I appeal to those in this house who are Christians.  Compare the idea you had of the joy of the Christian life before you became a Christian with the appreciation of that joy you have now since you have become a Christian, and you are willing to attest before angels and men that you never in the days of your spiritual bondage had any appreciation of what was to come.  You are ready to-day to answer, and if I gave you an opportunity in the midst of this assemblage, you would speak out and say in regard to the discoveries you have made of the mercy and the grace and the goodness of God:  “The half—­the half was not told me!”

Well, we hear a great deal about the good time that is coming to this world, when it is to be girded with salvation.  Holiness on the bells of the horses.  The lion’s mane patted by the hand of a babe.  Ships of Tarshish bringing cargoes for Jesus, and the hard, dry, barren, winter-bleached, storm-scarred, thunder-split rock breaking into floods of bright water.  Deserts into which dromedaries thrust their nostrils, because they were afraid of the simoom—­deserts blooming into carnation roses and silver-tipped lilies.

It is the old story.  Everybody tells it.  Isaiah told it, John told it, Paul told it, Ezekiel told it, Luther told it, Calvin told it, John Milton told it—­everybody tells it; and yet—­and yet when the midnight shall fly the hills, and Christ shall marshal His great army, and China, dashing her idols into the dust, shall hear the voice of God and wheel into line; and India, destroying her Juggernaut and snatching up her little children from the Ganges, shall hear the voice of God and wheel into line; and vine-covered Italy, and wheat-crowned Russia, and all the nations of the earth shall hear the voice of God and fall into line; then the Church, which has been toiling and struggling through the centuries, robed and garlanded like a bride adorned for her husband, shall put aside her veil and look up into the face of her Lord the King, and say:  “The half—­the half was not told me.”

Well, there is coming a greater surprise to every Christian—­a greater surprise than anything I have depicted.  Heaven is an old story.  Everybody talks about it.  There is hardly a hymn in the hymn-book that does not refer to it.  Children read about it in their Sabbath-school book.  Aged men put on their spectacles to study it.  We say it is a harbor from the storm.  We call it our home.  We say it is the house of many mansions.  We weave together all sweet, beautiful, delicate, exhilarant words; we weave them into letters, and then we spell it out in rose and lily and amaranth.  And yet that place is going to be a surprise to the most intelligent Christian.  Like the Queen of Sheba, the report has come to us from the far country, and many of us have started.  It is a desert march, but we urge on the camels.  What though our feet be blistered with the way?  We are hastening to the palace.  We take all our loves and hopes and Christian ambitions, as frankincense and myrrh and cassia, to the great King.  We must not rest.  We must not halt.  The night is coming on, and it is not safe out here in the desert.  Urge on the camels.  I see the domes against the sky, and the houses of Lebanon, and the temples and the gardens.  See the fountains dance in the sun, and the gates flash as they open to let in the poor pilgrims.