yesterday, to-day, and for ever. It is written, "In him was life" (John
for through him, and on him, and in him, we live; but still all this is little; for what is the small inland lake, however clear deep, in comparison with the boundless ocean? To be able to, say, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God," is much; but it will be infinitely more to say, when the day has dawned at last, "In thy presence is fulness of joy, and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." "He that hath the Son hath life;"—we know this, and are glad. But how much more fully shall we understand hereafter what it is to "have the Son," and to "have life!"—nay, and how much more blessed shall this make us, when we actually see as we are seen, and know as we are known—when we reach the fountain itself, and drink life out of life's deepest well! Nay more, if "the life of Christ be manifested in these mortal bodies" (2 Cor. 4:10), that is, if this life of Christ gets such full scope and vent to itself in quickening and invigorating us even here in our mortality, what will its manifestation be hereafter, when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and mortality shall be swallowed up of life! (2 Cor. 5:4.) Instead of being, as here, a continual strife between life and death, whereby life is obscured and hindered, nay oftentimes made to seem as if but halt conqueror, it shall be the complete and unchecked manifestation of glorious life, the life of the Living One— of him who has yet in reserve for us uncounted stores of life, which, in order to be seen and appreciated, will require to be spread out over a whole eternity.
All the things written of in Scripture, in connexion with this life, are everlasting. There is no change, no end, no decay.
1. There is the life itself.—It is everlasting. Many times over is this name given to it, and many are the ways in which this eternity of the life is affirmed to us, as if God would assure and re-assure us of this truth, beyond the possibility either of doubting or mistake.
2. There is He from whom it comes.—He is everlasting—the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. It is written, "In him was life" (John