The increase is the intercession of Jesus. Place your offering, be it prayer or alms, deed or work, or submission—in his hands for presentation; pray him, as your only priest, to transact for you with God, and he will do so. And the sense of God’s favor shall shine out upon thy offering; and the dew of his blessing shall descend upon it, and ye shall be gladdened with your Father’s smile.—Goulburn.[3]
[February 22.]
Heaven, as a place of residence and state of enjoyment, should always be viewed in contrast with earth. This is a state of pupilage and probation, that of dignity and promotion. Here is conflict, there victory. This is the race, that the goal. Here we suffer, there we reign. Here we are in exile, there at home. On earth we are strangers and pilgrims, in heaven fellow citizens with the saints; and, released from the strife and turmoil, the bitterness and regrets of earth, are incorporated forever with the household of God.
This is triumph! How striking the contrast! How must earth and its trials be lost sight of in such a vision! How must this contrast strengthen the ties of confidence, and kindle the ardor of devotion!
What did Moses care for the perils of the wilderness, when, from the storm-defying steep of Pisgah, he viewed the land of promise, imaging forth the green fields of heaven’s eternal spring! Look at Elijah, the immortal Tishbite, exchanging the sighs and solitude of his juniper shade, for wheels of fire and steeds of wind that bore him home to God! Look at Paul—poor, periled and weary, amid the journeyings and conflicts of his mission: the hand that once stretched the strong eastern tent, or wore the dungeon’s chain, now sweeps in boldest strain the harps of heaven.… Look at the Christian of apostolic and early times, exchanging the clanking of his chains and the curses of his jailor—the dungeon’s den and martyr’s stake—for the notes of gladness and lofty anthem pealing from lute and harp, bedecked with eternal amaranth! The load of chain with which he went out to meet the descending car of his triumph, with its angel escort, was a richer dowry than the jewels of empire! The taper that flickered in the dungeon of the sainted hero shot a ray more glorious than ever spoke the splendor of the full-orbed moon! What are the crowns or the diadems of all this world’s masters or Cæsars, compared with the prospects of such an expectant!
Christians! what need we care, although on earth we were so poor and low we had nor purse nor pillow; so few and trodden down we had no power; and hamlets, huts and grottoes were the places where we wept and prayed; if these are to be exchanged for a residence amid the jaspers and chrysolites, the emeralds and sapphires of the heavenly Jerusalem!
What though soiled by the dust of toil or damp with the dungeon’s dew—struggling amid tattered want along our lone and periled path—when even here we find ourselves invested with glory in the night of our being, and sustained by hopes guiding and pointing us to the temple hymn and the heavenly harp above! …—Bascom.[4]