Sunday at Home.

Southern Cross, Volume 3, Issue 3, 20 April 1895, Page 11

Sunday at Home.

‘‘ THE LAND O’ THE LEAL.”

(By the Author of “ The Harvest of •-a'Quiet- Eye,” in the Sunday at Home for 1876.), , , ; , ,

(Concluded) ‘ The Land o’ the Leal ’ —-what do we know of it h Little. Nothing. The best description of what will be, when heaven and earth ; are passed a way, and all things are become new, is and must be, for us here and now, a series of negatives. For more telling than any attempt at description is the veil drawn over the golden gates by the apostle’s words : ,

‘ Eve hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart ox man to conceive, . • ‘ What God hath prepared for them .that love Him.’

Is not that,the best, way of leaving it P Earth's language has no grasp of it;-earth’s ideas fall short of it, even .as arrows shot into the blue sky. It is inconceivable, now; and mere

satisfying, so. Negatives. Yes, that is all we can understand, take in, here and now. Not what there is —that is beyond our idea; but what there is not, in the ‘ Land o’ the Leal ’—this, at least is within our comprehension. And is not this almost enough ? ‘No more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.’ ‘ They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb that is in the midst of the Throne shall feed them, and shall lead .them unto living fountains of waters : and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’ Fancy this beautiful earth without •sin, sorrow, pain, death: just look merely at the negative side of the matter. Does not this indeed seem merely enough ? Then add the positive side —the fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore ; the full draft of satisfaction (water which ever eludes our eag-er lips here)—and grudge no more waiting, and watching, and warring, if, at the end of so brief a. probation, there awaits you that which your Lord has won for yon —infinite rest, and perfect satisfaction, in ‘ the Land o’ the Leah’

Hush ! for another delicious thought comes surging, in a wave of subdued music, over our soul. They have gone before us. We tell over —when we have passed the meridian of our years —we tell over the rosary of our hearts’ dear remembrances ; and every bead recalls to us the name of some household saint, not lost, hut gone before.

And, in the ‘ Land o’ the Leal, these will be restored to ns again.

‘ Saint after saint, on earth, Has lived, and loved, and died And, as they left us one by one, We laid them side by side ; Wo laid them down to sleep, But not in hope forlorn ; We laid them but to ripen there Till the last glorious morn.’ ' Ther-e is to be a blessed reunion of the /loved and lost; a union never to be again broken, because all shall be forever ‘ with the Lord !’ Shall we wonder that, even in the heathen world, yearnings and aspirations towards some unknown, but groped-after, ‘ Land o’ the Leal’ are “ to be found ? The Spirit of God even ■ with them moved over the pale expanse of the leaden waters of seem,ingly hopeless death ; and in their dim-eyed straining through the dark 'their prophetic hope pointed as to one of the chiefest delights, to the thought that the spirits, at least, of loved ones would meet again. ‘ Oh glorious day,’ writes Cicero, grown old—‘Oh glorious day, when I shall go to that divine conference and gathering of spirits ! When, also, I may take my leave of the turmoil and pollution of this present life !' I shall then depart not only to the great and wise and mighty, whose names have stirred my blood, but to the dear hearts which especially are mine.’ And Cicero’s thought (some of our iToaders will remember) is developed

and expanded in the closing portion of Baxter’s ‘ Saints’ Rest-; ’ only in higher Christian strains, as we might expect, when life and immortality have been brought to : light in the gospel. Especially the heart that is sad and low from want of' sympathy here, or, it may be, weary and worn with persecution for what, at least, seems conscience’ sake, will aspire and yearn for the quiet laud. Many a martyr and confessor, however he might not have symbolised with him, has joined in the aspiration of the old Covenanter beside the green hillock which marked the grave of Hie hard Cameron; Harassed by personal troubles, and hunted upon the mountains, and saddened by, the dark times which had come for what he, thought the cause of Christ in Scotland, he sat down by the grave, arid, lifting his bared bead, sighed, ‘Oh to be wi’ Hichie !’ Indeed, though the chief delight of heaven will be , what we cannot even imagine, the ‘ Beatific vision,’ the utter satisfaction of the Presence of God , the Good—, the Goal of every yearning and desire- —yet we naturally do, and innocently may, cling to the joy which we can forecast and appreciate the joy of happy meetings in the ‘ Land o’ the Leal.’ ‘The Laud o’ the Leal! ’ How long we might dwell on this theme ! How many branches might spring from the stem ot this thought ! We might call up the thinkers and writers upon the fruitful and seductive subject. John Bunyan,-"of coarse, who talks with that sort of quiet—experience —almost, it seems —that makes his language of the Celestial City, and the account of the passage of his pilgrims to it, a thing- apart and separate, almost, from any other uninspired writing in the English lan-saiao-e. Where even Milton is stilted, O ' ■ 7 Bunyan is so simple. Leaving, however, the ancient, standard writers on the subject, I would name ‘ An Autumn Dream ’ (by John Sheppard) as a volume of earnest thought and poetrjx bearing on it —a volume which may not be familiar to some readers. We like a new grass track sometimes, however justly dear to us are the old beaten paths, ‘ The Land o’ the Leah’ Once more, in closing, we dwell on the musical words, tender in their suggestion of peace, and hope, and secure possession, in a world of unrest, and disappointment and bereavements. We dwell on it to emphasise the concluding word of the sentence. ‘The Land o’ the Leal For loyal hearts and true, and for these alone. No traitors there. No, disaffected subjects. All open-hearted ; all children of the day. For ‘ There shall be no night there.’

No darkness, where traitors may hide. So St. John says : ‘ There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth.’ So Isaiah said : ‘ It shall be called The Way of Holiness : the unclean shall not pass over it. ■ No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon ; it shall not be found there. ‘ But the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. ‘ They shall obtain joy and gladness ; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” There is anxiety, and there is also comfort, in this thought. Each will anxiously ask the question, ‘ Am I of the loyal ? Is ‘The Land o’ the Leal ’ my own, my native land F’ Think what ‘ loyal ’ implies, in its highest manifestations, in the service of that King, the chiefest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely. But comfort, too, in this word, ‘ The Land o’ the Leal.’ No jar, no rebellion, no disaffection there. All loyal to the being’s core ; all one ; no disturbing element in the fields of the blessed. Land of pure delight ; land of glory; land of safety ; land of peace. ‘ So glorious in its fulness, Yet so inviolate.’ Yes, the door once shut (as St. Austin says), ‘ that no enemy may

enter, and np friend.depart.’ A secure land.; ‘ The Land o’ the,Leal!’ , Aye, happy shall be,, the : people that are ,in such a state, and, that attain to enter in through, the gates into the City—Jerusalem the Golden. For now we are strangers and pilgrims across the desert.,, But there is the true: Jerusalem, the Promised Land, the ‘.Land o’ the Leal.’ And we cheer pur hearts with thoughts of it in this our trial time. ~ For, you know, ‘Where..! am, there shall ye be . also,’ is the chief, and royal, and absorbing saying con-, cerning ‘ .The Land, o’, the Leal.’