Christian fiction; Neighborhoods -- Scotland -- Fiction
After we had sung this hymn, the meaning of which is far better than
the versification, I preached from the words of St. Paul, "If by any
means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I
had already attained, either were already perfect." And this is
something like what I said to them:
"The world, my friends, is full of resurrections, and it is not always
of the same resurrection that St. Paul speaks. Every night that folds
us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early
and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it--the day rises out of
the night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life.
That you may feel that the sunrise is a resurrection--the word
resurrection just means a rising again--I will read you a little
description of it from a sermon by a great writer and great preacher
called Jeremy Taylor. Listen. 'But as when the sun approaching towards
the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven and
sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and
calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a
cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns
like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear
a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a
man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face
and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud
often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets
quickly; so is a man's reason and his life.' Is not this a resurrection
of the day out of the night? Or hear how Milton makes his Adam and Eve
praise God in the morning,--
'Ye mists and exhalations that now rise
From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's great Author rise,
Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling still advance his praise.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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