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LECTURE XVII.

RECOGNITION IN THE AGE TO COME.

"There shall be no night."-Revelation xxii. 5.

THIS text occurs in the previous chapter; and in discussing it in a previous lecture, I viewed it as a prediction of the perfection of that state to which the church is progressively approaching. On this occasion, I am anxious to look at the prediction in another of its aspects, and to answer, in this light, the question, Shall the saved, in their resurrection bodies, and amid millennial light, recognise each other just as clearly and distinctly as they do now?

The reunion of all the people of God, before the throne of God and of the Lamb, is an admitted fact. The Millennium is, in short, the rendezvous of all the people of God,-the "rest that remaineth" for them,-the hour of "the manifestation of the sons of God." "I go," says the Saviour, "to prepare a place for you; and I will come again, and receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." And again, he prays—“Father, I will that those thou hast given me be with me, that they may behold my glory." We are to be gathered together unto him, and to be presented "a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing."

The resurrection, whether it respects the lost, or the people of God, is not a re-creation of humanity, or the restoration of mankind in the mass, but the resurrection, or rising again, in purity, in beauty, and in glory, of all that was deposited in the grave. The same body that fell, shall rise: this mortal shall put on immortality—this corruptible, incorruptibility: all that constitutes me, be it moral, mental, or physical, shall rise again at the last day. And just as the body which Jesus laid in the tomb was the same body with which he rose from the dead, so shall it be with ours.

Now, if all our faculties be raised, memory will be restored and resuscitated with the rest. Its essential function is recollection, its aspect is retrospective. It deals only with the past: it is a storehouse of facts. If in the future there be no recollection of the past, we shall have no memory, and shall thus be raised with mutilated powers; or some wave of Lethe, of which we have no intimation in the oracles of truth, shall have washed away and expunged all our reminiscences of departed scenes. But there is abundant evidence that there will be remembrance, and therefore memory, in the age to come. Gratitude, which will then be so deeply felt and vividly expressed, implies recollection of benefits received. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus indicates that memory will have its part and its power in the punishment of the lost it is surely not unreasonable to suppose that it will have a share in contributing to the joys and felicities of the blessed. The words of our Lord, addressed to his own, "I was hungry, and ye gave me meat-thirsty, and ye gave me drink," is an appeal to the memories of his own. Shall we recollect the truths that first kindled in our hearts the joys of heaven, and have no recollection of the instrument, however humble, that conveyed them to our hearts, and interested us in them? Can we have walked together to the house of God, and taken sweet counsel together, and yet have no recollection of voices that were familiar to us as household words, and features with which we were intimately acquainted as with our own? If, then, we recollect in the future dispensation those we knew and loved in the present, shall we be prevented from seeing them? Will any change in them, or in us, prevent us from recognising them? Shall the future be merely successive tiers of separate cells-piles of solitary prisons-a scene of isolation and solitude? Will memory preserve the shadows of the dead, but our eyes fail to recognise them when living? Are we not told that death shall be destroyed? But if those bonds which were broken at death are not restored again in the realms of life, death is not annihilated; one of its deepest wounds survives; its heaviest blow is felt throughout the successive cycles of a futurity to come. this cannot be. I look on the future as the restoration of scattered families, of suspended friendships, of broken circles; the reanima

tion of departed images; the apocalypse of faces we gazed upon below, when channelled by floods of tears, then bright and radiant with joy, where tears are no more shed. It was not good to be alone in the first Paradise-surely it cannot be better to be alone in the second. Night shall be rolled away, alike from the memories, the horizon, and the days of the blest. But there are express instances in Scripture, that prove the conviction of the saints of God that they shall rise again and recognise each other in the regions of the blest. Thus in Gen. xxxvii. 35, it is related of the patriarch Jacob, that he refused to be comforted, and said, "For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning." The Hebrew word is not that which is strictly translated "the grave," but sheol, which means the place of departed spirits. That it could not be the literal grave which the patriarch meant, is obvious from the fact that he knew his son was not buried, but devoured, as he was told, by an evil beast; and besides the cessation of his sorrow, which he expected, must have been by the very nature of his hope contingent on his restoration to the presence of his son, which he so ardently desired.

In 2 Sam. xii. 22, we read, David said, "While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." If the expected consolation of David arose from the prospect of his being buried in the earth with the body of his child, we absurdly suppose his extracting consolation from what was essentially and wholly the cause of his distress. What was the spring of David's sorrow? Plainly, separation from this child. What could comfort him under such sorrow? Clearly, reunion with, and recognition of, his child. David cherished the hope, and has furnished, in his language, satisfactory evidence that he, too, believed that the nightless land would be the land of reunion, restoration, recognition.

Again, we read in Jer. xxxi. 15: "Thus saith the Lord, A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not. Thus saith the Lord: Refrain

thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy." This prophecy is declared to have been fulfilled in the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem, and in the weeping of Rachel for her offspring. The dead infants are represented by the prophet as captives in the realms of death: their resurrection is set forth as the restoration to their bereaved mothers; and this hope, which implies their mutual recognition, is declared to be their sustaining comfort.

In Matt. viii. 11, we read, "Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." What is here the distinguishing element of the happiness promised by our Lord? Surely it is the enjoyment of the presence, and the recognition of the persons, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If we fail to know them, we shall have no proof that the promise is fulfilled, nor any increase of satisfaction and delight from the fact that such will be our sublime companionship. Can we for one moment suppose that Abraham will be seated with his son amid the brightness of unclouded glory, and yet fail to recognise him? or that Isaac will be seated in the presence of his father, and the father of the faithful, and regard him merely as a stranger?

In Matt. xvii. 1, it is written, "And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them, and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light; and behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him. Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here; if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.". Plainly, Moses and Elias knew each other; the disciples, as plainly, knew and distinguished them as pointed out to them and thus the essential identity of their persons in the resurrection state with their persons in their earthly state is clearly indicated. In Matt. xix. 28, it is written, "And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging

the twelve tribes of Israel." We cannot conceive any fulfilment of this promise, except in the apostle recognising the tribes, and the tribes the apostles, and the apostles each other, in the age to

come.

In Matt. xxv. 40, we find these words: "And the king shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." These words suppose the actual presence of all the recipients of the bounties bestowed in the name of Christ by the saints of God. They also imply the recognition of them as such recipients in the past; and the judgment is the manifestation and the evidence of such deeds before an assembled world. In Luke xvi. 9, we read: "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations." Riches are here called the mammon of unrighteousness, from the manner in which they are too frequently employed; and the exhortation of our Lord impresses the duty of consecrating to holy and beneficent ends those elements of power which are too frequently prostituted to the worst of purposes: and the words of our Lord plainly imply that. the objects of the compassion and the beneficence of the people of God-the naked they clothed, and the hungry they fed, and the ignorant they taught the lessons of the gospel-having preceded them to glory, will stand at the gates of the New Jerusalem and welcome them within, honouring them as the instruments of good, while they give all the glory "unto Him that loved them and washed them in His blood, and made them kings and priests unto God."

In Luke xvi. 22, we read as follows: "And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died and was buried; and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom." From this it is plain that the rich man recognised in the light of the other world the poor beggar whose person he recollected to have often seen at his gates; and felt fulfilled in his bitter experience that awful prediction of our Lord, "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all