rance and error, must end; and that grand and glorious day break upon the shores of time when all shadows shall flee away, when all imperfection shall be lost in perfect sunshine, and we shall no more ask the people their pastor, or even the Christian his Bible, what is God's will, but his will shall be instinct, his law shall be inner love; and we shall need no outer revelation, but shall each have a revelation in his heart, the teaching and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God. It is here where certain writers of the present day have gone wrong. They say that an outer revelation is needless; that an inner light is sufficient. That will one day be truth; but at present it is a huge error. If the day were come when "they shall no more teach every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; but all shall know him from the least to the greatest," that sentiment of one of the writers of the Essays and Reviews would be absolute truth. But unhappily he has anticipated the millennium; he has dreamed some night that the millenium is come, and he has risen in the morning and written in his Essay that we need no more to teach every man his neighbour, saying, Know the Lord; for everybody shall now know him, from the least to the greatest. By this time he must have discovered that he is in error; for on all sides thousands know not the Lord; and on all sides, in spite of multiplied teachers, teachers of every gift, and grace, and manner, and resource, there are thousands in every neighbourhood and parish who know little of the Saviour, less of salvation, and nothing of the hopes of glory.

Then he adds: "I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." What a blessed thought is that ! The last breath that we draw, alas! will be laden with sin. The very last beat of the heart before we enter into glory will have imperfection in it. But it is a gracious and a glorious promise that God is the sinforgiving God; at every hour, and every minute, and every second in life's long day his words are not, I

have forgiven, and will forgive no more; but, "I, even I am he that blotteth out thine iniquities for mine own name's sake;" and again: "The Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin." And hence the Christian need never fear that the imperfection of the hour that passes will not be forgiven. God forgives ever as we in our weakness and our worthlessness come short of what He requires ; and every hour of our life we can fall back upon him as a sin-forgiving God: "And their iniquities will I remember no more." And the whole earth, we are told, shall be filled with his glory.

Such is the world as it will be. Do you not sometimes long for that day? I do not mean, do you long for death? Nobody loves death; we have an instinctive recoil from death. Why? Because death is the shadow of the curse; and if it be only its shadow, still it is its shadow, and belongs to the curse. But then we must long for that day, whether we shall enter it through the valley of the shadow of death, or whether we shall be in that happy group that shall never see death; for it is a fact that we should not lose sight of that one day there will be a whole race of Christian men that will never die. It is not true, as people sometimes quote the text, "It is appointed unto all men to die;" it is not, "it is appointed unto men to die;" but all men will not die. A day comes, perhaps the young may enter on it, when the heart, instead of standing still and staggering on the weary march of life, shall begin to beat with a nobler pulse; and this mortal in the twinkling of an eye shall put on immortality, and this corruptible shall put on incorruptibility. "We shall not all die," says the apostle, "but we shall be changed." But if we should be called upon to pass through the valley of the shadow of death; or whether we shall be called upon, or rather summoned without dying to enter on the rest that remains for the people of God, how must we long for that day when all imperfection, obscurity, misinterpretation, misconception, shall all be lost, forgotten, cast off for ever; and you and I shall

appear in light in which there is no shadow, and shall know each other even as God himself knows us! And all who have met together within the house of God, and those who have left seats in the sanctuary below, and taken possession of thrones in the sanctuary above; and them you have committed dust to dust and ashes to ashes; what a glorious meeting will that be when we shall talk together, and you shall tell me, oh how cold you were in preaching that love! how poor were your exhibitions of the greatness, of the goodness of that blessed Saviour! how unworthy were your sermons of all that we now learn of him! and how cold were our hearts, and how poor and few were our services! and yet, whilst we admit all this, through your sermons we learnt the way that has conducted us to the land ; and whilst we thank you as the servant for the service you have done, we give the glory, and the honour, and the praise to Him who has manifested himself as our God, and has made us in his infinite grace to be his people on a new earth and a nobler world.

LECTURE XIX.

THE WORLD THAT WILL HAVE NO SORROW.

BREAKING and broken hearts-weary limbs and weeping eyes-are this life's daily experience. The long sisterhood of sorrow still stretches onward. It will not be always so, for

"God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow.”REVELATION xxi. 4.

WE have learned something of the nature of the new heaven and the new earth which are to supersede the heavens and the earth which are now about us. We have also read of the holy city that comes down from heaven, and settles a magnificent vision upon the bosom of this earth, beautiful and adorned as a bride adorned for her husband; in which shall shine a glory that shall never fade, and from which shall rise songs that shall never cease; in which all hearts shall be bounding and no heart shall break for ever. We have also learned the mystery and the meaning of that promise: "The tabernacle of God is with men;" or if it had been written in Hebrew it would have been: The shechinah is returned; the bright glory that dwelt between the cherubim, and was to the ancient Jew the apocalypse of Deity; the evidence and the proof that God was there shall return in more than its ancient effulgence, and be such a light that the city shall have "no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God," that is, the shechinah," the glory of God did lighten it; and "-magnificent thought! that shows how soft, and tempered, and beautiful that light will be "the Lamb is the light thereof."

The next predicted feature in the world that will be is a most precious one to weeping eyes, to sorrowful hearts, to suffering mankind. And if there be any in

this world ignorant enough to deny that they are sinners, we never find one who will deny that man is a sufferer. A poet has said that "man is born to weep." So far it is true he is born to weep; but he was not originally made to weep. If sin had not touched the heart, and opened the flood-gates of tears, we had not needed the promise to cheer us: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." The Greek word translated "wipe away " is most expressive; it is eaλɛipei ; literally, he will "wipe out all tears from their eyes.' It is an interesting fact that the Hebrew word for the eye is also the Hebrew word for a fountain; as if tears since sin was introduced had become the spontaneous and ceaseless exponents of the existence and the depth of the fountain of sorrow that is within. It is this thought that the eye and the fountain are the same in Hebrew that gives such beauty to the words of Jeremiah, the sorrowful prophet: "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears." The original is exquisitely beautiful: Oh that my eye were what it also means-a fountain-" that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people." A day comes, according to this prom when not simply God will dry the tear-time may that-but when he will render tears impossible: it be that tears are sometimes shed from exces he will extinguish all tears of sorrow; he wil fountain no more well up from the depth those bitter waters of whic

eye is

40