YONDERLAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27212, 15 October 1949, Page 2

YONDERLAND

GREAT PREACHER’S WORD Written for the Times by the Rev. Gardner Miller

I have been refreshing my spirit lately by reading a book which I think would be rather difficult to secure to-day. 1 don’t own it mySelf, and am obliged to an old friend for the loan of it. The book is “A Preacher’s Life,” by the late Joseph Parker, the famous minister of the City Temple, London, a church which is, alas, now a rum by a German bomb. Parker will always be remembered. He was a finer scholar than is generally recognised, while his interpretations of Scripture tingle with life. I never heard Parker preach, but knowing personally some of his successors in the famous pulpit, I have had many a first-hand story of his wit and genius. But what I am interested in passing on to you is his use and interpretation of a word not generally used. It is the word Yonderland. It, of course, refers to Heaven, and most fittingly comes in the last chapter of his breezy and tender book. While the word is not unknown to any of us, it is so seldom used that it fails upon our ears like an unexpected note of music.

I am always perplexed when I hear people say that we ought not to think of Heaven, but to be busy here and leave the matter of the Hereafter alone. This is strange to me. for I believe that Heaven and all that it means is an essential part of the Gospel. Leave Heaven out, and we are pilgrims without any destination. I believe that to lift your thoughts to Heaven is to make the road here lighter and to put a song in vour heart.

Thoughts of Heaven and the loved ones there do not incapacitate us for our tasks here, but rather urge vis to their completion, for we know not the day nor the hour when we shall be called hence.

Land of Reminiscence I was moved by Joseph Parker’s longing to leave this scene. “I am nearing Yonderland. Soon, mayhap to-morrow, to-night, I may see the King. So near is Yonderland. What a land of reminiscence it must be!” A land of reminiscence, why, that’s what it must be if Heaven is what I confidently believe it is; a place where old friends meet. Sometimes we have a foretaste of this on earth. The other night I forgathered with two old friends I have not seen for two score years, and then it was in old Scotland. We had a “crack” until the night wore thin, and then we parted on the promise to “hae anither nicht thegether" before we took our several ways. What reminiscences we recalled! The past became the present as we talked about old friends and old occasions! Heaven must be like that or else what have we memories for? To meet and to understand, perhaps to explain and to forgive and to be forgiven, is surely the very least that the Yonderland can offer us. The stored-up wealth of literature must be in Yonderland for nothing good and gracious created by the spirit of man can be lost. The late John Masefield, one whom I like to call the poet of the people, said in one of his books that in a vision he saw the most wonderful library in Yonderland.

There were blanks on the shelves, he said, where God had taken away booKs that never should have been written. But what was left would make Heaven a joy for ever to any book lover. I confess that the thought of being able to read books I have longed to read, but never had the opportunity of doing so, makes Yonderland an attractive and magnetic place to me.

It would be wrong to think that Yonderland only holds promise or reminiscences and reading; what really it means is that to each of us, according to our needs and longings, there will be the utmost satisfaction. I treasure the belief that the Yonderland will give to men and women the things they never had here. I mean that Yonderland is a place of compensation. I have been a minister so long now that my memory is full of the stories of my fellow pilgrims whom life denied peace and joy and fulfilment. I believe with all my heart that what li£e denied them will be more than made up to them. God is so understanding. Then this old pulpit warrior finishes the last chapter of his book by reminding himself and his readers that we are now In Body-land. What an expressive term! It means that in the meantime we ape living within the limits of the body. That does not confine the spirit, for we are able to mount up. with wings like the eagles and look into the face of Him Who loved us and gave Himself for us. That is good for us to do and to do often. Or, to put it another way, since God is the fountain of life, let us see to it that our pipe line is laid to the lip of the fountain. But never forget this—the body is but for a moment. Body-land can never imprison us. Death is just leaving Body-land. We may have, a sore time of it while we live in the body, but we know the day, the hour, will come when we shall leave the body to the earth, and we shall travel to Yonderland. where we shall receive a new body, one like Christ’s, which shall never know decay.

I think if is a good thing now and then to contemplate Yonderland. while I read this old book and thrilled to the warmth of an old preacher. I found myself recalling- the words of an old Scottish Covenanter, “Forefancy your death bed.” , . There is nothing morbid m that; it is just looking over the wall of Yonderland.