om their native
country, at the sound of their national air get so homesick that they
fall into melancholy, and sometimes they die under the homesickness.
But oh! the homesickness of Christ! Poverty homesickness for celestial
riches! Persecution homesick for hosanna! Weariness homesick for rest!
Homesick for angelic and archangelic companionship. Homesick to go out
of the night, and the storm, and the world's execration, and all that
homesickness suffered to get us home!

THE HOME-GATHERING.

At our best estate we are only pilgrims and strangers here. "Heaven is
our home." Death will never knock at the door of that mansion, and in
all that country there is not a single grave. How glad parents are in
holiday times to gather their children home again! But I have noticed
that there is almost always a son or a daughter absent--absent from
home, perhaps absent from the country, perhaps absent from the world.
Oh, how glad our Heavenly Father will be when He gets all His children
home with Him in heaven! And how delightful it will be for brothers
and sisters to meet after long separation! Once they parted at the
door of the tomb; now they meet at the door of immortality. Once they
saw only through a glass darkly; now it is face to face; corruption,
incorruption; mortality, immortality. Where are now all their sins and
sorrows and troubles? Overwhelmed in the Red Sea of Death while they
passed through dry shod.

Gates of pearl, capstones of amethyst, thrones of dominion, do not
stir my soul so much as the thought of home. Once there let earthly
sorrows howl like storms and roll like seas. Home! Let thrones rot and
empires wither! Home! Let the world die in earthquake struggle, and be
buried amid procession of planets and dirge of spheres. Home! Let
everlasting ages roll with irresistible sweep. Home! No sorrow, no
crying, no tears, no death. But home, sweet home, home, beautiful
home, everlasting home, home with each other, home with God.

A DREAM.

One night lying on my lounge, when very tired, my children all around
about me in full romp, and hilarity and laughter--on the lounge, half
awake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream: I was in a far country.
It was not Persia, although more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the
cities. It was not the tropics, although more than tropical
fruitfulness filled the gardens. It was not Italy, although more than
Italian softness filled the air. And I wandered around looking for