light upon his path. He is "seeking for Jesus," seeking Him who has said, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John viii. 12). He thinks on what Christ has done, on what God hath said respecting it, on the testimonies which others have borne to the power and love of Christ, and on the invitations of the Gospel to sinners as sinners; even to such as feel themselves to be destitute of all good. He approves of this method of salvation, and takes it home to his own heart. The stone is now removed, the summit is gained, he stands on the Rock of Ages,-Heaven smiles over him, the beams of the Sun of Righteousness heal him,privileges and blessings, like a glorious harvest, are all around him,—and he sings his new song to the praise of the Saviour who redeemed him,to the Holy Spirit, by whom he now sees that he was led in a way that he knew not, and brought to a Saviour whom he despised and neglected,— and to the love of God, who provided the Saviour, and bestowed the Holy Ghost. His dependance has issued in delight. He now rejoices in God, in his word, his works, and ways, in his character and glory, and in the prospect unfolded to his view. His delight leads to dedication. He attaches himself to the service of God, identifies himself with his cause and people, and seeks, while waiting for glory, to work for God. The pyramids reared by man, and even "the mountains of God," are limited; you climb their summit, you can proceed no farther, and must soon return again to earth's low level; but the spiritual staircase of which we have been speaking pierces the skies. It is like the ladder which Jacob saw in vision, which reached unto heaven, and on the top of it stood the God of Israel. True, this spiritual staircase has many good landing-places, where noble entertainment is provided, and from whence glorious prospects are to be seen. But those who have really begun to ascend, will not be content to tarry long by the way, but will still press upwards. One who had known the horrors of the deep cavern, and whose songs may be heard pealing through all time, while he stood on one of these landing-places, " a man in Christ," "rejoicing in the Lord alway," yet said, "Not as though I had attained," "I follow after," "I press towards the mark, for the prize of my high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Let us be likeminded with him, and we shall then know even now what it is to be "quickened with Christ, to be raised up to gether, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus ;" and "in the ages to come God will show the exceeding riches of his grace, in his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus." This will be the grand summit. This will be full deliverance, and complete salvation. We shall stand in unclouded light, "before the throne," "in the temple," "to go no more out." This will be the highest dignity, combined with the deepest humility. There will be no fear of falling; but the most entire and simple dependance will be realized. The strongest sense of obligation, will be united with the liveliest feelings of gratitude. And connected with all this joy and satisfaction, there will be a perpetual progress in knowledge, enjoyment, and holiness. The Mount of Glory will still have heights rising above those upon which the most exalted saints stand; and these gained, others yet higher will be presented; and as joy after joy, and blessing after blessing is realized, the soul will still look down to the horrible pit, and along the path which it once climbed in weariness and conflict, and will give all the glory of its deliverance, guidance, and blessedness to Him to whom alone all is due. Reader, when you climb your staircase at night to rest upon your bed, ask yourself these questions, "Am I really climbing towards heaven? Is Christ the ladder by whom I am mounting? Is his name my whole dependance, and likeness to him my chief desire?" Soon the time must come when your lifeless corpse, shut up in the narrow house, will be brought down those stairs, which perhaps you have so often climbed, where then will your deathless spirit be, and what will it be doing? Where is it now, and what is its employment now? Are you found in Christ, and following after Christ? Are you abiding by faith in the propitiation of Jesus, and seeking to walk as he walked? (1 John ii. 6.) If not, if you are neglecting Him, and pursuing with ardour the vanities of earth, what a desolate eternity is before you if you persevere, and close life thus. But if He is your life, your all, your pattern, your glory, to you he says, "Where I am, there shall ye be also." London. "GOD SHALL WIPE AWAY ALL TEARS." This is a strangely beautiful expression, and full of meaning. It imports not only the absence of sorrow from heaven, but its removal by the Divine hand. Yet it cannot mean, as the words appear to imply, that sorrow shall find admission into heaven, and that God's infinite love will remove it. The expression must be a beautiful figure to represent the fulness, and Divine origin of the heavenly felicity. We are to conceive of God's relation to the blessed in heaven as analogous to that of the loving and beloved friend whose privilege it is to wipe away our tears. 1. The passage thus interpreted teaches the tenderness of the Divine sympathy, and the intimacy of our fellowship with God. It is the act only of the loving and beloved friend to wipe away our tears. Man loves no intrusion on his grief, but that of the dear and trusted. The sympathy of the unknown and untried is never sought, and coldly welcomed. The heart yearns only for the sympathy of the beloved, in whose kindness it finds relief, in whose unchanging love it finds solace under the crushing woe; it rejects all other sympathy. On the other hand, sympathy in sorrow is the tenderest, and most delicate act which friendship has to perform. Only the faithful and pure venture to offer it; they alone can administer it with delicacy and effect; they alone may so far intrude as to participate the grief, and remove the tears. Often, indeed, human sympathy fails to wipe away the tears, it must be content to mingle others with them. This intercourse, on either side so intimate and beautiful, fitly represents the blessed and confiding intercourse between the glorified and their Almighty Father; an intercourse so exalted that the closest fellowship of earth is as the starlight to the sun in comparison to its glory; the believer opens his spirit to the irradiations of Divine love, every faculty glowing with intense delight, and the Almighty Father pours the tide of his infinite compassion upon the spirit of his child. Heaven is our "Father's house." The intercourse with God is unrestricted. On earth they were at a distance from his pavilion,-in heaven they stand in his presence, and before his throne. When on earth, they "walked with God," how much more so now in the heavenly city. When on earth, every cry of his feeblest child was sacred in his ear, every thought and desire was watched with interest, the "hairs of his head were all numbered;" in heaven the believer will enjoy the unreserved fulness of his friendship, will luxuriate in his parental goodness, will bathe for ever in the sunlight of his smile. 2. It imports the fulness of the believer's satisfaction in God. On earth man wipes away our tears; in heaven God. Here we have human sources of comfort under our disasters; in heaven the chief source of our blessedness is found in God. Even here true and lasting consolation is found only in heavenly sources; we have the sympathy of our Great High Priest; we "cast all our care on him, who careth for us." Our hearts are relieved of their burden by communion with the skies. Light from heaven streams down upon our earthly darkness. The lovingkindness of other worlds silences the sorrows of our present lot. The finite has every aspiration realised, and every need met in the fellowship of the infinite. It is yet more true of the heavenly existence, that God himself will be the source of the believer's satisfaction and delight. That which is material, that which is created, may minister subordinate pleasure, but true and absorbing felicity is found only in the uncreated and eternal. Here a man's capacity of knowledge may be exercised without restraint or end. Here his power of affection and enjoyment will be immeasurably surpassed by the infinite love of his Almighty Father. Here his admiration of the pure and good will be satisfied in the fountain of universal holiness. All the aspirations of his glorified nature will be realised, his capacity of enlarging thought and feeling will be amply met in the infinitude of Deity. The sacred writers constantly represent the Divine Being as the source of heavenly blessedness. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake in thy likeness." "He that sitteth on the throne, shall dwell among them. The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them to living fountains of waters." Here we drink of polluted fountains, there of pure. Here our happiness is often primarily connected with our fellow-men, there our affections turn to the Father himself. The glori fied will assuredly find no little blessedness in intercourse with unfallen beings, and the society of redeemed men; it will be something to recount the history of earth, to study the administration of Providence to our race; it will be something to have clear views of those high truths which towered above our comprehension on earth, and have wearied the intellects of angels; it will be something to have opened to us the wonders of Jehovah's power and goodness, in those vast provinces of his empire beyond human travel, to behold the whole universe teeming with exhaustless exhibitions of his glory; but all this fails to satisfy the perfect mind. God himself, and not his works, must be the portion of the soul. Man's intellect finds satisfaction in the study of the illimitable. Man's spirit finds repose on the bosom of the Infinite. Without the destruction of consciousness, without the annihilation of separate existence, the beautiful dream of Eastern philosophy shall be realised; man shall be absorbed in Deity. God himself is the fountain of blessedness to his people. "The Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and thy God thy glory." 3. It imports the perpetuity of our blessedness. If man wipes away our tears, they soon flow again. Human sympathy often fails us in the hour of need. Friends we love often pass before us to the Father's presence. In some sorrows human sympathy is powerless. "A wounded spirit who can bear?" But if God wipes away our tears, they disappear for ever. Inferior sources of happiness are soon exhausted. Perpetual variety and change is required to stimulate our interest. "The eye is never satisfied with seeing." Human friendship fails to meet our yearnings. But if our satisfaction and blessedness are sought in God, they partake of his purity, his unchangeableness, his eternity. "In his presence is fulness of joy; at his right hand there are pleasures for ever more." The felicity of heaven can experience no diminution; it flows from an exhaustless source. It can know no interruption; it springs from the friendship of Almighty love. It shall have no end; the smile of the everblessed One on his children endureth as long as his throne. His arm of mercy encircles them for ever. The pavilion of his glory is their everlasting home. Let us, then, bear patiently life's heaviest burdens. The disappointments and sufferings of earth will soon be forgotten in the ineffable repose of heaven. Bristol. N. H. THE CHRISTIAN'S PATH. Much in sorrow, much in woe, Though the way with thorns be strewed, Though temptations sore abound, And thy daily path surround, Thou must not despondence know- When to tempt thee Satan tries, Think of Him who went before, REST IN HEAVEN. "There remaineth a rest."-Heb. iv. 9. There is an hour of peaceful rest, There is a soft, a downy bed, 'Tis fair as breath of ev'n; There is a home for weary souls, By sin and sorrow driv'n; When tossed on life's tempestuous shoals, There, fragrant flow'rs, immortal, bloom, There, rays divine disperse the gloom :- Appears the dawn of HEAVEN! Cales and Sketches. "BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN." A man sat by the couch of his dead wife. The lips he loved were mute, the hands were still, the voice was dumb, and its dying echoes lingered only in the chambers of his brain. She had not been long in the land of heaven, that wife, and the wings of the angels who bore away her soul, had left a faint trace of the glory of their presence upon her forehead. The man had not yet fully recovered from the shock of her last farewell. His head, as he pressed his hands against it, seemed crowded and confused. "Better off "-he just remembered that somebody had said it, as he staggered out of the room and left the women with his dead. Mocking words! how COULD she be better off? He had surrounded her with luxuries, he had loved her with a tender love, passing the common love of man; she knew no want, no care,-she was still young, beautiful, fresh to him as a new creation,how could God take her from him! As he mused, he gazed on the white still face; he would not believe it was death. He folded his arms about the stiffening form, and pressed her to his heart as if he would throw the warm current of his life, from his throbbing veins, into the pale blue lines that threaded the marble face. In vain,no answering pressure,-still cold, inexorable, stony,-dead,-dead! Then the fountains of his grief broke forth, and the sound of his mourning went up to God. It was a bitter grief, a real sorrow. The man had loved his wife, had been true to her in thought, word, and deed; he could call heaven to witness that. She had never shed a tear that he would not joyfully have kissed away; he had never committed an act that he was unwilling her pure eyes should see; and she had seemed as his own soul, so present was she with him always. But good and gentle, and upright as this man was he had no present Christ to comfort him. No Saviour bent with him over the coffin lid, no risen Lord stood at the portals of the gloomy grave; and thus it was that in his grief he was almost in despair. Old Jeanette was the name of a wrinkled crone who lived at the foot of a steep hill in a little tumble-down hut that was, like herself, crumbling to decay. Jeanette bent forward towards the earth with age; so did her poor little hut. Jeanette was very scantily appareled, and likewise was her homely dwelling-place. A bed of straw, a broken chair, a board for a table,-that was all. Here the comparison ceased, for Jeanete, broken and worn-out as she was, had always the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, while the forlorn and crazy cottage held only the emaciated frame of the poor old Scotch woman. The dead wife lying so cold and still, had been a good friend to Jeanette; she had given her meat, and drink, and comforting words, as often as she saw her. "So," said Jeanette tying a ribbon of faded black over her Scotch cap, "I must e'en go to the leddy's funeral, though, perhaps, the great folks will say na." But nobody said "na," for there were many poor people there, and old Jeanette had a seat near the coffin, for all she was so meanly dressed with a scant plaid gown, and one poor black ribbon crossed over her cap. Jeanette's heart bled for the suffering husband, and when he stood at the grave, with a face as white and rigid as the marble shafts that gleamed around, Jeanette whispered, "The puir body, does he ken na God ?" This thought haunted her, and the next day old Jeanette might be seen, slowly toiling up the hill towards the rich man's house. "Tell him a puir, mean body has come to gie him comfort," she said, as the domestic refused her, saying that he received no visitors. "Dinna stan' lookin' in my face, mon," she continued; "Go tell him I ha' brought a message fra' the Lord of life and glory." The man went, returned, and ushered Jeanette into a darkened room, where sat the mourner. It was the room where his wife had been wont to sit, and he had gathered her precious little memorials on a table before him, and now rocked back and forth, with his forehead bowed in his hands, a white handkerchief thrown over his head, and falling on his dry, tearless eyes. Jeanette stood in the doorway, her faded locks combed over her hollow cheeks, her seamed face lighted up with an unearthly light, as she exclaimed," The Lord comfort ye." |