What is it to serve God? You know what it is when a servant serves his master, like good old Eliezer of Damascus and others spoken of in the Bible. He has his master's interests and welfare at heart; he does all he can to please him, and he serves him as faithfully behind his back as he does to his face. He feels it to be his duty to do so. But "duty," to a truly faithful servant, is a delight. He has a real pleasure in saying to himself, "My master likes me to do this, and I shall joyfully do it, because I know it to be his wish." You know better, perhaps, what it is, when a child with a devoted love serves his father. He watches his father's wishes; he studies to find out his father's wants; he rushes to the door to meet his father on his return from business, and kisses away the cares of the day from his brow. Or, if that father be laid on a bed of pain, how fondly does he note every look of the sufferer-how gladly at one time does he bathe the fevered temples; at another, the best and choicest flower is plucked from the garden, and set as a silent lovetoken by the sick one's couch; or, if he can do no more, he gives a pressure of the hand or lets drop a silent tear.

The redeemed in glory will delight thus to serve their heavenly Master and heavenly Parent. Here they cannot obey Him perfectly. God has too often reason to say, " If I, then, be a Father, where has been mine honour? and if I be a Master, where has been my fear?" (Mal. i. 6). yonder bright world, we read in the last chapter of this Book of Revelation, "His servants shall serve Him, and His name shall be in their foreheads." Just as slaves or servants, in ancient times, had the names or initials of their master

But in

branded on their brows to betoken that they were his property, so will Christ's redeemed and ransomed people in glory have His name engraven on their foreheads, and their song through eternity will be, "O Lord, truly we are Thy servants: ""We are not our own, we are bought with a

price!"

That service, too, will be without interruption. There will be no more weary frames, and wandering thoughts, and divided hearts, and truant wills. Heaven will combine the perfect service of the Master with the perfect love of the Father; and the beautiful petition in the Lord's Prayer about "the will of God" at last shall be fulfilled. The poor, imperfect service of earth will come to be done. and performed "as it is done in heaven." It is said of the glorified saints of God that they shall be "equal to the angels." Who are the angels? Let the Psalmist answer:

Ye ministers of His that do His pleasure" (Ps. ciii. 21). If we are to serve God and do His pleasure in heaven, we must try to serve Him and do His pleasure on earth. Let heaven be begun in your hearts now, by obeying the commands of this best of Masters, this kindest of Fathers. Believe me, its living fountains of water, its golden crowns, and crystal pavement, and walls of sapphire and emerald, will be nothing to you, if you are without a holy heart-the spring of all true and loving service. You remember how it is written, "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord" (Heb. xii. 13). God's words to the redeemed, as He throws open the gates of heaven and welcomes them in, are these"Well done, good and faithful servant."

There is a

IV. The text speaks of a HAPPY COMPANY. great deal of happiness in this happy world. God has not hung His creation in curtains of black, or made its sounds to be sounds of mourning. No, He has draped it in garments of beauty. He has painted His heavens, not with the colour of ashes, but with bright blue. The sun rises from a couch of gold, and pillows his head on a couch of amber. The groves are melodious with sweetest music. The very streams go singing all the way down the mountain-clefts to their ocean home. While this, however, is true, alas! sin has done its best to mar and wreck the world's happinessto spoil its glad music and drown its song. Sin has done its best to tear down these draperies of gladness and joy, and to hang it round and round in weeds and sackcloth. Sin (to use the Apostle's words) has brought the creation under "the bondage of corruption." Think of its pains and sorrows, its sick-beds and death-beds, its bereavements and broken hearts, its famines and pestilences, its hunger and thirst and nakedness; its hatreds and variances; its strifes and jealousies; its wars, and slavery, and bloodshed, and cruel wrongs. But whatever be the evils and sufferings of earth, on the gate of the celestial city there shall be written, regarding these, the words-" No more!" Hunger, thirst, sickness, sorrow, pain, death, the grave-the Redeemed shall know of all these "NO MORE!" They shall then have entered a holy place, and therefore a happy place. The curse of sin is stamped on "this present evil world; " but of that blessed "world to come it is specially said, "And there shall be no more curse" (Rev. xxii. 3). The white robe will never again be

exchanged for mourning; for "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." You may have seen bushes, and trees, and flowers so drenched with the night-dew that it hangs like tear-drops upon them; but the sun rises, his beams shine, these dewy tears vanish-they have what is called " evaporated;" they are dried up by the warming rays. So, if believers-plants and "trees of righteousness"—are from various causes full of tears now, God, the great Sun of heaven, will shine upon them and disperse them for ever!

"We sing of the realms of the blest,
That country so bright and so fair,
And oft are its glories confest,
But what must it be to be there!

We speak of its pathways of gold,
Its walls decked with jewels so rare,
Its wonders and pleasures untold,
But what must it be to be there!

We speak of its freedom from sin,
From sorrow, temptation, and care;
From trials, without and within,
But what must it be to be there!

We speak of its service of love;
Of robes which the glorified wear;
The Church of the first-born above,
But what must it be to be there!

Do Thou, Lord, midst pleasure and woe,

For Heaven our spirits prepare ;
And shortly we also shall know,
And feel what it is to be there!"

"The Harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." Jer. viii. 20.

O

you remember, each of you, last winter, when you were warming your hands at the fire, how you said to yourself, "I wonder when summer will come again?" and then in spring, when you saw the ploughman sowing his seed, "I wonder when harvest will come again?"

And

Now, "the harvest is past, the summer is ended." so, dear young friends, time moves on:-oh, how fast! The Bible likens this passing away of the seasons to a weaver's shuttle,-a dream,—a flood,-a shadow,-a vapour. Every new harvest as it comes round, seems more loudly to proclaim" Nearer Eternity!"

The fields are again all clear-the stackyards are fullsome of the granaries are stored-we listen, here and there, to the noise of the threshing-mill. The plough is even beginning to turn up the ground for a new crop. has come and gone-so has summer-so has autumn.

Spring
Amid