of life, clear as crystal" (Rev. 22:1). With twelve manner of fruits that
gold not only pure and unalloyed, but transparent as crystal! We shall then be beyond the region where the "foot can swell" or the "shoes wax old," or the garments grow old; nor on that bright pavement shall our feet any longer need to be "kept." There will be nothing there to make us stumble or fall. Our feet still "shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace," we shall move to and fro along those happy streets where the pure river flows, and where the everbearing tree of life flings its fragrant shadow. Like silver winding through plains of gold, that stream of life rolls onward, and we, walking upon its golden brink, shall taste the refreshment for which we so often, with homesick sighings, longed in this waste howling wilderness.
5. Its provisions.—"The tree of life is here, and the pure river of water of life, clear as crystal" (Rev. 22:1). With twelve manner of fruits that tree is laden, and every month these fruits are ripened. There is no complaining in the streets of this city. The food of immortality is here. We eat, and live for ever, sitting down under the shadow of that tree with great delight, and finding its fruit sweet to our taste. We eat and hunger no more, feeding upon more than angels' food—upon the bread of God. Restored to paradise—to more than paradise; made welcome to that tree from which our first father was thrust out—the better tree—the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God (Rev. 2:7). And then, as we shall hunger no more, so shall we not thirst any more (Rev. 7:16), for the living stream supplies us even more plentifully than the water from the rock supplied Israel. "They thirsted not when he led them through the desert" (Is. 48:21), much less shall we on the banks of the heavenly stream. The fountain-head of Israel's desert-water was a rock, but the source of the great citystream is "the throne of God and of the Lamb" (22:1). Israel's fountain in the latter day is to be the sanctuary—"the threshold of the house whence this stream is to proceed" (Ezek. 47:1); but the Church's well of water springing up into everlasting life, is the throne —the throne of the Father and the Son. What will our first day be under these trees, and by the banks of that stream, when "led by the Lamb to the living fountains of water," and all "tears wiped away