SATURDAY, May 20. Meeting in the Campbellite meetinghouse. John 4 is read. Evening meeting at Brother John Shoemaker's. John 15 is read. Stay there eighteenth night. Heavy rain to-day and night.
SUNDAY, May 21. Meeting at Brother Eli Dickey's. Revelation 21 is read. Brother Benjamin Bowman gave us some delightful thoughts suggested by these words: "Behold! I make all things new." He said: "This promise is generally thought to point for its fulfillment to the golden day when God's people shall realize in fact what John saw in vision,--'a new heaven and a new earth.' I believe that day is coming. I believe the tabernacle of God will be with men; that God will dwell with them in that Holy City, the New Jerusalem. But I ask here, first of all, whence arises the necessity for making all things new? If the existing order of things is faultless, why this renovation? There must be imperfection, there must be a defect somewhere. Whatever else these words may comprehend, I for one regard them as applying to the church as it will then appear, as Solomon describes it, 'comely as Jerusalem;' the New Jerusalem he means; 'and terrible' in the power of its righteousness and truth, 'as an army with banners.'
"Notice right here the striking similarity of the text to what Paul says. What does my text say? 'Behold, I make all things new.' What does Paul say? 'If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new.' What is it to be in Christ? It is to be filled with his truth as a sponge is filled with water when immersed in it. It is to be filled with gospel light as a healthy eye is filled with light in the blaze of a clear day. And when the spiritual eye is single, that is healthy, not double-sighted, our Lord says the whole spiritual body shall be full of light. The light is in the body, because the body is in the light. I mean just what the Lord meant, the spiritual body, for Paul says: 'There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.' But he goes on and says: 'However, that which is natural is first.' This we can all see and know. We know that we were not naturally born of God. 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,' and what is born of the Spirit is the spiritual body.