Montrose—from the Sea.
X
A DAY OF REST
At the morning service, which was held as usual in the saloon, Dr. Cameron of Cape Town preached an eloquent and suggestive sermon from Luke xiii. 29, ‘They shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God.’ The words, he thought, were not inappropriate to the occasion; for the company was gathered from many parts of this country, and some of its members from distant lands. It might be said, indeed, that we had come from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south. After pointing out that the words were Christ’s real answer to the question, ‘Are there few that be saved?’ and showing that His restrictions applied to those who sought to enter the kingdom of God in other ways than by the strait gate, the preacher continued:—
‘My text gives us the vision of a great commonwealth or society, into which all worthy elements of human character are gathered up—a kingdom of God which is at the same time a kingdom of man. And they form a great multitude which no man can number, because fresh crowds are ever gathering into it. “The nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it.”
‘“They shall come from the East”—the land of immemorial traditions and gorgeous imaginations, of Oriental splendour and barbaric gold: the cradle of civilisation, and philosophy, and religion: where, a thousand years before Christ, mystics dreamed of a blessedness which could be reached only by those who mortified the flesh, and contemplated the unseen glories of the spiritual world;—the East, with its patient millions who have borne without complaint the yoke of a cruel bondage: with its frankincense and myrrh, once laid in homage at the cradle of a little child: with its jewelled temples raised in honour of gods many and lords many, and its holy plains,
“Over whose acres walked those blessed feet