ng, one
solemn part of the Christian revelation about the future is that Time is
the parent of Eternity, and that, in like manner as in our earthly
course 'the child is father of the man,' so the man as he has made
himself is the author of himself as he will be through the infinite
spaces that lie beyond the grave. Therefore, when a Christian preacher
prophesies of times that are afar off, he is prophesying of present
time, between which and the most distant eternity there is an iron
nexus--a band which cannot be broken.

Nor is that all. Not only is the truth in my text but a half truth, if
it is supposed that the main business of the gospel is to talk to us
about heaven and hell, and not about the earth on which we secure and
procure the one or the other; but also it is a half truth because, large
and transcendent, eternal in their duration, and blessed beyond all
thought in their sweetness as are the possibilities, the certainties
that are opened by the risen and ascended Christ, and tremendous beyond
all words that men can speak as are the alternative possibilities, yet
these are not all the contents of the gospel message; but those
blessings and penalties, joys and miseries, exaltations and
degradations, which attend upon righteousness and sin, godliness and
irreligion to-day are a large part of its theme and of its effects.
Therefore, whilst on the one hand it is true, blessed be Christ's name!
that 'he prophesies of times that are far off'; on the other hand it is
an altogether inadequate description of the gospel message and of the
Christian body of truth to say that the future is its realm, and not the
present.

II. So, then, in the second place, my text gives a very good reason for
prizing and attending to the prophecy.

If it is true that God, speaking through the facts of Christ's death and
Resurrection and Ascension, has given to us the sure and certain hope of
immortality, and has declared to us plainly the conditions upon which
that immortality may be ours, and the woful loss and eclipse into the
shadow of which we shall stumble darkling if it is not ours, then surely
that is a reason for prizing and laying to heart, and living by the
revelation so mercifully made. People do not usually kick over their
telescopes, and neglect to look through them, because they are so
powerful that they show them the craters in the moon and turn faint
specks into blazing suns. People do not usually neglect a word of
wa