Blessed are they that need no argument; and blessed are they whose memories take them back to the glowing hours of experience, in which they have seen the transfigured Christ; in which to them the heavens have been opened; in which to them the angels of God not only have descended upon the ladder, but have brought the divine and sacred presence with them. Many a couch of poverty has been more gorgeous than a prince’s couch; many a hut and hovel has been scarcely less resplendent to the eye of angels than the very battlements of heaven. Many that the world has not known; who had no tongue to speak, and no hand to execute, but only a heart to love and to trust—many such ones have had the very firmament of God lifted above them, all radiant. There is this truth in the Spirit of God that works in the hearts of men directly, and in overpowering measure. Blessed be God, it is a living truth; and there are witnesses of it yet.—_Beecher._ [_March 22._] Jesus Christ, in his dying discourse with his eleven disciples, in the 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters of John (which was, as it were, Christ’s last will and testament to his disciples, and to his whole church), often declares his special and everlasting love to them, in the plainest and most positive terms, and promises them a future participation with him in his glory in the most absolute manner, and tells them, at the same time, that he does so to the end that their joy may be full. John xv:2: “These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” See also, at the conclusion of the whole discourse, chapter xvi:33: “These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Christ was not afraid of speaking too plainly and positively to them; he did not desire to hold them in the least suspense. And he concluded that last discourse of his with a prayer in their presence, wherein he speaks positively to his Father of those eleven disciples, as having all of them savingly known him, and believed in him, and received and kept his word; and that they were not of the world; and that for their sakes he sanctified himself; and that his will was that they should be with him in his glory; and tells his Father that he spake these things in his prayer, to the end that his joy might be fulfilled in them: verse 13. By these things it is evident that it is agreeable to Christ’s designs, and the contrived ordering and disposition Christ makes of things in his church, that there should be sufficient and abundant provision made, that his saints might have full assurance of their future glory.