My home is where my Saviour is,
In light, and life, and holy love;
And He is mine, and I am His,
In blessing creature thought above.
For me that place is now prepared,
And of its glories I have heard.
No spot on earth, in His esteem,
Is good enough wherein to place
The objects of His love supreme,
The Spirit-born, the heavenly race.
His Father’s house alone is meet
Wherein His blood-redeemed to seat.
Less would my soul have satisfied,
When hunger-bitten I retraced
My steps across the great divide,
Which severs affluence from waste;
A servant’s menial place had met
The famine which my soul beset.
And this was my sublimest thought,
For not for love had I returned;
The mercy now so humbly sought
Long had my haughty spirit spurned;
Nor had I ventured back again
Had not by famine pride been slain.
But with a fatherly embrace
The vagabond I was He met,
And in a son’s eternal place
Me with rejoicing great He set;
And in a robe, the very best
That heaven could furnish, I was dressed.
The mirth, the music, dance, and song,
From end to end of heaven heard,
Broke from the hierarchal throng,
The Father gave the gladsome word:—
Let this propitious day be crowned
With merriment, the lost is found.
And midst that festive multitude,
Whose joy was all on mine account,
I ate the heavenly living food,
And drank from love’s eternal fount;
More welcome, even in a way,
Than if I ne’er had gone astray.
Forgiven. Ay, if that were all,
Tho’ surely much it be indeed,
It had not given me right to call
My Maker Father, nor to read
In His own Son’s eternal place,
My heritage before His face.
Yet this relationship is mine,
Designed before His works of old,
And brought to pass in power Divine,
By circumstances uncontrolled.
But had that love and power been less,
Endless had been my soul’s distress.
The fatness of His house I eat,
And more than satisfaction find;
I who once envied swine their meat,
And would off husks have gladly dined,
But could not, even when I would,
Have fed my hunger with such food.
For Him who loves me thus I wait,
He comes to claim me as His own,
And bring me to His glory great,
The joys of which I now have known.
Then shall I, in His likeness dressed,
In body, spirit, soul, be blest.
Oh, day of days for Him and me,
When I shall gain the heavenly goal,
And He who died to save me, He
Shall see the travail of His soul;
And I shall praise Him as I would,
For all His mercies multitude.