THE REDEMPTION DEPARTMENT.
GOING through the Treasury Building, at Washington, a few weeks since, we were deeply interested in watching the various stages and processes through which the nation's currency is carried, in its manufacture, beginning with the pure white paper, and ending with the perfect bank-bill. After observing all this, we were invited by our guide to look into "the redemption department." Entering a large room, he explained to us that thither were sent from all parts of the country, the torn or mutilated bills which the Government is pledged to redeem. He showed specimens of these bills which had been upon paper, in order to hold the torn fragments together sufficiently to recognize their genuineness. Some of these bills had been blackened and crisped by fire; some had been soaked into white pulp by water; some had been gnawed and nearly consumed by mice, and some had been turned completely black by the action of ink spilled upon them. "It is often a very long and laborious process," said our guide, "to identify these fragments and to prove the bills genuine. But the Government is pledged, at whatever cost, to redeem any bank-note that is sent here, if it is not counterfeit, and for it to return a bright, new and perfect one." "Sometimes," he added, "the applicants are often compelled to wait for months before they get their new notes; but every applicant is registered, and he is certain, sooner or later, to have his bill redeemed." Was it strange that sayings of Scripture founded on such analogies should have instantly flashed upon our minds with such vividness? We recall instantly and especially these words of the apostle: "Waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." Every body laid in the grave in Christian hope, is an application for the redemption which has been promised and purchased by Christ. The pledge of such redemption is surer vastly than any guarantee of man: "And I will raise him up at the last day." How constantly do we find the Lord Jesus setting his hand and seal to this promise. Death is not "paying the debt of a nation," as it is often said. For the Christian it is rather the process of collecting the debt of grace. "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." It is bringing the old, worn and enfeebled body and presenting it to God for redemption. It may have been dismembered by accident, disfigured by disease, maimed by the sword, or blackened and torn to shreds upon the battle-field; it may have been soaked and whitened in the depths of the ocean; or it may have been calcined and dissolved into dust by the fire,—but God is able to identify it. And for it he will give back the new and perfect body, the body fashioned like unto Christ's glorious body. To wait for the Son of God from Heaven, is to wait for the redemption of the body, which he will most gloriously accomplish at his appearing and kingdom. Instead of looking so much at death and the grave as giving release from the body, let us think of them as the entrance to God's redemptive department, and be eagerly waiting till that redemption shall be accomplished. —Rev. A. J. Gordon, in the Watchword.