---
title: 'T. De Witt Talmage: The Sabbath a Taste of Heaven'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2025-11-30
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2025-t-de-witt-talmage-the-sabbath-a-taste-of-heaven
---

# T. De Witt Talmage: The Sabbath a Taste of Heaven

“I remark, also, we are to have in this day, the joy of eternal Sabbatism. I do not believe it is possible for any Christian to spend the Lord’s day here, without thinking of heaven. There is something in the gathering of people in church on earth to make one think of the wrapt assemblage of the skies. There is something in the song of the Christian church to make one think of the song of the elders before the throne, the harpists and trumpeters of God accompanying the harmony.

...

I would to God that we could all come to a higher appreciation of this Sabbath heritage. We cannot count the treasures of one Christian Sabbath. It spreads out over us the two wings of the archangel of mercy. Oh, blessed Sabbath! Blessed Sabbath! They scoff a great deal about the old Puritanic Sabbaths, and there is a wonderful amount of wit expended upon that subject now — the Sabbaths they used to have in New England. I never lived in New England; but I would rather trust the old Puritanic Sabbath, with all its faults, than this modern Sabbath which is fast becoming no Sabbath at all.

...

Oh, blessed day! blessed day! I should like to die some Sabbath morning, when the air is full of church music, and the bells are ringing. Leaving my home group with a dying blessing, I should like to look off upon some Christian assemblage chanting the praises of God as I went up to join the one hundred and forty and four thousands standing around the throne of Jesus. Hark! I hear the bell of the old kirk on the hillside of heaven! It is a wedding bell, for behold the bridegroom cometh! It is a victor’s bell, for we are more than conquerors through Him that hath loved us! It is a Sabbath bell, for it calls the nations of earth and heaven to everlasting repose!” — [**Thomas De Witt Talmage**](/authors/thomas-de-witt-talmage), “The Brightest of Days” in *Fifty Sermons* (1874), pp. 308, 310-311