IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

1.0

■i> lij 12.2

I.I

IS us

1.25

1.4

1.6

Photographic

Sciences

Corporalion

23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580

(716) 872-4503

CIHM/ICMH

Microfiche

Series.

CIHM/ICMH
Collection de
microfiches.

Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques

Technical and Bibliographic Notat/Notas tachniquas at bibliographiquas

Tha Instituta haa attamptad to obtain tha baat
original copy available for filming. Faaturaa of thia
copy which may ba bibliographically unique,
which may altar any of the imagea in tha
reproduction, or which may aignificantly change
the usual method of filming, are checked below.

Coloured covers/
Couverture de couleur

I I Covers damaged/

Couverture endorrimagie

Covers restored and/or laminated/
Couverture restaurte et/ou pellicul6e

PTj Cover title missing/

Le titre de couverture manque

I I Coloured maps/

Cartes gAographiques en couleur

Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black)/
Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bieue ou noire)

I I Coloured plates and/or illustrations/

Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur

Bound with other material/
ReliA avac d'autres documents

ITyl Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion

along interior margin/

La re liure serr6e peut causer de I'ombre ou de la

distortion le long de la marge intirieure

Blank leaves added during restoration may
appear within the text. Whenever possible, these
have been omitted from filming/
II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajouties
lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans le texte,
mais, lorsque cela 6tait possible, ces pages n'ont
pas 6t6 filmias.

Additional comments:/
Commentaires suppl6mentaires:

Tha
toti

L'Institut a microfilm* le meilleur exemplaire
qu'il lui a M possible de se procurer. Les details
de cet exemplaire qui sont peut-Atre uniques du
point de vue bibliographique, qui peuvent modifier
une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une
modification dans la m6thode normale de filmage
sont indiquis ci-dessous.

I I Coloured pages/

Pages de couleur

Pages damaged/
Pages endom magmas

Pages restored and/oi

Pages restaur6es et/ou pelitcui^es

Pages discoloured, stained or foxei
Pages d^coEories, tachetdes ou piqu6es

Pages detached/
Pages d^tach^es

Showthrough/
Transparence

Quality of prir

Quality in^gaie de I'impression

Includes supplementary materia
Comprend du materiel suppldmentaire

Only edition available/
Seuie Edition disponible

I I Pages damaged/

I I Pages restored and/or laminated/

I I Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/

I I Pages detached/

r^ Showthrough/

I I Quality of print varies/

I I Includes supplementary material/

I I Only edition available/

Tha
posi
of tl
film

Ori{
beg
tha
sior
oth<
first
sior
or 11

Tha
shal
TIN
whi

Mai
diffi
anti
bag
righ
raqi
met

Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata
slips, tissues, etc., have been refilmed to
ensure the best possible image/
Les pages totalement ou partieilement
obscurcies par un feuiilet d'errata, une pelure,
etc., ont 6t6 film^es d nouveau de faqon d
obtenir la meiileure image possible.

This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/

Ce document est film* au taux da rMuction indiqut ci-dessous.

10X 14X 18X 22X

26X

30X

12X

16X

20X

24X

28X

32X

I«tail8
M du
nodifier
Br une
'ilmage

Th« copy filmed here hae been reproduced thanks
to the generosity of:

{Metropolitan Toronto Library
Canadian History Department

The images appearing here are the beat quality
poaaible conaidering the condition and legibility
of the original copy and in keeping with the
filming contract apecifice Jona.

Original copiea in printed paper covera are filmed
beginning with the front cover and ending on
the laat page with a printed or illuatrated imprea-
aion, or the back cover when appropriate. All
other original copiea are filmed beginning on the
firat page with a printed or illuatrated imprea-
aion. and ending on the laat page with a printed
or illuatrated impreaaion.

L'exemplaire fiirnA fut reproduit grice A la
giniroait* de:

Metropolitan Toronto Library
Canadian History Department

Lea imagea auivantas ont AtA raproduitas avac ia
piua grand aoin, compte tanu da la condition at
de ia nattetA de l'exemplaire fiimt. et en
conformity avac lea conditiona du contrat da
filmage.

Lea exemplairea originaux dont la couverture an
papier eat imprimAa aont fiimis an commandant
par la premier plat et i>n tarminant soit par ia
dernlAre page qui comporte une emprainte
d'impreaaion ou d'illuatration, aoit par le aecond
plat, aelon le caa. Toua lea autraa exemplairea
originaux aont fiimAa en commandant par la
premiAre page qui comporte une empreinte
d'impreaaion ou d'illuatration et en terminant par
la dernidre page qui comporte une telle
empreinte.

The laat recorded frame on each microfiche
ahall contain the aymbol ^»> (meaning "CON-
TINUED"), or the aymbol V (meaning "END"),
whichever appliea.

Mapa, platea, charta, etc., may be filmed at
different reduction ratioa. Thoae too large to be
entirely included in one expoaure are filmed
beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to
right and top to bottom, aa many framea aa
required. The following diagrama iliuatrate the
method:

Un dea aymboiea auivanta apparaltra aur la
derniire image de cheque microfiche, salon ia
caa: le aymbole — ► signifie "A SUiVRE", le
aymboie y signifie "FIN".

Lea cartea, planchea, tableaux, etc., peuvent Atre
film^a d dea taux de reduction diff^rents.
Lorsque le document est trop grand pour Atre
reproduit en un seul cliche, il est f ilm6 A partir
de I'angle sup6rieur gauche, de gauche A droite,
et de haut en baa, en prenant ie nombre
d'images nicessaire. Les diagrammes suivants
iiluatrent la m^thode.

errata
ito

9 pelure,

on d

32X

1 2 3

15^3

THE

ABIDING WOED.

A SERMON.

Bl THE

REV. W. B. POPE.

PUBLISHED BY BEQUEST.

LONDON:

WESLEYAN CONFERENCE OFFICE,
2, CASTLE STREET, CITY ROAD ; , , ...
SOLD AT 66, PATERNOSTER B^O^;

' S 1

1 .*. •

4».

••••

•<*»

''^'- %^k^^e«^T:i^^^^^

'1"

,,F ^1 291^

.■

lOKDON:

,«.• :

PftlNTKU BY WILLIAM NICHOLS,

46, UUXTON SqUARK.

• ••

.••V

•••

•••..

•.:7

%•.•.*;..•

••••!•

"•^

^^J

THE ABIDING WORD.

1 Peter i. 24, 25.

" For all flesh is as grass, aud all the glory of man as the flower uf grass. The
grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away : but ihe word of the Lord
enduteth for ever. And this is the word whiuh by the Gospel is preached uuto
you."

By this quotation from the prophet the apostle worthily
winds up his own strain. The theme which fills his
opening chapter is the immutability of the Christian
economy as opposed to the fluctuation of all created
things. The inheritance to which our hope is begotten is
one that fadeth not away ; the precious blood that bought
it is not corruptible, like the ransom-price of silver and
gold, but bears an eternal value ; the life of which God's
word is the seed is, unlike human life in the flesh, im-
mortal; and the conversation to which it leads is not
vain and transitory, but will have its issues in eternity.
This is the sublime contrast that rules the strain, which,
afber all its impassioned changes, finds its full, appropriate,
and perfect close in the cry of the ancient voice in the
wilderness : All jleah is as grass, and all the glory of man as
the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and thefl^mer thereof
falleth OAjoay : hut the word of the Lord endureth for ever.

But more than a quotation is here. It is that kind of au-
thoritative use which an apostle may make of a prophet's
words. Inspiration is quoting inspiration, and more than

A 2 -

interpreting itself. The Old Testament lends to the New,
to receive as much again. In that mysterious colloquy of
Isaiah one voice bade the other cry that all the glory of
human power resisting the Divine decree for Israel's re-
demption from captivity would be but the flower of grass,
which the Spirit of God should blow upon and wither.
Another deeper and more comprehensive meaning that
voice did not and could not disclose. But St. Peter
unveils and releases the secret. Dropping the clause
that for a season restricted its interpretation, he adds
his own apostolical comment on the prophetic utterance.
That enduring word to which prophets made their appeal
was no other than the Gospel which apostles preached :
the word that pledged the lower redemption redeemed
its own pledge in the redemption of mankind. And
as St. Peter interprets Isaiah, so is he his own inter-
preter : we need not travel beyond the precincts of the
text to find the following illustrations of its force as a
new version of an ancient oracle. The Gospel is the word
of v/nchanging truth; proclaims a Divine purpose for ever
settled in heaven ; offers a salvation whose conditions
are immutable ; imparts a new life that is in itself impe-
rislmhle ; and formes a society that shall survive all the
mutations of time. These illustrations are no more than
a reflection and summary of the apostle's own thoughts.
They cover a vast field; but they revolve around one
central idea, while, they lead our meditations onward in
a profitable progression. May the Father of lights, with
whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning, grant
us, in dwelling upon them, liberally of His wisdom.

I. The finished word op God is immutable. There
can be no question that the word preached in the Gospel
is in the highest and deepest sense the eternal Word,
who in His incarnation became at once the manifested
Revealer and the manifested object of His own revelation.

he New,
loquy of
glory of
ael's re-
f grass,
wither,
ng that
Peter
clause
adds
fcerance.
appeal
Bached :
deemed
. And
I inter-
i of the
ce as a
!Ae word
for ever
nditiona
f impe-
all the
'e than
oughts,
nd one
ard in
8, with
. grant

There
jrospel

VoRD,

fested
ation.

St. Peter, like the two other chief apostles, uses lan-
guage bordering on an identification of the Word and
the words. But the term here used indicates rather the
oral and written oracles which the Son of God has made
the vehicle of His communications to men. And the
immutability of that word has in this chapter a twofold light
thrown upon it. Viewed in itself, the abiding word has
lived through its changing forms, and stamped upon
them its own permanence. Viewed from without, and in
relation to the words of men, it has maintained its
stability in the midst of all the fluctuations of human
tradition.

1. It has been one unchanging word from the begin-
ning, p^'eserving in a wide variety of forms the unity of
life.

The methods have been various by which the Spirit
of revelation, to whom all the avenues of hiunan nature
are known, has found access for Divine truth to the
minds and hearts of men. And the Bible, containing
the history of God's education of mankind, is at once the
record of that large variety and the witness of that essen-
tial unity. In its earliest pages we have the simplest
revelation. We hear the voice of God speaking to His
new creature in that pavilion of His presence from which
sin had not yet made man an alien. Then we hear the
same voice — changed, indeed, and yet not changed — at
the gate of paradise and threshold of a fallen world,
dooming the transgressor to the penalty of his sin, and
yet preaching to him the Gospel of a glorious redemption ;
in His justice turning man, the first sinner, to destruction,
but in His mercy crying, to him and all his unnumbered
descendants. Come again, ye children of men ! From that
time for thousands of years, and throughout the entire
Old-Testament Scriptures, revelation is the narrative of
the "sundry times and divers manners" in which it
pleased the wisdom of God to foreannounce the unuttered

secret of the cross. The word of the truth of the Gospel
was long arrayed in the rich morning drapery of symbols,
its Levitical coat of many colours. It was expressed and
yet concealed, concealed and yet expressed, in a multitude
of mysterious rites. It was uttered and illustrated in an
abundant variety of typical histories. It was set to more
than mortal music in the Psalms. It was proclaimed
in a sphere higher than human poetry or musi<i could
reach in the visions of prophecy. Until at length, when
the ancient roll was closed, and after long silence in hea-
ven, the eternal Word came forth from the bosom of the
Father, bearing a " burden " that no prophet could have
borne, and sealed the long variety of revelation by giving
to His church, mider the keeping and interpretation of
the Holy Spirit, the one perfect and unchangeable word
of God. And, while He was giving His final revelation.
He declared that one living testimony to Himself per-
vaded the ancient Scriptures. St. Peter here only echoes
his Master's words. He tells us that it was the Spirit
of Christ who guided the pens and excited the desires
of the prophets; that they all transmitted to us one
immutable Gospel which they could not themselves as
yet understand. And the permanence of the living word
throughout its fleeting forms was fi*esh in his thoughts
when he wound up in the language of the text : " The
methods of the preaching, and the voices of the preachers,
have changed, but the word preached abideth un-
changeable. The organs of revelation have passed
away ; but revelation has never ceased, has never been in
reality suspended. The prophets died one after another,
with their deep desires in their hearts, and their longing
prophecies on their lips ; but the word which they minis-
tered to us, a generation more blessed and more respon-
sible, like Him who was its end, is the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever."

And, as that word has given the imity of life to all

Gospel
ymbols.
Bed and
altitude
d in an

more
laimed

could
, when
in hea-
of the

1 have
giving

tion of
e word

elation.

If per-

echoes

Spirit

desires

us one

ves as

§• word

oughts
"The

ichers,

h un-

passed

een in

other,

•nging

minis-

Jspon-

erday,

to all

methods of revelation, so it has insured the permanence
of life to the vehicle of revelation. The living truth
enshrined in the written oracles has preserved, and must
preserve them, in their integrity, through all the gene-
rations of men.

It has pleased God to commit His eternal counsels to
human language, and to human language under all
the penalty of Babel. From age to age he has raised
up men to utter His words to their fellow-men in their
own fleeting speech, and to deposit those words in docu-
ments which were not visibly shielded from the vicis-
situdes of all human things. He did not create for reve-
lation a dialect that should never change, or write it upon
tables that might defy the hand of man or the breath of
time to destroy them. The ancient tongues of the earliest
revelation are now dead languages. The original auto-
graphs are lost ; nor is there a single sentence extant
written by inspired fingers. God's book, like the books
of men, has been transcribed and continually reproduced ;
it has been translated, and must be translated into all the
languages of the earth, more or lees suffering, for a season
if needs he, in the process. Christendom does not remem-
ber, nor ever can now retrieve, any one central authorita-
tive copy. Such an archetypal Bible might indeed have been
preserved in the ark of the church, even as the law was
long preserved in the ark of the sanctuary, from the waters
of oblivion. It had been a light thing for Omnipotence to
do this. But God has ordered it otherwise : and, in ordering
it otherwise. He has protected His people from the danger of
enshrining and worshipping a book, whilst He has given
their faith in perpetuity one of its sublimest exercises.

The church's faith in the permanent integrity of the
written word has every presumption in its favour, is sus-
tained by the express assurance of Scripture itself, and is
justified by the results of Christian learning.

If God has condescended to inspire holy men to an-

•'

nounce and write His will in a book, can we suppose that
He would permit their writings to be abandoned to all the
chances of time and all the caprices of men? that He
would suflfer His holy word to see corruption ? The very
thought is like the first shaking of the foundations. And
what man's instinct suggests, the Bible everywhere,
and with express emphasis, declares, that as the word of
God its every jot and tittle is under a mysterious but
most cei-tain defence: with no less assurance than it
appeals to inspiration for its origin does it appeal to a
special omnipotent Providence for its preservation. Scep-
tical criticism cannot deny that the Bible contains sub-
stantially the same documents as were received by the
faith of the church before and after Christ. And reverent
criticism glories in her function, as the handmaid of the
Holy Ghost, gradually and surely to restore to the sight
of man what to the eye of God has always existed amongst
the diversified copies, — ^the true and faithful sayings
which first sprang from inspiration. Concerning some of
the jots and tittles of the word we may for a time hang in
doubt ; but our faith is assured that there is no uncer-
tainty in the Holy Spirit. The foundation of God*s word
also standeth sure, having this seal. The Lord knoweth the
words that are His. And we also may yet have absolute cer-
tainty. Before the holy volume is rolled up again for ever,
it will shine forth in all its faultless glory. Meanwhile,
its transmission and preservation, as an aggregate of holy
writings running through all the ages of the world, is a
phenomenon standing alone. Its enemies, confessing
this, have many theories more or less plausible to ac-
count for it : to us it suffices that as the word of God,
created and hallowed to be the elect instrument of the
world's renewal, it must live on in its integrity until it
has taught its last lesson and conferred its last blessing
on our race.

2. The revealed word not only bears the evidence of its

immutability in itself: as eternal truth it also lives down
the rival records of man*s wisdom or folly. No attri-
bute of that word is more constantly insisted on than its
truthf as opposed to the vanity and delusion of all merely
human thoughts. Ood is not a man thai He should lie, is
both a testimony to God's truth o.nd an impeachment of
man's falsehood from which there is no appeal: the
Scripture itself gives us our only response, Let God he true
and every man a liar. Wherever the strength or the
weakness of man's intellect has rivalled the word of God,
like the flower of grass it has been doomed to perish : the
truth alone abideth for ever.

Man's rivalry of Divine revelation is twofold : he either
teaches a word which is opposed to Scripture, or he per-
verts the Scripture itself. The lie is either outside the sphere
of revelation or within it. But, in either case, passing away
is the doom written upon all that is not God's word.

(1.) That word has always had its rivals.- As the Bible
has gone on from age to age accumulating its treasures
and enlarging the range of its influence, the inventions of
the "father of the lie," using the best flower of man's
intellect, have run on their parallel course. But not with
equal pace : always with fainting and failing steps. The
sacred books of ancient heathenism, the philosophical sys-
tems of classical antiquity, and the infidel speculations which
in modern times assume without deserving it the name of
philosophy, — all have contributed, or aro contributing, or
will contribute their illustration of our text. How vast
the multitudes of the world's religious wiitings that have
become mere curiosities of literature, not now moulding a
single human intellect, or moving a single human will, or
shaping a single human life. Where are the mythologies
of Greece and Eome ? where the Scandinavian supersti-
tions ? These, and many others, the spectres of which still
haunt the deserts of the world, have been swept from the
face of the earth by the besom of truth. Or, rather, they

have faded and died out of human a£Pairs in obedience to
the inexorable law that truth alone endureth. And those
which still are living forces among men betray, more
slowly it may be but not less surely, their subjection to
the same decree. Their tenacity of existence is not the
tenacity of life. The ancient systems that still rule the
East exert a sway that perpetually wanes ; and, if left
alone, would perish even without the aggression of the
true word. The evershiffcing philosophies of the West —
so unlike the stagnant Eastern superstitions in every other
respect — agree with them in this submission to the eternal
law. But how glorious is the contrast of the word of Qod !
All the efforts of man to make his own Bible have needed,
and will need, only time to convict them of their impo-
tence. They shall perish. The beautiful vestures in which
they clothe their inventions in due time become girdles
marred and filthy rags. But the word of God endureth for
ever.

(2.) It is only uttering the same truth in another form
when we point to the transitoriness of all merely human
commentaries on the word itself. The real and only for-
midable enemies of the Bible have ever been they of its
own household : holding the truth, but holding it in per-
version and unrighteousness. While the Divine Spirit has
never wanted men who taught of God have been worthy
expositors of His truth, and whose expositions, bearing in
them the incorruptible seed will live, the tradition of
which St. Peter speaks has been in every age the finitful
source of corruption, — from the single marginal gloss of
error up to the great systems of heresy that have rent
and darkened the Christian church. Scarcely a text of any
importance that has not been made the basis or the centre
of entire libraries of false doctrine. But in these there is
no continuance, and the truth is eternally safe. Like the
great systems of heathenism without the borders of Chris-
tendom, the great systems of heresy within have their day

and vanish. But the central word abideth. The ancient
" traditions received from their fathers," like the conver-
sation they led to, were vain : the huge folios of rabbinical
comment and paraphrase have become mere refuse, while
the indestructible text has remained in its integrity. So
Christian ages have been industriously accumulating
another and still vaster Talmud, in the formation of which
superstition and infidelity have industriously joined their
forces. This has not yet passed away, but it is doomed.
The Bible is outliving modem, as it has outlived ancient,
tradition. That these errors fade so slowly is due simply
to the measure of the truth that they contain. But, sooner
or later, that residuum of truth exhales : they return to
their own place. The silent finger rubs out the glosses
that cumber the margin of the holy text ; but the word of
God endurethfor ever.

We live in days, brethren, one element of whose evil is
that this truth is recklessly assailed. That word which is
for ever settled in heaven is not suffered to be settled on
earth. But how good it is to turn from the vain criticism
of man to the sure sayings of God, and to hear the Bible
speak for itself ! The word of our God shall stand for ever,
said the ancient voice in the Old Testament ; the word of
the Lord Christ endureth for ever, is the New Testament
echo. The word of the Lord in the consummate Gospel is
thus made identical with the word that runs through the
Bible. Our Lord hath made both Testaments one : one in
the unity of eternal truth. He has not claimed Himself
to utter abiding words, while abolishing or rendering ob-
solete the imperfect oracles of earlier times. If that had
been His purpose. He wonld have told us. But, on the
contrary. He has authenticated all, and made the whole
Bible His own ; " beginning at Moses and all the prophets.
He has expounded unto us in all the Scriptures the things
concerning Himself." He has set His seal, which cannot be
broken, on the whole word : on every fact of the historian.

on every strain of the singer, on every vision of the prophet.
We share Simon Peter's confidence, derived from the same
Bonrce as his. We too have gone np the holy mount, and
listened to the higher than prophetic voice, saying, This is
My beloved Son^ hear Him I We have heard that Son say-
ing. This is My word, given by My Spirit, hear it ! We,
like the first Apostle, rest assured that we have not fol-
lowed cunningly-devised fables. Cunningly devised, indeed,
but cunningly-devised truth : so cunningly devised by the
finger of God, that all the efforts of our modern critics to
break it, to unweave it, to reconstruct its fi^agments, to
assign to new authors and new ages their parts, to elimi-
nate the great masses of legend, reserving the little re-
mainder for criticism, will prove but like the trifling of
children in the market-place, equally puerile but far less
innocent. Heaven and earth shall pass away ; hut not one
tittle of My word shall fail.

II. The transition is easy, in the second place, to the

STEADFAST ENDUEANCE OF THE DiVINE PURPOSE IN CON-
TRAST WITH THE TRANSITORINESS OF HUMAN THINGS. The

one supreme purpose of God in Christ, which is the key to
the history of the world, and the living soul of the entire
Scripture, has been swaying St. Peter's thought throughout
this chapter, and gi' os its nerve to the outburst in the text.
All human glory is transitory : the Divine purpose sur-
vives. All human power is impotent : the Divine purpose
must surely triumph.

1. The Divine purpose lives on through all the muta-
tions of human things. The majestic word that heads the
Psalms may be set as a superscription over the whole
Bible: I will declare the decree. The establishment of
Christ's kingdom, and the gathering of a new and glori-
fied humanity into one in Him, was from the beginning
the central design to which innumerable other ends con-
verged, This keynote, struck by the morning stars who

sang together over the dawn of the world's new hope, hajs
governed the ever- varying strain of Scripture through all
its manifold oracles down to the visions of the Apocalypse, in
which the temporal kingdom expands into universality and
melts into the eternal kingdom of heaven. But St. Peter
here breaks human history, waiting on the Divine pur-
pose, into two parts : that which sometime tarried for the
suffering of Christy and that which now waits for His glory.
(1.) For thousands of years after the Divine government
of a sinful world began, the redeeming death of Christ was
the common horizon of Divine purpose and human hope.
The word of God at the outset of revelation decreed that
an incarnate Eedeemer should by suffering and death
destroy the empire of Satan and of sin. This was that
will of Godj written above in the book unread by mortals,
which Christ came to do by suffering in the body prepared
for Him. But how many slow generations came and
went, with the infinite variety of their changing history,
while that body was a preparing, and that decree was
suspended ! Ages rolled on, empires rose and fell, dis-
pensation followed dispensation, and all things continued
as they were ! Meanwhile the Spirit of Christ never left
the world without a witness and a prophet of the coming
day. While the seers saw and wondered and waited;
while angels shared their dread curiosity, desiring to look
into the unsealed mystery ; known unto God from the begin-
ning was this, the crown and consimimation of all His
works. While heaven and earth mused in awe, He Him-
self knew what He would do. How gloriously did He con-
firm the immutability of His counsel, and check the
impatience of His saints, by awful oath of final appeal to
His own unchangeableness ! " My righteousness is near :
lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth
beneath ; for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke,
and the earth shall wax old as doth a garment, and they
that dwell therein shall die in like manner ; but My salva-

tion shall be for ever." " By Myself have I sworn.'* " I the
Lord will hasten it in His time." At length the Father's
hour, the fulness of time, was come ; and the sacrifice of the
cross gave its eternal ratification to that dread oath, the
first great pledge that the word of the Lord endwreth f&r
ever.

(2.) No sooner did one mystery of the Divine purpose
cease than another began. " It is finished " sealed the
accomplishment of the first decree ; but the " glory that
should follow " became a new horizon of the Divine pro-
mise and of human hope. Already when St. Peter wrote,
that mystery — ^the delay of Christ's final manifestation
and universal supremacy — had begun to tax the patience
and the wonder of the saints. Already did the apostle
find it needful to utter his apology for the slackness, as
some men counted it, of God's promise ; and to make his
appeal to the timeless patience of Providence, with whom
a thousand years are as one day. The watchword of our
chapter for the waiting church is Ho'pe to the end, or rather
Ho'pe on to perfection. And still the labouring ages groan
on, under their imchanging burden of change, whUe the
decree is yet suspended. We also, like the ancient pro-
phets, search both what and what manner of time the,
testimony of Jesus, the Spirit of prophecy, still points to.
We see the earth now, nearly at the close of a second
great millennial day, greener with the grass of human
culture, and more glorious with its secular flower, than
with the herbage of the " garden of the Lord. We
see other empires founded and flourishing: not the
kingdom we long for. Of other battle-fields we hear : not
yet of Armageddon the last. Still our cry is. What of the
night ? and still the response is, over all the waiting earth,
only The Tnoming cometh. But the word of our Lord endureth
for ever. He shall not fail nor be discouraged ; and we
must enter more deeply into the fellowship of Christ's
patience, as well as of all else that is His. We must

watch with Him yet. To-day is gone ; to-marrow
is all but spent; the third day, the third great millen-
nial day, the King shall be perfected in His august
kingdom, and we. His subjects, shall reflect His perfection.
Then cometh the end of the " things concerning Him."
Created nature shall yield its supreme illustration of its
vanity; and time shall expire with the last g^eat proof
that the word of the Lord endureth for ever.

2. But so far our application of the text has been only
negative : it has also a positive side. Not only does the
Divine purpose survive the mutations of human things ;
it also vanquishes the opposition of the perishable
creature. The prophet, who gave the word to the apostle,
had that great truth especially in view. The voice in
the ancient wilderness breathed out its defiance against
the people confederate in all their glory to resist the
redemption of Israel; and in that cry there was an
undertone of defiance against the enemies, hui.ian and
spiritiial, of the world's greater redemption. The voice
not only uttered the prophecy that all human combina-
tions against the decree would pass away ; it also blew
upon and blasted all their glory. So now, also, the same
Spirit of the living God, whose influence breathed upon
the people of God is their strength and their joy, blows
upon the greatness and glory of the enemies of God,
withers the sap of their strength, and parches them into
utter impotence. At their best estate they are but vanity ;
and, left to themselves, would soon come to nought. But
they are not left to themselves : the ftdl and steady current
of the wrath of God is for ever turned upon the enemies
of His church ; and, however slow may seem its withering
effect, it is absolutely sure. The wind passeth over it, and it
is gone.

The history of the world, as read by a believing eye, is
one great and manifold commentary on this text. From
the time when the Spirit of God first strove with rebellious

man, and rescued the little church from the whole con-
federate world by unloosing with His breath the fountains
of the deep, through all the diversified drama of human
history, one great law has ruled all the Divine dealings
with the world : the vindication and defence of His holy
decree against its enemies. It is not only that the
Supreme has upheld His purpose throughout the bound-
less mutations of human things ; but at all the great crises
of rebuke and blasphemy the mockery of His derision in
heaven has been followed by swift and sudden catastrophes
on earth. Are not these things most plentifully written
" in the book of the wars of the Lord ? "

And there is another history, containing the deeds and
destinies of higher enemies than man, that will be found
hereafter to have been equally full of the truth of these
words. God's great decree for mortals has been studied
and withstood by beings more than mortal. When the
Redeemer defied the gates of hell. He saw more than the
glory of man confederate against His church. So also
His holy apostles perpetually open the eye of our faith to
see principalities and powers of spiritual wickedness in
high places set in array against the truth. In the sight
of God, human enemies are subordinate to angelic : while
all flesh is grass, spiritual powers are the flower of grass.
But the opposition of the invisible and the visible worlds is,
whether separate or combined, alike of no avail. Hell and
earth together have never yet thwarted one single purpose
of the Divine will. Heaven and earth, and earth and hell,
may pass away : but the word of God shall stand for ever.

3. It is the prerogative of the Church of Christ to be
co-workers with God, in the accomplishment of His high
and holy designs. As His servan*;S we are the agents and
the guardians of His high decree : the representatives
upon earth of His unslumbering Providence in heaven.
Whilst we are working out our own salvation, and pro-
moting all lesser objects of the Divine philanthropy.

this
its
the
The
Gofi

this is our highest honour, that we are, with reverence be
it spoken, the essential and indispensable instruments of
the eternal purpose of God with respect to the world.
The will, and word, and oath of God — that Christ's
Gospel shall sway the world, and His kingdom rule over all
— is not more sure than that His people, confederate as
we are confederate, must be His agents in accomplishing
that design. This is the mystery of our vocation; but
it is also its strength. That we, in our mightiest
combination no better than the grass which to-day is
and to-morrow is cast into the oven, should be carrying
out plans conceived from eternity in an infinite Mind, to
whom the past, the present, and the future are one
eternal now, is a thought which amazes while it tran-
quillises the mind, and comforts while it subdues. By
exhibiting the infinite contrast between the vanity of His
instruments and the eternal immutability of His own
Being, God has strengthened His servants in every age.
So in the beginning Abraham's faith was made firm by
the lesson taught him under the steadfast heavens,
emblem of the unchangeableness of the all-sufB.cient God
who called him. So Moses recoiled with trembling from
his vocation, until the dread / am entered and steadied
his soul, and sent him on his unfaltering career. So
Elijah, with all his Carmel grandeur, never knew stability,
until amidst the awful convulsions of Horeb the still small
voice spoke to his dejected spirit the lesson of God's calm
and immutable power. And so we read throughout all
the Divine records, and pre-eminently in the Psalms and
the Prophets, that God's sovereign remedy for His ser-
vants' feebleness and vacillation has ever been the exhi-
bition by word and symbol of His own unchangeableness.
Let us then, brethren, strong in a sense of the irre-
sistible necessity of our triumph, labour on in our sacred
Master's cause, surrendering ourselves wholly to so high and
so holy a vocation. It is ours to go everywhere through-

out the land and throughout the world, declaring the
decree, A decree vaster and more authoritative than its
humble type, the Median's, we must publish it in every
language, and enforce it upon every soul. As a Society,
whether at home or abroad, essentially Missionary, we
must co-operate with our holy Master in proclaiming His
supreme authority ; and help Him to execute His blessed
vengeance upon the heathen, to bind their kings and
their nobles with spiritual chains and fetters of grace, to
execute upon them the judgment of mercy written in the
imchanging counsels of the word of God. Let us not
think too much of our own weakness, or our past failures^
or even our past imfaithfulness. To dwell on our own
wavering attributes would be to encourage despondency,
and send us with our too great burden to Elijah's juniper
tree. Let us rather go to Horeb, the mount of God,
and dwell on the immutable attributes of Him who gave
us our commission, and whose word, that to Him every
"ktiee ahaM how, endureth for ever.

III. St. Peter suggests to us a third illustration of his
own text. The endvbing wobd op God is an immutable

FBOMISE FBEACHED IN AN IMMUTABLE GoSPEL. The decreo

which outlives and lives down all the changes of human
things works out its accomplishment through the publica-
tion of a message of unalterable mercy to man. That word
which, in regard to Christ, has the eternal kingdom for
its subject, is in regard to man a revelation of grace and
salvation. The preaching of glad tidings to mankind is
based upon a mediatorial work established from the
foundation of the world and immutable ; it is adapted to
those relations of men which know no change; and it
may therefore be offered with absolute confidence to all
men everywhere and for ever.

1. We are taught in this chapter that the redemption
of the world is an eternal redemption : not only, as the

Epistle to the Hebrews teaches, eternal hi its issues, but
eternal in its origin ; and, between these two eternities,
unchangeable through all the generations of tune. The
text is a not distant inference from those great words :
" Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible
things, such as silver and gold, but with the precious
blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without
spot, who verily was fore-ordained before the foundation of
the world.'* Silver and gold, the most enduring things
in nature, and all that they represent, were created in
time and with time shall perish; but the ransom of
mankind was not found in created riches. Th^ price of
human redemption — ^that goodly price at which He was
valued — ^was settled in heaven before the earth was defiled
with sin. The atonement rounds and enwraps the whole
destiny of man. " Before the mountains were brought
forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God," receives
a new close in the New Testament, — " from everlasting to
everlasting Thou art God in Christ." Holy Scripture in
sundry places and by sundry hints transfers the sacred
scenery of redemption into a sphere beyond the threshold
of time. It erects the cross on that side of the river of
human life ; and makes redemption anticipate the fall, the
saving purpose prevent the act of sin. The Gospel is traced
back by successive apostles from age to age : it shows us
before the law, before the flood, before the faU, the I am of
our eternal redemption. Christ was the Lamb slain, the
King crowned, the Priest interceding for a guilty futurity,
before the foundation of the world : the Alpha before our
history began, as He will be the Omega when it shall
end. Well, therefore, might the apostle exult in the
word of the Lord, preached in the Gospel, as enduring
for ever through all the mutations of human things.

It follows, as a consequence, that this Gospel has
been in some sort preached in every age. Not only as

B 2

a prophecy brightening the pages of revelation, lighting
up every comer of it and leaving no part dark, but also as
a power of life and salvation has the grace of God been
preached from the earliest day of the world's sinful
history. While the Spirit revealed to the ancients that
they were ministering their prophecies to a future and
more privileged generation. He did not leave them
without their own portion in the truths they understood
not. Although His hour was not yet come to take of the things
of Christ and show them plainly of the Redeemer, He gave
them also their heritage in the everlasting consolation and
the good hope through grace. Their hearts too burned
within them in their Old-Testament way while the unknown
Saviour talked with them. In all times penitent faith, even
without the manifestation of its great object, received the
atonement. Christ was the Desire of all nations ; and in
every age those who have feared God and wrought righ-
teousness — ^whether patriarchs, or Jews, or Gentiles —
have been debtors to the blood of the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world. Surely our Lord was with them
though they knew it not ; and His mediation made this
earth to many more than Jacob the gate of heaven.
TJnto us indeed they ministered : but it is our joy to
believe that they ministered something also to themselves.
Through all the changes of time one note of mercy hath
endured for ever.

2. The word preached in the Grospel is immutable as
adapted to those universal conditions of mankind which
are independent of change. Amidst the endless fluctuations
of human things there are a few characteristics that
never vary: a few touches of nature that make all the
world kin, and all the generations of mankind absolutely
one. For these few elements the Gospel was prepared :
it meets the sin and misery of the world with an
unchangeable remedy, the counterpart of man's immuta-
ble disease. Infinite is the catalogue of the effects of sin ;

but the cause of all is ever and everywhere the same.
Guilt, defilement, death, are the three woes which in sin,
their central unity, rule the world with terrible unchange-
ableness. The Gospel, by its triple antidote, pardon,
renewal, life, — one in their central unity, grace, — delivers
us from the hand of the enemy that hated us. It preaches
a forgiveness full, perfect, and for ever the same ; it
preaches a living Spirit of grace, whose sanctifying power
cleanses the defilement of our nature ; and it preaches a
full and eternal redemption from all the penalties of sin,
from Satan, from sorrow, and from death.

Therefore, the Gospel cannot change. " For ever, O
Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven." A new Gospel will
never be devised of God; a new Gospel will never be
needed by man. The word of Qod, preached as St. Peter
and St. Paul preached it, endureth for ever. With what
unspeakable recoil of abhorrence did St. Paul deprecate
the thought of another Gospel: whether man or angel
preached it, let him be consigned to a curse ! But that
tremendous anathema has never been sufficient to restrain
the licentiousness of free thought from perverting the
Gospel of Christ. According to the apostles* teaching,
every change in the simple condition of the atonement is
publishing an alien Gospel. Hence, all wilful develop-
ments, all additions, all adaptations of the simple truths
of the Church's first heritage, are the perversions which
he denounced. Whether superstition on the one hand
overloads those truths, or rationalism on the other seeks
to tone down their oflfensiveness to unregenerate reason,
both are mere perversion : if not the lie direct, the shadow
of the lie. Known unto God were all the deep necessities
of hv 'nan nature when He pressed into one sentence the
terms of salvation. Those deep necessities are not among
the things that change ; and the word of God that meets
them with its relief will endure for ever.

With what calm confidence, brethren, may we proclaim

it throughout the world ! Ita first preachers, strong in
the assurance that it was the power of God to save man
in every extremity of his weakness, went through all the
zones of humanity proclaiming their one message, and
were never ashamed of their confidence. Rejection they
often encountered; they never mot with failure. They
triumphed everywhere ; never finding a single tribe or a
solitary soul on whose willing mind the Gospel spent its
strength in vain. And their successors, although without the
apo.s ties' supernatural endowments and preaching the word
to races nnthought of by them, have never found their word
powerless to save. We can add our own testimony. By
multitudes in our day is the Gospel rejected ; but none
receive it perfectly without being perfectly mode whole.
We have no doubt that the word we preach can cure, and
will cure, man*s universal disease. We send it abroad
without any distrust to every region of our enterprise.
Tears and anxieties we may have on other grounds, — as to
OTu-selves, as ■* i the men we send, as to our resources for
sending them, as to our subordinate equipments and
agencies, — ^but not the faintest doubt about the Gospel
message and its universal sufficiency. It is still worthy
of all men to be received, and will endure for ever.

And with what confidence may we all, brethren, cast
the burden of our present and everlasting salvation upon
it ! Creatures of a day, but of a day pregnant with
eternity; passing vlr-vigh , swift probation to an un-
changeable state J we are bur-ought by our Saviour to take
refuge in His eternal luercy. "V^Te are sinners, but the
justice and the n^ercy of God are alike and together
pledged to our forgiveness. We are unholy, but the
fountain for sin and uncleanness flows unsealed to all
generations. We are beset by enemies, and exposed to
endless temptations ; but One ever liveth to make inter-
cession for us and save us to the uttermost. This is the
accepted time : now — ^between the two eternities — is the

mg in
man
IJI the
, and
they
They

day of Balv;iH..n. You cannot have placed yourself yet
beyond the pale of the covenant of immutable grace,
Eoiuember tl e countless multitudes of those who have —
SUM , Paul made himself the pattern of all the saved —
proved his Gospel a faithful saying : " whose faith follow,
considerinff its end, Jesus Christ the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever." If you refuse and rebel, the
judi^ents of God's word, the sanctions of His Gospel, are
equally eternal with its mercies. If you will not be a
monument of His immutable grace, you shall be a monu-
ment of His changeless justice. But this part of the
dread alternative is not St. Peter's theme, nor ours. It is
the mercy of God, from everlasting to everlasting to them
that fear Him, that we now proclaim. We plead with
you by the heavenly chorus that runs through the Bible :
by that mercy which — like His word — endurethfor ever.

rV. Once more, the truth of the text is illustrated by

the NEW AND IMMORTAL SPIRITUAL LIFE TO WHICH WE ARE
BEGOTTEN AGAIN BY THK ABIDING WORD. This is another of

the sublime applicatih^ns of his theme that fill the opening
' r St. Peter's Epistle. "The grass withereth, the flower
fadcth : " man's life is fragility itself, and the glory of his
life is more fragile still ; but the Divine life in the
Christian man <ndureth for ever. Here the apostle
presents to our thoughts the indestructible dignity of
spiritual life, as maintained by the abiding Word; and its
eternal continuance, in contrast with the transitory life of
human generation.

1. The Gospel has given us a new and nobler life. "I
am come," said the Eedeenior, "that they might have
life, and that they might have it more abundantly,"
literally, that they might have it more: a life nobler,
deeper, richer; fuller than man could ever otherwise have
enjoyed ; a life derived from union with Him the Living
Word, communicated by His indwelling Spirit, and

sustained by His neverfailing word. " Thou hast," said
the same Simon Peter, in his first ever-memorable
confession, " the words of eternal life ; " and his doc-
trine here, like the doctrine of the whole New Tes-
tament, is that regeneration confers, not new strength
upon the old life, but a new and more noble life from
above, — a gift which, in his own very hold language,
makes us " partakers of the Divine nature."

Thus born again, we should glory alone in our new
being. How utterly unworthy of the name of life is that
mere existence, doomed to worse than annihilation, which
man unregenerate spends in the vain show of this world !
How miserable is the career of human life, at its
best state and under its best possible conditions, if not
revivified from above ! How vain is every flower that
springs not firom the eternal seed : the flower of strength,
the flov^er of beauty, the flower of youthful joy, the flower
of family delight, the flower of wealth, yea, every flower
into which the grass of human life may bloom ! This has
been the very commonplace of the moralist in every age ; yet
how few there are in any age who act as if they believed
it, and who refuse to be content with theu' heritage in
the life that now is ! But let those who are born again by
the Spirit rejoice in that they have died to self to live in
Christ. Let us rejoice, brethren, together : we have
found that which we had lost, and more than we had lost,
— our true and imperishable life ; and can exult in the
possession of that immortal secret which makes existence,
even amidst the conditions of this changing and sorrow-
ful world, matter of infinite joy.

And how diligently should we seek the sustentation and
vigour of this life. As it was the word of God that gave
us our new being, so it is His word alone that can sustain it
unto perfection. The seed of that Ufe is incorruptible ;
but, like all seed, it der^ands its nourishment. " Mali
doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro-

ceec
nat^
Goc

VVJ

ceedeth from the mouth of God doth man live." As the
natural Ufe depends for its continuance upon the word of
God making bread the nourishment of life, so the life
spiritual depends upon the continual impartation of the
Spirit in the word. " If ye abide in Me, and My word in
you," is the great condition of perfect and perfected life,
uttered by lips from which there is no appeal. " Severed
from Me ye can do nothing," because ye are nothing. Tiie
blessed Spirit of the new life is indeed incorruptible : He
can never, and therefore it can never, perish in our nature.
But He, like Christ, may leave us: it may be withdrawn, and
in this sense too the spirit may return to God who gave it.
But so great a calamity shall not be to us. We will re-
member the terms of our new and higher immortality, and
keep our renewed spirits for ever in communion with Him
who hath the words of eternal life, and who gives those
words to us for our sanctification as freely as He gave
the drops of His blood for our redemption.

2. Thus imparted and thus sustained, the new life will
survive the mutability of mortal things. " All flesh is
grass, and all the glory of man is the flower of grass."
The grass does not more siu'ely wither, nor the flower
fade, from season to season, than man succumbs to change,
decay, and death. Not more surely will the earth's pre-
sent beautiful scarf, woven by the cunning hand of spring,
wither, than the brightness of our mortal Hfe will depart :
" we all do fade as a leaf." But, in opposition to this life
appointed to death, that new life endureth for ever.

We carry about in ourselves the present illustrp.tion of
this truth, and the earnest of its eternal fulfilment. We
have two lives within us, not indeed struggling together,
but each taking its own calm course to its full develop-
ment : the one, the natural life, tending surely to decay ;
the other, the lile spiritual, tending to perfection. The
gloomy side of the text has its illustration in omrselves,
even as we see it affectingly illustrated in others: with

j^''^^

most of us the flower has already fallen away, and our
little stem of life shall never again put forth its blossom.
But we know, we feel, that there is another life within us
that holds on its steady upward course through all the
stages of physical delay; and, feeling that, while our
physical energies are daily failing us, our spiritual vigour
increases day by day, we rejoice in the earnest that our
life, like the word that gave it to us, will endure for ever.

Then with what calmness may we confront our coming
change, and death, its once dreadful representative!
How clear and blessed the prospect to the regenerate
believer ! Death to him is already swallowed up, if not in
victory, yet in hope ; and the very word is sanctified and
ennobled. Since that moment when, as the darkness rolled
from the cross, the voice of Jesus cried. Father, into Thine
hands I commit My spirit, the ministry of death has been
changed: not utterly abolished, but translated into the
ministry of an angel of light. The apostle's words con-
cerning it are few, but always serene. They are governed
by that sacred paradox uttered at the only grave before
which we have seen the Eedeemer stand: "He that
believeth in Me, though he die, yet shall he live ; and he
that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die ;" and by
that other word, uttered when the Lord intercepted the
retreating sph'it of the child, " Not dead, but sleepeth."
To Simon Peter, indeed, it is hardly sleep. He at least knew
that he must die, and had his inverted cross for ever sus-
pended before his eyes ; yet lie speaks of his death but once,
and then terms it his departure. That word he heard on the
holy mount, spoken there of the Lord's exodus out of life :
it lingered in his ears, and he dared to make it his own.
And now the word stands in the Bible twice concerning
death, — once for Christ, and once for you and me. Full
of his own text, St. Peter speaks of putting off his taber-
nacle with the same solemn tranquillity as he put off ere-
while his fisher's coat, to go to Jesus. Let us arm

PEL

ourselves with the same mine', and comfort our hearts, as
the great change draws near, with the thought that the
eternal life within us shall never see death.

V. Lastly, the society formed by the word of the Gos-
pel IS AN eternal society. Hcrc once more we have the
apostle's own application of his great truth : " Bom again
of incorruptible seed, to an inheritance incorruptible, and
destined to an eternal fellowship of glory, see that ye love
one another with a pure heart fervently." But the
thought is still more in the spirit and the tone than the
words. Simon Peter, having strengthened his brethre.1
through life, strengthens them to the last ; and, knowing
that the end of all things, — the end of all changes too, —
was at hand, writes with the glorious anticipation of an
eternal fellowship. All earthly conversation or citizenship
is vain : the Christian society is redeemed from vanity.
All human confederations are transitory, and must be dis-
solved : the Christian church shall endure eternally.

1. Vanity is written upon all human confederations ;
but the brotherhood of the Cliristian Church is redeemed
from vain conversation. Earthly societies have indeed
their glory and their beauty ; but when compared with the
society formed around the cross of Christ their best glory
fades away. The family bond, with its tender grace and un-
utterable joy, we all too surely know has no continuance in
this life ; and it cannot in every respect be renewed here-
after. Earthly political confederacies, the unions of
nations and states, have their dignity; and, as appointed
by God, must not be lightly disparaged. But noble as
they are in human estimation, and magnificent as their
annals are in human history, in them there is no continu-
ance. In due time there is or may be an historian of the
decline and fall of every empire. And the destiny of that
last empire, the history of which no human historian will
survive to write, has been forewritten in the night visions of

Daniel, and in the day visions of St. John the Evangelist.
Over all the glory of the kingdoms of this world there is
no defence. But the kingdom of the Son of Man is an
everlasting kingdom, and of His dominion there shall be
no end. The multitudinous grass of His subjects shall
be green eternally, and their flower. His sacred self, the
true and restored glory of man : ah, what shall e\8r dim
His lustre ! Other confederacies there are in human
things. The great fellowship of literature, science, and
art is the most beautiful representative of collective
humanity, viewed only as such. But its dignity and
beauty are only mortal. It is based on man's perishable
word, and its institutions change from age to age. The
treasures of literature pass into dead languages : one
generation is busy in disinterring the remains of another,
until human knowledge shall vanish away, and the day
come when all marl's thoughts shall perish. But the Christian
church, — the church founded when human history began,
— has gone on, through the fluctuations of time, from
strength to strength, with its immutable government, its
undecaying literature, its immortal hope.

2. But while the Christian fellowship is already re-
deemed from vain conversation, it is only in the future
state that its immutability will be absolute. The society
of its people is now more or less subject to vicissitude and
change. While the mystical body of Christ is in itself
incorruptible, and enjoys a life which is as inaccessible to
death as that of its Head, ^ho dieth no more, yet is that
living body clothed at present in vestments that decay and
change. The immutable church assumes among men a
variable form ; bears a multitude of badges that vary from
age to age ; changes from time to time her congregations
and services and many of her lesser usages and laws.
The eternal society is also more or less subject to temporal
vicissitudes, and shares largely in the general doom. To
name no other proof, she is constantly burying the genera-

tions

mort

she

comf

with

for e

pany

from

chan

the

mgelist.
there is
m is an
jhall be
ts shall
elf, the
ler dim
human
ce, and
llective
ity and
•ishable
The
one
ttother,
he day
iristian
began,
, from
ent, its

dy re-
future
society
ie and

itself
ble to
s that
Lyand
tten a

from
itions
laws,
poral
To
aera-

tions of her dead r an immorl^al Rachel weeping for her
mortal children, not because they are not, but because
she sees them no more, and not indeed refusing to be
comforted. While hasting to the coming of her Lord
with songs, and everlasting joy upon her head, there is
for ever the sound of weeping and lamentation in her com-
pany, — gad proof that she is not yet altogether redeemed
from vanity and change, and the sorrow that cometh of
change. " All flesh is grass, and aU the glory of man as
the flower of grass," is the cry of a voice sounding within
the church as weU as in the desert of this world ; and how
mournfully has that cry been heard within the chambers of
our own bereaved community since the year began !

But all this will soon be over. The time shall come — if
time it may be called — when the church shall lay aside for
ever every vestment of earth, and enter upon the eternal
possession of an inheritance that fadeth not away. As
her inheritance wiU be unchangeable, so she shall enter
upon its enjoyment as an unchangeable society, into which
no element of variation shall ever enter. Sin, the great
distm'ber, shall be no more. Time shall be no more ; and
mutability, the fleeting shadow of time, shall be no more.
And, in the prospect of that tranquil and eternal communion
of unchanging glory and unchangeable service, St. Peter
bids his own generation of Christians, and every genera-
tion, to love one another fervently as those who are imited
for eternity, to labour together heartily as those who will
share together the everlasting recompense, and to wait
patiently together until the great change shall come, — that
change which will end all change for ever.

Let us, brethren, in conclusion, sum up and hear St.
Peter's full interpretation of the ancient cry, as it is a
voice sounding not now in the wilderness but within the
com'ts of the Lord's house. It tells us that in this book
we have the eternal word of truth : let us make it in its

inviolable integrity our heritage for ever. It tells us of a
Divine purpose that shall stand through time, and be glori-
fied in eternity : let us renew our pledges of devotion to
the service of that great decree. It tells us of a saving
Gospel unchangeably preached : let us cast our own souls'
eternal care upon its immutable promises, and count it
our supreme vocation to proclaim it to the ends of
the earth. It tells us that we have the seed of imperish-
able life within us : let us rejoice together in the earnest
of our immortality. And it assures us of an eternal
fellowship in heaven : let us take to our hearts the
everlasting consolation, and cry with St. Peter's Easter
song, " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath
begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance in-
corruptible, undefiled, and that fadcth not away.'

LONDON :

PBINTKO BT WILLIAU NICHOLS,

it, UOXTON SqUABC.

«;»

Is us of a
I be glori-
votion to
a saving
wn souls'
count it
ends of
mperish-
e earnest
L eternal
arts the
s Easter
rd Jesus
cy hath
irrectiou
ance in-