he was so smitten by the thought of death and eternity, that it changed his whole frame and course of life in an instant. The powers of the world to come were upon him—the sense that the end of all things was at hand. He rose up an altered man. O that God would do the same to us. All mankind from the beginning have died; and you must die soon! The end of all things is at hand. Be sober, therefore, and watch unto prayer!

Let us pray to our heavenly Father, who has had compassion upon his children, and, remembering that we are but dust, has opened a new and living way by which we may approach the throne, even Jesus Christ the righteous, to give us faith, and hope, and love, that we may draw nigh unto Him in this blessed Son's name! Let us pray Him to give us the Spirit of prayer and supplication. For so shall our hearts and souls rise unto Him, as the incense, and the words of our lips as the morning and evening sacri

fice. For thou alone, O God, art He that hearest the prayer, and unto thee shall all

flesh come.

Grant this, O Lord, for thy

dear Son's sake.

Amen.

160

SERMON VII.

MATT. xxiv. 14.-" And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come."

THROUGHOUT the whole of this discourse our Lord combines together two awful manifestations of his power; one the destruction of Jerusalem, for the impenitent rejection of the Gospel and the crucifixion of the Lord of glory. The other, the destruction of the whole world and all that it contains, when its sins shall be ripe.

Both of these events are judgments. They are acts of justice, that is, wherein retribution is given according to the works done, during the time of man's trial, be

they good or evil.

Both are the last

steps of God's dispensations towards men; in the one case, the breaking up in wrath of the law of Moses; in the other, the consummation of the Gospel of Christ. Only in this they differ, that the final judgment of the quick and dead is God's unchangeable decree, touching the whole world we live in, which shall then be purged in fire, and the generations of mankind, who shall then enter on their eternal state. It is, therefore, unspeakably more tremendous than the other. And, therefore, all the images of terror in which Christ clothes his coming to take vengeance upon Jerusalem, have a further meaning than that. The turning the sun into darkness, and the moon into blood, the failing of all men's hearts for fear, and the shaking of the powers of heaven, are to be taken as representations of what will really find its full accomplishment only in the judgment-day!

And so in that sign of the coming of the Son of man, which is mentioned in the

text, the preaching of the Gospel over all the world; it belongs to both. For before the destruction of Jerusalem, incredible as such a rapid spread of truth appears, there was hardly a corner of the world, as then known, in which the light of the Gospel had not shone. Beautiful

on the mountains of heathenism were the feet of them that brought good tidings,that published peace. So is it rapidly coming to pass at the present time, when the dimensions of the globe we live in, are more than doubled by the discovery amidst the waters, of great continents, which in ancient times were unknown to mankind; and as compared with the apostles' time, it is almost a new world altogether. God hath poured out his Spirit again, as at the first, upon all flesh. He hath stirred up the hearts of his faithful people to spread his word anew throughout all the world. You might almost say that the day of Pentecost itself is come over again, to aid in the spread of the Gospel. For though the