comes to claim it. All that death and Satan hold they must relinquish; all that Christ has purchased he shall possess. The soul wants her partner; and although the exile may return no more, nor see his native land, the redeemed shall return to claim their bodies from the earth―aye, and claim the very earth they lie in. "The saints shall inherit the earth."

rows.

A grand destiny awaits this world of sins and sorThis earth, purified by judgment fires, shall be the home of the blessed. The curse of briars and thorns shall pass away with sin. "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree." Of the thorns. of that curse Jesus' crown was woven, and he bore it off upon his head. Under laws accommodated to the new economy, the wide world shall become one Eden, where, exempt from physical as from moral evils, none shall shiver amid arctic frosts, nor wither under tropic heat; these fields of snow and arid sands shall blossom all with roses. From the convulsions of expiring

or rather the birth-pangs of parturient nature-a new-born world shall come, a home worthy of immortals, a palace befitting its King. The blood that on Calvary dyed earth's soil shall bless it, and this theater of Satan's triumph, and of a Saviour's shame, shall be the seat of Jesus' kingdom, and the witness of his glory.

Then the saints shall inherit the earth. Some, like Abraham in the promised land, are poor wanderers here-the proprietors of nothing but a grave. Some own not even so much as that. The saints, like the descendants of a noble but decayed house, are strangers on the soil which was once the property of their fathers. But the time of their redemption draweth nigh. Man

shall get his own again, and hold it by a charter writ ten in the blood of Christ. This world was gifted to him. It was his patrimonial estate. It was the land given to our fathers. And it seems most meet, that with the rank and title, the lands should come back to the old family; and, as forming the completest triumph over Sin and Satan, that our redemption should be altogether like that of Israel, when Moses turned round on Pharaoh, saying, "Not a hoof shall be left behind." Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

The Security of the Belieber.

I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it.-EZEKIEL Xxxvi, 36.

WHEN in a sultry summer day the sky gets overcast, and angry clouds gather thick upon its brow, and bush and brake are silent, and the very cattle, like human beings, draw close together, standing dumb in their untasted pastures, and while there is no ripple on the lake, nor leaf stirring on the tree, all nature seems struck with awe, and stands in trembling expectation; then, when the explosion comes, and a blinding stream of fire leaps from the cloud, and as if heaven's riven vault were tumbling down upon our head, the thunders crash, peal, roar along the sky, he has neither poetry, nor piety, nor sense, who does not reverently bow his head and assent to the words of David, "The voice of the Lord is full of majesty."

When the God of glory thundereth in nature, his voice is full of majesty; when, in still louder thunders, the God of providence speaks by calamities that shake the nation, or shake to its foundations the happiness of our home, his voice is also full of majesty; and when the ear of faith listens to these august and lofty words, "I have spoken, and I will do it," the voice of the Lord again is "full of majesty." This language is stamped with divinity. And to God we may, with the highest propriety, address the words which the flatterers of royalty blasphemously offered to an orator, whose proud assumption of divinity the worms soon

refuted. The lie of their adulation to Herod changes to truth on our lips, when-speaking of him who says, "I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it” we exclaim, "This is the voice of a God, and not of

The words of my text fit not mortal lips. Of that truth, Jephthah's calamity and Herod's crime afford memorable illustrations. In the full tide of patriotism, in the fierce excitement of the fight, with a warrior's proud ambition to win the field, Jephthah made his vow, and resolved to keep it-to do what he spake. Ah! little did he dream, that the first to leave his house, the victim for sacrifice, should be the daughter of his heart—his only child. And as little did Herod foresee, upon what a bloody path of remorse and crime the rash pledge extorted by the fiendish hatred of a paramour would lead him.

Often, we have not the power to do what we say, and to perform what we promise. "If the Lord will," should qualify all the future. And although the power were ours, some vows, some resolutions, are more honored in the breach than in the observance. The language of my text, therefore, belongs only to him. whose glance penetrates eternity; to whose omniscience nothing is impervious, to whose power nothing is impossible. Weak, short-sighted, ignorant, erring mortals, such words in our mouths were impudent and impotent presumption; and we have no more right to assume the imperial tone of Divinity, than we have ability to launch his thunderbolts, or wisdom to guide his counsels.

These great words of power are also words of mercy. Connect them with the exceeding precious promises, the exceeding lofty offers of the Gospel, with such a

passage as this-"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;" or this, "Come unto me all ye that labor, and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest;" or this, "My grace shall be sufficient for thee, and my strength made perfect in your weakness;" or this, "With my dead body shall they arise.” "Awake and sing, all ye that dwell in the dust. For thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead"-and these words are as full of mercy as of majesty. God in them speaks with absolute confidence. And how is his confidence calculated to create and sustain in our hearts the firmest assurance that he can and that he will do all he says? He speaks "as one having authority." There is no obscurity about his language, or hesitation in its tone. He speaks as one whose word is law, whose will is power, whose smile is life, whose frown is death. He speaks as one who has entire confidence in his own resources, and whose word is as efficient now as on the day when he issued the creative fiat, and said, "Let there be light, and there was light."

Were you ever at sea in a storm, when the ship reeled to and fro like a drunken man, and struggling, as for life in the arms of death, now rose on the top of the billow, now plunged into the trough of the sea? Partially infected with others' terror, did you ever leave shrieking women and pale men below, to seek the deck, and look your danger bravely in the face? In such circumstances, I know nothing so re-assuring as—when we have staggered across the slippery planking, and are holding by rail or bulwark-to see amid these weltering foam-wreaths, that fierce commotion, the hurricane roar of the wind among the shrouds, and the loud dash of the billows beneath--calm con