He wraps the subject

points to what we call the judgment-day. It is often called "the day of the Lord." Our day is now. His day is coming. Then our day will begin once more beyond, to have no more ending. But there must be judgment before glory. The apostle brings out this idea with truthful and unsparing severity. This passage to our first thought is positively awful! in an atmosphere of flame. Again, and again, and again, he mentions "the fire!" There is no part of divine truth more difficult to declare faithfully than this. It is the very burden of the Lord. But it is a burden that must be borne. How shall I dare stand up and try, with my soft dewy speech, with my misleading instincts, to quench God's holy fires? They will burn all the same, and be the more consuming the less men expect them. It were far wiser and far more merciful to our own souls and the souls of others, to look at the subject in all its solemnities, to meet it in our thought in all its severities, and to compel our souls to abide by its issues. Yes; for after all, those issues will be to us (if only we are true, however imperfect) far better than any others which by our own thought we could put in their place. If our mildness might rule God's judgment-day and quench his fires, what would it make as the result? Certainly a mixed, probably a miserable state for eternity. We wish to spare ourselves, to spare our sins and our likings and our labours, so that after we have gone through that last

ordeal, there may be left to us something considerable of all our earthly work. God proposes and resolves to take us through that last ordeal with all his judgment fires at furnace heat, sparing nothing that will burn, and bringing us out, if need be, with nothing left to us of all our sore labour under the sun, that we ourselves may be saved-saved so as by fire. And which is best? Our poor human shrinking and longing, or God's holy will? Can there be a doubt that in this as in everything else his will is best-best not only in the abstract, for him and for the universe, but also far the best for ourselves. For what would you have "the wood, the hay, the stubble," yonder as well as here-calcined and hardened and preserved by those fires which were too feeble to consume them? Would you go up on the shore of immortality with a close-clinging vesture of imperfection, as you may have seen one, with dripping garments, come up rescued out of the sea and go shivering along the way without change of raiment? Would you come out of this dying life with some of the cerements of the grave still around you, like Lazarus raised but bound hand and foot with the grave-clothes, to walk thus among the sons of light in immortal glory? Would you, oh would you, have renewal even in a mitigated form, of all, or of anything that makes this life a sorrow, a burden, and a trial? Would you have probation continued, and moral strife renewed, and the down-dragging of the carnal nature,

and the lusting of the flesh against the spirit, and of the spirit against the flesh? Would you wish to cry yonder as well as here, "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" Would you not rather commit yourself to God in an act of uttermost trust, and let him judge and try you according to his holy law, and also according to his unfailing mercy in Christ Jesus? I am sure you would. Ah yes, far better have his judgment than our own. Far better pass through his fires than yield to our own shrinkings. Better stand at last in his full and complete salvation, than in any respect or for any length of time come short of it. Day of God! Day of Christ Jesus our Lord, with awful yet with loving desire we would look on to thee! We would hail the very splendours which herald the king's approach, and hoping to have through grace something to shew and to keep as the fruit of all our earthly toil, we would yet make this our deepest solicitude and our most earnest prayer, "Lord remember us when thou comest into thy kingdom." The Lord grant to us that we (whatever may come of many of our works), that we may find mercy of the Lord on that day."

But let us, on the other hand, remember that nothing in us, pertaining to heart, or life, or character, which is truly Christian, can fall in those flames at last. All Christian principles and all Christian works are indestructible. The glories of the judgment, and even the

fires of hell, could not consume one atom of anything Christian-of faith, or love, or loyalty to Christ. And a little of these things is just as indestructible as much. Gold is gold always and everywhere. It will pass through any fires. If it is mingled with alloy the fire will be its salvation, and it will shine the more clearly after it has come from the furnace. So with all in you which Christ approves now. He will approve it then, and for ever. And you do not know how grand your faith will seem on that day, and how the little services you are rendering, and sometimes with only a trembling hand, will expand into nobleness, when the spirit and principle of them are known and declared. Not one precious stone which you put into your life will ever crumble, not one particle of gold or silver can perish. He whom you serve will gather up all the fragments, so that nothing shall be lost. He is gathering them day by day, and building them compactly together against the day of trial. And when that day shall come, when its fires shall be lighted, when what is inflammable in our lives shall catch and kindle at the first touch of the flame, we shall rejoice with an awful joy as we behold, emerging from these fires, that fair structure which will be incorruptible, undefiled, and which will never fade away.

With both Hands earnestly.

With both hands earnestly. MICAH vii. 3.

IS is how bad men work. At least it is how they

THIS

wrought in the Prophet's time. It was a sad dark

Not a

time. He looked for a good man and could not find one. He felt like one standing in an orchard or garden after the summer fruit had all been removed. cluster hangs on the tree. No fig is left worth taking. The prophet felt as if the harvest of goodness, and of pious men in the earth, had all been reaped, and there were none around him but the wicked, and they— whether as private persons and in the family relations or as judges and magistrates, in whom wickedness is peculiarly heinous as corrupting the sources of human justice they wrought evil with a will-without the least compunction or remorse" with both hands earnestly."

Well (I say this in passing), we see how little there is of excellence in mere earnestness. Earnestness may be as fiery as the flame, and at the same time as destructive, to real life and goodness. The more earnest a man is in vital error, he inflicts, of necessity, the deeper injury on the interests of truth and men; and the more earnest