Sunday at Home

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 24, 8 September 1894, Page 7

Sunday at Home

VOICES OF THE DEAD.

Oh, there are moments when the cares of life Press on the wearied spirit ; when the heart Is fainting in the conflict, and the crown. The bright, immortal crown, for which we strive, Shines dimly through the gathering mists of earth; Then voices of the dead, sweet, solemn voices, — How have I heard ye in my inmost souk!— Voices of those who, while they walked on earth, Were linked unto my spirit by the ties Of pure affection, love more strong than death: Ye cry, frail child of earth, tried, tempted one, Shrink not, despond not, strive as we have striven, In the stern conflict, yet a little while, And thou shaft be as we are, —thou shaft know How far the recompense transcends the toif. —Selected.

IMMORTALITY.

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle ivere dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made, with hands, eternal in the heavens. —2 Cor. 5 1.

What we seek is the immortality that is clothed with disinterestedness rather than wing’s. We look for a heaven where there will be more disinterested love, more patience with weakness, more hospitality t© truth. If such is to be realised, we ourselves must begin to shape it now. By working in and for the life that now is, we lay hold of the life that never ceases to be. We expect the continued life, because we have more work on hand than we can finish in this. . . . The universal provi-

dence, that includes bird and flower, is the providence that is to have continuous use for the soul of man. The simplest movement of flowers aud grass through the sod reaches the throne of the Eternal. The lowliest blade has its message and rings its Easter bell in April. There is a prophetic instinct in the soul that carries on the lines of thought suggested by our knowledge of the near beauty and the lowly marvel. We build large hopes upon the great and beautiful laws of the universe. We place generous confidence in the Master Builder who so grandly forms the growing order. We cannot believe that He will allow our lives to remain mocking segments of an incompleted circle. There is some vast meaning in this mystic tide that has arisen in the soul of man in all ti/les. There is some distant attraction, some moon in the heavens of infinite life, that bends this ocean of mortality towards its immortality. Immortality as a mere present from God to man, as a compliment or mark of confidence, an opportunity to sing praises to the Power that gave it, does not find much in the analogies of the universe to justify it. • But the expectant life, as successive chapters in a continued story, being wrought out for some higher good than we know of, —immortality as a necessity to that which is already begun,— presses upon us as a responsibility, as a necessity.— J. LI. Jones.