232 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



have vanished. It gleams before our eyes, purged by 

 the heavenly eye-salve, in the soft tender radiance of one 

 of the fairest and most precious objects that we know 

 on earth. Beneath it flows the river of life ; over it 

 waves the unchanging foliage the ever-beautiful blos- 

 soms and the unfading fruits of the tree of life. Upon it 

 is blazoned the armorial bearings of Christ, the crown of 

 righteousness, beside whose splendour all earthly glories 

 vanish. It is a triumphal arch for the passage of 

 those who have been made more than conquerors 

 through Him that loved them. How strange will be the 

 transition to many of God's timid saints who are in 

 bondage all their lifetime to the fear of death, who 

 dread every allusion to it, and keep every object and 

 association connected with it away from their eye and 

 their mind ! Like Peter, led by an angel, they will pass 

 forth from their narrow prison here in which they 

 groaned, through the iron gate, and awake to find them- 

 selves in a trance of joy on the golden street of the New 

 Jerusalem. Through darkness into light, through pain 

 and weeping into everlasting joy, through fear and dread 

 into a bright and blessed assurance for evermore; the 

 gate of iron changed into a gate of pearl ; that which 

 was an object of the utmost abhorrence into an object 

 of admiration unbounded ! Who has not seen the 

 transfiguration of the dying, the gleam of the pearly 

 gates shining upon the face growing pale and cold in 

 death, like a winter sunbeam on a wreath of snow, and 

 giving to the meanest countenance a dignity and 

 beauty which it never knew before ! Who has not 



