“Come Up Higher.”
“MIDST the darkness, storm, and sorrow
One bright gleam I see—
Well I know the blessed morrow
Christ will come for me.
Midst the light and love and glory
Of the Father’s Home,
Christ for me is watching, waiting,
Waiting till I come.
Long the blessed Guide has led me
By the desert road;
Now I see the golden towers,
City of my God.
There amidst the love and glory
He is waiting yet;
On His hands a name is graven
He can ne’er forget.
There amidst the songs of Heaven
Sweeter to His ear,
Is the footfall through the desert
Ever drawing near.
There made ready are the mansions,
Radiant, still, and fair;
But the Bride the Father gave Him
Still is wanting there.
Who is this who comes to meet me
On the desert way,
As the morning star foretelling
God’s unclouded day?
He it is who came to win me
On the cross of shame;
In His glory well I know Him
Evermore the same.
O the blessed joy of meeting,
All the desert past!
O the wondrous words of greeting
He shall speak at last!
He and I together entering
Those fair courts above―
He and I together sharing
All the Father’s love.
Where no shade nor stain can enter,
Nor the gold be dim,
In that holiness unsullied
I shall walk with Him.
He and I in that bright glory
One deep joy shall share;
Mine, to be forever with Him―
His, that I am there.”
So the years passed on in the old churchyard, where there came no change to Julian except that the outward man decayed, and the inner man was renewed day by day. And though her earthly dwelling was within narrow bounds, the door into the large and blessed country stood open, and she saw more that was beautiful and marvelous than those who traveled far and wide over the land and sea.
It must have been that she was left as a fountain of living water, in mercy to many souls who came to her little cell. For it was not till she was a hundred years old that the Lord called her into the heavenly joy.
We ascertain this from the fact that she was thirty years old in the year 1373. And in an ancient vellum manuscript, which was in possession of the author of “Antiquities of Stanford,” the “Revelations of Mother Julian” are given at length, beginning thus, “that they were showed by God to a devout woman, whose name is Julian, a recluse at Norwich, and who yet is on life, this year of our Lord 1442.”
During the last years of Julian’s life, she had two servants to attend upon her; and we find, from her writings, that friends were in the habit of visiting her in her illness. In these writings there are not wanting many traces of the superstitions that beclouded God’s brightest witnesses in those evil days.
But we cannot but wonder, both at that which we find in her writings, and at that which we fail to find. When in one passage she says she desired to know somewhat of hell and purgatory, she adds, “It was not my meaning to take proof of anything that belongeth to our faith, for I believed verily that hell and purgatory is for the same end that Holy Church teacheth for. But for aught that I could desire, I could see of this right naught, but that I saw the devil is reproved of God and endlessly damned.
“In which I understand the same of all creatures that be of the devil’s condition in this life, notwithstanding that they be of mankind, whether they have been christened or not.”
But of purgatory “naught” was shown her.
Nor do we find any allusion to the worship of saints or angels; but in the remarkable passage relating to the Virgin Mary, she says the love of the Lord to her is a pattern of His love to all His people. Much that is in involved and ill-constructed language has been omitted in these extracts; but the same truth runs through all, so frequently repeated, that for that reason much could be left out without breaking the connection of the whole.
And again, as in the case of Richard Rolle, do we recognize unmistakably the language, familiar to those who have read their writings, of the “Friends of God,” the apostles of the Waldensian “Brethren.”
How had this teaching reached the secluded churchyard of S. Julian’s at Norwich? We do not know. We know that the Lord teaches His own, and we know also that He most frequently teaches them by means of one another. It is not therefore an unlikely supposition that there were those amongst the “Friends of God” who gladly came to hold converse with one who loved Him so truly.
We may remember the remark of the Inquisitor, that the “seat of heresy” was chiefly in the class of tradesmen and mechanics; so that he considered them to be exclusively, or almost exclusively, found amongst the working classes; and he adds, “Their teachers were working men, shoemakers or weavers.”
And it is remarkable that this stream of light from the Norwich churchyard, coincides with the time when the Flemish weavers, brought over by Queen Philippa, had settled down there and gained for themselves a social standing amongst the citizens.
Just as at Oxford, the light arose and spread amongst teachers and scholars, just at the time, and after the time, of the great influx of masons and builders. We have also to bear in mind, that both before the time when Julian took up her abode in the anchorage, and during her long life afterward, much building was carried on at Norwich, as before mentioned, and communities of builders must have been succeeding one another during the whole of the fourteenth century. And probably towards the end of the century the number of “Brethren” amongst them increased.
We find in a manuscript preserved at Strasburg, dating from the year 1404, that in consequence of the terrible persecutions of the Waldensian Brethren in Holland and Germany, during the last half of the fourteenth century, many of them “fled to a land the other side of the sea,” where in consequence “the number of saints increased greatly.”
We know that till the end of the reign of Richard II., the Lollards not only had a safe refuge in England, but multiplied and grew; and the well-known Peter Payne, the friend of Wiclif, and head of one of the Oxford schools, was in close intercourse with the German “Friends of God.” It is more than probable that Norwich became a haven of rest to many of them, builders and weavers alike.
And now, when we go back to the words of this servant of the Lord, imprisoned in her little cell, yet making it as a fountain of gardens and well of living water, we hear how strangely in tune are those words, with the letters of Rutherford, imprisoned at Aberdeen; with the hymns and sermons of Gerhardt Tersteegen; and, thank God, with words written and spoken amongst us in these our days. With a few of these words of the nineteenth century, preached in the busy heart of London, let us bring our history to an end. Many more such words have been sounding, and are still sounding, in quiet places afar from the noise and controversy of the world and of the Church. Therefore let us listen for a few moments longer to the “sweet note that soundeth to us from the feast of Heaven.”