'I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice.' In other parts of these closing discourses the form of the promise is the converse of this, as for instance--'Yet a little while, and ye shall see _Me_.' Here Christ lays hold of the thought by the other handle, and says, '_I_ will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice.' Now these two forms of putting the same mutual relationship, of course, agree, in that they both of them suggest, as the true foundation of the blessedness which they promise, the fact of communion with a present Lord. But they differ from one another in colouring, and in the emphasis which they place upon the two parts of that communion. '_Ye_ shall see _Me_' fixes attention upon us and our perception of Him. '_I_ will see you' fixes attention rather upon Him and His beholding of us. 'Ye shall see Me' speaks of our going out after Him and being satisfied in Him. 'I will see you' speaks of His perfect knowledge, of His loving care, of His tender, compassionate, complacent, ever-watchful eye resting upon us, in order that He may communicate to us all needful good. And so it requires a loving heart on our part, in order to find joy in such a promise. 'His eyes are as a flame of fire,' and He sees all men; but unless our hearts cleave to Him and we know ourselves to be knit to Him by the tender bond of love from Him, accepted and treasured in our souls, then 'I will see you again' is a threat and not a promise. It depends upon the relation which we bear to Him, whether it is blessedness or misery to think that He whose flaming eye reads all men's sins and pierces through all hypocrisies and veils has it fixed upon us. The sevenfold utterance of His words to the Asiatic churches-the last recorded words of Jesus Christ-begins with 'I know thy works.' It was no joy to the lukewarm professors at Laodicea, nor to the church at Ephesus which had lost the freshness of its early love, that the Master knew them; but to the faithful souls in Philadelphia, and to the few in Sardis, who 'had not defiled their garments,' it was blessedness and life to feel that they walked in the sunshine of His face.