The Wedding Ring: A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those Contemplating MatrimonyTalmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Religion
The Wedding Ring: A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those Contemplating Matrimony
Talmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Marriage
At our best estate we are only pilgrims and strangers here. "Heaven is
our home." Death will never knock at the door of that mansion, and in
all that country there is not a single grave. How glad parents are in
holiday times to gather their children home again! But I have noticed
that there is almost always a son or a daughter absent--absent from
home, perhaps absent from the country, perhaps absent from the world.
Oh, how glad our Heavenly Father will be when He gets all His children
home with Him in heaven! And how delightful it will be for brothers
and sisters to meet after long separation! Once they parted at the
door of the tomb; now they meet at the door of immortality. Once they
saw only through a glass darkly; now it is face to face; corruption,
incorruption; mortality, immortality. Where are now all their sins and
sorrows and troubles? Overwhelmed in the Red Sea of Death while they
passed through dry shod.
Gates of pearl, capstones of amethyst, thrones of dominion, do not
stir my soul so much as the thought of home. Once there let earthly
sorrows howl like storms and roll like seas. Home! Let thrones rot and
empires wither! Home! Let the world die in earthquake struggle, and be
buried amid procession of planets and dirge of spheres. Home! Let
everlasting ages roll with irresistible sweep. Home! No sorrow, no
crying, no tears, no death. But home, sweet home, home, beautiful
home, everlasting home, home with each other, home with God.
A DREAM.
One night lying on my lounge, when very tired, my children all around
about me in full romp, and hilarity and laughter--on the lounge, half
awake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream: I was in a far country.
It was not Persia, although more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the
cities. It was not the tropics, although more than tropical
fruitfulness filled the gardens. It was not Italy, although more than
Italian softness filled the air. And I wandered around looking for
thorns and nettles, but I found that none of them grew there, and I
saw the sun rise, and I watched to see it set, but it sank not. And I
saw the people in holiday attire, and I said: "When will they put off
this and put on workmen's garb, and again delve in the mine or swelter
at the forge?" but they never put off the holiday attire.
And I wandered in the suburbs of the city to find the place where the
dead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills,
the place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers
and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab could I
see. And I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: "Where
do the poor worship, and where are the hard benches on which they
sit?" And the answer was made me:
"WE HAVE NO POOR
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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