it.  He sees, with no certain sight, the inevitable penalty awaiting his wrong-doing, else he would not and dare not sin.  No man would sin, could he read the future; no man would defy the Infinite, did he unerringly know that God is a just God, and that He shall visit inevitable retribution upon him who trangresses His holy law.  The wicked man, like the sordid man living in the low lands, never vaticinates, and can not, not by reason of any want of talent or conscience, but by reason of want of altitude of vision.  But St. John does not tell us here that all men shall know all things that must be; that all men have a sense of futurity.  What he does say is that there is an intimate and indissoluble relationship between elevation and futurity; that only the man who stands upon the altitudes can command the future; for only there, when he is at his best, and when he is living on the summit of his soul, does he behold the true and perfect action of the forces and the laws of the Eternal.  It is not “Stay down there and I will show thee things which must be hereafter,” but “Come up hither”—­live, aspire, ascend into the altitudes of mind; ascend into the altitudes of feeling; ascend into the altitudes of conscience; live where God means you to live, and then—­“I will show thee things which must be hereafter.”

And now, if you will consult your own experience or meditate on history, if you will scan the great things thought and the great things done, and the great things wrought and the great things won by man, you will see that they have been always wrought and won and done and thought upon the heights.  The Muses live upon Parnassus, the Deities upon Olympus.  Jehovah has his abiding place on Zion.  David says, “I look unto the hills, whence cometh my help.”  Not unto the meadows, or the streams, or by the forests, or the cities, or the seas, but “unto the hills, whence cometh my help.”  He looks high, and his high vision grants him spiritual perspective.  And Jesus speaks his great sermon, not by the Jordan, but on the mount.  He is transfigured on a mount, crucified on a mount, and ascends to the right hand of His Father from a mount.  Everywhere the heights play a great part in the history of human thought, feeling and faith.  All great truth comes down; it does not rise up.  All great religion comes down; it does not rise up.  It is not the wilderness, nor the low lands, nor the level places, but Mount Carmel, Mount Horeb, Mount Zion, the Mount of the Beatitudes and the Mount of Transfiguration that are focal points of righteousness and faith.  And when you look at and reflect upon men—­the great men, the men who have moulded the world, who have made the massive contributions to humanity, who have dealt the Titan strokes that have redeemed the race from its servitudes and bestialities, who, like Atlas, have upheld and lifted up the world; who, like Prometheus, have brought to man precious gifts from Zeus, and so delivered him from the tyranny and dominion of his ignorance, superstitions, fears and passions—­you will always find that they are men who have lived upon the lofty summits of the Spirit, and therefore have been seers of the future and have seen “those things which must be hereafter.”