. this. Any man who can say, My heart leans upon that precious atonement, as the exponent of God's love, and the channel of God's mercy, and I am satisfied that I am freely, fully, and completely pardoned by it; and who can also say, I submit myself to the directions and the precepts of Christ my King, desiring to do everywhere, in the public roads of social life, in the by-paths of private life, in great places and in little places, everywhere and anywhere, his will;such a one will have always within him the peace that passeth understanding, that a stranger cannot meddle with, and that the world can neither make nor mar. "What must I do to be saved?" was the question of the jailer at Philippi. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved," was the sermon of apostles beside him. This is the same story, the same grand prescription, Believe on Christ, the King of righteousness and the King of peace; and then, justified by him in his first capacity, you will have peace from him in his second, and thus your path will be like the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. CHAPTER XX. THE HEAVENLY HIGHWAY. "The clouds weep o'er the fallen world, Ere, to the blessed breeze unfurled, "The sky is as a temple's arch, Is glorious with the spirit march "The gentle moon, the kindling sun, The many stars are given, As shrines to burn earth's incense on, The altar fires of heaven." "And Jesus saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." -JOHN i. 51. THE allusion in the words of Jesus to the incident in the history of Jacob which we read in Genesis is perfectly obvious. Indeed, no commentator has come to any other conclusion than that our blessed Lord represents himself as the Antitype of what Jacob saw, the true bond or medium of intercourse between heaven and earth. Jacob is a refugee from his home, not from his misfortune, but for his sins; and sin keenly felt in the heart, I doubt not, made slow his progress and weary his footsteps. He is overtaken by the setting sun, he falls asleep in the desert, the hard stone his pillow, the wide horizon his only chamber; but the great God that watcheth over all, watched over him, the sinful, the consciously sinful patriarch, sleeping in the midst of the lonely desert. God speaks to him as well as looks after him, not in terms of reprobation, as he deserved, but in accents of mercy and of love. One of the most wonderful facts that occur in God's dealings with mankind, is that where judgment has been provoked by aggravated and conscious sins, and when the cloud may be expected to let forth the shining thunderbolt, it breaks in benediction and in sunshine. It reveals to us, not that God applauds sin, or would canonize the sinner, but that his ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts. In fact, if with any of us God had dealt as we deserve, not one of us would be spared to hear again the overtures of the glorious gospel. Our blessed Lord prefixes to the announcement of the antitype, or the truth of the type or shadow, the following words, "Verily, verily, I say unto you." These words are peculiar to the Gospel of St. John, they occur in none of the other three. They are the translation of the Greek words, Aunv, auny, "I say unto you." Amen is not indeed Greek, but Hebrew, it means strictly, living, true. In some passages of the Old Testament we have translated it, "the true God," but in the original it is, "the Amen Jehovah ;" and in the beautiful passage where it is said, "I will send you living waters," it might be rendered, "I will send you Amen waters." The word amen, frequently occurring in the Old Testament Scripture, is rendered living, and sometimes true, and sometimes truth. Jesus introduces himself in the Apocalypse as the "Amen." He says, "I am the Amen, the faithful and true witness." And in those passages in the Gospel of St. John, we might render it, not as our translators have done, Verily, verily, I say unto you," but, " I, the Amen, the Amen," that is, the true Amen, in whom all the promises are fulfilled, by whom 66 66 all mercies are reached, in whom there is treasured up all fulness "I that am able to make good by my power what I pronounce from the depths of my love - I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” Perhaps we may regard the words as equivalent to the Old Testament phrase, "Thus saith the Lord”—it is the announcement of absolute and divine truth. Martin Luther's commentary upon this passage is in the following words, "Jesus says, An agri, Hereafter," or, properly Anot, speaking, "from this very moment," for that is the strict meaning, "from the beginning" he says, "When Christ became man, and entered on his ministerial office, and began to preach, then was heaven opened, and remains open, and has from that time remained open. Since the baptism of Christ in the Jordan, it never having been shut, although we do not see it with our own eyes." The meaning of heaven opened, therefore, would seem to be divine communications made known from that moment, of the richest and the most precious sort to mankind. We read in Ezekiel of "the heavens opened, and I heard" - John says, "Behold a door in heaven"-again Isaiah says, "Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens" again we find, opening the windows of heaven, and sending down a blessing. It is the expression used repeatedly to denote that communications Divine and precious, were about to come forth. The word translated in the story of Jacob in Genesis, ladder, is perhaps not the exact rendering. It might just as correctly be translated staircase. It is in the Greek Septuagint xhuas, from which our word climax comes; or it might be, "mountains piled upon mountains a high-road, a staircase or platform stretching from earth to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. When Christ sets himself before us here as the دو it means true climax, as the true pathway and high-road from heaven to earth, for high-road is, perhaps, the justest meaning, there are certain lessons plainly and clearly taught by such a representation. The very first idea indicated by the heavens being opened, and a highway stretching from heaven to earth, is that Divine communications are now coming from heaven to earth. These began in Paradise, and they closed in their inspired character, as far as any written testimony is concerned, when John expired in Patmos. Before Christ came, Divine communications were made. Jacob saw this vision in the desert before the advent. It was meant to teach Jacob that there were revelations from God to which he was to listen. From the fall of Adam onward to the close of the New Testament Scriptures, there have been a series of Divine communications and revelations from God, telling us what he is, and what are the duties that he requires of us. The Lord Jesus Christ is himself the grand communication between heaven and earth. He is described by Paul in his Epistle to Timothy, as "God manifest in the flesh." So that in Christ, who proceeds. from heaven and comes down to earth, we see the highway between heaven and earth; and in what he said, and did, and inspired by his apostles and his teachers, I have that knowledge of God, the soul, eternity, responsibility, judgment, which I never could have had besides. Conceive that angels had never sung a Saviour's birth, that the seal affixed to a Saviour's grave had never been broken, or that this blessed record had never been inspired and written, how dense had been the darkness, how entire the ignorance of man! I need not state that the simplest truth of all, the immortality of the soul, philosophers guessed at, but could not demonstrate so as to satisfy their own anxious minds. A judgment to come, a heaven of happiness, the relation |