PREPARING TO SEE THE KING.
"Thine eyes shall see the King, in his beauty."
Isaiah 8:17.
HAVE you thought much about that verse, 'dear friends, and of all that. it implies? Has it come home to you that it is your eyes, which are one day to behold the "King;" that it is to you the words are spoken I Your eyes may be often tired now, or dim with tears; it may be your portion day after day to meet the glances of other eyes which flash no sympathy back to yours, or to miss the response of eyes which once made a sunshine in your home. I do not know your lives, but this I know, that all who have their faces turned Zion-ward shall one day behold "the King!"
Is not this enough to brighten us when our days seem dull? Why do we let the clouds come between us and the promise, which shines like a line of light, on the far away horizon! Meanwhile, we are not left without beauty. "God hath given us all things richly to enjoy;" let us go through his world with seeing eyes; let us accustom ourselves to look for beauty. And I do not mean only the beauty of nature—that of the trees bending to whisper in the wind, or of the mountain-stream eddying over the rocks, or the beauty and hush of the twilight when day is done; neither do I mean only that of art, of delicate statuary, and pictures where eyes laugh back to you from the canvas; but I mean also the beauty in the characters of those around us. As we go through life, I think we should keep before us what our eyes are one day to see; it might help us to blind them to the unpleasant things of life, and open them more to the beautiful things there are.
I have read books sometimes which speak of this world as a wilderness, and poems which call it a desert; I do not agree with them. There is sorrow in this world, and sin, but there is beauty too, and our King hath given us "richly all things to enjoy"!
There are beauties familiar' to all of us, and which any who live in the country may see every day. Is there not beauty in the sheen upon the water as it changes in cloud and sunshine; in the lights and shadows chasing each other as the wind passes among the trees; in the cool, quiet shade, with the sunbeams flickering beyond, by the pond where every fern is reflected; in the tall and stately garden flowers, and in the violets and primroses by the roadside; in the broad, level plains, with the ripening corn-fields, and a line of heathery hills sloping away to the blue beyond! There is the beauty of the day, and the mysterious beauty of the night, when familiar things change and gleam in the moonlight; there is the loveliness of youth girding on its armor for the battle, and the beauty of old age which has been through the fire and come out purified, whose eyes wear a dreamy, expectant took, as if they knew they were nearing "the King."
I think, too, people may live beautiful lives, I mean by doing their duty; and this is within the power of us all. The humblest little maid who does a thing because it is right, not merely because she may wish to do it, or because her companions say it is the thing to do, is a servant of that "King" whom she will one day see.
There is a beauty, not visible to our eyes, but very plainly seen by our King, in resisting the temptation to wrongdoing, in the gentle patience, which answers a harsh and perhaps unjust rebuke with kindly words.
Our eyes are one day to behold "the King;" do we behave as if we remembered this? Do we not sometimes misconstrue motives, or seem not to see what is meant, when the recollection of what is coming ought to fill these eyes of ours with such a light of love and gratitude that the anger would be all quenched Let us try what keeping these words before us will do!
Sabbath Reading
