It has not been a longing after an impossible ideal. It has been the hunger, the homesickness of your soul for its true Fatherland.. But do not forget that you can satisfy that hunger instantly. Tonight, out of the farthest country, in an instant of time, you may come home, For in spiritual things are we not akin to the homesick one who longs unavailingly for a little island far away in the west, for the cities of old Ergland and its countryside, for a glimpse of highland hills that they may not see for months or years. God waits, Christ knocks, You may return to: Communion with him, now. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as snow, and though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" The spiritual exile may return, and there is a welcome awaiting him.
Two thoughts very briefly in conclusion. "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" It would "not be fitting; it would be illogical and impossible. How dare the sinner sing praise of God? "How could the captive sing songs in praise df his deliverance? Such songs would be out of place. One said to me, "We gave up saying grace before meals in our family because it seemed out of place to speak to God and then bicker and quarrel, as we all did about the table" "How can we sing the Lord's Song in a strange land?" How can we expect reality in our prayer and praise when we live careless and heedless lives, often lives of selfishness and sin?
Then how could they sing? Those songs reminded them of the great days of their nation's'glory. Those songs reminded them of the days of David and Solomon, and of all the glory of Israel. They reminded them above all of their God, of His Temple and the Services of the Sanctuary. Three times in the year they would wend their way toward the Holy City, coming in companies along the roads, singing the sweet songs of Zion, lifting up their eyes to the hills "whence cometh our help." But now they are in cruel capri How can they sing?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.