xxi. BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 377 



for what we have lost ; what we want is a resurrection 

 of our dead loves, our past joys. We feel safer and 

 surer with what we have already experienced. The 

 faint blue smoke that ascends from the shepherd's 

 lowly shieling on the mountain waste is more precious 

 to the wanderer than the gorgeous sunset clouds that 

 hang high above it in the western sky. And dearer far 

 to the human heart is the old familiar earth, with its 

 homely ways and common experiences, than all the 

 gorgeous descriptions of heaven with its golden streets 

 and jewelled walls. No imaginable or unimaginable 

 beauty could possibly compensate us for the ashes of 

 what we had previously loved. 



The hope that is set before us in the gospel appeals 

 to this universal human feeling. It is not altogether 

 a new heaven and a new earth that are to arise from 

 the conflagration and ashes of the old ; but a place 

 prepared by Him who wears our nature and knows 

 our experience, filled with objects long familiar 

 to us, and furnished with delights which we have 

 already enjoyed in part. It is no new creature, no 

 strange being, forgetful of the past, soaring out of the 

 power and memory of the beautiful affections of the 

 earthly home to the ethereal fellowship with God and 

 angels, that will be raised from the dust to dwell in 

 that new earth, and under these new heavens, but the 

 friend we loved here, whose mortal form and human 

 love will put on immortality. The alchemists of old 

 believed that in the embers of all things their prim- 

 ordial forms existed, and that therefore they could 



