evangelical recoils from the idea that they can constitute any ground for our recompense. On the contrary, we have the feeling that such requital of faithful service and and obedience is absolutely necessary to satisfy our instinctive sense of justice. We cannot think of a final divine reckoning which shall assign the same rank in glory, and the same degree of joy, to the lazy and indolent and unfruitful Christian, which are accorded to the ardent and devoted and self-denying Christian. As we cannot doubt that God, who can show Himself just and yet justify the ungodly through His faith, will at last show Himself equally just in rewarding the godly for his works. Else why lighten our possessions here except to add to our eternal weight of glory 'yonder? Why accept of poverty now, except to acquire "the riches of the glory of His inheritance" hereafter? As a matter of fact, when we open the Scriptures we find the discrimination between grace and reward to be clear and unvarying. Without money and without price we are saved; with a great price must we obtain our heavenly recompense. Search the Scriptures diligently, and see how clearly this is revealed :

faith without the deeds of shall come in the glory of law."-Rom. iii. 28.

"Behold I come quickly and my reward is with me, to give to every man according as his work shall be."-Rev. xxii. 12.

His Father with His angels,
and then He shall reward
every man according to his
works."-Matt. xvi. 27.
"Who will render
every man according to his

"For the Son of man deeds."—Rom. ii. 6.

to

But let it be borne in mind, that while the supreme and final reward of the Christian is at the coming of Christ, the Lord has promised much even in the life that now is. The record "manifold more in this present time, and in the age to come life everlasting."* The age to come

runs,

is the millennial age, to be ushered in by the second advent of Christ; at which time the full reward will be meted out for losses and trials and hardships endured for Him in this age. All the crowns of the faithful are reserved unto that period ;-the crown of life, the crown of joy, the crown of righteousness, the crown of glory, -all are assigned by the promise to the time of Christ's return.† Let us settle this in our minds. The present is the age of cross-bearing, wherein we are to fill up that which is behind in the sufferings of Christ; the next is the age of crown-wearing, wherein we shall fill up that which is behind in the rejoicing of Christ. For as His sufferings can never be complete while He is still afflicted in His members,

*Luke xviii. 30.

† Thess. ii. 19. 2 Tim. iv. 8.

I Peter v. 4. Rev. ii. 10.

neither can His joy be full until His Bride the Church is with Him, beholding the glory which He had with the Father before the world was.

Now no human biography can give us any light concerning the rewards of that age of glory. But the recompense of the just in this world, the hundredfold now in this time, with persecutions," is wonderfully illustrated in the history of Christ's faithful servants. And to enforce this promise we shall turn to the story of several saintly lives, and let them tell us how much of blessed requital, even now, the Lord bestows on those who choose to suffer with Him.

It has often seemed as though God takes care to reward His faithful servants most richly at the very points where they have suffered and sacrificed most for Him. As the clay is fashioned to the mould, so His bounty is shaped to our privations, His fulness to our self-emptying, His gift of Himself to our surrender of self for His sake. Indeed is not this the substance of what He promises in that saying of His, "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it "? He shall find the very thing, in other words, which he has foregone, only in Christ and not in himself; divine joy for the loss of human happiness, spiritual riches for the spoiling of earthly goods, favour with the Lord's people for the enmity and rejection of the world. Surely we may comfort ourselves unspeakably in this fact, in the face of any trial or hardship which we may

be moved to undergo for the Master's sake. He never leaves Himself without this witness to His tender love and gracious care of His own. His reward will always take its measure from our privation; and if we can say truly, "Behold we have left all and followed thee," we shall certainly have the promise fulfilled to us, "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." As much of self-sacrifice, so much of the divine indwelling is the law of the Spirit of life, even as every indenture of the coast means a corresponding fulness of the incoming tide. Therefore we need not think it strange that the same apostle who had "suffered the loss of all things" for Christ, could yet speak of himself as "possessing all things."

This is the lesson most deeply impressed upon us from the life of that rare Christian of the last century, Gerhard Tersteegen of Mulheim in Germany. Born in 1697; begotten again at sixteen years of age; soon after so wrought upon by the Spirit that he often spent whole nights in prayer and supplication; then his renunciation of wealth and comfort, that with all his substance he might minister to the poor; then his noble dedication of himself to God in written covenant; and then the years of obloquy and desertion by formal Christians. This, in brief, is the story of his life. But in the midst of it all what immeasurable compensations! No thought of making himself attractive or widely influential seems to have

entered his mind. But just when he was most shunned and deserted by the worldly, then the sinburdened and sorrowing began to crowd upon him from every direction, to crave his spiritual ministrations. Mark it well, oh popular preacher, compassing all art and originality in order to draw the people! Here was one who had no thought of drawing anybody, his heart being set only on the one end of becoming holy unto the Lord, and perfectly doing His will. Indeed, while pursuing his humble calling as a ribbon maker, how little he anticipated being a preacher at all. But like his Master, for Whom he lived supremely, "he could not be hid." The people thronged upon him. He tried to withdraw from them, but so much the more they pressed about him. Before he had risen in the morning, fifty or sixty would gather at his lodgings to hear the word of life from his lips; while state-church clergymen were jealous of his irregular ministry, and complaining of him to the magistrates, he was yielding to the importunity of hungry souls, and consenting to preach; and such crowds gathered that they not only filled every part of the house, but climbed on ladders about the windows, in their eagerness to catch his words. One totally unknown to him comes two hundred miles on foot and in bad weather that he may hear the words of this blessed man. But Tersteegen meantime is strangely amazed at it all, since his discourse is so plain and so unstudied.

"I