of magnificence and power that Isaiah spoke out of another land and out of an earlier age, the solemn words "All flesh is grass and all the beauty thereof is as the flower of the field."

Was it possible that such a metaphor could be truly applied to the city and throne and people of Nebuchadnezzar? Yes, it was passing. Isaiah already saw the capture of the city by a Medo-Persian army. And after the conquest of Persia by the Great Alexander, the city ceased to be in any sense a seat of empire. It became, in fact, for many centuries, a mere quarry, which supplied the materials for building several cities. Every modern traveller tells us, now, that "the beauty of the Chaldees excelling," has become heaps-that her walls have fallen, and been thrown down and broken utterlythat her very site is a wilderness, that the wild beasts. of the desert lie there, that the natives regard the site as haunted by evil spirits, so that neither will the Arab pitch tent, nor the shepherd fold-sheep there, that in a word, prophecy has been literally fulfilled. The beauty of human life is this: for many a century, its principal, its representative centre, was after all but as a flower of the field. "The grass withereth, &c."

And even had it been otherwise-had Babylon been chartered with the promise of an eternal youth, Babylonians would have died one after another. The individual man is still as the grass which withereth, even if the political society to which he belongs were strictly imperishable. In this respect there was no difference between the courtiers and officers of Nebuchadnezzar and the silent captives, who, by the waters of Babylon, sat down and wept when they remembered Zion. Of both it was true that "the grass withereth and the flower fadeth." The simile has a two-fold force.

I. It justifies, to a certain extent, the sympathy with,

the admiration of human life with its freshness, its variety, its beauty, which would have been felt to a certain extent by captive Israel.

What is more beautiful that a single blade of grass? There it is waving in the wind, inimitable in its form, in the grace of its movement, in the subtilty and delicacy of its texture. We cannot reproduce that blade of grass, nor even really imitate it. It is just as much beyond us as the sun itself. How mysterious it is! How little really we know about it! How did it come to be there? It grew from a seed. What do we mean by that which we call " 'growth." Growth is a profound unfathomable mystery moving before our eyes wherever we find it. It implies the active energy of life. We share this power of growth and life with the humblest blade of grass. We are far from being dishonored when our life is compared in Scripture to a thing so full of wonder and of beauty.

Why should it grow?

II. Isaiah refers to the grass as an emblem of the perishable and the perishing.

The grass, has at best, a vanishing form, ready, almost before maturity, to be resolved into its elements-to sink back into the earth from which it sprang. "The breath of the Lord has blown upon it." Death does not come to men, animals or herbs simply in consequence of the chemical solvents which they contain, but because the Being who gave them life, freely withdraws that which he gave. Death is always the fiat of God, arresting the course of life. This truth of revelation is not at variance with the chemistry of animal life. Whatever else human life is, or may imply, it is soon over. It fades away suddenly like the grass. The world may have made great progress during the centuries, but the frontiers of life do not change with the generations of men. We are born and die just as our rudest ancestors. Every one of us

shall die.

"The grass withereth, &c." It is not a bit of sentiment, but a solid law, true at this moment and always true.

But:

III. "The word of the Lord endureth for ever." How do we know that? We know it to be true if we believe two things (1) that God the perfect Moral Being exists, (2) that He has spoken to man.

If God is eternal, then that which He proclaims as his truth and will, will bear on it the mark of his eternity. If it is true it will bear the impress of his faithfulness. The great facts of Revelation, clustering around Jesus Christ, as their centre and substance, do not change, because they rest upon the authority of the unchanging God. There is something that does not change. It is still what it was when we were young, it is what it will be when we are laid in our coffins. It is liks God Himself. It lasts. Men's opinions about it may change, but it remains what it was, hidden, it may be, like a December sun-behind the clouds of speculation or of controversy-but in itself unchanged, nnchangeable. "Thy word, O Lord, endureth, &c." The grass

Let us then remember these two truths, withereth, &c." It is true of all other men, it must be true of us. We may read the solemn truth in the world around us. Every age, every rank, every profession furnishes the proof. Life would be unendurable, but for the second truth. "The word of the Lord shall stand forever." What then is the object of my thoughts, hopes, affections, conduct? Is it this perishing life, which must so soon have vanished like a dream, which is so perpetually changing? or, is it the unchanging eternal word which liveth and abideth for ever?

That great question, that question of questions, between the grass that withereth, on the one hand, and the word that shall stand for ever on the other, must be

answered. Let each answer for himself ere he takes another step on the brief journey across the fields of time towards the gate of the eternal world.

Νο

ASLEEP IN JESUS.

THEODORE L. CUYLER, D.D.

For if we believe that Jesus died, and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus, will God bring with him.—2 THESS. 4: 14. O Scriptural description of death is so suggestive and so consoling as that which is conveyed by the familiar word sleep. It recurs often. Stephen the martyr breathes his sublime prayer, and then "he fell asleep.” Our Lord said to His disciples : "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth but I go that I may awake him out of sleep." Paul, in that transcendently sublime chapter on the resurrection, treats death as but the transient slumber of the body, to be followed by the glorious awakening at the sound of the last trumpet. And then he crowns it with the voice of the Divine Spirit, that marvelous utterance which has been said, and sobbed, and sung in so many a house of bereavement: I would not have you to be ignorant concerning them which are asleep; for, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." No three words are inscribed on more tombs or on more hearts than these, "Asleep in Jesus."

These declarations of God's Word describe death as simply the temporary suspension of bodily activities. Not a hint is given of a total end, an extinction, or an annihilation. The material body falls asleep, the immortal spirit being, meanwhile, in full activity; and the time is predicted when the body, called up from the

tomb, shall reunite with the deathless spirit, and the man shall live on through eternity. What we call dying is only a momentary process. It is a flitting of the immortal tenant from the frail tent or tabernacle, which is so often racked with pain and waxes old into decay. Paul calls it a departure: "To depart and be with Christ." The spiritual tenant shuts up the window of the earthly house ere he departs. We kiss the brow, and it is marble. The beloved sleeper is sleeping a sleep that thunders or earthquake cannot disturb. But what is there in this slumber of the body that suggests any fear that the ethereal essence of the spirit has become extinet, or even suspended its activities? When the mother lays her darling in its crib, she knows that sleep simply means rest, refreshment, and to-morrow morning's brighter eye, nimbler foot, and the carol of a lark in her nursery.

They who die in Jesus live a larger, fuller, nobler life, by the very cessation of care, change, strife, and struggle. Above all, they live a fuller, grander life, because they sleep in Jesus' and are gathered into His embrace, and wake with Him, clothed with white robes, awaiting the adoption-to wit, the redemption of the body." In God's good time, the slumbering body shall be resuscitated and shall be "fashioned like to Christ's glorious body"-i. e., it shall be transformed into a condition which shall meet the wants of a beatific soul in its celestial dwelling-place. Verily with this transcendent blaze of revelation pouring into the believer's deathchamber and his tomb, we ought not to sorrow as they that have no hope.

In this view of death (which is God's own view) how vivid becomes the Apostle's exclamation: "I am confident, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." Paul was entirely willing