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we know that it did one day come. Perhaps all unknowingly he placed his foot on the lowest step of the heavenly ladder when the morning after his vision he vowed his vow; with a glad heart he flung away his staff, and rested his weary foot on the uppermost step, when, sixty years afterwards, he "yielded up the ghost and was gathered to his fathers." Who shall say that, during that long period, he had not been climbing, step by step, that lofty flight of stairs? In him, tribulation must have worked patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. All through his life, I think I can trace how he grew to be a better man and a grander, till he became at last the father who Joseph mourned, the patriarch whom God and the Church have ever since honoured. For myself. I cannot help learning from this vision the lesson-and I am thankful that it is thus strikingly taught me -of the progressive character of the Christian life. Not that this lesson is not taught, even more distinctly, in other ways and by other emblems. There is scarcely a reference in God's Word to the divine life in man which does not imply, and is not intended to imply, its progress. We read of the building and of the top stone put on with shoutings; we read of the seed and the ear, and the full corn in the ear; we read of the shining light, shining more and more unto the perfect day. But even more familiarly does the figure of the ladder convey the same meaning. It is set up, we are told, on the earth. Its lowest step is not too lofty for an infant's foot. But its top reaches to beaven. It is lost amidst the eternal sunshines. Oh, it is something if by divine grace we have been enabled to put our foot on the lowest step of the heavenly ladder. Through all eternity we shall have to praise the love that enabled and induced us to place it there. But wherefore did we place our foot on the lowest step, but that we might ascend one day to the highest? Why did we begin the celestial journey, but that we might prosecute it to a glorious and immortal issue? With all plainness, I would speak here of an error which I conceive to be far too prevalent nowadays. We are too apt to think-from our practice it would seem at least as if we thought that the ladder of the Christian life had but one step to it. We say a man becomes a Christian-he joins the Church he is numbered among God's people-so one round of the ladder is climbed. But if we call that, in apostolic language, the round of faith, it is our duty to add to our faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. Till these are added the Christian character is incomplete; when these are added the topmost step of the ladder is reached, and the next step is that into the heavenly city itself. My brethren, I know that it is weary work oftentimes, thus to climb the celestial ladder. "I looked after Christian," says Bunyan, "to see him go up the hill, when I perceived that he fell from running to going, and from going to clambering upon his hands and knees, because of the steepness of the place." But the fact that we have begun to climb the ladder at all proves that we think it worth climbing. We should not have set

out to the heavenly city if we had not thought it worth reaching. To us at least it is no unworthy object of ambition to have " an abundant entrance to that city ministered to us. If we would have "an abundant entrance," it must be by constant daily climbing.

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"We have not wings-we cannot soar-
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees-by more and more-
The cloudy summits of our time."

Let us be thankful that we may thus climb. We may forget the
things that are behind, we may press on to those that are before. We
may, by God's grace, even while on earth, become daily less earthly;
and we may breathe, even while here, some of the breezes which flow
down from the celestial hills. Oh, why should we stay for ever in
the valley, when the celestial mountains invite us? Why should we
mourn in darkness at the foot of the ladder, when the everlasting sun-
shine is above us and within our reach? My brethren, I invite you, I
call on you, to ascend. I would inspire you-I would inspire myself
-with this noble ambition to ascend. For do not voices from above
call us? When the winds of life cease sometimes, do we not hear, from
adown the ladder, voices-sweet voices-voices once dear and familiar
-and do they not say
to us, Come
up hither? My hearers, let us listen
to those sounds. They are always speaking, it is ours to hear. Let our
journeying spirits, as they travel onward through the various passages
of mortal life, listen ever to the sounds which are brought to them
from the mansions of their only rest!

Before I close, I would recur for a moment to the passage which I have quoted already as helping to explain the text. "Hereafter,' said Christ to Nathaniel, "hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man." There is, perhaps, some difficulty in answering the question, to what period the word hereafter in this passage points. Some have been disposed to connect it with a particular event-the closing scene of our Lord's earthly life, or that grander manifestation of Himself, when He shall come the second time:" others have regarded it as applying to the general results of Christ's mediation, after that mediation should have been fully accomplished. Whichever of these interpretations we adopt, or whichever be the true one, the words of our Lord teach us most plainly two things: first, that the visible and the spiritual worlds are very closely connected; secondly, that they are connected through Him. Than these lessons I know none more important, nor any that we are more prone to forget. For in this eating and drinking world, surrounded on every hand by the tokens and signs of the visible, our chief thoughts, our most absorbing cares, necessarily connected with the things that are seen and temporal-we all feel how difficult it must be for us to carry with us the remembrance of the spiritual and the eternal. And yet we feel too that the habitual recog

nition of spiritual things is that which raises us above the temporal: the living for spiritual realities is that which indicates and proves that we are the children of God. My brethren, how dark would this world be, but for the peeps and visions which we get sometimes of those spiritual realities! Neglect or forget the spiritual as we may, there is not one of us who would be without the knowledge of it for worlds. Think, my brethren, what life would be without the knowledge of spiritual realities. Remember the darkest passages in your life, and think how necessary were spiritual realities then to you. Have you ever any of you lost a child? or has "a nearer one still and a dearer one yet than all others" ever been taken from you? Has fortune taken to itself wings? or have hopes which for long years you had cherished been suddenly shattered and wrecked? I have seen a man whose every earthly hope had been destroyed, and I have heard him say with an almost unfurrowed face, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away!" I have seen a mother stand by the coffin of her dead child-nay, I have seen her lay it in the cold ground-and I have seen her smile, because both on the coffin and the grave there has played the light from heaven! But why should I confine my appeal to the darker passages of human life? The appeal will stand almost as good if made to times of joy and gladness. The spiritual man at least will tell you that the recognition and enjoyment of spiritual things adds to all temporal bliss; and that

"The hill of Sion yields

A thousand sacred sweets

Before we reach the heavenly fields
Or walk the golden streets."

Oh, my hearers, let us be thankful that this poor temporal life of ours is made noble and gladsome by the presence of the spiritual. Let us be thankful to the Saviour through whom the spiritual is revealed and brought near. For the Christ is the true Jacob's ladder. Upon Him the angels descend to men, and men ascend to the angels. We see Him not, as Jacob saw, in a dream, but with eyes opened by His Spirit. By His presence the desert is made bright, and through Him the gales from paradise visit us. The Christ is the true Jacob's ladder. He is the new and living way. Through Him we have access to the Father; through Him we may look forward to the Father's home. That home is not so far away. Only the steps of the ladder separate us. Brighter and brighter that home will seem, as nearer and yet nearer we come to it. And when at last we shall have climbed right up to the topmost step of the heavenly ladder, and shall look right in through the gate into the city, then at least we shall understand the words of old Bunyan when he said, "Which when I saw I wished myself amongst them!" Who does not "wish himself amongst them " sometimes at least? Wearied with the battles of life, cast down by the troubles and disappointments of life, unsatisfied by even the so-called successes of life, who does not sometimes "wish himself

amongst them"? Well, my brother, my sister, only hold firmly to the ladder-only climb, as God shall help you, day by day-and one day you also, like those who have gone before you, shall "find yourself amongst them."

"One sweetly solemn thought

Comes to me o'er and o'er :

I'm nearer home to-day,

Than I've ever been before.

"Nearer my Father's house,

Where the many mansions be;
Nearer the great white throne,
Nearer the crystal sea.

"Nearer the bound of life,

Where we lay our burdens down,
Nearer leaving the cross,
Nearer wearing the crown.

"But lying darkly between,
Rolling down into the night,
Is the dim and unknown stream
That leads at last to the light.

"Father, perfect my trust,

Strengthen my feeble faith;

Let me feel as I would when I stand
By the shore of the river of death.

"Let me feel as I would when my feet
Are slipping over the brink,
It may be I'm nearer home-
Much nearer than I think."

PRAY ALWAYS!

THE following incident occurred on Lake Erie nearly forty years ago. The principal personage in the narrative was a Christian sailor, John

-, employed as first mate under Captain C, who had command of one of the two ships which some ambitious persons in Buffalo set afloat on Lake Erie during the fierce heat of the speculation which raged like a forest fire over the West for a few years prior to 1836. Determined to lead the navigation of the season, the ship left Buffalo immediately after the harbour was cleared of ice, supposing, what was quite a usual occurrence, that the wind would carry the ice up the lake, break it up, and so disperse it

that they would have no further trouble with it; but to their great surprise, as they neared the upper end of the lake, they found themselves moving between two immense fields of ice; that on the right extending, apparently, to the Canada shore, that on the left moving before the wind, slowly, but surely, down upon them. The ship was not prepared for an Arctic encounter like this, and how to escape from their perilous position was, of course, an anxious question. But two courses presented themselves, and whether either of these was practicable remained to be seen. The first was to land on the ice, and so make their way to the

Canada shore. Our hero, John | deep-drawn sigh, or half-suppressed volunteered the attempt to sob, while the converted sailor, in reach the shore. It was, of course, simple, childlike language, told in fraught with fearful hazard; yet he the ears of Him who holds the succeeded in making the explora- winds in His fists, and the sea in tion and in returning safely to the the hollow of His hand, their expoship, but only to report that the ice sure and danger, the interest they was entirely detached from the shore, each had in their own lives and and that escape in that direction the lives and happiness of others— was impossible. The second method fathers, mothers, wives, children, was to reach the open water through and friends; humbly confessing the channel between the ice-fields their sins and just exposure to pain in the ship's boats; but this idea and penalty; and then, with tearful was soon abandoned, for, at the penitence and loving trustfulness, rate the ice was moving before the supplicating mercy and deliverance wind, it was very certain the two through the crucified and exalted fields would meet long before the Redeemer. After the prayer the boats could reach the open water, captain and mate went on deck, and, if caught, they would be crushed and who can tell what were their like eggshells. What was to be thoughts or feelings when they saw done? Officers, sailors, passengers, that, during that solemn moment looked in silence and with pallid of penitent prayer the wind had cheeks upon the approaching foe. changed, and now, instead of blowIn front, as far as could be seen, ing the crushing ice-field upon there was nothing but that narrow them, it was blowing the ship slowly, channel, and no wind to carry them but surely, through that open chanthrough to the open water. Under nel? In the presence of that strange these circumstances the captain fact the captain and mate uncovered called the passengers, and as many their heads, and John -, looking of the crew as could be spared from aloft at the nearly naked yards, the deck, into the cabin; made a said, "Shall I put some more canplain statement of their danger, and vas on her, captain ?" "No," said of his entire want of power to afford the captain, "don't touch her, some them relief; and, though not a pro- one else is managing the ship." And fessing Christian, said, "We are in so the unseen Hand did lead them the hands of God; if He does not to the open water, and to their deinterpose for us, there is no help, sired haven in safety. We will not no hope. If any of you know how stop to do battle with the speculato pray, I wish you would do so." tive theories of prayer which emiThere sat that despairing company nent scientists have latterly thrust with bowed heads in dead silence, into the face of Christendom. so still you could hear your heart incident, of the truth of which the beat. In that terrible moment John reader can rest assured, shall be the pious mate, raised his left to bear uninterpreted its own head, and just in a whisper said, testimony to the truth that God "Let us pray." Officers, passen- hears and answers prayer. And, gers, sailors, at once quietly went therefore, it is written that "men down upon their knees, and nought ought always to pray, and not to was heard, except now and then a faint."

The

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