“Her sylvan scenes, and hill and dale
  And liquid lapse of murmuring streams.”

These afford him no satisfaction; they only develop in him the saving sense of earth’s insufficiency; all the scenes of this wilderness state are but those of thorns, and desert heath, and barren sands; and he cries out in the midst of his happy home,—­“This is not your rest!” Our tent-home may include every earthly cup, and all the riches and honors of the world, yet it satisfies not, and the Christian turns from it all to rest and expatiate in a life to come.  Every home here is baptized with tears and scarred with graves.  Its poverty is a burden, its riches are snares, its friends are taken from us; broken hearts agonized there; restlessness is tossed to and fro there; and disappointment reigns in every member there.  Hence in our wilderness-home we hunger and thirst, and pine for something more satisfying.  We turn from the shadow to the reality; and realizing the insufficiency of home as a mere type, we turn with anxious hope to that which it typifies—­our heavenly home.

Heaven is the antitype of the Christian home.  There the latter reaches its consummation, and reaps the rich harvest of its great reward.  The Father; the Mother of us all; our Brethren; our inheritance; our all sufficiency are there.  Yea, all that is included in the dear name of home, is treasured up there, for the child of God.  In that better land he finds the reality of his home on earth; the latter is but the prophecy of the former:—­

  “There is my house and portion fair,
  My treasure and my heart are there,
    And my abiding home.”

That better home is radiant with light and love.  There you shall not see through a glass darkly, but shall behold all things face to face.  You shall not merely know in part, but even as you are known.  There you shall realize in all its fulness what you dimly taste here.  We have a hunger here which is not fully satisfied till in heaven we pluck the fruits of the tree of life.  We have a thirst here which is not fully quenched till in heaven we drink of the waters of the river of life which flows fast by the throne of God.  In our tent-home here, we eat and drink, but hunger and thirst again; we are healed, but we sicken again; we live in the light of truth, but darkness and clouds intervene; we are comforted by the spirit and by friends; but we sorrow and weep again.

But in heaven “sighing grief shall weep no more;” and we “shall hunger no more, neither shall we thirst any more; and we shall not say I am sick; and there shall be no night, nor sorrow, nor tears, nor sighing, nor death; for the former things are passed away.”  Love will then be perfect; there will be no heart-burnings and disappointments there.  There you shall enjoy the honey without the sting, and the rose without the thorn.  “Earth hath no sorrows that heaven cannot heal.”  All care and toil, and tears, and orphanage, and widowhood,