ed to make His crown complete,--their happiness and joy the
needful complement of His own!

Reader! learn from this, the grand element in the bliss of your future
condition--it is _the presence of Christ_; "_with Me_ where I am." It
matters comparatively little as to the locality of heaven. "We shall see
_Him_ as He is," is "the blessed hope" of the Christian. Heaven would
be _no_ heaven without Jesus; the withdrawal of His presence would be
like the blotting out of the sun from the firmament; it would uncrown
every seraph, and unstring every harp. But, blessed thought! it is His
own stipulation in His testamentary prayer, that Eternity is to be spent
in union and communion with _Himself_, gazing on the unfathomed
mysteries of His love, becoming more assimilated to His glorious image,
and drinking deeper from the ocean of His own joy.

If anything can enhance the magnitude of this promised bliss, it is the
concluding words of the verse, in which He grounds His plea for its
bestowment: "_I will_--that they behold my glory;"--why? "For Thou
lovedst (not _them_, but) ME before the foundation of the world!" It is
equivalent to saying, "If Thou wouldst give _Me_ a continued proof of
Thine everlasting love and favour to Myself, it is by loving and
exalting My redeemed people. In loving _them_ and glorifying them, Thou
art loving and glorifying Me: so endearingly are their interests and My
own bound up together!"

Believer, think of that all-prevailing voice, at this moment pleading
for thee within the veil!--that omnipotent "_Father, I will_," securing
every needed boon! There is given, so to speak, a blank _cheque_ by
which He and His people may draw indefinite supplies out of the
exhaustless treasury of the Father's grace and love. God Himself
endorses it with the words, "Son, Thou art ever with me, and all that I
have is Thine." How it would reconcile us to Earth's bitterest sorrows,
and hallow Earth's holiest joys, if we saw them thus hanging on the
"_will_" of an all-wise Intercessor, who ever pleads in love, and never
pleads in vain!

"BE IT UNTO ME ACCORDING TO _THY WORD_."

24TH DAY.

"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said"--

"Because I live, ye shall live also."--John xiv. 19.

The Immutable Pledge.

God sometimes selects the most stable and enduring objects in the
material world to illustrate His unchanging faithfulness and love to His
Church. "As the mountains are round about