IT was my happy privilege for some few years past to visit a dear old saint of God, who has lately fallen asleep, to await that long looked-for morn when the trumpet shall sound and the dead in Christ arise.
Many are the happy hours I have spent in her solitary room, and often have I come away refreshed from my visit to one poor in this world, but rich in faith.
Close upon a century her years had run, and for a very long time she had known the Lord as her Saviour, her refuge, and comfort. One constantly felt when with her in the presence of one to whom heaven was not simply heaven, but home.
As a home she constantly spoke of it, with evident reality, and yet with perfect simplicity; for the deep, blessed teaching of the Spirit of God had made this home, so soon to be hers, a very real place to her; a place she longed for day by day.
If, after some threatening attack, we said to her, using the familiar name by which we always called her, "Well, granny, not gone home yet?" she would reply, "No, not yet; I must have patience.”
One afternoon I said to her, "Well, granny, wouldn’t you like to live to be a hundred?" —as she only wanted three or four years of that great age. Her quick reply, as she raised herself on her arm, was—
“No, I wouldn't—not at all; I want to go and be with Jesus; if I am His and He is mine, what more do I want? His rod and staff will comfort me.”
Then, as one standing by repeated the lines—
“There would I find a settled rest,
While others go and come;
No more a stranger nor a guest,
But like a child at home,”
granny added, "Yes, I shall be 'like a child at home'; I shall see Him as He is, and praise Him as I ought.'”
Thus this aged woman, ignorant and unlettered though she was, had been taught by the Holy Spirit to know and believe, in the simplicity of faith, the love of God to her; it was this knowledge that made heaven a home to her.
“A child at home!" Beloved reader, is that your thought of heaven? You sing, "Heaven is our home." But what is home? The expression of social bliss on earth is conveyed in that word; as the father returns home after the labor and toil of the day, and the little ones run down the path hastening to meet "father," each longing to be first to obtain the welcome kiss: that is home.
He who gave His Son for us, is He not our Father? Did He not give us the kiss of welcome when, in our rags and ruin, we first came to Him? What are our thoughts of Him now? Should we be in His presence as children at home? Let us ask our own hearts whether we have so learned His love, that casteth out all fear, and are so walking before Him and with Him that we look forward to His presence as dear old granny, now at rest, did, with the restful, assured feeling with which a child looks forward to his home.
Unsaved one, nothing but fear and dread can fill your heart as you think of His bright glory and what is consistent with it. While you shrink from hell do you not wish there was some other place where you could go by-and-by rather than to the presence of Him whom the redeemed call "Father"? May the Lord, in His tender mercy, use the words of that dear old saint to tell you of the blessed realities of faith! "I often think," she used to say, "I am a great sinner; but He is a bigger Saviour. You think yourself a great sinner, don't you?—I know you do; but He is a greater Saviour.”
May you, my reader, know for yourself how great a Saviour the Lord Jesus is! C. B.