This Life and That.

This life is the childhood of which yonder life is the manhood. As the childhood is, so shall the manhood be. We are making Heaven now. By building into ourselves principles, by creating in our souls holy tastes, we are rearing the walls of jasper and paving the streets of gold and beautifying the eternal mansions. I believe Heaven to be just this: A new setting of the principles we are mastering and working into our personalities and embodying in our works and characters here and now. By doing well our fragmentary duties day by day we are getting ready to sing the new song of Heaven.

This story is told in connection with a celebrated musician who had a large number of pupils: It was his purpose at the end of a specified time to give a grand concert, at which his favorite pupil was to be made the conspicuous figure. There was one among the others to whom was given fragmentary work. No part of his instruction seemed to have the least connection with any other part. It was dull work, but he practiced upon the dull fragments and fought discouragement. He did his best and forced the whole man into the work. When the day of celebration came he was chosen as the favorite pupil. He felt that he did not know a single complete piece of music. Tremblingly he took his place at the instrument, but when the score which he was to play was placed before him he throbbed and thrilled with delight to find that the completed work was made up of the fragments which he had mastered, and which were now perfectly arranged. This gave him courage, and so he

performed in such a way as deservedly to win the plaudits of the great audience. We are like that musician. When we go hence we shall find that the fragmentary Christian earth-life, with its principles and its loves and its Christ spirit, is that out of which Heaven is made. Heaven is the holy life of earth glorified and perfectly arranged and grandly transfigured.—DAVID Gregg.

"Satisfied."

When I shall wake on that fair morn of morns,
After whose dawning never night returns,
And with whose glory day eternal burns,
I shall be satisfied.

When I shall see Thy glory face to face,

When in Thine arms Thou wilt Thy child embrace,
When Thou shalt open all Thy stores of grace,
I shall be satisfied.

When I shall meet with those whom I have loved,
Clasp in my arms the long-removed,

And find how faithful Thou hast proved,

I shall be satisfied.

When this vile body shall arise again,

Purged by Thy power from every taint and stain,
Delivered from all weakness and all pain,
I shall be satisfied.

When I shall gaze upon the face of Him
Who for me died, with eye no longer dim,

And praise Him in the everlasting hymn,
I shall be satisfied.

When I shall call to mind the long, long past,
With clouds and storms and shadows overcast,
And know that I am saved and blessed at last,
I shall be satisfied.

When every enemy shall disappear,

The unbelief, the darkness and the fear;
When Thou shalt smooth the brow and wipe the tear,
I shall be satisfied.

When every vanity shall pass away,
And all be real, all without decay,

In that sweet dawning of the cloudless day,
I shall be satisfied.

H. BONAR.

66

Our Home.

At ur best estate we are only pilgrims and strangers here. Heaven is our home." Death will never knock at the door of that mansion, and in all that country there is not a single grave. How glad parents are in holiday times to gather their children home again! But I have noticed that there is almost always a son or a daughter absent-absent from home, perhaps absent from the country, perhaps absent from the world. Oh, how glad our Heavenly Father will be when He gets all His children home with Him in Heaven! And how delightful it will be for brothers and sisters to meet after

long separation! Once they parted at the door of the tomb; now they meet at the door of immortality. Once they saw only through a glass darkly; now it is face to face-corruption, incorruption; mortality, immortality. Where are now all their sins and sorrows and troubles ? Overwhelmed in the Red Sea of Death, while they passed through dry-shod.

Gates of pearl, capstones of amethyst, thrones of dominion! These do not stir my soul so much as the thought of home. Once there, let earthly sorrows howl like storms and roll like seas. Home! Let thrones rot and empires wither. Home! Let the world die in earthquake struggle, and be buried amid procession of planets and dirge of spheres. Home! Let everlasting ages roll irresistible sweep. Home! No sorrow, no crying, no tears, no death. But home, sweet home-home, beautiful home! Home everlasting, home with each other, home with God!--TALMAGE.

Condensed Comments.

Will there be a trum

And shall they rise, all these? pet blast so shrill that none of them may refuse to hear it, and the soul, re-entering its shrine of eminent or common clay, pass upward to the judgment? "Many and mighty, but all hushed," shall they submit with us to the judgment of the last assize? And in that world. is it true that gold is not the currency, and that rank is not hereditary, and that there is only one name that is honored? Then, if this is the end of all men, let the living lay it to heart. Solemn and thoughtful, let us

search for an assured refuge; childlike and earnest, let us confide in the one accepted Name. Let us realize the: tender and infinite nearness of God our Father, through: Jesus our Surety and Friend.-Wм. M. PUNSHON.

After all, there is a weariness that can not be prevented. It will come on. The work brings it on. The cross brings it on. Sometimes the very walk with God brings it on, for the flesh is weak; and at such moments we hear softer and sweeter than it ever floated in the wondrous air of Mendelssohn, "O rest in the Lord," for it has the sound of an immortal requiem: 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors."--JAMES HAMILTON.

No wearisome days, no sorrowful nights; no hunger or thirst; no anxiety or fears; no envies, no jealousies, no breaches of friendship, no sad separations, no distrusts or forebodings, no self-reproaches; no enmities, no bitter regrets, no tears, no heart-aches. And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."--BISHOP R. S. FOSTER.

Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells and with dying promises that they would wait to welcome us when we should arrive. And so they do. Not sorrowfully, not anxiously, but lovingly, they wait to bid us welcome.--Bishop R. S. FOSTER.