O Suffering Saint, John Macduff,
The Promised Land, 1859. And the days of your mourning
shall be ended, Isaiah 60, 20. The present world is a valley
of tears, a wilderness of woe. While passing through it, we
are exposed to sorrows and sufferings of various kinds. Pain and disease
beset us on every side, and many, in the extremity of their anguish,
wish for death rather than life. Here we are subject to innumerable
troubles, our fondest hopes may be blasted, and we may be called
to survey the wreck of all that we once possessed. Here the dearest
friends are snatched from each other's embrace. The ruthless
spoiler respects neither rank nor age, he tears asunder the
very heart-strings of our nature, and seems to delight in trampling
upon the tenderest sympathies of the soul. The parent is called
to weep over the remains of a much-loved child, the husband has to mourn
the loss of the partner of his life, the lover and friend are
cut off by a stroke, and the desire of our eyes is taken away. From a thousand sources do our
present distresses spring, and the streams of sorrow, in all
their sad variety, follow us, more or less, through the whole
course of our earthly pilgrimage, But in heaven all our troubles
will be over, no sorrow will be there, all temporal and all
spiritual evils will be entirely banished, no disappointment,
no anxiety will be there, no wearisome nights, no dismal moanings,
no tossings to and fro until the dawning of the day will be
there. There will be no sickness to
blast, and no death to devour there. There will be no Rachel
weeping for her children, no broken-hearted father exclaiming,
O Absalom, my son, my son, there. There will be no separation from
those we love there. There will be no faithless friend
to wound our hearts and betray our confidence there. There will
be no being vexed from day to day with the filthy lives of
the wicked there. There will be no temptations
there, no fightings without or fears within. no hardness of
heart, or stings of conscience, no obscuring clouds, or contrary
winds, or tossing waves there. No, nothing to grieve, nothing
to cause a single sigh to rise from the bosom, or a single tear
to fall from the eye, will be there. But joy and peace will
be there, And cheerful hearts and beaming countenances Will
be there, and the conqueror's song, And waving palms and harps
of gold, And robes of spotless white, will be there. O suffering
saint, think much of what is there. It will help you to bear
up and to press on under your load of sorrow here. It is only
for a little while that you will have to traverse this howling
desert, and then, having passed the narrow stream of death, you
shall know heaven by happy experience. No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who
love Him.