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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
Which, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed,
For our advantage, to the bitter cross.”
‘None of that splendour shall be lost: it shall receive a new consecration. That devotion shall find its true object: those dusky brows shall be decked by the hand of Him who hath made us kings and priests unto God. “They shall come from the east,” and sit down with prophets and patriarchs in the kingdom of God.
‘“They shall come from the West.” The kingdom of God is no palace of luxury, no paradise of passive repose, where kings sit in solemn state, and mystics dream away their days in fruitless visions. It is the commonwealth of those banded together to do the work of the Lord, and there must be place in it for the practical vigour and the restless energy of the Western mind. The subtle Greek, who sent the arrows of his thought quivering into the heart of Europe: the practical Roman, fulfilling his great part in the commission to replenish and subdue the earth: the nations of modern Europe, with their culture, and power, and ambitions: the great Republic of the West, where the banner of religious freedom was unfurled, and great problems in politics and religion are being worked out—not one of these can be spared from the final association of men in the kingdom of God. Each has its contribution to bring. We are debtors to the Greek and the barbarian, to the wise and the unwise: and they in their turn are debtors to the great world of which they form a part, and are to bring their glory and honour, their worth and their wisdom, into the Community of the Saved.
‘“They shall come from the North.” They came from the north in mighty hordes—those fierce barbarians who swept down upon the tottering Roman Empire, and crushed out what remained to it of life. Province after province was invaded by these terrible men, the fairest tracts of Southern Europe were occupied by them, and are still held by their descendants. They shall come again, Christ says, from the north: not for destruction, but for help and blessing: not to ravage the provinces of a decaying earthly empire, but to swell the population and to add to the wealth of the city of God: from the far north, the land of the midnight sun, and the noonday darkness, into the city of which the Lord is the everlasting light, and whose sun shall no more go down for ever.
‘“They shall come from the South”: where palm-trees cast their grateful shadows on the earth, and temples lift their stately heads to heaven. We read and speak of the luxury and ease of the South, where life is free from care, and its burdens rest very lightly on men whose hearts are bright and gay. But there is a place even for something of this kind in the final home. There must be rest and peace, as well as toil and energy: enjoyment, as well as action. So the men of the South come trooping in at the call of Christ, even as the Queen of the South once came to hear the wisdom of Solomon. From the banks of the river of Egypt, with its mighty pyramids and mystic learning: from the central plains and southern shores of the dark continent of Africa, which shall one day be light in the Lord: from the new world of the Southern Seas with their multitude of islands, and from that greater Britain which is throbbing with the vigorous life of what they love to call the Mother Country—from each and all of these they shall come, a goodly host, each under its own standard, but high over all the blood-red banner of the Captain of our Salvation. They shall come, a great multitude which no man can number, “from the east, and from the west, from the north, and from the south”: and this is the processional hymn to the music of which they march through the gates into the city—
“Unto Him that loved us, and washed
us from our sins in His own blood,
And hath made us kings and
priests unto God and His Father;
To Him be glory and dominion
for ever and ever. Amen.”’
