the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them,” as his reconciled and beloved people.  As a tender Father, he will “wipe away all tears from their eyes.”  “There shall be no more death,” either of themselves or their beloved friends, to open the fountain of tears any more for ever.  But death is the last enemy to be destroyed; (1 Cor. xv. 26;) how then can these words apply to any state short of immortality in heaven?  “Neither sorrow nor crying,”—­for sin or suffering; “neither shall there be any more pain,” causing tears or cries:  and what is this but heaven?  Yes, “the former things are passed away.”  Now “he that hath the bride is the bridegroom,” and she shall never be false to her marriage covenant any more.—­“He that sat on the throne,” denotes the Father most frequently in this book, as he is distinguished from the Son; but the Son “is set down with his Father in his throne,” (ch. iii. 21;) and the Son is to be viewed as the person on the throne here, as the following words, compared with the twentieth chapter, verse eleventh, make evident.—­He it is who “makes all things new.”  He left his disciples as to his bodily presence, and went to “prepare a place for them,” (John xiv. 2;) and now he has come again and received them to himself, in fulfilment of his promise.  Having sent the Holy Spirit to create them anew and to carry on to completion their sanctification, he now sees of the travail of his soul, the Father has given him his heart’s desire, and hath not withholden the request of his lips.  Now, all his ransomed ones are with him, in answer to his prayer, and also their own prayers, that they may behold his glory which the Father gave him. (Ps. xxi. 2; John xvii. 24; Phil. i. 23.)—­The Lord Christ said to John,—­“Write; for these words are true and faithful.”  And what has sustained the spirits, animated the hopes, and filled with exulting joy, the confessors, witnesses and martyrs of Jesus, but faith’s realizing views of the King in his beauty, and the glories of Immanuel’s land?  For this peculiarity the disciples of Christ have been as speckled birds, men wondered at, in all generations.—­“It is done,” so he said at the pouring out of the seventh vial, (ch. xvi. 17;) when the final stroke was given to the antichristian enemies:  but now these words import the completion of the whole counsel of the will of God, as carried into effect by the Captain of salvation, in bringing the beloved and adopted sons and daughters of the Father home to glory. (Heb. ii. 10.) He who is the “Alpha and Omega,” is the “author and finisher of their faith.”—­Although the Lord Jesus has made of sinners “new creatures,” prepared them as “vessels of mercy unto glory,” and introduced them into heaven, they are creatures still, and necessarily dependent.  They thirst for refreshment suited to their holy nature; and accordingly he gives of the “fountain of the water of life freely,” for the streams of which they thirsted, “as the heart panteth for the