"Thy dead shall live, My dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead."
Oh, joyful Easter morn, for which Faith is watching and waiting! When the first dawn of its coming light is around us, and the shadows of night are beginning to flee, well may our Lord address to mourners for departed saints the question, "Why weepest thou?"
Christ when He rose from the dead was again restored to His loving followers, but, as regarded visible presence, for only a little space; but when the graves of His saints shall be opened, when from countless sepulchres the heavy stones shall be rolled back, it is to no transient glimpses of the Lord, to no brief moments of blissful intercourse that they will then be admitted.
"I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not a stranger—" (marginal reading).
No, NOT A STRANGER! When Mary first beheld her risen Lord, her eyes were holden that she should not know Him, and as a stranger she addressed Him! But the saints as they burst from the sod in the morn of the resurrection shall at once recognize Him, whom not having seen they have loved! They will know the voice of the Good Shepherd who has led them through the wilderness of life, and the valley of the shadow of death!
"And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation."
[The Queen and the Twelve Names.]
WE find in the seventh chapter of the book of Revelation a description of the sealed ones, the spiritual Israel, under the names of the tribes to whom was granted the promised inheritance of Canaan. If it be, as many believe, that we here behold Christ's Church under a different symbol, yet identical with her of whom we read in the forty-fifth Psalm, the twelve names in Revelation beautifully fill up the description of "the King's daughter, the Queen," who is "all glorious within," for all these names have meanings. The virgins, her companions, that shall be brought into the King's palace with gladness and rejoicings, may be regarded as representing "the multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds, and peoples and tongues," who appear to be distinct from, and yet in some degree sharers in the blessedness of the sealed ones, "the hundred and forty-four thousand." Let us examine the meaning of the names mentioned in Revelation vii., and see if they are not as twelve stars in the crown of the "Church of the firstborn," * placed on her head by Him whom she worships, because He is the Lord her God.
* Heb. xii. 23.