smooth, the steepest hill easy, the biting frosts, the beating winds, or the torrid heat to be all tolerable, because you are animated by that great passion that strengthens and nerves for the hardest service, and for certain victory. The Apostle Paul's love to his Saviour was so strong that he said what he felt, that the affliction he endured was light. So the patriarch, speaking of his love for Rachel, said that the seven years appeared but as a few days for the love that he bare her. How much more in the instance of Divine love! Divine love kindled in the human heart will think what others only dream of, speak what others only think, and triumph where others strive and fail.

"Yet shall not thy teachers be removed out of thy sight." What a beautiful thought is this "Thy teachers shall not be removed out of thy sight!" They are often removed now. Where are the teachers of your infancy, your boyhood, and your youth? There spring up dreary and desolate feelings when one grows up to manhood, and looks back upon the scenes of his youth. Look back any who have attained to forty or fifty or sixty years of age-look back. The friends of your youth, the teachers of your first lessons, those with whom you spent so many sunny hours, those with whom you took sweet counsel together-where are they? Echo on earth only repeats your words. A voice from heaven comes down, like music from the sky, saying: "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord: yea, saith the Spirit, from henceforth they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them." Our teachers we shall not be deprived of any more; that is to say, there shall be no ignorance there to dissipate, no error striking its roots in our hearts to be dug up, no uncharitableness, no suspicion, no doubt, no difficulty; for thine eyes shall see and thine ears shall hear thy teachers. At that bright day everything we see shall be a teacher. It was so in Paradise, and the reason it is not so now is that sin has stained the lesson book, and all but struck dumb the teacher; but when sin shall have fled from God's renovated world,

when imperfection shall be done away with, and perfection without limits, and love and life without end, shall be our experience, then God's mind shall be seen written on the stars in the sky, and his will shall be legible in the flowers on the earth. Every stream by its chimes as it rolls to the sea will be a teacher; every wave as it breaks upon the shore will be a teacher; the dewdrops, like jewels, shall reflect Christ's grand name; the sea, like a bright mirror, shall throw up and fling back his glory; every rose shall remind you of Sharon's rose; every star, of the bright and morning star; and all things in the height and all things in the depth, and the whole universe itself shall teach marvellous lessons. In the words of a poetess lately deceased, who has written true poetry, inspired often with the noblest sentiment—

"Christ will send us down the angels,

And the whole earth and the skies
Will be illumed by altar candles
Lit for blessed mysteries;

And a priest's hand through creation
Waveth calm and consecration."

Or, in the words of an American poet

"The ocean looketh up to heaven,

As 'twere a living thing;

The homage of its waves is given
In ceaseless worshipping.

"They kneel upon the sloping sands,
As bends the human knee,

A beautiful and tireless band,
The priesthood of the sea.

"The green earth sends its incense up
From every mountain shrine,
From every flower and dewy cup

That greeteth the sunshine.

"The sky is as a temple arch,
The blue and wavy air

Is glorious with the spirit march
Of messengers of prayer.

"The gentle moon, the kindling sun,
The many stars are given

As shrines to burn earth's incense on-
The altar-fires of heaven."

But human poetry cannot reach or overtake the magnificence of the spectacle of the world that will be. It has been left for the apocalyptic pen justly and truly to portray it; and only in that grand Apocalypse can we see what a glory will settle down upon our world when all things will be made new. What a radiant

lesson book will this universe be, and what a blessed heaven is in reversion for those who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and in truth! The future and everlasting rest will not be spent in ceaselessly singing, or in ceaselessly reading the picture and comparing it with the original; but we shall grow in all kinds and in all degrees of knowledge. The telescope gives us now but a glimpse of the magnificence of that universe which we shall then see no more through a glass darkly. The mere outposts and sentinels of that brilliant army are all that even the telescope can overtake. The microscope shows us that even in a drop of water, on a blade of grass, on a young bud, on a tender root, are mysteries the most marvellous, and evidences of wisdom, skill, and beneficence the most untiring. In the world as it will be we shall be in a state where the microscope must be imperfection, where the telescope will be useless; and when we shall see as we are seen into all heights and all depths, and penetrate all mysteries, and unravel all difficulties, I can really comprehend that there is in reserve for us a joy unspeakable and full of glory, when the glass through which we now see darkly and dimly shall be shattered, and we shall see as we are seen, and know even as we are known. Who does not wish for that noon of time, that brilliant close of the chequered universe, the fulfilment of this grand prophecy, the realization of this living and blessed hope, when there shall be no sin to vex, no disappointments to fret, no evil to intrude, no tears, no death, no crying, no pain, but when there shall be positively the glory of Deity, the presence of the Lamb-the reunion with all that we parted with on earth, whom we would have kept because we loved them, but whom God took because he loved them more-faces in the shadow of the

grave shall emerge into the sunshine, voices now silent in death shall be heard in more musical reverberations, footsteps familiar in their fall as household words shall be heard again, and those we parted with, we wickedly said for ever, we shall then thankfully hail, the broken circle will be completed, and the missing links found, for all things are made new.

LECTURE XXVIII.

THE CURSE TURNED INTO BLESSING.

NEITHER earth, nor air, nor sky-neither man, nor beast, nor bird, nor fish is as originally made. A great curse fell on all six thousand years ago. But there shall be

"No more curse."-REVELATION Xxii. 3.

THE primal curse is written in these words: "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow, and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorus also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread, till thou return unto the ground: for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."-Gen. iii. 16-19. On the descent of that curse the brutes of the field, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea underwent a total change, not of shape or plumage, perhaps, but of disposition. Is it possible to believe that the whole brute creation was originally constituted as we now find it? that creatures called into being by a benevolent God, whose were the resources of infinite wisdom, devoured each other in Paradise? that man's eyes were originally meant to gaze on bloodshed, and witness the horrors of a battle-field; and his ears to hear, amid the melody of brooks and the music of winds, the cries of creation groaning in pain and seeking to be delivered?