imperishable, glorious.

So sin, a corroding drop, a dark, deadly, vexing, torturing thing, fell
upon God's fair creation, threatening to inoculate it with a poison that
should leaven the whole lump, and change its beauty into corruption. But
around the dark sin-spot, and because the sin-spot was there, divine
love showered down, like the impalpable silver gathering on its object
in the electrotype, embracing, surrounding, covering, killing the evil
and bitter thing that threatened to destroy the works of God. Death was
swallowed up in victory. The Son of God came into the world because sin
was on it. He, the Holy One, took sin into his bosom, that he might
quench it in his own embrace. It was sin that summoned the Saviour to
the world, and gave shape to the Gospel of God. To the devil's wile in
Eden, as the occasion, though not the cause, unfallen angels and
ransomed men will for ever be indebted for that specific work of their
Creator which will most attract their eyes and inspire their songs. On
one side they behold mercy, in spotless, unmingled white; and on the
other side they behold judgment, darker, indeed, yet equally
resplendent. But here in the midst, in the person of God incarnate, they
see mercy and judgment meeting--the pearl of great price--where two
different and apparently opposite glories mysteriously and beauteously
mingle and play. Death swallowed up in victory; sin embraced and so
destroyed in the person of Immanuel; sin lost in the holiness and love
that agglomerated round it;--this pearl will shine in heaven with a
glory that excelleth, when the sun and stars shall have fallen like
unripe figs from the sky.

VII.

THE DRAW-NET.

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the
sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew
to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast
the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels
shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and
shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and
gnashing of teeth."--MATT. xiii. 47-50.

Great variety obtains in the size and structure of fishing-nets; and
great variety, too, in the manner of using them. Some are stationary,
fixed to poles in the sea or the estuaries of rivers; some are dropped
in a straight line into the water, and allowed to remain there suspended
until a shoa