THE BLESSED HOME by Guthrie

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 30, 1856

THE BLESSED HOME.

By Guthrie

Home! To see home is the wish of the seaman on stormy seas and lonely watch. Home is the wish of the soldier, and tender visions mingle with the troubled dreams of trench and tented field. Where the palm-tree waves his graceful plumes, and birds of jewelled luster flash and flicker among gorgeous flowers, the exile sits staring upon vacancy, a far-away home lies on his heart; and borne on the wings of fancy over intervening seas and lands, he has swept away home, and hears the lark singing above his father’s fields, and sees his fair-haired boy brother, with light foot and childhood’s glee chasing the butterfly by his native stream.

And in his best hours home, his own sinless home, a home with his father above that starry sky, will be the wish of every Christian man. He looks around him—the world is full of suffering; he is distressed by its sorrows and vexed with its sins. He looks within him—he finds much in his own corruptions to grieve for. In the language of a heart repelled, grieved, vexed, he often turns his eye upwards, saying, "I would not live here always. No, not for all the gold of the world’s mines—not for all the pearls of her seas—not for all the crowns of her kingdoms—would I live here always." Like a bird about to migrate to a sunny land where no winter sheds her snows, or strips the grove, or binds the dancing streams, he will often in spirit be pluming his wing for the hour of his flight to glory.