It is ninety-five million miles from here to the sun, and all
astronomers agree in saying that our solar system is only one of the
small wheels of the great machinery of the universe, turning round
some one great centre, the centre so far distant it is beyond all
imagination and calculation; and if, as some think, that great centre
in the distance is heaven, Christ came far from home when He came
here. Have you ever thought of the homesickness of Christ? Some of you
know what homesickness is, when you have been only a few weeks absent
from the domestic circle. Christ was thirty-three years away from
home. Some of you feel homesickness when you are a hundred or a
thousand miles away from the domestic circle. Christ was more
millions of miles away from home than you could calculate if all your
life you did nothing but calculate. You know what it is to be homesick
even amid pleasurable surroundings; but Christ slept in huts, and He
was athirst, and He was ahungered, and He was on the way from being
born in another man's barn to being buried in another man's grave. I
have read how the Swiss, when they are far away from their native
country, at the sound of their national air get so homesick that they
fall into melancholy, and sometimes they die under the homesickness.
But oh! the homesickness of Christ! Poverty homesickness for celestial
riches! Persecution homesick for hosanna! Weariness homesick for rest!
Homesick for angelic and archangelic companionship. Homesick to go out
of the night, and the storm, and the world's execration, and all that
homesickness suffered to get us home!