YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

Our /Lord's View

WORLD'S EVANGELIZATION.

$x\x Sorb's fftefo of % BBorto'a tfkngel^ation :

AN ADDEESS

BEFORE THE SYNOD OF NEW YORK, BY ITS APPOINTMENT, DE
LIVERED IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
NEWBURGH, N. Y., OCTOBER 16th. 1866.

REV. WILLIAM IRVIN,
MINISTER OF TUB PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, RONDOTJT, N. s.

PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE BOARD OF
FOREIGN MISSIONS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

NEW YORK :
MISSION HOUSE, No. 23 CENTRE STREET.
1866.

ADDRESS.

The work of missions is the work of Christ. For it he was
anointed by the Holy Ghost, and sent of the Father. In it
he labored, while he tabernacled with men in the flesh — labor
ed, not only as a Master, but as a servant — with his own lips,
and his own hands. He was the Apostle, as well as the High
Priest of our profession ; the first preacher of the gospel ; the
first missionary of the Cross. His Church, by her ministers
and members, now carries on, instrumentally, the work which
he in person began. For the right estimate and performance
of that work, then, he is at once our Teacher and our Model.
Here, as in other spiritual relations and duties, it is emphati
cally true that " without him" — asunder from him, out of
sympathy with him — " we can do nothing." For this work, we
need especially to walk by his side, and hold by his hand,
and catch his spirit. How did Christ look at the work of the.
world's evangelization? What was his attitude towards it?
How did he labor at it ? are questions to which, however famil
iar and old and trite they, may be, we must perpetually re
cur, to be correct in our principles, and safe in our plans, in
respect to the fulfillment of the Lord's final command. The
life of Christ, the words and deeds of Jesus, are the Church's
nianual and guide-book in the discharge of her mission. We
need the constant study of the sayings and doings of our
Lord as they bear specially on the spread of the gospel — the
habitual contemplation of his example as a propagator of his
own truth. We must look at the starry firmament through
the telescope and with the skilled eyes of an astronomer, to
apprehend the divine order and harmony of that stupendous
frame, which, to an untaught eye, appears " a mighty maze,

4 THE LORD'S VIEW OF
and all without a plan." So we must survey Christ's great
work from Christ's stand-point, and with his eyes — approach
it with his temper and spirit, see it as he saw it, and do it as
he did it, to see it and do it rightly. The more nearly we at
tain this, the more nearly will our estimate of it be correct,
and our labor in it efficient and acceptable.
There are passages in the Gospels, familiar, yet exhaustless
in impressiveness and significance, which seem to set before
us Christ's attitude toward the world of sinners he came to
save. We read, for instance, " When he saw the multitudes,
he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted,
and were scatteied abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.
Then saith he to his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous,
but the laborers are few ; prajr ye, therefore, the Lord of the
harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest."
The time of this record is itself significant in this direction, as
being just before he sent out the twelve as his first deputies
and helpers. And the passage, though primarily the special
record of a single occasion, may yet be considered represent
ative. We may extend and generalize its application. It
was always thus that Christ looked upon the multitudes of
human kind ; this was his habitual attitude and temper, as
the Teacher and Saviour of man ; and the words he then spoke
gather more and more breadth and fullness of meaning the
more widely we apply them. So it was, likewise, on that oc
casion when he stood by Jacob's well, and looked on the eager
crowd which poured out of the Samaritan city to see and
hear him. " Say not ye," said he to his disciples, " there are
yet four months, and then cometh harvest ? Behold, I say un
to you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields ; for they are
white already to harvest." And the same is still more true
of that supreme and marvellous moment when the feet of the
risen Lord, human still, but mortal no longer, pressed for the
last time the soil of Galilee, and when, with the emphasis of
parting words and divine authority, he laid upon the con
sciences, and put into the hands, of the apostles and the Church

THE world's evangelization. 5
they represented, the work he had begun : " Go, make all na
tions disciples ;" " Go ye into all the world, and preach the
gospel to every creature."
Without attempting to analyze or expound these passages,
and other like ones, let us gather from their surface some
broad general features and characteristics of the view our
Lord took of the work of the world's evangelization.
I. And in the first place, the view which Christ took was
a universal view. " The field" for this spiritual husbandry
was to him " the world." The heavenly gift he had purchased
and preached knew no limits but those of the habitable globe.
There was in this point the most marked and astonishing con
trast between divine grace under the old dispensation and
under the new. It was then jealously confined and guarded
— kept close, like a treasure in a casket, from profane eyes
and common hands ; now, the same hand which had hidden
these riches in secret places, brought them forth into the sun
light, and scattered the pearls broadcast among the nations.
The Divine love had been contracted at the penal dispersion
from Babel, had chosen Abraham with a special partiality,
and had been narrowed still further to Isaac's line and Jacob's
seed ; but now these " sure mercies of David," pent up so long,
regained at a bound their world-wide dimensions. In prac
tice, indeed, even our Lord himself, although as a faithful son
of Abraham he recognized and deferred to the restrictions of
the old economy, once and again reached out a healing and
helping hand over the barriers set up of old by Divine law.
He was " not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ;"
yet he broke bounds, if we may say so, when he went into the
borders of Tyre and Sidon to hear and grant the Syropheni-
cian's prayer, and when he preached the Gospel by Jacob's
well to the woman, doubly outcast as a Samaritan and a sinner
— heedless of the silent wonder of his scandalized disciples.
And as his practice was in these exceptional cases, so his atti
tude and temper always were. That was, no doubt, a Jewish
throng which was before him, when, as we have read, he " saw

6 THE LORD'S. VIEW OF
the multitudes." But surely we are not to confine the pregnant
significance ofthe words to the few thousands, at most, then
within the range of his bodily vision, nor even to limit their
wider application to the tribes of Israel represented there.
Ah ! how much more that gaze then saw than it seemed to
see ! It was Christ looking at ,the whole family of man — sur
veying the multitudinous race of Adam — scanning the num
berless myriads who thronged the cities, and tilled the fields,
and lined the rivers of the world — and looking, not only
round the world, but forward through the centuries ; not only
upon the contemporary millions, but the uncounted and ever-
increasing generations yet to come. He " saw the multitudes"
— that penetrating glance searched the dark places of the
earth for the long-lost children of man ; passed over no tribe
or tongue ; left no human soul unnoticed, however far off and
forlorn. All needed his salvation — to all it was adapted — to
all he meant it should be heartily and freely offered ; and
therefore he looked upon all men as the universal Redeemer
—the Saviour of the world. And such, too, was his wide
meaning when he said to his disciples, " Lift up your eyes,
and look on the fields." His finger, doubtless, pointed as he
spoke to the fair scene before his eyes, from which he drew
the figure— the broad plain bright with the rich verdure of
the springing grain. But the fields he thought of were vaster
than any explorer had then surveyed— kingdoms and conti
nents, and far islands of the deep— fields whose walls are
mountains, and their highways oceans— fields rich with the
priceless possibilities of salvation, laden with the ripening
corn which might fill the heavenly garner. So wide and
grand was the view he took of the work to be done— such
was the view he demanded his Church should take— and
commensurate with it, therefore, was the parting charge he
gave : " Go, make disciples of all nations, for I will have them
all own me as Master and Lord. Go into all the world for
there is not a corner of it in which I do not intend my Church
to be established, and my truth to prevail. Visit all its cities

THE WORLD'S EVANGELIZATION. 7
for I have much people in them all. Preach the gospel to
every creature — to the whole creation — that my kingdom may
be set up wherever Satan has reigned, and that all flesh may
see the salvation of God."
Now it is undoubtedly true that the Church has accepted
and appropriated this broad view of her mission, and made it
at least the theory to whose requirements her obedience is to
be adjusted. Seldom has she been so false to her high call
ing as to shrink back, professedly and openly, where her Lord
leads her oh. Seldom has the true co-worker with Christ ven
tured so to limit the Holy One of Israel as deliberately to ex
cept this or that class, this or that individual, from the reach
and scope of the grace of God. There are men, even nominally
Christian, who scoff at the work as a wild waste of life and
labor and money; but the Church, as such, has accepted as
her bounden duty a simple, literal compliance with the man
date of her Lord. But if we turn from her faith to look for
those works by which faith is proved and perfected, how little
— how very little, in all these long centuries, has been really
done ! At first, indeed, it seemed as if the Church would ful
fil her mission with adequate energy and promptitude. The
Christians of the early dispersions " went everywhere preach
ing the word." The blasts of persecution wafted the winged
seed of the truth far in every direction from Olivet and Cal
vary. The faith of Christ overran and transformed the vast
empire of Rome ; and the banner of the Cross was carried
farther than the Roman eagles ever reached. But that first
faithful effort was short-lived. Ages of apathy and indolence,
and even retrogression, followed it. Christian missions into
heathendom are a recent and modern thing. And how far
short — how lamentably and guiltily short do we come of do
ing now, what humanly speaking, would have been done ages
ao-o, if that first missionary spirit had been sustained with its
primitive energy ? Might not the Master well come to His
Church to-day, and repeat with sorrowful indignation the
command which fell on the apostles' ears, " Go ye into all

8 f THE LORD'S VIEW OF
the world?" When treason is to be crushed, and a nation
saved, hundreds of thousands of men leave all and go freely
and gladly to hardships and death ; and we pay hundreds of
thousands more to follow them; and thousands of millions of
treasure are lavished, almost without hesitation or murmur ;
we reck little of life, and nothing of money; and when the
stupendous total of blood, and suffering, and tears, and debt,
is summed up, we look calmly at it, and say, " Liberty is
worth all that it costs ; nationality, and unity, and justice are
cheaply won, even when so dearly bought." But when re
demption is to be offered to a world— when the glad tidings
are to be preached to every creature — we send a man for a
million — single scouts instead of full battalions ; we send a
few spies before us, but the Israel of God enters not in to
possess the land she is so well able tp overcome ; we light a
few glimmering tapers here and there in the gross darkness
of the world, which can no more light it up than stars can
turn night into day — which twinkle in the murky gloom like
the straggling lamps of a great city at midnight, just making
darkness visible, while many a dark corner, where robbers
prowl and murderers lie in wait, is still unlit by a single ray ;
we gather here and there a soul into the Church, while the
nations are marching in solid columns and gloomy processions
to the hopeless grave and the dread judgment ; and having
done so little, are wo not too apt, my brethren, to sum up
these petty fractional results, and recount them with satisfac
tion, as if we had measurably done, or at least were doing,
the work the Master had given us to do ? Would we not
have a different air, and attitude, and tone, in reference to the
matter, if we looked at it as Christ looked at it — if we felt that
our duty was undone and guiltily neglected, while there was
one human ear within our reach in which the message from
heaven had not been spoken ? Our plain and positive duty
is simply to tell every son of man of the love of God, to bring
every sinner face to face with the Saviour. Have we fairly
accepted this as our work ? Have we yet even set about it

THE WORLD'S EVANGELIZATION. 9
in earnest? The thing is within our power; the means and
opportunities are in our hands ; wide and effectual doors
stand open, and we may enter in. Until this is done, surely
we and the Lord whose we are, and whom we serve, are not
at one in this matter. We do not see eye to eye ; we do not
stand side by side ; we are not co-workers with God. When
this is done, or at least when we have put forth every possible
effort to do it, then, and only then, will our obedience square
with Christ's commandment ; then, and only then, shall we
hear no longer his accusing voice, " Why call ye me Lord,
Lord, and do not the things that I say ? " Until we do this,
is there not a stinging reproach for us in those words of Paul,
well thus applied, though not in the sense in which he uttered
them, — " Some have not the knowledge of God ; I speak this
to your shame " ?
II. In the second place, the view which our Lord took of
the work of the world's evangelization was a tender and com
passionate view. " When he saw the multitudes, he was
moved with compassion on them." Pity for man was the
predominant feeling in the heart of Jesus. It certainly stands
out most prominently in the record of his earthly ministry.
There were other emotions that might well and naturally
have swayed him. Sin, the great cause of his coming, had
other aspects, especially to his eyes, than those which called
for sorrow and compassion. Wrath and indignation as an
outraged Sovereign, resentment as a slighted and ill-repaid
Benefactor, rigid sternness as an inexorable Judge, might
properly enough have characterized the attitude of the Son
of God toward men. And then the keen and bitter suffering
he must have experienced from the contact of his pure and
holy nature with sinners and with sin, would have been but
suitably and naturally manifested by an outward and evident
aversion and disgust. The elevated and refined shrink in
stinctively from the low and brutal ; the upright and moral
turn with abhorrence from the profligate and the fallen ; and
in like manner, but with an infinitely deeper and sharper

10 THE LORD'S VIEW OF
pain, must the holy Jesus have revolted at the pollution and
the vileness ofthe fallen world. And both the depth of the
degradation he found, and the bitterness of the hostility and
ingratitude he met with, must have tended to produce a pro
found and overwhelming discouragement as to the success of
his mission. And yet, not wrath, not disgust, not discour
agement, but pity, was the foremost emotion and the might
iest impulse of the Lord Jesus. He was the very impersona
tion of it, as he bent over the disfigured and loathsome leper
who kneeled before him ; and the tenderest compassion was
expressed, more eloquently than words could speak it, in the
tears he shed at the grave of Lazarus, and over doomed Jeru
salem. That briefest verse of Holy Writ, " Jesus wept," is
the most astonishing revelation which even inspired words
could convey, of the attitude and feeling of Jesus toward man.
And it was not merely as a friend, or as a son of Israel, that
he shed those tears ; not merely for his loss in the one case,
nor for the coming misery of his people in the other ; nor was
it, in general, simply the physical suffering which in all its
forms he was so prompt to help and heal, which most deeply
touched his heart. All outward griefs and miseries, all the
curse and blight which rested on the world, were but the
fruit and consequence of sin ; and, therefore, it was because of
sin that " Jesus groaned in the spirit and was troubled "  it
was over sin that " Jesus wept." It was man as a sinner, far
more than man as a sufferer, that moved the sorrow of the
Lord. ^ To him a sinner was the most wretched and pitiable
object in the universe; a sinner, he well knew, was, and must
ever be, as such, a laboring and heavy-laden man. He saw
that the multitudes "fainted and were scattered abroad, as
sheep having no shepherd." They were vexed, harassed,- and
cast down, desolate, hopeless, and forlorn, under the grievous
burden and bondage of sin ; and, therefore, " He was moved
with compassion on them,"— the tender mercy of a God, and
the yearning pity of a man.
Now, what the Church needs, and what every member of

THE WORLD'S EVANGELIZATION. 11
it needs, in order to be more like the Lord, and to do more
for the Lord, is just this spirit of Christ. We need to be per
vaded, and swayed, and overmastered by the mighty impulse
of a holy pity for sinners in their sin. No other man can, in
deed, ever weep over sin like Jesus, because none can see its
guilt, and fathom its pollution, and gauge its heinousness, and
comprehend its misery, like him. And yet grace can teach
us, as it taught David, to cry out, " Rivers of waters run
down mine eyes^ because they keep not thy law." We must
at least share, if we cannot reach and realize to the full, the
temper of Jesus toward a lost and wretched world, if we
would labor with him, and like him, for its rescue and re
lief. We must learn to feel how terrible and desperate a
thing it is to be a sinner, before we can worthily and efficient'
ly reach out to a sinner a helping hand, in the name and after
the manner of the Master. That the Church comes grievously
and guiltily short in this particular — and surely it does come
short — -must be owing to a defect in the depth and thorough
ness of religious life and feeling. Superficial conviction of
sin, partial repentance, imperfect contrition for sin, slight per
ceptions of the tremendous evil of sin, cannot but be the cause
of our want of sorrowful sympathy for a perishing world. It
was in such an unsanctified and un-Christlike temper that
James and John proposed to call down fire from heaven on
the inhospitable Samaritan village, and which Christ rebuked
when he said, " Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.
For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to
save them." If the exalted Prince and Saviour would bestow
on his Church in richer measure the gift of repentance, and
breathe on his people his own meek and lowly spirit, we
should find harshness, and disgust, and discouragement, and
impatience, and weariness in well-doing, whether in respect to
the man at our doors who resists the truth, or the blinded and
obdurate millions of heathendom, expelled and replaced by
the tenderest pity for all for whom Christ died. Just as we
feel that we have been pardoned, are we willing and ready

12 THE LORD'S VIEW OF
to forgive ; as far as we know that Divine mercy has borne
with us, so far and so long will we bear with others ; as deeply
as a humble yet grateful memory reminds us that we fell our
selves, so low will we be willing to stoop to the fallen. When
that charity which " beareth all things, hopeth all things, en
dureth all things," shall have its perfect work in the Church
of Chi-ist, and fill her with that warm and loving sympathy
which beamed from the eyes of Jesus, then will she open her
arms in her Master's name, and, after his example, to embrace
and welcome and save the dying world.
III. Again, the view which Jesus took of this work, was evi
dently one which prompted the most earnest effort and energy
in its prosecution — the use of every means, and the putting
forth of every power for its accomplishment. How singly and
entirely he gave himself to it — how persistent and tireless he
was in going up and down doing good, it is the burden of the
Gospels to tell. The most complete and exhaustive record of
a human life ever made, is given in those two utterances of his
own lips: "The zeal of thy iouse hath eaten me up; " "My
meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his
work." And this is what he demands ofthe Church on which
he laid the work of spreading his gospel through the world ;
not of his ministers alone, and surely not of the little band
only who are his witnesses to 'the uttermost parts of the earth,
but of every soul that calls him Master and Lord. He looks
upon the faint and scattered multitudes— he declares the
greatness of the harvest— and then he calls for laborers ; for
.apostles and evangelists, for pastors and teachers, yet not for
these alone, but for all who can fill any place, and do any part
of the work, in the vineyard, " Pray ye the Lord of the har
vest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest." " I
sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor; other
men labored, and ye are entered into their labors." The divis
ion and allotment of work is .as plainly a law of the kingdom
of Christ as of any other, department of human exertion
Some sow, others reap; some labor, and others enter into

THE WORLD'S EVANGELIZATION. 13
their labors. Praying, giving, and going, seem to be the three
grand departments of the Church's work ; and in at least one
of these, every one of her members is responsible to the
Master for his share. The Lord will have, not a ministry,
but a church, of laborers; and woe be to him who con
cludes that he has no work to do, and stands all the day
idle ! There, just as in the mechanism of human society, the
wisest and strongest worker has but his own share to do ; and
the feeblest and humblest laborer is as necessary as he to
the great plan which embraces all — just as the smallest satel
lite is as indispensable to the order and balance of the heavens
as the mightiest orb in the firmament. No angel can be spared
from the ranks of the host of heaven ; and no Christian can
fold his hands or follow his own devices, without wronging
his neighbor and robbing his Lord. There and here, God's
servants must serve him, or they are not his servants at all.
A sense of personal, distinct responsibility for activity and
service, is one of the earliest and_ most impressive thoughts
that true religion awakens in the soul ; and he has not learned
the first lesson taught by the Holy Ghost, who has not been
brought to cry with Paul, " Lord, what wilt thou have me
to do ? " Avith Samuel, " Speak, Lord, fbr thy servant heareth ;"
with Isaiah, " Here am I, send me." O brethren, partakers
of the heavenly calling, if this were more universally felt and
solemnly realized in relation to the work of making known
the grace of God unto all men, would our stated meetings for
intercession for the world be so thinly attended and so coldly
carried on — would such scanty driblets of our abundance find
their way into the treasury of the Lord — would hundreds of
our churches, as now, utterly fail either to give or to pray —
would the mass of those who bear the name of Christ neglect
in any form of effort to spread the savor of that name, either
in the shadow of heathen temples, or in the neighborhood of
our own homes ? Let us hear anew for ourselves, and let us
sound ao-ain in the Church's ears, the solemn admonitions of the
Lord : " Freely ye have received, freely give ; " "To whomso-

14 THE LORD'S VIEW OF
ever much is given, of him shall be much required ; " " That
servant which knew his Lord's will, and did it not, shall be
beaten with many stripes."
IV. And lastly, the view which Christ took of the work of
the world's evangelization, was a cheerful and hopeful view.
This is implied in the very figure which he chooses to set it
forth — plainly and necessarily implied — if there is any force and
significance in the figure at all. To him, the world over which
his salvation was to be carried was a harvest field — a field white
to the harvest. He was, no doubt, gazing, as he spoke, over the
rich and fertile plains and valleys of Galilee. The luxuriant
soil teemed before him with the promise of plenty ; the tall,
strong grain stood thick and heavy, pledging seed to the
sower amd bread to the eater ; and just as Jehovah had done
in his word by the mouth of Isaiah centuries before, so Christ
now used this fairand joyous scene as the emblem of the
growth and glory of his kingdom. And as he then said to
his apostles, so he calls aloud to his Church to-day, " The har
vest is great ; " " Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for
they are white already to harvest." The season which "furnishes
the metaphor is the most joyous and gladsome of the year.
Doubt and uncertainty are ended ; disappointment and famine
are no longer possible. Even though he sowed in tears, the
husbandman shall now reap in joy ; and the song of the reap
ers, as they gather the golden sheaves, welcomes the harvest
home. And thus it is that the Great Sower and Husbandman
would have his people look upon the world, as they labor iu
it for him ; — not as a dreary desert, a barren wilderness, with
out flower, or fruit, or verdure, but as a harvest, rich and sure,
in which " he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit
unto life eternal ; " where even he that has " gone forth
weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again
with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." He will not
have them toil and labor on drearily in hard and sullen
obedience, but expect great things from him, as well as
attempt great things for him, and count on full barns and

THE WORLD'S EVANGELIZATION.' 15
overflowing garners, when their work is done. He had this
joy set before him, that he should " see of the travail of his
soul, and be satisfied ; " and that joy, that satisfaction, he
means that they shall share. The means and methods are his,
and his only, to appoint, and control, and bless ; the times and
the seasons are in his power, and are not for us to know ; but
the glorious result, when and as he shall choose, he pledges to
us beyond a perad venture. "There shall be a handful of corn
in the earth upon the top of the mountains ; the fruit thereof
shall shake like Lebanon." " Israel shall blossom and bud,
and fill the face of the world with fruit." u As the earth
bringeth forth her bud, and as a garden causeth the things that
are sown in it to spring forth ; so the Lord the God will cause
righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations."
And how vain to attempt to describe or imagine, what the
final ingathering of that great harvest shall be ! How utterly
does anything we now know fail to tell us what shall be the
golden value of the sheaves, and the reapers' .reward and joy !
When the great diseoverer set forth from the shores of Europe*
and found at last, beyond the unknown sea, the green shores
of the long-sought land, he turned homeward joyously with
the news that he had found a new world ! And yet how little
he knew then of its size, its shape, its surface, its position, its
relations ; how utterly beyond his wildest hope were its ex
tent, its richness, its beauty! And now that almost four
centuries* have passed since that first glance, and the foot of
adventure and of science has explored mountain, river, and
valley, and a teeming population has occupied and subdued
it to the purposes of man, are there not, even now, grand
heights whose summits human foot has never scaled, and broad
territories not yet developed by busy industry? And so,
when the ingenuity of man, long baffled by the inviting but
inscrutable secrets of the heavens, framed at length that mar
vellous aid to human vision which seemed at once to pierce the
veil which hid the starry worlds, did it not seem as if their
mysteries were all his own % And yet, through centuries, as

16 THE WORLD'S EVANGELIZATION.
he has peered further and further into those azure depths, he
has but learned how little he knew, and how little he could
know; and deeper and wider abysses, still opening as he
gazed, and cloudy mists in the far heaven, resolving before
him into myriads of distinct and ponderous worlds, stretching
to the dim outposts of the universe, have taught, and will for
ever teach him the narrow scope of his own faculties, and the
boundless and fathomless glory of the works of God. And
in like manner, this gospel of Christ, when its richness and
beauty, its great peace and unfading hope, its treasures of good
will to men and glory to God, first meet our opened eyes,
seems to break like a new and perfect revelation upon the
astonished and delighted soul. But as we study and gaze
with calmer and stronger vision, we marvel and tremble at
the length and breadth and depth and height, which we can
not grasp or understand. The landscape lights up, as we look,
under the rising sun ; the fair fields stretch into the vague
distance of the far horizon : and " the deeps of God" spread
out illimitable in the heaven above. We study and discover
and press onward ; we solve mysteries, and scale the heights
of this science of heaven ; but though ever learning, we are
never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. In that
world where we shall know even as we are known, we shall
comprehend and measure, infinitely better than now, what
marvels grace has wrought in the redemption of man ; but
even there, with sinless energies, and immortal powers, and
the wide sweep of an angel's wing, we shall both enjoy with
out exhausting, and explore without mastering, " the fullness
of the blessing of the gospel of Christ."