ternal
'things which are not seen,' since only so can the light and the
momentary afflictions, joys, sorrows, or circumstances, work out for
us, and work us for 'a far more exceeding and eternal weight of
glory.'

TENT AND BUILDING

'For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle
be dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens.'--2 COR. v. 1.

Knowledge and ignorance, doubt and certitude, are remarkably blended
in these words. The Apostle knows what many men are not certain of;
the Apostle doubts as to what all men now are certain of. '_If_ our
earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved'--there is surely no if
about that. But we must remember that the first Christians, and the
Apostles with them, did not know whether they might not survive till
the coming of Christ; and so not die, but 'be changed.' And this
possibility, as appears from the context, is clearly before the
Apostle's mind. Such a limitation of his knowledge is in entire
accordance with our Lord's own words, 'It is not for you to know the
times and the seasons,' and does not in the smallest degree derogate
from his authority as an inspired teacher. But his certitude is as
remarkable as his hesitation. He knows--and he modestly and calmly
affirms the confidence, as possessed by all believers--that, in the
event of death coming to him or them, he and they have a mansion
waiting for their entrance; a body of glory like to that which Jesus
already wears.

I. So my text mainly sets before us very strikingly the Christian
certitude as to the final future.

I need not dwell, I suppose, upon that familiar metaphor by which the
relation of man to his bodily environment is described as that of a
man to his dwelling-place. Only I would desire, in a word, to
emphasise this as being the first of the elements of the blessed
certitude in which Christian people may expatiate--the clear, broad
distinction between me and my physical frame. There is no more
connection, says Paul, between us and the organisation in which we at
present dwell than there is between a man and the house that he
inhabits. 'The foolish senses crown' Death and call him lord; but the
Christian's certitude firmly draws the line, and declares that the
man, the whole personality, is undisturbed by anything that befalls
his residence; and that he may pass unimpaired from one house to
another, being in both the self-same per