Words About Heaven (3)

As one part of Knox Church's 175th anniversary, quotes are being read during Sunday worship services from sermons, prayer, and other writings of previous Knox Ministers.   On Sunday, February 17th, in connection with our sermon series, "Questions about Heaven," the following words of Rev. F.W. Farries, 3rd Minister of Knox from 1875-1893 were read from his sermon "The Transcendant Value of Man" preached Sunday, November 29, 1891, including some high praise for his homeland and and recitation of poetry from a favourite fore-bear of the Scots: 

"...and so while cherishing in our inmost hearts the memory of our native land, and glorying in its heroic history, let us remember that our heritage of liberty and truth is the birthright of all.   And so live and labour as to lift up others and make them free to be co-workers with God in striving for perfect manhood.   There is nothing narrow or national in the gospel.   It's blessings, it salvation are free for all.  And there is nothing narrow in the heroic martyr-spirit of our forefathers.  For the dying Covenanter, as he sank among the heather of his native hills, saw not only a vision of the splendour and glory of the new Jerusalem, his eternal home, but also the vision of a righteous and holy Scotland, radiant with the light of God's favor, and beyond the world redeemed and won to Christ, and filled with his glory, and the earthly scene was scarcely less enrapturing to his passing and triumphing spirit than the heavenly.  So let our eyes dwell upon the vision of the promised time, for which the martyr heroes of Scotland and the good and true of every land and age have laboured and longed, when the knowledge of God, and of his estimate of man shall fill the earth, when all men shall seek to be like Christ, and all men shall be linked together in the bonds of a loving brotherhood. 

'Then let us pray that come it may,                                                                                                                                          As come it will for a' that,                                                                                                                                                        That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,                                                                                                                                  May bear the gree' and a' that;                                                                                                                                            For a' that, and a' that,                                                                                                                                                          It's coming yet for a' that,                                                                                                                                                  When man to man, the world o'er,                                                                                                                                          Shall brothers be for a' that.'