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in which man will then adore Him.

How magni

The blessed

ficent a figure! how sublime a hope! will be so included in God that even when they worship He will be their temple. He, the Lord God Almighty, and the Lamb. My brethren, what know we as yet of any approach to such a worship? It is as much as we can do to believe that our prayer ever reaches God; that it is not utterly spoken 1 Cor.14.9. into the air; that it does not fall back idly upon the earth from which it is offered. But as to praying in

God as well as to God, as to what St Jude calls praying in the Holy Ghost, what do we know of it? Jude 20. How many of the prayers offered in this house to-day have been offered in God as well as to God? Where God is, the world is not, and folly is not, and vain trifling idle thought is not, and sin is not: he who worships in God worships apart from all these things; his very soul rising into a world of spirit, of reality and truth, not of shadow and semblance, above; his very life absorbed for the time in that life of Christ Himself which is centred and hidden and lost in Col. 3. 3. God. Which of us knows anything of such prayer? Nay, which of us knows anything of that life itself, of which such prayer is at once the food and the expression?

I fear, my brethren, the change from earth to heaven will be too great, too sudden, too abrupt, for almost any of us! of us! We trust that all will be done

for us by that unknown, that unrealized event, to which we give the name of death. Let us be assured that, whatever else death may do or not do for us, it will carry no man for the first time across the boundary-line between ruin and salvation, it Joh. 5. 24. will enable no man to pass from eternal death to eternal life. If we would hereafter worship in that

temple which is God Himself, Christ Himself, we Collect for must know God now by faith, we must have life the Epi

phany. now in Christ; and then the words may be verified Joh.16. 22. to us, I will see you myself, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.

THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER,

May 11, 1862.

LECTURE XXXVII.

REVELATION XXII. 1-5.

AND he showed me a river of water of life, bright as I crystal, going forth out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of its street and of the river hence 2 and thence [is] a tree of life, making (yielding) twelve fruits, according to each month rendering its fruit: and the leaves of the tree [are] unto healing of the nations. And every 3 accursed thing shall not be [exist] any longer. And the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him, and they shall see His countenance, 4 and His name [shall be] on their foreheads. And night 5 shall not be (exist;) and [there is] not need of lamp and of light; because the Lord (Jehovah) who is God shall give light upon them, and they shall reign unto the ages of the ages.

LECTURE XXXVII.1

REVELATION XXII. 2.

And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

WE believe that we are reading now of heaven. After all its conflicts and sorrows the Church of Is. 57. 2. Christ has at last entered into peace. All the sayings of God have now been accomplished: resurJoh. 5. 29. rection, the twofold resurrection, the resurrection of life and the resurrection of condemnation; judgment, the last, the universal judgment, with its twofold and but twofold result: and there has come in that new scene, every feature of which is unlike the present, whether it be in point of holiness or of happiness, of the absence of evil or of the presence of good.

The first five verses of this last chapter of the Bible are our subject this evening. May God give us grace so to enter into their sense and force, that we may find in them not only a resistless argument

1 A collection was made on this occasion for the Church Missionary Society.

for this day's work of charity, but also a constraining motive for a life of consistency and of devotion!

And he, that holy Angel who was employed as Verse 1. the messenger and interpreter of this vision, showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, going forth out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. He had already shown the city itself descending, with its walls and gate-towers, its twelve vast foundationstones, its street of transparent gold, its light the glory of God, its only temple God and the Lamb. And now he points out that further element of its blessedness which is typified by a river, clear as crystal, of the water of life. We all know by description, none of us perhaps knows by experience, what water is in eastern deserts or under eastern suns. We all know that our Lord Himself when He was upon earth consecrated the element of water to denote the promise of His Holy Spirit; as when He said, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, Joh. 7. 37. and drink. If thou knewest the gift of God, and who ch.4.10,14. it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water. The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. This spake He, the Evangelist adds, after re- ch. 7. 39. cording a similar prediction in another chapter, of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive. The water of life is the Holy Spirit of God.

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