Ever with the Lord.
“Reading tires me,” said Rev. John Brown, of Haddington, “walking tires me, riding tires me; but were I once with Jesus, fellowship with Him will never tire me. So shall we ever be with the Lord.” Oh, that sweet little sentence, ‘We shall be for ever with the Lord.’ Oh how sweet!—for ever with the Lord! And that which makes the wonder is this, that it is we that are to enjoy this happiness; we pitiful wretches are to be for ever with God our Saviour—God in our nature!”
The Celestial City.
Dr. Guthrie described heaven thus:— “A city never built with hands, nor hoary with the years of time—a city whose inhabitants no census has numbered—a city through whose streets rush no tides of business, nor nodding hearse creeps slowly with its burden to the tomb—a city without griefs or graves, without sins or sorrows, without births or burials, without marriages or mournings—a city which glories in having Jesus for its king, angels for its guards, saints for its citizens; whose walls are salvation, and whose gates are praise.”
Cleansing from Sin.
Mr. Williams, having visited an old blind warrior in Raiatea, who had been converted to Christianity, intimated that he thought his sickness would terminate in death, and wished the old man to tell him what he thought of himself in the sight of God, and what was the foundation of his hope. “Oh,” he replied, “I have been in great trouble this morning, but I am happy now. I saw an immense mountain with precipitous sides, up which I endeavoured to climb; but when I had attained a considerable height, I lost my hold and fell to the bottom. Exhausted with perplexity and fatigue, I went to a distance and sat down to weep, and while weeping, I saw a drop of blood fall on that mountain, and in a moment it was dissolved.” Wishing to have his own ideas of what had been presented to his imagination, Mr. Williams said, “This was certainly a strange sight; what construction do you put upon it?” After expressing his surprise that Mr. Williams should be at a loss for the interpretation, he exclaimed, “That mountain was my sins, and the drop which fell upon it was one drop of the precious blood of Jesus, by which the mountain of my guilt must be melted away.” He died soon after, exclaiming, “O death, where is thy sting?”
An Infidel Silenced.
“Sitting lately,” said one, “in a public room at Brighton, where an infidel was haranguing the company upon ‘the absurdities of the Christian religion,’ I could not but be pleased to see how easily his reasoning pride was put to shame. He quoted these passages: ‘I and my Father are one’; ‘I in them, and Thou in Me’; and that there are three persons in one God. Finding his auditors not disposed to applaud his blasphemy, he turned to one gentleman and said, with an oath, ‘Do you believe such nonsense?’ The gentleman replied, ‘Tell me how that candle burns?’ ‘Why,’ replied he, ‘The tallow, the cotton, and the atmospheric air produce the light.’ ‘Then they make one light, do they not?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Will you tell me how they are one in the other, and yet but one light?’ ‘No, I cannot.’ ‘But you believe it?’ He could not say he did not. The company instantly made the application by smiling at his folly: upon which the conversation was changed. This may remind the young and inexperienced, that if they believe only what they can explain, they may as well part with their senses, being surrounded by the wonderful works of God, ‘whose ways are past finding out.'”