There the redeemed of the Lord shall, with their blessed Saviour, "inherit the kingdom," where the glory of God illumines the "city," and throws its radiance over all the vast realm. O what a delightful place for a permanent "Home!" How singularly different it contrasts with our residence on earth. Here we have to endure toil, pain, and death; there, rest, happiness, and eternal life. See here the care-worn, weary husband, toiling and striving against contending billows and waves of misfortune, to earn a support for a helpless, dependent family; perhaps his strivings are the more difficult because of pain of body or anguish of mind. Disease in some form may be preying upon his vitality, even through long years of existence, and he knows that it will eventually conquer, and consign him to his grave. Or, if bodily health prevails, the mind may be tortured and distracted at witnessing the sufferings of a beloved wife, or children, as one by one they are smitten down or snatched away by death; or still more poignant the grief and anguish he endures because of the alienation of affections, or family tumults, of strifes and contentions. See that wife and mother lingering by the bedside of a devoted, yet now dying husband, or clasping to her tortured and heaving bosom the lifeless form of a beloved child, and yet powerless to save the one or call back the other. These are the heart-strugglings in the tempest of life. Soon they will be over. A few years more, at most, and then all will be still; this mortality will be silent in the grave.
But of that "home in heaven." "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O City of God." There love, peace, and joy forever reigns. There is the "full fruition" and realization of "the hope of the glory of God." There "their lines have fallen to them in pleasant places." There they realize "fulness of joy," and their heritage "pleasures for evermore." There they find "that inheritance which is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away." There they have a home in an enduring city, whose foundations are eternal. There the palms of victory; and crowns of glory. There they walk the gold-paved streets of the city, or wander at pleasure in the 'Garden of the Lord,' or amidst forests green, or pleasant groves. There the crystal fountains play their sparkling waters in the light of eternal day, and the "river of life" flows "from beneath the throne of God," onward and onward, meandering through, and encircling the vast realm of that heavenly empire. There perennial spring, and never-fading flowers. There old age and decrepitude are never known, but all clothed upon with "garments of righteousness," will live and dwell in perpetual immortal youth, through the ever-recurring cycles of endless eternity. Angels of God are there. The Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs are there; ministers of God are there; some of our kindred friends are there; others of them will soon be there. The redeemed of earth, who were accepted of the Lord are there, and the remainder of the "ransomed hosts," are now pressing on, or coming after, and will all be there, and form an innumerable company which no one can number, each can form pleasant associations there, never to be broken up, "For nothing shall disturb in all the holy mountains." Reader, are you striving for that HAPPY HOME?
CONCLUSIVE AND CONCLUDING ARGUMENT.
The Sun is held by all Philosophers and Astronomers to be the central pivot of the solar system, and the loadstone power of attraction, which governs, steadies, and controls all its surrounding planet-worlds in their orbits. So great is its power of attraction, that a counter-balancing force was necessary to keep the machinery of Nature in order. This force is produced by the attracting power of the various planet-worlds, placed in proper positions in surrounding space, and thus furnishing the centrifugal, to counterbalance the centripetal force ascribed to the Sun, by which means our earth, and the other planets, are kept whirling in their elliptical orbits, and thus each prevented from being drawn by the superior centripetal or attracting power of that globe into certain destruction by the fires of the Sun.
This is the hypothesis, we believe, of every Philosopher and Astronomer of the present day.
Now let us examine this hypothesis, and see if it does not foreshadow and sustain our own.
In the first place, it is true that the "loadstone power of attraction" is there: but it is within what all denominate the Sun, and by this the surrounding planets are controlled. But this power is not the Sun. For what all denominate the Sun, is that which gives out light and heat. The Sun is fire, heat, and brightness or light. Fire, or heat, is ethereal; has no such power of attraction: but on the contrary, is repelling and dissipating. There is no solid substance in fire; it is an invisible agency—save when it is concentrated. It would be an unreasonable hypothesis to conclude that the fires of the Sun were fed on combustible material. The Sun may have been just the same as it is now, for untold billions of years—possibly from all eternity—and God, by His Word has revealed the fact that it will continue forever—even as long as His throne. Hence, if produced by combustion, its material would be constantly wasting away, and, as Prof. Olmsted says, "the products of combustion would obscure its light." Therefore, as there is no tangible source, and all agree that God Himself was, and still is its source, we hold that our hypothesis, that it is a fixed volume of Photospheric-ethereal, or spirit-fire, is correct. That it is one of Jehovah's attributes; ever existing and performing its offices in creative and enduring Nature; never increasing nor diminishing.
Now, this being the only reasonable, and—as we believe—correct hypothesis, of the origin, nature, and element of the Sun—the Sun being the brightness we see in looking at it—where and what is the loadstone power of attraction, which reaches out millions of miles into space, and controls vast worlds, steadying each in its own orbital path, while they are flying round at the rate of from fifty thousand, to one hundred thousand miles an hour? We think the answer plain, and that all can comprehend it. This Earth is a solid body, and all such possess, within themselves, the power of attraction. Therefore, the laws of Nature reveal the fact to us, that the great central and controlling power of attraction attributed to the Sun, is the vast Inner Globe we have been contemplating; a globe, or world, more than a million times the size of this Earth. Leading Astronomers have agreed on the existence of such a body within; and far separated—by a non-luminous atmosphere or void—from the outer photosphere of ethereal fire. That globe we hold is—beyond a doubt—the "HEAVENLY WORLD" spoken of throughout the Holy Scriptures, and is the final and eternal home of the righteous.