Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE QUESTIONS.

Q. What is glory?

A. It signifies the bright shining of the light.

Q. What is the glory of the natural creation?

A. The sun.

Q. What is the glory of the kingdom of heaven?

A. God himself.

Q. What shall glorify the Saints?
A. The presence of God.

Q. How doth the Scripture describe him?

A. As having no variableness nor shadow of turning like to what we are subject to who inhabit this earth.

Q. How did Christ appear, when he was transfigured?

A. His raiment became white as snow, his face shone like the sun, and his whole person as bright as the light itself.

Q. Did any sign of glory attend the angels of heaven when they appeared?

1

A. A

A. A light shone in the prison when Peter was delivered by an angel.

Q. What was the effect when Moses conversed with God?

A. A glory remained on his face, too bright for the people to behold.

Q. How are you to obtain the glory which is promised?

A. By putting away the works of darkness.

Q. Who are they that love darkness rather than light ?

A. They whose works are evil. Q. How is the mind to be glorified now?

A. By conversing with God as Moses did.

Q. How can that be done?

A. By reading and studying his word. Q. How are you to prepare yourself farther ?

A. By bearing, as Christ did, the sufferings of the present time?

Q. How farther?

A. By using the means of grace; for it is grace only that leads us to glory.

[ocr errors]

THE TEXTS.

་་་་་

Psal. xix. 1. The heavens declare the glory of God.

Rom. xvi. 27. To God only wise be glory.

.

Luke ix. 29. And his raiment was white and glistening.32. And when they were awake they saw his glory.

2 Cor. iii. 7. The children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his counte nance.-V. 18. But we all, with open (unveiled) face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the sume image from glory to glory.

Luke ix. 26. He shall come in his own glory, and in his Father's and of the Holy Angels.

Col. i. 27. Christ in you the hope of glory.

Rom. viii. 18. The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. XIX. THE

XIX.THE PREACHER'S PICTURE OF OLD AGE.

IN

N the 12th Chapter of Ecclesiastes, the preacher admonishes me to dedicate my youthful days to the service of my Creator, considering the evil days which are coming upon us, when all the faculties of our minds and bodies shall fail us under the infirmities of age. For then, as the preacher beautifully represents it to us, as in a glass or mirror, the sun and the moon and the stars are darkened; the superior powers, which rule in the body of man, as the heavenly luminaries do in the world; the understanding and reason, the imagination and the memory, are obscured, as when the clouds interpose between us and the lights of the firmament. In the earlier season of life, the clouds of affliction having poured down their rain, they pass away, and sunshine succeeds; but now the clouds return after the rain; old age itself is a continual sor

[blocks in formation]

row, and there is no longer any hope of fair weather. The keepers of the house, the arms and hands, which are made to guard and defend the body, begin to shake and tremble; and the strong men, the shoulders, where the strength of the body is placed, and which were once able to bear every weight, begin to stoop and bow themselves; and the grinders, the teeth, begin to fall away, and cease to do their work, because they are few. Also those that look out of the window's are darkened: the eyes, those windows of the body, through which we look at all things abroad, as we look out from the windows of a house, become dim; and he that uses them is as one who looketh out of a window in the night. Then the doors are shut in the streets; difficulties and obstructions attend all the passages of the body, and digestion becomes weak when the grinding is low. The youthful and healthy sleep sound, and are apt to transgress by taking too much rest; but the aged sleep with difficulty, and rise up at the voice of the bird; they are

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

ready

« PreviousContinue »