homes reminds them of that happy country which lies beyond the Jordan.
Besides, they behold the impress of change upon every aspect of their home.
All that is near and dear to them there is passing away. It is but the
shadow of better things to come. And as the type bears some resemblance to
that which it typifies, we may understand both by considering the relation
they sustain to each other. We may gain a new view of the Christian home by
looking at it in the light of its typical relation to heaven; and we have a
transporting view of our heavenly home when we contemplate it as the
antitype of our home on earth.

The Christian home on earth is a tent-home, a tabernacle adapted to the
pilgrim-life of God's people, set up in a dreary wilderness, designed to
subserve the purposes of a few years, as a preparation for a better home.
The Christian, amid all his domestic enjoyments, does not realize that his
home is his rest, but that it is only a probationary state, the foretaste
and anticipation of the rest that remaineth for the people of God. It is
but the emblem,--the shadow of his eternal home; and it is, therefore,
unsatisfying; it does not meet all the wants of our nature; there is a
yearning after a better state; the purest happiness it affords proceeds
from the hopes and longings it begets, and the interests it is transferring
to eternity, laying up, as it were, treasures in a better home. Our home
here, develops our wants, inflames our desires, excites our expectations,
educates, and points us to the realities of which it is an emblem; but it
does not fully satisfy our desires, it only increases their intensity. The
pilgrim soul of the child of God pines and frets amid all

"Her sylvan scenes, and hill and dale
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams."

These afford him no satisfaction; they only develop in him the saving sense