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The text shows us a Divine method in providence; a law for individual and national life, and for the larger life of the race; a law borne witness to by the history of the people whose history is a light for all time, and by which we have gleams through experience of bitter times, earnests of the inheritance of light, periods filled with special mercy and truth, times of quickening and spiritual growth, days of heaven upon earth.

I. THE FIRST DAYS OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION were, in the highest and most absolute sense, days of heaven upon earth. A light began to shine amid the dark shadows of that time, and a Divine life to give forth sparks and gleams of a better world. God was manifest. He dwelt with men. He trod the common paths of life. Brief though the days were, all the great days of human history which preceded them had led up to them; and they were themselves, while they lasted, a vision of heaven for all time, an actual dawn of the possibilities to which Christ is conducting His Church, a demonstration of the power of that life of Christ in His people which, today as then, may be an opener of blind eyes, and a raiser of the dead, and may still go forth, as in the first apostles, to conquer the world. Those days were sent to us to create new days in our daily lives, and enable us, even amid the shadows and imperfections of our earthly life, to live lives of heaven upon earth. And these days still return to us. Times of revival are simply repetitions on a smaller scale of the first days of the Church. The light that shines upon human life at such times is light from heaven. Christ once more walks among men, and His presence seems to encompass them wherever they go.

II. THE TIMES WHEN THE SOUL IS OPEN TO THE REVELATIONS AND OFFERS OF DIVINE LIFE are days of heaven upon earth. The dawns and sunsets of these days are in the soul itself. These are the blessed times when the heart is still impressible, when the eyes of the soul are undimmed, when the conscience is still tender. The soul is face to face with the claims of God. It has new views of its responsibilities, of its aims, and of its destiny. Christ's word and the Spirit of God and our own conscience work together to range us on the side of God. New visions of the Divine mercy and goodness are opened up to us, and we are placed under the argument of the love that died for us, to admit that love into our hearts.

III. THE COMING OF CHRIST INTO A LIFE is the beginning of days of heaven for that life. We are not our true selves until the blood of the Divine life has been mingled with ours. In the midst of natural occasions for joy we are not glad. Christ enters and joy begins. The long absent Friend has come — the life is heightened. The thoughts flow forth, the nature expands, the eyes kindle, and the whole wide world of circumstance and relationship takes on our joy.

IV. TIMES OF SERVICE UNDER CHRIST are days of heaven upon earth. The soul has now entered into loving relations with the Lord. It is no longer its own, but His. Its joy is to live in Him. Its life is a daily consecration to His service. Sacrifice, gifts, labours, worship: Christ is the object of them all.

V. THE BEAUTIFUL DAYS OF EARTH are types and sometimes actual realisations of such days. On such days every river becomes an emblem of the river of life; every tree, of the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations; and the glory of the sky when the dawn burns into the perfect day, of the glory which is to lighten the streets of the New Jerusalem, and clothe the nations of the saved who shall walk in its light. I recall at this moment such a day of heaven upon earth. Here and there, all up the sides of a Highland mountain, patches of corn were yellowing for the sickle. These literally peeped out, so small they were, from amid great breadths of purple heather. Little hollows of meadow grass shot up over their edges the richest green; and, at irregular intervals, the bare rock displayed itself like protruding bones. The sun was setting. His rays came level and struck all that breast of colour at once, and seemed to touch it into active life. It expanded, it swelled, it rose upwards until clouds of colour floated about all the mountainside. The whole scene glowed with coloured light — yellow and green and purple. It flamed upwards, outwards, downwards, casting back upon the naked granite an ethereal brightness, and down upon the spectator a glory as if the gates of heaven had been opened to his view. It was one among ten thousand glimpses of the glory of God in the face of harvest. To them who were present it was a day of heaven upon earth.

VI. CHRIST IS THE LIGHT WHICH MAKES DAYS OF HEAVEN POSSIBLE. And such days fail of their purpose if they fail to increase our joy in Him. Man in his ordinary state can neither see nor enjoy such days. He is blinded and oppressed by his burdens — the well known, the universally felt burdens, which only Christ can remove — of guilt and care and sorrow.

(A. Macleod, D. D.)

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KJV: And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

WEB: You shall teach them your children, talking of them, when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.