Dear Christian worker, are the shadows resting
Upon thy way? Is thy life-pathway drear?
Does daily bearing of the cross appall thee?
Is thy heart stricken with its sense of fear?
Then look not at the meadows but above them,
Wreathe every cross with love's fair blooming spray,
Take trials patiently, and thou shalt prove them
God's stepping-stones for thee to clearer day.

Heart-worth, like gold, is tested in the furnace,
And fire that purities is fierce and strong.
Rare statues gain art's ideal of perfection

By skillful stroke of chisel wielded long.
The view from sunlit peaks is for the climber,

The harbor's calm for those who've cross'd the bar, The fountain's coolest draught is for the thirsty,

The sweets of home for those who've wandered far.

Shall we, then, murmur if the hand of sorrow

Bestow the polish meet for jewels rare,
Or think to gain full height of Christian stature
Without large exercise of faith and prayer?.
Nay; shall the servant be above his master,
Or we who wait be greater than our Lord?
Shall we not rather glory in our crosses,
Since these our spirit-training best afford?

Shall we not rather choose the rougher pathway,
Since ease betrays our weakness to the foe?
Nay, better still, leave all to his sure guiding
Who all our need and helplessness doth know.
Let us seek first the blessed Master's spirit,
That conquest of ourselves be sooner won,
And in the midst of deepest earthly trial

Our hearts may learn to say, "Thy will be done."

Then shall we journey on thro' light or shadow,
Cheering the upward way with grateful song,
Content if thro' the rifts we catch faith's glimpses
Of that blest home where all our hopes belong.
Glimpses made brighter by the daily contrast
With sore affliction and deep spirit-pain,
Until shall dawn for us that glorious morning
When seeming loss shall prove our truest gain.

458

E

THE DISCIPLINE OF LIFE.

ETERNITY AND THE EARTHLY LIFE.

TERNITY has been defined as the lifetime of the Almighty. "From everlasting to everlasting thou art God."

"How long art thou, Eternity?

As long as God is God, so long
Endure the pains of hell and wrong,
So long the joys of heaven remain;
O lasting joy! O lasting pain!"

Eternity is duration, without beginning or ending; existence, without bounds or dimensions; present, without past or future. Tennyson says:

"In time there is no present,

In eternity no future,

In eternity no past."

God's eternity is youth, without infancy or old age; life, without birth or death; to-day, without yesterday or to-morrow. Man's eternity is the endless future, compared with which his earthly life is a fraction of a moment, the smallest conceivable beginning of

existence.

"The longest time that man may live,
The lapse of generations of his race,
The continent entire of time itself,
Bears not proportion to eternity;

Huge as the fraction of a grain of dew

Co-measured with the broad, unbounded ocean.
There is the time of man, his proper time,
Looking at which, this life is but a gust,

A puff of breath that's scarcely felt ere gone."

Man has no past eternity, because he is a created being. There was a time when man was not, and when time itself had no reckoning. Thus Bickersteth observes:

"Creation had its morning without clouds;

And soon

When first the bare illimitable void

Throughout its everlasting silences

Heard whispers of God's voice and trembled. Then,
Passing from measureless eternity,

In which the highest dwelt triune alone,

To measurable ages, time began."

"Descending from the firmamental heavens,

Where he had wrought and whence his mandates given,

Upon a mountain's summit which o'erlooked

The fairest and most fruitful scene on earth,

Eden's delicious garden, in full view

Of the angelic hosts, God took

Some handfuls of the dust and moulded it.

Within his plastic hands, until it grew

Into an image like his own,

Of perfect symmetry, divinely fair,

But lifeless, till he stooped and breathed therein
The breath of life, and by his spirit infused

A spirit endowed with immortality."

This earliest point of human existence was the beginning of man's eternity. He was made, not for a day only, or a year, or a thousand years, but for ensuing endless ages. God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." He was formed to be God's representative upon the earth, clothed with authority and rule as the visible head and monarch of the world, endowed with moral dispositions and spiritual attributes like unto his Creator, and possessed like him, not of a past, but of a future eternity of being. "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (Gen. ii. 7.) "In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him." (Gen. v. 1.) And what was his purpose? Why did God favor man with such rich endow

ments, and form him in the image of himself? Why, but to give him a period of training and experience upon the fair earth, and then receive him into the brighter heaven? This is the meaning of man's power and dignity, as French says:

"Up, man! for what if thou with beasts hast part,
Since in the body framed of dust thou art?
Yet know thyself upon the other side
Higher than angels, and to God allied."

In Scripture we are told that to every purpose under the heaven there is a time and place; that God has made everything beautiful; that it is for man to rejoice and do good in his life; and that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever. (Eccl. iii. 11, 12, 14.) Again, we are instructed that when the course of time is past, and the divine purpose has been accomplished in the life of man, the King shall recognize moral distinctions, and shall say unto those who are meet, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matt. xxv. 34.) "Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God," inquired one of old, “mine Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained them for judgment! and, O mighty God, thou hast established them for correction." (Hab. i. 12.) Man shall not die. His body may fall, like that of the beast which goeth downward, but his spirit is established in its own immortality, and ascendeth at death, after the period of its correction, upward to its Maker.

"Spirit, proud spirit, ponder thy state,

If thine the leaf's lightness, not thine the leaf's fate.
It may flutter, and glisten, and wither, and die,

And heed not our pity, and ask not our sigh;
But for thee, the immortal, no winter may throw
Eternal repose on thy joy or thy woe;

Thou must live, and live ever, in glory or gloom,

Beyond the world's precincts, beyond the dark tomb."

What the precise character of man's future life may be is not revealed to us. Jesus himself said but little about it. Whenever he referred to the future life at all, he spoke of it as a fact, apparently having no more need of demonstration than the facts of man's life

on earth. Once he said to his disciples, "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." This is a plain and emphatic assertion of our blessed Lord that in the many apartments of God's home his disciples shall surely have a place. It is just such a statement as one would expect from the lips of him who had come into the world immediately from his Father's presence and glory, and was soon to return thither again. He makes nothing wonderful or extraordinary of it, but as it were common-place fact and truth. Once the Sadducees approached him with curious questions touching the marriage relation in the resurrection. Jesus reminded them of their utter ignorance of the Scriptures and the power of God, and then remarked that they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels. (Luke xx. 35, 36.) This does not imply that pure affections arising from the family relations on earth are not to be perpetuated in the life to come, but simply that what pertains solely to the earth, and is of the earth earthy, will fail of recognition in the resurrection morn. All bodily experiences and appetites, such as hunger and thirst, sickness and pain, will be done away with the body, while all passions and powers which appertain to the spirit will continue the same as before. Ambition, for instance, is a power which sways the mind, and only through that medium affects the body. It may be supposed to continue without interruption. The earthly life is calculated for the discipline and control of just such powers, that they may not mar the harmony of heaven when the spirit goes hence. Satan's ambition and pride moved him to rebel, and resulted in his downfall. Perhaps his offence is the secret of man's state of trial. It is a great thought that all purely intellectual powers, as well as moral attributes, will be carried over into the unseen world. We shall have our memories, our aspirations, our powers of thought. Death produces no essential change in intelligence or will. It only alters the state of existence, and forever cuts off the spirit from gratification of its passions through bodily activities and functions. With some this will be terrible. Suppose that a man has in this life given his body over as the instrument of evil, allowing himself