Oh, tell me how they shine and sing, Beams like the bright sun gloriously!" There is another reason which makes us take a deep interest in heaven - it is our home. I do not say it is to be our homeit is our home. The Christian poet put the case correctly who taught us to sing,— "I'm but a stranger here, Heaven is my home; Around me on every hand; Heaven is my fatherland, Heaven is my home." We are not at home here. We are We are "strangers and pilgrims on the earth," journeying towards home. We "nightly pitch our moving tent a day's march nearer home," and we hope one day to settle down there for ever. Now, if heaven is our home, how is it possible that we should not take the utmost interest in knowing all about it that we can know? The emigrant who intends going to a new world gathers all the information he can obtain about it. How glad he is to meet with people who have been there, and to hear all they can tell him of it! How carefully he inquires for the best guide-book, and how closely he scans its pages! Now we cannot converse with any one who has been in the heavenly home. From its bourne no travellers return, or, if any do, they either tell nothing, or what they told is lost. Lazarus, and the widow's son of Nain, and Jairus's daughter, and Paul, and Elijah, and Moses all came back to earth after a longer or shorter sojourn there, and we would give anything to hear the story of their visits. But we cannot. If we may not, however, talk with any who have visited the far country, we have a guide-book to it, and we can study that. What is the Bible but such a guide-book? And if, by studying our Murray or Baedeker, we prepare ourselves in advance for the foreign land to which we are going on business or pleasure, so as not to be altogether strangers to it or its ways when we arrive, we ought surely to make the same use of this other better volume, not only for the purpose of knowing the way to the heavenly country, but of learning all that may be learned regarding the land itself. It is the authorized guide - book. It is "issued by authority," and we may therefore be sure that all its information is reliable. These pages will have served their purpose if they point out what it really tells us of this "undiscovered country." For they will be based upon the Bible, as the only real and infallible source of information on the subject. appeal will be "to the law and to the testimony;" and if they and if they "speak not according to this Word," there will be indeed "no light" in them. Their This, then, is our object in this inquiryto know all we can of that wonderful land "beyond the stars," of its inhabitants, its ways, its life. God speed us in the task! |