IN MEMORIAM.

Temuka Leader, Issue 10462, 26 October 1929, Page 3

IN MEMORIAM.

A REVERIE. (By A Livingstone)., It is two years since she said “Au Revoir!”—a wife and a mother, the best of all the good gifts of God to man! She was withal a Christian! “Honour and happiness unite To make the Christian’s name a praise; How fair the scene, how clear the light, That fill’d the remnant of her days! A queenly character she bore, No change her priestly office knows; Unfading is the crown she wears, Her joys can never reach a close. Adorned with glory from on high, Salvation shone upon her face; Her robe was of the ethereal dye, Her steps were dignity and grace. Inferior honours she disdained, Nor stooped to take applause from earth; The King of Kings Himself maintained The expenses of her heavenly birth.

The noblest creature seen below, Ordained to fill a throne above; God gives her all He can bestow — His Kingdom of eternal love. My soul is ravished at the thought! Methinks from earth I saw her rise! Angels congratulate her lot, And shout her welcome to the skies!” „ —Cowper. It was 7 a.m., October 25, 1927, that her soul and spirit took its flight. If she had boarded a train, or embaTked on a steamer, I could, in thought, have accompanied her, and so have located her en route. As it was, the exit was so quiet, I hardly realised the mysterious happening, until those who were watching with me, exclaimed: “She has gone!” I suppose at the moment I was too numbed to feel the pang of pain. Where had she gone? Loosed from her tenement of clay, her upward flight was inevitable, and her destination Paradise. Paradise had been the subject of her own conversation. Where is Paradise? We are told by the Apostle Paul that he knew a man who was caught up to the third heaven, and that from thence he was caught up to Paradise (11. Corinthians, 12.2-4). The ancients spoke of seven heavens. Some there are who think that Paradise is in the Pleiades, a group of seven stars in the shoulder of the constellation Taurus. The aphelion of our own orbit is many million miles from the sun, and the sun is many million miles from the earth, <ynd Paradise is countless million miles away from our own aphelion; so that, try as I will, I cannot follow our loved one in her flight. The next best thing that I can do is to look carefully at the Saviour’s promise to the dying thief upon the cross. At the time that the promise was made, the sun was fast sinking toward the horizon in the western sea, and yet the Saviour said to His fellow sufferer: “To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”

“To-day!” Usually death lingered in coming on the cross—sometimes until two days. What a glad surprise! It would then be the sixth hour (out soon, 12 o’clock). At the ninth hour —3 o’clock —the mighty Saviour uttered a loud cry, the shout of a victor, and gave up the “Ghost.” His human body died; the thief died about an hour later by the violence of the Roman soldiers. In the interim, Christ went down to Hades and preached to the spirits in prison. From thence ‘He led captivity captive,” i.e., all the righteous ones from Adam to that hour, who had passed through death: being joined by the thief, whose body along with the Saviour’s body, were still upon the cross. He led them up to Paradise, where they were and are in conscious fellowship with each other.

In Christ’s promise, “being” is affirmed —“Thou shalt be.” Communion is affirmed —“With Me.” ■Conscious happiness is affirmed — “In Paradise.” Time is specified; not the time of the resurrection, or after a period of unconscious nothingness: “This day”—the very day they hung side by side on Calvary, and before the sun became hidden in darkness of the night. In the light of these things, it is easy to understand the light I have often seen in the eyes and upon the face of dying Christians. The penetrating power of thought is wonderful. Here I am reminded that “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath laid up for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”

The words “to search” are here indicative not of ignorance, but of accurate knowledge, as when Henry Ware, Professor of Astronomy, U.S.A., exclaimed:

“And these are suns: vast, central, living fires. Lords of dependent systems, kings of worlds; That wait as statellites upon their power And flourish in their smile. Awake, my soul, And meditate the wonder! Countless suns Blaze round thee, leading forth their countless worlds! Worlds in whose bosoms living things rejoice, And drink the bliss of being from the fount Of all-pervading love. What mind can know, What tongue can utter, all their multitudes? Thus numberless in numberless abodes Known to Thee, blest Father. Thine they were u .

Thy children and Thy care, and none o’erlooked Of Thee. No, not one, the humblest soul that dwells Upon the humblest globe that wheels its course Amid the giant glories of the sky. None can escape the kindness of Thy care; All compass’d underneath Thy spacious wing, Each fed and guided by Thy powerful hand.” I was called from my reverie by my daughter asking: “Where are you, Dad?” With a start, I answered: “Not far away.” And neither was 1: a billion or two miles, more or less, is nothing for the mind to travel in “the twinkling of an eye/ !