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which open to us in the Apocalypse, show us the bright dwellers there filled with adoring wonderbreaking out into utterings of praise-and. with unrestrained rapture gazing for ever on God! And these bright revealings of their adoration convey to us that we must not expect to comprehend, here in this present world, the inward bliss, and the unuttered emphasis of joy which draw forth such wonder, such worship, and such praise. Oh! for a moment look up to those resplendent scenes! gaze upon that blaze of celestial brightness! see, see the Son of God invested with the radiance of glories ineffable! behold those angel-worshippers-those sainted adorersthose white-robed choristers who bend before the throne! They are enrapt with the beatific vision; a simultaneous throb of bliss thrills through each seraphic breast; in ecstacy of lauding homage they tune together their golden harps; ten thousand times ten thousand hands spontaneously sweep across the harmonious strings-one strain of jubilant rhapsody reverberates in sweet diapason from the concordant melodists of heaven's extolling choir; and the untiring song they sing in the fulness of irrepressible praise is: "Alleluja! Blessing and glory, and wisdom and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen."

Oh! ye redeemed servants of the Lord, what glory awaits you after the sufferings of this present time! How exalting, how animating a hope have you set before you! Your way may seem dark through this scene of sojourning-your trials may seem more than you can bear. But look often, and with Faith's keen eye, to the glory to be revealed. This the Apostle did—he looked not to the things which are seen, but to the things which are not seen; he looked to the glory breaking behind the gloom-to the Crown succeeding to the Cross. An eternal and exceeding weight of glory! Press onward with that beaming before you, and the toilsome way will not stay you, and the things of time will not hold you back; and your path shall be as the shining light shining more and more to the perfect day; for the nearer you approach to that glory the fuller shall it be revealed, and the more ardently will it be desired. Look with faith for Christ's glorious appearing. This was the consummation for which the Apostles longed. This is the fulfilment for which the struggling Church now waits and prays. "Looking for and hasting to the coming of the Lord," you will not dread his appearing, though He should be revealed whilst you are living on the earth; and if you sink down into your rest before

His coming, when you cease in your quiet graves from your labours, it will be with the blessed expectation that all who are in their graves shall yet hear His voice; that you shall see Him when He is revealed from Heaven, and then "be for ever with the Lord." Oh! blessed hope of exaltedness awaiting us! Filled with such fulness of expectation, who would not say with the dying Saint, "Go forth my soul, go forth, what fearest thou?" With such a staff in his right hand, and such a band to bind up his sinking heart, who does not feel the sufferings of this present time, all lost and swallowed up in this holiness-this blessednessthis glory-yet to be revealed!"

ILLUSTRATION IX.

THEY WHO SEEK ME EARLY SHALL FIND ME.

"FROM A CHILD THOU HAST KNOWN THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, WHICH ARE ABLE TO MAKE THEE WISE UNTO SALVATION, THROUGH FAITH, WHICH IS IN CHRIST JESUS."-2 Tim. iii. 15.

IN the former Illustrations of my subject-"The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the power of God unto salvation"-I have considered that Gospel and its power in their general effects; it remains that I now set before you three or four Illustrations of its domestic influence. And here I would observe, that to estimate the great blessings which our most Holy Faith has bestowed upon us, we must not look merely to many and great nations called by the Christian name, and the overthrow of the old systems of idolatry and darkness, and the higher tone of character, and the holier exercises of true piety, and the general outcalling of many lovely kindnesses and charities which had no scope and no existence before our Lord and Saviour "brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel;" but we must consider, too, the home

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