of events foreboding and looming in the future? Look at our own country, most justly arming at every point; look at the proposals we have heard for ten millions to be laid out in doing what is instant duty, adding to the strength of our navy, and the force of our army; as if there were preparations for a storm through the like of which England never passed before. It is quite right that we should be dependent not upon any man's good intentions, however great or however tried. It is worthy of our antecedents that we should stand upon our own ground. I have the completest conviction that our country will pass chastened yet victorious through it all: we have too many proofs of the blessing of God upon the past, ever to doubt that we have still the elements of a people that God has blessed. England occupies in Christendom the position which ancient Judea occupied of old; it is God's grand protesting witness to the nations of the earth; and whatever chastisements we may be fated to pass through, whatever tribulations we are doomed to endure, old England, I believe, will weather all.

The duties of the day are ours; the trust of eternity is ours also the bright hope shines before us like a star, cheering and steady; and while England expects every man to do his duty, a greater than England, the great Captain of the faith, expects us to have our loins girt, our lamps burning, our shoes upon our feet, our hearts and our treasure in heaven; and to them that thus look for Him, He will come the second time without sin unto salvation.*

* I have profited much in these chronological investigations by the study of Mr. Shimeall's very able and elaborate work, to which the reader is referred.

LECTURE XIII.

FEAR NOT, YOUR GOD WILL COME.

The

We need encouragement as well as warning. advent, like the Pillar in the Desert, has one aspect to Christians and another to the world.

"Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not; behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will come and save you."-ISAIAH xxxv. 4.

THESE words are interpolated in that magnificent strain which predicts the glory of the future. They form a prescription, practical and personal, in the bosom of a prophecy more than ordinarily magnificent. As if the prophet felt that the splendour of the scene delineated in the chapter was too dazzling, he interrupts the strain, and throws in the homely, the personal, and practical prescription, "Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not ;" God your Saviour will come in righteous judgment upon all that despise Him, but with salvation and healing under his wings to all that look for Him at that day. The predictions of the previous chapter, the 34th, are meant to stir the world, and to waken up the drowsy sleepers among mankind; the grand prophecy in the 35th chapter is meant to cheer and animate the drooping heart of a persecuted, but a

patient and expectant church, that will not let go her hope of deliverance and of glory yet to be revealed. "Fear not." What has a Christian to fear? The apostle Paul enumerates what we need not fear, what we in our weakness fear; but against which the prescription of the prophet fully and clearly guards us. We have a catalogue of the things which Christians sometimes in their weakness fear, but which the apostle tells them they need not fear, in the 8th of Romans. He tells us of tribulation, of distress, of persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, death, life, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, height and depth; but in the rush of all these, Fear not; "for I am persuaded,” says the inspired and magnificent orator, "that none of these shall be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Therefore, "Say unto them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not."

Let me look at one or two of the things we are prone to fear in the dark catalogue of the apostle. Do you fear death? We are told that there are many who are all their lifetime kept in bondage through the fear of death. At once I admit that death is an unnatural thing; we were never made nor meant to die. Nothing can account for that violent interruption of the continuity of a life whose every pulse should be praise, and whose every look should be sunshine, except the introduction of sin; yet death we have no cause, if we be Christians, to fear. In order to have a right apprehension of death, we must detach from it the grave. What we popularly mean by death is the grave, corruption, decay: in the language of the patriarch, sitting mourning and weeping on those eastern plains, we

understand by it "the worm our sister, and corruption our mother." But what is death detached from the grave? The lifting of the anchor, that the immortal ship may set sail; the snapping of the cords that moor it to the shores of this life, that we may enter on that ocean that has no storms, and in which shipwreck is for ever impossible. Death, therefore, a Christian need not fear. Should any of you fear it, remember who has said, "O death, I will be thy destruction;" remember who teaches us to sing, "O grave, where is thy victory ?" The portrait is grand, the victory is glorious: it represents a Christian standing upon an elevated height, on some lofty rock, high above the tide mark, seeing death dashing against the rock, in order to suck him into its depths, and looking down upon the cold waves as you look down upon wild beasts that seek to tear you in pieces, where you are safe beyond their reach, and shouting in defiant and sarcastic accents-for there is a sarcasm that is sacred-"O death, where now is thy sting? O grave, where now is thy victory ?" You cannot touch me: there is separation between you and me, which you can no more cross than you can leap from the grave into the bosom of heaven itself. Death at present comes to all. There will be some at the last day who will never die; but at present the body goes the way of all flesh, and the soul the way of all spirits. Sometimes it comes to us in the shape of lingering disease: sometimes the spring of life, like the mainspring of a watch, snaps at once; at other times it gradually uncoils, and we reach a protracted age. The experience of nearly 6000 years has been, that it is appointed unto men to die. If you be not a Christian, then of all things death is the most terrible; but if you

be a Christian, death has no power to hurt you: it has only a commission to give you your Nunc Dimittis, to bid you come from being an out-door servant in the storms, and winds, and rains, and cold, and snow, to be an in-door servant in that sunshine and in those magnificent mansions which God has prepared for them that love Him. Therefore, a Christian, death merely takes into closer intimacy with his Lord; it merely wafts him across the sea into the presence of God and of the Lamb. The funeral bell that tolls a Christian's death to his ear is the joyous peal of bells that welcome him to the marriage feast of the Lamb. And, therefore, let a Christian now learn to feel, that nowhere, in no shape, at no time, can death hurt him; it has been consecrated to go forth at Christ's bidding, and to lay its finger upon the heart, as the minstrel lays his hand upon the harp-strings; not to destroy them, but simply to deaden their vibrations. Death shall not separate us from Christ: therefore I say to every Christian who is of a fearful heart, "Be strong, fear not;” death cannot separate you from Christ.

Let me take another item in the apostle's dark catalogue-"Nor life." Life is a thing which Christians often fear may separate them from Christ. But what does He tell us? "Neither death nor life" shall do it. It is a solemn thing, people say, to die; but it is a vastly more solemn thing to live. It is easier to die a martyr than to live a Christian. Man's nerve can inspire him to do one grand, heroic deed; but it requires wonderful grace to enable him to go on patiently and persistently, fulfilling the small duties, and bearing meekly the petty trials of social, domestic, national, and individual life. Courage is far more easy than patience: