p. 134 | THE BETTER COUNTRY

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 12, 1861

THE BETTER COUNTRY.

Nowhere on the earth do we find the presence of all good things without any evil things, nor of all evil without any good: and this we are ready enough to admit of our own country when we call it better than all we have named. It contents us, if at all, only on comparison with other parts of the same world.

Now all such comparisons ought to lift every thoughtful mind to higher and more satisfactory contemplations. It would be well for us, as a growing habit,—and the wonder is, we are not irresistibly tempted, if only for our relief,—to overleap all these limits, and think and speak often, not of this or that eligible region on the earth, but of "a better country, that is, an heavenly."

The word country, in this familiar scripture, is borrowed, as being understood, from a foregoing use where the Greek properly signifies fatherland, native country, or home. The writer says that the patriarchs whom he commemorates, in leaving their own land, and seeking that which God had promised, in faith, as "strangers and pilgrims on the earth," sought indeed a fatherland or home, but a better than that which they had known; and then, to show that this was not the land of Canaan, the literal subject of the divine promise to Abraham, he adds, "That is, an heavenly." By so much, therefore, it was better, more desirable than any country on the earth.

The description is universally understood of the future condition of God's children. It is their final abode, after the resurrection, upon Christ's second coming, the "place" which he told his disciples he went "to prepare" for them, and which evidently they were to enjoy when he should "come again and receive them to himself;" for the sacred writer seems to have in view a condition to which not only the living apostles, but the deceased patriarchs also, still look forward, those ancient worthies, as he afterwards says, having "received not the promise," or all that was promised, "God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." And further, if we adopt the view always extensively held, which Dr. Chalmers among others has eloquently set forth, that this earth, purified and renovated, will be made the abode of his people, we understand by the better country, the "new earth" of which other scriptures tell us, and which, thus transformed in its condition and use, will become heavenly. Under any interpretation, the phrase denotes the future home, or what an ancient writer calls "the blessed fatherland of the just."

And what theme is better fitted to cheer believing hearts amidst private anxieties and ills, or public agitations and calamities, even in "perilous times?" Let us be at home in such thoughts.—Sel.