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 thoughtful and sober moments.  We cannot read the Scriptures without the dark vision passing before our eyes with more or less gloom.  Conscience whispers to us about it.  It recurs to our thoughts amidst the penitential confessions and earnest prayers of public worship.  The theme is constantly discussed in works and periodicals widely read, and not even professedly theological.

There are few, we presume, who will assert that every man, whatever his character may be when he leaves the world, shall after death immediately pass into glory, and be received into fellowship with God and His saints.  With such a belief earnestly entertained, suicide would cease to be an evidence of insanity, and murder would become philanthropy.

Most men are prepared rather to believe, apart altogether from any Scripture statements on this momentous subject, that punishment of some kind or other must be awarded to crime at last, and in some degree proportionate to the character of the criminal,—­that somewhere or other, by some means or other, not yet discovered or revealed, reformation if at all possible must necessarily be effected in order that peace and happiness may