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. The 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."

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.

surely die." The

There is no such
In every

"In the day thou eatest thou shalt instant we are born we begin to die. phenomenon now as a perfectly healthy man. 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 sins to his glory, and out of the evil we superinduced He has been pleased to educe good to us. Whilst sin leads to death, it does not do so without the presence, the control, the surveillance of God. Hence it is appointed unto man to die. God has fixed the hour, the day, the how, and the where; as fixed as that stars shall move in their orbits; as spring, and summer, and autumn, and winter. Our death is not in the cold hand of fate, but in the loving hand of our Father. Our departure from this world is not surrendered to the contingency of an accident; but it is according to the arrangement, in the purpose, and under the government of God. "It is appointed unto men once to die; and after death the judgment." Whilst death is an appointment it is no less true that it comes to all in various forms. In some it comes in infancy; in the case of others in youth; in the case of others in mature years; in the case of some in old age. But at whatever time death comes, in whatever circumstances death overtakes

us, it is in the form, and at the time, and under the circumstances that are best for us, and most for the glory of God. If we be Christians our death will not occur too soon, it will not occur too late; it will just take place when it shall be the greatest contribution to the praise of Him that redeemed us by his blood, and when we are ripest and fittest for being transplanted to the paradise of our God.

After death, says the apostle, comes the judgment. "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after death the judgment." That is to say, the instant that death takes place, the judgment, as far as that individual is concerned, takes place also. "Once to die, and after death the judgment;" not referring, I think, to the judgment of all, but to the destiny or the doom of the individual thus dying. The instant that the soul emerges from the body, it enters on its place of joy or its place of sorrow; and the addition of the body to that soul at the resurrection is only the enhancement of its joy or in addition to its misery. "After death," he says, "the judgment." The soul does not cease to be because it ceases to inhabit its terrestrial tenement: the disorganization of what we see is the emancipation of what we are; and when the dead dust is taken to its resting-place beneath the green sod, the living soul that is really the man, that constitutes the individuality, that emerges from the wreck, ascends to the presence of God, rests not if it be a believer's till it worships as a priest within the vail, where there is fulness of joy, and where there are pleasures for evermore.

This reveals to us another interesting fact-that there is no process or purification between death and the judgment. First, there is death; next, the judg