THERE is a great difference between up and down, is there not? Yet how many pursue their journey through this world, as if there were none in respect of the future, however eager they may be about up and down trains, and up and down in the social scale. Ah! if it is very important to go up in this world, and very disappointing to go down, how much more serious for the future.
There is a great junction in the vicinity of London where it is difficult not to be struck with the difference between these two words, and that which they convey of deep meaning. Two trains there constantly run out from two platforms side by side, and for a few moments they continue running on parallel lines, then almost imperceptibly the levels change, and with astonishing rapidity one train runs down-hill and soon disappears, while the other seems slowly ascending. Any way, they lose sight of each other — one goes up, the other down.
Many young people wish to ascend in every sense, and some take for their motto Excelsior; but perhaps they are only thinking of life in this world, often so full of aspirations, and have forgotten eternity. But what can authorize any to say of the life which is on the other side of death, “I am going up?” Nothing but the fact that Jesus has been down beneath death’s dark waters-
“Down to Calvary’s depth of woe.”
As Jonah “went down” in the belly of the fish, so did He under the weight of our sins, and God’s wrath against sin. He went down alone. He could say, “Thou hast cast Me into the deep... Thy waves passed over Me” (Jonah 2). It is figurative language, you may object — yes, but truth, couched in language that we can well understand. God has been pleased to use such simple words as up and down to convey to us the solemn reality of two conditions or destinations in the future. We know very well, and we take care to know, whether we are going up to London or down to Bristol, just as the poor man who was going “down from Jerusalem to Jericho” was, of course, aware of it. Why should eternity be of less importance? Why do not men prepare for it as they do for a journey here?
But to return — the Lord went down, but not to remain there. “Thou wilt not leave My soul in hell.” “Thou halt brought up My life from corruption.” He went down to bring us up. He went down that He might not be alone in going up. Can you not thank Him?
How solemn it is to carry on the thought of up and down! There are some — thank God there are many — who will be “caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air,” or as an old hymnologist says, who will
“Run up with joy the shining way,
To see and meet their Lord.”
Just as Jesus was “taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight” (Acts 1), so will it be with them; they will be taken up, they will leave earth for heaven. Will you be there?
And this earth? Ah! it will be emptied of believers, but Satan will be here in great wrath. “The devil is come down unto you” (Rev. 12), it says, for he is cast out of heaven to which he has access now. Many terrible things will happen, and then God will consign the devil to the bottomless pit, and shut him up for a thousand years, after which he will be cast into the lake of fire — he will go down.
But why speak of Satan? Oh, reader, would that he might be alone there! Where will you go? Will you have your portion where he has? “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psa. 9). Are you one who is forgetting God? If so, think seriously before it is too late; do not shut your eyes to that to which every moment brings you nearer. You are on the eve of a journey, and it is well to consider now whether you are prepared for it, whether you will go up or down. “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found.” When once “the up-train has started,” when once “the saved ones are caught up,” “when once the Master of the house has risen up and shut to the door,” it will be too late to apply for a ticket, or to seek an entrance. “Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation... therefore the harvest shall be reaped in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow” (Isa. 17).
Thank God this need not be true of you; you may look up and see Jesus, and learn that He went down to death to save you and bring you to God, so that where He is, you may be.
“As an eagle soaring
Up the radiant skies,
Even now to find Thee,
In Thy Paradise.”
H. L. H.