there we may be also. The departed saints shall welcome our faithfulness-for they await our coming, and without us they shall not be made perfect.

"Now the God of peace, that brought again. from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen."

PREACHED IN BALMORAL CASTLE,

Sunday, Sept. 29, 1872.

148

VIII.

LIGHT IN THE FUTURE.

REVELATION, xxii. 5.-" And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light."

HE

THE

future is to us the unknown. We speak of it as dark and inscrutable; and so in a true sense it is. We know nothing in detail of that future life which is promised us in Christ. We cannot conceive it, or bring before our minds any true image of it. The more we may try to do so, the less do we probably realise the Divine ideal. The picture may be splendid and attractive; but it is our own device. It is the reflection of our own imagination. It tells us nothing which it has not borrowed from our own thought. And it may be doubted whether all the pictures of this kind men have formed do not rather tend to lower than heighten the reality. They have

clothed and vivified the unknown; but they

reduced its sublimity There are minds in a order to keep the idea

have at the same time and carnalised its joys. time like ours which, in of a future life before them at all, find it necessary to unclothe the picture, and to sink all its details in the conception of an illimitable good.

But it may be said, Does not the language of such a chapter as this and the foregoing give us some definite picture of the future celestial life? I cannot think that it does, or that it is meant to do so. We read of a new heaven and a new earth of the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God as a bride adorned for her husband, having the glory of God, and her light like unto a jasper stone most precious; with three gates on the east, and on the north, and on the south, and on the west, and its walls having twelve foundations, garnished with all manner of precious stones; with a pure river, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb; and on the other side of the river the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. But the very accumulation of this imagery, and its parallelism of numbers, is enough to show us that it is not so much

designed to convey any clear image as to excite and stir our imagination to an indefinite wealth of excellence exceeding all our vision and grasp. It is rather of the nature of a child-picture, suggesting a transcendent reality, than any indication of what that reality is in itself. The colours are glowing and splendid; but the true heaven" the tabernacle of God with men "—is behind all the colouring and material imagery. The glory of the Divine presence is not in precious stones, nor crystal streams, nor fruitful and life-bearing trees, whose leaves are for healing -beautiful and consecrated as are all these

emblems of the higher life. It is something transcending our most glorious imaginings. For "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit."* The heavenly Future is a spiritual reality answering to a spiritual faculty in us, as yet imperfectly developed. It may be somehow foreshadowed by these material pictures-we can hardly tell; but it does not itself consist in any of them. They cannot adequately or even truly express it. As we pass them

* 1 Corinthians, ii. 9, 10.

before our minds, we may get some impulse towards a larger or more fitting conceptionand there are minds that can rest on such pictures, and delight in them; but we are never to forget that they are only pictures, and that the reality is something more than all-it may be, something very different from them all.

But can we then know nothing definitely of the future life? Is it to the Christian, no less than it was to the pagan, a formless vision? Are there no voices from it ever reach us? Cannot we say what it will be to the longing soul that looks towards it, or the weary spirit that sighs after it? This, at least, we can say, first of all, which is more than the pre-Christian mind could say with any certainty, that it is. If we are Christians at all, we cannot doubt that there is a future life. Or if it be too much to say that we cannot doubt this-for there are moments of intellectual perplexity in which we may doubt anything yet we know that it is a clear point of Christian faith that Christ hath made known to us eternal life in Himself. He hath assured us of an abiding existence beyond the present. He "hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel."*

* 2 Timothy, i. 10.