When the choir sang of
"Seas of heavenly rest,"
a breath of salt wind came in with the words through the open
door, from the sheltered waters of the bay, so softly blue and so
lovely, I always wondered how a world could be beautiful where
"there was no more sea." I concluded that the hymn and the text
could not really contradict other; that there must be something
like the sea in heaven, after all. One stanza that I used to
croon over, gave me the feeling of being rocked in a boat on a
strange and beautiful ocean, from whose far-off shores the
sunrise beckoned:--
"At anchor laid, remote from home,
Toiling I cry, Sweet Spirit, come!
Celestial breeze, no longer stay!
But spread my sails, and speed my way!"
Some of the chosen hymns of my infancy the world recognizes among
its noblest treasures of sacred song. That one of Doddridge's,
beginning with
"Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell!"
made me feel as if I had just been gazing in at some window of
the "many mansions" above:--
"Ye stars are but the shining dust
Of my divine abode-"
Had I not known that, ever since I was a baby? But the light does
not stream down even into a baby s soul with equal brightness all
the time.
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