e thread.
The life of the humblest Christian, the most imperfect Christian, the
most infantile Christian, the most ignorant Christian here on earth, has
for its essential characteristics the very same things as the lives of
the strong spirits that move in light around the Throne, and receive
into their expanding nature the ever-increasing fulness of the glory of
the Lord. Grace here is glory in the bud; glory yonder is grace in the
fruit.

But there is still further to be noticed another great thought that
comes out of this remarkable language. The words of my text, literally
rendered, are 'the grace that is being brought unto you.' Now, there
have been many explanations of that remarkable phrase, which I think is
not altogether exhausted by, nor quite equivalent to, that which
represents it in our version--viz. 'to be brought unto you.' That
relegates it all into the future; but in Peter's conception it is, in
some sense, in the present. It is 'being brought.' What does that mean?
There are far-off stars in the sky, the beams from which have set out
from their home of light millenniums since, and have been rushing
through the waste places of the universe since long before men were,
and they have not reached our eyes yet. But they are on the road. And so
in Peter's conception, the apocalypse of glory, which is the crowning
manifestation of grace, is rushing towards us through the ages, through
the spheres, and it will be here some day, and the beams will strike
upon our faces, and make them glow with its light. So certain is the
arrival of the grace that the Apostle deals with it as already on its
way. The great thing on which the Christian hope fastens is no
'peradventure,' but a good which has already begun to journey towards
us.

Again, there is another thought still to be suggested, and that is, the
revelation of Jesus Christ is the coming to His children of this grace
which is glory, of this glory which is grace. For mark how the Apostle
says, 'the grace which is being brought to you in the revelation of
Jesus Christ.' And that revelation to which he here refers is not the
past one, in His incarnate life upon earth, but it is the future one, to
which the hope of the faithful Church ought ever to be steadfastly
turned, the correlated truth to that other one on which its faith rests.
On these two great pillars, rising like columns on either side of the
gulf of Time, 'He has come,' 'He will come,' the bridge is susp