sparkle the more beautifully when they have passed through the fire, in his own glorious diadem.

To comfort the believer still more, and to lead him not to fear, let him recollect, that the love of Christ originates and directs. all. Now, here is just the difference between a Christian man's suffering and an unconverted man's suffering. The unconverted man's suffering is penal; the Christian's suffering is paternal. In the case of a child of God, Christ exhausted from every suffering the last element of wrath, and substituted for it the element of love. The blow that smites the Christian most severely, is inflicted by that hand which was nailed to the accursed tree; the cup that a Christian has to drink, even when that cup is bitterest, is filled with love in disguise, and not with wrath in the least possible degree. Whatever your affliction may be-be it the loss of thy property, or the loss of thy children, or the loss of the nearest and the dearest that thou hast, not one blow reaches thee, my Christian brother, which has not been meted out by the wisdom and the love of Him who has taught us to kneel and say to Him, "Our Father who art in heaven." Glorious truth! Let me then go forth with this blessed assurance, that if there light upon my head all the storms of the four points of the compass together, they are all expressions of paternal love. There is no really cross wind in a Christian's voyage to glory; whether it blow against him, or blow forward, or blow from either side, it equally wafts him to the haven of perpetual rest. Whatever be the severity of the conflict, or the force of the tempest, it can never rend him from Christ, nor induce him to let go Him, whom he has as an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast.

Recollect also that all your afflictions are designed to sanctify and fit you for heaven and for happiness. For what says the Apostle? Not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: for tribulation worketh patience"-this is one grace-" and patience, experience," that is another; "and experience" is the parent of another grace · "hope," and then this hope "maketh not ashamed." "All things," says the Apostle, "work together for good;" mark the expressiveness of this assertion. He does not say that "some things work together for good" to a Christian, but "all things." And he says that "all things work." Every

thing is in action; and there is no dispute among them, for all things "work together" in perfect harmony; and all things have a beneficent tendency, for "all things work together for good to them that love God and are the called according to his purpose." Therefore I say to every true Church, what Christ said to the Church of Smyrna, "Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer."

In order still further to enforce this, let me very briefly remind you that the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John begins with a prescription exactly parallel to this. Our Lord says, in the first verse, "Let not your heart be troubled:" the Seer in the Apocalypse says, "Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer." It may be useful, when you have leisure, to study this chapter, to go over, seriatim, each verse of it; and you will find that the first verse. "Let not your heart be troubled," is the text: or, in the language of this epistle, "Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer;" and that each verse in succession is a reason why the Christian's heart should not be troubled. For instance, "Let not your heart be troubled." Why? "In my Father's house are many mansions." Do not think that there is any necessity for your pressing back your friend; there is plenty of room for all that wish to enter; not one will be excluded who does not exclude himself. "Let not your heart be troubled, as if you knew not for what I am going: I now tell you that I go to prepare a place for you. Why should you fear because I am absent? my absence is for your good; I am preparing a place for you, and affliction is one of my servants, which is preparing should say, We know not the But if you should say, We canfear not, for I am 'the truth,' say, We are dead and weak,

you for that place. But if you way; fear not, I am 'the way.' not know how to walk in that way; and I will guide you. But if you and unable to do anything; fear not, for I am the life,' and I will strengthen and sustain you in the way. Be not afraid, therefore, for I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me." But if should say, "We have none of those things that we need;" yet "Fear not; be not afraid, for if ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it." But if you should say, "O Lord, we shall have no comfort

you

in the midst of the conflict, our hearts will be so torn and our feelings so injured by the struggle through which we shall have to pass, that we shall be worn out with the ceaseless agony and conflict and trial;" our Lord says, "Fear not; be not afraid, for I will pray the Father, and he shall send you another Comforter." "But, O Lord, we may forget these things." "Fear not; be not afraid, for that Comforter shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance." Whatever may be your sufferings however you may be persecuted, and reproached, and calumniated, "fear not, for I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world; let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

"Fear not." Those who have palms in their hands, and who wear the white robes they have washed and made clean in the blood of the Lamb, were all in the furnace, and have come through the same arduous struggle for Christ: we follow only in the wake of Abel, the first martyr-of Enoch, and Moses, and Abraham, and Isaiah-of Matthew, who was beheaded—of Mark, who was dragged through the streets of Antioch till he died— of Luke, who was hanged on an olive tree-of Peter who was crucified, and of Paul who was murdered in the Mammertine prison at Rome. You follow them who through faith have passed through the same Red Sea, and who now sing a nobler song than the song of Moses, being more than conquerors through Him that loved them and gave Himself for them. Fear not the prison, for no walls can intercept the communion between Christ and his own. "Fear not," says our blessed Saviour, "persecution, for it cannot separate you from me, it will rather bind us the more closely together. Fear not poverty, for I will make you unspeakably rich; fear not death, for I have taken away its sting; fear not eternity, for the Lamb is its light, and I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." Fear nothing; pray, watch, persevere through life; but do not fear. To fear, is to lose strength. The joy of the Lord is the Christian's strength; sadness and gloom are the elements of a Christian's weakness. Remember then whom you serve, who watches over you, from whom you may draw, and what treasure you may

draw from Him; and then, whether you shall be, like the Church of Smyrna, ten days, which, prophetically, is ten years, cast into prison, or whether you shall be subjected to trials and tribulation and distress, and all God's billows and waterspouts seem to pass over you-some few years hence it will matter very little what we have suffered, if we find this, that we have washed our robes in the Lamb's precious blood, and that our righteousness is the righteousness of our Lord. Our hearts shall beat in a better clime, where every beat shall be blessedness, and every pulse a wave from that ocean of joy and felicity which is around the throne of God and of the Lamb for ever.

LECTURE XII.

CHRISTIAN FAITHFULNESS.

"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."-REV. ii. 10.

THIS promise, as I explained on a previous evening, is made to the angel, and through him, to the people of the Church at Smyrna. I explained, in my first discourse upon this Epistle to the Church of Smyrna as a section of the Church Universal, Christ's Omniscience - "I know thy works- thy meanest and thy mightiest; the cup of cold water and the precious sacrifice." "I know," too, "thy tribulation," the path thou hast trodden, the thorns that have stung thee in it, the reproaches that have settled on thee, the conflict and the agony through which thou hast passed. And "I know," too, "thy poverty;" thou art a poor Church; thou hast not much wealth; thy people belong to the humblest, not to the highest class, as does the greater part of the Church of Christ still. It is true, not only of the ministry, but also of the people; not many mighty, not many noble, not many rich are called. What a solemn statement is this, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" Strange and terrible evidence of the disastrous eclipse under which all humanity has come, that the very thing which God's word proclaims to be the greatest drag on our career to glory is the very thing for which all hands are stretched out that they may clutch it, and which all hearts are thirsting to possess, and all men thinking the greatest and the chiefest of the gifts which heaven showers down upon mankind. I do not believe that wealth is a real blessing; the true blessing is within, not without; it is not the change of the outward circumstance that