“When shall my labors have an end,
  In joy and peace and thee!”

Even these hopes and longings after reunion with the departed in heaven, afford her joy, and open in her panting spirit a foretaste of unearthly bliss.  To her aspiring faith all things look heavenward.  The stars of the sky, and the flowers of the field smile their blessings upon her; and she welcomes death to break off her chains, to draw the bolts and bars, and open the prison doors of her house of clay, that her home-sick spirit may go up to that happier land where her possessions lie:—­

  “Let me go! my heart is fainting
    ’Neath its weight of sin and fears,
  And my wakeful eyes are failing
    With these ever-falling tears! 
  For the morning I am sighing,
    While I earth’s long vigils keep;
  Here the loved are ever dying,
    And the loving live to weep!

  “Let me go!  I fain would follow,
    Where I know their steps have passed—­
  Far beyond life’s heaving billows,
    Finding home and heaven at last! 
  While my exiled heart is pining
    To behold my Father’s face,
  They, in His own brightness shining,
    Beckon me to that blest place!

  “Let me go!  I hear them calling,
    ‘Ho! thou weary one,—­come home!’
  Words which on mine ears are falling,
    Wheresoever my footsteps roam,
  I can catch the far-off murmurs
    Of life’s river, sweet and low,
  Calling, from earth’s bitter waters,
    Unto me—­O let me go!”

Gentle reader! seek that better land.  Let your home be a preparation for, and a pilgrimage to, a home in heaven.  You are now in the wilderness beset on every side by enemies.  Go forward!  You are now in the deep vale,—­in the low retreats of pilgrim life.  “Friend, go up higher!” “Be thou faithful unto death, and you shall receive a crown of life.”  Be patient in tribulation.  The storms that swell around your pilgrim home will soon subside, and a cloudless sky will burst upon you; the winter gloom and desolation will soon pass away; and “sweet fields arrayed in living green and rivers of delight,” will spread out themselves before your enraptured vision.  Remember that “the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.”  In a few years at most the conflict shall end, and sighing grief shall weep no more; the wormwood and the gall will be exchanged for the cup of salvation; the armor and the battle-field will be exchanged for the white garment, the crown and the throne.  Soon your typical homestead shall be exchanged for your antitypical home; and we shall unite in the home-song of everlasting joy,—­the song of, “unto Him that loved us and washed us in His own blood, to Him be praise and glory and dominion forever!”