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Sermon xv.

Canaan: the Rest.

"The good land that is beyond Jordan."-Deut. iii. 25.

It is there, a seer has seen it; and God gave him words to paint the vision for us. A good land; glorious in beauty, yet homelike; familiar in every form and feature, but still a transfigured world. It is the hope that lights the way of the wilderness-the hope that we may one day behold it, that we may one day tread the paths and gaze on the glories of a creation, which has been "delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God."

If the wilderness marches of this people, which we have traced to the edge of Jordan, be a picture of man's pilgrimage, the goodly land which is beyond the dark rolling river must have some pregnant suggestions of heaven. Its foreshinings of what God has in store for the souls He loves could be but dim, or Moses had been suffered to go over to possess it; but they must have been real, or the vision of it had never so gladdened

and uplifted his heart. In truth, the vision is the best part of all earthly satisfactions. To those who cannot look with the inner eye on all the prospects of this earth, and catch the glow of heaven's transfiguring sunlight upon them, that which may be seen of earth is bare as desert and black as night.

For long years this vision of Canaan had floated before his sight. It had led his marches through the wanderings, it had fed his imagination and filled his dreams. And the sight of the actual Canaan was granted. It was all of Canaan that was heaven-like. Imagination, not disenchanted by the bare and hard reality, gazed from that mountain brow over the splendid beauty and richness of the land, which spread, flooded with sunlight, at his feet. More like heaven to Moses in that hour, than even to Joshua and the heroes who won and held it; more worth the quest of a lifetime, more able to satisfy a spirit's hope.

To one only, the seer of the new Jerusalem, has a fairer vision been vouchsafed. To him heaven opened and the invisible appeared. He saw the Apocalypse of a world transfigured, as he had once seen transfigured the way-worn and tear-stained body of his Lord.

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed

away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; 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."-Rev. xxi. 1-4.

I suppose that earth needs but the heavenly lustre upon it to glow and shine like heaven. Thus Moses saw the goodly land which had been the dream of a lifetime, and had mingled its beauty as the golden thread in the texture of the noblest, manliest, godliest life-work ever accomplished in this world. Canaan had inspired it, if duty had constrained it. It was the vision that gleamed there over the dim bounds of the desert to his prophetic sight, that lit those dreary marches with touches of glory, such as on mists that surge round the mountain peaks and steam down their rugged flanks, warn night-weary pilgrims of the advent of joyous day.

Brethren, it is the inspiration to all of us. The dullest, darkest hearts have some dim prospect

of a better land, which makes it easier to endure. None believe that the present is final. There is no man's life, be his creed as atheistic as it may, which does not, in its daily marches, toils, and ministries, assume the existence of the God whom it discredits, and the heaven which it denies. Legends, golden legends, among all peoples, tell of the heroic deeds of some divine leaders,— Prometheus, Krishna, Beowulf, what matter their names?-who, by toil or suffering, have wrought deliverances for man. The idea is there, enshrined in the heart of all the nobler peoples, and uttered in their literature-there is a sense in which it makes literature-and it prophesies, with more or less explicit tones, the advent of the righteous King. And men, dreaming of a delivered humanity, have dreamed, too, of a delivered world. The King who should come, should deliver earth as well as man-should reclaim its wastes, light up its gloom, and weave its discords into the universal harmonies which fill the sphere from which He came. How grandly does the vision of a ransomed earth cross the prophetic imagination of Isaiah, the most regal, and, therefore, the most evangelic of the seers. "Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of

many generations. Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings and thou shalt know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob. For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron: I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise. The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified. A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the Lord will hasten it in his time."-Isa. lx. 15–22.

A world, a home to dwell in, not cursed as this is, with all its prophetic beauty-a world without wastes, marshes, lava-floods, blights, famines, plagues—a world that shall fit a redeemed, as this