had pursued him, might kill him, for he had strength, and he had weapons, and he had hate; but he knew that by a law greater than that, he dare not; and that all the force of the city of refuge would be enlisted on his side, for his protection. So is it with you. When these things begin to come to pass, remember you are in the ark, the waves cannot touch nor overwhelm you; you are in the city of refuge, the pursuer cannot smite you; for I am persuaded that neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate the humblest Christian now or ever from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Then "look up, lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh."

LECTURE X.

THE DAY OF THE LORD.

Multitudes expect no day of the Lord. They deprecate all allusion of it. Their hearts are wholly in the present.

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night."-2 PETER iii. 10.

THE idea expressed by the apostle is, that the last day of this present Christian economy will come sudden and unexpected on the earth as a thief breaks into a house in the silence of the night, when none are prepared to repel him, because none expect to be assailed. You must detach all idea of sinfulness in the thief, and retain only the idea of unpreparedness in the inhabitant whose house the thief breaks into. We are taught in this passage, first of all, the suddenness with which Christ will come to our world. Paul says in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, that when he comes it will be "sudden destruction" upon them that neither know, nor love, nor expect him. To the last the world will repudiate all idea of this world having a close. Those clouds that are the harbingers of storm will be explained away as every day's ordinary phenomena; the eddying straws that show how the wind blows, and are here presignificant and premonitory, they will despise; warnings

addressed to the world, imploring it to make ready for the crisis, will be treated as the anile appeals of fanaticism, or the expressions of drivelling folly, to be disregarded by sane and prudent minds; till at last the full weight of that day falls upon thousands like an alpine avalanche on the plain, overwhelming, crushing, destroying.

The second idea conveyed is not only that of unexpectedness, but also of unpreparedness. The appeal of the day, the trumpet summons of this moment that every one should hear as no uncertain sound is, "Prepare, O Israel, to meet thy God." Whether Christ comes to you in the day of the Lord, or you are called to Him at the close of the day of grace, you are equally under the obligation to make some preparation in some sense or in some shape, or by some described discipline, for so great and so stupendous an event. What if that day should overtake you, with its descending dark, silent night, when you find your lamps gone out, the oil that is in them utterly consumed, and no means left of replenishing them in that hurricane which shall sweep the earth, and in that night which shall overshadow with its sable wings the wide world of mankind? Another idea suggested by the simile is that of great loss. The thief breaks into the house unexpectedly, and therefore you are unprepared to meet him; and therefore you suffer the loss of those things that the thief carries away. When the day of the Lord comes, there will be great loss; but what loss? The loss of wealth is nothing; the loss of health is a sad thing, but it is not a finally fatal thing; the loss of your good name may be retrieved; but the loss of that day will be far greater. The discovery will then be made that the soul is lost, and its salvation for ever impossible.

And what a loss is that! In the words of Robert Hall: "What if it were possible to cover the earth with sackcloth, and the ocean with crape, and the sky with mourning; would it be possible for Nature to utter a groan too deep or a cry too piercing to express the magnitude of such a catastrophe ?" Or in the still sublimer language of Scripture: "What shall it profit a man if”—and it is only an if—“if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Behold what a frightful discovery! The sun of all privilege is set, the day of grace is closed, the day of retribution has overtaken us; in the awful but expressive language of the prophet, "the harvest is past, the summer is ended; and," terrible discovery, "we are not saved." I need not tell you that no loss can equal that loss. Just as life is the most precious thing on earth, and as every man will give anything to save his life; so the most precious thing in the world to come is that soul which if lost is lost for ever and ever. In most terrestrial losses that we encounter upon earth there are some relieving lights and consolations. If, for instance, a person loses the wealth that he has accumulated by the industry of years, that wealth and more he may recover by the intenser industry of years to come; or if he lose by sickness the health that in this world is the highest and the happiest of all earthly possessions, he may by the skill of his physician, by care, by prudence, by temperance, recover all his health again. But if any man lose in the day of the Lord-the day that closes all grace, and commences only glory or gloom for ever-his immortal precious soul, it is a loss that he never can recover: no time and no exertions will enable him to do so. There is no proof that a

future rainbow will span the concave of the lost; or that a single interposing angel of mercy will descend to its depths in pursuit of the victims that are there; or that the gospel in any sense or shape will be preached there; and therefore the loss is irrecoverable, irretrievable, final, and for ever. If such be the fact, should any man cherish one moment's happiness till he has some reason for believing that there is a better prospect for that soul than the world generally entertains? Is it common sense for any man to try to get rich, or to become learned, or powerful, or celebrated, while he leaves unsettled this most momentous of all questions that can agitate the human heart, or employ human investigation—is there an eternity to come or is this life the end of me? Do I, when I descenă into the grave, not merely cease to be seen, but cease to be? If this be fact, and you can prove it, then all my preaching is vain, and all Scripture is written in vain. But it is not fact, the reverse is fact: even nature teaches immortality; and the very idea that you and a dog are to lie down in the same grave, and experience the same annihilation, revolts the instincts of our nature, and seems to us the most horrible of all things; for fearful as hell is, annihilation is something no less so. All the instincts of our nature shrink and recoil from it in horror. If, then, the grave is not the end of us, but only the great wardrobe of the world, in which the body is folded up as a garment used, to be restored, and refitted, and rebeautified; and the very instant that you die, that instant the soul, with the speed with which the lightning leaps from the black cloud, alights in the presence of God in happiness, or in the presence of the devil in misery; then I do say