Sarah Osborn's World

by Brekus, Catherine A.

  The more heaven looked like earth, the more the boundaries between the two seemed to dissolve. Earlier generations of Protestants had assumed that the dead were so entranced by the heavenly vision that they had no desire to look back toward the scene of their suffering and sorrows, but many eighteenth-century ministers speculated that the saints took a keen interest in events on earth. According to Jonathan Edwards, Moses and other biblical heroes enjoyed watching “the progressive wonderful doings of God with respect to his church here in this world. . . . The church in heaven and the church on earth are more one people, one city and one family than generally is imagined.” Elaborating on this point, Samuel Hopkins claimed that the saints had “a very particular knowledge of the events which take place in this world, and a much more clear and certain knowledge of the state of the church of Christ, and the conversion of sinners, than any have while in the body.” As they waited for Judgment Day, the saints eagerly watched the unfolding of God’s providence on earth.35 Each day brought more glimmers of progress.

  Indeed, heaven itself was imagined as a place of progress. In the past most Christians had taught that souls would attain even greater joy after being reunited with their bodies, but the resurrection would be the ultimate fulfillment of history, “the complete and total consummation of all.” As a Puritan minister explained, “This is the highest pitch, that they can arrive at.” To suggest otherwise was to imply that heaven was imperfect and needed improvement.36 Yet Enlightenment thinkers like G. W. Leibniz were troubled by this static view of heaven, and it conflicted with the exhilarating faith in human progress that inspired technological advances, capitalist exchange, and revolutionary politics.37 Over the course of the eighteenth century many ministers concluded that God would lead saints to infinitely greater joys. Although acknowledging that his view sounded unorthodox, John Tillotson insisted that heavenly perfection would continually increase, and Cotton Mather claimed that “the Knowledge of GOD will be Eternally Progressive.” In a treatise on “natural religion,” Gad Hitchcock argued that “the most rational and consistent notion we can form of the condition of good men in heaven is, that of continual advances in knowledge and holiness, approaching towards the Deity, and perfecting their image of him.” According to Jonathan Edwards, the saints had an endlessly increasing capacity for love and delight. “As they increase in the knowledge of God and of the works of God,” he wrote in his private notebook, “the more they will see of his excellency; and the more they see of his excellency . . . the more they will love him; and the more they love God, the more delight and happiness . . . will they have in him.” In a remarkable departure from traditional doctrine, Edwards imagined that even God would make progress: he would grow in glory as humans grew in their love for him, binding them together in a reciprocal relationship that would yield greater and greater joy.38

  Because they associated progress with knowledge, many Protestants imagined heaven as the place where their questions about God would finally be answered. Without claiming that she would attain perfect knowledge of God, Sarah Osborn imagined heaven as the place where she would come to a deeper comprehension of how he had directed her life. “I shall see thee as thou art,” she rejoiced in her diary. “Then, Lord, shall I be satisfied, when I have the open vision, and full fruition of my God.” After the death of Joseph Fish’s daughter, she speculated that “our dear departed now knows the Meaning, to Her unspeakable Joy, of Many a thing she could not Here understand.”39

  In most of her writings Sarah imagined gazing at God in a timeless, unchanging state of bliss, but there are hints that she may have expected a heaven of eternal progress. In one of her descriptions of seeing God face to face, she imagined him promising that in the “boundless ocean” of his love, “thy delights shall be forever new.” She would experience new joys each time she plunged into his depths, floating in an ocean of love without a shore. “All here is concord; all at peace,” she wrote in a poem, “And happiness does still increase.”40

  As envisioned in the eighteenth century, heaven would be always new and always changing. What earlier generations seem to have most prized about heaven—its timelessness—no longer seemed as appealing. Because eighteenth-century Americans lived in a world of technological, scientific, and political innovation, many seem to have found it hard to imagine a heaven where each and every day would be the same. “There will be new glories to be seen in GOD to all eternity,” John Murray exclaimed. “Thus the wine in our Father’s kingdom is ever new—and new songs shall celebrate the Giver’s praise to endless ages.”41

  Of all the eighteenth-century Protestants who imagined heaven as a better earth, Charles Chauncy was the most bold. In a sermon titled The Earth Delivered, he argued that the “new heavens and new earth” described in Revelation would be “this world of ours brought back to its paradisaick state, or one that is better; and that the very world we now live in, thus changed and made new, is the place, where good men, after the resurrection, and judgment, shall live and reign with Christ forever.” Although God had cursed the earth after Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden, he would restore the world to its original perfection—or make it even more glorious—after Christ’s return. If Christians wanted to know what heaven would be like, they should imagine it as “the present” without “all the inconveniences and evils, the curse has subjected it to.” Although Chauncy’s ideas never seem to have become popular, they reflected a growing desire to collapse the boundaries between heaven and earth.42

  The Communion of Saints

  Evangelicals helped create the image of heaven as an earthly paradise, but they insisted that their happiness would come first and foremost from gazing at God. Torn between their desire to see their loved ones again and their fear of idolatry, they were especially ambivalent about imagining heaven as a place where families and friends would be reunited.

  Christians had always assumed that they would spend eternity with a generalized “communion of saints”—the apostles, the martyrs, and all the ordinary believers who had devoted their lives to God—but in the eighteenth century they increasingly looked forward to being reunited with their lost loved ones. This was not a new idea (it had been popular in early Roman Christianity and during the Renaissance), but the Protestant Reformers had insisted that the joy of seeing departed family members and friends was only a pale shadow of the joy of seeing the almighty God. Without completely rejecting the image of heaven as a new home (Calvin expected to see Luther there), they worried about its exclusiveness and this-worldliness, and they argued that a person could be supremely happy in heaven even if completely alone with God. As Calvin explained, “If God contains the fullness of all good things in himself like an inexhaustible fountain, nothing beyond him is to be sought by those who strive after the highest good and all the elements of happiness.” Echoing medieval ideas, Calvin imagined that the greatest joy of heaven would be the beatific vision of God, the eternal delight of gazing at Christ. As he explained, “Nothing is more desirable for the consummation of our happiness, than that we should behold the serene countenance of God.”43

  Puritans shared this Christocentric view of heaven, and although they assumed that they would see their loved ones among the communion of saints, they particularly emphasized their desire to see Christ “face to face.” (The apostle Paul had written, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”) In his popular The Saints Everlasting Rest, Richard Baxter warned that “we must be careful not to look for that in the saints which is alone in Christ,” and in his Meditations on Death, Increase Mather barely mentioned reunions with loved ones at all. “In Heaven the Infinitely Glorious GOD is to be Enjoyed,” he proclaimed. “He is the Portion of his Children and a greater Portion cannot be.”44

  During the eighteenth century, however, many Protestants revived the Renaissance emphasis on the joy of heavenly reunions, imagining touching scenes of loved ones coming toge
ther never to be parted again. Not surprisingly, liberals led the way. Influenced by Enlightenment ideas, they claimed that God had created heaven—like earth—to make humans happy, and he wanted them to spend eternity surrounded by family and friends. In a sermon comforting those who had lost “pious friends and relatives,” Charles Chauncy promised that their separation would be brief: “They are gone to the very Place, we call our Home; to the very Place, whither we are hastening ourselves.” When a grieving Simeon Howard preached his wife’s funeral sermon, he imagined that they would someday be joined in love again, a reunion that would last for all eternity. Samuel Webster was so passionate about portraying heaven as a better home that he cluttered his sentences with exclamation points, a style that made his sermon sound like a sentimental novel: “O how often are we called to mourning in this dying world! But happy saints who have got to heaven! They shall no more be afflicted with such sorrowful bereavements! For Oh, there all are immortal! Nor shall any of their dear friends ever be parted from them more! But as fast as they come there, abide with them, and are parted from them no more forever!”45

  This vision of heaven was based on the implicit assumption that something akin to individual identity would persist even in the afterlife. Even though most Protestants denied that sexual difference would endure in heaven, they still imagined that the resurrected saints would be recognizably themselves. This idea was not new, but at a time when Americans defended the right of sovereign individuals to choose their own government and pursue their own economic interests, it became more important. Influenced by the nascent individualism of the Enlightenment, both liberals and evangelicals emphasized that selfhood would not be lost in heaven; rather, it would be made perfect. Since liberals saw the self as essentially good, they thought it would endure for eternity. And since evangelicals believed that the foundation of Christianity was a personal experience of divine grace, they assumed that the born-again self would last forever. As Jonathan Edwards explained, the saints would never forget “what passed in their life upon earth.”46

  Evangelicals usually criticized liberals for caring too much about human happiness, but they, too, were drawn to the hope of seeing lost loved ones in heaven. Elizabeth Rowe, one of Sarah Osborn’s favorite authors, published a best-selling book, Friendship in Death, which portrayed families and friends meeting again in heaven, including a man who was greeted by his beloved wife in a dazzling sapphire and gold “Chariot.”47 Osborn’s poem on heaven included the verse, “Though bonds of nature now do cease,/Our happiness it does increase,/To see our godly parents here,/And relatives to Christ most dear.” Often she imagined heaven as her “home,” as if heaven would be something like the house where she and other Christians had once met to worship God.48

  Evangelicals looked forward to loving one another in heaven with a freedom that they had never enjoyed on earth. The sinfulness that had divided them—the backbiting, selfishness, and greed—would be washed away by Christ’s atoning blood, and the schisms that had rent Christ’s body would finally be healed. Devoted to serving God, they would no longer fear loving one another as idols in competition with him. Sarah Osborn imagined God as promising that her friends would never “ensnare” her, “even as they were wont to do. They shall never turn off thy eyes from me.”49

  In her poem on heaven, Osborn envisioned it as a loving community that would spend eternity adoring God with her. Besides being reunited with her “dear companions,” “godly parents,” and “relatives,” she hoped to see many others whose salvation seemed less sure, including Africans, Jews, and “the charming infant race.” Many of them would be brought to heaven through God’s “rich and sovereign grace.”50

  Yet evangelicals also insisted that Christians must confront the terrible possibility that they might not see all their loved ones in heaven—a burden Sarah had carried ever since her son’s death. Liberal-leaning Protestants assumed that most people would be saved if they tried to live virtuously, and two of the most prominent liberals, Charles Chauncy and John Murray, argued that everyone would eventually be saved. (Chauncy insisted that sinners would be punished before being admitted into heaven, but he and Murray both preached universal salvation.)51 In contrast, evangelicals insisted that one of the pleasures of heaven would be gazing into hell, a spectacle that would reveal God’s almighty power. Although Enlightenment thinkers rejected this teaching as cruel and even sadistic, it had deep roots stretching back to the first centuries of Christian history. In a sermon delivered to children, Edwards warned that even their own parents would rejoice at the sight of their damnation: “When they shall behold you with a frightened, amazed countenance, trembling and astonished, and shall hear you groan and gnash your teeth; these things will not move them at all to pity you, but you will see them with a holy joyfulness in their countenances, and with songs in their mouths.”52

  Since Sarah rarely wrote about hell, it is not clear whether she shared the belief that the saints would take pleasure in the sufferings of the damned. By the 1770s and 1780s this idea had begun to fade from view, an affront to humanitarian sympathies. Yet evangelicals continued to insist that the point of heaven was to glorify God, and Sarah argued that heaven was only heaven because God was there. One of her favorite psalms was “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” Just as she had once turned her eyes away from her dead son and toward Christ, she refused to meditate for too long on the prospect of seeing loved ones in heaven, focusing instead on God alone. Perhaps to remind herself of the true source of happiness, she asked in her diary, “What is the Hope of Enjoying departed friends or angels compared with the Enjoyment of the Ever blessed God?” Isaac Watts gently reminded his readers that their love for one another must always be rooted in their greater love for God: “God, who is the first Cause, must be the last End of all, and no Creatures, as divided from him, can make us either holy or happy.”53

  More than anything else, Sarah Osborn longed to see God “face to face,” to gaze at his “matchless beauty” forever. Like other evangelicals, she echoed medieval language by imagining that the greatest joy of heaven would be the “open vision,” the “full fruition” of God. Gilbert Tennent promised that every redeemed soul would “see God as he is, face to face,” and the Reverend Aaron Burr imagined that “the beatific Vision of Jehovah, shall transport their Souls, and fill them with ineffable Ecstasy.”54 In a diary entry addressed directly to God, Sarah wrote, “O Lord, hasten the time when I shall enjoy thee, behold thy glory, see thee as thou art, when all veils and walls of separation shall be forever broken down, and I shall gaze, adore and praise, as glorified saints and angels do.” Once he was no longer hidden, she would never turn away from his “Lovely Glorious face.”55

  If Sarah ever dared hope that she would be reunited with her two beloved Samuels, father and son, she may have tried to discipline her emotions. She knew that not everyone would be saved, and to die was to leave behind the flawed relationships of a fallen world for something far better: Christ’s perfect, eternal love. Although she hoped to see the “charming infant race” in heaven, Samuel had not been an infant when he died, and we do not know whether she ever overcame her fear that his “naked soul” had been launched “into a boundless eternity, without a God to go to.” Losing him seems to have been the greatest sorrow of her life.56

  Despite her passionate love for her family and her friends, Sarah had always told herself that nothing mattered except God. Other people were only “creatures,” and “Creatures are Empty broken cisterns.” As she assured God, “Tis thou, thou fountain of all felicity, that art able to fill my soul.”57

  A Life of Wonders

  Sarah had spent most of her life meditating on the joys of dying in Christ, but as the time of her death drew nearer she could not keep herself from feeling a twinge of fear. Though assuring her friends that she had “no reason to be apprehensive for the future state,” she was afraid of dishonoring God by complaining or questioning h
is goodness. In some of her final words to her friends, she is reported to have said, “The trials of my situation are great; to be in want of breath, is very distressing; pray for me, that I may have patience and resignation: I desire them above all things. O pray for me that, in these last hours of my life, I may not cause you all to blush that I have professed Christianity.”58 She wanted her death, like her life, to demonstrate her trust in God.

  In the past Sarah had tried to blunt the hard edge of her fear by forcing herself to meditate on the physical reality of death, the wasting away of her body in its last hours and minutes. In a graphic passage in her diary she asked, “What though my eye strings crack, my blood chill, hands, feet and all grow cold, and all nature is convulsed and distressed, while the soul is breaking loose: Is this to be compared to the body of sin and death, under which I groan; but shall then be delivered from, and bid a final adieu to forever!”59 Although it was terrifying to imagine her body decaying, she thought it was better to confront her death openly than to pretend, like Newport’s foolish sinners, that “the king of terrors” would never knock on her door.

  Sarah’s meditations on death always ended with the comforting thought that Jesus would be waiting for her on the other side of the grave, his arms open to embrace her. Leaving behind all of her “trials,” sorrows and sins, she would finally be with her savior. “The day of one’s death [is better] than the day of one’s birth,” she reminded herself, quoting from Ecclesiastes. Often she reflected on the comforting words of Psalm 23: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”60