space between hope and fear; and, if they even have faith at all in a future state, yet is this faith, upon examination, found, in most cases, to be so barren and comfortless, and at the same time so wavering and weakly-founded, that death laughs at it, and, in general, is wont to dash this brittle, glassy shield into a thousand pieces, even with its first attack.

outlines; and, if we believe therein, we know also in what we believe. He shows behind the clouds no barren, immeasurable expanse, no district of air "without form and void," the presence of which could only produce discomfort and uneasiness. He shows us something more habitable and more precious; a house, a heavenly paternal mansion. "These But into this circle of wise men, who, as the are but figures!" you say. Truly, they are so; fruit and bloom of speculations of more than a but the objects of this truth have a deep reality, thousand years, have only to show a poor and bar- and are more than oratorical figures and sports of ren conjecture that there is perhaps a futurity and reason. Certainly heaven is not a building with an eternal existence of the soul, there now steps roof and walls; yet, it is a real habitation, where forward the Christian, with beaming countenance we shall know one another, and be with each other and head triumphantly erect, and exclaims exul- upon terms of intimate communion. The exprestingly, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, sion "my Father's house" implies a happy family where is thy victory?" "We know," he says in community, a confidential intercourse, living with a firm and decided tone, "that if our earthly house and in the presence of the Father, pointing the of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a buil-way to naught but love and peace, and this is the ding of God, a house not made with hands, eternal reality, the essential, in the image. O, how prein the heavens." And, if you ask him for the cious is the possession of the certain knowledge source of this his knowledge, for the basis of such respecting this mansion beyond the clouds, and, joyful hope, he repeats to you not the loose, flying when weary of the misery of earth, we would fain sand of a dream of imagination; he refers you to wish to escape in spirit to a better world, how sothe words of one in whose mouth men and devils lacing to the heart to know we are enabled to reach, tried in vain to find deceit, who supported his on the wings of faith, a fairer, brighter territory. words by the deeds of a God, who, in proof that How cheering to the heart, amidst the gloomy condeath cannot irrevocably hold his prey, has ap- fusion of this age, to know one land where reign proached the graves, and, with a sign, summoned continued peace and harmony; to know, in the the dead from corruption; yea, who supported his kingdom of decay and withering, of another realm assertion of the eternal life of those that are his where the roses bloom eternally; to be able to own, not only by the valid rock of Elijah's heavenly rejoice, amidst the wild dissonances of the earth, ascent, but also the pillar, incomparably more glo- in a region where all is happy unison; and, rious and stronger still, of his own resurrection from the tempestuous waves of the pilgrim's life, and visible elevation. Know ye this man? Attend, to behold the haven where all the storms are silent, listen to him when he saith: "In my Father's and from whence, once anchored in safety, no farhouse are many mansions: if it were not so, I would ther launch is made into the foaming billows. Ah, have told you: I go to prepare a place for you: how comforted and cheerful do we pass through and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will this vale of tears, when we have this glorious come again, and receive you unto myself, that glance of faith! The gloomy space in which we where I am, there ye may be also." Behold, then, breathe is, happily, not walled in; and, even if it the veil of the clouds is removed, and the bounda- were, and the feet thus chained to the ground, yet ries which separate time from eternity are lifted to the ardent, longing mind, nothing can oppose away with a mighty and authorized hand, and we itself. Behind yon blue clouds, it finds its golden have now naught else to trouble us, but to behold anchorage. The stars are as shining lamps of the and enjoy, rejoice and be glad, in the glorious paternal home; the moon, like a door-keeper, reprospect of wondrous beauty, which here discloses gards the pilgrim with a mournful eye, as if it itself to us. It is only, it is true, that miraculous said, "Ah, would thou wert already here on high!" eye we call faith which sees this revealed glory. the very thunders sound like festive chimes from But how fixedly and plain, how distinct and defi- the bells of that native home! nite, does the eye of faith discern, when the per- Yes, we thus behold only a reflected image of spective glass is the word of Him in whom we be- our individual future glory, which beams upon_us hold, in manner and gait, "the Lord from heaven," from the triumphant ascension of our prophet. Lo, and out of whose discourse there echoed to the when the cranes and storks desire to visit the warmer devils a language like the language of a man who home of the south then does one of their number at the same time is God most high. Now, this start first as their leader, and forthwith the whole man, who is just as much at home in the realm of troop take wing after, with the lively note of mispirits as in the circuit of what is corporeal and gration, " Farewell, ye cold, misty vales!" And visible, whither does he direct us with our hopes, thus do we also join company with the crane, that our yearning? Does he, perhaps, point only to a yonder soars up from the wilderness, and who, as vision like the wisdom of this world? Does he the scripture says, "was a man subject to like present us with only dim conjectures of a dark, far passions as we are." In spirit we journey on beremote futurity? Or does he give us only incom-hind him and joyfully flap the wings of hope. prehensible phrases about a sea of spirits, into which Even now do we behold with our eyes whereto the the souls of men will one day flow back, and unin- road leads, and the pioneer shows us already the telligible notions of an existence beyond time and way. When in the spring of the year a tree begins space, by which nothing can be understood? Ah, to shoot, and even if but one blossom displays itself no, far from that! He gives us an evident, palpable, conceivable nearness of object. What he offers us does not dissolve from before our eyes into mist and vapour. It has form, clearness, solidity, and sharp

on a small twig, then are we glad, and know that this tree lives, and will soon show forth in all the clothing of that season. Thus, from that spiritual tree in the desert, whose root is Christ, a small

twig strikes out, and one bud unfolds itself and becomes a celestial flower of wondrous loveliness. We observe it with heartfelt pleasure, and reflect that also at some future day so also will the other branches be forced into verdure, and every germ on that tree unbosom itself into a similar florescence of Paradise. Yes, thou bold climber! continue only on in advance; we follow! For our sakes, also, has the Pioneer paved the road! The portal of the clouds is open to us, the path is beaten, the passport prepared, the quarters appointed, and the toll paid. And, even if there be no wheels of fire to convey us hence, yet are there still the hands of angels, and who knows what more besides. From before the scene of Elijah's departure, the veil has only once been removed. We die, we enter the cloud; but who knows what will meet us within that cloud?

We part from the glittering and heart-elevating picture of our history; yet I cannot let the curtain drop, without having first drawn up another opposite to it, of a very different character. Behold, then, yonder; ah, what a scene! A frightful mount of death; a blood-stained martyr's cross; a dark and dismal night all round: and, from out the gloom is sent forth the shriek of anguish and wailing. What is to come to pass here? A scene is presented here quite different from that we have witnessed to-day in the desert. Here languishes one that is just nailed to the cross, and there a sinner ascends with jubilee. Here one that is blameless languishes in the horrors of hell; and there a transgressor triumphs in a chariot of fire. Here the loveliest star of the morning waves in the night of blood-spilling; and there one worthy of death soars in the company of angels past the gate of death, even to Paradise. Here a lamb without blemish is made to bleed under the sword of the wrath of the living God; and there a worm couches, as a child of high favour, upon the breast of the eternal Father. What contrasts! What vast enigmatic contradictions, in appearance at least; and yet, closely obscured, what a deep inward connection between the two opposite events. For the one is stipulated for by the other, and the former finds in the latter the prompting motive on which it was founded. Know the Son of God has changed places with the sinner. He has become the sins of Elijah, and Elijah was his justification; he has taken on himself the punishment for sin; therefore does the sinner inherit his blessedness. He has drunk the curse of the transgressor, therefore the transgressor receives his blessing. Behold in this wondrous exchange of Immanuel with the worm, the riddle is solved, and a reason found why a worm, in that passage of our text, travels to heaven as though he were a God. That blood which we see trickling yonder from the cross, even that it is which gives to the cloud-born chariot its ascending power, that oils the axles of its wheels of flame, that makes the horses of fire thus fly forth, and opens for them the bolts and the

barriers.

Come then, for to-day we leave the luminous wilderness. But, how do we depart from this depository of miraculous power? I think with the choral song of the angels and just men made perfect: "worthy the lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour and glory, and blessing." Amen.

THE PARTING INVOCATION.

WHEN we read the words, "And Jesus upbraided them with their unbelief," we read something there which, as is well known, has not happened once only, but innumerable times. Against nothing did the Saviour so often and so earnestly draw the sword as against unbelief; and that with good reason; for unbelief is the source of all sin, the iron-bond of iniquity, the brazen bolt before the gate of heaven, and the most formidable chain with which man is riveted to the kingdom of darkness.

O, there is an abhorrence about unbelief, from whatever side we consider it. To destroy, undermine, and darken, is all it is capable of doing. It extinguishes sun, moon, and stars. It chokes up the fountains of our life; envelopes it in darkness and death; and engenders nothing save deformities and mischief. It makes the world a moral desert, where no divine footsteps are heard, where no angels ascend and descend; where no living hand clothes the fields, feeds the birds, and regulates events, where only machine rattles on close to machine; where, in place of an animating breath, a dead spring-work sets things in motion, and no everpresent solicitude of love acts in secret. Thus it transforms the world into a mighty charnel-house, and makes of nature, the garden of the Lord, a mere automaton; of history, that miraculous web of the works of an All-ruling will, a schemeless, chequered medley of chance circumstance; and out of man, this pupil of an Almighty preceptor, a creature who owns no other directors of his life than blind fate and himself; and which renders prayer an unmeaning thing, a useless and superfluous ceremony. Thus, does it banish all that is of a higher nature from the world, and from the life of man; thus does it neutralize and annihilate even the small vestige of heaven that still remains upon earth, and barricades, as it were, the portals to all higher regions.

But faith unfastens them again. It peoples nature and life with high and noble guests. It beholds an invisible universe dawn upon the world we see, and, before its eye, the earth appears as a scene of unbroken miracles and divine acts. It everywhere discerns the administration, the operation, and direction, of an Almighty Triune Deity. In the tempests, it beholds messengers sent by him: in the lightnings, it sees angels sent out in his service. It has eagle's wings for the worm of the dust, and alone bears the keys of the realms that lie beyond the grave.

Great and wonderful, it is true, appears the spirit of man, when it, for instance, as some one says, with threads more wonderful than the autumn spinner, carried along by the wind over mountain and valley, as it works in the light open air, spins the web of its own thoughts from one fixed star to another, from one boundary of the milky path over to the other, and, in moments quickly numbered, feels the narrowness of space which the measureline, yea, even though it were borne by a beain of light, would scarcely, after the lapse of thousands of years, be able to attain. And yet, how weak and inexperienced does the spirit appear in the midst of those sublime paths; how little appears the bold adventurer in the ocean of the firmament, when he * Mark, xvi. 14.

knows not how to raise one of those radiant curtains against which he brushes, as it were, in passing; and is forced to confess that he certainly guessed them to be but the sparkling walls of a mysterious world which was concealed behind them, but, over which walls his eye reached not; and, of the unknown land, therefore, he can state nothing with confidence. Enclosed within the narrow limits of time there remains to him only the poor unelevating spirit with curtain and veils. With whatever boldness and vigour he may wing the flight of his thought, man cannot soar beyond the limits of the visible world, until he become as a little child, and seats himself at the feet of the word of revelation, in a listening and docile attitude, and, deny-air, no less truly than Noah in his ark was borne ing himself and forsaking his own strength, commits his soul to the pinions of faith. But then it is, indeed, well with him. The prison is burst open; the vale of tears swims in the rosy light of the unclosed eternity. The poor longing heart has now a place where to find rest and shelter, amidst the storms of this life; and, whatever beloved object the grave has snatched from it, an open heaven now restores, glorified and eternal.

2 KINGS, II. 12.

"And Elisha saw it, and he cried, 'My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof.'

And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own

clothes, and rent them in two pieces."

History leads us to-day once more back into that desert where we were allowed to be the witnesses of a spectacle which in glory and comfort-teeming import, in the thousands of years of the anti-christian era, scarcely finds its equal, and which, in the temple-roof of the old testament, formed, as it were, the sun, from which the sweetest stars of promise that have shone down on the pilgrims of God in their night of tears received at the first their full radiance. The man whom we were wont so often to accompany in the instructive passages of his life, and who, by his whole appearance, has won our heart in the self-same degree that he has compelled from us the deepest admiration; alas, today, for the first time, we meet him no longer amongst the mortal children of the world. He has shaken the dust of the earth from his feet, and only Elisha, his faithful companion, meets us still in the wilderness, beyond Jordan. Ah, how can we describe the feelings of the bereaved man! He yields us a glance into his wondrously agitated heart; and the points on which we intend to-day to dwell a few moments with our contemplations are Elisha's AFTER-GAZE, HIS PARTING INVOCATION, and HIS LAMENT.

happy city, which the glory of the Lord doth enlighten? And is he really awake? Or does he only witness a vision? Ah, for the moment he is himself in doubt. Yet he sees clearly he is not lying on his couch at home, but that he is abroad in the wilderness. Yes, his eyes are really open; he is convinced he has not slept, and is clearly conscious that Elijah was only the moment before standing at his side, and conversing with him! He sees the mantle of the ascended prophet floating down from the clouds, and his own hand it is that grasps it. Ah, no! it is no vision that he beholds: it is all reality. His friend, his spiritual father, does indeed soar yonder in the chariot through the over the entombing waves of the deluge; no less, verily, than that Moses at the head of his nation traversed dry shod, like a lord of the elements, through the surging walls of the waters of the Red Sea. But, ah! who had ever witnessed such a sight as this? Verily did he need a sustaining hand from above, to keep him from sinking under the overwhelming feelings which must have seized him in this most solemn moment of his life.

Blessed man that he was to whom it was granted to witness such a scene! And still more blessed are we also, who, in the closing scene of Elijah's history, see the same as Elisha, and by God's grace are no longer of the number of those of whom the Saviour said, "Thou hast hid it from the wise and prudent!" As the blinded people of yore, when the Father called with an audible voice over his son, " I have glorified it, and will glorify it again," heard only a rumbling noise in the clouds, but no language, no intelligible sound, no word of God, and said to one another, "it thunders!" they thus only saw in what enraptures us-namely, in the ascent of Elijah - what do you suppose? Merely an ordinary thunder-storm, and the whole fiery equipage dissolves into a flash of lightning, which unhappily-must have struck the poor prophet! What say ye to such profound effect of contemplation? But that is the judgment and curse of these people, that, "hearing, they hear not," and, ing, they cannot see; that, before their shortsighted mole-looks, the most glorious occurrences shrink into the most unmeaning, trivial, every-day matters; and that only falsehood, disguised in the garb of truth, has weight with them; truth, however, throwing over itself one cloak and veil after another, and letting itself be neither seen nor touched by them.

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You know, my friends, of how great consequence it was to Elisha that it should be granted to him I. Like the royal eagle, Elijah soars, in his car to be present as an eye-witness of the ascension of triumph, betwixt heaven and earth. The waving of his master. This sight insured him the fulfilmanes of the horses of fire sport upon the clouds ment of his own request; yea, from the very comlike sunbeams, their neighing is the rolling thun-mencement his prayer was therein answered. For, der, their hoofs send forth a thousand lightnings, by that very scene, the circle of his spiritual vision and the wheels urge themselves upwards like two had at once extended, as it were, even to the most circling stars of fire. Elisha beholds with tottering secret cabinet of the paternal heart of God, to the knees the unheard-of spectacle, overwhelmed by deepest recesses of His love for sinners; a light the grandeur of such a scene, and struck, as it had passed suddenly upon him in that event, upon were, to the earth by the power of the sensations the especial relation of the Most High towards which overcome him. But does he see aright? His children in grace, which, in new testamentary Is it really an historical fact, that the man of his glory and clearness, scarcely ceded anything to that heart thus darts forth with a miraculous fiery equi- in the radiance in which the connection appeared to page from one layer of clouds to the other, to the that man who ventured to announce to the besilent regions of the world of light, towards the lieving sinners, "There is therefore now no con

now also as the Second Adam, as the Son of Man, "as the Head of His Church," as the Surety of His ransomed. Not only does He now present Himself before the Father; He represents at the same time all His members. So in like manner as the Eternal Father saw, in the former period, the whole human race in that one individual Adam; so does He now behold all the generations of believers presented before his countenance, in Christ Jesus, their perfected High-priest. In Christ's person, He beholds our person; in Christ's obedience, our obedience; in Christ's loveliness and beauty, ours also: and, whilst He now extends His love, tenderness, and favour to Christ, He in Christ extends these at the same time to ourselves. Thence do the Scriptures also style the love of God to His children ever as "a love in Christ Jesus." Would that I could make this great matter still more evident by an example from every-day life; but there exist on earth no corresponding circumstances. Meantime, imagine to yourselves, for instance, that king Pharaoh had judged of the other sons of Jacob according to the picture he had formed of Joseph. He would thus consider them all worthy of his affection in the same degree as the latter, and love them, from that cause, with the very same warmth, and appoint for them also the same honours, benefits, and privileges, which were allotted to Joseph, loading them equally with favours. Is it not true that Pharaoh would, in that case, have beheld, in Joseph, Reuben, Simeon, Benjamin, and all the brothers according to their several names; have embraced them in Joseph, have held them dear in Joseph; and Joseph would have represented his brothers before the king, in his own person have brought their forms before the eye of Pharaoh, and, in a word, have represented them?

stupid language when we maintain "that God is seated above on His throne, and receives us in His loving arms; no bragging boast, when we say the heavens stand open for us, like the cordial home of our Father, and every moment we are bid welcome above in the most loving manner. It therefore only now depends upon our vividly comprehending this mighty matter with Paul, in neither wishing nor desiring to be found aught else but in Christ.

If you

If you will not be consoled until you are holy, then will you be found in your own glory. will doubt God's mercy, because you look upon your faith as still imperfect, in this your faith will you then be found. If you believe that God will not love you as long as you feel so withered in your heart, then will you suffer yourself to be found in these your sentiments. If you think that God would then have greater delight in you, if this and that virtue were but once to be seen in you in perfect beauty, then again it is your virtues in which God shall find you. No, no; regard with Paul every thing as mischief and folly, and rejoice that God acknowledges you in Christ; and in Christ behold yourself standing every moment before the presence of the Father; then from one moment to the other the inward sensation of rapture will fill you of possessing the whole love of the Eternal. And ah! what is it when the friendliness of the Father in Christ beams into our soul, and the transporting conviction is alive within us, but that we repose with Christ in the bosom of the selfsame favour and paternal love. He who by faith knows how to live and breathe in this love, as in his proper element, ah, he has indeed attained that joyfulness which, as John says, "is perfect, and hath boldness in the day of judgment." Such an one is like a tree "planted by the rivers of water," and exults with the apostle, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." He has already overcome the world; and, walking in heaven, he beholds sin, death, and the devil, lying bound and prostrate at his feet!

You see then, my beloved, that the matter rests thus:- that we arrive at the evangelic position, in the full sense of the word, only in like manner as Elisha was drawn over to the new testamentary element- beneath the opened heaven, and in the livingly comprehensive vision of one elevated above heaven, of whom, yonder, the bold explorer over the desert by the Jordan was but the prefigurative, shadow.

Now it is in such wise that Christ represents us; still, however, with the important and essential difference, that the Father not merely imagines we are as fair as this fairest of the children of men, but that we really are equally fair, Christ having in a mysterious fashion fulfilled all righteousness in our stead. Howbeit, this matter is not to be taken up so unaidedly and sensuously as though indeed God no longer knew that we were, in ourselves, still miserable sinners. Undoubtedly He knows that, and for that very reason He leads us through all the purifying fires in which we still pine in such multitudes here below. But He passes judgment, he sentences us, not according to what II. But now return we to our history. There we are in ourselves, but what we are in His well-we behold Elisha now, prostrate upon the desert. beloved. Thus He loves us unspeakably, even in the midst of those manifold weaknesses and offences which still adhere to us; thus He accepts no farther accusation whatever against us; and when we now hear the Saviour say, "As the Father loveth Him, even so loveth He us also," it cannot now excite our wonder even for a moment, for, as we know," Christ and we are one in the sight of God!"

raising his eyes in the direction of the chariot of fire. A whole heaven of stars beaming full of fresh hopes, and thoughts creating new consolation, has suddenly opened upon his soul, and his poor heart is almost too small and too narrow for all the rapture which rushes upon him, like a storm, from the opened firmament. Nevertheless, he is sensible, at the same time, to the importance of the immeasurable loss that has befallen him at this moment; and his grief at the immense void, which, by the absence of such a man, was suddenly created in the world, threatened nearly to counterbalance his joy. In this strangely mingled feeling, he cries out with a loud voice, after the already vanishing prophet, "My father! my father! The chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof." Such was the parting-greeting of his trusty companion; such the

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