had great privileges, and these may save you. Many will come in that day, and say, "Lord, in thy name we have done many wonderful works, and cast out devils; but he will say, Depart from me ye that work iniquity, I know you not." There is a Gospel to-day for the greatest sinner. No man knows whether tomorrow will be the judgment-day. Nobody knows what may be in the future. The past is gone—it is not ours; the future is not come it is not ours; the present is ours, and for it alone we are responsible before God. The ark now rides on the wave ready to set sail for a better hill than the ancient Ararat; are you prepared to enter and escape from the flood that will soon depopulate and dismantle our world? The Saviour is lifted on the cross; do you look to him and draw from him healing and everlasting hopes? Now is the sweet, the soft spring-time, when seeds may be sown that will grow into golden harvests; now, and now only, deeds are done that may have their echoes amid the music of the blest, instead of ceaseless crashes amid the misery and wretchedness of the lost. Now character is formed that will endure for ever. What a tremendous importance is given to this present moment by this one fact, that we are here taking in a character that will last throughout everlasting ages; that we are here being shaped in a mould for a life we are to live for ever and for ever; that we speak, we act, we hear, we think, for eternity. Associations are begun to-day that will last for ever. The very briefness of the moment gives it unspeakable intensity.

Oh, may He who inspired this blessed book, who gave us this rich salvation, enable us now to accept it. So every day will be a festival; earth itself will be a Tabor, and time itself, instead of being the workshop of man that perisheth, will be transformed into a porch of eternity, a vestibule of glory.

WHO IS ON THE LORD'S SIDE?

"Who is on the Lord's side ?"-EXODUS xxxii. 26.

THE question to which I am now to endeavour to reply, is, "Who is on the Lord's side?" It is a momentous one. Amid the thousand inquiries of the day, surely this is not the least important. Too much is it the question, What party do you belong to? What shibboleth can you pronounce? What denomination do you prefer? What leader is it whose standard you rally round, whose principles you embrace? But in the midst of all these clear, emphatic, demanding instant, prayerful, honest, investigation rises the question of the Lord of hosts, uttered by the lips of his servant Moses, "Who is on the Lord's side?"

The form of the question upon earth is often varied by changing one sect or party for another, and so thinking that we have made a change in an upward and a better direction. It is possible to change our communion, and yet neither in the first nor in the last communion to have been Christians. It is possible to change our church, and yet to have made only a change on the surface. It is possible to change our leader, our denomination, our party, and yet never to

have been on the Lord's side, and to be no nearer being so now.

Let us, therefore, lay aside, and leave all ecclesiastical disputes, all party questions, and ask, as in the sight of God, "Who is on the Lord's side?" And a question is not made to provoke a mere echo, but to get an answer.

"Who is on the Lord's side?" The grand peculiarity of the Gospel is suggested at the very commencement of our investigation. Christianity is not adhesion to a doctrine, however true; but union to a living person - the Lord Jesus Christ. Christianity is not being on the side of a subject, but on the side of a Divine Person. When the question was asked, "What must I do to be saved?" the answer was not, "Believe in justification by faith;" though that doctrine is most precious; but, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ." Orthodoxy is not Christianity; Calvinism is not Christianity; Arminianism is not Christianity. Christianity is the living union of the living branch to Christ Jesus, the living and the everlasting Vine.

I cannot conceive a more important question than this. You may be a Churchman or a Dissenter, and no great calamity may follow from either. The one may be better than the other; but, whether better or worse, your everlasting interests will not be touched by it. But if you be not on the Lord's side, if you be not a Christian, this great fact will stretch its shadow into everlasting ages; and all eternity will ever reproduce and reflect the awful and the agonizing remembrance, I might have been on Christ's side; I

allied myself to a sect, a party, a system; I forgot that real religion was union to the Son of God.

In determining this question, we are not to regard number as an element at all. Many say, That must be the true church, for it has the greatest number of adherents. That minister must preach the Gospel most faithfully, for he has the most crowded congregation. The inference might rather be the very reverse; for our Lord says, "Many are called, but few are chosen." He speaks of his flock as a very little flock; and the great Western abomination, it is said, in the Apocalypse, sits upon many waters, which are "peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.' The element of number is not to determine, in the faintest degree, our adhesion to a cause. Thousands and tens of thousands may tread the courts of error; tens and fives may worship before the altar of truth. We are not to count heads, but to look at texts. We are not to inquire how many go here, and how many worship there; but to appeal "to the law and to the testimony;" for, if all the population of London were to say, Romanism, Hindooism, Socinianism is truth; and if three Sundayschool children were to say, Christianity is truth, the whole millions of London would be wrong, and those three Sunday-school children would be right. We do not determine what is truth by the majorities or minorities, but by an appeal "to the law and to the testimony." And that man has never learned what Christianity is, who will not accept truth amid a handful, and reject error amid the assembled crowds of an admiring world.

Another element we are not to accept in determin