a covenant with my Lord, that I will never take amiss anything that He does to me." We may have to walk sometimes through rough places, on our way to heaven. But surely it is a resting, soothing reflection, " Every step of my journey was foreknown by Christ."
We learn, secondly, in these verses, that a heliever^s death is intended to glorify God. The Holy Ghost tells us this truth in plain language. He graciously inter- prets the dark saying, which fell from our Lord's lips about Peter's end. He tells us that Jesus spake this, " signifying by what death he should glorify God."
The thing before us is probably not considered as much as it ought to be. We are so apt to regard life as the only season for honoring Christ, and action as the only mode of showing our religion, that we overlook death, except as a painful termination of usefulness. Yet surely this ought not so to be. We may die to the Lord as well as live to the Lord ; we may be patient sufferers as well as active workers. Like Samson, we may do more for God in our death, than we ever did in our lives. It is probable that the patient deaths of our martyred Reformers had more effect on the minds of Englishmen, than all the sermons they preached, and all the books they wrote. One thing, at all events, is certain, — the blood of the English martyrs was the seed of the English Church.
We may glorify God in death, by being ready for it whenever it comes. The Christian who is found like a sentinel at his post, like a servant with his loins girded and his lamp burning, with a heart packed up and ready to go, the man to whom sudden death, by the common consent of all who knew him, is sudden glory, — this, this is a man whose end brings glory to God. — We may glorify God in death, by patiently enduring its pains. The Christian whose spirit has complete vie-