d society can never be diminished
by death, nor divided in spirit, but that, along with saints and
angels, all God's works shall be seen, all His ways known, all His
plans and purposes fulfilled, all His commands perfectly obeyed, and
Himself perfectly enjoyed for ever and ever! And then, at what might
seem to be the very climax of their joy, to behold Jesus! And, seeing
Him, to remember the lowly home in Bethlehem; the once humble artisan
of Nazareth; and the sufferer, "who was despised and rejected of men,"
"the man of sorrows, who was acquainted with grief;" and the tempted
one, who for forty days was with the devil in the wilderness;--seeing
Him, to remember Gethsemane with its trembling hand and cup of
agony; the judgment-hall and Calvary with their horrors of blood, of
blasphemy, and mystery of woe;--seeing Him, to see all this history of
immeasurable love not only recorded in the glory of every saint above,
but embodied in the very person of that Saviour, and in that human
form which was "wounded and bruised for our iniquities," and in that
human soul that was sorrowful unto death, in order that He might be
able to pour into the hearts of lost and ruined men all the fulness of
His own blessedness and joy! What shall be the feelings, what the song
of the redeemed, as all this bursts on their enraptured gaze! Oh,
blind discoursers are we of such ineffable glory! Children-dreamers
are we about this as yet unrevealed vision! What are all our thoughts
but "fallings from us, vanishings" from "creatures walking among
worlds not realised!" But let us pray more and more that the "God
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto us the
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; the eyes of
our understanding being enlightened; that we may _know_ what is
the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His
inheritance in the saints;" for though "eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which
God hath prepared for them that love Him," yet "_God hath revealed
them unto us by His Spirit!_"

FUTURE PUNISHMENT.

The subject of future punishment is one the consideration of which
gives mental pain. We naturally shrink from it, would prefer to leave
it alone, and to think, as we say, of something else.

But the question won't leave us alone, and we must think about it. It
forces itself on our notice, and that, too, in our most tho