secure in peerless enthronement over a vassal world! Faithful unto death, nobler functions await us, and loftier ministrations in a temple not made with hands. Who shall tell the privileges of a celestial priesthood? Who shall sing the raptures of an eternal eucharist? Already we enjoy the earnest. We have learned something of the ritual, and are practising the prelude of the anthem. We stand at the gate, and catch bright glimpses of the inner glory, and hear the ravishing minstrelsy of the host, and inhale the perfume from the golden altar. Soon the portal shall open, and we shall be summoned to enter; and the white-vested elders shall advance to meet us, with greetings of gladdest welcome; and visions of beauty, such as mortal eyes were never blessed withal, shall smite the sense with sweet bewilderment; and voices of wondrous melody, with the accompaniment of many harps, shall be heard chanting through the corridors--"Come in, ye blessed of the Lord! come in!" and of all our blissful fellowships in the everlasting home of the faithful, our happy intercourse with the best and purest that ever lived and died, and our long-desired re-union, realized at length, with those we have loved and lost, this shall be the crown--to be with Him in his glory world without end, who made good his promise to be with us in our ministry "unto the end of the world!" [1] Preached at the ordination to the priesthood of the Rev. Robert A. Holland, in St. George's Church, St. Louis, 1872. XVIII. KEPT FROM EVIL.[1] I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.--John xvii. 15. So pleaded the departing Shepherd for the little flock he was leaving. Though the petition primarily respected the apostles and first believers, there is no impropriety in extending its application to their successors down to the end of time. We, too, are in the world and exposed to evil; we, too, are incapable of self-protection, and dependent upon the merciful guardianship of Heaven; and Christ invokes the Father's love for our preservation as for theirs: "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil."