the coming of this day of God, that we may be found of it, when it comes, in peace, without spot, and blameless! FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER, April 28, 1862. LECTURE XXXV. REVELATION XXI. I-8. AND I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first 1 heaven and the first earth departed; and the sea is not any longer. And the holy city, a new Jerusalem, saw I de- 2 scending out of the heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of 3 the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God [is] with men (mankind,) and He will tabernacle with them, and they themselves shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them [as] their God. And He shall wipe away every tear 4 from their eyes; and death shall not be (exist) any longer, neither shall mourning nor crying nor pain be (exist) any longer; because the first things departed. And He 5 who is seated upon the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. And He saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true. And He said to me, They have come 6 to pass. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I to him that thirsteth will give out of the spring of the water of life freely. He that conquereth shall 7 inherit these things, and I will be to him God, and he himself shall be to me a son. But for those who are cowardly, and 8 unfaithful, and defiled with abominations, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and for all the false, their share [is] in the lake which is kindled with fire and brimstone; which thing is the second death. LECTURE XXXV. REVELATION XXI. 5. And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. We have read of AT length we are in still waters. trials and judgments: we have read of foes and battles: we have read of sorrows of the righteous and triumphs of the ungodly. Shall there be no end of these things? no end of this state of imperfection, of warfare, of unrest? no end of these vicissitudes and alternations, of these inversions of right and wrong, of these perpetual renewals of a strife once decided? The very last chapter was of a somewhat saddening and disheartening character. It told us that even a condemned criminal differs from a criminal executed; that Satan in his prison-house can still tempt, and shall one day be loosed. It told us that redemption itself is not yet completed; that there are still years, perhaps centuries of years, to be accomplished, before the work of Christ will have vice. taken its full effect, before the mystery of God is con- Rev. 10. 7. summated, and before the opening of the book of life shall have brought in the final manifestation of the Rom. 8. 19. sons of God. Though the death and resurrection, the ascension and glory of the Son of Man, was the dethronement, the humiliation, the incarceration of the devil; though the souls of the righteous, after they Burial Serare delivered from the burden of the flesh, not only are in joy and felicity, but are even living and reign- Rev. 20. 4. ing with Christ during the typical thousand years which intervene between His departure and His return, between the Ascension and the Advent; still the approach of the termination of that period shall be marked by new perils, by unexampled disasters, for the Church below; the devil himself will exert a power untried before; it shall be as though he had burst the bars of his dungeon, and had liberty to put forth all his strength and all his subtlety for one last, one crowning effort. The evil spirits of deception and seduction shall go forth in every direction to gather the nations of the earth to the war of the great ch. 16. 14. day of God Almighty. And but too successful shall be that Satanic mission. The face of the earth shall be darkened by the mustering legions: the camp of ch. 20. 9. the saints, the beloved city, shall be like a little fortress assailed by countless hosts; like a single rock in the midst of the ocean, against which the surging tide is raging with all its storms. But this conflict, if the sorest, is also the last of all. When it ends; when the intervention of God Himself, when the descent of Christ the Judge of man, brings it to its decisive close; when the fire from heaven falls, as it I Ki. 18.38, fell once on Carmel, to consume as it were the wood and the stones and the dust of the altar, and to lick up the very water that was in the trench around; then shall an assembled universe bow the knee in final subjection, saying, The Lord, He is the God; the Lord, He is the God. The controversy will be for Ro. 14. 11. ever ended: then, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to 39. Rev. 20. 11, God. The great white throne is set for judgment. 12, 15. The dead, small and great, stand before God. The book of life is opened. The dead are judged according to the things written. And whosoever is not found written in the book of life is cast into the lake of fire. That which follows upon these things must of 1 Cor. 2. 9. necessity be a revelation of the world to come. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard those things which lie beyond the last great judgment of mankind. And yet it is to these things, as revealed by God's Spirit to the beloved Apostle and Evangelist St John, that our thoughts are now to be directed. Henceforth, in the brief remainder of that course which has so long engaged us, we are to seek by God's grace to |