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"That there should be time no longer." A tremendous asseveration, whether we regard the thing affirmed or the person who affirms it. Of the person making this asseveration we may say that there are traces about him, which, although he is called an angel, seem to identify him with our Lord Jesus Christ. In the first verse he is represented as clothed with a cloud; and the cloud vesture is stated in the Psalms to be the vesture of God Himself — "clouds and darkness are round about Him." A rainbow encircles his head; and a rainbow is the well-known token of the covenant of grace made with us in and through Christ. "His face," we are told, "was as the sun." In the first chapter of this Book, John describes the countenance of the Son of Man to be "as the sun shining in its strength"; not to mention that one of the features of the glorified Christ, as He appeared at the Transfiguration, was this, "His face did shine as the sun."

I. WHAT MAY BE MEANT BY THIS CESSATION OF TIME? Time, considered in itself, can never cease to exist. It must flow on and on to endless ages. Everything which happens must, of course, have a certain period of time, longer or shorter, in which to happen. The redeemed in glory will sing the praises of God and the Lamb. Time must elapse while they are singing those praises. If in the glorified body there should be a heart, it must go on, pulsation after pulsation, in never-ending succession. If in the new heavens and the new earth there should be anything analogous to that movement of the heavenly bodies which gives us day and night and the vicissitudes of the seasons, such a movement must necessarily ask time to proceed in — nay, as it proceeds, it must measure time. What, then, is meant by the announcement of a period when there shall be time no longer? Time, as I have said, must always flow on; but it may be annihilated to us, or in great measure annihilated. How this may be is not really an intricate or a subtle question, although it may at first sight appear so. It is generally and truly said that to Almighty God there is no such thing as time. If you understand this assertion, you will then find no difficulty in perceiving how time to us may be no longer. To say that to Almighty God there is no such thing as time, is only another method of expressing the truth (and be it said with the utmost reverence), that God has a perfect memory and a perfect foresight. There are many points of analogy between the mind and the eye. Imagine, then, an eye as free from the laws of the eye as you have been imagining a mind free from the laws of the mind. Imagine an eye not subjected to the laws of perspective, an eye to which things do not, as they recede from it, either diminish in size or fade in colour. It must be clear that to such an eye distance does not exist, just as to a mind endowed with perfect memory and perfect foresight time does not exist. One object may be placed a yard distant from the eye; another object may be placed a thousand miles distant; but if the latter of these objects appear of the same size, shape, and colour, and with all the same circumstantials, as it would if brought within the range of thirty-six inches to that eye distance is annihilated, and has no existence. And if God were to announce to any one that distance would be no more to him, this would be only another form of saying that his eyesight should be free from those limitations which are at present the conditions under which eyesight exists. Thus we have arrived at the last stage of our explanation. You have only to remember that the human mind, in another stage of existence, will be made competent for a far higher state of things than it can ever now attain, that its reach will be increased both as regards the past and the future, in order to comprehend the announcement that "time shall be no longer." Our memory of all that has befallen us will then be perfect. Many events and sensations of our past career are buried away in the sod of the mind, trodden down into the soil, and overlaid by our more recent experiences. Of many very critical events, on our minds there is just a headstone, as it were, with a monumental inscription, giving in the coldest manner their name and date; but freshness, reality, and vitality they have none. Yet, even now, passages of our past history are, ever and anon, recalled to us with a wonderful vividness, by music, by odours, by long forgotten scenes, or by some other association of the senses. Sudden and transient flashings these, of a light which is destined one day to flush the whole mind, and to penetrate into its darkest recesses. The memory has really no more lost its deposits than the graveyard has lost the corpses entrusted to its keeping. Those deposits will one day start from the sod in all the freshness of new life, and stand up upon their feet "an exceeding great army." Nor need we shrink from supposing that in that higher condition of existence the powers of memory and foresight possessed by the mind will be greatly enlarged, whether or not they be made, as regards our future experience, perfect.

II. WHY THE ASSEVERATION OF THE TEXT IS MADE UPON OATH. The reasons are obvious. First, its being made on oath argues its importance. We take an oath in matters of moment, not in trifles. Petty interests are felt to be beneath the solemnity and dignity of an appeal to Heaven. Secondly, an oath is an indication that the thing assevered appears till then in more or less uncertainty. It is the province of an oath to give assurance of something which was previously open to question.

III. TO EACH ONE AMONG US THE ABOLITION OF TIME WILL BE THE HOUR OF OUR OWN DEATH. "This I say, brethren, the time is short." Yes, that is the main point which the oath may be taken to imply — the infinite importance in God's estimation of the time that remains to you upon earth.

(Dean Goulburn.)

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KJV: And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,

WEB: The angel who I saw standing on the sea and on the land lifted up his right hand to the sky,