Baptists -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
I delight to think of heaven as _his_ barn; _his_ barn, what must that
be? It is but the poverty of language that such an expression has to be
used at all concerning the home of our Father, the dwelling of Jesus.
Heaven is the palace of the King, but, so far, to us a barn, because it
is the place of security, the place of rest for ever. It is the
homestead of Christ to which we shall be carried, and for this we are
ripening. It is to be thought of with ecstatic joy; for the gathering
into the barn involves a harvest home, and I have never heard of men
sitting down to cry over an earthly harvest home, nor of their following
the sheaves with tears. Nay, they clap their hands, they dance for joy,
and shout right lustily. Let us do something like that concerning those
who are already housed. With grave, sweet melodies let us sing around
their tombs. Let us feel that, surely, the bitterness of death is
passed. When we remember their glory, we may rejoice like the travailing
woman when her child is born, who "remembereth no more the anguish, for
joy that a man is born into the world." Another soul begins to sing in
heaven; why do you weep, O heirs of immortality? Is the eternal
happiness of the righteous the birth which comes of their death-pangs?
Then happy are they who die. Is glory the end and outcome of that which
fills our home with mourning? If so, thank God for bereavements; thank
God for saddest severings. He has promoted our dear ones to the skies!
He has blessed them beyond all that we could ask or even think; he has
taken them out of this weary world to lie in his own bosom for ever.
Blessed be his name if it were for nothing else but this. Would you keep
your old father here, full of pain, and broken down with feebleness?
Would you shut him out of glory? Would you detain your dear wife here
with all her suffering? Would you hold back your husband from the crown
immortal? Could you wish your child to descend to earth again from the
bliss which now surrounds her? No, no. We wish to be going home
ourselves to the heavenly Father's house and its many mansions; but
concerning the departed we rejoice before the Lord as with the joy of
harvest. "Wherefore comfort one another with these words."
_Funk & Wagnalls' Important Publications._
The Ethics of Marriage.
BY H. S. POMEROY, M.D.
Prefatory note by Thomas Addis Emmett, M.D., LL.D., and Introduction
by Rev. J. T. Duryea, D.D., of Boston. With an appendix showing the
laws of most of the States and Territories regarding certain forms of
crime. 12mo, cloth, 190 pp. Price, $1.00.
The Author says in the preface:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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