mit to it; but the Christian can triumphantly exclaim, "I will"-notwithstanding-"rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation." Paul says, "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing"-his life like an April day-sunshine and showers, tears and smiles, intermingling in rapid succession. James says, "Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations." And, again, it is said of the Christians, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, "Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods." We are therefore taught in all these passages, that in that hour when, according to this world's wisdom, a Christian should weep, he may "rejoice evermore." There is no night that falls upon our hemisphere in which there are not some intermingling rays. There is no sorrow in which there is not some compensatory spring of joy and thankfulness. Have you lost your property? Has some storm, unexpected-and it may be, undeserved-swept away all that your industry had accumulated? Is not that ground, the world would say, for sorrow? It is, no doubt, ground for sorrow; and if you look at the loss in itself, you must weep; or if you regard the loss as an accident, you cannot but grieve. But if you can look above the loss, and see it was a Father that took it from you, because you made it a substitute for him; or that it was infinite love that snatched it from you, because your heart was there instead of being where Christ your treasure is; then the loss of earth may be the gain of heaven, and the departure of the riches of this world may leave you a deeper hold of the unsearchable riches of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is thus, that amid the losses of this world you may feel in the knowledge that God sends them, and that a Father's love is in them, what will make you, like the early Christians, "take joyfully the spoiling of your goods." The mere man of the world says, "I am afflicted, I have lost my property; therefore God hates me." But the Christian be

gins at the other end, and says, "God loves me, therefore my loss of property must be the expression of that love." The natural man argues from the physical effect below, up to the moral feeling that is in God's bosom above; but the Christian begins his creed, - as he begins his prayer, with "Our Father," and then he argues downwards, "the heaviest blow is from his hand, the sorest loss is his will, the bitterest disappointment is only the expression of his infinite and inexhaustible love."

But, perhaps, you have suffered a severer trial than this: you have lost those that you loved on earth; you are bereaved and left forlorn and alone; and you ask, Can I hear or respond to the words of Paul, "Rejoice evermore," whilst I gaze on the pale face of the beloved dead? Can I rejoice when my tears flow so fast and so bitterly? Yes, even there, when dust goes to dust, and ashes to ashes, a Christian may hear an undertone of gladness, and feel an undercurrent of joy in his deepest and his bitterest sorrow; for if the lost was a Christian he is not lost, he is only gone before, the preoccupant of the everlasting rest,- the inheritor

of the better land. You feel a new detachment from a world that is perishing, and a new attachment and attraction to a world that lasts forever; and, instead of burying your heart in the grave of the dead, you will lift it to the home and the habitation of the living, knowing that "absent from the body is present with the Lord," and that departure from you was to be "with Christ, which is far better." Thus the palm rises where cypress grew, and joy springs from the scenes of grief, and the grave rings already with the accents of a coming and a joyous resurrection.

But there is another hour,—that hour that comes to all, and must come to the oldest and the youngest; the hour when "the dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall go to him that gave it." In that hour Christians

have rejoiced — and Christianity teaches us to rejoice; and if we have felt its blessed influence in our hearts, a dying hour will be to many of us our brightest and our happiest. When God says to the Christian, "Come up hither," he invariably gives him a robe of willingness to put on for it. We often anticipate what we shall feel when dying by what we feel now. We are now in full health and strength, and we do not wish to die. Quite right; there is nothing sinful in that; it is altogether natural. It is unnatural to die. But when God lays us on the last bed, and the heart, "like a muffled drum," indicates it is "beating" its last "march to the grave". then and there God gives us what he has not given us yet a willingness to "depart and to be with Christ which is far better." We shall discover at that hour, inspired by God, and "willing in the day of his power," that the body we are leaving is only the broken up and ruined temple in which Divine service is now ended; and that the holy and immortal Levite that lived and officiated within, begins his ascent through the veil into the holy of holies, to serve God without imperfection and without suspension. Death comes to the Christian, clad in no robes of terror, but with a bright and joyous welcome. The Greeks made it a rule never to mention the word oúvaroç, death-the Romans rarely mentioned the word mors. They would not even say that a man was dead; they were frightened at death; and I do not wonder at it. A Roman would say of a person that died, not, he is dead, but, fuit, that is, he was; meaning he was once, but he is not now; the word death being so terrible to an heroic Roman, so repugnant to an accomplished Greek, that neither used it when they could escape the necessity of the employment of the sad word. It is Christianity that has made death familiar, that has clothed it in robes of beauty, that has disclosed in it, not the foe that comes to smite, but the messenger of Christ that bids us

welcome to our everlasting home. And why should not a Christian rejoice at death? It is being lifted from the field of conflict into the everlasting rest; the soul goes at that hour to join the companionship of them with whom we took sweet counsel upon earth, and to wait till the rest of the saints are gathered to their everlasting home. One wonders that a true Christian, who has half his family, his relations, and his friends in the great continent of heaven, should not long to cross the sea that separates this distant isle from it, and so to be, not only with Christ whom he loves, but with them who have preoccupied the many mansions, years and months before him.

Thus, "in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and," I may add, "in the day of judgment," a Christian may rejoice, “rejoice evermore: rejoice that God reigns, rejoice that not a hair of his head can fall without his permission, rejoice that there are no accidents; that " a mother may forget her infant, that she should not have compassion on the fruit of her womb; but I will not forget thee: I have engraven thee upon the palms of my hands; thou art continually before me."

Thus Christians may rejoice now-rejoice exceedingly; joy entering into us here, as a tiny rill, we enter into joy there as an illimitable sea; the joy of heaven beginning upon earth, and the joy of earth expanding and unfolding itself in heaven. That Christians dying thus rejoice, I think we have a very beautiful instance in the very remarkable words of the late Dr. Payson, an eminent American divine, who says, writing a letter, as he was able to do in his dying moments, "Were I to adopt the figurative language of Bunyan, I might date this letter from the land of Beulah, of which I have been for some weeks a happy inhabitant. The celestial city is full in my view. Its glories beam upon me - its breezes fan me-its odors are wafted to me- - its sounds

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strike upon my ears its atmosphere is breathed in my heart. Nothing separates me from it but the river of death, which now appears but as an insignificant rill, that may be crossed at a single step whenever God shall give permission. The Sun of righteousness has been gradually drawing nearer and nearer, appearing larger and brighter as he approaches, and now he fills the whole hemisphere, pouring forth a flood of glory in which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun, exulting, yet almost trembling, while I gaze on the excessive brightness, and wondering with unutterable wonder why God should deign thus to shine upon a sinful worm. I want a new heart to love him, a new tongue to celebrate his praise."

This is not fanaticism, it is the enthusiam of a love refreshed and strengthened with the joy of the Lord, not the fanaticism of one who knows not what he says.

Are we branches of the vine? Are we members of the body of Christ? Have we abjured every name but his? Have we ever felt in its pressing force the vast importance and value of the soul? Have we ever asked, under deep depression, "what must I do to be saved?" Have we found Him in whom alone is everlasting life? Are we Christians? There is joy like a river for the humblest Christian; there is no joy for the most illustrious personage who is a stranger to the gospel of Christ. If you be Christians, rejoice. You owe it to God, to show to the world that he makes his own happy; you owe it to the world, to draw it to that spring from which your heart is filled; you owe it to yourselves. Rejoice, for the Lord is your strength. Rejoice evermore; rejoice, and again I say, Rejoice.