford only thirty minutes of recess. The celestial programme is so crowded with spectacle that it can afford only one recess in all eternity and that for a short space.
III. The immortality of a half-hour. Oh, the half-hours! They decide everything. I am not asking what you will do with the years or months or days of your life, but what of the half-hours. Tell me the history of your half-hours, and I will tell you the story of your whole life on earthand the story of your whole life in eternity. Look out for the fragments of time. They are pieces of eternity.
IV. My text suggests a way of studying heaven so that we can better understand it. The word “eternity” that we handle so much is an immeasurable word. Now, we have something that we can come nearer to grasping, and it is a quiet heaven. When we discourse about the multitudes of heaven, it must be almost a nervous shock to those who have all their lives been crowded by many people, and who want a quiet heaven. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Silence in heaven
Are such seasons of quietude--of calm and holy anticipation--needful to be observed there--and shall we wonder that they are appointed unto us here? You will observe that to almost all things there are these parentheses. Nature very seldom does her work without a cessation, where all seems lost and dead. A winter always lies between the autumn sowing and the spring-time shooting. There are very few providences which happen to man without delays, which seem as if they had broken their courses. Promises seem very slow of foot in their travel. And it is generally long to our feelings--after the prayer has gone up--before the answer falls. Peace does not always come quickly--even to the strongest faith. And grace does not succeed to grace--nor to joy--in one unbroken series. Life is full of pause. And these prefaces of God’s works--these introductions--these heraldings of the great approaches--these subduings of soul--these times to make ready: they are only the reflections of that which St. John saw passing within the veil: “There was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” Let us cultivate the heavenly power of “silence.” Let us pray for the angelic gift of “silence.” It is what we all want. There are many voices--in continuous stream--speaking in the world; some from within, some from without; voices in the sublime and in the lofty things around us; voices in very common things, and every little passing event; but you do not hear them. Why? There is not “silence” enough in the breast. Be more still. Listen for the whispers of God, and ice whether earth, and heaven, and your own heart also, do net talk sweetly to you all the day, and all the night, about spiritual things! I advise every one--who wishes to be a true worshipper, and to improve his communion with God--to exercise complete “silence.” The spiritual life would often be much the better for more of a devout “silence.” May it not be that there is, sometimes, more filial love and confidence in the prayer that does not speak, and cannot speak, than in any oral prayer? And there are some seasons which specially invite the piety of “silence.” Such a time is those early days of deep sorrow: “I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth.” Such a time is the waiting, before we begin some work that God has given us to defer Him--like the wilderness to Moses, or Elijah in Horeb. Such a time is the moment spent with God before we make an answer. Such a time is the few minutes before prayer; or before a service here; or before the Holy Communion. Such a time may be at the gates of glory. For it is a pleasant thing to pass the threshold of eternity “silently.” Does not God--for this very reason--make His children go through--one after another--alone? (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Soul-silence
I. Soul-silence often follows great excitement. From the storms of remorse, secular anxieties, arid social bereavements, the soul of the genuinely Christly arises into a “peace that passeth all understanding.”
II. Soul-silence is often found absorbing worship.
1. The prayers of saints on earth are of great practical interest in the spiritual universe.
(1) They are offerings that are acceptable to its Supreme Ruler.
(2) In rendering them acceptable to God, His highest spiritual ministers are deeply engaged.
2. The prayers of saints on earth exert an influence on the things of time.
III. Soul-silence often springs from high expectancy. What wonderful things are before us all! Were we earnestly waiting for the “manifestation of the sons of God,” waiting the advent of Him who is to wind up the affairs of the world, how silent should we be! (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Silence
I. The silence of suppression. “While I kept silence,” David says; that is, while I suppressed my sense of sin, and sought to check and coerce the tide of free confession. This is the silence of our fallen nature; our abuse of God’s gift, bestowed upon us for a very different end. If any of us are thus silent to God, let not night close upon us without breaking that silence: if conscience accuses us of sin, let it be heard while it may: if any iniquity of ours is separating between us and God, bring it to Him, and spare it mot, that it may be forgiven for Christ’s sake, and its chain removed from us by His Holy Spirit.
II. The silence of conviction. First there has been that sullen silence of which we have spoken; the heart locked up, and refusing to empty itself of its secret. Then, many times, the first silence has been broken by prevarications, excuses, and self-justifications, going perhaps even to the length of direct falsehood. Then, in process of time, by patient hearing and inquiry, these also have been broken down: the false tongue has been confuted by the force of truth, and every refuge of lies has at length been swept away. When this is so, then at last there is silence; refreshing by comparison, and, in this life, certainly in young life, hopeful; till it comes, there is no hope, because the soul is still trying to say Peace to itself fallaciously. But now there is silence: now may punishment try its remedial power, being accompanied, as it ever ought to be, with a fall forgiveness. Now, too, may the sinner, humbled in himself, before others, and before God, listen with livelier interest to the assurance of God’s forgiveness, to thecomfort of the blood of sprinkling which speaks not to reproach but to console.
III. The silence of preparation. Every real, certainly every great, work of man is prefaced by a long silence, during which the mind is concentrated upon the object, and possessing itself with that which is afterwards to be produced. What is all study but the preliminary to some work, or else to one’s life’s work? It is not in man to be capable of always giving out, without long processes of taking in. This is the secret of so many barren and unfruitful ministries, that men are trying to dispense with silence: they are altogether in public, never in solitude: they are counting their exertions, instead of weighing them, satisfied if they are always labouring, without forcing themselves to prepare for labour by silent study, by silent meditation, by silent prayer.
IV. The silence of endurance; that of him who with a noble self-restraint refuses to avail himself even of a plea which might avail for his deliverance. He is following the example of One who Himself in the very crisis of His earthly fate exhibited in its fullest glory the dignity and the majesty of silence.
V. The silence of disapprobation; that silence by which, perhaps most effectively of all, whether in the society of the young or of the old, a Christian enters his protest against wrong, and acts as a witness for the truth. Who has not seen the effect of silence, of a Christian, a consistent silence, upon uncharitable or wicked conversation? Before the presence of disapprobation, however unobtrusive, evil soon shrinks, cowers, and withdraws itself.
VI. The silence of self-restraint, general and habitual, or else special and particular.
VII. The silence of sorrow, and of sympathy with sorrow.
1. Grief may forget itself (as it is called) for the moment in society, and sorrow for sin may spend itself--alas! it often does--in fruitless and only half-explicit confessions and lamentations to man: but these are dangerous as well as vain remedies. In either case, be silent; only add the words, silent before God. Let Him hear all from you, and, to speak generally, none else.
2. I spoke, too, of the silence of sympathy. Who has not suffered from the officiousness of a talking sympathy?
VIII. The silence of awe, the silence of meditation, the silence of prayer, yes, the silence of praise.
IX. The silence of death. The silence of death may reign around the bed from which a living soul has departed and on which a dead body lies alone. But it reigned first in the departing soul itself. At what particular point in the illness isolation began, and the presence of friends was no longer felt in the dying, varies no doubt with the nature of the disease, and certainly can by none be defined: but well may it be seen that after a certain point silence and solitude have taken possession, that there is, to all intents, an abstraction from things around, and an absorption in things within. (Dean Vaughan.)
Silence
What is silence? Not the absence, the negation of speech, but the pause, the suspension of speech. Speech is, we all admit, one of God’s choicest gifts to man, for the employment of which man is specially and awfully responsible. Must not something of the like sacredness and responsibility belong to that correlative power--the power of silence? As if to impress this truth upon our minds, Scripture invests silence with circumstances of peculiar interest and awe. Thus, when Solomon dedicated the Temple to Jehovah, after that the priests had arranged all the sacred furniture, and completed the solemn service of consecration, there was silence, and during that silence the glory of the Lord, in the form of a cloud, so filled the whole building that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud. Thus, again, in the text, when the angel “had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” Very wonderful and mysterious is this instance of silence. It was as though, upon the opening of the mystic seal, events so strange and amazing were to follow throughout the universe, that the very hosts of heaven were compelled to suspend their worship and adoration in order to behold and listen! Now, the first sort of silence to which I would call your attention is the silence of worship, of awe, and reverence. “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.” Such is the canon for worship laid down by Habakkuk; and it is a canon as much binding upon us as upon those to whom it was originally addressed. When we come up to the house of prayer, there to meet Christ upon the mercy-seat--there to hear His voicespeaking to us in the read and spoken Word--there to receive Him into our very souls in the Sacrament of His broken Body and shed Blood--we are bound to observe the silence of awe and reverence. Except when we open our lips to join in prayer and praise to God, our attitude within these hallowed walls should be that of silence, of those who are impressed with the sanctity of the place, and who know and feel that the Almighty God is indeed in their midst. Yes; and it would be well, could we put more of this holy silence into our religious acts. Our religion shares too much in the faults of the age in which we live. It is too public, too outspoken, conducted too much as a business; and so the inner and contemplative element is too much lost sight of. The silence of self-examination, the silence of the heart’s unsyllabled supplication, the silence of meditation on the mysteries of redeeming love--these are forms of silence which every one must observe often who would have the flame of spiritual life to burn bright and clear in his soul. Then, again, there is the silence of preparation. Every great work that has ever been achieved has been preceded by this-the doer making himself ready, by thought and study, for action. Every great achievement, whether in the moral or the intellectual world, has been in a sense like Solomon’s temple--it has risen noiselessly, silently, without sound of axe or hammer. Therefore is that great primary act in religion--the conviction of sin--invariably preceded by deep and solemn silence, while the sinner stands before God self-accused and self-condemned. Therefore, also, is silence ever present at all the more solemn passages of our life. Sorrow--real, genuine sorrow--is ever silent. A cry--a tear--what relief would these be; but they must not intrude into the sacred ground of sorrow, the sorrow of the just--bereaved widow or orphan. And so, too, sympathy with sorrow is ever silent. Idle words, or still idler tears--these are for false comforters, like those who troubled the patriarch Job; the true sympathy is the sympathy of a look--of the presence of silence, not of uttered consolation. And now think of that last silence--a silence that we must all experience, and for which, by silence, we must prepare now--the silence of death. What exactly the silence of death is, none but the dying can know. May we have known what it was, day by day, to be many times alone with that God who must then be alone with us, to judge or else to save. (Charles H. Collier, M. A.)
Silence in heaven
Whatever judgments come down upon the region below, they are seen by the apostle to be the consequences of activities in the region above. No stroke falls on earth that is not directed in heaven. The two worlds move in concert. The time-accomplishments of one world correspond to the time-appointments of another. We have set before us, in unmistakable symbolism, this truth--That in the developments of God’s plans in providence, there are times of comparative quietude, during which it seems as if the progress of things was stayed awhile.
I. What is intended when we speak of progress being apparently stayed? There are in the Word of God great promises and prophecies which open up a glorious vision for the future days. There have been also great events which have excited in the Church of God the strongest hopes, and which ever and anon form a restful background. To such periods there succeed long years in which either no appreciable advance is made towards the inbringing of the new heavens and the new earth; or if in onedirection some progress appears, in another the cause of righteousness seems checked afresh by new developments of error, folly, and sin. The prophets of God are crying, “Flee from the wrath to come.” They long for some manifestation of Divine power to startle man. But no. Man goes on sinning. And our God seems a God that “does nothing” (Carlyle). The thunder is rolled up. The lightning is sheathed. There is a prolonged lull. There is “silence in heaven.” The sceptic makes use of the quietude to ask, “Where is the promise of His coming?” The careless one settles down at his ease, and cries, “The vision that he seeth is for many days to come.” Hollow professors desert in crowds, and go over to theranks of the enemy. And still--still there is “silence in heaven.” No voice is heard from the invisible realms to break in upon the steady course of this earth’s affairs, or to arouse and convict a slumbering world!
II. What does this silence mean? What does it mean?
1. Negatively.
(1) It does not mean that this world of ours is cut adrift in space, or that the human family are left fatherless and lone.
(2) Nor does it mean that time is being lost in the development of the plans of God. Catastrophes are not the only means of progress.
(3) Nor does it imply that God is indifferent to the sin which He is ever witnessing. “The Lord is not slack,” etc.
(4) Nor does it imply that God is working on any other plan than that which He has laid down in the book.
(5) Nor does the silence mean that God will ultimately let sinners escape with impunity (Rom_2:8; Rom_2:4).
2. Positively.
(1) We are not to expect startling providences at every turn of life.
(2) We are to he guided more by what God says than by what we see before our eyes. The book gives principles which are eternal.
(3) There are other sides to, and other forms of, God’s working than those which startle and alarm.
(4) By the silence of heaven God would test His people’s faith, and quicken them to more fervent prayer.
(5) God would thus teach us to study principles rather than to gaze on incident.
III. What should this silence teach us? And what effect upon us should it have?
1. Let us learn anew to exercise faith in the spiritual power which God wields by His Spirit, rather than in the material energy which shakes a globe.
2. Let us use heaven’s time of keeping silence as a time for breaking ours (Isa_62:1; Isa_62:6-7).
3. Let the ungodly make use of the space given for repentance, by turning to the Lord with full purpose of heart.
4. Let us lay to heart the certain fact, that, although judgment is delayed, come it will. (C. Clemance, D. D.)
