before the foundation of the world." Love made a provision for the forgiveness of our sins. Love had a Gospel ready for us. Love anticipates our deep

miseries and needs. Love never hesitates to make sacrifices for its objects. A man would give everything-life itself-for his best beloved. "God so loved. . . that he gave his only begotten Son." "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." Love is unchangeable and unchanging. I go into men's homes, and am deeply affected by the tenderness, forbearance, longsuffering, of love— by love that never wearies-that receives, embraces the sinner. Man's love is but the shadow of the Infinite.

Why is lovingkindness better than life?

Because it meets all the needs of life. Man has a physical nature, and its needs are met in the outward world, or it could not live. He has eyes, on which the light is ever painting pictures; ears, through which sound comes to the soul; senses, singularly delicate and susceptible, requiring gratification. Light is for the eye-music for the ear—a thousand influences minister to the senses. Man has a higher nature; he has mind, he has capacity for thought; he has an emotional nature, a heart with boundless wealth. What is mind without culture, education, converse, literature ? What is the heart without friends, relatives, love? Without lovingkindness how

little is known of life! God can come to man; He can dwell in man; He can reveal His love to man. The mind has life only in receiving truth. The heart has life only in love. You have life only in God, "His lovingkindness is better than life." There is no life without His love. God is necessary to man,the Divine and human elements are fitted to each other. Man finds his completeness in God.

The lovingkindness of God is better than life. This estimate is not exaggerated. It sanctifies lifeseparates it from everything that is "common or unclean"-beautifies it-lifts it up, and redeems it from degradation. It tests life that it may strengthen it, for God's love is not weakness; its kindness is displayed in needful discipline. "Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee."

There is a sense in which the lovingkindness of God is so much better than life, that it even reconciles us to the loss of life. We are delivered from the fear of death. "To die is gain." So shall we, divesting ourselves of the mortal, become immortal. The perishable and outward may die, but the spiritual goes to be for ever with God. "Therefore we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord." Love is to go to dwell with love-to commune with it for ever.

If you realise God's love to you, and form so high

an estimate of it, surely you will do well to say with David, "Therefore my lips shall praise thee." The highest utterances of life are musical. The soul, filled with the consciousness of the love of God, expresses its deep joy in its songs of praise. You may well praise God-you will find it a relief to you-it will be the fitting language of life. You may say, "Every day will I bless thee, and I will praise thy name for ever and ever." You may praise God in the worship of life-you may constantly lift up your heart, and as from an altar let praise like incense ascend to heaven. You may praise God in the sanctuary. Let God be praised in the Church in psalms and hymns, with the music of stringed instruments, and sweeter music of voices. "Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen." I have stood in those wonderful sanctuaries, built in olden times for the worship of God, and have heard at the end of every prayer, Amen, in tones of richest melody floating through the building, as if pillar and arch re-echoed the sound. Amen: let men in all ages say so. Amen: thus I breathe out my heart; thus I make the praise of the Church my own. Amen: so let it be. And let all the saints say, Amen.

TRUMPET VOICES TALKING WITH US.

"After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the Spirit."-REV. iv. 1, 2.

THE isle of Patmos was, so to speak, the stage on which the great providential dispensations of God were rehearsed. The solemn acts that were to fill up the history of ages, were presented in figure to the Apostle John, as the representative of the Church. In the Apocalypse the history of the world is written in symbolical characters, in chapters dimly revealing to us things which shall be hereafter." Our especial business, however, is to show that revelations are still made to us, these are present and personal, there are voices still talking with us, they are often trumpet-toned, and the result is, that we find ourselves in the Spirit, as if we had been lifted above the flesh.

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I. Revelations are made to us of great and solemn realities.

What a world this would be if there were no

voices from heaven, no Divine utterances, no spiritual revelations, if no door were opened in heaven, if there were no communication between heaven and earth, if there were no Gospel to meet our needs and our questionings. We should be left in our darkness, our perplexity, and our sin. That darkness would become deeper, that perplexity more fearful, and from that sin there would be no escape. We are naturally anxious to know if God thinks about us, and if so, what is the character of His thoughts; are they gracious and loving, have they led Him to interfere and interpose? We want to know if there are Divine purposes that include our fallen race, and if so, have they to do with our restoration, and will they be to the praise of the glory of God's grace? We are told that God does think about us. The thoughts that filled His mind in the depths of the everlasting are revealed to us. We read of "His purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began." We are led to the Cross that that wondrous fact may reveal and illustrate His purpose. We have a Gospel not of figures but of facts,-a Gospel symbolised by the priest blowing the trumpet over the sacrifice,-by the blast of the trumpet through the length and breadth of the land, ushering in the year of Jubilee,by the great trumpet which was blown, that men in exile and ready to perish, might return to their own land. Our Gospel is like the voice of a trumpet