CHAPTER XII.

THE GLORY.

Not only a man's true life, but a man's true history begins with his conversion. Up till that time, he is a being without a history. He has no story to tell. He is but part of a world lying in wickedness, having nothing about him worthy of a record.

But from the moment that he is born again, and thus taken out of the mass, he receives a personality as well as a dignity which fit him for having a history,-a history which God can own as such, and which God himself will record. From that time he has a story to tell, wondrous and divine, such as angels listen to, and over which there is joy in heaven.

In that broad ocean, there are millions of drops; yet they are one mingled mass of fluid; no one of them has a history. There may be a history of the ocean, but not of its individual drops. But, see, yon drop is beginning to part from the mass. It takes hold of a sun-beam and rises into the firmament. There it gleams in the rainbow or brightens in the hues of sun-set. It has now a history. From the moment that it came out of the mass and obtained a personality, it had a story to tell, a story of its own, a story of splendour and beauty.

In those vast blocks of unquarried rock what various forms are lying concealed! what shapes of statuary or architecture are there! Yet they have no history. They can have none. They are but parts of a hideous block, in which not one line or curve of beauty is visible. But the noise of hammers is heard. Man lifts up his tool. A single block is severed. Again he lifts up his tool, and it begins to assume

a form; till, as stroke after stroke falls on it, and touch after touch smooths and shapes it, the perfect image of the human form is seen, and it seems as if the hand of the artist had only been employed in unwrapping the stony folds from that fair form, and awakening it from the slumber of its marble tomb. From the moment that the chisel touched that piece of rock its history began.

From the

Such is the case of a saint. moment that the hand of the Spirit is laid on him to begin the process of separation, from that moment his history begins. He then receives a conscious, outstanding personality, that fits him for having a history—a history entirely marvellous ; a history whose pages are both written and read in heaven; a history which in its divine brightness spreads over eternity. His true dignity now commences. He is

fit to take a place in story.

Each event in

his life becomes worthy of a record. "The

righteous shall be in everlasting remem

brance."

On earth this history is one of suffering

and dishonour, even as was that of the Master; but hereafter, in the kingdom, it is one of glory and honour. "All the time," says Howe, "from the soul's first conversion God has been at work upon it, labouring, shaping it, polishing it, spreading his own glory on it, inlaying, enamelling it with glory; now at last the whole work is revealed, the curtain is drawn aside, and the blessed soul awakes." Then a new epoch in its history begins.

What that history is to be, we know not now. That it will be wondrous, we know ; how wondrous we cannot conceive. That it will be very unlike our present one, we know; yet still not severed from it, but linked to it, nay, springing out of it as its root or seed. Our present life is the under-ground state of the plant; our future life, the shooting, and blossoming, and fruit

S

bearing; but the plant is the same, and the future depends for all its excellency and beauty upon the present. Night is not the shutting up of day, but day is the opening out of night. Day is but the night in blossom,—the expanded petals of some dark, unsightly bud, containing within it glories of which no glimpses have yet reached us here. It is moody sentiment, as well as false philosophy, to say as one in our day has done, "Night is nobler than day; day is but a motley-coloured veil, spread transiently over the infinite bosom of night, hiding from us its purely transparent, eternal deeps." Night is at best but the beauty of death; day, of life. And it is life, not death, that is beautiful. And if life on earth, in all its various forms and unfoldings, be so very beautiful, what will it not be hereafter, when it unfolds itself to the full, transfused throughout all being, with an intensity now unknown, as if almost becoming visible by means of