from us in the shadow of the grave. How beautiful are these words, and how sweetly they must ring by the graves of the dead-"If we believe"-and there is no doubt of it" that Jesus died, and rose again; even so them that sleep in Jesus will He bring with Him!" What a glorious thought! Not only will Christ come; but in the words of Zechariah, all his saints with Him. Those that you committed to the grave will come down to this very world of ours again; and at that very grave they will put on the robes of flesh that you deposited there; but no longer the clinging garments of decay, but coronation garments, bridal robes, this mortal putting on immortality, this corruptible incorruptibility, and death swallowed up in victory. The grave will not quench one feature that constitutes our identity. We shall leave nothing for the last fire except what we would wish to be eliminated now; imperfection, sin, mortality, and decay. If, therefore, we have a desire-and who has not? for there is one freehold that we all have, a grave; and there is property on earth that every one has, that is, the dust that was once animate and living-that these broken circles should be reknit; that those who have left us should return; the fathers, and mothers, and sisters, and brothers, and husbands, and wives, and all that made up that exquisitely musical and blessed word home, should again see us, and we see them, to tell over the story of our pilgrimage below, and to lift up together the anthem peal that celebrates our joys above-we shall long for that day when we shall see Him come in like manner as we have seen Him go.

Not only shall they all be restored, but death itself shall be everywhere destroyed. Everywhere there is death. Is it not a remarkable fact that there is nothing that you can plant, or build, or lay aside, that death in some of his formulas does not instantly set upon? Build walls of granite, and decay; and what is decay? the breath of death will instantly begin to act upon them. Build your houses of parliament of stone selected by the best judges, and death with his fangs is already

gnawing into dust the fabric that cost inillions of the nation's wealth. The sweetest flowers that burst into bloom will no sooner reach their full bloom and beauty than death will breathe upon them, and they will wither and be resolved into earth again. All that man builds, all that nature throws up from her bosom, all that is beautiful in the heights, all that is fragrant in the depths, all are under the régime of decay, disease, and death. What a glorious day will that be-who does not wish it? -when flowers bloom that shall never fade, when trees grow whose leaves shall never wither and fall! We all feel what a lovely sight a green thing is in the winter ; and when we go in the depth of winter and see the laurel, and the laurestinus, and the box all green, it seems as if God had given them just to keep the pathway open from summer that is gone, for that summer to come back again, and be in the midst of us once more. But a day comes when all trees shall be evergreen—all flowers amaranthine; and there shall not be one trace of decay or of death over a renovated, a restored, and a happy globe; and then shall be brought to pass in all its fulness the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory."

Satan will be cast out, the restless fomentor of what is wicked, the instigator of what is depraved, the inspirer of what is vile. He combines all the strength of the archangel with all the malignity of the fiend. And what an archangel's strength is we do not know; what the malignity of a fiend is, the tragic stories of our world are too often the terrible testimonies. Satan will be cast out, and bound for at least a thousand years. Thus we long for that day when Christ shall come. Let us now see sights that will be reproduced at that great harvest; let us now collect in our hearts the feelings that we would wish to see there. My impression is, that not only is the regeneration of the heart begun now that shall be perfected in heaven, but that partially the resurrection of the body begins even while we are living. How often have we noticed that a man's countenance, whatever be its

features, reflects and reproduces more or less the dominant passion? I could select a miser at once by the compressed forehead, on which mammon has been inscribing his accounts in lines deeply engraved, that cannot be effaced, and the downward look. I could tell you the man that lives in the gratification of foul lust and passion; it is visible on his face. The sensualist needs no

very skilful interpreter to detect him. It is easy to point out the man who is animated by burning ambition, or the man who is actuated by corroding envy. What are all these passions doing? Just writing themselves on the physical structure of the man. It is a wondeful tribute to the strength and greatness of the soul that it can force the body to record outwardly its inner feelings and workings. And if that be true, may it not then be possible that not only is the heart undergoing that change that shall be perfected in heaven, but even the body is now receiving, from the action of the soul, the heart, the intellect, the passions, those outward characteristic features which will be developed only more sharply and distinctly at the resurrection day?

Let us seek first the kingdom of God and his right.eousness; let us set our hearts upon things that are above; and when He comes we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Only remember that the grace that culminates in glory begins now-that the character that is perfected in heaven begins now-and that most men die as they live; and while conversion at the stroke of the twelfth hour is a possibility, and may be pressed, offered, received, enjoyed; yet the man that puts off the concerns of his soul to that hour is hardening his heart.

LECTURE VII.

LOOKING FOR HIS RETURN.

Faith fills the past and hope the future. The one rests not till it finds the cross. The other pauses not till it alights on the crown. A Christian feels the deepest in "The Was, and Is, and Is to come."

"As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation."-HEBREWS ix. 27, 28.

CHRIST JESUS is set before us in this passage as once offered to carry away, as the scapegoat did, the sins of many; while to them that look for Him He has promised to come again the second time without sin unto salvation. There are two great facts in the history of humankind : first, death; secondly, its sequel, the judgment. There are two great facts in the biography of Christ: first, his atoning death once for all; and, secondly, his appearance again to them that look for Him. Let us look at these four prominent and distinctive facts. Death is the lot of all. The longest life must end in death; the stream of life must rush universally into this dense sea. No prescription of skill can avert it, no strength of constitution finally overcome it. strongest and the frailest, the longest lived and the shortest lived must equally, and universally, and without exception, and in spite of every precaution, die. Man was not so made originally. A poet says—

"Man was made to mourn."

The

This is not true. Man was made to be happy, to be immortal; to live in happiness-a creation of beauty and of joy-for ever: and if he is not now what his constitution once was, the fault is not in his Maker, but in him. The only explanation of a change in the original destiny of man is, that sin entered, which God did not make, and death by sin; and so death produces the disorganization of this exquisite economy, which was once so beautiful, of which God pronounced, as well as of the earth on which it was meant to live, "Very good." Tears and ills, and aches and losses, and sicknesses and sorrows, and death, are subsequent intrusions into man's world; they were not in the inventory of those things that God pronounced "Very good" and, as they did not come from God, so they will not be admitted or endured when God shall reconstitute and reconsecrate all things, and exhibit to the universe an orb brighter and more beautiful than it was when it first proceeded from his beneficent and plastic hand. But it is now, we are told, appointed unto man once to die: not originally, but subsequently appointed. Man gave hospitality to sin; and the moment he accepted that poisonous parent he opened the door of access to his soul to all the progeny of sin-the aches, the sorrows, the ills that flesh is heir to. The sentence originally denounced is fulfilled in every individual. "In the day thou eatest thou shalt surely die." The instant we are born we begin to die. There is no such phenomenon now as a perfectly healthy man. In every one of us there is the commencement of death, that is, disease. In every one of us there are defects, and failings, and taints, and poisons, and decay, which are the commencement and the premonitory symptoms of that approaching dissolution which is the wages of sin, and the consequence of our personal participation in it. But, at the same time, it is very interesting that, whilst all the consequences of sin have been provoked by man, death has become now, in the providence, and by the mercy of God, an appointment. He has overruled our