The Claim of the Divine Parent, and the Grander Reversion

“the lord hath need of them.” — Matt. xxL 3. “fbom olobt to olobt.” — 2 Cob. iil 18.

THE CLAIM OP THE DIVINE PARENT, AND
THE GRANDER REVERSION.

REATLT would an Israelite of old, in the Desert of the Wandering, have been startled and saddened, if, as he sat reclining under some sheltering palm, he had seen an axe suddenly placed at its root, and that which hour after hour had been gladdening him with its boughs, laid prostrate with the ground.

Similar, often, is it in the case of the bereaved, when loved ones, under whose shadow they have reposed, have suddenly succumbed to the stroke of the Great Destroyer. In a moment the joy and zest of life seems gone. To-day, it was the gentle rustling of the green leaf overhead. To-morrow, “the shadow from the heat” is exchanged for the pitiless rays of the scorching sun and a dreary outlook of drifting sands.

“Why has all this befallen us?” are the words which, at such seasons and experiences, we have seen again and again in these pages, ring their dreary echo. Why that life of consecrated activity so suddenly paralysed? Why this Isaac laid on the altar of sacrifice? Why this abnormal falling of the tender foliage?

One reply we have placed at the head of this meditation. They are words once put by the Divine Saviour Himself into the lips of His disciples. We need not stop to note upon what occasion. But, like many of the gracious utterances which proceeded from His lips, we may accept and accommodate them as a quieting solace for mourners; among these for bereaved Christian parents in all time of their tribulation — “The Lord hath need of themJ’ There are spring flowers needed to waft their perfume, and swing their censers, in the gardens of immortality. There are “vessels of small” as well as of “great quantity;” — “vessels of cups” as well as “vessels of flagons” needed in the sanctuary above. Yes! if there are no battles there to fight — no armour to prove — no “harps on the willows” forbidding to sing the Lord’s song, — there are noble embassies of active service, in which are embarked the unresting energies, young and old, of the glorified. Ye who are now saddened with such apparently premature losses! who are now lamenting blanks at your table — the music of cherished voices hushed for all time: these missing ones formed a part of yourselves; sharers of your thoughts and toils, identified with all your plans in life: soothers and strengtheners in your anxious hours — ministering angels at your beds of pain. Their presence had become apparently indispensable; and now their absence or withdrawal is like the expunging of the sun from his place in the firmament. Too truly you may feel, day by day, in the depths of your lone, aching hearts, how ill you could spare — how much you had “need” of them. But take this as the explanation: — let all murmurs be stilled by the higher claim of the Great Giver. It is a beautiful thought in one of the finest of the sonnets of Dante, as he wails the absence of Beatrice, that “the angels had asked God for her.” AVe do not require to imagine the intervention of angels: — “The Lord hath need of them.” At such deathbeds we are too apt, like Jacob with the mysterious Wrestler at Jabbok, in the agony of nature’s fond struggle, to say, “We will not let thee go!” But hark! as the youthful wing is pluming for its immortal flight, let the gentle whisper come to us, rebuking all tears, “Let me go, for the Day breaketh:” — let me go, for “the Lord hath need of me”

Glorify God by meek submission to His holy will.

“Thou hast done well to kneel and say,
* Since He who gave can take away,
And bid me suffer, I obey: *” —

rejoicing that the loss you mourn is not that of a talent hidden in the earth; nay, rather, a golden coin stamped in the mint of Heaven is withdrawn from its uses in the Church below, for the higher and holier purposes of the Great Master in the Church above. It is the infant life of the present, passed, it may be, at an early bound, to its full development in the manhood of heaven. ‘* The Master is come, and calleth for thee”

(John xi. 28); and the word accompanying the call is this, “Friend, come up higher!” K it was from strength to strength and from grace to grace on earth, it is now from glory to glory!

Yes! “from glory to glory.” We may speak for a few moments now, as indicated by the title to this meditation, of * the grander reversion* As the believer’s path below is, or ought to be, a progressive one in knowledge, love, happiness, and joy; so we may well believe, if he be early removed from the Church on earth, in a loftier and more ennobling sense will this be true in a future world. The sun of his bliss will ever be climbing higher and higher the firmament, but yet never attaining its fall meridian. That Future, indeed, would be wanting in one chief element of happiness were progress unknown. The redeemed in heaven, “vessels of glory,” early needed and early “fitted for the Master’s use,” while they will be always filled, yet, if it seem not a paradox, they mil be always filling; ever increasing in the Divine knowledge and likeness, advancing along the line of infinite blessedness flowing from God’s presence. Each new pause on the steeps of the everlasting hills will only unfold new and more amazing discoveries of God’s grace and love. Nor shall they ever reach that point where their knowledge of the Infinite will be complete — where they shall be able to fold the wing in its upward soaring. An old English writer beautifully compares the believer’s knowledge of God in a coming world, to the two well-known mathematical lines, which, though approaching nearer and nearer to one another, never meet. So the ransomed spirits, (and none mgre than those who by reason of early translation have been initiated into the knowledge of God and of spiritual realities), will be borne upwards, nearer and nearer the great Sun of all knowledge, yet never reaching the confines of that light which is spoken of as “inaccessible and full of glory.” Every new height attained in the infinite progress of the soul will only inspire with greater longings to know more of His ineffable love. Had they continued in their places in the Church on earth, they would have been, in comparison with what they are now, but children-dreamers; their path lying through misty shadows and murky clouds, their sun wading thrgugh a stormy sky, their best light often fitful and transient, — like the luminous wake of a vessel on a midnight sea, which gilds only for a moment the waves over which it bounds, and then leaves them as dark as ever. But now that they are across the threshold of glory, the “darkness is past and the true light shineth.” Theirs is now an “unsmiting and unsetting sun.” “The sun shall not smite thee” says one (Ps. cxxi 6). “Thy sun shall no more go down,* says another (Isa. Ix. 20). They have entered “the inheritance of the saints IN light” (Col. i. 12).

How mil all earth’s learning, — its boasted acquirements and eagle-eyed philosophy, had they been spared 184 THE CLAIM OF THE DIVIDE PARENT,

to master them, sink into the lispings of very in&ney in comparison with their present manhood of knowledge!’ Heaven, the true “Excelsior:” its song, “a wng of degrees; “— Jesus leading His children to ever-nobler and maturer attainments; — from height to height of glory, and saying, as He said to Nathanael, ‘’ Thaushcdt see greater things than these!” (John i. 50). The farther they advance, singing with more fervent lip and devout ardour: —

“Nearer my God, to Thee!
Nearer to Thee!
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee I
Nearer to Thee!”

Hush, bereaved mourner! “The Lord hath need of them,” Heaven hath need of them. They have some appointed niche in its Temple they are required early to fill. They have some allotted part in the Hallelujah-song they are required early to take up. Grudge them not the early harp, the early palm, the early consecration. You have “ministering children” before the Throne. Recognise the higher claims of the summoning Voice: “I need them!” — “They shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy!” The earthly education has been cut short, but it is only that they may graduate in a higher school. The life curtailed on earth will be ever and increasingly maturing, enlarging, developing. The old saying of the Church and believers here, will have its truest, grandest.

everlasting interpretation in the Chnrch of the glorified: “The path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day!”

HIGHER USES.

The Lord hath need of them! *’ Bereaved one! own

The peerless claim and Claimant! Had thy gourd

Been spared for future years to bless thy bower,

Sooner or later must its sheltering leaves

Have drooped and withered. The great Husbandman

Selects the time to take His own; and if

For transplantation He may deem them fit.

Before the chilling frosts of life have fallen,

Would’st thou retain them longer in the blasts

Of an ungenial clime?

Your sainted ones Are set as beacons on the heavenly shore, To which, in many a deep, dark night of woe. Oft you may turn your eye; the hallowed radiance Cheering your shattered bark across the waves Betwixt you intervening and the haven Where you desire to be. Thrice sacred tie! The spirit, which perchance, while yet on earth. Like the magnetic needle to its pole. Pointed aloft to Jesus, still directs To the same glorious Source of heavenly love, Of joy in soitow, victory in death I Oh! is it no incentive when you think That in the lustrous cloud of witnesses Which line the battlements on high, are those Who lighted once with their perennial smile The home below, — still from their lofty seats

:’6 THE CLAIM OF THE LIVIXE PAREKT^

Sutvyln to iroo Ton viti their txaaoe of liiBss?

The Bride sajiE, “Come!” — at EW©etly mTngM Toioe

Of saiirted parents, brotliezs, rafrtfTR, ^f^**”^^

Bvsa21ng in holr mnac inn the skiei

And telling, thon they camiot oome to v**

Tbeie it a meeting-plaoe in Ini^iter

Wldcb knows no pardpg!

THE CROWN AND COXSUMMATIOX,

Tis done! the world’s long night is o’er;
At last is reached the longed-for shore;

Life’s transient tale is told;
The Crystal City hursts on sight,
MTith gates of pearl and sapphire bright,

And streets of purest gold I
One theme each sainted bosom fires,
The thunder of the myriad choirs

The anthem-peals prolong;
No wearied frame, no languid eye.
Suspend the swelling minstrelsy

Of the exultant throng.

See! more than conquerors they stand.
Clothed in white robes, while every hand

Bears the triumphal palm;
Down at His feet each crown is flung,
And onward rolls from tongue to tongue,

“Salvation to the Lamb!”
” Blessing and glory, might and power,
Ascribe to Him for evermore.

Ye countless hosts of heaven:
IJ nto the Lamb who once was slain,
Who through eternal years shall reign,

Immortal praise be given!

And higher still their palms they wave,
And deeper in the ocean lave

Of heavenly bliss divine!
Yet ne’er the plummet can be found
By which, O Lamb of God, to sound

Such depth of love as Thine I