missionaries into it. The proposal of the excellent Mr. James, of Birmingham, to send a million Chinese Testaments into China, has been taken up, and more than the expense is now provided. In all probability, a half million of Old Testaments will be added. The tribes that cluster around the North Pole, whose home is the region of perpetual snow, have been sought out for so many years apparently to gratify curiosity, but really to complete the fulfilment of the prophecy: "This gospel shall be preached as a witness among all nations." The Moslem, the Hindoo, and the Chinaman, are emerging into the everlasting light. In every tongue on earth the Gospel has its music and its glad echo. In every latitude and longitude the cross is revealed, obstructing walls are falling; and where Christianity may not be accepted as a remedy, it is everywhere heard as a witness, and is, therefore, according to the words of our Lord, a precursor of the end.

Another symptom of the close of this age is now patent, the great boasting of the Romish Babylon. Never did the Church of Rome boast louder than she does now. She saith in her heart, "I sit a queen, and am no widow." This is dotage, not power. Her last day shall be her proudest, her dying resistance will be the greatest. She will go down, as sure as there

is truth in prophecy; but like a ship at sea, every sail set, and her prophecies of supremacy lifted up loudest and most impudent to the end. She has crushed every attempt within to rectify her errors and reform her corruptions; she has persecuted with the sword and fagot every exertion from without to awaken her to a sense of apostasy; her pride has grown with her years; her pretensions are, in the year 1854, louder than in the palmy days of Hildebrand himself. But her imperial splendour shall be her funeral pall; her present glory shall only soon light her to her grave.

At this very period, immediately before the destruction of the Crescent in the East and of the Tiara in the West, we read in Old and New Testament prophecy, there will be a general war over the length and breadth of Europe; the unclean spirits preparing the kings of the earth for the great battle, as the Scripture calls it, of God Almighty. Many and terrible are the signs of the fulfilment. The revolutionary fires that are smouldering under every throne will likely soon burst out; and every capital in Europe shall blaze, every village become a camp, and every country a battle-field. Assembled kings shall debate their very existence in the high places of the earth, and kingdom dash against kingdom, like stars broken

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loose from their orbits; and rulers fall from their high places, like leaves or unripe fruit from the fig-tree, when shaken by fierce winds. Every acre of Europe is covered at this hour with strange and ominous shadows, which coming events cast before. Auguries of looming evils have found access to cabinets and councils; and statesmen at their wits' end look pale and perplexed, while their hearts tremble for fear of the things that are coming on the earth. was a great sea-wave, rising and reaching far up the shores of Europe, and then receding, but only to gather fresh volume, and to come up again augmented in mass, and with accumulated speed, to burst over the lowliest hearthstone and the loftiest roof-tree, convulsing all things, wasting many, yet sweeping away the corrupting drift-weed of centuries, and destined, we believe, in the purposes of God, to baptize rather than overwhelm and bury the earth.

Another remarkable sign of the times, and, in its place, significant of our impression of the nearness of the end of the age, is the intensity that is concentrated in almost every sphere and department of life. The object may be great, or the pursuit may be in itself worthless; but everywhere you perceive that energy, and vigour, and great force are in it. Let it be the manufacture of a pin, or the enlightenment of a soul,

-let it be the service of a master behind the counter, or of our gracious Queen in the cabinet, -there is condensed in it evident, and palpable, and untiring energy. For evil or for good, the age of apathy is gone. Men are in earnest in all they do; they are doing what they undertake with all their might. All seem to feel as if the time for their mission were preternaturally short, and the force they have extremely inadequate, and the night of time, or the night of death, too near to allow of respite from their toils, or a relaxation of their energies.

What is Tractarianism but old High Churchism in earnest? Ignorant of vital and evangelical truth, it is occupied about robes, and candles, and genuflexions, and crosses, and phylacteries. Better however earnest anything than dead everything. We pray that their earnestness may be directed by the Spirit of God to objects. worthy of it!

This intensity is a prophetic instinct, a sign of the times, an omen of the retiring sun and the gathering darkness, the termination of the groans of humanity, the travail of nature, and the winding up of a drama of which angels have been for six thousand years the spectators, and men the solemn actors. If this be a sign of the times, and the character of the men of this world, let us Christians excel, not fall behind them.

"Work while it is called To-day." "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." The warning cry is ringing loud and clear from every quarter of the compass-" The Bridegroom cometh!" Are our lamps burning? Are our loins girt? Are our hands in the shop, in the counting-house, the senate, but our hearts, and our hopes, and our treasure in heaven, where Christ is, and from whence we look for the Lord?

Another very pregnant and remarkable sign of the times, and peculiarly suggestive, is the disintegration and disorganisation of all things. Where reformation is refused, revolution begins. Whether there be or be not the hope of improvement, there is all but a universal determination to have change. Age is no defence; past services to generations gathered to their rest is no apology. Some who were in former days the strenuous champions of things that be, have now become the earnest advocates of new creations. Some may be factious, others restless, but all seem to be unanimous in their desire to alter the existing economy. This is a feature of the day-a sign of the times. And what means it? It is the disorganisation of the old, that is ready to pass away, preparatory to the emergence from beneath the horizon of a new and more glorious order of things, which God