are all with us, and we with them, for "Jerusalem which is above is the mother of us all.” *

"Us all." Notice that. The thought has come, perhaps, as we have been meditating on these high and mysterious verities, "But what is all this to me? I am a worm and no man, weak, struggling with temptations, bowed down by sorrow and anxieties, obliged to toil on all day long and every day with monotonous revolting drudgery, in the midst of uncongenial, coarse beings, finding it but too sadly certain that I am a citizen of earth, that the corruptible body presseth down the soul, that I have no wings like a dove to flee away and be at rest, weary as I am." Have you never read of Isaac, the heir of all God's promises, stripped beside the altar of sacrifice, with his father's knife at his heart? Your extremity is not so deep as that. Have you never read of Joseph, his father's dearest son, sold by his envious brothers, falsely accused, in prison forgotten by his friend who had promised to help him to get out? This is a depth below yours. Have you never read of apostles rejected, beaten— citizens of Great Rome though they were-shut up in noisome dungeon, all for trying to teach men the way of life as their Lord bade them. Yet they did not despair, did not complain; they sang in their chains, for they were free; their souls escaped from

"As heaven and earth are one kingdom of God, so the heavenly and earthly Churches are one coherent indivisible whole. The earthly Church is the anti-chamber of the heavenly, and the heavenly stretches into it. Christ is the High Priest of both portions of His Church."-Döllinger's "First Age of Christianity."

their bonds and mounted up to God. There was no prison, there were no chains to trammel and hamper their souls. Have you never read of Him who cried upon His Cross, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Are you not willing to suffer with Him, that you may be glorified together? What are all these high privileges but aids to help you to bear up under life's trials? You must go by the same way that Christ has gone; "the servant is not greater than his Lord." Even the souls of the redeemed whom St. John saw beyond the grave, when they cried like you, "Lord, how long?" were told that they must wait a while. Cannot you too wait? It will not be long; time will seem short indeed when the end has come

"Ah! my sweet home Jerusalem,

Would God I were in Thee!

Would God my woes were at an end,
Thy joys that I might see.

"Strive, man, to win that glory;

Toil, man, to gain that light;
Send hope before to grasp it,
Till hope be lost in sight.

"Exult, O dust and ashes,

The Lord shall be thy part;

His only, His for ever,

Thou shalt be, and thou art!"

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE MARRIAGE OF THE SOUL.

"The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, who made a marriage for his son."-St. MATTHEW Xxii. 2.

"Ascend, Beloved, to the feast;

Make haste, thy day is come;

Thrice blest are they the Lamb doth call

To share the heavenly festival,

In the new Salem's palace hall,

Our everlasting home!"

the gates

BONAR.

Roll back, and far within

For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.

The sabbath of Eternity,

One sabbath deep and wide

A light upon the shining sea

The Bridegroom with his bride! "

TENNYSON.

THE son of Sirach tells us that "all the works of God are two and two, one against another." Substance and shadow are everywhere, body and spirit, the visible and the invisible. It has always been a question with the thoughtful which is the

more important, which is the real and permanent, which the passing. Dull, ignorant, sensual beings live only in the present, the tangible, the material; but wiser, higher souls have long ago suspected that the invisible was the only reality; that beneath the external accidents of created things there was a subtle substance not discernible by the senses, which was in reality the thing itself. Modern science is steadily moving towards the acceptance of this theory, not to say its positive proof; so that we may look on to the time when all wise men will unite, coming by different roads to the same end: deep and patient study of nature, and the faithful acceptance of revelation, meeting in the same confession, that "the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal."

"The children of this world marry and are given in marriage." Marriage is the root and mainspring of civilization. Human life and the affairs of the world cluster around marriage as a centre. We might show this at large, and see how wide and deep are the influences of marriage-how much depends upon it, directly or indirectly. Birth, marriage, death-fill up this outline, and you have the ordinary life of the majority of mankind. But there are those who are too great to be confined within these mundane limits; the soul asserts its claims, its passions and instincts clamour for satisfaction which none of this affords. The intellect is greedy for knowledge, the spirit strains upward

after God. The former can find what it longs for by the exercise of its own faculties upon the wide field of natural phenomena, but the latter depends entirely upon the benevolence of God, and can know only what He pleases to reveal.

God has revealed Himself in two ways: by His works, and by His word. God Himself is the soul of His creation; nature is His garment, man is His image, Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and those words of His are a sort of motto for the history of creation and of man, "A certain king made a marriage for his son."

The union of man with God through Jesus Christ is the topic of the Bible from beginning to end. As Eve was formed from Adam, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, so man was formed in the image of God, that he might dwell with Him in perfect love for ever. And when man sinned, and broke the gracious purpose of his Maker, that purpose was not given up, but only modified. God selected one people of the earth, and betrothed them to His Son, as the representative of the human race. All through the Old Testament this similitude of marriage is used. Israel is spoken of by prophets ever in God's name as wedded to God by mutual pledges and covenants, and her idolatries and rebellions are constantly resented by God as adulteries. Prophet after prophet uses this phraseology, and denounces the sins of Israel as the infidelities of a lewd and faithless wife, till at last she meets her due punishment; degraded, childless, shamed, she is put away