heavens.

At Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." And he had just said, "He is at my right hand." If we bring Him, as we can if we will, to stand by our right hands as our Champion, our Guide, and the Breather of strength into our weakness, then at His own time He will bring us and set us at His right hand, where the Lord and Forerunner of our spirits is; and where, therefore, we, too, shall be. He is at our right hand whilst we fight; we are at His when we are crowned as victors. He is at our right hand whilst we tarry here below; we are at His when we dwell beside Him, gazing upon His face, the children of His right hand, the chosen of His love.

And so, dear brethren, the communion of earth, imperfect as it is, yields analogies, by the heightening and purifying of which we may construct for ourselves, some dim indeed, but reliable, visions of the blessedness of heaven. And they who here on earth know what it is to be in touch with God, to draw instruction and guidance from Him, and to realize the light of His face as pouring upon them even through the clouds and the mist, need but to enlarge their experiences, and to strip them of all their imperfections, in order to have a not altogether unworthy image of what makes heaven.

Especially the enlargement and perfecting of this earthly experience is to be looked for, says my text, in two directions. "The fulness of joy" is "in Thy presence." Limited joys are all that we have here. Not only all earthly joy is less than the capacity of our nature, but even the joys of the closest communion with God leave something to be desired,

and something possible to be imagined. We can always conceive a little more that might be. The vessel is never filled here. We drink, and they may be deep draughts, but still they are only, as it were, of brooks by the way. Yonder we shall be close by the fountain-head, and shall slake an immortal thirst, which shall never know the possibility of greater enjoyment at the moment, though each moment's full enjoyment will make a fuller possible in the moment thereafter. The incompleteness of earth shall be changed for the fulness of the heavens.

And, again, "at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." The word is the same as has been already used in the psalm, with a slight variation only of form. "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places," and hereafter there are "pleasantnesses" that are eternal. The contrast, of course, is with the fleetingnesses of earthly joys. Yonder they are 'for evermore," either in the sense that these delights do not cloy or cease to charm, nor do they perish, but rather increase with the using, or, as seems to be more properly the sense, that from Him there flow, in unbroken and eternal succession, grace for grace, gift for gift, one wave of felicity following the other like the sunlit ripples that press to the shore, and stretch away into the horizon, in one continual network of light that knows no end. So the communion of earth is heightened, expanded, made full, and made perpetual.

III.-I need only remind you, in a word, last of all, of the fulfilment of this triumphant confidence.

The Psalmist died. True, the essence of his hopes was fulfilled. True, too, the form of them was not.

He did "see the pit," because he did not "set the Lord always before him." His communion was incomplete, his immunity was therefore partial. The words, then, point to an ideal which the Psalmist strained after, and did not realize. They are prophetic, inasmuch as all the imperfections of ancient prophets, kings, and singers point onward to Him in whom they are fulfilled. And Jesus Christ, God's loved One, saw not the pit, though He passed into the grave, because in Him, and in Him alone, was realized in its completeness that life of communion which delivers from death.

But He having died and having risen, His death and His resurrection have completed that thinning away of the ghastly form of Death which is begun in the confidence of my psalm; and it is now true, literally true, that He has abolished death. For though there still remains the physical fact, all that makes it "death" is gone for him who trusts in Jesus Christ.

We then, with more triumphant confidence still than the Psalmist, may laugh in the face of the spectre, and bid defiance to his blunted darts. "Abraham is dead, and the prophets are dead; and Thou sayest, If a man keep My saying he shall never see death. Whom makest Thou Thyself?" And the answer comes: "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die. Believest thou this?" May we respond, "Yea, Lord! I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God!"

V.

Philip the Evangelist.

"BUT Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through he preached in all the cities, till he came to Cæsarea."ACTS viii. 40.

HE little that is known about Philip, the deacon and evangelist, may very soon be told. His name suggests, though by no means conclusively that he was probably one of the, so-called Hellenists, or foreign-born and Greekspeaking Jews. This is made the more probable because he was one of the seven selected by the Church, and after selection appointed by the apostles, to dispense relief to the poor. The purpose of the appointment being to conciliate the grumblers in the Hellenist section of the Church, the persons chosen would probably belong to it. He left Jerusalem during the persecution "that arose after the death of Stephen." As we know, he was the first preacher of the Gospel in Samaria; he was next the instrument honoured to carry the Word to the first heathen ever gathered into the Church; and then, after a journey along the sea-coast to Cæsarea, the then seat of government, he remained in that place in obscure

toil for twenty years, dropped out of the story, and we hear no more about him but for one glimpse of his home in Cæsarea.

That is all that is told of him. And I think that, if we note the contrast of the office to which men called him, and the work to which God set Him; and the other still more striking contrast between the brilliancy of the beginning of his course, and the obscurity of his long years of work, we may get some lessons worth the learning. I take, then, not only the words which I read for my text, but the whole of the incidents connected with this man as our startingpoint now. And I draw from them two or three very well-worn, but none the less needful, pieces of instruction.

I. First, then, we may gather a thought as to Christ's sovereignty in choosing His instruments.

Did you ever notice that events exactly contradicted the notion of the Church, and of the apostles, in the selection of Philip and his six brethren? The apostles said, "It is not reason that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables. Pick out seven relieving-officers; men who shall do the secular work of the Church, and look after the poor; and we will give ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word." So said man. And what did facts say? That out of these twelve, who were to give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word, we never hear that by far the larger proportion of them were honoured to do anything worth mentioning for the spread of the Gospel. Their function was to be "witnesses"; and that was all. But, on the other hand, of the men that were supposed to be fitted for