passage of Scripture, confessedly difficult, and yet so completely in harmony with other portions of the word of God, that I cannot explain it away by supposing that all its spiritual meaning is exhausted in the present dispensation: I must regard it as mainly a prophetic fact to be fulfilled, embodied, and illustrated in the dispensation to come.

I now close my remarks upon another address to another of the Seven Churches of Asia. You must have noticed that all the promises which have been given are promises of Christ himself. Are you placed in deep despondency? Christ will give you "the white stone of cordial acceptance before him. Are you placed amid famine-spiritual famine, the most terrible of all? He will feed you with "hidden manna." Are you plunged in the shades of the darkest night? He tells you that he will give you "the morning star." And what a blessed epoch will that be which is here predicted! Why should we fear its advent? How should we long for that hour when we shall " see the King in his beauty"—when Job's beautiful prediction shall become performance," I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another!" How should we long for that day when this shall be fulfilled, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is!" How should we pant for that blessed day when we shall no more see through a glass darkly," but "face to face!"

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This promise is given to the conqueror―to him that keeps Christ's word. Yet it is not said, "I will give as a reward," or, "I will bestow as a purchase;" but grace sounds as clearly in the promise, as it does in the doctrines and privileges of Christianity, "I will give him the bright and the morning star." We need not climb alp upon alp to reach it; we need not wings to enable us to fly to it: ask, and you shall obtain all that you seek. God's word is the telescope; Christ is

the star; and he that looks the longest shall see the most clearly and rejoice most heartily, till that day comes which is the eloquence of a thousand prophecies, the burden of a thousand songs.

Such is the promise to the Church of Thyatira. Let me ask you now, my dear friends, are you among the people of the Lord? is the morning star your trust, your hope, your glory? Are you Christians? Are you born again? Are you justified? Were the heavens to rend—were the earth to quake—and were the peal of the last trump to reverberate through the graves of the dead, and the homes of the living; or, were you called upon this night to lay aside this old tabernacle, and to appear at that judgment-seat whose sentence cannot be reversed, and from whose doom there can be no appeal-are you ready? What would be your position there and then? Could we say,

"Blessed Lord, thou art my hope, thou art my shield, thou art my righteousness, my Lord, my all! If thou wert to deal with me after my deserts, I could look for nothing less than everlasting banishment from thee. If thou shouldest deal with me as thou hast promised, thy righteousness shall be my title, thy blood my sacrifice. Then, blessed Lord, I know that thou who art my judge, art also my friend, and in the New Jerusalem, and on the judgment-seat, I shall alike see thee." Why should this great subject be left in doubt a single moment? Why should we leave this question unresolved, unsettled,-whether we are going to everlasting perdition or to everlasting happiness? If there were a neutral place, you might so leave it if there were some intermediate isthmus, neither wasted by the streams of time nor washed by the waves of eternity, on which you could stand and treat the past with indifference and the future with contempt, then you might now care nothing about these things. But if it be true that every man in this assembly must live for ever amid the effulgence of eternal joy, or pine for ever in the miseries of an eternal hell, is it common sense to leave such a question untried-such a destiny un

The man who

settled? My dear friends, be decided. can go home this night, and in the silence and secresy of his closet can thus speak to Christ: "My Lord, my Saviour, my sins are a load that might and must sink me to the depths of hell, but thou hast died for the chiefest of sinners, and for me who flee to thee; this night it is my prayer that thy blood may wash me that thy righteousness may cover me, and thy Spirit sanctify me and I know that if I so trust I shall never be confounded;"-the man who can say so from the depths of his heart, has begun the new course, is justified by faith, and will have peace with God through Jesus Christ—to whom be all the glory both now and for ever. Amen.

"Life is real-life is earnest,

And the grave is not its goal:
'Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not spoken of the soul.

"Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end and way;
But to act that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

"Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait."

LECTURE XXVIII.

ENTHUSIASM.

"And unto the angel of the Church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."-REV. iii. 14-16.

The

THIS Church is the last and least praised of the seven; to it special rebukes are addressed, one of which is couched in the words which I have now read. Our blessed Lord introduces himself under one of those august characteristics by which he is described in the opening part of the book: he declares himself to be "the Amen," i. e. the commencement and the close of creation, providence, redemption, to whose glories creation, providence, redemption shall all contribute. "Amen" is the truth and the substance of every promise-the performance and the burden of every prophecy, in whom revelation is seen complete, and creation shall be seen restored-in whom man shall receive his greatest happiness and God his everlasting glory. He is not only the "Amen," but he is also "the Witness." This epithet is applied to Christ by God through the lips, or rather, the pen of the prophet Isaiah; "I have given him for a witness to the people :" as a witness he has a testimony. To what does Christ witness? The testimony of a witness is the chief ground on which the decision of a judge is based and the infor