Bible. Luke II, 14 -- Meditations; Christmas sermons
up our eyes in torment with this unavailing, endless cry, "O that my
mother had been my grave! Cursed be the day wherein I was born?"
If language cannot express the love and gratitude we owe to the
Saviour, let our lives do so. Shallow streams run brawling over their
pebbly beds, but the broad, deep river pursues its course in silence
to the sea; and so is it with our strongest, deepest feelings. Great
joy like great sorrow, great gladness like great grief, great
admiration like great detestation, take breath and speech away. On
first seeing Mont Blanc as the sun rose to light up his summit and
irradiate another and another snow-clad pinnacle, I remember the
silent group who had left their couches to witness and watch the
glorious scene: before its majesty and magnificence all were for
awhile dumb, opening not the mouth. I have read, when travellers
reached the crest of the hill, and first looked down on
Jerusalem,--the scene of our Saviour's sorrow, the garden that heard
His groans, the city that led Him out to die, the soil that was
bedewed with His tears and crimsoned with His blood,--how their hearts
were too full for utterance. If a sight of the city where He died so
affects Christians, as the scenes of His last hours rush on their
memory and rise vividly to their imagination, how will they look on
that scene where, surrounded by ten times ten thousand saints and
thousands of angels, He reigns in glory! I can fancy the saint who has
shut his eyes on earth to open them in heaven, standing speechless;
and as the flood of music fills his ear, and the blaze of glory his
eye, and the thought of what he owes to Jesus his heart,--I can fancy
him laying the crown, which he has received from his Saviour's hands,
in silent gratitude at His feet; and as he recovers speech, and sees
hell and its torments beneath him, earth and its sorrows behind him,
an eternity of unchequered, unchanging bliss, before him,--I can fancy
the first words that break from his grateful lips will be, "Glory to
God, glory to God in the highest!" Never till then, nowhere but there,
will our praise be worthy of Jesus and His redemption. Meanwhile, let
Him who demonstrates God's highest glory and fills heaven's highest
throne, hold the highest place in our hearts. Let us surround His
name with the highest honours; and, laying our time and talents, our
faculties and our affections, our wealth, and fame, and fortunes at
His feet, crown Him Lord of all.
_PART III._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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