symbolism. It is all a time of glad, grateful remembrance of the
wilderness march. It is all a time in which festal joys shall be
theirs, and the memory of the trials and the weariness and the sorrow
and the solitude that are past shall deepen to a more exquisite
poignancy of delight, the rest and the fellowship and the felicity of
that calm Presence, and God Himself shall spread His tent above them,
lodge with them, and they with Him.

And so, dear brethren, rest in that assurance, that though we know so
little of that state, we know this: 'Absent from the body, present
with the Lord,' and that the happy company who bear the palms shall
dwell in God, and God in them.

III. And now, lastly, look at that final vision which we have in these
texts, which we may call the Tabernacle for the renewed earth.

I do not pretend to interpret the scenery and the setting of these
Apocalyptic visions with dogmatic confidence, but it seems to me as if
the emblems of this final vision coincide with dim hints in many other
portions of Scripture; to the effect that some cosmical change having
passed upon this material world in which we dwell, it, in some
regenerated form, shall be the final abode of a regenerated and
redeemed humanity. That, I think, is the natural interpretation of a
great deal of Scriptural teaching.

For that highest condition there is set forth this as the
all-sufficing light upon it. 'Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with
men, and He will tabernacle with them.' The climax and the goal of all
the divine working, and the long processes of God's love for, and
discipline of, the world, are to be this, that He and men shall abide