d no sciences to learn. What will you do
there? 'He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.' If you have
done your housekeeping, and your weaving and spinning, and your
book-keeping, and your buying and selling, and your studying, and your
experimenting with a conscious reference to God, it is all right. That
has made the act capable of eternity, and there will be no need for such
a man to change. The material on which he works will change, but the
inner substance of his life will be unaffected by the trivial change
from earth to heaven. Whilst the endless ages roll he will be doing just
what he was doing down here; only here he was playing with counters, and
yonder he will be trusted with gold, and dominion over ten cities. To
all other men the change that comes when earth passes from them, or they
from it, is as when a trench is dug across a railway, into which the
express goes with a smash, and there is an end. To the man who, in the
trifles of time, has been obeying the will of God, and therefore
subserving eternity and his interests there, the trench is bridged, and
he will go on after he crosses it just as he did before, with the same
purpose, the same desires, the same submission, and the same drinking
into himself of the fulness of immortal life.

Brother, John tells us that obedience to the will of God brings
permanence into our fleeting years. But how are we to obey the will of
God? John tells us that the only way is by love. But how are we to love
God? John tells us that the only way to love--which love is the only way
to obedience--is by knowing and believing the love that God hath to us.
But how are we to know that God hath love to us? John tells us that the
only way to know the love of God, which is the only way of our loving
Him, which in its turn is the only way to obedience, which again is the
only way to permanence of life, is to believe in Jesus Christ and His
propitiation for our sins. The river flows on for ever, but it sweeps
round the base of the Rock of Ages. And in Him, by faith in His blood,
we may find our sure refuge and eternal home.

THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS

'Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that
we should be called the sons of God....'--1 John iii. 1.

One or two points of an expository character will serve to introduce
what else I have to say on these words.

The text is, I suppose, generally understood as if it pointed to the