The Hunger for Heaven by William Henry Harrison Murray

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jul 17, 1879

The Hunger for Heaven.

By William Henry Harrison Murray

My friends, I am not tired of earthly life beyond what all men, fitted for the life to come, at times are weary of it. I love it in its uses, its labors, and its joys. Its duties give exercise to my faculties, its loves to my affections, its successes to my happiness. I am not morbid, but sense the world through a healthy body, a growing mind, and a hope as strong and bracing as a current of northern air when it bears down upon a camp from the sides of mountains planted thickly with odorous trees. The pulse of this life is strong within me, my friends many, and my fortune beyond my merit or my expectation. I am not talking to you as a disappointed, a depressed, an unhappy man. Keeping only what I have, blessed only with my present blessings, I could stay on earth forever, if it be God's will, and be content. But, in spite of all this, when my thoughts range out ahead, and canvass my future, I can but feel persuaded that the present, precious as it is, does not begin to measure the resources of blessing hidden in the heart of God for me.

My present state does not permit me their full reception; does not allow the perfect disclosure of His love. I need the spiritual body, the heavenly language, the celestial sphere of action, the holy companionships, the powers and functions, the rank and dignity, the privilege and liberty, of the glorified world and state, or ever I shall know the breadth, and length, and depth, and hight of the riches of His love; and I feel persuaded that by the very drift and movement of time I am being borne toward, and at last shall come to something far better than the good of to-day.—Rev. W. H. H. Murray.