to my children. Death you feel does not disturb this; wills, bequests, and family arrangements, all overcome this. But the idea that the funds will one day be extinguished; that the Royal Exchange will one day blaze as if it were paper or timber in the last fire; that one day all these things, castle, lands, hut, and palace, shall dissolve in the devouring flames; that we shall all stand either shivering or rejoicing at the judgment seat of Christ; that that day is not a dream in the infinitely remote perspective but a nearing certainty and that all things at least call aloud, "Be ye ready; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." This is what men do not like; this is what men cannot away with. The apostle predicts it will be so; our own experience shows that it may be so. But, you say, is there evidence that this day is proximately near? That I have to adduce afterwards. But is it not remarkable, to use the illustration under review, that the nearer the flood came the more specific and definite appeared the time when it should come? First a hundred and twenty years; then God tells Noah, "In seven days the flood shall come." Now may it not be that just as the light grew brighter the nearer that the judg ment came then, the light will grow clearer the nearer that the event comes now. Have you ever noticed lamps lighted in a cathedral? First a lamp is lighted on a pillar at the western door, in the nave; then another lamp farther on; then a third lamp, then a fourth; you notice that not only does the space illuminated grow brighter, but that the dark space beyond becomes comparatively lighter also; until when all the lamps of the nave are lighted, and the altar candles also begin to blaze in the choir, the whole cathe

dral is filled with light. It is so with prophecy. As one prophecy is fulfilled, and then another, and then another, not only does light become brighter on the past; but the dark and unfulfilled future that remains becomes more illuminated also; and we have a clearer, if not a certain idea of the day and the hour, or of the approximate time when all these things shall be fulfilled.

In conclusion, are we Christians? This is the great inquiry. What does it matter if in six, or ten, or twenty, or fifty years this world shall pass away like a scroll, and all its cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces crumble in the fervent heat; what does it matter to us if we be Christians? What did Noah care for the depth of the flood, the fierceness of the hurricane, the height of the giant waves? He was safe, not because the ark was strong but because the promise of his God was sure. So will it be with us; we are safe only in Christ, only in that ark built in heaven, and in which if we be now placed we shall pass through all the storms, and winds, and waves of this tempestuous world, and of that troubled era into which the world is plunging; and our ark will land us, not like Noah's upon the barren hills of Ararat, to go forth again upon a world depopulated and dismantled, but upon the everlasting hills of the heavenly Jerusalem; where may God grant we may be found at that day; for Christ's sake. Amen.

LECTURE III.

THE EARTH'S LAST BAPTISM.

The future condition of the earth and the process through which it will be introduced into its regeneration are clearly revealed. We are not left to guess. We have simply to read

"But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."-2 PETER iii. 7.

"The

Or the words of Peter the translation may be amended, and so amended be the more just to the original. The Rev. E. B. Elliot, author of the able work, the "Hora Apocalypticæ," remarks that these words ought thus to be literally translated :— heavens and the earth which are now are by the same word stored with fire, being reserved unto the judgment and perdition of ungodly men." Just as the earth of old was stored with the waters, whose fountains broken up overflowed the earth, so by the same word the earth, now stored, treasured up, or charged with fire, is ready, when the repressive force is withdrawn, to burst forth, to burn up all things, and to cause the elements to melt with fervent heat. Let us here, also, mark

how truly science justifies-if, indeed, one may venture to use such a word, for we are sure the Bible is right -the words of God, or rather discovers by its own researches how accurately Scripture speaks when it refers to natural facts. A very eminent Christian geologist, Professor Hitchcock, makes the following remark :— "Wherever in Europe and America the temperature of the air, water, rocks, in deep excavations has been ascertained, it has been found higher than the mean temperature of the climate at the surface, and experiments have been made in hundreds of places; it is found that the heat of the earth increases rapidly as we descend below that point in the earth's crust to which the sun's heat extends. The mean rate of increase of heat has been stated by the British Association to be one degree of Fahrenheit's thermometer for every forty-five feet: at this rate all the known rocks in the earth would be melted at a depth of sixty miles." This is the deduction of science. The instant you pass into the earth's crust beyond the reach of the sun's warming beams, you find that every forty-five feet you bore down the temperature increases by one degree of Fahrenheit's thermometer; and the calculation is-not a calculation that is rash, but a certainty, I mean if there be any truth in reasoning by analogy-that, assuming the heat to rise one degree every forty-five feet you bore down, if you could bore down a depth of sixty miles-which is a very little bit of the crust of the earth compared with its diameter of 8000 miles-we should find everything we know, iron, copper, silver, gold, granite rocks, melted and reduced into liquid lava. Here is the illustration from science of what is stated here, that the earth is stored with fire. In fact, our earth is, in

plain words, a charged shell. We live upon the shell, that we call the crust; we scratch that shell that it may produce a little cereal food for us and ours; but the whole vast interior, for upwards of 7000 miles in diameter, and therefore 21,000 miles inside circumference, is all one vast ocean of molten rock, molten metal, liquid fire. All science shows, in the words of Peter, that the earth is charged, or stored, with fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. Now, if this were merely the opinion of a Christian geologist, who is committed to great Christian truths, I would not lay such stress upon it; but Sir Charles Lyell, one of the most eminent geologists of the age, in his "Principles of Geology," vol. ii. p. 451, without any reference to Scripture, makes the following striking remark: "When we consider the combustible nature of the elements of the earth, so far as they are known to us, and the facility with which their compounds may be decomposed, and enter into new combinations; and also the quantity of heat which they evolve during these processes; when we recollect that water is composed of two gases which by their union produce intense heat, we may be allowed to share the astonishment of Pliny that a single day passes without a universal conflagration." Now here are the words, not of one of those whom some newspapers would set down as fanatics, but the words of a calm, sober, dispassionate, and highly learned investigator of the laws and facts of nature and the universe; and his feeling, drawn from facts, is that of surprise that a single day elapses without everything being wrapped in universal fire. Let us here adduce another statement. Gibbon, the sceptic, remarking upon this subject, says: "In the opinion of