Chapter XXVII—The Memories Of Home.2
"The home of my youth stands in silence and sadness:
None that tasted its simple enjoyments are there,
No longer its walls ring with glee and with gladness
No strain of blithe melody breaks on the ear.
* * * * *
"Why, memory, cling thus to life’s jocund morning?
Why point to its treasures exhausted too soon?
Or tell that the buds of the heart at the dawning,
Were destined to wither and perish at noon?
"On the past sadly musing, oh pause not a moment;
Could we live o’er again but one bright sunny day;
’Twere better than ages of present enjoyment,
In the memory of scenes that have long passed away.
"But time ne’er retraces the footsteps he measures;
In fancy alone with the past we can dwell;
Then take my last blessing, loved scene of young pleasures;
Dear home of my childhood—forever farewell!"
CHIEF JUSTICE GIBSON.
The bereavements of home fill up the urn of memory with its most hallowed treasures. Though these memories of the household have an alloy of sorrow and are the product of its adversities, yet there is no pleasure so delicate, so pure, so painful, so much longed after, as that which they afford. They bring to our hearts the purest essence of the past, and cause us to live it over again. They come over us like the "breath of the sweet south breathing over a bed of violets." When we revert to the happy scenes of our childhood, we live amid them in spirit again, and remembrance swells with many a proof of recollected love; sweet ideals of all that lived under the parental roof spring up within us, and pass before us in visions of delight; the home of the past becomes the home of the present. The things of that home are spiritualized and changed into the thoughts of home; we enjoy them again; and we live our life over again with those we loved the most.
"Why in age
Do we revert so fondly to the walks
Of childhood, but that there the soul discerns
The dear memorial footsteps, unimpaired,
Of her own native vigor; thence can hear
Reverberations, and a choral song
Commingling with the incense that ascends,
Undaunted, towards the imperishable heavens,
From her own lonely altar?"
The memories of home are both pleasing and painful. When we leave the parental home for some distant land, how many pleasing recollections sweep over our spirits then. Even when tossed to and fro upon the angry wave, far from our native land.
"There comes a fond memory
Of home o’er the deep."
The memory of departed worth is a kind of compensation for the loss we sustain. The pious mother’s recollection of her sainted husband or child becomes the soother of her grief, and casts a pleasing light along her pathway, and awakens a new joy in her widowed heart. Pious memories, when they reflect the hope of reunion in heaven, are like the radiant sky studded with brilliant stars, each shining through the clouds which move along the verge of the horizon. They sweep as gently over the troubled heart as the summer zephyr over the blushing rose, touching all the chords of holy feeling, making them vibrate sadly sweet, in blended tones, too sweet to last.
"Here a deeper and serener charm
To all is given,
And blessed memories of the faithful dead
O’er wood and vale, and meadow-stream have shed
The holy hues of heaven."
How indelibly does memory paint the image of a departed child upon the mother’s heart! No flight of years; no distance from the grave in which he slumbers, can erase the image. It will be ever fresh, and, with awakening power, mingle with her tears and glow in her fondest hopes. Though time and distance and vicissitudes may calm her troubled heart, and cause her to settle down into tranquility of feeling; but these can never destroy the tenacity and vividness of her memory. Even then those objects to which it fondly clings, become the theme of her holiest and her happiest thoughts; and she retains them with a passionate ardor, exceeded only by that with which she clung to the living child. Her greatest pleasure is, to retire from the busy cares of the world, to some solitude where she may sit among flowers that remind her of the one that withered in her arms, and meditate upon him who slumbers beneath the clods of the valley. Oh, these are sweet and precious moments to her; and the tears which are then drawn from the deep well-springs of reminiscence, are sacred to him with whom she in spirit there communes. There with, rapture she remembers
"All his winning ways,
His pretty, playful smiles,
His joy, his ecstasy,
His tricks, his mimicry,
And all his little wiles;
Oh! these are recollections
Round mothers’ hearts that cling—
That mingle with the tears
And smiles of after years,
With oft awakening!"
Memory links together the loved, ones of home though they be widely separated from each other, some on earth, and some in eternity. There is a mystic chain which binds them together, and brings them in spirit near to each other and infuses, as it were, with electric power, a realizing sense of each other, while their past life under the same roof, "like shadows o’er them sweep." In the light of memory their faded forms are vividly brought back to view; they see each other as when they rambled over their childhood haunts; and the echo of their playful mirth comes booming back in deep reverberations through their souls. In this respect the memory of the dead is a pleasure so deep and delicate, and withal so melancholy, yea, so painful, that the heart shrinks from its intensity. This we experience when we ramble through the family graveyard, and bring within the sweep of recollection our past communion with the loved who slumber there. There is a mysterious feeling awakened in our hearts,—a feeling of peculiar melancholy, which, combines two opposite emotions,—that of pleasure and that of pain. These seem to embrace each other, and their union in our hearts affords us a strange enjoyment. We enjoy the pain; the agony awakened by the remembrance of those who lie beneath the sod is pleasing to us. It is a bitter cup we love to drink; we love to keep open the wounds there inflicted. The sadness we then feel we dearly cherish; and we linger around these tombs as if bound to them by some mystic chord we could not break; we are loth to leave a spot in which are accumulated the fondest associations of early life. Would the mother, if she could, forget the child that slumbers beneath the flower-crowned sod of the family cemetery? "Where," in the beautiful language of Irving, "is the child, that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved and he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portals, would accept consolation that was to be bought by forgetfulness? And when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved, is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud even over the bright hour of gayety, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No; there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song; there is a recollection of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living!" How passionately we cling to those memories of a sainted mother, which crowd in rapid succession upon our minds!
"Weep not for her! Her memory is the shrine
Of pleasing thoughts, soft as the scent of flowers,
Calm as on windless eve the sun’s decline,
Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers."
What a purifying and restraining influence does the memory of a pious parent’s love, exert upon the wayward child! When he bends in mournful recollection over the grave of a sainted mother, how must every heart-string break, and with what remorse he reviews his past life of wickedness and filial disobedience. The memory of that mother’s love and kindness to him, haunts him in all his revels, and draws him back, as if by magnetic force, from scenes of riot and of ruin. Can he think of that mother’s prayers and teachings and tears of solicitude, and not feel deeply, and often savingly, his own guilt and ingratitude? If there is a memory of home-life which allures him to heaven, it is the recollection of her love and pious efforts to save him.
The child who lives in exile from his country and his home, is soothed in the midst of his cares and disappointments, by the stirring imagery of his far-distant friends and home. And oh, if he has been unfaithful to the ministrations of that home; if he has trodden under foot the proffered love of his parents, and repulsed all the overtures of their pious solicitude, will not the memory of their anguish haunt his soul, and plough deep furrows of remorse in his conscience? The sense of past filial ingratitude, and the recollection of a parent’s injured love and disappointed hope, constitute one of the most powerful incentives to repentance and reformation. It was thus with the prodigal son. As soon as he came to himself, he remembered the dear home of his youth, the kind love of his father, and his own unworthiness and ingratitude; and this brought him to repentance and to the resolution to return to his father, confess his sin, and seek pardon. How many now, in thus looking back upon the home of their childhood, do not remember their abuse of parental love and kindness!
"Oh! in our stern manhood, when no ray
Of earlier sunshine glimmers on our way;
When girt with sin and sorrow, and the toil
Of cares, which tear the bosom that they soil;
Oh! if there be in retrospection’s chain
One link that knits us with young dreams again—
One thought so sweet we scarcely dare to muse
On all the hoarded raptures it reviews;
Which seems each instant, in its backward range,
The heart to soften, and its ties to change,
And every spring untouched for years to move,
It is—the memory of a mother’s love!"
We see, therefore, that there are painful, as well as pleasant, memories of home. When the absent disobedient child remembers how he abused the privileges of the parental home, and brought the gray hairs of his parents down with sorrow to the grave, and turned that household into a desolation; when
"Pensive memory lingers o’er
Those scenes to be enjoyed no more,
Those scenes regretted ever,"
how dark and painful must be the shadows which then sweep over his penitent spirit! "If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent; if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms, to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth; if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one unmerited pang to that true heart that now lies cold and still beneath thy feet; then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action, will come thronging back upon thy memory; then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and penitent on the grave!"
If we would avoid the agony of declining age, let us be faithful to our childhood-home. What must be the anguish of that wretch who has brought infamy upon it; how painful must be every recollection of it, when in the distance of years and of space, from its scenes and its loved ones, his remembrance hails them with its burning tear.
"I am far from the home that gave me birth,
A blight is on my name;
It only brings to my father’s hearth
The memory of shame;
Yet, oh! do they think of me to-day,
The loved ones lingering there;
Do they think of the outcast far away,
And breathe for me a prayer?
That early home I shall see no more,
And I wish not there to go,
For the happy past may nought restore—
The future is but woe.
But ’twould be a balm to my heavy heart
Upon its dreary way,
If I could think I have a part
In the prayers of home to-day!"
Every thing within the memory of home will question our hearts whether we have been faithful to her parental ministry. Every cherished association; every remembered object, and even the old scenes and objects around the homestead, will challenge our faithfulness. The trees under whose shade we frolicked and of whose fruit we ate; the streams that meandered through the meadow; the hills and groves over which we gamboled in the sunny days of childhood; the old oaken bucket and the old ancestral walls that yet stand as monuments of the past,—these will all question your fidelity to the training you received in their midst; and oh, if they assume, in the courts of memory, the attitude of witnesses against you; if nursery recollections speak of forgotten prayers and abandoned habits, what a deep and painful sense of guilt and ingratitude will this testimony develop in your bosom, and
"Darken’d and troubled you’ll come at last,
To the home of your boyish glee."
How precious are the mementoes of home! Memory needs such auxiliaries. That lock of silken hair which the mother holds with tearful contemplation, and wears as a precious relic, near her heart, what recollections of the buried one it awakens within her!
"Thou bringest fond memories of a gentle girl,
Like passing spirits in a summer night!
Oh, precious curl!"
And that picture of a departed mother which the orphan child presses with holy reverence to her bosom! As she gazes upon those familiar features, and reads in them a mother’s love and kindness, what scenes of home-life rise upon the troubled thought, and what echoes of love come through the lapse of years from the old homestead, touching all the fires of her soul, and causing them to thrill with plaintive sadness and with painful joy. What mementoes of a sad, yet pleasing memory are found in the chamber of bereavement, where death has done his work; the empty chair; the garments laid by; playthings idly scattered there;—these are pictures upon which the eye of memory rests with pensive meditation. And our letters from home! What sweet recollections they awaken as we read line after line; and what volumes of love they contain from those dear ones who now moulder in the narrow vaults of death! Oh, how miserable must he be who has no recollections of home, who is not able to revert to the scenes of childhood, and amid whose cherished memories of life, the image of a mother does not glow!
Let us lay the foundation of a joyful, grateful memory. Let us be faithful to home, that when we leave it, and when the members of it leave us, we may delight in all the memories which loom up from the scenes of home-life:
"Oh, friends regretted, scenes forever dear,
Remembrance hails you with her burning tear!
Drooping she bends o’er pensive fancy’s urn,
To trace the hours which never can return;
Yet with retrospection loves to dwell,
And soothe the sorrows of her last farewell!"
Chapter XXVIII—The Antitype Of The Christian Home.
"Oh, talk to me of heaven! I love
To hear about my home above;
For there doth many a loved one dwell
In light and joy ineffable.
"O! tell me how they shine and sing,
While every harp rings echoing,
And every glad and tearless eye
Beams like the bright sun gloriously.
"Tell me of that victorious palm,
Each hand in glory beareth;
Tell me of that celestial calm,
Each face in glory weareth!"
The Christian home on earth is but a type of his better home in heaven. The pious members feel the force of this. Every thing within their earthly homes reminds them of that happy country which lies beyond the Jordan. Besides, they behold the impress of change upon every aspect of their home. All that is near and dear to them there is passing away. It is but the shadow of better things to come. And as the type bears some resemblance to that which it typifies, we may understand both by considering the relation they sustain to each other. We may gain a new view of the Christian home by looking at it in the light of its typical relation to heaven; and we have a transporting view of our heavenly home when we contemplate it as the antitype of our home on earth.
The Christian home on earth is a tent-home, a tabernacle adapted to the pilgrim-life of God’s people, set up in a dreary wilderness, designed to subserve the purposes of a few years, as a preparation for a better home. The Christian, amid all his domestic enjoyments, does not realize that his home is his rest, but that it is only a probationary state, the foretaste and anticipation of the rest that remaineth for the people of God. It is but the emblem,—the shadow of his eternal home; and it is, therefore, unsatisfying; it does not meet all the wants of our nature; there is a yearning after a better state; the purest happiness it affords proceeds from the hopes and longings it begets, and the interests it is transferring to eternity, laying up, as it were, treasures in a better home. Our home here, develops our wants, inflames our desires, excites our expectations, educates, and points us to the realities of which it is an emblem; but it does not fully satisfy our desires, it only increases their intensity. The pilgrim soul of the child of God pines and frets amid all
"Her sylvan scenes, and hill and dale
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams."
These afford him no satisfaction; they only develop in him the saving sense of earth’s insufficiency; all the scenes of this wilderness state are but those of thorns, and desert heath, and barren sands; and he cries out in the midst of his happy home,—"This is not your rest!" Our tent-home may include every earthly cup, and all the riches and honors of the world, yet it satisfies not, and the Christian turns from it all to rest and expatiate in a life to come. Every home here is baptized with tears and scarred with graves. Its poverty is a burden, its riches are snares, its friends are taken from us; broken hearts agonized there; restlessness is tossed to and fro there; and disappointment reigns in every member there. Hence in our wilderness-home we hunger and thirst, and pine for something more satisfying. We turn from the shadow to the reality; and realizing the insufficiency of home as a mere type, we turn with anxious hope to that which it typifies—our heavenly home.
Heaven is the antitype of the Christian home. There the latter reaches its consummation, and reaps the rich harvest of its great reward. The Father; the Mother of us all; our Brethren; our inheritance; our all sufficiency are there. Yea, all that is included in the dear name of home, is treasured up there, for the child of God. In that better land he finds the reality of his home on earth; the latter is but the prophecy of the former:—
"There is my house and portion fair,
My treasure and my heart are there,
And my abiding home."
That better home is radiant with light and love. There you shall not see through a glass darkly, but shall behold all things face to face. You shall not merely know in part, but even as you are known. There you shall realize in all its fulness what you dimly taste here. We have a hunger here which is not fully satisfied till in heaven we pluck the fruits of the tree of life. We have a thirst here which is not fully quenched till in heaven we drink of the waters of the river of life which flows fast by the throne of God. In our tent-home here, we eat and drink, but hunger and thirst again; we are healed, but we sicken again; we live in the light of truth, but darkness and clouds intervene; we are comforted by the spirit and by friends; but we sorrow and weep again.
But in heaven "sighing grief shall weep no more;" and we "shall hunger no more, neither shall we thirst any more; and we shall not say I am sick; and there shall be no night, nor sorrow, nor tears, nor sighing, nor death; for the former things are passed away." Love will then be perfect; there will be no heart-burnings and disappointments there. There you shall enjoy the honey without the sting, and the rose without the thorn. "Earth hath no sorrows that heaven cannot heal." All care and toil, and tears, and orphanage, and widowhood, shall drop and disappear at the threshold of heaven. If our tent-home stirs up within us imperishable joys, by the power of anticipation and foretaste, what joy will not that better land afford? If the promise is so cheering, what must the fulfillment be! If the pursuit is so inspiring, what must the possession be! If our home on Tabor, where we have but a distant view of home-life, affords us so much happiness, what must our home on the eternal throne of God be? There your intercourse with the loved ones of earth will not be clogged by pain and infirmities. Your society there will be the most endearing, and with "a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindred, and people, and tongues, standing before the throne, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands." You shall there hold fellowship with the fathers of a thousand generations, with the patriarchs, and prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, and reformers, and the "innumerable company of angels." With these you shall engage in the most delightful avocation. There will be no indolence there, as we often find in earthly homes; but all will be continually engaged. "They serve Him day and night in His temple." There will be one unbroken worship, which will afford you rapturous delight. You shall be presented, before God’s glory, with exceeding joy; for "in His presence is fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures for evermore." These joys will be eternal,—forever and ever. That better home will never be dissolved, cannot be shaken, and your crown of glory there is a crown which fadeth not away.
But this happiness and glory of heaven are not only eternal but progressive,—ever increasing. There is nothing stationary there with the saints; but their powers will ever expand and their glory increase. New songs will be ever bursting in new strains from the celestial choir; new discoveries and fresh exclamations of praise and gratitude will he continually made. Here on earth they were "by nature the children of wrath, even as others;" they had their tribulations and often murmured at God’s dealings with them. But there in that heavenly home they will understand the reason for all this. The deep mysteries of the Christian life are now revealed, and they see that a father’s chastisements are the work of a father’s love, and worketh out for them that are exercised thereby, an "exceeding and eternal weight of glory." They now see that while in their tent-home they lived in the center of a grand system of natural, providential and spiritual things, all of which were working in beautiful harmony together for "the good of them that loved God and were the called according to His purpose;" and with rapturous gratitude they cry out, "Marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are all thy ways, O thou King of Saints!"
Here, too, they will fully realize the wisdom of the Christian home and life; they will now see how wise it was for them as a family, to serve the Lord. In their earthly home, they "knew whom they believed, and were persuaded that he was able to keep that which they committed unto Him against that day." They did this in the midst of fiery trials. They were unknown. The world, hated and despised them as she did their divine Master. But they persevered unto the end; and now they "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." We shall not there, as we do here, eat the bread of care and drink the waters of bitterness. Here thunders spend their echoes and lightnings gleam in fierce wrath around our homes. There such sounds and storms never come.
"No sickness there,
No weary wasting of the frame away;
No fearful shrinking from the midnight air;
No dread of summer’s bright and fervid ray.
"No hidden grief,
No wild and cheerless vision of despair;
No vain petition for a swift relief,
No tearful eye, no broken hearts are there
"Care has no home
Within that realm of ceaseless praise and song;
Its tossing billows break and melt in foam,
Far from the mansions of the spirit-throng.
"The storm’s black wing
Is never spread athwart celestial skies;
Its wailings blend not with the voice of spring,
As some too tender floweret fades and dies."
Christ is the great center of heaven’s glory and attraction. "Whom have I in heaven but thee?" It would not be heaven if He were absent. Its harps would become unstrung, and its voices would lose their tune. When eternity dawns upon our disembodied spirits, and the heavenly home appears in view, with its golden streets, and living temples, and crowns, and thrones, and joys, bursting on our sight; while seraphim and cherubim, and angels, and the sainted spirits of departed friends—our parents and children, and kindred, bend over its threshold to hail our entrance with songs and shouts of everlasting joy,—oh, what a glorious heritage will this be! But all this will fade into insignificance before the Lamb on the throne. He will absorb all interest; and will be all and in all to its unfading treasures. Oh, there is much in that celestial home to allure us there. Its "fields arrayed in living green, and rivers of delight." Its blood-washed throng, its crowns and peace, the angelic choir, our friends and relations,—perhaps a father and a mother, perhaps a husband or wife, perhaps a brother or a sister, or a child,—a lovely babe;—all these make heaven dear, and draw us there. They beckon us to themselves; they are waiting for us now, and on the glowing pinions of love they come thronging as ministering spirits, to our hearts.
But what are all these attractions of that spirit-home, compared with Jesus there as the crowning glory of them all! other things are stars and streamlets. He is the central sun,—the source of all. Take Him away, and all the brightness and the glory of that heavenly world would become shrouded in darkness and desolation.
There is a living union between the Christian’s home on earth, and his home in heaven. Christ represents our nature and advocates our cause there. The saints on earth and the inhabitants of heaven "but one communion make." The latter minister to the former. "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent to minister unto them who shall be the heirs of salvation?"
"Oh! a mother’s spirit hung
O’er her last pledge of earthly love,
And, while attending angel’s sung,
Welcom’d her dear one home above.
"Gentle babe, I come for thee:
I did come to bear thee home,
Far from mortal agony;
Come, then, gentle infant, come.
"Yes; while o’er thy mouldering dust
Falls the tear of earthly love,
Thou shalt live amidst the just,
Brighter life in heaven above."
Every thing good in our earthly home has its echo in heaven, and sweeps like the breath of God over the harps of the blessed. When the pious mother kneels with her child in prayer to God, it sends a thrill of new ecstasy into the bosom of the redeemed around His throne. When the child gives its heart to Christ, each harp bursts forth with a new anthem of joy at the prospect of that accession to their happy band. And oh, what unspeakable joy must thrill the bosom of a sainted mother when the news of her child’s conversion reaches her there!—
... "A new harp is strung, and a new song is given
To the breezes that float o’er the gardens of heaven."
And there, too, sainted relations continually warn the impenitent members of the tent-home. "Though dead they yet speak." "Turn ye, turn ye; for why will ye die?" "The spirit and the bride say, come!" Oh, regard those solemn admonitions which come to you from the spirit-world! With unearthly eloquence they urge you to "lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset you, and run the race set before you, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith." And oh, if you, in obedience to these angelic persuasives to piety, yield yourself unto the Lord, all the arches of that eternal home will reverberate with the sound of jubilee over your salvation, until its echo from harp to harp shall be borne up to the throne of God.
And as there is a living union of the Christian’s home on earth and in heaven, so also will there be a conscious union and recognition of the members of the Christian home, when they enter that better land. When the tent-home is broken up, and its members take their place and enter upon their joys in the heavenly home, they will recognize each other, and exchange congratulations. The bonds of natural affection which bound them together here will bind them also there. They will possess the same home-feeling and sympathy; they will love each other as members of the same household; the parents will know and love their children as parents; and the children will feel towards their parents as children. Thus in the clear light of that blessed land we shall see and know our kindred, and shall be recognized, and known by them. All family ties will be re-knit; all home-relationships will be restored; all the links of affection will be renewed. The babe that withered in your arms like a frost-stricken flower in winter, will come forth clad in redemption robes, to embrace you there; and one of your joys will be a conscious reunion with him:—
"We shall go home to our Father’s house:
To our Father’s house in the skies,
Where the hope of our souls shall have no blight,
Our love no broken ties;
We shall roam on the banks of the river of peace,
And bathe in its blissful tide;
And one of the joys of our heaven shall be,
The little boy that died!"
And that sainted mother of yours shall greet you there. In your earth-home, you and she were united in faith and love and hope; and in the morning of the resurrection you shall ascend together from the family grave-yard; and together bow in grateful adoration before the throne of God.
And oh, what a glorious meeting in heaven that will be, when all the members of the Christian household shall unitedly surround the marriage supper of the Lamb! It will be joyful beyond conception. There they "shall meet at Jesus’ feet,—shall meet to part no more!" No one is absent. Bright faces will meet there; bounding hearts will meet there; and on the banks of the river of life they will walk hand in hand, as they did unitedly in this vale of tears. "There is hereafter to be no separation in that family. No one is to lie down on a bed of pain. No one to wander away into temptation. No one to sink into the arms of death. Never in heaven is that family to move along the slow procession, clad in the habiliments of woe, to consign one of its members to the tomb!"—REV. A. BARNES.
If heaven is our better home, where the members of Christian families meet to part no more; if dreams cannot picture a world so fair; and if eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor human heart conceived, the felicity of its peaceful inhabitants, then we should greatly rejoice that our pious kindred have been taken there, and that we are blessed with the hope of reunion with them in that heavenly home:—
... "If to Christ, with faith sincere,
Your babe at death was given,
The kindred tie that bound you here,
Though rent apart with many a tear,
Shall be renewed in heaven!"
In our tent-home, we should cultivate spiritual longings after heaven, and live in the true hope and assurance of entering there. The soul of the Christian, conscious of the emptiness of all things here, rests and expatiates in a life to come. In proportion to his preparation for it, and his nearness to it, will be the depth of his aspirations and the assurance of his hope. The widowed mother, who feels that part of her household is in heaven and that soon she will join them there, yearns with all the pining of home-sickness, for departure to the promised land, which is far better.
"When shall my labors have an end,
In joy and peace and thee!"
Even these hopes and longings after reunion with the departed in heaven, afford her joy, and open in her panting spirit a foretaste of unearthly bliss. To her aspiring faith all things look heavenward. The stars of the sky, and the flowers of the field smile their blessings upon her; and she welcomes death to break off her chains, to draw the bolts and bars, and open the prison doors of her house of clay, that her home-sick spirit may go up to that happier land where her possessions lie:—
"Let me go! my heart is fainting
’Neath its weight of sin and fears,
And my wakeful eyes are failing
With these ever-falling tears!
For the morning I am sighing,
While I earth’s long vigils keep;
Here the loved are ever dying,
And the loving live to weep!
"Let me go! I fain would follow,
Where I know their steps have passed—
Far beyond life’s heaving billows,
Finding home and heaven at last!
While my exiled heart is pining
To behold my Father’s face,
They, in His own brightness shining,
Beckon me to that blest place!
"Let me go! I hear them calling,
’Ho! thou weary one,—come home!’
Words which on mine ears are falling,
Wheresoever my footsteps roam,
I can catch the far-off murmurs
Of life’s river, sweet and low,
Calling, from earth’s bitter waters,
Unto me—O let me go!"
Gentle reader! seek that better land. Let your home be a preparation for, and a pilgrimage to, a home in heaven. You are now in the wilderness beset on every side by enemies. Go forward! You are now in the deep vale,—in the low retreats of pilgrim life. "Friend, go up higher!" "Be thou faithful unto death, and you shall receive a crown of life." Be patient in tribulation. The storms that swell around your pilgrim home will soon subside, and a cloudless sky will burst upon you; the winter gloom and desolation will soon pass away; and "sweet fields arrayed in living green and rivers of delight," will spread out themselves before your enraptured vision. Remember that "the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us." In a few years at most the conflict shall end, and sighing grief shall weep no more; the wormwood and the gall will be exchanged for the cup of salvation; the armor and the battle-field will be exchanged for the white garment, the crown and the throne. Soon your typical homestead shall be exchanged for your antitypical home; and we shall unite in the home-song of everlasting joy,—the song of, "unto Him that loved us and washed us in His own blood, to Him be praise and glory and dominion forever!"
Let the hope of soon entering that happy home, stimulate you to increased ardor in the cause of your Master. Methinks, some who will read these pages, have snow-white locks and wrinkled brows and faded cheeks; and these tell you that soon your pilgrim journey will be ended, your tent-home dissolved, and your staff laid aside; and oh, if you have made God the strength of your heart and your portion forever, you shall welcome death with joy; yea, you will now be anxious to lay aside these garments of toil and conflict, and soar away to that better country, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. With holy pantings after God you will say, "Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!"
"Let me go! my feet are weary,
In the desert where I roam.
Let me go! the way is dreary—
Let the wanderer go home!
I am weary of the darkness
Of these lonely, failing streams—
Let me go where founts are flashing
In the light of heaven’s beams!
"Let me go! my soul is thirsting
For those waters, bright, and clear,
From the fount of glory bursting—
Ah! why keep the pilgrim here?
Let me go! O, who would linger,
Fainting, fearing, and athirst,
When before us lies a region
Where undying pleasures burst?"
We have now enumerated some of the elements of the Christian home—its constitution, its ministry, its trials, its joys, and its relation to a better home in heaven. But we have not exhausted this interesting subject; we have given but a very general and imperfect sketch. If this our first effort will contribute to the salvation of one soul, we shall be compensated; and should our encouragement justify it, we may continue the effort, in the preparation of a work on the historical development of the Christian home.
FINIS.