the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
"With thee is the fountain of life; in thy light shall we see light." - Psalms 36:9.
In a few verses of this psalm, we have the elysium of God divinely sketched, and how do all the elysian scenes of poets fade in comparison with it. There is poetry and there is wisdom in the abstinence that controls the delineation. They that minutely depict the home of the blessed and seek to present us with a finished drawing of it, forget that whatever can be thus photographed is of necessity fallen from the region to which faith, hope, and whatsoever is heavenly in us, aspires. Give us a minute description of heaven and it is no more heaven. For what we need to understand by heaven is a place or a condition such as eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, heart not conceived; having so little in common with earth that earthly language is no medium for the expression of its marvels; and whose distinguishing elements must just be hinted; negations being more employed than affirmations. Oh, how much reason have we to admire and rejoice in the reticence of the sacred writers, or rather of the Spirit who dwelt in them!
Let us not fail also to admire the fact that everything which is uttered concerning the place of God’s glory, has reference to us. "We are told of a fountain of life, because we long to be fully possessed by the life of heaven, to be emancipated from the body of this death, to drink our full of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. We are told of God’s light, because in that marvellous light we shall see light, and never more be compelled to look on darkness. There is darkness within us; the light that we have is but light shining through the riven darkness; and there is darkness on our path; and darkness in the mind and in the speech of every man we walk with; and a mighty pall of darkness stretches over the whole world. There is darkness in the government of every land under the sun, whether it be absolute, constitutional, or republican; darkness in all literature; darkness in the daily press; darkness in all codes; darkness in the ministry. Almost everywhere, utter darkness; in the Church, mingled darkness and light, and the promise of unmixt light. We now believe in God’s light; soon we shall see it.
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