eternal." We "desire a better country, that is, an
heavenly." "It doth not yet appear what we shall be; we shall be like
Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

Much current Christian teaching practically tends to drop immortality
very nearly out of sight. The Lord's Return, the heavenly Life, "the
liberty of the glory of the sons of God"--these topics are either
little mentioned, or treated too much as luxuries and ornaments of the
Gospel. But it was not so for the Lord Jesus, and for His Apostles.
And we shall find that to follow Him and them in this, as in other
things, is best. It "hath the promise of the life that now is, and of
that which is to come." Their doctrine of the future is much more than
an antidote to death. It is the mighty animation of life. It makes
altogether for present purity, and righteousness, and self-sacrificing
love, in the concrete circumstances of this generation. It is the
thought in which alone man can live his true life _now_, as a being who
is made "to glorify God--and to enjoy Him fully _for ever_."

As a matter of fact, no human life is so true, full, and beautiful as
that which is at once assiduously attentive to present duty and
service, and full of the everlasting hope. Such lives are being lived
all around us. Which of my readers has not known at least one such?
For me, one among many shines out in my heart radiant with a brightness
all its own; it is the life of my blessed Mother. She has now been a
great while with the Lord, on whom she so long believed. But the
impression of what that "conversation" was is not only indelible; it
lives and moves, as fresh to-day as ever. It was a busy life--the life
of a wife, a mother of many sons, a friend of many friends, the
pastor's help-mate in a poor parish. It was a life of minute and
devoted attention to every duty, large and little. It was a life of
warm and ready sympathies, and manifold interests. But it was a life
all the while of divine communion, and of an unwavering "hope full of
immortality." Dear to that heart indeed were husband, children,
friends, neighbours, suffering and sinning world. Very fruitful was
that life for individual and social blessing, just such as the
philanthropist seeks to convey. Side by side with my Father, who
laboured incessantly through a long life for God and man, and for men's
health as well as their salvation, my Mother lived for others in all
their present needs. But the springs