One blessed consequence from this revelation of the nature of the spiritual world, in which the risen Christ reigns, is that we can enter it, and live for it, even in the present life, without any disregard of the obligatory claims which this world has upon us. However busy a man’s life, however absorbed he may necessarily be in the requirements and duties of his daily occupations, he can also be exerting his energies of thankfulness and prayer to God, of truth and love and compassion and meekness and peace, which make the life of the eternal world. There is no occupation or condition of life in which those blessed graces may not be exerted and cultivated; and men and women may thus live in the spirit and light Of Heaven, even while they are confined within the cave of the flesh. In proportion as they are living in this light even here, they are being prepared for the eternal Heaven of the future; they are fulfilling, all the more completely, their duty to the society and the life of this world because they are guided by the illumination, both of the present Heaven which overshadows their souls, and of the future Heaven, of which the approaching gleams throw flashes of light across their path. But what I would more particularly ask, at the present moment, amid the strain and distress of these months and years of war, is whether the promise of this eternal blessedness, the vision of this unseen and eternal world, does not justify the Apostle’s description of all the sorrows and sufferings which he and his fellows underwent, as “our light affliction, which is but for a moment.” If this world were the main scene of our life and of our hopes, there would be something appalling in the destruction, or mutilation, of so many of the best lives among us, and the cruel bereavement of those who are left behind. But in the light of this revelation, is it not our privilege to regard it all as “a light affliction, which is but for a moment,” and which is working for us all, for those who are taken and for those who are left, a far more exceeding and eternal glory? What does it matter to a life, however young and bright, that it should be cut short in this world if, through death in the discharge of duty, it passes to the full enjoyment of those “things that are with Christ,” in that world where Christ will welcome it with the greeting: “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord?” It is, indeed, a hard fate for those whose life in this world is, for the future, maimed by injuries, or marred by bereavement. But for them, too, there is the assurance of Christ that if they suffer with Him, and in sympathy with Him, they shall also be glorified together, and that all they suffer, in obedience to His will here, will help them forward in the way that leads to everlasting life. These are not mere human hopes and imaginings; they are the express promises and assurances of