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LECTURE XXV.

NO MORE SEA.

A great transformation awaits the earth, of which instalments are daily multiplying; one of these is thus intimated

"There was no more sea."-REVELATION xxi. 1.

PROPHECY often states in the past what really relates to and is to be fulfilled in the future. The Apocalypse passes before the eyes of John as a brilliant panorama ; he sees the whole sweep past, while he records what he saw as it swept past him. But the whole of it, at the same time, or at least the last half of it, is the prediction of things that are to be, and not the historic statement of things that were.

What is meant by the strange, we would almost say startling, prediction, "There shall be no more sea?" Does it mean that God is literally to annihilate the ocean, to dry up its waste and wilderness of waters, and to turn it into dry land? There is no proof of this: we believe that all God has made is to endure for ever, all that sin has originated as its progeny is to be cut off and cease for We find on referring to the original record in the book of Genesis, at the 9th verse of the 1st chapter, that God said, "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered

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together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas." So again in the 104th Psalm we find God spoken of in this way, in language most magnificent-poetry that, were it contained in Shakspeare or Byron, would be quoted as a perfect masterpiece of beauty; but because it is contained in the Bible, literary men have no appreciation of its beauties. He says, speaking of the earth, "Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment:" what a beautiful idea-the earth covered with a shining mantle, that mantle the broad expanse of the crystal ocean! "Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth." All this indicates that God made the ocean; and as God, in the very beautiful and happy language of a Collect of the Church of England, "hateth nothing that he hath made," but hates only the defiling taint that has spread over the beautiful garment, and stained it with hues that were not originally on it, we have no reason to expect that he will destroy the sea or anything that he has made; on the contrary, that the regenesis of the future will be the restoration of more than the genesis of the past; that whatever sin has done shall be repaired; whatever disease, decay, and death, have wasted shall be restored in other words, Christ will come to our world not the destroyer

of what he made, but the redeemer of what sin has made its slave, its thrall, and its victim. But if this be the case, still you ask, how can the prediction be fulfilled, "There shall be no more sea?" I will show you just by a parallel passage in the 22nd chapter what must be its meaning. We read in another passage in the 22nd chapter, at the 5th verse, "And there shall be no night there." What does that mean? If the earth in the day of its restoration, as we expect and believe, shall revolve round its axis, and if the sun shall occupy his central throne in our system, it is quite plain that there must be the alternation of day and night. We cannot conceive that those alternations will cease as long as the main laws of our existing economy continue. It is obvious then, that by the prediction, "There shall be no night there," it must be meant that all the damp, the clouds, the danger, the uncertainty, the precariousness, that are the accompaniments of night, shall not exist under the regime in which the earth shall be placed at that day; but that a glory shall rise upon the ocean and upon the earth, so great, that there shall be no need comparatively of the sun and the moon to shine on it; for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the light thereof. And in the 21st chapter, where he says, "The city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it;" it does not mean that the sun will sink and be destroyed; but it means that there will he a compensatory glory that will render sunlight as dim amid its effulgence, as a candle light is dim amid the beams of the noonday sun. Thus when we read, "There shall be no night there," it means that whatever night has now of uncertainty, or danger,

or disturbance,,shall altogether be put away. Wherever there are the fruits of sin, mark you, such as tears, and grief, and sorrow, and suffering, there shall be absolute annihilation on this earth; but wherever there is what God made, there shall be reconsecration, purification, and adjustment. The prediction, "There shall be no more sea," is exactly the same as "No more night;" namely, whatever are the perils, whatever the evils, whatever the disturbances, represented by night and sea, shall cease in that blessed and happy day. For instance, in northern latitudes, in the extreme north of Scotland, I have heard people say, "There is no night here." You ask, How can that be? The answer is, when the sun sets, the Aurora Borealis supposed by the most recent discoveries of astronomy to be connected with a ring round our earth, as Saturn has a bright ring round him; certainly not derived from the sun-shines with a brilliancy and a beauty that will enable you in its mysterious light to read even the smallest type. So in the age to come, when the seer says, "There shall be no need of the sun, nor of the moon," the explanation of it is given; "for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." Therefore we understand, that as "No more night," does not mean the extinction of the physical arrangements of our system or economy; so, "No more sea does not mean the drying up of the ocean, or the annihilation of its waters, but its regeneration and restoration to that state in which it was when God looked upon that shining Robe, and saw no flaw on it, and pronounced it very good. It is a just impression that religion is not a thing for the sanctuary only, but for everywhere; and that one

should associate all providence throughout its varied chapters with all grace throughout its successive kingdoms. The subject of this lecture was suggested by reading in the newspapers, that the two worlds, new and old, were connected by the electric wire; and by the strange remark of a secualr newspaper, "There is no more Atlantic Ocean." That expression instantly suggested, perhaps from previous reading, this beautiful prediction, "There shall be no more sea." Not that I suppose the electric telegraph is to fulfil this; not that its accomplishment, when it shall be completed, and the two great continents shall talk together, will exhaust this; though one rejoices to see in it something like the fulfilment of the prophecy in Malachi, "He shall turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, and the fathers to the children, lest I smite the earth with a curse." children are the great Republic across the Atlantic; we are their fathers and mothers; and one sees in this beautiful bond of union and communion, as soon as it shall be achieved, if not, as I do not venture to say, the fulfilment of Malachi's prediction, at least a happy illustration of it that we do well to take notice of. But that the accomplishment of this great feat of science is not the fulfilment, I mean the perfect fulfilment of this text, is plain enough; because, alas! if we look at the Atlantic Ocean, that separates England from America, we see there indeed incipient bonds of sisterhood and brotherhood, and union and communion; but without imputing anything-we see other signs if we look across a nearer and narrower sea. We see the ocean imprisoned within the excavated rock; that imprisoned ocean

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