of the Son of Man: to look upon the LORD of Glory; and recognise the pierced feet and hands, the wounded side, the face marred with many sorrows!.... This will be much, yet not the thing reserved for those who love GOD.

And why go on? To wander from star to star: to see all the glories of all the Worlds: to be shewn Archangels, as Michael; and Angels, as Gabriel; Cherubim and Seraphim, in glorious order thronging the courts of Heaven :-to have one's soul filled with all high and celestial knowledge all will be far short of the promised glory!

Or again, to be shewn the providences which watched over our lives: to have revealed to us the history of all the things we called accidents: to recognise the hand of Love in every blow which overtook us, every disappointment which afflicted us: yea, to be restored, and that eternally, to everything we had ever loved and lost; -these things and more, told over ten thousand times, convey but a feeble picture, a faint image of the blessedness of Heaven!... There have never entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him!

To conclude. The use of these declarations,

(if words which declare so little may be called by that name;) the use of what is revealed, or intimated of the future state of glory, is clearly this,-to reconcile good men to present sorrow. Here then let the sick and suffering soul find support amid disease and pain: hither let the poor man turn for consolation when the heaviness of his hard lot sits more heavily upon him: hither let the eyes of all be habitually directed amid the pressure of affliction, the sharpness of bereavement, the weariness which the daily business of secular life is sure to bring. There is a bright prospect beyond those everlasting hills. which form the boundary line of our mortal vision; and we have the sure promise of Almighty God that in the case of as many as He hath enabled to live godly lives, the reality will be found so Divine that the sufferings of this present time' will not be deemed 'worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.'

The Fifth Sunday after Trinity.

THE STRICTNESS OF THE DIVINE LAW.

ST. JOHN xxi. 6.

Cast the net on the right side of the ship,
and ye shall find.

THESE words belong to the history, not of the first, but of the second, miraculous draught of fishes. On both occasions there was the same ready obedience shewn. At CHRIST's word, the net was let down; as on this occasion, so on that. But the peculiar command to cast it on the right side of the ship, belongs to the second occasion; and the remarks which follow seem to grow most naturally out of that strict, and definite, and somewhat peculiar injunction.

In the narrative from which the text is taken, seven of the Apostles are discovered at daybreak engaged in their old occupation as fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. They had been toiling all night long, and had caught nothing. The dawn found them cold, faint, and weary.

Disappointed too, they were, and, as we may suppose, thinking of bringing their empty boat to land; when they heard a voice calling to them from the shore. They certainly had no idea. who the Speaker was. It was the grey of the morning; and our LORD was a long way off; and perhaps they did not see His form distinctly. But that was not why they did not recognise Him. No; their eyes were holden, and He did not seem to them the same being whom they had listened to so often, and walked with so long, and loved so dearly. No one suspected who it was,—although on that very spot He and they had so many a time been together.

In reply to His question, Children, have ye any meat?' they merely answered that they had caught nothing-whereupon the Stranger, (for so He seemed,) spake the words of the text. 'Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.' They cast, therefore, as He directed; and now, they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. Whereupon St. John exclaimed to St. Peter,- It is the LORD!

This is as much of the History as we propose now to consider.

The lesson we gather from it is neither to be overlooked, nor mistaken. The seven Disciples,

it seems, had been toiling fruitlessly, so long as they had followed their own devices; but caught such a draught of fishes as their united strength would not enable them to secure, the instant they acted by the Divine command, and in strict conformity to it. We also, in like manner, may surely toil on in darkness, as we will: but we shall discover in the end that, without CHRIST, we can do nothing. - Tossed on the waves of this troublesome World, we shall find that without His Blessing,-unless we listen to His voice, and follow His guidance,—it is but lost labour that we haste to rise up early, and so late take rest; yea, even though our pursuit should be as humble and as innocent as that of those seven poor fishermen of Galilee: for they seem to have been bent only on the supply of their bodily wants. But this is not by any means the whole of the lesson. Our need of Him, without whom nothing is strong, nothing holy,-is only half the matter. What we have to notice even more particularly is the strictness of the Divine Law.

Pray observe then, that there was no apparent reason whatever why casting the net on the right side of the ship should have been of any more use than casting it on the left. It was most probably over the left side of the ship that the