Unnamed author, in "The Voice," 1878.
There are two experience:- (1) the greatest for time; (2) the dawn of eternity. (1) when Christ is seated on the throne of your heart — his Coronation day. It is not merely that He is in your heart, but that His sway there is fully recognised. Spiritually it is the same as in Gen. 21; when Isaac was weaned, Abraham made a great feast for him. Every one did homage to him. They celebrated his right and title. The greatest day in time is when the heart keeps festival in celebration of Christ's right to be enthroned there. That is a moment of surpassing delight, when Christ is only heard to speak. He reigns alone! Though rejected on earth, He is proclaimed King there. That makes the merry heart a continual feast! Like "the whole year" which Elijah spent with the widow (1 Kings 17): every care and every need were foreseen and provided for by the great guest in the house of the desolate one.
(2) The dawn or introduction to the eternal day is when you accept that all that is beautiful in the first creation terminated in the death of Christ; not only that all the bad is under judgment in Adam, but that "old things are passed away, all is become new and all is of God." You find yourself in the light of the eternal scene. Figuratively it is Gen. 22, you have traversed Mount Moriah having practically accepted that everything is gone in Christ's death. Your eyes have opened on eternal day! You are before God in that new day in the sweet savour of Christ; the ram on the Mount; "Jehovah-Jireh." The order of the old creation sets before us these two experiences. The tree lives and thrives in winter because of its roots; it bursts forth into unhindered manifestation of its life in summer, because the climate and seasons induce it to do so. The winter is time; the summer is eternity! We live in Christ at home during the winter; we bask in the sunshine of His presence in foretaste now of an endless eternity. It is Christ in both; He reigns in our hearts and we shall reign with Him; but the better we know the festive time when He reigns in our hearts, the more shall we enjoy in prospect reigning with Him. If we do not like His full sway in our own little kingdom, how can we relish His unbounded sway over everything? "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much." Crown Him King in your own heart and the great day of His Kingdom and glory will also burst on your prepared and delighted heart!