8 Sermon Illustrations on Heavenly Home

A little child, whose mother was dying, was taken away to live with some friends because it was thought she did not understand what death is. All the while the child wanted to go home and see her mother. At last, when the funeral was over, and she was taken home, she ran all over the house, searching the sitting room, the parlor, the library, and the bedrooms. She went from one end of the house to the other, and when she could not find her mother, she wished to be taken back to where they brought her from. Home had lost its attractions for the child when her mother was not there. My friends, the great attraction in heaven will not be its pearly gates, its golden streets, nor its choir of angels, but it will be Christ. Heaven would be no heaven if Christ were not there. But we know that He is at the right hand of the Father, and these eyes shall gaze on Him by-and-by; and we shall be satisfied when we awake with his likeness.

As a wheel, although it turneth about on the ground, yet the greatest part of it is always from the earth, and but little of it toucheth the ground: so, although our body be on earth, yet the conversation of the soul, which is the greater part of us, must be in heaven. Cawdray.

A poor, sick German woman, the wife of a blind soldier, while lying on the bed of death in a leaky garret in New York, told her brief story in broken English and German, while the tears in her eyes attested the sincerity of her feeling. She beautifully said, "Die welt ist nichts; der himmel ist alles!"—"The world is nothing; heaven is every thing!"

"I long to see home," says the sailor when the ship rocks to and fro from the violence of the storm. "I am going home," thinks the shopman when he bars his heavy doors, and closes his windows at night, tired with the labors of the day. "I must hurry home," says the mother whose heart is on her baby in the cradle. "Oh, how I long to get home!" says the schoolboy disconsolate over the hopeless task. "Don't stop me; I am going home," says the bright-eyed girl skipping along the footpath. And "almost home," says the dying Christian. "I shall soon be home, and then no more sorrow nor sighing forever. Almost home." Bowes.