Until the grace of God reaches us, our perceptions of reality are very skewed. Getting things exactly back to front, we overlook spiritual and heavenly things as insignificant and invest all our interest and energies on our everyday lives. It takes the Holy Spirit to make us spiritual, and sometimes He uses a period of difficulty to make this change in us. One young man who experienced this was Andrew Welwood. Son of a godly minister and brother to the Covenanting minister John Welwood, Andrew seems to have had thoughts of entering the ministry himself. However, he became terminally ill with a consumptive illness and all his thoughts turned to heaven, where he would see his Redeemer face to face. Reaching out by writing when he was unable to pursue the ministry, Andrew Welwood wrote an extended meditation titled “A Glimpse of Glory.” In the following excerpt he invites us all, whether believers or unbelievers, to turn away from earthly trivialities and instead reflect deliberately and fixedly on eternal realities with faith in the Lord Jesus.

Heavenly-mindedness is an essential trait in a believer

Heirs of glory, what do you think of your goodly inheritance? the delightsome countries, the pleasant habitations, the unspeakable joys, the everlasting pleasures, the inconceivable blessedness, that lie a little before you, and to which you are hastening?

Are you not amazed with the consideration of your wonderful rights and privileges? Is it possible you can bear the fore-thoughts of what you are coming to? Shall you ever be able to pull your minds down from such ravishing things? Have not all sublunary excellencies disappeared in your sight? What are the stars, when the sun appears?

I think this is what I hear every one of you say:

“I have done for ever with the painted clay images, for I have seen and found the only real and substantial things. O joy unspeakable and full of glory! I more or less overlook both the delights and the sorrows of time, while I lie here in view of eternal delights. One moment’s immediate converse with Jehovah and the Lamb shall eradicate all the impressions of sorrow and grief that I can possibly undergo. I shall see Him as He is! I am to see Him face to face! These arms, even these very arms, shall embrace the chief of ten thousand! I shall be for ever satiated with His infinite sweetness, even drunk and overfilled with his overcoming loves.”

Expressions fail me, for representing the high thoughts of my heart. Where am I now? Am I not almost in heaven already? Heart and love and all have fled there — nothing remains here but this clay tabernacle (and, before long, it shall be there also). Verily I have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God; my converse is not here any more.

Those who are earthly-minded should face up to reality

Silly worldlings, what do you think of our world? I appeal to your own thoughtless selves, which of us are wisest, wealthiest, happiest, most renowned and excellent?

Are you not beginning to consider your desperate folly and madness? Are you not marvelling at the foolishness of your previous futile efforts, in spending your strength for transient, vanishing shadows? Are you not almost beginning to fall in love with our blessed country? Are you not content to renounce the love of your dunghill for it? Have you not come to such a blessed change in your thoughts?

Come, the bargain is done, and heaven is yours. It’s a case of, love it, and you have it. What do you mean, friends? Why should any of you stand there wavering? Must you not have heaven? If you lose that, what can you purchase? Is there any impediment? Be willing, and welcome.

Dare any of you doubt of the reality of the only real things? What, because they are not accessible to your brutish senses? Are you so brutish as to think that you can only accept what your senses confirm, when there are so many other things that are evident and real? No one would deny the existence of all the countries he never saw with his own eyes, when attested by multitudes of eyewitnesses of diverse sorts and ages. And have not large numbers, of all ranks and conditions, of the most excellent in all ages, attested their most excellent discoveries of this happy world?

O friends, lack of consideration causes you to look on the only substantial things as uncertain fancies. But consider eternity seriously, and you shall find yourselves moved in a manner that is quite different from those who are led away with fanaticism. Enter into your own hearts, enquire at your own consciences, and you shall find heaven and hell written on them. Whatever you say, worldling, against our happy world of heaven, you only manifest your desires, not your real and serious thoughts. You are fighting against your own conscience.

Transient thoughts of glory signify nothing

I fear that many of you have taken only a glance at our beloved Lord Jesus’s country, a quick glance and no more. Will you not direct all your faculties to this, and consider profoundly again and again what you have seen, until an enduring impression is left on your spirit?

What! shall your thoughts be so superficial and transient that you undergo no transformation in the spirit of your minds, but still remain earthly?

What, still earthly? and presently back to earth again! Is glory to be so soon forgotten, as if it were only a nine days’ wonder?

How are you affected? Are you not in some heavenly frame? And will you suffer it to vanish by negligence, vain conceits, worldly thoughts and words, and fleshly lusts? Shall earth eclipse the ravishing view you have had? Will you become as low and creeping in your conceptions as you have been?

Do not be like Balaam, who fell to his customary baseness after the elevated sight he had of Israel’s beautiful tents. Do not be ranked with the fallen angels, who fell from the highest places of the world to the lowest. Keep your place, if you are wise. Fallen stars are the most abominable. The higher pitch, the lower fall.

Better you had never known such excellent things, than to slight and to forget them, and be as base and earthly as if the sound of such astonishing things had never come to your ears.

An invitation to exchange earthly things for heavenly things

Launch out further and further into the depths of infinite excellencies. What can we speak of such substantial and sublime things? Supposing we should write as many volumes as would fill the whole creation, earth’s shallow dialect is insufficient to communicate such things. Words here are but silent shadows, of no efficacy. Come and see, come and taste, would explain it better.

Friends, have you anything to say? Is not the business past all debate? Need we say any more? Can you be so mad as to be indifferent in such a weighty concernment? How long will you stumble between two opinions?

Stand back no more. O come, come, come away, and be everlastingly blessed! Are you tired of time’s worm-eaten glory? Are you not lamenting your former vanity and madness? Are you not wearied in the things that cannot profit? Are you considering things which never entered within your conception before?

What hinders you then, that you do not become heavenly and divine? Are you not altogether in love with our well-beloved, the Lord Jesus, the author of all?

Close with Him, on His own terms, as He has offered Himself in His testament. Heartily embrace Him, and strive to grow more and more conformed to His lovely image, until you grow up to the complete stature of His fullness.

Welcome, a thousand times welcome to this glorious world of Emmanuel’s conquest. You have come to the joyful side of the creation. I would pawn my own salvation, you shall never repent of such a sweet change. Your light shall shine out more and more, unto the perfect day. Your progress through all the difficulties of time, including even death itself, shall be cheerful and sweet.

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