death she speaks to us of the joys of victory and the peace and happiness of our heavenly home. Christ and His Church lead us heavenward by alternate appeals to our hopes and our fears — for mental food they give us a judicious mixture of the bitter and the sweet. That is the idea we find embodied in Raphael's masterpiece — " The Transfiguration." Below is depicted the misery of human life — the tortured demoniac, the frantic appeals for help, and the vain efforts of even the Apostles to afford consolation or relief. But a hand points upward to the tower of comfort and support — Religion represented in the ecstasy of the Apostles, and heaven — the happy consummation of it all — reflected in the serene loveliness of the Saviour.
Brethren, when God promised Palestine to Abraham, He bade him lift up his eyes and view that region and walk in the length and the breadth thereof; and Moses while still in the desert was bidden to send messengers abroad to inspect the promised land. So, too, should we with regard to our promised land — the kingdom of heaven; but who shall be able to walk through the length and the breadth thereof? Glorious things are said of thee, O city of God, says the Psalmist, but the greater part of heaven's glories must be left untold, because even to conceive them hath not entered into the heart of man. Like all things most intimately associated with us, heaven is the best known and the least known. That there is life everlasting, our craving for happiness testifies, but what heaven is, where it is, what
