of my subject, in the meantime, with some personal and practical lessons, which I think ought to be drawn from all that I have stated.

First, I would ask, should you not feel infinite delight that the great obstruction to the spread of the glorious Gospel is now passing away, or soon to pass away? Does not the mariner upon the ocean's bosom rejoice when the cloud that obscures the pole-star has been dissolved? Does not the traveller in the desert rejoice when the sun begins to shine forth and lead him to his home? Do not angels in heaven rejoice that great Babylon begins to fall? Are not the holy inhabitants of glory called upon to rejoice that the hour of her judgment is come? Surely, what causes such joy to the saints in heaven - what is such a contribution to the spread of the Gospel upon earth, is not a topic unworthy of the study, or to be regarded without the praise and thanksgiving of the people of God. But this great fact, while it tells us that a great obstruction is being removed from the onward march of the glorious Gospel, also teaches us another great and still more important truth that we are upon the eve of the world's close; great shadows, like birds of night, begin to rise above the horizonthat night which will be so dark and cold because the day which succeeds it will be so glorious. It is known to every one that the night becomes coldest and darkest just before the sun begins to dawn. We shall find now, that all strange and horrible opinions, all great and terrible delusions, so great and so deceptive that, if it were possible, they would deceive the very elect-will begin to spread and to thicken all around. It becomes us then, my dear friends, to see that our footing is on the Rock of Ages, to see that we are not partaking of the sins, in order that we may thus escape the judgments which will so speedily descend upon Babylon. I ask then, to whom do you belong? to Christ or Antichrist? to the true Church or to the false? The longer I live, the less I seem to care to what denomination you belong; but the longer I live, the more I care that you should belong to that blessed Saviour whose living members alone will stand the crash of that crisis which thunders already at our doors. Are you resting then, my dear friends, on Christ's glorious sacrifice? Are you placing your whole confidence in this fact alone, that "he

us, that we might be made Are you sanctified, renewed, Are you living Christians?

who knew no sin, was made sin for the righteousness of God in him?" regenerated, by his Holy Spirit? Is your Christianity a mere name, or is it power? Is your religion a mere conventionalism, or is it life? Is it power? Is it that plastic principle which knits you to your Lord, and consecrates you to the happiness and the well-being of mankind? Those establishments on which we have too much relied will in all probability soon be broken up; those privileges for which we have fought will be taken away; those distinctions about which we quarrelled will be swallowed up; nothing but vital, genuine religion will survive the coming catastrophe or stand the ordeal. And, my dear friends, to belong to Rome it is not necessary that you should be a citizen of Rome. He that trusts in his baptism, as if it were regeneration, is a Roman Catholic; he that trusts in his church, as if that alone could save him, is a Roman Catholic; he who believes that all outside his communion is Samaria, and that all inside of it is the true Israel, is a Roman Catholic; he that can imprison for principle, or persecute for difference of creed, may call himself what he pleases, but he is a Roman Catholic. He that is trusting in his tears, in his prayers, in his sufferings, in his sacrifices, in anything he is, in anything he has done, or in anything he has suffered, may call himself what he pleases, but he is a Roman Catholic; and when judgment comes, the nation that is tinged with popery will feel that those who participate in any way in the sins of Rome shall share most disastrously in her judgments. My dear friends, let me abjure you to decide for Christ-to take up your position on the Lord's side. Do not be ashamed to avow it wherever you are in the shop, in the warehouse, in the parliament, in the church-do not be ashamed to acknowledge whose you are, and for whose sake you are prepared to live religiously, and to die divinely.

26*

LECTURE XIX.

THE BLOOD OF SAINTS IN ROME.

"Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols."-REV. ii. 20.

"And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth."-REV. xviii. 24.

A PROMINENT crime of this woman, Jezebel, was idolatry; this is one of her distinctive brands. The Church of Rome is, above all, stained with this crime-a crime which cleaves to her at this day as a corroding and consuming curse; and so far from repenting of it in the midst of the judgments that have so recently overtaken her, she has, through her head and representative, and in her very last manifesto, invoked the Virgin Mary as her patroness, and as her in whom her best hope is placed, and from whom she expects great deliverance. The next great offence of which this woman was guilty, namely, persecution, is recorded in I. Kings. xviii. 14, where we are told how she "cut off all the prophets of the Lord, except those who were hid by Obadiah in a cave." I need not tell you that persecution has long been the characteristic of the Roman Catholic Church, so that in this respect also the antitype answers to the type: the Bishop's oath the Fourth Lateran-the Bull Unigenitus-the history of Europe, are proofs. In the third and last place, Jezebel was suddenly consumed and destroyed by a most ignominious death; and so it is said of the great apostasy, which is the antitype of her: "I will kill thy children with death; and thou shalt know that I am he which searcheth the reins and trieth the hearts, to give to every man according to his works."

I have thus, in these three great particulars, hinted at the chain of reasoning by which Jezebel may be shown to be designed to be a perfect type of Rome, which is her complete antitype. It is now stated, you observe, that during the destruction of this great apostasy and of its master builder, so graphically delineated in chap. xviii., there is to be a startling disclosure and dragging to light of the persecutions, the sanguinary cruelties and murders of the Church of Rome. It is whilst she is being consumed that this fact evolved: "In her was found the blood of saints, and of them that were slain on the earth." It is the last generation of Rome that is to be visited for all the sanguinary crimes of generations that have preceded. Just as our Lord said of the Jews in his day, "that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, who was slain between the temple and the altar." You will recollect that, at the opening of the fifth seal, to which long ago I called your attention, there is a cry emitted by the martyrs who are beneath the altar, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And it was said unto them, that they should rest yet a little season." That little season finishes with the events recorded in Rev. xviii. which I have read. And if it be the fulfilment of the eighteenth chapter which is now taking place in Rome, then the last days of ecclesiastical persecution are come; imprisonment and proscription for conscience' sake is about to cease -it may be not without a struggle; then the sword that has been stained with the blood of martyrs shall be sheathed, preparatory to being turned into the pruning hook; the fagots shall no more be collected, and the flame of the auto-da-fé shall blaze no more; for she who persecuted the saints, and cherished and gloried in the principles of persecution, and is drunk with their blood - is in her turn about to reap the judgments she has deserved; and a new era, and new prospects, and new glories, are about to dawn upon the world that has so long pined, and prayed, and waited for the manifestation of the sons of God.

Now, if this be true, surely it is an event worthy of our notice.

Do not say, ministers should keep their eye within the

boards of the Bible only, and see no facts outside; I submit they should also look abroad: they should endeavour to show God's finger writing on the acres of the earth, and on the streets of cities, and on the floors of palaces, the truth which God's Spirit has inspired in the chapters of the Bible; I cannot conceive that it is an uninstructive or an unedifying sermon when the minister calls his people's attention to great truths which the Spirit has thought it right to indite, and to the probable accomplishment of those great truths which the providence of God is making manifest every day that we live. The most skeptical must admit that the events of the last two years, in weight, in importance, in rapidity, in brilliancy of effect, in range of action, are not behind. any of the events of the last sixteen centuries. The worldly men that I have met with are not only startled, but awed, at the events of the age; and even men who used to smile at the views of prophecy I endeavoured to enunciate in Exeter Hall, are heard saying, "Well, I begin to think there is something in these things." Great statesmen are, many of them, at their wits' end, and wondering what is to be the issue. But we know, what great statesmen without the Bible never can learn, that all this is but the tuning of innumerable instruments selected and prepared of God, in order that each may take its part in that glorious jubilee in which all creation shall join as its song of triumph, “Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." We know that all the stir and noise are but the clearing of the stage for the manifestation of the sons of God. We know that it is love; all things, -the fall of Louis Philippe, the ebbs and flows of the Austrian dynasty, the breaking up of the German empire, the flight of the Pope, all these not sent in wrath to the people of God; on the contrary, they bear in their bosoms countless benedictions, and in their loudest explosions may be heard by the sanctified ear, the music of the approaching footsteps of Him whose is the kingdom in right, and whose shall be in fact the kingdoms and the powers of this world. We rejoice that it is so-we thank God that our lot is cast in an epoch which is big with so glorious issues. Surely it becomes the minister of the Gospel to look around him; to weigh these accumulating events, and see whether God's word casts any light upon them, or whether they are