There is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come.
And how cheering and comforting it is for us to know that, though now we are wanderers from home, our home in God still awaits us, the door is ever open to receive us, and the kind, compassionate Father watching for us, eager for our return, and ready to receive us and enfold us in His love, and set us in royal state at His own right hand to partake of His fulness, to be with Him and His dear and loved ones, whose faces will beam on us with tenderness and whose hearts will overflow to us with sympathy and aflection; and that out of that home we shall never again go, but be there in infinite joy and glory for evermore. Your soul leaves its house of clay within which it has dwelt here below. Where shall that soul, when it goes, find rest and home ?
Here is the house,
Empty and lone; Where is the home of that which is gone, Out in the regions of boundless black space, Floating and floating, no space, no place? Or did it gather its wealth and remove To the home up above? All's still in the house here below, God grant that the soul that has wandered away, Be not homeless to-day.
220 THE HOME OF THE SOUL
Into Thy house,
Lord, take us straight, Lest we be left in the darkness to wait; Lest we be lost in reahns without sun, And wander for ever where mansion is none, Crying witliout, "Let us in! Let us inl" When the feast shall begin, And the door shall be shut.^
2. Home suggests a place where care is thrown aside, while the affections expand themselves freely and fully, and loving looks and kindly words and gentle deeds are the order of the day. When God is said to be the refuge or home of man, it is meant that God offers man His best and tenderest welcome; that in God, and God alone, man finds that which yields perfect repose and satisfaction to all the pure and tender sympathies of his nature. For man's higher or spiritual self the One Eternal Being is what the fireside represents to the heart's affection — a sphere in which man may abandon himself to perfect enjoyment, to that unrestrained delight which accompanies a sense of being among friends, with whom reserve is neither necessary nor possible.
There is a presence moving in that home, anticipating all our wants, cheering us when we are sad, hushing us when we are fretful and impatient, smoothing us when we are rullled, ministering to us when we are in suffering ; and the soul, enfolded in God's great, tender love, finds rest and blessedness. And as it is a home of love, it is one in which there is no coldness or reserve. In the world there is always a certain reserve. There are joys which delight us, but which others cannot care for. There are sorrows, cares, anxieties which trouble us, but in which others have no interest. There are things that we do not tell and cannot tell. Even with our most familiar acquaintances, there are some chambers in our heart kept locked from them. But at home, in a home of love, everything is open, frank, free, natural; we throw off all restraint, unbosom all our heart's cares and troubles ; we know we shall get sympathy ; we speak to interested ears and loving hearts, whose joys and sorrows are ours. We are not afraid to whisper our secrets. It is to no rude and heartless gaze we expose them. We do not fear ridicule or
^ E. Stoplien, Divine cDid Human Injliunce, ii. 271.
PSALM xc. I 221
cold indifference. We confide in hearts which love us as they love themselves. And we get relief by others sharing and bearing with us. So the soul finds sympathy in God.
^ Lord, I have viewed this world over, in which Thou hast set me; I have tried how this and that thing will fit my spirit, and the design of my creation, and can find nothing on which to rest, for nothing here doth itself rest, but such things as please me for a while, in some degree, vanish and flee as shadows from befoi-e me. Lo ! I come to Thee — the Eternal Being — the Spring of life — tlie Centre of rest — the Stay of the Creation — the Fulness of all things. I join myself to Thee ; with Thee I will lead mj- life, and spend my days, with whom I aim to dwell for ever, expecting, when my little time is over, to be taken up ere long into Thy eternity.^
3. The Old Testament is rich in promises that God will supply the earthly needs of those whose trust is in Him. He fed His people with manna in the wilderness ; He satisfieth our mouth with good things (Ps. ciii. 5). He prepareth a table before us in the presence of our enemies (Ps. xxiii. 5). The promise to those who trust in the Lord is that verily they shall be fed (Ps. xxxvii. 3). And the Psalmist records his lifelong experience that he had never "seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread" (Ps. xxxvii. 25). And He who gives us our daily bread also satisfies the higher needs of our souls. This blessed fact is fully developed in the New Testament ; but even the Old Testa- ment saints record that they panted for God "as the hart panteth after the water brooks " (Ps. xlii. 1) ; that by Him their " soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness " (Ps. Ixiii. 5). " He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness " (Ps. cvii. 9). If we make the Lord our habitation, all our wants, spiritual and temporal, will be supplied.