SUNDAY BEADING.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1715, 11 January 1905, Page 81 (Supplement)

SUNDAY BEADING.

Clergymen and all interested in religious work are invited to send news items and other contributions suitable for publication in this column to “Mizpah,” eare of Editor <f New Zealand Mail/' Wellington, .

THE FANTASIES OF DREAMLAND

: . - (By A Banker.) Casting off-the trammels of earth, in a reverie of the night we bound' upwards into the ether, and, after curvetting and gambolling in mid-air, now swooping down as an osprey about, to strike its pray, now again soaring to the skies as -an eagle, or now circling and disporting with a buoyant,vivacious glee and joyous exhilaration, we at length alight on a- mountain summit whence we survey the kingdoms of the earth spread out beneath us like an■ outstretched map. Pausing for a time to admire the wondrous panorama of plain and forest, river and ocean, city and scattered hamlet, in the fantasies of the imagination we again vault into the azure of the firmament, and hie for a far-off ’ glittering ocean, and with the rapidity of thought we are amongst its rolling breakers;, sailing for. a moment beneath the arched curve of a «reat foam-crested wave, skimming along the wind-swept hollow troughs, side by side with petrels and sea swallows, or gaily sporting amidst the ever advanc’ng and receding surge. And now we are exploring some ox. the lovely flower-bedecked coombes w nienin some far off age have been cleft ay the hand of nature in the lofty buttressed cliffs which guard the land from ihe perpetual onslaughts of the great ocean. Here is a long winding valley, clothed almost to the summit of the rocks, which slope abrupt on each side, with flowering shrubs iintl forest trees; Avliilo m tiL6 centre a purling* strea m plashes nil cl gui’gles down the declivity over rounded boulders and through narrow rifts and clefts, until at length it merges with the sea. Here and there are parterres of wild flowers; spikes of purple fox-glove or of the brilliant golden red, bright clumps of forget-me-nots or of some belated yellow iris, or bushes of go i so or whin, now in all their glory; while from time to time may be seen the beautiful pendant fronds of bracken or the handsome erect “flowering” spil es and upright pinnate fronds of the rarer royal fern. ' .. . \nd then, with an exultant cry ot jubilation at our newly found powers we again range at will over lull and over

dale, over rolling down and over, coombe and hollow, vaulting over forest trees and over rivers and brooks, until at length with a start we suddenly awake, —and behold, it was all but a dream. Ah! but brit a. fantasy of the night, yet* the recollection of a thrilling dream like this endures xor a lifetime, never forgotten, never effaced from the memory. And how delightful will it be, when, really released from our earth-tram-mels we shall, be able to roam on angel wing over the whole creation of God, over the serried array of universes over all those stellar wonders of tlie midnight skies. I'or, this great privilege will surely be the. inheritance of those who have laid their sins on their Divine Dedeemeiy and who through His expiation inherit the glory and become like unto the angels. " But how bitterly will they who are shut out from it all rue their insensate folly.