Reader, God has given you a command, the command to follow Him, and work for Him, and love Him; and He has given you a promise, that if you serve Him faithfully here you shall reign with Him eternally hereafter in Heaven. And, oh! think of the kindness of our Heavenly Father! Just compare the two--a few years of sickness, sorrow, and labour here, and then an eternity of rest and perfect happiness there.
Secondly, look at Heaven as our rest. And perhaps there is no way of looking at it which gives us more thankfulness than this. Sorrow and labour we must have here, but there we shall have rest, and our "rest shall be glorious." "Everything round us here has a capacity for rest as well as action. The stormy winds and restless waters can at times be calm and still. The city, with its ceaseless hum and stir of voices and footsteps, lies hushed and quiet in its nightly rest. The railway, with its snorting engines, its crowded stations, and lightning speed, seems as if it knew no rest; yet a moment after the flying train has gone there is no sign of life or motion along its iron rails." And so, too, is it with life. The most active Christian will one day be at rest. Like the stormy waves, or the whistling train, he cannot work for ever, and after his work is over then will come rest.
Oh! reader, Heaven is indeed a home worth working for. Where is the home on earth, in which we never hear an angry word, or never see a cold or passionate look? But it won't be so in Heaven! In our Father's kingdom we shall hear no angry words, and we shall have nothing but the kindest looks. God is there, and Jesus is there; and there too we shall meet our friends who are now "absent from the body," but "present with the Lord." The mother who first taught you to speak the name of your Heavenly Father will be there. The father, whose bright Christian example you remember as a child, will be there. Your brothers and sisters will be there. All, in short, will be there, who by their bright Christian examples have helped you on the road to Heaven; for all God's saints will be there, enjoying their reward and resting from their labours.
Young man, the same Heaven is open to you as to them. The same battle-field lies before you; the same cross and the same crown. The same heavenly watchers as welcomed them are waiting to receive you into your heavenly home. It is for you to say whether you will accept their invitation to come. It is for you to show by your daily life and conversation whose side you have chosen in the battle of life, whose home you will live in hereafter.
SUNDAY.
"Oh! pass not hence so swiftly,
Bright Sabbath hours, we pray;
None other tell so sweetly
Of regions far away.
No breath of flowers at eventide,
When the rain-cloud's store is spent;
No cooling airs so softly glide
From the sultry firmament;
No waveless calm along the deep,
When its fever-pulse is still;
No visitings of dew-like sleep
To eyelids worn with ill."
F. C. Boyce.
The word "Sabbath" means rest. And such indeed God intended Sunday to be. "Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God[#]." Our Saviour indeed teaches us that the stern and strict way in which the Sabbath was kept by the Jews was an unnecessary and painful discipline. He told the people it was quite lawful to do good on the Sabbath day, even though that good might be misinterpreted and misunderstood. He taught us that Sunday was a day sacred to God, and not to man, and that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath[#]." You know the old words--
"A Sabbath well spent
Brings a week of content,"
and if you will try to put that old maxim into force, you will find as you give up the Sunday to God and His service, so surely will He be with you during the week. For now the old Jewish Sabbath has given place to the Christian Sunday--our Lord chose "the first day of the week" on which to rise from the grave, and the Church has fitly chosen the first day of the week as the best on which to meet together to worship her ascended Lord.
[#] Exod. xx. 8.