^ The religious temper of his mind shows itself in the medita- tions he recorded from time to time while at Tubingen, which abound in expressions of longing for closer communion with Christ. On the last evening of the year 1838 he thus unbosomed himself : —
" I am quite full of the blessed nearness of the Saviour which I have felt in these last days of Christmas week, and especially as I have listened to preaching. I have learned again that the most precious of all experiences is the experience of His presence. There are happy hours spent in the friendships of the world where we say one to the other " I am thine, thou art mine." But those who feel the secret presence of Christ know that these pass into the shadow before the experiences we have in His communion, when we rise, as on the wings of eagles, through prayer and faith to Him the highest of all beings, the beginning and the end and the moving centre of all things. Here, one has answer to his questionings; here, peace which passeth knowledge. Our faith and hope, how can they fail to be sources of blessing, since they look towards Christ, who is not a hard master, but the Kedeemer, the Wonderful, the Prince of Peace ! " 2
» Dora Greenwell, The Patience of Hope (ed. 1894), %Q. 2 D. S. Schaff, The Life of Philip Schaff, 24.
REVELATION xi. 15 237
Jesus, Fountain of my days,
Well-spring of my heart's delight, Brightness of my morning rays,
Solace of my hours of night! When I see Thee, I arise To the hope of cloudless skies.
Oh, how weary were the years
Ere Thy form to me was known! Oh, how gloomy were the fears
When I seemed to be alone ! I despaired the storm to brave Till Thy footprints touched the wave.
But Thy presence on the deep
Calmed the pulses of the sea. And the waters sank to sleep
In the rest of seeing Thee, And my once rebellious will Heard the mandate, " Peace, be still ! "
Now Thy will and mine are one.
Heart in heart, and hand in hand; All the clouds have touched the sun,
All the ships have reached the land; For Thy love has said to me, "No more night!" and "no more sea!"^ * G. Matheson, Sacred Songs, 115.
The Dead in Christ.
«39
Literature.
Brooke (S. A.), The Kingship of Love, 293.
Brown (J. B.), The Sunday Afternoon, 320.
Cairns (J.), Christ the Morning Star, 161.
Callan (H.), Seart Cures, 89.
Cook (F. C), Church Doctrine and Spiritual Life, 165.
Dean (J. T.), Visions and Revelations, 168.
Eyton (R.), The Glory of the Lord, 76.
Farrar (F. W.), Words of Truth and Wisdom, 144.
Findlay (G. G.), The Things Above, 159.
Gutch (C), Sermons, 290.
Guthrie (T.), The Way to Life, 372.
Hankey (W. B.), The Church and the Saints, 183.
Horder (W. G.), The Other- World, 59.
Knight (G. H.), In the Cloudy and Dark Day, 169.
Little (W. J. K.), Sunlight and Shadow in the Christian Life, 196,
Massillon (J. B.), Sermons, 141.
Matheson (G.), Sidelights from Patmos, 203.
Moir (T.), Sermons, 110.
Moore (A. L.), God is Love, 205.
Paget (F. E.), The Living and the Dead, 175.
Rawnsley (R. D. B.), Village Sermons, i. 187.
Roberts (D.), A Letter from Heaven, 1.
Sidebotham (H.), The Discipline of Temptation, 55.
Speirs (E. B.), A Present Advent, 178.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxi. (1875), No. 1219.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), v. (1867), No. 528.
Christian World Pulpit, xv. 232 (H. W. Beecher) ; xviii. 92 (H. W.
Beecher) ; xx. 49 (F. W. Farrar) ; xxxviii. 323 (A. Rowland) ; xli.
81 (A. T. Pierson). Church of England Pulpit, xl. 61 (B. Maturin) ; Ixi. 608 (R. E. Giraud). Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd Ser., v. 146 (H. G. Youard).
The Dead in Christ.
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; for their works follow with them.— Rev. xiv, 13.
1. This is one of those rare enough verses in the Apocalypse which, amid the prevailing utterances full of woes and threaten- ings, of judgments and of terrors, fall with a quite peculiar soft- ness and soothing upon our ears. Like the fragments of a tender melody which now and then is heard breaking through the storm- ful wailing notes of some piece of music, they are all the more heavenly because of the surrounding strife and stress of sound. Or, as when the sky is dark and the hills are in gloom, and the only patch of colour is the lurid red on the great mounting thunder-cloud, "rolled outward into space on thunder-edges," a gentle gleam escapes for a moment and lights up some height or rests in glory upon some distant slope, so does such a sudden burst of spiritual sunshine as this divinely tint the sombre landscape, and bring a feeling of more than earthly gladness and hope into our hearts.
2. If the Apostle John was, as is generally believed, the writer of the Book of Eevelation, and if he was at Eome with St. Peter and saw the persecution of the first Christians by Nero, and escaped the slaughter, then the passage containing the text not only has the beauty of its long association with those who have died in our arms, and with the sorrow and sentiment of gracious death all over the world, but it also has a deep historical interest of its own. The writer had then seen at Eome the crowds of martyrs who day after day testified by strange and cruel deaths to the faith of Jesus. He may have watched their suffering from the rows of the great circus, the site of which we look on from the steps of St. Peter's. He may have heard with mingled wrath and pity of the paths of the palace of Caesar lit at