Steve P. Holcombe, the Converted Gambler: His Life and WorkAlexander, Gross
Religion
Steve P. Holcombe, the Converted Gambler: His Life and Work
Alexander, Gross
Holcombe, Steve P., 1835-; Methodists -- United States -- Biography
But in some respects we are all alike.
We want to be free from sin and danger.
To a Christian heart, sin is the most abhorred and dreadful of all
things. It gives more pain and causes more darkness than any other
cause; and the fear of it causes more suspense than the fear of all
bodily suffering.
But in heaven we shall be free from sin, and free from all fear of sin
and all liability to sin. For nothing that defileth or maketh a lie can
ever enter there; and they who are so happy as to gain heaven shall go
out no more forever.
We all dread sorrow and grief and pain. And truly we all have our share
of it in this life. "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward."
"Man is of few days and full of trouble," but we leave it all behind
when we go in at the gate of the City of God. "And there shall be no
more sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the
former things are passed away." Christians in this world feel that they
are pilgrims and strangers in a foreign land, away from their home and
their Father's house. Their hearts have been so changed, and they have
tasted of the powers of the world to come, and have come into communion
with God, so that neither the pleasures of the world nor the friendships
of earth can content them--their hearts are not here, but away in
heaven.
I heard a Christian man say, not long ago (though he has a sweet family
and many friends), that he felt that day an unutterable loneliness, as
if he were an exile. His heart had such a longing for his Father and his
kindred and his home beyond the skies. Oh, the sympathy and love and
tenderness we know we shall get at home! It makes us all feel a thrill
that responds to the poet's immortal lines:
"Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."
And all the sympathy and tenderness of father, mother, brother and
sister are transcended by the sympathy and tenderness of God, for
marvelous to tell it is said that "God _Himself_ shall wipe away all
tears from our eyes."
And how we thirst for _knowledge_ here. We know nothing now. We are
surrounded on all sides by things we do not understand. If we undertake
to investigate, we soon reach the limit of our capacity and have to stop
before we have learned anything. "But then we shall know as also we are
known."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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