"
But it is only when God turns our hearts to Himself, so that we can say
that we have "known and believed" His love to us, that we can really thank
Him for it. When one, who knew what it was to have had his own dark heart
lighted up by this great love, was thinking of these things, he wrote
some words which I am going to write down for you, for they deserve to be
remembered.
"The creation of the sun," he says, "was a very glorious work; when God
first rolled him flaming along the sky, he shed golden blessing on every
shore. The change in spring is very wonderful; when God makes the faded
grass revive, the dead trees put out green leaves, and the flowers appear
on the earth. But far more glorious and wonderful is the conversion (that
is, the turning to God) of the soul. It is the creation of a sun that is to
shine for eternity; it is the spring of the soul that shall know no winter,
the planting of a tree that shall bloom with eternal beauty in the paradise
of God." McCheyne wrote like this because he knew that
"When this passing world is done,
When has sunk yon glaring sun,"
the spirit, that part of man which can never come to an end of its life,
will still be living somewhere; and that those only who have been turned to
God, and are His children by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, will live with
Him all through that great _for ever_ which will go on when sun and moon
and all that we can see may have passed away.
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