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use the talents God has given you in active service: or, like heavenly minded Mary, bring your precious box of ointment, and anoint the feet of your Lord.

And that you may be more inclined to this, now draw nigh to his table in fulfilment of his dying command: "Do this in remembrance of me." And may the Lord, of his abundant goodness, so bless his ordinance, that each may have cause to say, "He has brought me into his banqueting house and his banner over me was love."

LECTURE XVII.

REV. xiv. 1-3.

"And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: and they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.

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THIS morning we concluded the narrative of all that is revealed to us in the inspired volume regarding the family which Jesus loved. In doing this we have traced their history from the day in which Martha first received our Lord into her house, up to that

still more remarkable season when they made him a supper; and Martha served: and Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead sat at the table with him: "And Mary took a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment."

It is, my beloved Christian friends, a part of that blessed hope which the Lord has given to his people, that although this happy family were personally unknown to us during their residence in Judea, that we shall hereafter have the privilege of knowing them and this at a season when their bodies shall be raised from the grave to die no more; and when a far greater supper shall be prepared -namely, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. For to this supper all that love his name shall be called: not one shall be omitted of that innumerable multitude of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, who are represented "as standing before the throne, having washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

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I consider therefore, that we cannot more appropriately conclude our mediations upon this instructive portion of the word of God— more especially as many of us were afterwards privileged to sit down at the supper of the Lord-than by anticipating that blessed day; a day when we shall see not only Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus, with all who have died in the faith of Jesus, but "behold the king in his beauty;" see him " eye to eye, and face to face." I have taken, therefore, my text from one of those sublime visions of future glory granted to the Apostle St. John, which sets forth the final blessedness of those who are "the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb." Such a vision seems more peculiarly appropriate to this blessed family for, assuredly, if there are any believers to whom the title of "the first fruits unto God and the Lamb" more especially belong, they are those characters of whom it is written, "Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus." May that same blessed Spirit who inspired the beloved disciple to write the things which he had seen

and heard, now assist us in meditating upon them; that we may "have our conversation in heaven," and finally, through the merits of our blessed Saviour, obtain an entrance into his everlasting kingdom.

St. John, before he describes the particulars of this vision, says, "I looked;" for, rightly to enjoy these heavenly scenes, it is necessary that the eye should be elevatedthat we should look above. For so many are the earthly objects ready to intercept our view, that, unless the eye be fixed on heavenly things, though all the glories of the world to come be displayed, they will pass unnoticed. Hence the charge of St. Paul to the Colossian church, "If ye, then, be risen with Christ, SEEK those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. SET your affection on things above, not on things on the earth."

Exert, then, every energy. Look above the things of time and sense, as if the glories of heaven were now unveiling. In the silence of your heart entreat the aid of the

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