time of the judgments so often predicted in the word of God as the characteristics of the last day; when "there shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be." If the storm show itself in the distance, and the first mutterings of the thunder are audible, it is a warning to seek shelter. The sounds of the coming storm are echoed from every capital of Europe, and already intimate to us the instant necessity of escaping for safety to the only asylum, the Lord Jesus Christ. Under the shadow of that great Rock, and amid the securities of that everlasting Refuge, we may hide ourselves till the judgment be overpast. Whoever grasps the horns of that altar, and none else, shall never be moved. Nothing that can come shall separate such an one from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

The time of separation is at hand. Parties are becoming more sharp in their outline, as well as more decided in their action. Christ's true followers are emerging into greater light, and the adherents of Antichrist are growing more bold and scornful. The world is getting ready for its doom and the church for her glory. Who is on the Lord's side? sounds from the sky; and the response is echoed from every quarter of the earth. Each soldier is falling into his rank; each battalion is taking up its position; each principle is putting forth its polarity; and all the stir and agitation of the earth is only the rapid preparation for the crisis that comes with increasing speed upon mankind.

The time of trial is at hand; testing times plainly draw near. The eve of the last conflict will try every man's principles: wealth, preferment, and rank will probably be offered to compromise; poverty, contempt, and neglect may once more be the lot of the people of God. Ships that have long moved majestically, with streaming pennants, will founder in the storm-much that has been received as precious will be discovered to be vile; much worthless currency will be exposed, and perish like dross in the crucible; but yet the fine gold will come out brighter and more resplendent with the reflected image of Him whose superscription is stamped upon it.

The time of great and pernicious delusions is at hand. Lo here! and, Lo there! will be sounded again in the streets of

every city. New and plausible systems of theology will be eloquently pressed on the acceptance of mankind. Great eternal truths will be diluted or explained away. Indifference will be called largeness of heart; latitudinarianism will be popular under the name of Christian liberality. Hatred to the great Apostasy will be branded as fierceness; and attachment to Protestant truth will be denounced as bigotry. Compromise will be called charity, and concession true prudence. Even now it is attempted to show that the Church of Rome is not the counterpart of the antichristian apostasy so frequently and fully portrayed in the Scriptures; and under the shelter of this protection, extended to her from a quarter whence it was least to be expected, that gigantic conspiracy against the rights and privileges of man and the glory of God puts forth her claims at the present moment with unparalleled audacity, and multiplies her cathedrals, churches, and chapels, with a liberality that seems to have no limits.

The time of disorganization is at hand, prosecuted under the pretext of a new and purer organization. The vessel of human society creaks and strains in the tempest. Its bolts and joints. are torn asunder, its cohesion gives way, each fragment becomes more and more isolated; we are unquestionably amid the rapids, and there is only one pilot that can guide us to a haven—the King of glory.

The time of wars and rumours of wars is at hand. What has been the history of the last nine months? What, at this moment, are the prospects of Paris, of Vienna, of Berlin? Why do the old casements of the world rattle so audibly ?-why do the gates of palaces creak upon their hinges ?-why does confusion fall so frequently on councillors and statesmen? It is the forethrown waves of the nearing storm-it is the sound of approaching footsteps; it is the voice, "Once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven." It is the cry, "The time is at hand!" The aberration in the system reveals the approach of a new star, and that the Bright and Morning Star. "Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand; a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon

the mountains." Joel ii. 1, 2. "The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers. And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord." Zeph. i. 14-17. "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." Matt. xxiv. 29. "For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape." 1 Thess. v. 2, 3. "And to you who are troubled, rest with us; when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Thess. i. 7. Awful eclipse! the night of nature, the cloud of darkness, that shall disclose, on its breaking, unearthly splendour.

This, too, will be the time of the restoration of Israel. They will hear from the heavens the summons of their great Deliverer, "Strike your tents and march homeward." The empty channel of the Euphrates will be their pathway, and resuscitated Jerusalem their resting-place. "Scal not," then, but enunciate with greater energy and boldness, "the sayings of this book." Urge on every man not to shut his eyes to adamantine facts, to nearing immortality, to awful responsibilities. Unvail the Apocalyptic portrait of Antichrist: warn the nations of their peril, the church of her duty, all men of their transgressions. Reiterate and repeat what the real church is; not an earthly sect, but a heavenly society; not an ecclesiastical corporation, but the body of Christ;

not a synod of contentious divines, but a company of redeemed saints. Above all, seal not the sayings that relate to Jesus as the refuge of sinners, the hope of saints: "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world;" "Look unto Jesus;" "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him." Let your anchorage-ground be under the shelter of the Rock of ages; set your affections upon things that are above. Watch! the time is at hand

270

LECTURE XXI.

THE ETERNITY OF SPIRITUAL CHARACTER.

"He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still."-Revelation xxii. 11.

Two great classes are here recognised as standing on the threshold of the age to come; and these alone. There is no mention of any intermediate class beheld by the seer, or hinted even most remotely in the sacred narrative. The whole population of the earth is, there and then, divided into two great classes -disguised and intermingled frequently on earth, but separate and perfectly distinct before the Lord. The features, too, by which they are characterized, are purely moral and spiritual. No conventional distinction survives the grave, or rises either with the first or the last resurrection. There is no mention here of rich and poor, of noble and commoner, of king and subject; for these, which are the glittering and tinsel distinctions of the age that now is, have perished from existence, as earthly, temporary, artificial. Nor is there any recognition of denominational peculiarity on the millennial platform. One would suppose, from reading what is here narrated, that Episcopacy, Presbytery, Independency, Apostolical Succession, Erastianism, and Non-intrusion, had never occurred in the language, or entered into the minds, of any portion of the human family. Not a hint is there given of the existence of sect or system: like thin clouds these petty things are dissolved-like dew-drops shed down in the coldness of the night, they have evaporated before the first ray of the rising Sun of Righteousness. Moral and spiritual elements alone -these only are weighty, and will endure for ever. Let us then examine the epithets that are here given, and the fixity of them in the world to come. "Unjust," does not mean simply dis